FEINBERG/WHITMAN LITERARY FILE Prose "How I Got Around at Sixty and Take Notes" (Jan.-July 1881). The Critic. Galley Proofs & Clippings. FEiNBERG/WHiTMAN Literary File Prose "How I Got Around at Sixty and Take Notes" (Jan.-July 1881). The Critic. Galley Proofs Clippings Includes A. MS. corrections & notations. from amt. 33-3 (oveisz 4-15) 16/8 1881 How I Get Around at Sixty and Take Notes: Proof and Clippings. A.MS. (6p. 65 x 15 1/2 cm., 29 1/2 x 23 1/2 cm.) Written in blue pencil at the top of a galley proof of 'How I Got Around at Sixty and Take Notes. (No. 2.)', with circle around 'Got' and date'April 7' 1881, question marks in margin, and 2 words: unread proof Copies of the pages from The Critic (New York) containing the article, Vol. I, No. 2, p. 2 (last paragraphs pasted on), 29 January 1881; Vol. I, No. 7, p. 88 (last paragraphs pasted on), 9 April 1881; Vol. I, No. 9, pp. 116-117, 7 May 1881; and Vol. I, No 14, p. 184 (last paragraphs pasted on), 16 July 1881. At top of No. 1, 6 words: Nos 1, 2, 3, & 4 Comma and 6 words deleted No. 2: 9 words in 1 line deleted No. 3: no changes No. 4: In 'No. 3' line through '3' and '4?' written; 'clearing' [over]1619 changed to 'cleaving' ('r' crossed out, and 'v' in margin)drank only water and lived on fruit with a little rice or millet. He aimed at translating his ideal Christ into reality. He wore long auburn hair, parted in the middle, so as to resemble the pictures of Christ. Charitable people furnished him money for his refuge, and he never seemed to want for funds. He slept on a board or on the floor. Even in his last hours, being a deck passenger on the El Dorado, he refused to be transferred to a cabin, but the kindly captain, some hours before he died, removed him to a berth, where he died, still speaking of going to heaven and entreating the bystanders to love the Lord. "As an instance of the character of the man I will state that when on one occasion I gave my annual dinner on Thanksgiving Day to the Americans, Mr. Crossett wrote to me beseeching that I would have no dinner, but would give the cost to the poor. He attended the dinner, but touched nothing but water and rice. "In theology he can hardly be said to have been orthodox. He found good in all religions. After a long conversation with him one day, I told him he was not a Christian, but a Buddhist. He answered that there were many good things in Buddhism. "The last important work of Mr. Crossett was an effort to provide for the deaf and dumb. To further this project he traveled to Hankow and thence to Canton, establishing everywhere schools for these unfortunates. He was successful wherever he went.afternoon. The game was played under protest on account of there being only one ball on the grounds and there was considerable wrangling on both sides on decisions of the umpires. After the fourth inning it was declared only an exhibition game. The score: LEBANON. R.l PO. A. E. Kirst, ef 1 1 2 0 1 Brown, 2b 1 2 3 6 1 Kline, p 2 2 0 5 1 Goodhart, c 1 0 4 0 1 Hahn, lb 1 0 13 1 0 Hagey 3b 1 1 4 1 1 Sparrow, lf 2 2 1 1 1 Garret, ss 0 0 2 7 2 Lausee, rf 0 1 1 0 0 Totals 9 9* 29 16 8 *Two men out when winning run scored. GORHAM. R.l PO. A. E. White, 2b 0 1 2 4 0 Garrison, ss 1 0 2 1 4 Q. Jackson, c 1 1 5 2 0 Emery, rf 1 1 1 1 1 A. Jac's'n, 3b 3 2 4 1 1 Miller, p 3 2 1 6 1 Nelson, ct 0 1 2 0 0 Ch'mb'l'n, 1b 0 1 7 0 0 Collins, If 2 0 6 2 1 Totals 10 9 30 17 8 INNINGS. Lebanon 6 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0— 9 Gorham 1 2 3 0 0 0 1 0 2 1—10 Earned runs—Lebanon, 2; Gorham, 1. Two-base hits—Kline and Miller. Sacrifice hits—Collins, Hahn, Garrett, Chamberlain, Nelson. Bases stolen—Lebanon, 4; Gorham, 7. Double plays —White, Chamberlain. Struck out—By Kline, 1; Miller, 4. Bases on balls—Kline, 4; Miller, 5. Hit by pitched ball--Kirst, Brown, Garrison. Passed balls—Goodhart, A. Jackson. Time—Two hours and thirty minutes. Umpires—Herring and Bell. Attendance, 800. Harrisburg and Norristown. HARRISBURG, Aug. 13 [SPECIAL].—It is not much of a lead for the home team in the race for the pennant but it is proposed to maintain it by more conscientious work. To-day a victory was won from the Norristown in a well-played game. The88 THE CRITIC April 9, 1881. [Number 7, The Critic NEW YORK, APRIL 9, 1881. HOW I GET AROUND AT SIXTY AND TAKE NOTES. (NO. 2.) April 4, '81.---SOME might think the following notes out of keeping with the weather this season. On the contrary, (I suggest), just as you want red and orange in your present room - trimmings, and reserve pale - blue and green till August, my summer reminiscences may well come in for latter winter reading. If they could only prove as glowing to you, Reader dear, as the experience itself was to me ! Doubtless the fact of invalidism will crop out, (I call myself a half-Paralytic these days, and reverently bless the Lord it is no worse,) between some of the lines---but I get my share of fun and healthy hours---and try to indicate them here. (The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.) Frequent portions of the last four years, especially summers, I have spent at a secluded haunt of mine down in Camden County, New Jersey---Timber Creek, quite a little river, (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve or fourteen miles away,) with its primitive solitudes, its flowing, fresh winding stream, its recluse and woody banks, its cool, sweet feeding-springs, and all the charms that, in genial seasons, the birds, grass, wild flowers, nook, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, etc., can bring. Domiciled at the farm of my friends, the Staffords, near by, I lived along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes. And it is to my experiences and my outdoor life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of the lease of life) from my prostration of 1873-'76. But let me proceed to the jottings, taking them as they come, from the heap, without particular selection. There is no consecutiveness in dates. They run any time within the last three of four years. Each was pencilled in the open air, and at the time and place. BY THE POND. Aug : 22, '77.---As I leisurely write this, (with a French water-pen, dipping every two or three minutes in the brook,) and pause and look around from time to time, nothing could be more secluded, or naturally free, cool, luxuriant, than the scene I am in the midst of. Not a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, in sight. After my semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the brook musically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since, through fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now the sky, now the mile-off woods on the hill, and now the apple-orchards. What a contrast from New York's or Philadelphia's streets ! Everywhere great patches of dingy-blossom'd horse-mint wafting a spicy odor through the air, (especially evenings.) Everywhere the flowering boneset, and the rose-bloom of the wild bean. Distant sounds.---The axe of the wood-cutter, the measured thud of a single threshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (with invariable responses from other barn-yards,) and the lowing of cattle, contribute the sounds. And now that swinging whirr most seasonable---two locusts, one quite near, with proud, brassy, cymbaline, continued, undulating song---the other just audible, far off, as if answering him. (The katy-did and locust now o'nights instead of as three months ago the hylas, the bull-frog of the marsh, and the early tree-toad.) The wind.---But most of all, or far or near, the wind ---through the high tree-tops, or through low bushes, laving one's face and hands so gently, this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept. 2)---I will not call it sighing, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery expression; though a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift or slow, or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off there---how curious, how sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossing the waves, with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and the scent of the salt---and that vast paradox somehow with all its action and restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest. Brook-babbling.---Out of the bank rapidly emerges a little volume of water as thick as my ankle---cool and clear, and no sweeter-tasting have I ever met. I love to rest in the shade of the willows close by this glossy rattler, as it runs along is bed over pebbles, with a couple of little falls, on its way to the big creek. By the soft-turbulent fount I stay long, abandoning myself dreamily to the liquid music, many a happy, negative half-hour. Other adjuncts.---But the sun and moon, here and these times ! As never more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial, so vast, so ardently, lovingly hot---so never a more glorious moon of nights, especially the last three or four. The great planets too---Mars never before so flaming bright, so flashing-large with slight yellow tinge, (the astronomers say---is it true ?---nearer to us than any time the past century)---and well up, lord Jupiter, (a little while since close by the moon)---and in the west, after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, now languid and shorn of her beams, as if from some divine excess. CONVALESCENT HOURS. Sunday, Aug : 27, '77.