offspring of a much more graceful, poetic, and affluent mind. If we place Bayard Taylor's in the first rank, as being the works of a man who has Nature's commission to travel, we must certainly put Willis's next as models of the traveling gentleman's diary. Nothing can exceed the spirit and interest with which he touches the old topics; and at this moment there is no more pleasant companion upon the usual European tour than the "Pencilings by the Way." It has, in a lesser degree, for all Europe, the peculiar kind of charm that Byron's Childe Harold" has for Italy; that is, it expresses, in the most apt and airy manner, the average natural sentiment of an intelligent American in Europe, just as Byron hits the general tone of romance in Venice and Rome. In the opening of "Pencilings by the Way" Willis speaks for every American who follows the lead of his desire across the ocean.

"The dream of my lifetime was about to be realized. I was bound to France; and those fair Italian cities, with their world of association and interest, were within the limit of a voyage; and all that one looks to for happiness in change of scene, and all that I had been passionately wishing and imagining since I could dream a day-dream or read a book, was before me with a visible certainty."

Willis knows where to merge his statistics in his sentiment. He describes with a poetic, and not a prosaic, detail; instinctively discriminating the characteristic from the merely accidental. Hence his brief descriptions of persons, in the "Pencilings by the Way," are like cabinet portraits.

"Nearest me sat Smith, the author of 'Rejected Addresses'—a hale, handsome man, apparently fifty, with white hair, and a very nobly-formed head and physiognomy. His eye alone, small and . with lids contracted into an habitual look of drollery, betrayed the bent of his genius. He held a cripple's crutch in his hand, and though otherwise rather particularly well-dressed, wore a pair of large India rubber shoes-the penalty he was paying, doubtless, for the many good dinners he had eaten. He played rather an aside in the conversation, whipping in with a quiz or a witticism whenever he could get an opportunity, but more a listener than a talker. * * * Toward twelve o'clock Mr. Lytton Bulwer' was announced, and enter the author of 'Pelham.' **

*

He is short, very much bent in the back, slightly knock-kneed, and, if my opinion, in such matters, goes for anything, as ill-dressed a man, for a gentleman, as you will find in London. His figure is slight, and very badly put together, and the only commendable point in his person, as far as I could see, was the smallest foot I ever saw a man stand upon. * * He ran up to Lady Blessington with the joyous heartiness of a boy let out of school; and the 'how d'ye, Bulwer,' went round, as he shook hands with everybody, in the style of welcome usually given to 'the best fellow in the world.' *** His forehead retreats very much, but is very broad and well-marked, and the whole air is that of decided mental superiority. His nose is aquiline, and far too large for proportion, though he conceals its extreme prominence by an immense pair of red whiskers, which entirely conceal the lower part of his face in profile. His complexion is fair, his hair profuse, curly, and of a light auburn, his eye not remarkable, and his mouth contradictory, I should think, of all talent. A more good-natured, habitually-smiling, nerveless expression could hardly be imagined."

Here is Charles Lamb:

"There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman in black-small- . clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful, forward bent, his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful, deep-set eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it expressed most humor or feeling, goodnature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other things which passed over it by turns, I cannot in the least be certain."

* *

"Mr. Moore!' cried the footman at the bottom of the staircase. 'Mr. Moore cried the footman at the top. And with his glass at his eye, stumbling over an ottoman between his near-sightedness and the darkness of the room. enter the poet. Half a glance tells you that he is at home on a carpet. He had the frank, merry manner of a. confident favorite, and he was greeted: like one. He went from one to the other, straining back his head to look up at them, ** and to every one he said something which, from any one else, would have seemed peculiarly felicitous, but which fell from his lips as if his breath was not more spontaneous."

For all this portrait-painting and free report of private conversation Willis was savagely handled by the English Reviews, and he undoubtedly injured his reputation by the performance. He makes his defense in the preface to the last edition of the "Pencilings," and it is surely quite sufficient to excuse what is excusable in the sketches. The mere fact of describing famous persons is not matter of blame. But there can be no excuse for publishing any man's opinion of another, which is uttered in the close confidence of a social circle, and which would not be uttered at all, if there were any chance of the world's hearing it.

But our concern with these passages is only as they are illustrative of the singular facility of eye and hand which makes Willis so delightful a traveling companion. They are artificial, we grant. They have the air of the drawing-room; and the eyes which see are set in a téte exaltée by early success, and the hands which record tremble a little with the pressure of the hands of famous wits, and noble lords, and lovely ladies. But they are vivid and individual. They give the whole impression of the subject and the detail is subjected to the general spirit.

