William Ellery Channing writes to Margaret Fuller:
In Concord—nothing new. [Benjamin West] Ball has gone off—Thoreau writes back Thoreauacic letters, pulmonary enough, from Staten Island; he has seen the ocean, & says that from the hills, it looks as if was quite near, although it is someway off; he has never seen anything LARGE before!
(Studies in the American Renaissance 1989, 195)