,
streets and squares, the railway stations and telegraph poles, the
wondrous sign-boards and triumphant bunting, of New York for the source
of its inspiration, and with a big hurrying printing-house for its
studio. If to begin the practice of art in these conditions was to incur
the danger of being crude, Mr. Abbey braved it with remarkable success.
At all events, if he went neither I through the mill of Paris nor
through that of Munich, the writer of these lines more than consoles
himself for the accident. His talent is unsurpassably fine, and yet we
reflect with complacency that he picked it up altogether at home.
If he is highly distinguished he is irremediably native, and (premising
always that I speak mainly of his work in black and white) it is
difficult to see, as we look, for instance, at the admirable series of
his drawings for "She Stoops to Conquer," what more Paris or Munich
could have done for him. There is a certain refreshment in meeting an
American artist of the first order who is not a pupil of Gerome or of
Cabanel.

Of course, I hasten to add, we must make our account with the fact that,
as I began with remarking, the great development of Mr. Abbey's powers
has taken place amid the brown old accessories of a country where
that eighteenth century which he presently marked for his own are more
profusely represented than they have the good-fortune to be in America,
and consequently limit our contention to the point that his talent
itself was already formed when this happy initiation was opened to it.
He went to England for the first time in 1878. but it was not all at
once that he fell into the trick, so irresistible for an artist doing
his special work, of living there, I must forbid myself every
impertinent conjecture, but it may be respectfully assumed that Mr.
Abbey rather drifted into exile than committed himself to it with malice
prepense. The habit, at any rate, to-day appears to be confirmed, and,
to express it roughly, he is surrounded by the utensils and conveniences
that he requires. During these years, until the recent period when he
began to exhibit at the water-color exhibitions, his work has been done
principally for Harper's Magazine, and the record of it is to be found
in the recent back volumes. I shall not take space to tell it over piece
by piece, for the reader who turns to the Magazine will have no
difficulty in recognizing it. It has a distinction altogether its own;
there is alwa