---Another day quite free from marked prostration and pain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtly filter into me as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and across fields, in the good air---as I sit here in solitude with Nature---open, voiceless, mystic, far-removed, yet palpable, eloquent Nature. I merge myself in the scene, in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear brook-water, how I am soothed by its soft gurgle in one place, and the hoarser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another ! Come ye disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left---come get the sure virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field. Two months (July and August) have I absorbed them, and they already make a new man of me. Every day, seclusion---every day at least two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no manners. Sept : 5, '77.---I write this, 11 A.M., sheltered under a dense oak by the bank, where I have taken refuge from a sudden rain. I came down here, (we had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull,) for a daily and simple exercise I am fond of---to pull on that young hickory sapling out there---to sway and yield to its tough-limber upright stem, thick as my wrist---haply to get into my old sinews some of its elastic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take these health-pulls moderately, and at intervals, for nearly an hour, inhaling great draughts of fresh air. Wandering by the creek, I have three or four naturally favorable spots where I rest---besides a chair I lug with me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots convenient [(since I am on the details of my convalescence)] I have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong and limber boughs of beech, or holly, in easy-reaching distance, for my natural gymnasia, for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can almost feel the say and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I hold on to boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent stalwartness,---and know the virtue thereof passes from them into me. (Or may-be we interchange---may-be the trees are more aware of it all them I ever thought.) But now pleasantly imprisoned here under the big oak--- the rain dripping and the sky covered with leaden clouds--- nothing but the pond on one side, and the other a spread of grass, spotted with the milky blossoms of the wild carrot--- the sound of an axe wielded at some distant wood-pile---yet in this dull scene, (as most folks would call it,) why am I so (almost) happy here and alone ? Why would any intrusion even from people I like, spoil the charm ? But am I alone ? Perhaps there comes a time---perhaps it has come to me---when one feels through his whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity between himself subjectively and Nature objectively which Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is I know not, but I often realize a Presence here---though nor humanity nor its voice, hardly its sign at all, is here. In clear moods I am certain of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor esthetics, will give the least explanation. All the past two summers it has been strengthening and nourishing my sick body and soul, as never before. Thanks, invisible Physician, for thy silent delicious medicines, thy day and night, thy waters and thy airs, the banks, the grass, the trees, and e'en the weeds ! A quintette.---While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my great oak, (perfectly dry and comfortable, to the rattle of the drops all around) I have pencilled off the mood of the hour in a little quintette, which I will give you : At vacancy with Nature, Acceptive and at ease, Distilling the present hour, What'er, where'er it is, & over the past, oblivion. Can you get hold of it Reader dear ? and how do you like it anyhow ? WALT WHITMAN. The Critic VOL. I., NO. 7.] NEW YORK, APRIL 9, 1881. SINGLE COPIES, TEN CENTS. $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE. Copyright, 1881, by J. L. & J. B. Gilder. THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. dared not accumulate capital, even if he could get it, for fear the land- lord would demand it in rent; where, in fact, he was an abject slave, who, at the nod of a human being like himself, might at any time be driven from his miserable mud cabin, a houseless, homeless starving wanderer, forbidden even to pluck the spontaneous fruits of the earth, or to trap a wild hare to satisfy his hunger? No matter how sparse the populations, no matter what the natural resources, are not pauper- ism and starvation necessary consequences in a land where the pro- ducers of wealth are compelled to work under conditions which de- prive them of hope, of self-respect, of energy, of thrift; where ab- sentee landlords drain away without return at least a fourth of the net produce of the soil, and when, besides them, a starving industry must support resident landlords, with their horses and hounds, agents, job- bers, middlemen, and bailiffs, an alien State Church to insult religious prejudices, and an army of policemen and soldiers to overawe and hunt down any opposition to the iniquitous system? Is it not impiety far worse than atheism, to charge upon natural laws misery so caused?" Persons who read "Progress and Poverty" might well be ex- cused if they passed by this outburst, considering into how many other fields Mr. George led them. But now that the Irish has become the burning question and to quiet it Mr. Gladstone has had to strain the authority of the government to a dangerous de- gree, his treatise on the real meaning of the upheaval and the remedy for the ills of that misgoverned land is come in the nick of time. The arbitrary action of the Gladstone government has allowed all parties a breathing spell, during which the situation can be thoroughly reviewed. Those who have looked into his former book can have some idea that Mr. George will not shrink from plain speech, no matter what should be the interest at stake. That book was received with all sorts of comments, ranging from attacks on the part of subsidized newspapers of San Francisco to the warmest praise on the part of thinking writers in the English and German reviews; but Mr. George has found little or nothing to change in it between the successive editions. His standpoint as. . . The Critic VOL. I., NO. 2] NEW YORK, JANUARY 29, 1881. {SINGLE COPIES, TEN CENTS. $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE. Copyright, 1881, by F. L & F.B. GILDER. [headshot illustration] TOMMASO SALVINI English is trying. It is the English of the translator not yet sufficiently removed from his work to have recovered his mother-tongue. He has no dignity, no evenness, no elegance of style. His trivialities smack of the clubroom, and are modern in the lowest sense. In Froude we have the scholar with a nervous, strong, glowing diction ; in Forsyth, the lawyer, full of technicalities, meandering along like a Chancery suit ; in Trollope, the gossip who hears all he can, and retails it all. It is very exasperating to the nice ear, but readable to the many. H. H. on the Indian Question.* No one ever saw more clearly than did Washington Irving the injustice of our dealings with the Indians, and no one ever treated it with broader humor than it is handled in the "History of New York." H. H. approaches the subject in a somewhat different spirit. Her aim is not to amuse, but to arouse, the reader. She has dropped the poet's for the reformer's pen ; but while [her style] has lost little, if any, of its grace, it has [*No's 1, 2, 3 & 4*] 2 THE CRITIC. Jan. 29, 1881. [Number 2, HOW I GET AROUND AT 60, AND TAKE NOTES. (NO. 1.) Jan. 26, 1881.---Wherever I go yet, winter or summer, city or down in the country, or alone at home, or traveling, I must take notes---(the ruling passion strong in age and disablement, and even the approach of---but I must not say it yet.) Then underneath the following excerpts--- crossing the t's and dotting the i's of certain moderate movements of late years---I am fain to fancy the foundation of quite a lesson learned. After you have exhausted what there is in business, literature, politics, conviviality, love, and even religion---have found that none of these finally satisfy or permanently wear---what remains? Nature remains. To bring out from their torpid recess, (where in nineteen cases out of twenty they sleep the sleep of death,) the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, birds, the changes of seasons---the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night. So cheap, so close at hand--- little things, perhaps yet unending, unpalling medicine to the soul, when all else has failed. That dumb Nature--- but not cold or bloodless---full of eloquence, emotion, nourishment. Even though crudely, we will begin and carry out our notes from these convictions. Literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced, that they may seem hardly more than breaths of common air, or draughts of water to drink. But that is part of our lesson. A FINE WINTER DAY ON THE BEACH. One bright-half-winter mid-day lately I spent down on the New Jersey sea-shore, reaching it by little more than an hour's railroad trip over the old Camden and Atlantic. Five or six miles at the last, our track entered a broad region of salt grass meadows intersected by lagoons, and cut up everywhere by watery runs. The sedgy perfume, delightful to my nostrils, reminded me of "the mash" and South Bay of my native Long Island. I could have journeyed contentedly till night through these flat and odorous sea-prairies. From half-past 11 till 2, I was nearly all the time along the beach, or in sight of the ocean, listening to its hoarse murmur and inhaling its bracing and welcome breezes. First, a rapid five-mile drive over the hard sand ; our carriage wheels hardly made dents in it. Then after dinner (as there were nearly two