WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 
 
 LIBRARY OF 
 
 AMERICAN BOOKS, 
 VIEA^S AND REVIEWS. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS 
 
 IN 
 
 iMERICAI LITERATURE, 
 
 HISTORY AND FICTION. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 •'THE YEMASSEE," " LIFE OF M ARI0?4 " "HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA," 
 "RICHARD HURDIS," &c., &c. 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 
 
 1845. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by 
 
 W . G I L M O R E SIMMS, 
 
 In the Clerk's OfiBce of the District Court of the United States for the 
 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 C. A. Alvord, Printer, T. B. Smith, Stereotyfkr, 
 
 Cor. John and Dutch Sts. 216 Wdliam Street. 
 
« 
 
 TO 
 
 PROFESSOR E. GEDDINGS, 
 
 or THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 I HAD placed your name, my dear Geddings, in one of 
 the first pages of a favourite study in fiction which 1 have in 
 hand — the scene of which, on our own Ashley, is very dear 
 to us both ; — but it may be some time before this task is fin- 
 ished, and I prefer not to lose the present opportunity of say- 
 ing to you, how very much, and how faithfully, I am your 
 friend, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 ^eM> York, Oct. 1, 1845. 
 
 fi7i578839 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The papers contained in the two volumes, of which the 
 present is the first instahnent, are drawn from numerous 
 contributions which have been made to the periodical litera- 
 ture of the country in the last fifteen years. ' They are taken 
 fiom the pages of the Southern and American (Quarterly Re- 
 views ; from the American Monthly and the Knickerbocker 
 Magazines ; from the Magnolia, Orion. Southern and West- 
 ern Review, and from other publications of like character. I 
 have detached them, with a single eye to their national ob- 
 jects and characteristics. They constitute a class, in them- 
 selves, illustrative ofour history, our materials of art, the mo- 
 ral of our aims, and the true development of our genius. 
 They appeal to the utihtarian, not less than to the person of 
 taste. They aim at showing what may be done among us, 
 and insist upon what we should do, in regard to the essential 
 in our progress. I flatter myself that, dealing little in the 
 commonplaces of these themes, I have ample authority in my 
 own experience — ^which has been that of self-training through- 
 out — for all that I declare and urge, however new or startling 
 it may seem to those whose standards are in stereotypes 
 which no revolutions of the world may disturb or decompose. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 • PAGB 
 
 Article I. — Americanism in Literature ..•.,.! 
 
 II. — The Epochs and Events of American History, &c. . 20 
 
 I. — Introductory. True uses of History. Objects of Art. Its 
 
 Ductility and Universality, &c. ..... 20 
 
 II. — Benedict Arnold as a subject for Fictitious Story . . 41 
 
 III. — The Four Periods of American History .... 58 
 
 IV. — The Early Spanish Voyagers. — Hernando De Soto as a subject 
 
 for Romance ........ 68 
 
 v.— The Settlements of Coligny 73 
 
 VI. — Pocahontas : A subject for the Historical Painter ... 88 
 
 III. — Literature and Art among the American Aborigines 102 
 
 IV. — Daniel Boon ; the First Hunter of Kentucky . 118 
 
 » V. — Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico . . . '143 
 
 VI. — The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper ... 210 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ARTICLE I. 
 AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 
 
 Americanism in Literature: An Oration before the Phi Kappa and De- 
 mosthenean Societies of the University of Georgia, at Athens, August 8, 
 1844. By Alexander B. Meek, of Alabama. Charleston : Burges & James. 
 1844. 
 
 This is the right title. It indicates the becoming object of our 
 aim. Americanism in our Literature is scarcely implied by the 
 usual phraseology. American Literature seems to be a thing, 
 certainly, — but it is not the thing exactly. To put Americanism 
 in our letters, is to do a somethmg much more important. The 
 phrase has a peculiar signification which is worth our consider- 
 ation. By a liberal extension of the courtesies of criticism, we 
 are already in possession of a due amount of American author- 
 ship ; but of such as is individual, and properly peculiar to our- 
 selves, we cannot be said to enjoy much. Our writers are nu- 
 merous — quite as many, perhaps, in proportion to our years, our 
 circumstances and necessities, as might be looked for among any 
 people. But, with very few exceptions, their writings might as 
 well be European. They are European. The writers think 
 after European models, draw their stimulus and provocation from 
 European books, fashion themselves to European tastes, and look 
 chiefly to the awards of European criticism. This is to dena- 
 tionalize the American mind. This is to enslave the national 
 heart — to place ourselves at the mercy of the foreigner, and to 
 yield all that is individual, in our character and hope, to the par- 
 alyzing influence of his will, and frequently hostile purposes. 
 
