With an intense sympathy for all the pleasures of childhood, Meyer unites a wonderfully delicate sense of the artistic and picturesque. His fertility of invention seems well-nigh inexhaustible. He has given us cottage scenes and out-of-door life with impartial liberality, and has shown equal skill of treatment, whether he handles groups or single figures.

His subjects are drawn largely from life in the Hessian, Bavarian, and Swiss Alps, where he has carefully studied the manners and customs of the people. The cottage interiors have all the characteristic quaintness and charm of these peasant homes. High wooden chairs, of the “fiddle-back” pattern, are the conspicuous pieces of furniture; rich old cabinets stand against the walls, and oddly shaped earthern jars are ranged on shelves. The light comes through little diamond-paned windows, and gleams on floors of hard wood, unadorned with carpet or rug. In these surroundings, groups of flaxen-haired children sport in all the sweet innocence of healthy, happy childhood. Sometimes they gather eagerly about the table to play with their Pet Canary; at another time they cluster about their mother’s knee to peep admiringly at the wonderful new baby in her arms, and to hear the mysterious announcement that The Storks Brought It. Again, the centre of their attention is the tiny brother gleefully taking his first uncertain steps towards the outstretched arms of his young mother.

[the little rabbit-seller.—meyer von bremen.]

The out-of-door scenes have the picturesque mountain scenery of the Alps for their background, and sometimes a pretty cottage is included in the scene. A characteristic example is the Little Rabbit-Seller. A group of children gather round a little girl, who carries, suspended from her shoulders, a large basket of rabbits. Two of the number peep with intense interest into the basket, delighted with the opportunity to feed the pretty creatures. The others are talking with the young merchant,—a school-boy with book satchel held behind him, and an older girl holding a curly-haired child on her back. The pure, gentle face of the young girl is one not to be easily forgotten, and which reappears on other canvases of the artist. The affectionate care of this older sister for the child she carries is one of many instances in which the same trait is shown in Meyer’s pictures, and is eminently characteristic of the Germans.

The earnest piety in which the children of these simple-hearted people are reared is beautifully expressed in the companion pictures, Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, as well as in one called Simple Devotion, where a little girl offers a bouquet to the Virgin of a wayside shrine.

In whatever mood the children are portrayed, they are always entirely unconscious of observers, never posing for the artist, but caught unawares on his canvas, in the midst of their pursuits. In this way they always make pictures with “stories” in them, of just the kind to delight the heart of a child.

Such art carries a beautiful and enduring lesson, whether the scenes it represents are German or French, English or American. In these visions of the simple and joyous life of the country, we are brought, as it were, face to face with Nature, to enjoy her sweetest and most beneficent influence.