gree that artistic genius in the broad arrangement of materials which insures interest. The course of his narrative is unperplexed by doubtful or insoluble problems; no pretence at profunity or subtlety saps the vitality of his characters or interrupts the flow of incident with dissertation and digression. The painting is filled in with primary colors and with a free hand, and any sense of crudity which may be awakened by a close inspection is compensated by the vigor and massive effectiveness of the whole. Though he did not bring to his work the highest scientific grasp, he brought to it scientific conscientiousness and thoroughness within his limitations, while his dominant pictorial faculty gave to his treatment a super-scientific brilliancy. The romance of history has seldom had an abler exponent, and a large number of editions and translations of his works attests their undiminished fascination at certain stages of popular culture." REFERENCES 1. Life of William Hickling Prescott, by George Ticknor, Boston, 1864. [This loving tribute of his life-long friend is so complete that it must always be the storehouse from which all articles about Prescott are drawn, and so admirably expressed that to vary the language is only to lose force of statement. Hence this article is made up almost entirely of excerpts, and instead of the usual reference by paragraphs it seems better to give instead this general credit for the whole.] 2. Justin Winsor, in The Atlantic Monthly, xvi. 660. 3. John Fiske, in the Atlantic Monthly, xvi. 664. 4. Essays and Reviews, by Edwin P. Whipple. 2 vols. Second edition, Boston, 1851. 5. American Lands and Letters. The Mayflower to Rip Van Winkle. By Donald G. Mitchell, New York, 1897. 6. American Bookmen. Sketches chiefly biographical, of certain writers of the Nineteenth Century, by M. A. DeWolfe Howe, New York, 1898. 7. Princes, Authors, and Statesmen of Our Time, edited by James Parton, Columbus, Ohio, 1885. 8. William Hickling Prescott. North American Review, xcviii. 40. 9. William Hickling Prescott. Harpers, xxviii. 54. JUNE 29 CELIA THAXTER I We wonder that Mrs. Thaxter's life has not been used to illustrate theories of education. When she was five years old her father became keeper of a light-house on the Isles of Shoals, nine miles east of Portsmouth. Through the long winters they hardly saw a face outside the family. Sometimes they lost track of Sunday. She writes: "The pilot-boat from Portsmouth steered over, and brought us letters, newspapers, magazines, and told us the news of months. The first echoes from the far-off world hardly touched us little ones. * * * Into the deep window seats we climbed, and with pennies (for which we had no other use) made round holes in the thick frost, breathing on them till they were warm, and peeped out at the bright, fierce, windy weather'." |