Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/281

Rh original force of Thoreau's mind and his life-example. Among these travelers was young Thomas Cholmondeley of Shropshire, England, who came to Concord in 1854 and lodged with the Thoreaus. He was the nephew of Bishop Heber, was a pupil of Arthur Hugh Clough at Oriel, and had been given letters by the latter for Emerson. He had already published a volume, "Ultima Thule," descriptive of a visit to a New Zealand colony. With Channing and Thoreau, he made some excursions to adjacent mountains and, in 1855, he returned to England to take part in the Crimean War. The correspondence, during the next few years, shows his devotion to Thoreau and the strong influence exerted by the simple, lofty ideals of the Concord naturalist. Clearly, this youth won from Thoreau a half-promise to visit him in England when the war was ended. For Thoreau's library and scholarly researches he sent a gift of peculiar value, fifty-four large, expensive volumes on Hindoo literature, many of them rare in America. Thoreau was delighted with this "nest of Indian books"; in a letter to a friend, he compared his joy of possession to what he might have experienced "at the birth of a child." In return he sent to Cholmondeley his own volumes, some of Emerson's, and a copy of "Leaves of Grass," which first aroused