ould hold on
to the mane of the real) slides off the other side of the runaway horse.
But he remains, on the whole, pencil in hand, a wonderfully copious and
veracious historian of his age and his civilization.

VII

I have left Mr. Reinhart to the last because of his importance, and now
this very importance operates as a restriction and even as a sort of
reproach to me. To go well round him at a deliberate pace would take
a whole book. With Mr. Abbey, Mr. Reinhart is the artist who has
contributed most abundantly to Harper; his work, indeed, in quantity,
considerably exceeds Mr. Abbey's. He is the observer of the immediate,
as Mr. Abbey is that of the considerably removed, and the conditions he
asks us to accept are less expensive to the imagination than those of
his colleague. He is, in short, the vigorous, racy _prosateur_ of that
human comedy of which Mr. Abbey is the poet. He illustrates the
modern sketch of travel, the modern tale--the poor little "quiet,"
psychological, conversational modern tale, which I often think the
artist invited to represent it to the eye must hate, unless he be a very
intelligent master, little, on a superficial view, would there appear to
be in it to represent. The superficial view is, after all, the natural
one for the picture-maker. A talent of the first order, however, only
wants to be set thinking, as a single word will often make it. Mr.
Reinhart at any rate, triumphs; whether there be life or not in the
little tale itself, there is unmistakable life in his version of it.
Mr. Reinhart deals in that element purely with admirable frankness
and vigor. He is not so much suggestive as positively and sharply
representative. His facility, his agility, his universality are a truly
stimulating sight. He asks not too many questions of his subject, but to
those he does ask he insists upon a thoroughly intelligible answer. By
his universality I mean perhaps as much as anything else his admirable
drawing; not precious, as the aesthetic say, nor pottering, as the
vulgar, but free, strong and secure, which enables him to do with the
human figure at a moment's notice anything that any occasion may demand.
It gives him an immense range, and I know not how to express (it is
not easy) my sense of a certain capable indifference that is in him
otherwise than by saying that he would quite as soon do one thing as
another.

For it is true that the admirer of his work rather misses in him that
int