mids, just those
awful ghosts against the ominous sky!

As different as are the subjects he chooses are the bits of scenery
Hamilton Wild introduces in his pictures of life as it now is. His are
more truly historical paintings, although aspiring to no record of the
greatly bad and sorrowful transactions of our age. They represent the
joy and hope of youth, the cheerfulness and vivacity of the lowly, their
pleasantest pursuits, their most primitive customs, their characteristic
and often superb costumes; and wherever a passage of scenery occurs, it
is always that which has aided in developing the human life with which
it is associated.

There is never a discrepancy, nor is unison of sentiment ever achieved
by any bending of the truth. His keen sense of harmony never fails to
perceive, in the infinite range of tones and expressions of Nature, just
that which better than all others supports the character and action of
his group. With motives so healthful, it may be less difficult to find
that sympathy which Nature cheerfully gives; yet there is a tendency
with artists to be enticed away from Nature's joyousness, and especially
from her simplicity.

To this temptation Mr. Wild can never have been subjected. The freedom
which he manifests is not that which has been won, but into which he
must have been born, and with that grew the ability which transfigures
labor into play. Unto such a Nature the out-world presents unasked her
phases of joy and brightness, her light and life.

Does he seek Nature? No. Nature goes with him; and whether he tarry
among the Lagoons, where all seems Art or Death, or in the shadow and
desolation of the Campagna, in the unclean villages of the Alban Hills,
or where the shadows of deserted palaces fall black, broken, and jagged
on the red earth of Granada, there she companions him. She shows him,
that, after all, Venice is hers, and gives him the white marble enriched
with subtilest films of gold, alabaster which the processes of her
incessant years have changed to Oriental amber, a city made opalescent
by the magic of her sunsets. At Rome she opens vistas away from the
sepulchral, out into the wine-colored light of the Campagna, into
the peace gladdened by larks and the bleating of lambs; above are
pines,--Italian pines,--and across the path falls the still shadow of
blooming oleanders. She leads away from squalid towns, and gathers a
group of her children,--peasants, costumed in scarlet and go