aphical writing," as in some of his magazine articles,
is evidently of the sort initially intended to "float cuts," it is very
well done, done most often with distinction. At times, of course, it
suffers from over-emphasis, as do the descriptive portions of his long
stories, but generally he attunes his writing to the genius of the
place. This is as true of his letters as of what he wrote for the
public, especially true of that series on Algiers from which Mrs. Sharp
quotes in her "Memoir." Papers of this sort, papers giving the genius of
place, Sharp was happier in, I think, than in those which are more
definitely the out-of-door essay. Sharp knew much of birds and small
mammals, of trees and plants, with a knowledge that evidently began in
childhood, but, as with so much else in his life, this knowledge he
never had time to fill out and deepen through patient observation. You
must not, then, turn to "Where the Forest Murmurs" to find writing of a
kind with that in which Thoreau and Jefferies so finely attained, much
less that loving intimacy with the personal side of birds and animals
that so humanly tempers the scientific spirit in White of Selborne. Nor
is there in them the racy earthiness of Mr. Burroughs. Their greatest
asset is their enthusiasm over the beauty of the world they are written
to praise; the next greatest their power of catching in words the mood
of a landscape; their next greatest their distinction of style, though
there are several in which the style is wholly without distinction. Now
and then, too, they are valuable for their guesses at the whys and
wherefores of things. There are to-day many explanations of what is
commonly called "The Lure of the Wild." Is not this as revelatory as
any?--

Is this because, in the wilderness, we recover something of what we
have lost?... Because we newly find ourselves as though surprised
into an intimate relationship of which we have been unaware or have
indifferently ignored? What a long way the ancestral memory has to
go, seeking, like a pale sleuth-hound, among obscure dusks and
forgotten nocturnal silences, for the lost trails of the soul! It
is not we only, you and I, who look into the still waters of the
wilderness and lonely places, and are often dimly perplext, are
often troubled we know not how or why: some forgotten reminiscence
in us is aroused, some memory, not our own, but yet our heritage is
pe