hours to spare) I walked off in another direction, (hardly met or saw a person) and taking possession of what appeared to have been the reception room of an old bath-house range, had a broad expanse of view all to myself---quaint, refreshing, unimpeded ---a dry area of sedge and Indian grass immediately before and around me---space, simple, unornamented space. Distant vessels, and the far-off, just visible trailing smoke of an inward bound steamer ; more plainly, ships, brigs, schooners, in sight, most of them with every sail set to the firm and steady wind. The attractions, fascinations there are in sea and shore ! How one dwells on their simplicity, eternity, even vacuity ! What is it in us, aroused by those indirections and directions? That spread of waves and gray-white beach, salt, monotonous, senseless---such an entire absence of art, books, talk, elegance---so indescribably comforting, even this winter day---grim, yet so delicate-looking, so spiritual---striking, emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, emotional, impalpable depths, subtler than all the poems, paintings, music, I have ever read, seen, heard. (Yet let me be fair, perhaps it is because I have read those poems and heard that music.) Even as a boy, I had the fancy, the wish, to write a piece, perhaps a poem, about the sea-shore---that suggesting, dividing line, contact, junction, the solid marrying the liquid---that curious, lurking something (as doubtless every objective form finally becomes to the subjective spirit,) which means far more than its mere first sight, grand as that is---that blending of the real and ideal, and each made portion of the other. Hours, days, in youth and early manhood I haunted the shores of Rockaway or Coney Island, or away east to the Hamptons or Montauk. Once, at the latter place, (by the old lighthouse, nothing but sea-tossings in sight in every direction as far as the eye could reach,) I remember well, I felt that I must one day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme. Afterward, I recollect how it came to me that instead of any special lyrical or epical or literary attempt, it should be an invisible influence, a pervading gauge and tally for me, in my composition. (Let me give a hint here to young writers. I am no sure but I have unwittingly followed out the same rule with other powers besides sea and shores ---avoiding them, in the way of any dead set at poetizing them, as too big for formal handling---quite satisfied if I could suggest them---could indirectly show that we have met and fused, even if only once, but enough---that we have really absorbed each other, and understand each other.) A Sea Vision.---There is a dream, a simple yet strange picture, that for years at intervals, (sometimes, quite long ones, but surely again, in time,) has come noiselessly up before me, and I really believe, fiction as it is , has entered largely into my practical life---certainly into my writings, and shaped and colored them. It is nothing more or less than a stretch of interminable white-brown sand, hard and smooth and broad, with the ocean perpetually, grandly, rolling in upon it, with slow-measured sweep, with rustle and hiss and foam, and many a thump as of low bass drums. This scene, this picture, I say, has risen before me at times for years. Sometimes I wake at night and hear and see it plainly. What country, or what else anyhow, I do not define ; but the vast and lonesome beach is there---an unknown, unsailed, untrod sea and shore. AUTUMN SCENES AND SIGHTS. Sept. 20, '76.---Under an old black oak, glossy and green, exhaling aroma, and four to five feet thick at the butt---amid a grove the Albic druids might have chosen--- enveloped in the warmth and light of the noonday sun, and swarms of flitting insects---with the harsh cawing of many crows a hundred rods away---here I sit in solitude, absorbing, enjoying all. The corn, [stacked] in its cone-shaped stacks, russet-colored and sere---a large field spotted thick with scarlet-gold pumpkins---an adjoining one of cabbages, showing well in their green and pearl, mottled by much light and shade---melon patches, with their bulging ovals, and their silver-streaked, ruffled, broad-edged leaves---and many an autumn sight and sound beside---the distant scream of a flock of guinea-hens ---and poured over all the September breeze with pensive cadence through the tree-tops. Another Day.---The ground in all directions strewed with debris from a storm. Timber Creek, as I slowly pace its banks, has ebbed low, and shows reaction from the turbulent swell of the late equinoctial. As I look around, I take account of stock---weeds and shrubs, knolls, paths, [butterflies]---occasional stumps, some with smoothed tops, (several I use as seats of rest, from place to place, and from one I am now jotting these lines,)---frequent wildflowers, some of rare beauty---little white, star-shaped things, or the cardinal red of the the lobelia, or the cherry-ball seeds of the perennial rose---or the many-threaded vines, winding up and around trunks of trees. Oct. 1, 2 and 3.---Down every day in the solitude of the creek. A serene autumn sun and westerly breeze to-day (3d) as I sit here, the water surface prettily moving in wind-ripples before me. ON a stout old beech at the edge, decayed and slanting, almost fallen to the stream, yet with life and leaves[*,*] [in its mossy limbs,] a gray squirrel, exploring, runs up and down, flirts his tail, leaps to the ground, sits on his haunches upright as he sees me, (a Darwinian hint?) and then races up the tree again. Oct. 4.---Cloudy and coolish; signs of incipient winter. Yet pleasant here, the leaves thick-falling, the ground brown with them already; rich coloring, yellows of all hues, pale and dark green, shades from lightest to richest red---all set in and toned down by the prevailing brown of the earth and gray of the sky. So, winter is coming; and I yet in my sickness. I sit here amid all these lair sights and vital influences and abandon myself to that thought, with its wandering trains of speculation. SPRING OVERTURES. Feb. 10 '77.---The first chirping, almost singing, of a bird to-day. Then I noticed a couple of honey-bees spiriting and humming about the open window in the sun. Feb. 11.---Dusk.---In the soft ro e and pale gold of the declining light, this beautiful evening, I heard the first hum and preparation of awakening spring---very faint---whether in the earth or roots, or starting of insects, I know not--- but it was audible, as I leaned on a rail and looked long at the western horizon. Turning to the east, Sirius, as the shadows deepened, came forth in dazzling splendor. And great Orion; and a little to the north-east the Big Dipper, standing on end. WALT WHITMAN. 184 THE CRITIC July 16, 1881. [Number 14. The Critic NEW YORK, JULY 16, 1881. NIGHTFALL IN THE CITY. EVENLY, spoke by spoke, Each cooler, deeper shaded, stroke on stroke, Majestic Night Opens her fan gigantic, umber-plumed. Gently and slowly smite Her feathery blows the folk; Her eyes are bright; Salt is her breath ; her dark hairs flower-perfumed, Fragrant from vines and cedarwoods and fruits, Steeping in airy sweets The canyons of the streets, Through the dry town dampen the swirls of sound. And while the houses, weary, dull and prim, Cooled from the roots, Loosen the rings of heat that blind them round, Night's holy kiss of peace Gives the shrill nerve release . . . But lovers swim Godlike, afar, on tides of bliss, till matin stars are dim. CHARLES DE KAY. HOW I GET AROUND AT SIXTY AND TAKE NOTES (No. [3]) [*4 ?*] ONE OF THE HUMAN KINKS. How is it that in all the serenity and lonesomeness of solitude, away off here amid the hush of the forest woods where I am jotting this note, alone, or in prairie-wilds, or mountain stillness, one is never entirely without the instinct of looking around, (I never am, and others tell me the same of themselves, confidentially,) for somebody to appear, or start up out of the earth, or from behind some tree or rock ? Is it a lingering, inherited remains of man's primitive wariness, from the wild animals ? or from his savage ancestry far back ? It is not at all nervousness or fear. Seems as if something unknown were possibly lurking in those bushes, or solitary places. Nay, it is quite certain there is ---some vital unseen presence. AN AFTERNOON SCENE. Feb : 22, '78.---Last night and to-day rainy and thick, till mid-afternoon, when the wind chopped round, the clouds swiftly drew off like curtains, the clear appeared, and with it the fairest, grandest, most wondrous Rainbow I ever saw, all complete, very vivid at its earth-ends, spreading vast effusions of illuminated haze, violet, yellow, drab-green, in all directions overhead, through which the sun beamed---an indescribably utterance of color and light, so gorgeous yet so soft, such as I had never witnessed before. Then its continuance : a full hour passed before the last of those earth-ends disappeared. The sky behind was all spread in translucent blue, with many little white clouds and edges. To these a sunset, filling, dominating the esthetic and soul senses, sumptuously, tenderly, full. I end this note by the pond, just light enough to see, through the evening shadows, the western reflections in its water-mirror surface, with inverted figures of trees. I hear now and then the flup of a pike leaping out, and rippling the water. A HINT OF WILD NATURE. Feb : 12, '80.