ys poetry, humor, charm, in the idea, and always infinite
grace and security in the execution.

As I have intimated, Mr. Abbey never deals with the things and figures
of to-day; his imagination must perform a wide backward journey before
it can take the air. But beyond this modern radius it breathes with
singular freedom and naturalness. At a distance of fifty years it begins
to be at home; it expands and takes possession; it recognizes its own.
With all his ability, with all his tact, it would be impossible to him,
we conceive, to illustrate a novel of contemporary manners; he would
inevitably throw it back to the age of hair-powder and post-chaises.
The coats and trousers, the feminine gear, the chairs and tables of the
current year, the general aspect of things immediate and familiar, say
nothing to his mind, and there are other interpreters to whom he is
quite content to leave them. He shows no great interest even in the
modern face, if there be a modern face apart from a modern setting; I
am not sure what he thinks of its complications and refinements of
expression, but he has certainly little relish for its _banal_, vulgar
mustache, its prosaic, mercantile whisker, surmounting the last new
thing in shirt-collars. Dear to him is the physiognomy of clean-shaven
periods, when cheek and lip and chin, abounding in line and surface,
had the air of soliciting the pencil. Impeccable as he is in drawing,
he likes a whole face, with reason, and likes a whole figure; the
latter not to the exclusion of clothes, in which he delights, but as the
clothes of our great-grandfathers helped it to be seen. No one has ever
understood breeches and stockings better than he, or the human leg, that
delight of the draughtsman, as the costume of the last century permitted
it to be known. The petticoat and bodice of the same period have as
little mystery for him, and his women and girls have altogether the
poetry of a by-gone manner and fashion. They are not modern heroines,
with modern nerves and accomplishments, but figures of remembered song
and story, calling up visions of spinet and harpsichord that have
lost their music today, high-walled gardens that have ceased to
bloom, flowered stuffs that are faded, locks of hair that are lost,
love-letters that are pale. By which I don't mean that they are vague
and spectral, for Mr. Abbey has in the highest degree the art of
imparting life, and he gives it in particular to his well-made, blooming