 | Life in the open air |  |
NOTE.
This is the last volume of Theodore Winthrop's
works. The reader will be interested to know that,
with a very few slight omissions, they are published
precisely as he left them. Beside these,
which he had himself prepared for the press, there
remains manuscript enough for more than another
volume, comprising poems, lectures, sketches, the
beginning of another novel, and a completed earlier
tale; but not in fit form for publication. A
man who wrote so much and so well was not of
course indifferent to the publication of his works,
for the desire of an audience is part of the author's
instinct; and that they are first printed after his
death is not owing to any want of effort upon his
part, but to circumstances which no author can
control. He can but do his work. It is for
others to receive or decline it.
At the close of a lecture upon the Fine Arts in
America, which he wrote in 1856, Winthrop said:
attain to the most varied splendor of success in
all pursuits that can make its future rich, refined,
noble, and happy. But let us not forget that our
march must be sustained by a hearty devotion to
the true principles of freedom. If we fail of public
or private duty, — if we cleave to any national
wrong, — this great experiment of mankind will
fail, and our life corrupt away, through slow decaying,
to dishonorable death.”
In that faith Theodore Winthrop wrote and
fought, — he lived and died.
| Life in the open air | |