---As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, saw a large flock of wild geese, right overhead, not very high up, ranged in V-shape, in relief against the noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capital, though momentary, view of them, and then of their course on and on south-east, till gradually fading (my eyesight yet first-rate for the open air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading). Queer thoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or less, seeing these creatures clea[n]ing the sky---the spacious, [*r*] airy realm---even the prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere (no sun shining)---the waters below---the rapid flight of the birds, appearing just for a minute---flashing to me such a hint of the whole spread of Nature, with her eternal unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses of sea, sky, shore ---and then disappearing in the distance. A TWO HOUS' ICE-SAIL. Feb : 16, '79.---From 4 to 6 P.M. crossing the Delaware, unable to make our landing, through the ice ; our boat, (the Philadelphia, Capt. Hand,) staunch and strong and skilfully piloted, but old and sulky and poorly minding her helm. (Power, so important, in poetry and war, is also first point of all in a winter steamboat, with long stretches of ice-packs to tackle.) For over two hours we bumped and beat about, the invisible ebb, sluggish but irresistible, often carrying us long distances against our will. In the first tinge of dusk, as I looked around, I thought there could not be presented a more chilling, arctic, grim-extended, depressing scene. Every thing was yet plainly visible ; for miles north and south, ice, ice, ice, mostly broken, but some big cakes, and no clear water in sight. The shores, piers, surfaces, roofs, shipping, mantled with snow. A faint winter vapor hung a fitting accompaniment around and over the endless whitish spread, and gave it just a tinge of steel and brown. Feb : 22.---As I cross home in the 6 P.M. boat again, the transparent shadows are filled everywhere with leisurely falling, slightly slanting, curiously sparse but very large flakes of snow. On the shores, near and far, the glow of just-lit gas-clusters at intervals. The ice, sometimes in hummocks, sometimes floating fields, through which our boat (the Pennsylvania, Capt. Walton) goes crunching. The light permeated by that peculiar evening haze, right after sunset, which sometimes renders quite distant objects so distinctly. BEETHOVEN'S SEPTETTE. Feb : 11, '80.---At a good concert to-night in the foyer of the opera-house, Philadelphia ; the band a small but first-rate one. Never did music more sink into and soothe and fill me---(is there any thing else, at one's best hours, so spiritual-real ? Is it not beyond all poetry ?)---never so prove its soul-rousing power---its impossibility of statement. Especially in the rendering of one of Beethoven's master-septettes by the well-chosen and perfectly-combined instruments (violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello and contrabass,) was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the sunshine ; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds ; a horn sounding through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes ; soothing floating of waves, but presently rising in surges angrily lashing, muttering, heavy ; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices ; now and then weird, as Nature herself is, in certain moods---but mainly spontaneous, easy, careless---often the sentiment of the postures of naked children playing or sleeping. It did me good even to watch the violinists drawing their bows so masterly---every motion a study. I allowed myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, showers of melody, and in their midst a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their own pensiveness, joyousness. LOAFING IN THE WOODS. March 8, '80.---I write this seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, mid-day. Have been loafing here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with a thick undergrowth of laurels and grape-vines---the ground covered everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss---every thing solitary, ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and you---(how made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind-through the pine-tops ; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the stillness) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads and paths and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks, begin to appear. Next day, 9th.---A snow storm in the morning, and continuing most of the day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and familiar paths, amid the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical hoarse murmur trough the pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now stilled, now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicately gratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens, holly-trees, laurels, etc., the multitudinous leaves and branches piled, bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of emerald---the tall-straight columns of the plentiful browze-topt pines---and a slight resinous odor blending with that of the snow. (For there is scent to every thing, even the snow, if you can only detect it---no two places, hardly any two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor of noon from midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a still one.) WALT WHITMAN. Midsummer Number. The Critic VOL. I., NO. 14.] NEW YORK, JULY 16, 1881. SINGLE COPIES, TEN CENTS. $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE Copyright, 1881, by J. L. & J. B. Gilder. ANTHONY TROLLOPE. (See Page 193.)116 THE CRITIC [Number 9, The Critic NEW YORK, MAY 7, 1881. HOW I GET AROUND AT SIXTY AND TAKE NOTES. (NO. 3.) My Late Visit to Boston. SEEMS as if all the ways and means of American travel today had been settled, not only with reference to speed and directness, but for the comfort of women, children, invalids, and old fellows like me. I went on by a through train that runs daily from Washington to the Yankee metropolis without change. You get in a sleeping-car soon after dark in Philadelphia, and after ruminating an hour or two, have your bed made up if you like, draw the curtains, and go to sleep in it—fly on through Jersey to New York—hear in your half-slumbers a dull jolting and bumping sound or two —are unconsciously toted from Jersey City by a midnight steamer around the Battery and under the big Bridge to the track of the New Haven road—resume your flight eastward, and early the next morning you wake up in Boston. All of which was my experience. I wanted to go to the Reverse House. A tall unknown gentleman (a fellow-passenger on his way to Newport, he told me—I had just chatted a few moments before with him) assisted me out through the depot crowd, procured a hack, put me in it with my travelling, saying smilingly and quietly, "Now I want you to let this be my ride," paid the driver, and before I could remonstrate bowed himself off. BUT WHY DO I GO SO FAR FROM HOME? The occasion of my jaunt, I supposed I had better say here, was for a public reading of "the Death of Abraham Lincoln" essay, on the sixteenth anniversary of that tragedy ; which reading duly came off, night of April 15. Then I lingered a week in Boston—felt pretty well (the mood propitious, my paralysis lulled)—went around everywhere, and say all that was to be seen, especially human beings. It is a theory of mine that occasionally there is vouchsafed to us one sudden hour, day, moment (opens quietly like a bud or pod) when we clearly see things, perhaps the people and places familiar for years, now realized for the first. I apply this to scenery, persons, works of art, and all. This time my theory had its day in Boston. The immense material growth—commerce, finance, commission stores, the plethora of goods, the crowded streets and sidewalks —made of course the first surprising show. In a trip out West not long since, I thought the wand of future prosperity, future empire, must soon surely be wielded by St. Louis, Chicago, beautiful Denver, perhaps San Francisco ; but I see the said wand invisibly stretch out just as decidedly in Boston, with just as much certainty of staying ; evidences of copious "capital"—indeed no centre of the New World ahead of it (half the big railroads in the West are built with Yankees' money, and they take the dividends) —old Boston with its zigzag streets and multitudinous angles (crush up a sheet of letter-paper in your hand, throw it down, stamp it flat, and that is a map of old Boston) —new Boston with its miles upon miles of large and costly houses—Beacon Street, Commonwealth Avenue, and a hundred others. But the real new departures and expansions of Boston, and of all the cities of New England, are in another direction. THE BOSTON OF TO-DAY. In the letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interesting, but fishy) about his excavations off there in the Homeric area, I notice cities, ruins, etc., as he digs them out of their graves, are certain to be in layers ; that is to say, upon the foundation of an old concern, very far down indeed, is always another city or set of ruins, and upon that another superadded—and sometimes upon that still another— each representing either a long or rapid stage of growth and development, different from its predecessor, but unerringly growing out of and resting on it. In the moral, emotional, heroic, and human growths (the main of a race, in my opinion), something of this kind has certainly taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis of to-day may be described as sunny (there is something else that makes warmth, mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those are not to be sneezed at), joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to be fooled ; fond of good eating and drinking—costly in costume as its purse can buy ; and all through its best average of houses, streets, people, that subtle something (generally thought to be climate, but it is not—it is something indefinable in the race, the turn of its development) which effuses behind the whirl of animation, study, business, a happy and joyous public spirit, as distinguished from a sluggish and saturnine one. Makes me think of the glints we get (as in Symonds's books) of the jolly old Greek cities. Indeed there is a good deal of the Hellenic in B., and the people are getting handsomer too—padded out, with freer motions, and with color in their faces. I never saw (although this is not Greek) so many fine-looking gray-haired women. At my lecture I caught myself pausing more than once to look at them, plentiful everywhere through the audience—healthy and wifely and motherly, and wonderfully charming and beautiful—I think such as no time or land but ours could show. I CALL ON LONGFELLOW April 16.