Willis shows the same man twenty years ago:

a

"Disraeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly-embroidered waistcoat. Patent leather pumps, a white stick with a black cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him, even in the dim light, rather a conspicuous object. *** He is lividly pale, and, but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, would seem victim to consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking and lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephistophiles. hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put

His

away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctuously

"With thy incomparable oil, Macassar.'"

It is this sensitive appreciation and graceful facility which make Willis so fine a narrator that he cannot easily touch the common-places of travel without partially restoring them to their places in the imagination. This peculiarity of his power has not escaped degenerating into mannerism; but if the reader who is impatient of the shower of grotesque, yet expressive words that weekly falls from Idlewild, will turn to the "Pencilings by the Way," and the "Suminer Cruise in the Mediterranean," he will find a style of opaline lucidity; and, if he has traveled, his mind will be left in the mood which followed lovely days at Albano and Sorrento, and brilliant evenings in the great European capitals. Among modern writers of travels, as distinguished from the travelers, Willis is very eminent. The indirect proof of his superiority is seen in the fact that his books of travel have given him literary distinction. But very few publishing tourists have ever acquired more than a momentary reputation. Stephens, with all the popularity and value of his "Incidents of Travel," achieved little literary position by them. It was instinctively perceived that the excellence of his books was not peculiar. They were like so much of the poetry which is published, and, which any welleducated gentleman ought to be able to write. Willis adds genius to the good education.

Mr.

The recent books, whose titles we have placed at the head of our article, illustrate the various kinds of the literature of travel to which we have alluded. Bayard Taylor's represent the genuine traveler; "Travels in Europe and the East," and "Another Budget,". are the ordinary sketches of ordinary travel; and "Cosas de España," ""Gan Eden," "Art, Scenery and Philosophy in Europe," belong to the category of traveling impressions, rather than descriptions, with which, also, must be classed the "Notes of a Theological Student."

The "Travels in Europe and the East" call for little remark, except upon the unpardonable carelessness of style in which they are written. They describe the usual course of American travel in Europe and the East, beginning with

"the outward voyage," and ending at the "Pyramids." They have the fault, not uncommon in the traveling journals of clergymen, of beatifying little men, and treating sectarian and local heroes as if they were of interest to the world. Exeter Hall is by no means the forum of civilization.

We shall specify several of the defects of style in these volumes, because they illustrate a pernicious literary error, which consists in supposing that slang is ease; and flippancy, spirit; and general carelessness, general superiority.

Mr. Prime leaves home an invalid, and upon page 16, vol. i., tells us that "I lay around on the deck generally." Upon page 74, vol. i., he is describing a dinner given by Mr. Peabody at the "Star and Garter," in Richmond. It chances that it fell to the lot of our author to hand out "a venerable English lady, patched and proud," who astonishes him, and he expresses his surprise that an aristocratic and splendidly-genteel woman" should do what she did. At Billingsgate, page 89, vol. i., he and his companions are insulted by a fish-woman, and while they are retreating "she followed us with her compliments, and some of her neighbors heaped on a few more of the same sort." Upon page 114, vol. i., our traveler and his friends go "early of a Sunday morning" to hear Dr. Cumming. Upon page 134, vol. i., he hears some one demand a question. Upon page 144, Mr. Prime informs us that Sir Joseph Paxton "with a good wife got a hundred thousand dollars, not bad to take." On page 308, vol. i.. he asks a question (or demands it) "in as fair German as I could frame to pronounce." Upon page 51, vol. ii., we learn that Venice is "unlike anything else in the way of a city that was ever seen before." In Florence, page 96, vol. ii., Madame A- "flourishes in the style of a princess," and "smokes and drinks, genteelly, of course," while Lord Bis "cutting a great dash in the city." And when our author reaches the East, and the American is in Egypt, this is his burst of enthusiasm: "On the Nile-on the Nile! and a broader, swifter, altogether a more respectable river than we had looked for."

All this is slipshod, if not vulgar, common-place. It is a kind of cheap newspaper style, which a sensitive eye or mind should have corrected in the proof. It is not ease, nor grace, nor

freedom, of style; it is simply slang, and bad grammar.

