It has been well said that there are but few great Nature lovers; that is strictly speaking, whose souls are in attune with the Creator's: but there have been a sufficient few to stamp their personality on the regions which they have animated. Thoreau's country, simple as it is, plain in its features, rough in its contour sometimes, is lovable because Thoreau has been there. We love the sods and the brown leaves which his feet have pressed. The wildwood precincts are hallowed by his memories. Men die, voices fail, and sentiment decays. Catbirds which are melodious in June squawk in August. Nevertheless, we love them all, birds and human kind, for what they were, and for what they have made their little spots of earth; and so, when the Hadley poet sings, we love him too. A quiet bit of country under an observant eye can be made to yield a store of happiness. Dudley Warner wheeled his settee around the garden-oak, to follow the sunshine or the shade, until he wore a path in the grass. N. P. Willis wrote winsome letters from under a bridge. And now, herewith, a vista opens before us down the forest lane. Methinks I hear the muffled drum beat of a partridge in the spruce. "Listen!" We feel already an impulse to proceed. Come with the poet! He will not sing in vain.
Our favorite Eugene Field is wont to dwell with sentimental fondness upon the memories of his dear Hampshire Hills: the old homestead, the cow pasture, the yearling colt, the watering trough, the deserted mill, the little red school house, and the playmates of his youth. But his reveries are liable to start a tear or draw his readers off into overgrown lanes and solitary corners, while Hawkes' themes, which bubble and flow from the self-same hillsides, are for the most part sparkling, treating of the ecstasies of the present hour. Sun pictures they are,