—A short but pleasant visit to Longfellow. I am not one of the calling kind, but as the author of Evangeline kindly took the trouble to come and see me three years ago in Camden, where I was ill, I felt not only the impulse of my own pleasure, on that occasion, but a duty. He was the only particular eminence I called on in Boston, and I shall not soon forget his lit-up face and glowing warmth and courtesy, in the modes of what is called the old school. I did not see Emerson, and have never seen Whittier. I found Mr. Longfellow troubled by neuralgia, but free from it just at the hour of my visit. The good, gentle, handsome old man—the true poet ! And now just here I feel the impulse to interpolate something about the mighty four who stamp this first American century with its birth-marks of poetic literature. In a late magazine one of my reviewers, who ought to know better, speaks of my "attitude of contempt, and scorn, and intolerance" toward the leading poets—of my "deriding" them, and preaching their "uselessness." If anybody cares to know what I think—and have long thought and avowed— about them, I am entirely willing to propound. I can't imagine any better luck befalling the United States for a poetical beginning and initiation, than has come from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. One of the four has already finished his noble career, and it cannot be very long before the lives of the other three must, in the nature of things, be closed. Emerson, to me, stands unmistakably at the head, but for the others I am at a loss where to give any precedence. Each illustrious, each rounded, each distinctive. Emerson for his sweet, vital-tasting melody, rhymed philosophy, and poems as amber-clear as the honey of the wild bee he loves to sing. Longfellow for rich color, graceful forms and incidents—all that makes life beautiful and love refined—competing with the singers of Europe on their own ground, and, with one excep- The Critic VOL. I., NO. 9.] NEW YORK, MAY 7, 1881. {SINGLE COPIES, TEN CENTS $2.00 PER YEAR, IN ADVANCE Copyright, 1881, by J. L. & J. B. Gilder. [illustration] DR. LEOPOLD DAMROSCH (See Page 127.)May 7, 1881.] THE CRITIC 117 tion, better and finer work than that of any of them. Bryant pulsing the first interior verse-throbs of a mighty world-bard of the river and the wood, every conveying a taste of open air, with scents as from hay-fields, grapes, bitch-borders- always lurkingly fond of threnodies-beginning and ending his long career with chants of death, with here and there, through all, poems, or passages of poems, touching the highest universal truths, enthusiasms, duties-morals as grim and eternal, if not as stormy and fateful, as anything in Eschylus. While in Whittier, with his special themes-his outcroping love of heroism and war, for all his Quakerdom-his verses at times like the measured step of Cromwell's old veterans-in Whittier lives the zeal, the moral energy, that founded New England-the splendid rectitude and ardor of Luther, Milton, George Fox-I must not, dare not, say the wilfulness and narrowness-though doubtless the world needs now, and always will need, almost above all, just such narrowness and wilfulness. MILLET'S PICTURES-NEW SUGGESTIONS, AWAKENINGS. April 18.-Went out three or four miles to the house of Mr. Quincy A. Shaw, to see a collection of J.F. Millet's pictures. Two rapt hours. Never before have I been so penetrated by this kind of expression. I stood long and long before "the Sower" (see frontispiece in Scribner's of last November). This particular painting is, I believe, what the picture-men designate "the first Sower," as the artist executed a second copy, and a third, and, some think, improved in each. But I doubt it. There is something in this that could hardly be caught again-a sublime murkiness and original pent fury. Besides this masterpiece there were many others (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, "Watering the Cow"), all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere art; and then it seemed to me, with that last impalpable ethic purpose from the artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I am always looking for. To me all of them told the full story of what went before and necessitated the great French Revolution-the long precedent crushing of the masses of a heroic people into the earth, in abject poverty, hunger-every right denied, humanity attempted to be put back for generations-yet Nature's force, Titanic here, the stronger and hardier for that repression-waiting terribly to break forth, revengeful-the pressure on the dyes, and the bursting at last-the storming of the Bastile-the execution of the king and queen-the tempest of massacres and blood. Yet who can wonder? Could we wish humanity different? Could we wish the people made of wood or stone? Or that there be no justice in destiny or time? The true France, base of all the rest, is certainly in these pictures. I comprehend "Field-People Reposing," "The Diggers," and "The Angelus" in this opinion. Some folks always think of the French as a small race, five or five and a half feet high, and ever frivolous and smirking. Nothing of the sort. The bulk of the personnel of France, before the Revolution, was large-sized, serious, industrious as now, and simple. The Revolution and Napoleon's wars dwarfed the standard of human size, but it will come up again. If for nothing else, I should dwell on my Boston visit for opening to me the new world of Millet's pictures. Will America ever have such an artist out of her own gestation, body, soul? AMID THE TABLETS. Sunday, April 17.-There are little episodes in life's experience which you cannot define, or say how it is they do affect you; yet they filter into one's heart, and tinge its blood forever. Such was an hour and a half, late this afternoon, in silence and half light, in the great nave of Memorial Hall, Cambridge, the walls thickly covered with mural tablets, bearing the names of students and graduates of the University who fell in the Secession War. Guard the tablets well, New England-ay, America entire! They do not appear in your census returns, or statistics of products, yet all the cotton and wheat, and all the mines of California, cannot countervail what those little slabs stand for. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. Among many, I desire gratefully to specify a few Bostonians by name: G.P. Lathrop, Boyle O'Reilly of the Pilot, T.H. Bartlett, the sculptor; Frank Hill Smith, the artist, and Charles B. Ferrin, proprietor of the Revere House. Then for the kindest visits and offered hospitalities from Col. and Mrs. Charles Fairchild, Mr. and Mrs. J.T. Trowbridge, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Mrs. Ole Bull and Mrs. Mosher, F.B. Sanborn; and friendliest calls from W.D. Howells, General Banks, C.A. Bartol, T.B. Aldrich, and from my old friends George Clapp, and J.R. Newhall of Lynn. These, and many others. It was well I got away (April 23) in fair order, for if I had staid another week I should have been killed with kindness, and with eating and drinking. WALT WHITMAN. --------------------------------------------------- LITERATURE --------------------------------------------------- A New Encyclopedia of Poetry.