In the fall of 1880, the four papers which had appeared in “Harper’s Magazine” were collected and published in a sumptuous volume, entitled “Pastoral Days.” It was a book which yesterday would have been called “epoch-making”; to-day it would only be called “record-breaking.” The simple truth about it is that it really touched the high-water mark in the history of nature-illustration by means of wood-engraving. It was everywhere hailed as exhibiting the very best work of its kind ever achieved. The praise which fell to Gibson himself was twofold; for it was an enthusiastic recognition of his talent both as author and as artist. His engravers were applauded for the skill and spirit with which they interpreted his designs. His publishers were commended for the unstinted generosity which had balked at no pains or cost. Even the printer received a curtain-call. For the “Evening Post” with great discrimination insisted that much of the success of the work was due to “another artist, whose name is nowhere given. That artist’s name is David Lewis and he passes his days in the press-room of Harper Brothers, amid the clatter of the printing-machines, engaged in the grimy work of his office.” The “Evening Mail” expressed the unanimous verdict of art circles when it declared: “Writers on art spoke of the days of Bewick with a sort of despair, as though no one like him might ever be expected again. It has been reserved for the United States to show that wood has, for the purposes of engraving, capacities of which Bewick never dreamed, and to produce a school of artists who in treating landscape, at least upon wood, have surpassed everything on the other side of the ocean. In the first rank of these artists stands Mr. William Hamilton Gibson.” The London “Times” in a long notice spoke of his having “the rare gift of feeling for the exquisitely graceful forms of plant life and the fine touch of an expert draughtsman which enable him to select and to draw with a refinement which few artists in this direction have ever shown.” Even the “Saturday Review” in a notice a column and a half in length, confessing its ignorance of Mr. Gibson and his work, declared that his drawings were so full of delicate fancy and feeling, and his writing so skilful and graceful, that it hoped “to hear more of him soon, in either function or both.” In hardly more than two years from the time of his first illustrations Gibson had made his way to the very front rank of the world’s illustrators. His position was truly of his own achieving; and he never fell back from the eminence he had so fairly won. His friend Mr. Charles N. Hurd of the Boston “Transcript” does the situation no more than simple justice in a letter written upon reading the “Saturday Review” article: “TRANSCRIPT OFFICE, “324 WASHINGTON STREET, COR. MILK STREET, “BOSTON, _May 18, 1881_. “MY DEAR GIBSON: