_Willis_, _Mitchell_, _and Warner_.--Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867), Donald Grant Mitchell (born in 1822), and Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) are suggested by the mention of Holmes, for they, like him, were writers of the “genial” essay. Willis was born in Portland, Maine, and was graduated from Yale at the age of twenty-one. Entering upon a journalistic career in 1828, he spent a considerable number of years abroad, whence he sent home for the periodicals of his day frequent accounts of his foreign travel and experiences. His complete works have been collected into thirteen volumes, but the best of his writing may be found in two books published during his lifetime, “Pencillings by the Way” (1835) and “Letters from Under a Bridge” (1840). Willis wrote with most painstaking care. It has been left upon record by James Parton that Willis “bestowed upon everything he did the most careful labour, making endless erasures and emendations. On an average he blotted one line out of every three that he wrote, and on one page of his editorial writing there were but three lines left unaltered.” It may be added, in passing, that Willis’ father in 1827 founded the well known and widely read _Youth’s Companion_. Mitchell, for many years better known as “Ik Marvel,” was, like Willis, a New Englander by birth and a graduate of Yale College. He, also, spent a few years abroad, acting, in fact, as United States Consul at Venice in 1853-1855. His works were many, but he is best known as the author of “Reveries of a Bachelor” (1850) and “Dream Life” (1851). Warner was in many respects the strongest writer of this group. A New Englander by birth, he was graduated at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, then studied law at the University of Pennsylvania, and finally began the practice of his profession in Chicago. In 1860 he was called to Hartford, Connecticut, as editor of a daily paper, and from then on gave himself up to journalism and other literary interests. His works were many and varied; the most important are “My Summer in a Garden” (1870), “Backlog Studies” (1872), “My Winter on the Nile” (1876), and a “Life of Washington Irving” (1881).
_Some Travellers._--Bayard Taylor’s experiences abroad found their expression in a number of books; but, readable as they all are, the first, “Views Afoot” (1846), is the best. It is a work to be compared with Irving’s “Sketch Book” and Longfellow’s “Outre Mer”; it may not be far wrong to assign it to a place between the two, inferior to the first, superior to the second. From Taylor’s numerous works in other departments of pure literature, “Studies in German Literature” (1879) and “Essays and Notes” (1880) may be chosen for mention.