THIRD JOURNEY. (continued 4)

A. A. FOLSOM, Superintendent.

HARPER’S CYCLOPEDIA

OF

BRITISH AND AMERICAN POETRY.

EDITED BY

EPES SARGENT.

Large 8vo, nearly 1000 pages, Illuminated Cloth, with Colored Edges, $4.50; Half Leather, $5.00.

Mr. Sargent was eminently fitted for the preparation of a work of this kind. Few men possessed a wider or more profound knowledge of English literature; and his judgment was clear, acute, and discriminating. * * * The beautiful typography and other exterior charms broadly hint at the rich feast of instruction and enjoyment which the superb volume is eminently fitted to furnish.—N.Y. Times.

We commend it highly. It contains so many of the notable poems of our language, and so much that is sound poetry, if not notable, that it will make itself a pleasure wherever it is found.—N.Y. Herald.

The selections are made with a good deal of taste and judgment, and without prejudice against any school or individual. An index of first lines adds to the usefulness of the volume.—N.Y. Sun.

The collection is remarkably complete. * * * Mr. Sargent’s work deserves special commendation for the exquisite justice it does to living writers but little known. It is a volume of rare and precious flowers culled because of their intrinsic value, without regard to the writer’s fame. The selections are prefaced by a brief biographical notice of the author, with a critical estimate of the poetry. * * * A valuable acquisition to the literary treasures of American households.—N.Y. Evening Express.

He seems to have culled the choicest and the best from the broad field. * * * Mr. Sargent had the fine ear to detect the pure, true music of the heart and imagination wherever it was voiced. * * * The elegant volume is a household treasure which will be highly prized.—Evangelist, N.Y.

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

==>Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

DRAKE’S NEW ENGLAND COAST.

NOOKS AND CORNERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. By Samuel Adams Drake. With numerous Illustrations. Square 8vo, Cloth, $3 50; Half Calf, $5 75.

#/ My dear Sir,—I laid out your new and beautiful book to take with me to-day to my summer home, but before I go I wish to thank you for preparing a volume which is every way so delightful. All summer I shall have it at hand, and many a pleasant hour I anticipate in the enjoyment of it. I have read far enough in it already to feel how admirably you have done your part of it, and I have seen, in turning over the delectable pages, what a panorama of lovely nooks and rocky coast your artist has prepared for the pleasure of your readers. May they be a good many thousand this year, and continue to increase time onward. If I am not greatly out in my judgment, edition after edition will be called for. Truly yours,

James T. Fields.

Thy “Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast” is a delightful book, and one of most frequent reference in my library. Thy friend,

John G. Whittier.

I take this opportunity of acknowledging the pleasure I have received from your interesting book on our New England coast. It was my companion last summer on the coast of Maine. Yours truly,

F. Parkman.

Mr. Samuel Adams Drake does for the New England coast such service as Mr. Nordhoff has done for the Pacific. His “Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast”—a volume of 459 pages—is an admirable guide both to the lover of the picturesque and the searcher for historic lore, as well as to stay-at-home travellers. The “Preface” tells the story of the book; it is a sketch-map of the coast, with the motto, “On this line, if it takes all summer.” “Summer” began with Mr. Drake one Christmas-day at Mount Desert, whence he went South, touching at Castine, Pemaquid, and Monhegan; Wells and “Agamenticus, the ancient city” of York; Kittery Point; “The Shoals;” Newcastle; Salem and Marblehead; Plymouth and Duxbury; Nantucket; Newport; Mount Hope; New London, Norwich, and Saybrook. What nature has to show and history to tell at each of these places, who were the heroes and worthies—all this Mr. Drake gives in pleasant talk—N.Y Tribune.

My dear Mr. Drake,—I have given your beautiful book, “Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast,” a pretty general perusal. It is one “after my own heart,” and I thank you very much for it. Your Preface is an admirable “hit” in more ways than one. Like Grant, whom you have quoted, it took you, I imagine, all winter as well as all summer to accomplish your victory, for you speak of experiences with snow and sleet.

You have gathered into your volume, in the most attractive form, a vast amount of historical and descriptive matter that is exceedingly useful. I hope your pen will not be stayed. Your friend and brother of the pen,

Benson J. Lossing.

To-morrow I leave home for a week or two in Maine, and shall take your beautiful volume, “Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast,” with me to read and enjoy at leisure. I am sure it cannot fail to be very interesting.

Yours faithfully, Henry W. Longfellow.

I need not tell you with how much interest both my husband and myself—lovers of the valley—look forward to your work, nor how much pleasure your “Nooks and Corners” has already afforded us.

With most cordial regards, Harriet P. Spofford.

His style is at once simple and graphic, and his work as conscientious and faithful to fact as if he were the dullest of annalists instead of one of the liveliest of essayists and historians. The legitimate charm of variety—characteristic of a work of this kind—makes the book more entertaining than any volume of similar size devoted exclusively to chronology, biography, essays, or anecdotes.—John G. Saxe, in the Brooklyn Argus.

Mr. Drake’s “Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast” ought to be in the hands of every one who visits our sea-side resorts. The artistic features serve to embellish a very interesting description of our New England watering-places, enlivened with anecdotes, bits of history connected with the various places, and pleasant gossip about people and things in general.—Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston.

Published By HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

==>Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

GLOWING TRIBUTES TO AMERICAN ART.

WHAT LEADING ENGLISH PAPERS

SAY OF

“PASTORAL DAYS;

OR,

MEMORIES OF A NEW ENGLAND YEAR.”

By W. HAMILTON GIBSON.

4to, Illuminated Cloth, Gilt Edges, $7 50.

FROM “THE TIMES,” LONDON.

The title of this very beautifully illustrated book conveys but a very faint idea of its merits, which lie, not in the descriptions of the varied beauties of the fields and fens of New England, but in the admirable wood-engravings, which on every page picture far more than could be given in words. The author has the rare gift of feeling for the exquisitely graceful forms of plant life and the fine touch of an expert draughtsman, which enables him both to select and to draw with a refinement which few artists in this direction have ever shown. Besides these essential qualities in a painter from nature, Mr. Gibson has a fine sense of the poetic and picturesque in landscape, of which there are many charming pieces in this volume, interesting in themselves as pictures, and singularly so in their resemblance to the scenery of Old England. Most of the little vignette-like views might be mistaken for Birket Foster’s thoroughly English pictures, and some are like Old Crome’s vigorous idyls. One of the most striking—a wild forest scene with a storm passing, called “The Line Storm”—is quite remarkable in the excellent drawing of the trees swept by the gale and in the general composition of the picture, which is full of the true poetic conception of grandeur in landscape beauty. But all Mr. Gibsons’s good drawing would have been nothing unless he had been so ably aided by the artist engravers, who have throughout worked with such sympathy with his taste, and so much regard for the native grace of wild flowers, grasses, ferns, insects, and all the infinite beauties of the fields, down to the mysterious spider and his silky net spread over the brambles. These cuts are exceptional examples of beautiful work. Nothing in the whole round of wood-engraving can surpass, if it has even equalled, these in delicacy as well as breadth of effect. Much as our English cutters pride themselves on belonging to the school which Bewick and Jackson founded, they must certainly come to these American artists to learn the something more which is to be found in their works. In point of printing, too, there is much to be learned in the extremely fine ink and paper, which, although subjected to “hot-pressing,” are evidently adapted in some special condition for wood-printing. The printing is obviously by hand-press,[46] and in the arrangement of the type with the cuts on each page the greatest ingenuity and invention are displayed. This, too, has been designed with a sort of a Japanesque fancy; here is a tangled mass of grasses and weeds, with a party of ants stealing out of the shade, and there the dragon-flies flit across among the blossoms of the reeds, or the feathery seeds of the dandelion float on the page. Each section of the seasons has its suggestive picture: Springtime, with a flight of birds under a may-flower branch that hangs across the brook: Summer, a host of butterflies sporting round the wild rose: Autumn, with the swallows flying south and falling leaves that strew the page; while for Winter the chrysalis hangs in the leafless bough, and the snow-clad graves in the village church-yard tell the same story of sleep and awakening. As many as thirty different artists, besides the author and designer, have assisted in producing this very tastefully illustrated volume, which commends itself by its genuine artistic merits to all lovers of the picturesque and the natural.

FROM “THE SATURDAY REVIEW,” LONDON.

This pleasant American book has brought to our remembrance, though without any sense of imitation, two old-fashioned favorites. In the first place, its descriptions of rural humanity, its rustic sweetness and humor, have a certain analogy with the delicately pencilled studies of life in Miss Mitford’s “Our Village;” but the relation it bears to the second book is much closer. It is more than forty years since Mr. P. H. Gosse published the first of those delightful sketches of animal life at home which have led so many of us with a wholesome purpose into the woods and lanes. It was in the Canadian Naturalist that he broke this new ground; and though we do not think this has ever been one of his best-known books, we cannot but believe that there are still many readers who will be reminded of it as they glance down Mr. Gibson’s pages.

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.

Vol. III. Switzerland, Tyrol, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Spain, United States and Canada.

It has stood the test of trying experience, and has proved the traveller’s friend in all emergencies. Each year has added to its attractions and value, until it is about as near perfect as it is possible to make it.—Boston Post.

Personal use of this Guide during several visits to various portions of Europe enables us to attest its merits. No American is fully equipped for travel in Europe without this Hand-Book.—Philadelphia North American.

Take “Harper’s Hand-Book,” and read it carefully through; then return to the parts relating to the places you have resolved to visit; follow the route on the maps, and particularly study the plans of cities. So you will start with sound pre-knowledge, which will smoothen the entire course of travel.—Philadelphia Press.

