works of art are often either at second hand or incorrect. His education had not prepared him to pronounce on these, and he had not the patience to cultivate a critical appreciation of them. But in the crowd and out of doors--whither he gladly escapes--he is always happy, and there are many pictures, scattered here and there through these excellent letters, which for sharpness of line and brightness of color have not been excelled either by Hawthorne, in his “Note-Books,” or by Bayard Taylor, in his numerous views, afoot or otherwise, or by Henry James, in his more penetrating and far more carefully finished studies. Willis did not sit down in Europe, like Longfellow, and become the interpreter to the New World of the Old World’s romantic past. He was never much of a scholar. The literature and legends of the countries he traveled had little to give him, though he possessed just enough of the historic imagination for the proper equipment of a picturesque tourist. In general it was the present that interested him: all this stirring modern life, the strange manners and dresses, the changing landscapes, the gay throngs in the streets, the pretty women and notable men at the drive or the ball. Nor was his attitude that of criticism, but rather of intense personal enjoyment. He had gone out ready to be pleased, and he was pleased. He gave, in consequence, a somewhat rose-colored view of Europe to his readers at home. Not that the disagreeable side escaped his notice, but he was having his holiday and he gave a holiday account of it, and his engaging egotism lent a personal interest to his descriptions. The “Edinburgh Review,” in a just but rather heavy notice of “Pencillings,” complained of the scantiness of useful information in them. Useful information was a thing which Willis eschewed. He took small interest in politics, public institutions, industrial conditions, etc.; and he knew that they would bore nine out of ten among his readers. He lumped them jauntily under the head of “statistics,” referred the anxious inquirer concerning them to the cyclopædias, acknowledged with delightful candor that he himself was an ornamental person, and went on with his sketches of people and places. Yet “Pencillings by the Way” was a book which so solid a man as Daniel Webster carried with him on a journey, and which, says his biographer, “he read attentively and praised. He said the letters were both instructive and amusing and evinced great talents on the part of the author.” They inspired the young Bayard Taylor with his first longing to travel. Thousands of Americans have taken their impressions of Europe from them; and in spite of all that has since been written by more leisurely and better instructed observers, they retain their freshness wonderfully, and present to the reader of to-day vivid glimpses of the outside of European life, at a time when steam had not yet made the byways of all countries accessible.