_Venetian Life_ belongs on the same shelf as _Outre Mer_ and _Views Afoot_ and _Castilian Days_--prose sketches with the golden light of youth upon them. _Italian Journeys_ is the first and best of a long series of sentimental "bummelings" that its author was to record--delicious ramblings, descriptions, characterizations--realistic studies, we may call them, made by a poet. Nothing that Howells ever wrote has been better than these earlier travel sketches, half poetry, half shrewd observation. In his later travel sketches--_Tuscan Cities_, _London Films_, _Certain Delightful English Towns_, and the like--this element grew constantly less and less. Wiser they undoubtedly are, and more scholarly and philosophic, but the freshness and poetic charm of the earlier Howells is not in them. The philosopher has taken the place of the poet. VIII The first period of Howells's literary life, the period of sketches and prose studies, covers the fifteen years of his connection with the _Atlantic Monthly_, first from 1866 to 1871 as assistant editor, and then from 1871 to 1881 as editor. He had returned from Venice a cosmopolitan and an accomplished Italian scholar. There was no trace of the West upon him; it was as if he had always lived in Boston. His sketches now centered about Cambridge life, just as earlier they had centered upon Italian themes--careful little character studies like "Mrs. Johnson" and "My Doorstep Acquaintance," little sentimental journeys like "A Pedestrian Tour" and "A Day's Pleasure," and chatty talks about himself and his opinions and experiences, something after the manner of Dr. Holmes, a variety of composition in which he was to grow voluminous in later years. His book reviewing in the _Atlantic_ during this period is notable from the fact that almost all of the chief works of the new national period of which he was a part passed under his pen. Freshness and truth and originality never failed to arrest his attention; he was a real force in the directing of the _Atlantic_ element of the American reading public toward the rising new school of authors, but aside from this his criticism is in no way significant. His art and his enthusiasm were in his sketches--American sketches now with the light of Europe over them. _Their Wedding Journey_ is an American counterpart to _Italian Journeys_, and it is made coherent by introducing a married pair on their bridal tour and describing places and manners as they became acquainted with them. The interest comes not at all from the narrative; it comes from the setting. It is an American sentimental journey over which the author strives to throw the soft light of European romance. Rochester was like Verona; and Quebec--"on what perverse pretext was it not some ancient town of Normandy?"