* THE next best thing to reading all the works of an author is to read his best works; and what holds true of one author holds true of all. But how shall we know which are their best works? would-be readers naturally ask, and are referred to volumes of selections which are supposed to answer that question, and which do answer it, if they are skillfully edited. But there are editors, and editors; and the great editor, like the great author, is born, not made. To be an editor, then is as surely his vocation as to be a historian., a novelist, and a poet, is the vocation of those whom he edits, and when he appears, he authenticates himself and his work. His name is not Legion, though legions come in his name, and, like the fools they are, rush in where he fears to tread, disporting themselves lightly while he moves reverently, "Beating his wings towards the golden bough." They generally avoid historians and novelists, though they have been known to condense Richardson, and Scott, and Dickens; but to make up for their discretion in this direction they precipitate themselves on the poets, as if they were easier to be understood than writers of prose, and as if it were mere child's play to edit them judiciously. It has not proved such hitherto, for among all those who have edited the singers of Great Britain during the last three hundred years I can recall but one who has really distinguished himself. -Campbell-whose Specimens are still a classic, though other and later editors will probably be thought to have done well when posterity shall sit in judgment on "Ward's English Poets." What may be called the earliest collection of English poetry is "Tottel's Miscellany," after its editor or printer, who gathered together the poetical writings of Wyatt and Surrey, and published them with fugitive pieces by other authors of the period in 1557, ten years after the death of Surrey, and fifteen years after the death of Wyatt. It was so popular that it passed through nine editions in seventeen years, and was followed by "The Paradise of Dainty Devices" (1576), "A Handful of Pleasant Delights" (1581), "Breton's Bower of Delights" (1592), "The Phoenix Nest" (1593), "The Arbor of Amorous Delights" (1597), and "The Passionate Pilgrim" (1599), the century closing with "England's Helicon," which is delightful reading to-day. Those old Elizabethan miscellanies were so widely known that it was the most natural thing in the world for Slender to refer to the earliest of them, as he is supposed to have done when he deplored the absence of his book of sonnets. They were not very long-lived, however, notwithstanding their contemporary popularity, for nearly a century and -------- *Harper's Cyclopaedia of British and American Poetry. Edited by Epes Sargent. New York: Harper & Brothers. From advance sheets.118 THE CRITIC [Number 9, a garter passed before they were succeeded by a second growth, whereof the first noticeable shoot was Ramsay's "Tea Table Miscellany," which sparkled cosily in the good city of Edinburgh in 1724. Thirteen years later came "The Muses Library" (1737), and twenty-eight years later (1765), Percy's famous "Reliques," the study of which by two or three men of genius revived the old, and created the new school of English poetry. Headley's "Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry" (1787), and the first edition, in one little volume, of Ellis's "Specimens" (1790), closed the eighteenth century as "England's Helicon" closed the sixteenth ---rounding a cycle which inclosed the culmination and decline of the Elizabethan drama ; the beginning and the end of the lyricism that enlivened the courts of Charles I. and II. ; the rhyming tragedies of Etherege, Dryden, and other disciples of the frigid French schools the stiff blank verse plays of Rowe, Addison, and Thomason, the satires and ethical epistles of Pope, the odes of Collins, the elegy of Gray, the moralities and natural descriptions of Cowper, and the incomparable songs of Burns, the lark singing at the heaven's gate---a cycle of glory, and gloom, and again of glory, the light of which is still shining in Byron, and Wordsworth, and Tennyson, after noon of the long day of English poetry whose Morning Star was Geoffrey Chaucer. Always a book-maker, for his family was large and his gains small, and emulous, perhaps, of the scholarly reputation that Ellis had made by his " Specimens," Southey projected a continuation thereof---" Specimens of Later English Poets"---which was published in three volumes in 1807, and had, I fancy, all the success that so voluminously wretched a work deserved. Campbell projected his " Specimens of the British Poets" three years before this date, and after brooding over it and dawdling over it nearly fifteen years, finally published it in seven volumes in 1819. Dr. Aikin, a dull man with old-fashioned tasted, brought out his " Select Works of he British Poets" during the next year ; about which time Hazlitt edited a collection of " English Poets," which for some reason was suppressed, through it was soon issued, I believe. I am not able to enumerate, nor is it desirable to enumerate here, the long list of Poetic Miscellanies edited and published in England within the last sixty years. I have read many of them, and have read critical notices of many more, and when I say that the majority appear to me ably edited, though when I say that the majority appear to me ably edited, though none so ably as the " Specimens" of Campbell, and that they are numerous enough to fill a good-sized library, I say all that I need to say concerning them. The first Poetic Miscellany of American origin saw the light in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the year after the publication of Ellis's " Specimens." All that I know about it I find in Griswold, who says it was entitled " Beauties of Poetry, British and American," that it was printed in 1791 by Matthew Carey (I imagine in New York), and that it contained specimens of nineteen native writers. He says, further, that two years later the first of proposed series of volumes of American Poems, Selected and Original, was printed in Litchfield, Conn., under the editorial supervision of Richard Alsop, who was one of the early American poets ; and that in the following year the " Columbian Muse," a selection of American poetry by various authors of established reputation, appeared from the press of J. Carey, in New York. It was not until the close of the third decade of the present century that Poetic Miscellanies can be said to have become a feature of American literature. They started tentatively in Kettell's " Specimens of American Poetry" (1829), Cheever's " Common Place Book of American Poetry" (1829), Bryant's " Selections from the American Poets" (1840), and Halleck's " Selections from the British Poets" (1840). Dr. Griswold next entered the field with " The Poets and Poetry of America" (1842). The success of this compilation, which passed through fifteen editions in seven years, led other book-makers to emulate it, or so much of it as represented the singers of America of the softer sex, whom they proceeded straightway to edit, Miss Caroline May publishing her " American Female Poets" in 1848, Mr. T. B. Read his " Female Poets of America" in the same year---a circumstance which annoyed Dr. Griswold, who Judaically divided the ladies and gentlemen of his tuneful congregation, and installed the former of themselves in the " Female Poets of American" in 1849, he having previously published, in 1844, " The Poets and Poetry of England in the Nineteenth Century." Dana published " The Household Book of Poetry" in 1858 ; Bryant, " A Library of Poetry and Song" in 1870 ; Coates, " The Fireside Cyclopaedia" in 1878, and Messrs. Fields and Whipple, " The Family Library of British Poetry," 1878, The list closes at present with Harper's " Cyclopaedia of British and American Poetry," upon which Mr. Epes Sargent was engaged for several years, but which he did not live to see in its present form, the last pages being put in type only a few days before his death. Four of the five volumes just named---i.e., Sargent's, Coates's, Bryant's, and Dana's---represent both British and American poetry ; the fifth, the Field-Whipple volume, representing British poetry alone. The selections in the Dana, Bryant, and Coates volumes are arranged under different headings or classifications ; the arrangement of the Field-Whipple and Sargent volumes is chronological, or as nearly so as may be. A good deal can be said in favor of both systems of arrangement. Occasional readers, to whom poetry is the recreation of spare moments, or the gratification of certain moods, prefer the former ; habitual readers, to whom it is an instruction as well as an amusement---a divine charm whose influence is never lost, though it changes from age to age---prefer the latter, and are wise, I think, in so doing. A few figures in regard to these volumes may not be without interest : The first edition of the " Household Book of Poetry" contained selections from two hundred and eight-six poets ; the first edition of " A Liberty of Poetry and Song" contained selections from five hundred and seventy-four poets ; the second selections from six hundred and seventy-four poets ; and the third selections from seven hundred and fifty-five poets. The " Fireside Encyclopaedia of Poetry" contains selections from four hundred and twenty-four poets ; " The Family Library of British Poetry" contains selections from three hundred and ninety-seven poets ; and Harper's " Cyclopaedia of British and American Poetry" contains selections from seven hundred and forty poets, besides over a hundred selections from anonymous writers of songs and ballads. Numerically the Bryant volume contains fifteen more names than the Sargent volume ; but as may of these are only represented by fragments of two or three lines at the end of the chief classes of verse, it is not incorrect to say that the latter represents the greater number, if not, indeed, the greatest number of poets ever represented in a single volume. How has Mr. Sargent performed his task ? He has shown the knowledge and the skill that might have been expected from so well read and so accomplished a writer ; he has shown a catholicity as well as sureness of taste ; and he has avoided the two great temptations which always lie in wait for the latest editor---the determination to represent his authors by poems that were never before quoted, and the determination to represent his subject by authors that were never before quoted --a hazardous undertaking, in which success, except a measurable success, is almost impossible. He has proceeded on what seems to me the true principle of arrangement, that of chronology ; he has made his selections as full as he could consistently with the multitude to be selected from, neither rejecting old ones because they were old, nor accepting new ones because they were new, but earnestly aiming in both cases to represent the great body of British and American poets at their best, and their best only ; and he has felt the demand of his work---the natural demand of its readers for information concerning it and its authors, biographical, critical, historical, in short for all sorts of information--an imperative demand which he has fulfilled with a thoroughness that is honorable to his scholarship, and a modesty that is honorable to his genius. That such a work as this might have been done differently I can see ; that it could have been done better I do not see at all. R. H. STODDARD. Life and Education of Laura Bridgmen.