 2 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 There is a season, perhaps, when such a condition of depend- 
 ance is natural enough in the liistory of every youthful nation. 
 It is in the national infancy that such must be the case. The 
 early labours of a newly established people, in all the intellectual 
 arts, must necessarily be imitative. They advance, by regular 
 steps, from the necessary to the intellectual-^from the satisfaction 
 of vulgar cravings, to a desire for the gratification of moral and 
 spiritual tastes ; — and, in this progress, they can only advance 
 through the assistance of other nations. This condition is inevi- 
 table in the history of a people wanting in homogeneousness at 
 first, and but recently segregated from their several patriarchal 
 trees. Time must be allowed to such a people — time to combine 
 — to exchange thoughts and sympathies — and to learn the difficult, 
 but absolutely necessary duty, of working together, as a commu- 
 nity, in harmonious and mutually relying action. Generations 
 must pass away, and other generations take their places, before 
 they shall utterly lose the impressions made upon their plastic in- 
 fancy by arbitrary models — before they shall begin to look around 
 them, and within themselves, for those characteristics which are 
 peculiar to their condition, and which distinguish the country of 
 their present fortunes. It is idle to say, as has been urged by the 
 British Reviewers in their reply to Mr. Jefferson, that the Anglo- 
 Americans were of full age at the very birth of their country. 
 This is scarcely true, even in physical respects. They did not 
 repi'esent the intellect of the nation which they left, though they 
 did its moral and its temperament. They represented neither its 
 tastes, nor its acquisitions, nor its luxuries. The eminence upon 
 which the superior characteristics of the British nation stood, had 
 never been reached by the footsteps of the Pilgrims. They were 
 in possession of the Anglo-Norman genius, no doubt — upon this it 
 will be the duty of the American to insist ; — but its great attain- 
 ments — its cherished acquisitions — its tastes, its refinements, its 
 polish, were not theirs. In all these essentials, the founders 
 of the Anglo-American States were in their infancy. And so 
 they were kept for a century, by the novel necessities, the trying 
 hardships, the perilous wars which followed upon their new con- 
 dition. The conquest of a savage empire — the conflict with bar- 
 barian enemies, — kept them back from the natural acquisitions, 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 
 
 which were due to their origin and genius. Great Britain her- 
 self is fairly chargeable, by her tyrannous exactions and the 
 bloodv wars with which she sought us out in the new homes so 
 perilously won in the wilderness, with having withstood our peo- 
 ple in their progress to the attainment of those objects the lack 
 of which she this day makes our reproach. 
 
 But these excuses can be urged no longer, nor is it necessary 
 that they should. Europe must cease to taunt us because of our 
 prolonged servility to the imperious genius of the Old World. 
 We must set ourselves free from the tyranny of this genius, and 
 the time has come when we must do so. We have our own na- 
 tional mission to perform — a mission commensurate to the extent 
 of our country, — its resources and possessions, — and the numer- 
 ous nations, foreign and inferior, all about us, over whom we are 
 required to extend our sway and guardianship. We are now 
 equal to this sway and guardianship. The inferior necessities 
 of our condition have been overcome. The national mind is now 
 free to rise to the consideration of its superior wants and more 
 elevated aims ; and individuals, here and there, are starting out 
 from the ranks of the multitude, ready and able to lead out, from 
 the bondage of foreign guidance, the genius which, hitherto, be- 
 cause of its timidity, knew nothing of its own resources for flight 
 and conquest. 
 
 If the time for this movement has not yet arrived, it is certainly 
 very near at hand. This conviction grows out of the fact that 
 we now daily taunt ourselves with our protracted servility to the 
 European. W^e feel that we are still too humbly imitative, want- 
 ing in the courage to strike out boldly, hewing out from our own 
 forests the paths which should lead us to their treasures, and from 
 the giant masses around us the characteristic forms and aspects 
 of native art. This reproach has been hitherto but too much 
 deserved, qualified only by a reference to the circumstances in 
 our condition at which we have been able to glance only for a 
 moment. We have done little that may properly be called our 
 own ; and this failure, due to influences which still, in some degree, 
 continue, is one which nothins: but a hiojh and stimulatincr sense 
 of nationality will enable us to remedy. It is so easy, speaking 
 the English language, to draw our inspiration from the mother 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 country, and lo seek our audience in her halls and temples, that, 
 but for the passionate appeals of patriotic censure, it may be yet 
 long years before we throw off tlie patient servility of our de- 
 pendance. With a daily influx of thousands from foreign shores, 
 seeking to share our political securities and the blessings of the 
 generous skies and rich soil which we possess, Europe sends us 
 her thoughts, her fashions, and her tastes. These have their 
 influence in keeping us in bondage, and we shall require all the 
 activity of our native mind to resist the influence which she thus 
 exercises upon our national institutions and education. Besides, 
 our very wealth of territory, and the ease with which we live, 
 are obstacles in the way of our improvement. The temptations of 
 our vast interior keep our society in a constant state of transition. 
 The social disruptions occasioned by the wandering habits of the 
 citizen, result invariably in moral loss to the whole. Standards 
 of judgment fluctuate, sensibilities become blunted, principles 
 impaired, with increasing insecurity at each additional remove ; 
 and this obstacle in the way of our literary progress must con- 
 linue, until the great interior shall re-act, because of its own 
 overflow, upon the Atlantic cities. 
 
