closing words upon these works should be one of hearty praise of the Alpine Club for its bold striking out of new paths among the Alps, by which fresh scenes are opened of that surpassing attraction which is in the overlaying and interpenetration of sublimity with beauty, the mysterious and transporting charm which nature vouchsafes only in her holy of holies of great mountains, and art grants only to solemn tombs of princes and sacred shrines of the church, in the "Day and Night" and the "Prophets and Sybils" of Michael Angelo. us. Particularly to the author of "Summer Months among the Alps" are we grateful for his introduction to the Zermatt valley and the enchantments of the Riffelberg. For a long time Chamouni was Switzerland and all the Alps to Now the walk up the Visp, and the haunting expectation of the obelisk of the Matterhorn to break upon our sight most draw us that way. We begin to dubitate about Mont Blanc. He may be "the monarch of mountains,' but æsthetic chivalry turns our loyalty to Monte Rosa, which at present rather queens it over our anticipation. There is something in the very name more seductive and sweetly attracting, with its implied rich yet tender color, than in the other haughty sounding title of a cold and severe majesty. When mountain travel leads us that way, we are sure that our knapsack will have a corner for this good contribution of Mr. Hinchcliff to mountain literature. No pleasanter or surer guide could we have to the spot which shall make real to the sense the charm to the imagination of these verses, which, when we read them, leave us always in doubt whether we have been reading Tennyson's rhymes, or looking at a picture by Turner, or listening to a cadence of Mendelssohn :— "How faintly-flushed, how phantom-fair A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys Next summer, and many summers to come, travellers among our White Hills will take with them the new contribution which Mr. King has made to mountain literature, after long and intimate acquaintance with the grand forms. of which he writes, and out of good understanding and hearty love of them. They could have no more delightful and profitable company unless they might have the man himself. The book contains much information in the way of advice and direction to tourists and sojourners, which they will find apt to their convenience. It is pleasant reading and a charming substitute for the small libraries people carry on their journeys. But what is more, we believe that it will greatly help, to some satisfying apprehension of mountain landscape, teachable people who would fain get from the hills some finer impression than of good or bad dinners, pleasant or tiresome drives, and the few hacknied points of view and interest. We might ride the high horse of enthusiastic laudation, and be justified by the signal excellence of the book. That rash courser, however, would carry us through many things, but bring us up nowhere. We will take the sober nag of a more quiet and discreet praise, content to go over a little only of our pleasure in it, and not tell all we know of its generosity. In a critical notice of it, the manner in which Mr. King's publishers have done their part must not be passed over. It is remarkable both for its intrinsic merit and as the beginning among us of good things in the way of landscape illustration. We suppose no native American is so credulous of the power of his nation to do all things, as to imagine the admirable wood-engravings, in the illustrated works published within two or three years in this country, to be the work of our artists. It is to England that we are indebted for the exquisite design and finished execution of the illustrated Gray's Elegy, Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy, Longfellow's Evangeline and Poems, and many other works whose illustrations upon wood are of an excellence beyond which it seems difficult to advance. The English lead off in this, and leave nothing to be wished, of delicacy, vigor, or general effectiveness, in the best of their works of this sort. It would require an article by itself to indicate the various and marked merits of those artists who, within a little while, have given to the drawing upon wood an express talent and faculty so nice as to amount, in some instances, almost to genius. We may mention Birket Foster as, in VOL. XVII. 16 landscape, at the head, and confessedly without peer in the rural air, sweet and quiet pastoralness, tender sentiment, and refined, poetic grace of his pictures. Then, in figure, Gilbert is, on the whole, before the rest in a certain effective manner and rich suggestion of color, with complete knowledge and mastery of the peculiar touch which tells best under the hand of the skilful graver. To those artists and their worthy mates, if not peers, and to the admirable rendering of their designs by such engravers as Evans, Cooper, and the Dalziels, we owe our growing appreciation of the beauty of design and engraving on wood, and the pleasure we have taken in many late publications of the Appletons, and of Ticknor and Fields, which, though put forth in America, were entirely got up the other side of the water. The publishers of Mr. King's work are, we believe, the first American publishers who have chosen to trust to native talent and workmanship to produce a really elegant and notable book, adorned with wood-engravings claiming an express artistic quality. The "sixty illustrations, engraved by Andrew from drawings by Wheelock," prove, on the whole, they were not unwise in taking the risk. A better style of engraving might have been secured by sending the drawings to England, or they might have been exquisitely photographed in France, but, with all the drawbacks