* THIS book draws largely upon Dr. Howe's statements concerning Laura Dewey Bridgman, which were presented from year to year in his reports of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. It contains also copious extracts from the journals kept by the teachers employed by Dr. Howe in the daily instruction of his wonderful pupil. The author, or rather the editor of the book, was herself the third of these teachers. She contributes to its contents a great part or the whole of her won journal, kept while she was thus employed ; a thread of narrative, intended to connect and supplement the matters recorded in the difference journals ; and some comments of her own certain of these matters. The volume also contains some letters written by Laura to her friends, teachers, and relatives ; part of her journal ; a brief autobiographi- * Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman. By Mary Swift Lamson. (New Edition.) Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. HOW I GOT AROUND AT SIXTY AND TAKE NOTES (80.2.) April 7, 1881 Some might think the following notes out of keeping with the weather this season. On the contrary, (I suggest), just as you want red and orange in your present room-trimmings, and reserve pale-blue and green till August, my summer reminiscences may well come in for middle and latter winter reading. If they could only prove as buoyant to you, reader dear, as the experience itself was to me! Doubtless, the fact of invalidation will crop out, (I call myself a half [?] these days and reverently bless the Lord it is no worse,) between some of the lines-- but I get my share of fun and healthy hours -- and try to indicate then here. (The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.) Frequent portions of the last four years, especially summers, I have spent at a secluded haunt of mine down in Camden County, New Jersey-- Timber Creek, quite a little river, (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve or fourteen miles away,) with its primitive solitudes, its flowing, fresh, winding stream, its recluse and woody banks, its cool sweet feeding spreading, and all the charms that, in genial seasons, the bird, grass, wild flowers, nooks, rabbits, and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, etc. can bring. Domiciled at the farm of my friends, the Staffords, near by, I lived along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes. And it is to my experience and my outdoor life here that I perhaps owe partial recovery (a sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of the lease of life) from my prostration of 1873- '76. But let me proceed to the jotting, taking them as they come from the heap without particular selection. There is no consecutiveness in date. They run any time within the last three or four years. Each was pencilled in the open air, and at the time and place. BY THE POND Aug 22, '77 -- As I leisurely write this, (with a French water-pen, dipping every two or three minutes in the brook,) and pause and look around from time to time, nothing could be more secluded or naturally free, cool, luxuriant, than the scent I am in the midst of. Not a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, in sight. After my semi- daily bath I sit here for a bit, the brook musically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since, through fields and the old lane, I stopt to view, now the sky, now the mile-off woods on the hill, and now the apple-orchards. What a contrast from New York's or Philadelphia's streets! Everywhere great patches of clingy blossm'd horse-mint wafting a spicy odor through the air, (especially evenings.) Everywhere the flowering boneset, and the rose-blossom of the wild bean. Distant Sounds-- The axe of the wood-cutter, the measured, "thud", of a single threshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (with invariable responses from other barn-yards,) and the lowing of cattle, contribute the sounds. And now that swinging whirr most musical- two locusts, one quite near, with proud brassy, cymbaline, continued, undulating song- the other just audible, far off, as if answering him. (The Katy did and locust now o'nights instead of as three months ago the pylas, the bull frog of the marsh, and the early tree toad.) The Wind-- But most of all, or far or near, the wind through the high tree-tops, or through low bushes, lacing one's face and hands so gently, this balmy-bright noon the coolest, "for a long time. (Sept. 1.)-- I will not call it sighing, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery expression; though a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift or slow, or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off there- how curious, how sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine in this moment, tossing the waves with spies of foam flying far, and the free whistle and the scent of the salt and that vast paradox somehow with all its action and restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest. Brook babbling-- Out of the [??nk] rapidly emerges a little volume of water as this as my ankle- cool and clear, and no sweeter-tasting have I ever met. I love to rest in the shade of the willow's close by this glassy rattler, as it runs along its bed over pebbles, with a couple of little falls, on its way to the big creek. By the soft turbulent fount I stay long, abandoning myself dreamily to the liquid music- many a happy, negative half hour. Other adjuncts-- But the sun and moon, here and these times! As never more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial, so vast, so ardently, lovingly, hot- so never a more glorious moon of nights, especially the last three or four. The great planets too- Mars never before so flaming bright, so flashing large with slight yellow tinge, (the astronomers say- is it true?- Nearer to us than any time the past century)- and well up, lord Jupiter, (a little while since close by the moon)- and in the west, after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, now languid and thorn of her beams as if from some divine excess. Sunday, Aug : 27 '77 -- Another day quite free from marked prostration and pain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtly filter into me as I slowly hobble down these country, lanes and across fields in the good air- as I sit here in solitude with Nature- open, voiceless, mystic, far-removed, yet palpable eloquent Nature. I merge myself in the scene, in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear brook water, how I am soothed by its soft gurgle in one place, and the hoarser murmurs of its three-foot tall in another! Come ye disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left- come get the sure virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field. Two months {July and [?]} I absorbed them, and they already make a new man of me. Every day, seclusion- every day two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no manners. Sept : 5 '77 -- I write this, 11 A.M., sheltered under a dense oak by the bank, where I have taken refuge from a sudden rain. I came down here, (we had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull,) for a daily and simple exercise. I am fond of- to pull on that young hickory sapling out there- to sway and yield to its tough-limber upright stem thick as my wrist- haply to get into my old sinews some of its elastic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take these healthy pulls moderately and at intervals, for nearly an hour, inhaling great draughts of fresh air. Wandering by the creek, I have three or four naturally favorable spots were I rest- besides a chair I lug with me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots convenient (since I am on the details of my convalescence) I have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong and limber boughs of beech, or holly, in easy-reaching distance, for my natural gymnasia, for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can almost feel the sap and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I hold on the boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent stalwartness, - and [?] the virtue thereof passes from them into me. (Or may be we interchange- may be the trees are more aware of it all than I ever thought.) But now pleasantly imprisoned here under the big oak- the rain dripping and the sky covered with leaden clouds- nothing but the pond on one side, and other a spread of grass, spotted with the milky blossoms of the wild carrot- the sound of an ace wielded at some distant wood pile- yet in this dull scene, (as most folks would call it,) why am I so (almost) happy here and alone? Why would any intrusion even from people I like spoil the charm? Bet I am alone? Perhaps there comes a time- when one feels through his whole being and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity between himself subjectively and Nature objectively which Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is I know not, but I often realize a Presence here- though nor humanity nor its voice, hardly its sigh at all, its here. In clear moods i am certain of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor esthetics will give the least explanation. All the past two summers it has been strengthening and nourishing my sick body and soul, as never before. Thanks, invisible, Physician, for thy silent delicious medicines, thy day and night, thy waters and thy airs, the banks, the grass, the trees, and e'en the weeds. A quatrain-- While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my great oak, (perfectly dry and comfortable, to the rattle of the drops all around) I have pencilled off the mood of the hour in a little quatrain, which I will give you: At vacancy with Nature, Acceptive and at ease; Distilling the present hour; What'er, where'er it is and ever the past, [?]