There is one other amusing point in these two volumes, not otherwise very amusing. Our author, traveling by rail to Oxford, consoles himself for the hole in his boot by observing that his neighbor is out at the elbows. In other words he sees women working in the fields, and triumphantly demands whether his English neighbor is so blinded by names as not to see that such a spectacle implies a state of things quite as bad as negro slavery? Now there is nothing more ignoble and unmanly than the testy and truculent patriotism which leads American travelers in Europe to defend that very disagreeable institution of ours because there chance to be other disagreeable institutions in other countries. Would Mr. Prime urge it as an excuse for his own bad manners (let us suppose) at an Englishman's table, that he had seen the host spit upon the carpet? Is a bad state of things at home better because there may be a bad state of things in France? or is an intelligent Frenchman not to allude to our beam because of his own mote? In traveling, the citizens of various countries may, sometimes, meet as men; and then they will regard life and society from the humane, and not the national, point of view; and it is an amusing illustration of the morbid nervousness which indicates an unpleasant consciousness, in a certain class of our fellowcitizens, of the necessity of springing to arms for slavery, that our traveler could not see a group of women working in the fields without insisting that a country which could tolerate such barbarity has no right to speak of human wrongs elsewhere. It is, at least, a principle that would soon close all mouths, and pulpits, and presses. We quote the passage as a specimen of the intellectual acumen of our author, and as an illustration of the wrong done the American name and character by scores of tourists abroad. The road lies through lovely English scenery :

"Yet in the midst of such pictures a sight suddenly met my eyes which pierced my heart. A gang of womenwhite women-thewOMEN OF ENGLAND' were at work in the field, in the middle of the day, each with a hoe in her hand, digging away as the veriest slaves. "There, said I, 'Edwards, you see the white slaves of England.'

"An Englishman sitting next to him

did not wait for him to answer, but with that readiness to put in a word so common here, instantly and tartly answered, 'Ay, but they are free.' Free to do what?' I asked him. 'Free to do as they like; to stop working if they choose.' And what then?' I pursued. He was silent. They must do that or starve, must they not?' I demanded. Why, yes, they must work, and do that if they cannot find anything else.' I continued my inquiries. And you do not suppose they work in the fields under a hot sun, planting potatoes or corn, because they love the employment?' 'No, but they are free; they are not slaves.' 'And are you so blinded by the name of slavery,' I replied, 'here in Britain, that you treat your women as they are not treated in America, nor in any other Christian country of which I have heard; you have poverty and misery among your laborers and those who are not even able to get work-wretchedness that the negro never feels-and you are totally insensible to it, while you are in pain for the poor slaves of a land beyond the sea.' 'But we never whip these poor people of ours, as you do the negroes.' There you are wrong again: I read in the London Times, this week, of a man in London who flogged his apprentice so cruelly, that the boy put an end to his miseries by suicide.' And so we pursued the conversation until we became good friends, and mutually admitted the evils of both countries, and agreed that we were bound to consider the difficulties under which each labors, and leave those, who are the most familiar with them, to do the best they can to alleviate or remove them."

6

The conclusion of the whole matter was certainly amiable and wise. But our author appears in the conversation not as a man, but as an American compelled to defend his country, right or wrong, and his defense is lamentable.

The necessity which drives the women of England, and of France, and of Germany, and of Italy, into the field to labor, is precisely the same necessity in kind, however different in degree, which leads the American citizen into the counting-room, the workshop, the pulpit, or the field, and that is-the necessity of getting a living. All this has nothing to do with the institution of slavery. Every man is the slave of physical necessity. Slavery is not work, nor the necessity of work. The suffer

ing which arises from overcrowded spheres of labor, or from the want of work, is fearful, but it is not to be confounded with another kind of suffering.

"Apprentices are savagely flogged in England by their masters," says Mr. Prime. Yes, and so are children by their fathers everywhere. "And here is one in London who kills himself," says our author. Yes, and here, as we write, is a young American wife who kills herself because of her treatment by her father and mother-in-law. Is Mr. Prime's argument, that the relation of fathers and parents-in-law is like the relations of slavery; or, that one sin excuses another? Why, being a man as well as an American, should he not allow that the special wrong of our institution is not the greater or less quantity of food, clothing, or whipping, but the legal, and moral, and social denial of manhood to man? There is no need of being furious about it. In a day of universal glasshouses we must be careful of flinging stones. But let us be manly. Let Americans in Europe concede that it is a very ugly business, and not try so painfully to find the raw of other nations, as if the human instinct against slavery were weakened, because there are other sins to condemn and correct. There is undoubtedly a great deal of Exeter Hall eloquence which entirely misses the mark, and Mrs. Jellaby, nervous about the interests of Boriboola-Gha while her own children run to waste, is a very absurd character; but, meanwhile, there are, also, noble aims, and generous sentiments, and humane efforts, and the possibility of decent life, at least; and an American traveler, by virtue of his name, should rather be found upon their side, than talking amiable, and puny, and irrelevant common-places. Some fatality seems to dog a certain class of American travelers, so that they cannot truly represent the American idea. They are either foolishly conservative and vain of dining with a Duke; or, they are rabidly destructive, and think it a deadly sin to live in a palace and be loyal to a king. For our own part, we do not believe that any genuine American, Northerner or Southerner, who is worthy to bear the name, is either a bully or a coward.

