REVIEWS — WANDERINGS OF AN ARTIST. 187 



proof in the completed volume, that no part of this interval has been 

 spent in book-making ; but, on the contrary, that we have here the 

 notes of the observant traveller in all their freshness and original 

 piquancy. And it would be difficult to conceive of one better fitted 

 to travel for us in a strange wild land, among the savage children of 

 its forests and prairies, than an artist, with sketch-book and note- 

 book in one. An observant eye he must have, a keen appreciation 

 of every striking minutiae of detail, and a discriminating perception 

 of all that is most characteristic in the strange locality and its 

 stranger occupants ; but along with this it is rare to find the painter 

 gifted with any power of the pen. He will open out to you all the 

 felicitous pencillings of his sketch-book, and all the rich coloring of 

 his portfolio, but his art goes no farther ; and with the dumb elo- 

 quence of his canvas must the student be satisfied. Here, however, 

 without any ambitious attempt at literary workmanship, we have a 

 spirit-stirring journal of adventures and strange perils encountered 

 among the Indians of the North-West, for the purpose of preserving, 

 by means of the pencil, some permanent record of races already 

 changing, and destined ere long to pass away. 



The term of fourteen years is no very long period, yet it is a 

 strange proof of the contrast which that wild North- West presents 

 to our eastern clearings, that such an interval could be allowed to 

 pass between our author's observations and their publication, without 

 any change in the tenses of his verbs being needful. His own ex- 

 periences in his native Canadian Village, as referred to in his preface, 

 sufficiently illustrate this. Among its primitive log-houses and tem- 

 porary frame-buildings on the banks of Ontario, he had passed his 

 boyhood, familiar with the Indians, who still found their game among 

 the water-fowl of the Bay, or in the thickets of the surrounding 

 forest, and were then rather attracted than scared, by the diminutive 

 clearings of the earlier colonists. But the same energy which at a 

 later period sustained our Canadian artist in his perilous adventures 

 among the tribes of the far "West, led him in earlier years to visit 

 Europe for the facilities it afforded in the study of his profession as 

 a painter. With funds, exceedingly moderate in amount, but all 

 amassed by his own sturdy toil, he passed months of profitable study 

 amid the teachings of Eome's immortal treasury of art ; and, if we 

 mistake not, has, pencil in hand, had a peep at some nooks in each of 

 the four quarters of the globe. But his Canadian village did not 



