es are bare (he
does the bare tree beautifully), and his draperies lined with fur; but
when he exhibits himself directly, as in the fantastic "Rambles" before
mentioned, contagious high spirits are the clearest of his showing.
Here he appears as an irrepressible felicitous sketcher, and I know no
pleasanter record of the joys of sketching, or even of those of simply
looking. Theophile Gautier himself was not more inveterately addicted to
this latter wanton exercise. There ought to be a pocket edition of Mr.
Boughton's book, which would serve for travellers in other countries
too, give them the point of view and put them in the mood. Such
a blessing, and such a distinction too, is it to have an eye. Mr.
Boughton's, in his good-humored Dutch wanderings, holds from morning
till night a sociable, graceful revel. From the moment it opens till the
moment it closes, its day is a round of adventures. His jolly pictorial
narrative, reflecting every glint of October sunshine and patch of
russet shade, tends to confirm us afresh in the faith that the painter's
life is the best life, the life that misses fewest impressions.

VI

[Illustration: Du Maurier]

Mr. Du Maurier has a brilliant history, but it must be candidly
recognized that it is written or drawn mainly in an English periodical.
It is only during the last two or three years that the most ironical of
the artists of _Punch_ has exerted himself for the entertainment of the
readers of Harper; but I seem to come too late with any commentary on
the nature of his satire or the charm of his execution. When he began to
appear in Harper he was already an old friend, and for myself I confess
I have to go through rather a complicated mental operation to put into
words what I think of him. What does a man think of the language he
has learned to speak? He judges it only while he is learning. Mr. Du
Maurier's work, in regard to the life it embodies, is not so much a
thing we see as one of the conditions of seeing. He has interpreted for
us for so many years the social life of England that the interpretation
has become the text itself. We have accepted his types, his categories,
his conclusions, his sympathies and his ironies, It is not given to all
the world to thread the mazes of London society, and for the great body
of the disinherited, the vast majority of the Anglo-Saxon public. Mr. Du
Maurier's representation is the thing represented. Is the effect of it
to nip in the bu