The book is not only unrivalled as a guide-book, for which it is primarily intended, but it is a complete cyclopædia of all that relates to the countries, towns, and cities which are described in it—their curiosities, most notable scenes, their most celebrated historical, commercial, literary, and artistic centres. Besides general descriptions of great value, there are minute and detailed accounts of everything that is worth seeing or knowing relative to the countries of the Old World. The great value of the book consists in the fact that it covers all the ground that any traveller may pass through—being exhaustive not only of one country or two, but comprising in its ample pages exact and full information respecting every country in Europe and the East.—Christian Intelligencer, N. Y.

It is a marvellous compendium of information, and the author has labored hard to make his book keep pace with the progress of events. * * * It forms a really valuable work of reference on all the topics which it treats, and in that way is as useful to the reader who stays at home as to the traveller who carries it with him abroad.—N. Y. Times.

I have received and examined with lively interest the new and extended edition of your extremely valuable “Hand-Book for Travellers in Europe and the East.” You have evidently spared no time or pains in consolidating the results of your wide travel, your great experience. You succeed in presenting to the traveller the most valuable guide and friend with which I have the good fortune to be acquainted. With the warmest thanks, I beg you to receive the most cordial congratulations of yours, very faithfully, John Meredith Read. Jr., United States Minister of Greece.

From having travelled somewhat extensively in former years in Europe and the East. I can say with entire truth that you have succeeded in combining more that is instructive and valuable for the traveller than is contained in any one or series of hand-books that I have ever met with.—T. Bigelow Lawrence.

To make a tour abroad without a guide-book is impossible. The object should be to secure that which is most complete and comprehensive in the least compass. The scope, plan, and execution of Harper’s makes it, on the whole, the most satisfactory that can be found.—Albany Journal.

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

==>Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.

The following volumes are now ready:

JOHNSON,Leslie Stephen.

GIBBON,J. C. Morison.

SCOTT,R. H. Hutton.

SHELLEY,J. A. Symonds.

HUME, ProfessorHuxley.

GOLDSMITH,William Black.

DEFOE,William Minto.

BURNS, PrincipalShairp.

SPENSER, TheDean of St. Paul’s.

THACKERAY,Anthony Trollope.

BURKE,John Morley.

MILTON,Mark Pattison.

SOUTHEY, ProfessorDowden.

CHAUCER, ProfessorA. W. Ward.

BUNYAN,J. A. Froude.

COWPER,Goldwin Smith.

POPE,Leslie Stephen.

BYRON,John Nichol.

LOCKE,Thomas Fowler.

WORDSWORTH,F. W. H. Myers.

DRYDEN,G. Saintsbury.

LANDOR, ProfessorSidney Colvin.

DE QUINCEY, ProfessorD. Masson.

LAMB, The Rev.Alfred Ainger.

BENTLEY, ProfessorJebb.

12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume.

HAWTHORNE. ByHenry James, Jr 12mo, Cloth, $1 00.

VOLUMES IN PREPARATION:

SWIFT,John Morley.

GRAY,E. W. Gosse.

ADAM SMITH,Leonard H. Courtney.

DICKENS, ProfessorA. W. Ward.

Others will be announced.

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS,New York.

==>Harper & Brothers will send any of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

ENGLISH CLASSICS.

EDITED, WITH NOTES,

By WM. J. ROLFE, A.M.

SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS.

The Merchant of Venice.

The Tempest.

Julius Cæsar.

Hamlet.

As You Like It.

Henry the Fifth.

Macbeth.

Henry the Eighth.

Midsummer-Night’s Dream.

Richard III.

Richard the Second.

Much Ado About Nothing.

Antony and Cleopatra.

Romeo and Juliet.

Othello.

Twelfth Night.

The Winter’s Tale.

King John.

Henry IV. Part I.

Henry IV. Part II.

King Lear.

Taming of the Shrew.

All’s Well that Ends Well.

Coriolanus.

Comedy of Errors.

Cymbeline.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

Measure for Measure.

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Timon of Athens.

SELECT POEMS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

SELECT POEMS OF THOMAS GRAY.

ILLUSTRATED.

16mo, Cloth, 50 Cents per Volume; Paper, 40 Cents per Volume.

In the preparation of this edition of the English Classics it has been the aim to adapt them for school and home reading, in essentially the same way as Greek and Latin Classics are edited for educational purposes. The chief requisites are a pure text (expurgated, if necessary), and the notes needed for its thorough explanation and illustration.

Each of Shakespeare’s plays is complete in one volume, and is preceded by an introduction containing the “History of the Play,” the “Sources of the Plot,” and “Critical Comments on the Play.”

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

==>Harper & Brothers will send any of the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.

[larger view] [largest view]

[larger view] [largest view]

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

griping his arm=> gripping his arm {pg 103}

more and more drouth=> more and more drought {pg 173}

turned to looked back=> turned to look back {pg 243}

Moosilauk 4881=> Moosilauke 4881 {pg 330}