which we shall have to notice in the workmanship, we think that the book, in its external form, may put forth no doubtful claim to be the best of the kind vet made this side of London. Familiar as we now are with what is best in the art, a comparison is inevitable between the American work and those which have so charmed us from English hands. But the implied criticism of the contrast is not unkind, because made most to express a hope that we have here a favorable omen, the earnest of drawings by our own artists, and engravings by native workmen, which, presently, may shift the comparison the other way. We consider some of these illustrations as quite up, in artistic excellence of design and execution, to the mark of those which have made us so fastidious and exigent in the matter of wood-engravings. The picture of King's ravine, p. 353, faithfully gives the topography of the place and also the sentiment of the mystery in its shadowed depth, and in the remote peaks and cliffs above, with a feeling of the strange beauty of its pard-colored forests and rocks, and its fine jewel-work of cascades and streams. It is a pleasant chance that the place so named should prove the best picture in the book. Next to it we would place the drawing of Tuckerman's ravine and the top of Mount Washington, p. 309, which presents a fine notion of height and distance, and of the exceeding strength of the ridges and gulf-lines. For soft beauty we might choose the picture of the Plymouth Elms, p. 86, and of the shores and expanse of Winnipiseogee, pp. 53 and 64, and for wild impressiveness, the strikingly exact portrait of the buttresses of Mt. Hayes, p. 291, and of the weird gate of the Notch, p. 191. The campanile-looking tower in the graceful sketch of the Elms is quite too Italian for the hideous architecture of New Hampshire villages, but seems the artist's memorandum, and hint to our remembrance of those golden days in the Saco or the Pemigewasset valley, when, by the magic of sunlight and colored haze, we have seen New-England prosaism raised into more than we can dream of the poetry which sun and air weave into the days and scenes of Italy. We must not omit to notice the pine presented on p. 67, with its suggestion of lonely pride and patience belonging to that tree, or the low, clinging sweep of cloud in the quiet picture of Echo lake on p. 116, or the rich tones of color on pp. 253 and 375. It would be easy to expatiate upon the worth of these and other illustrations, but we must now dash our general praise with some particular censure and stricter criticism. In many the manner of engraving is notably faulty. Detailed criticism of the bad points, as of the excellences, in the engraver's work, is, of course, out of the question here. We can only hint a few of the obvious defects. The failure to represent the spirit of the scene, discernible, we think, in some of the illustrations, may, perhaps, be shared by both artist and engraver. A lack of that sentiment of the place pictured, which is hardly to be described, yet is always felt, and without which the faithfulest portraiture of it is not raised above the utility of topography to the dignity and charm of landscape art, may result here as well from a want of technical skill in drawing upon wood, as from incapacity or carelessness in cutting the block. And we are inclined to think that Mr. Wheelock must put largely to his own account the sometimes spotty effect, as on pp. 22 and 278, which breaks up the picture and distracts and vexes the eye with a want of repose and unity. But it needs not to look at his capital sketches, some of which are now before us, to make it plain, that, in not a few instances, his engraver has not done him justice. So great a discrepance as between the good, conscientious work on pp. 353 and 375, and the poor, slovenly work on pp. 25, 206, and 208, indicates rather an apprentice than the master hand, or the careless indifference which is a graver fault than incompetency. We have always observed in this artist's drawings, as in his elaborate color-works, a fine ability to aerial truth and grace, and special excellence in expressing delicate atmospheric relations and effects. But of this, in many of the engravings, there is hardly a hint. The engraver's hard outlines take the place of his vanishing distances and tender lapsing retiracy of clouds and haze, black and white are put for light and shade, and all made "plain as way to parish church," where soft gradation and subtle subordinations in the drawing suggest the mysterious glooms alternate with splendors as mysterious, which constitute so much of the individual character and peculiar charm of the " delicious region" represented. There is also too great a uniformity of tone and style in the engraving. A dull sameness of texture in many of the illustrations squeezes them dry of all suggestion of color, and gives to rocks, trees, streams, and fields, a staring and monotonous look, very different from the various and sweet changefulness of nature. But, that such delicacies of refined feature and mutable expression are not too much to expect from wood engraving is plain, not only from the English work before praised, but from those best pictures of this book pointed out above. We give genuine, hearty praise to much of Mr. Andrew's production here, but must as heartily blame him for the very shabby style of some of it. If he is concerned for the progress of his art, and would see its results worthy to stand presently with what the English wood-engravers do so elegantly, he must bring to it a quick conscience, as well as patient skill and deft hand, and must seek more earnestly to interpret the artist's idea, by seizing and appropriating to his own work the |