with all the distinctive charm of the literature to which
it belongs.
'These dwellers in the North, with a certain simplicity of their own mingle a Southern passionateness, and so form admirable subjects of romance. And there is, too, an artistic temper singularly diffused among them in a way which also suggests Southern characteristics. This is the special subject of Gunnar. Its hero, so named, is of the peasant clan, and rises to that eminence in art which peasants in the far North have more than once achieved, helping himself thus to win a love which had otherwise been out of his reach. Rhyme-Ola, the wandering minstrel, is a noticeably distinct figure. The story of Gunnar's solitary boyhood, spent with a stern, reserved father, whose heart had been closed, to all appearance, by the death of his wife, and the wise grandmother, with her store of wild legends, and educated partly by solitude, partly by romance, is very graphically told. This little volume, which fulfils one condition of being readable by being very easily held in the hand, is much to be commended.
Previous page
