People must be strangely constituted who do not enjoy such pages as Mr. Gibson has presented to us here. It is not merely that he writes well, but the subject itself is irresistibly fascinating. We plunge with him into the silence of a New England village in a clearing of the woods. The spring is awakening in a flush of tender green, in a fever of warm days and shivering nights, and we hasten with our companion through all the bustle and stir of the few busy hours of light so swiftly that the darkness is on us before we are aware. Then falls on the ear a pathetic, an intolerable silence; a deep mist covers the ground, a few lights twinkle in scattered farms and cottages, and all seems brooding, melting, in the deep and throbbing hush of the darkness. * * * The wailing of the great owl upon the maple-tree takes our author back in memory to the scenes of his youth, where the owl was looked upon as a creature of most sinister omen, and his own partiality to it, as a proof that there was something uncanny or even “fey” about him. All this is described with great sympathy and delicacy; but perhaps Mr. Gibson is most felicitous in his little touches of floral painting. He has a few words about the earthy, spicy fragrance of the arbutus that might have been said in verse by the late Mr. Bryant; his description of the effect of biting the bulbs of the Indian turnip, or “Jack-in-the-pulpit,” is inimitable in its quiet way; while the phrase about the fading dandelions—“the golden stars upon the lawn are nearly all burned out; we see their downy ashes in the grass”—is perhaps the best thing ever said about a humble flower, whose vulgarity, in the literal sense, blinds us to the beauty of its evolution and decay.
In his studies of life and country manners Mr. Gibson is a very agreeable and amusing, if not quite so novel, a companion. Not seldom he reminds us not merely of Miss Mitford, but sometimes of Thoreau and of Hawthorne. The story of Aunt Huldy, the village crone who sustained herself upon simples to the age of a hundred and three, is one of those little vignettes, half humorous, half pathetic, and altogether picturesque, in which the Americans excel. Aunt Huldy was an old witch in a scarlet hood, whose long white hair flowing behind her was wont to frighten the village children who came upon her in the woods; but she was absolutely harmless, a crazy old valetudinarian, who was always searching for the elixir of life in strange herbs and decoctions. At last she thought she had found it in sweet-fern, and she spent her last years in grubbing up every specimen she could find, smoking it, chewing it, drinking it, and sleeping with a little bag of it tied round her neck.
But although Mr. Gibson writes so well, he modestly disclaims all pretension as a writer, and lets us know that he is an artist by profession. His book is illustrated by more than seventy designs from his pencil, engraved in that beautiful American manner to which we have often called attention. The scenes designed are closely analogous to those described in the text. We have an apple-orchard in full blossom, with a group of idlers lounging underneath the boughs; scenes in the fields so full of mystery and stillness that we are reminded of Millet, or of our own Mason; clusters of flowers drawn with all the knowledge of a botanist and the sympathy of a poet. It is hard to define the peculiar pleasure that such illustrations give to the eye. It is something that includes and yet transcends the mere enjoyment of whatever artistic excellence the designs may possess. We are directly reminded by them of such similar scenes as have been either the rule or the still more fascinating exception of every childish life, and at their suggestion the past comes back; in the familiar Wordsworthian phrase, “a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.”
We know so little over here of the best American art that it may chance that Mr. Gibson is very well known in New York. We confess, however, that we never heard of him before; but his drawings are so full of delicate fancy and feeling, and his writing so skilful and graceful, that, in calling attention to his book, we cannot but express the hope that we soon may hear of him again, in either function, or in both.
==>“PASTORAL DAYS” is published by Harper & Brothers, New York, who will send the work, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of $7 50.
HARPER’S GUIDE TO EUROPE.
HARPER’S HAND-BOOK FOR TRAVELLERS IN EUROPE AND THE EAST: being a Guide through Great Britain and Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Tyrol, Spain, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, United States, and Canada. By W. Pembroke Fetridge. With Maps and Plans of Cities. In Three Volumes. 12mo, Leather, Pocket-Book Form, $3 00 per vol. The volumes sold separately.
Vol. I. Great Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland.
Vol. II. Germany, Austria, Italy, Sicily and Malta, Egypt, The Desert, Syria and Palestine, Turkey, Greece.