Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/130

112 Later Essayists mood to the widening circles of those readers whose love for country life his own writings had in no small measure developed. Thus Mitchell figures in a very personal way in the large group of American writers on nature, and deserves recognition as an influential pioneer in directing, with the urbanity of the scholar, the attention of his countr5rmen to non-urban delights. This point is emphasized because, all told, American essayists have, in their treatment of nature, covered an exceptionally wide range, and approached this theme, both as to style and inter- pretation, in ways that repay the most interested study: Audubon, ' the important naturalist, indulging in exaggerated poetical rhetoric in acquainting us with the habits of birds; Emerson" and Thoreau, ' not impervious to the interest of nature's details, yet winning from them the highest spiritual sustenance for the world of men; Agassiz" and Warner and Mabie and Burroughs and John Muir, approaching each ac- cording to his temperament and qualifications this ever boun- tiful theme. From some of these authors we derive knowledge concerning animal life and plant life ; from others, messages of the intimate relationship between human life and the great world of nature. But Mitchell, in his Edgewood writings, stands as one whose main interest sprang from the soil itself. Towards the end of his long life, Mitchell wrote four volumes on English Lands, Letters, and Kings (1890), and two on Ameri- can Lands and Letters (1897-99). Here are many shrewd ob- servations concerning his contemporaries, as well as pungent estimates, often mingled with humour, of the writings and character of earlier authors ; but these books, with their wealth of pictures, were intended for the public at large, and cannot be considered as original contributions to critical literature. In them we have the somewhat obvious fruit of his travels, experiences, and readings, but in a manner that has less flavour than the gleanings of travel, published in far younger days, such as A New Sheaf from the Old Fields of Continental Europe (1847). Those earlier descriptive papers and legends, so immediately related to Irving' s Tales of a Traveller, are more in accord with Mitchell's fame as the author of the Reveries and Dream Life, and through them Mitchell is most pleasantly ' See Book III, Chap. xxvi. » See Book II, Chap. ix. 3 lUd., Chap. X. 4 See Book III, Chap. xxvi.