In Alexandria the author sees a bridal procession, and gives this description of it:

"One day, while walking out, we heard curious music. We stopped, and saw a gay-looking procession coming along. We found out a wedding was going on, and the friends of the bridegroom were leading him to his dwelling; and in the evening, the friends of the bride were to escort her to the same place."

Truly, of making of books there is no end.

And we trust there never might be, if all books could have the airy grace and various merit of "Cosas de España," which is one of the latest and best of American sketches of travel. It uses only a skeleton of statistic, enough to gain force and consistency; the rest is grace, form and color. It is fresh without flippancy; sparkling without a strained humor; with the ease of the man of the world, and the elegance of the scholar. You open the pleasant pages, and you go to Spain. You are not gone long: but you are shown what is essentially Spanish, and you enjoy it with the true Hidalgo humor. It is a gay, gushing, rollicking story, and belongs to that class of works of travel which gives literary reputation. It is not only the record of an educated gentleman who happened to be in Spain, but who, also, happened to have eyes, and imagination, and wit, and good sense, and who could write in a style that few, except the aptest Frenchmen, can so dextrously control. There is so much shrewd and sprightly criticism of French character, in the opening chapters of this little book, that we are tempted to quote more than we ought. Our author is at the hot baths in the Pyrenees:

"Thus did I spend my summer-days, lying in waters soft as woman's tears, and-with all due deference to better authority be it said-of just about the same temperature. For though it is sometimes asserted that such tears are scalding, I must be allowed to say that this has not exactly been my experience, and is not, therefore, written in the articles of my faith. But be the case as it may, it is absolutely certain that I lay gloriously steeped in dreams and thermal water from June to October. memory, when, in recalling the past, it reaches these months of soft delights, stops, and refuses to go back further. The lotus I ate from the branches which

My

overhung these pools of healing, has made the Pyrenees to me a barrier and a shore, against which breaks the sea of a semi-oblivion beyond. But by way of compensation, the recollection of this summer in the mountains ever keeps a nook in my heart as green and sunny as one of their own vales.

"Whoever, then, is tired of the paradise of Paris, would do well to look for another in the Pyrenees. Even in winter one may go to Pau; and, during four or five of the warmer months. let his path lead him to what bath it may, it will be only his own fault if he be not the happiest of mortals. Paris empties its saloons to furnish the society of these watering-places. And if, when seen in the blaze of gas and the flashing of brilliants, the accomplished Parisienne dazzled, here en négligé, in the simple robe which sets off more than it conceals the graces of her person, she attracts and charms you. Let not this seem an exaggeration; for, of all female prodigies, the Parisian belle is the most extraordinary. She is as unequaled in capacities as in graces. Her salon has often proved a third chamber in the government. It is a court no less of literature and the arts, than of love. In beauty of toilette, that rarest of female accomplishments, or in elegance of conversation, that highest grace of civilized society, she has no rival. In the lower grades of life, the Parisienne is the most clever of saleswomen and accountants. She invents the fashions in dress for the world; and in the use of her needle is more skillful than Andromache or the Queen of Sheba. Nor is this the half of her worth; for in spite of the temptations which lie, like flowers, along her path of life, she is, in the great majority of instances, a true woman in all her sentiments-the scandal-mongers to the contrary notwithstanding. Seen in the country, she may not always carry away the palm from the very best bred of Englishwomen, much as she excels them in the metropolis. Still, with her good sense and her good toilette-'tis about all it takes to make a lady-she adapts herself so perfectly to rustic scenes, and establishes such harmony of attire and conduct with the life of surrounding nature, that her, who at Paris was the grace of ball and opera, you also worship in the Pyrenees as the goddess of woods and streams. Not but what there is a plenty of stately dowagers to be met with at the baths, who are stiffer than