"Life in the Open Air"—containing sketches of travel among the mountains and lakes of Maine, as well as the story of "Love and Skates," which has been spoken of, "The March of the Seventh Regiment," "Washington as a Camp," an essay descriptive of Church's great picture, "The Heart of the Andes," and two fragments, one of them the charming commencement of a story which promised to be one of his best and most enjoyable efforts in this direction—is the concluding volume of Winthrop's collected writings. I speak of it in this place, because it is in some part a companion-book to the volumes we have been discussing. It is as full of buoyant life, of fresh and noble thought, of graceful wit and humor, as those; in parts it contains the most finished of his literary work. Few Americans who read it at the time will ever forget that stirring description of the march of the New-York Seventh; it is a piece of the history of our war which will live and be read as long as Americans read their history. It moved my blood, in the reading, tonight, as it did in those days—which seem already some centuries old, so do events crowd the retrospect—when we were all reading it in the pages of the "Atlantic." In the unfinished story of "Brightly's Orphan" there is a Jew boy from Chatham Street, an original of the first water, who, though scarce fairly introduced, will, I am sure, make a place for himself and for his author in the memories of all who relish humor of the best kind.
"Cecil Dreeme" and "Edwin Brothertoft" are quite other books than these we have spoken of. Here Winthrop tried a different vein,—two different veins, perhaps. Both are stories of suffering and crime, stories of the world and society. In one it is a woman, in the other a man, who is wronged. One deals with New York city-life of the very present day; the other is a story of the Revolutionary War, and of Tories and Patriots. The popular verdict has declared him successful, even here. "Cecil Dreeme" has run through no less than fifteen editions.
In this story we are shown New York "society" as doubtless Winthrop knew it to be. Yet the book has a curious air of the Old-World; it might be a story of Venice, almost. It tells us of Old-World vices and crimes, and the fittings and furnishings are of a piece. The localities, indeed, are sketched so faithfully, that a stranger to the city, coming suddenly, in his wanderings, upon Chrysalis College Buildings, could not fail to recognize them at once,—as indeed happened to a country friend of mine recently, to his great delight. But the men are Americans, bred and formed—and for the most part spoiled—in Europe; Americans who have gone to Paris before their time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight moment, from the mysteries which "society" decorously hides,—as though he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but because the true men are the better men.
These, then, are Winthrop's writings,—the literary works of a young man who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his memory green amongst us; for, through them, all who read may know that there wrote a true gentleman.
Once he wrote,—
"Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,
In petty struggles. Rather in the hour
Of deadly conflict may I nobly die,
In my first battle perish gloriously."
Even so he fell; but in these written works, as in his gallant death, he left with us lessons which will yet win battles for the good cause of American liberty, which he held dearest in his heart.
HILARY.
Hilary,
Summer calls thee, o'er the sea!
Like white flowers upon the tide,
In and out the vessels glide;
But no wind on all the main
Sends thy blithe soul home again:
Every salt breeze moans for thee,
Hilary!