s in Water-colors, in
London, he exhibited an exquisite picture of a peaceful old couple
sitting in the corner of a low, quiet, ancient room, in the waning
afternoon, and listening to their daughter as she stands up in the
middle and plays the harp to them. They are Darby and Joan, with all the
poetry preserved; they sit hand in hand, with bent, approving heads, and
the deep recess of the window looking into the garden (where we may be
sure there are yew-trees clipped into the shape of birds and beasts),
the panelled room, the quaintness of the fireside, the old-time
provincial expression of the scene, all belong to the class of effects
which Mr. Abbey understands supremely well. So does the great russet
wall and high-pitched mottled roof of the rural almshouse which figures
in the admirable water-color picture that he exhibited last spring. A
group of remarkably pretty countrywomen have been arrested in front of
it by the passage of a young soldier--a raw recruit in scarlet tunic and
white ducks, somewhat prematurely conscious of military glory. He gives
them the benefit of the goose-step as he goes; he throws back his head
and distends his fingers, presenting to the ladies a back expressive of
more consciousness of his fine figure than of the lovely mirth that the
artist has depicted in their faces. Lovely is their mirth indeed, and
lovely are they altogether. Mr. Abbey has produced nothing more charming
than this bright knot of handsome, tittering daughters of burghers,
in their primeval pelisses and sprigged frocks. I have, however, left
myself no space to go into the question of his prospective honors as a
painter, to which everything now appears to point, and I have mentioned
the two pictures last exhibited mainly because they illustrate the happy
opportunities with which he has been able to surround himself. The sweet
old corners he appreciates, the russet walls of moss-grown charities,
the lowbrowed nooks of manor, cottage and parsonage, the fresh
complexions that flourish in green, pastoral countries where it rains
not a little--every item in this line that seems conscious of its
pictorial use appeals to Mr. Abbey not in vain. He might have been a
grandson of Washington Irving, which is a proof of what I have already
said, that none of the young American workers in the same field have so
little as he of that imperfectly assimilated foreignness of suggestion
which is sometimes regarded as the strength, but which i