Brief mention was made, in our allusion to Mr. Page’s picture of the “Flight into Egypt,” to its landscape.  This work was executed in Rome, and its peculiar tone excited much interest among the friends of Mr. Field, its fortunate possessor.  A beautiful, yet not altogether original idea, finds expression in the foreground group, where Mary, poised upon the back of the ass, folds the child in her arms, the animal snatches at a wayside weed, Joseph, drawing tightly the long rope by which he leads, bends away into the desert with weird energy.  In all other representations of this subject the accessory landscape has usually been living with full-foliaged trees, abundant herbage, and copious streams.  To indicate the Egyptian phase of its character, palms have been introduced, as in the beautiful picture by Claude in the Doria Gallery, and almost invariably the scene has been one of luxury and peace.  But with the event itself all this conflicts.  In it were sorrow and apprehension and death.  The fugitives saw not then the safety, nor anticipated the victory.  In this picture, beyond and before the hurrying group, stretches the immeasurable, hungry sand.  A sad golden-brown haze—­such as sometimes comes in our Indian summer, when the hectic autumn rests silent, mournful and hopeless, in the arms of Nature—­ pervades the plain; while on the horizon far away,—­an infinite distance it seems, so strangely spectral are they,—­rise the Pyramids, just those awful ghosts against the ominous sky!

As different as are the subjects he chooses are the bits of scenery Hamilton Wild introduces in his pictures of life as it now is.  His are more truly historical paintings, although aspiring to no record of the greatly bad and sorrowful transactions of our age.  They represent the joy and hope of youth, the cheerfulness and vivacity of the lowly, their pleasantest pursuits, their most primitive customs, their characteristic and often superb costumes; and wherever a passage of scenery occurs, it is always that which has aided in developing the human life with which it is associated.

There is never a discrepancy, nor is unison of sentiment ever achieved by any bending of the truth.  His keen sense of harmony never fails to perceive, in the infinite range of tones and expressions of Nature, just that which better than all others supports the character and action of his group.  With motives so healthful, it may be less difficult to find that sympathy which Nature cheerfully gives; yet there is a tendency with artists to be enticed away from Nature’s joyousness, and especially from her simplicity.

To this temptation Mr. Wild can never have been subjected.  The freedom which he manifests is not that which has been won, but into which he must have been born, and with that grew the ability which transfigures labor into play.  Unto such a Nature the out-world presents unasked her phases of joy and brightness, her light and life.