. Can you get hold of it Really dear? I like it anyhow. CA 126HOW I GET AROUND AT SITY AND TAKES NOTES. (NO. 2.) April 4, '81.-SOME might think the following notes out of keeping with the weather this season. On the contrary, (I suggest), just as you want red and orange in your present room-trimmings, and reserve pale - blue and green till August, my summer reminiscences may well come in for latter winter reading. If they could only prove as glowing to you, Reader dear, as the experience itself was to me! Doubtless the fact of invalidism will crop out, (I call myself a half-Paralytic these days, and reverently bless the Lord if has now worse,) between some of the lines-but I get my share of fun and healthy hours-and try to indicate them here. (The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.) Frequent portions of the last four years, especially summers, I have spent at a secluded haunt of mine down in Camden County, New Jersey-Timber Creek, quite a little river, (it enters from the great Delaware, twelve or fourteen miles away,) with its primitive solitudes, its flowing, fresh, winding stream, its recluse and woody banks, its cool, sweet feeding-springs, and all the charms that, in genial seasons, the birds, grass, wild flowers, nooks, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, etc., can bring. Domiciled at the farm of my friends, the Staffords, near by, I lived along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes. And it is to my experiences and my outdoor life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a sort of second wind, or semi-renewal of the lease of life) from my prostration of 1873-'76. But let me proceed to the jottings, taking them as they come, from the heap, without particular selection. There is no consecutiveness in dates. They run any time within the last three or four years. Each was pencilled in the open air, and at the time and place. BY THE POND. Aug: 22, '77. - As I leisurely write this, (with a French water-pen, dipping every two or three minutes in the brook,) and pause and look around from time to time, nothing could be more secluded, or naturally free, cool, luxuriant, than the scene I am in the midst of. Not a human being, and hardly the evidence of one, in sight. After my semi-daily bath, I sit here for a bit, the brook musically brawling, to the chromatic tones of a fretful cat-bird somewhere off in the bushes. On my walk hither two hours since, through fields and the old land, I stopt to view, now the sky, now the mile-off woods on the hill and now the apple-orchards. What a contrast from new York's or Philadelphia's streets! Everywhere great patches of dingy-blossom'd horse-mint wafting a spicy odor through the air, (especially evenings.) Everywhere the flowering boneset, and the rose-bloom of the wild bean. Distant sounds.-The axe of the wood cutter, the measured thud of a single threshing-flail, the crowing of chanticleer in the barn-yard, (with invariable responses from other barn-yards,) and the lowing of cattle, contribute the sounds. And now that swinging whirr most seasonable-two locusts, one quite near, with proud, brassy, cymbaline, continued, undulating song-the other just audible, far off, as if answering him. (The katy did and locust now o'nights instead of as three months ago the hylas, the bull-frog of the marsh, and the early tree-toad.) The wind.-But most of all, or far or near, the wind- through the high tree-tops, or through low bushes, laving one's face and hands so gently, this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept. 2)-I will not call it sighing, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery expression; though a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift or slow, or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off there-how curious, how sibilant. or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossing the waves, with spirts of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and the scent of the sale-and that vast paradox somehow with all its action and restlessness conveying a sense of eternal rest. Brook-babbling.-Out of the bank rapidly emerges a little volume of water as thick as my ankle-cool and clear, and no sweeter-tasting have I ever met. I love to rest in the shade of the willows close by this glossy rattler, as it runs along its bed over pebbles, with a couple of little falls, on its way to the big creek. By the soft-turbulent fount I stay long, abandoning myself dreamily to the liquid music, [??], negative half-hourOther adjuncts.---But the sun and moon, here and these times ! As never more wonderful by day, the gorgeous orb imperial, so vast, so ardently, lovingly hot---so never a more glorious moon of nights, especially the last three or four. The great planets too---Mars never before so flaming bright, so flashing-large with slight yellow tinge, (the astronomers say--is it true ?--nearer to us than any time the past century)---and well up, lord Jupiter, (a little while since close by the moon)---and in the west, after the sun sinks, voluptuous Venus, now languid and shorn of her beam's, as if from some divine excess. CONVALSESCENT HOURS. Sunday, Aug : 27, '77.---Another day quite free from marked prostration and pain. It seems indeed as if peace and nutriment from heaven subtly filter into me as I slowly hobble down these country lanes and across fields, in the good air---as I sit here in solitude with Nature---open, voiceless, mystic, far-removed, yet palpable, eloquent Nature. I merge myself in the scene, in the perfect day. Hovering over the clear brook-water, how I am soothed by its soft gurgle in one place, and the hoarser murmurs of its three-foot fall in another ! Come ye disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left---come get the sure virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field. Two months (July and August) have I absorbed them, and they already make a new man of me. Every day, seclusion---every day at least two or three hours of freedom, bathing, no talk, no bonds, no dress, no books, no manners. Sept : 5, '77.---I write this, 11 A.M., sheltered under a dense oak by the bank, where I have raken refuge from a sudden rain. I came down here, (we had sulky drizzles all the morning, but an hour ago a lull,) for a daily and simple exercise I am fond of---to pull on that young hickory sapling out there---to sway and yield to its tough-limber upright stem, thick as my wrist---haply to get into my old sinews some of tis elastic fibre and clear sap. I stand on the turf and take these health-pulls moderately, and at intervals, for nearly an hour, inhaling great draughts of fresh air. Wandering by the creek, I have three of four naturally favorable spots where I rest---besides a chair I lug with me and use for more deliberate occasions. At other spots convenient (since I am on the details of my convalescence) I have selected, besides the hickory just named, strong and limber boughs of beech, or holly, in easy-reaching distance, for my natural gymnasia, for arms, chest, trunk-muscles. I can almost feel the sap and sinew rising through me, like mercury to heat. I hold on to boughs or slender trees caressingly there in the sun and shade, wrestle with their innocent stalwartness,---and know the virtue thereof passes from them into me. (Or may-be we interchange---may-be the trees ae more aware of it all than I ever thought.) But now pleasantly imprisoned here under the big oak--- the rain dripping and the sky covered with leaden clouds--- nothing but the pond on one side, and the other a spread of grass, spotted with the milky blossoms of the wild carrot--- the sound of an axe wielded at some distant wood-pile---yet in this dull scene, (as most folks would call it,) why am I so (almost) happy here and alone ? Why would any intru- sion even from people I like, spoil the charm? But am I alone? Perhaps there comes a time- perhaps it has come to me- when one feels through his whole being, and pronouncedly the emotional part, that identity between himself subjectively and Nature objectively which Schelling and Fitche are so fond of pressing. How it is I know not, but I often realize a Presence here- through nor humanity nor its voice, hardly its sign at all, is here. In clear moods I am certain of it, and neither chemistry nor reasoning nor esthetics, will give the least explanation. All the past two summers it has been strengthening and nourishing my sick body and soul, as never before. Thanks, invisible Physician, for thy silent delicious medicines, thy day and night, thy waters and thy airs, the banks, the grass, the trees, and e'en the weeds! A quintette.- While I have been kept by the rain under the shelter of my great oak, (perfectly dry and comfortable, to the rattle of the drops all around) I have pencilled off the mood of the hour in a little quintette, which I will give you: At vacancy with Nature, Acceptive and at ease, Distilling the present hour, What'er, where'er it is, & over the past, oblivion. Can you get hold of it Reader dear? and how do you like it anyhow? WALT WHITMAN,129