MISS JEWETT.
The publication in the same season of the latest collection of Miss Jewett's stories and an illustrated edition of her earliest book gives opportunity for a glance at the growth in artistic skill of one of our most happily endowed writers. Twenty years have elapsed since the first of the sketches appeared which, with others strung upon a light thread of personal narrative, formed the little volume now gracefully illustrated. The drawings which Mr. and Mrs. Woodbury have made for its decoration, it is not unfair to say, present in their variety and choice of subject the salient features of Miss Jewett's art with the delicacy of touch and the firmness of line which she is to-day disclosing in her maturer work. Figures, landscapes, interiors, all are delightfully expressive of Miss Jewett; but their fine drawing, vividness of portraiture, and reserve of force belong to the Deephaven which Miss Jewett might write to-day. The feeling is the same; it is the art which has become more definite and clear. The designs are pictures where the text is a sketch. As an example, how thoroughly satisfactory is the picture of Miss Brandon at her Piano, in which Mrs. Woodbury has caught Miss Jewett's sketch capitally, and filled it out! One exception should be made. Good as is the portrait of Mrs. Dockum, and admirably as Mrs. Woodbury has reproduced Miss Jewett's idea, the author's own portrait of Mrs. Dockum, as
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delineated in that excellent woman's address when introduced, is a bit of characterization as good as anything she is doing to-day. There are other passages in Deephaven which the reader will recall, equally humorous in conception and true in drawing. Such are those that portray the figures in the chapter The Captains, the sketch ...
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