 There is nothing really to distress us in this survey, unless, — 
 either because of a supineness of character which is not our 
 reproach in merely every-day pursuits, or because of an intrinsic 
 deficiency of the higher intellectual resources, — we continue to 
 yield ourselves to our European teachers. Our literature, so far, 
 has been English in its character. We have briefly striven to 
 show why. Glad are we that we can make some exceptions to 
 this admission — that we can point, here and there throughout the 
 country, to some individuals, and say, here stands a true scion of 
 young America, — this is a plant of our own raising — true to the 
 spirit of the country, — to its genuine heart — a man to represent 
 and speak for the nature which we acknowledge, and of which 
 time shall make us proud. In these instances we find our hope. 
 It is thus that we feel ourselves encouraged to say to our people, 
 and to the workers in the mind of Europe, that we too are 
 making a beginning in a purely individual progress — evolving, 
 however slowly, a national aim and idea, out of the fulness and 
 overflow of the national heart. We are rejoiced to behold symp- 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 
 
 toms of this independent intellectual working, simultaneously, in 
 remote regions of the country ; and flatter ourselves with the vision 
 of a generous growth in art and letters, of which tokens begin to 
 make themselves felt from the Arostook to the Rio Brave. This 
 evidence needs but sympathy and encouragement to grow power- 
 ful, and to challenge a living rank among the great spirits of 
 other lands and periods. As yet, perhaps, the shows are faint 
 and feeble. Few of the hurrying multitude have leisure to be- 
 hold them, — our progress declaring itself, as it now does, rather 
 by its anxieties and cravings, — its discontents with itself, and its 
 feverish impatience at the advance of other communities — than 
 by its own proper performances. But such a condition of the 
 popular mind is the precursor of performance. The wish to do, 
 is the forerunner of the way. Let us only take something for 
 granted. Let the nation but yield a day's faith to its own genius, 
 and that day will suffice for triumph. We do not yet believe in 
 ourselves, — unless in the meaner respects which prove our capa- 
 city for acquisition only in concerns the most inferior — in the 
 mechanical arts, — in pursuits regarded as simply useful, — in 
 selfish desires, and such as are necessary to our physical condi- 
 tion merely. This scepticism is the great barrier to be overcome. 
 Our development depends upon our faith in what we are, and in 
 our independence of foreign judgment. A resolute will, a bold 
 aim, and a spirit that courageously looks within for its encourage- 
 ments and standards, — these are our securities for intellectual 
 independence. To these acquisitions our labours must be ad- 
 dressed. To the want of these, and the necessity for them, the at- 
 tention of our people must be drawn. The popular mind scarcely 
 yet seems to perceive that there is a vast and vital difference 
 between the self-speaking among our people, and that numerous 
 herd, which, though born, living and walking in our midst, speak 
 never ybr our hearts, and seldom yro/?t their own — whose thoughts, 
 no less than language, are wholly English, and who, in all general 
 characteristics — so far as the native progress and development 
 are effected — might as well have been born, dwelling and di- 
 lating in Middlesex or London. It is but to see these things as 
 we should — to understand the world-wide difference between 
 writing for, and writing frcmi one's people. This difference is 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 U 
 
 the whole, — but what a difference ! To write yVow a people, is to 
 write a people — to make them live — to endow them with a life and 
 a name — to preserve them with a history forever. Whether the 
 poet shall frame his song according to custom, or according to the 
 peculiar nature and the need of those for whom it is made, is, in 
 other words, to ask whether he shall be a poet at all or not. It 
 was by properly understanding this difference in ancient days that 
 he grew into the stature of the poet, and won his reputation ; and it 
 was through the proper comprehension of this difference and this 
 duty, on the part of the Poet, that the genius and the history of 
 the great nations have survived all the political disasters which 
 have bowed their pillars in the dust. 
 
 Up to the present day — the signs whereof encourage us with 
 better hopes — the question might properly have been asked, how 
 should objects, such as these, be to us of any consideration ? — we 
 who live not for the morrow but the day — whose plans are con- 
 ceived for temporary not eternal refuge — who hurry forward as 
 if we had no children, and who rear them as if we loved them 
 not ! Such is the profligacy of every people who show themselves 
 indifferent to the developments of native art. It is by the exhibi- 
 tion of the constructive faculty that the intellectual nature of a 
 people is distinguished. In proportion to the possession and ex- 
 ercise of this faculty, which embodies all the elements of the im- 
 agination, will be the moral rank of the nation. We have been 
 very heedless of this matter. Our people have taken too little in- 
 terest in the productions of the American mind, considered purely 
 as American, whether in art or letters. In all that relates to the 
 higher aims of the social and spiritual nature, England, and what 
 she is pleased to give us, sufficiently satisfies our moral cravings. 
 Yet we have an idea of independence in some respects which 
 tends to show how wretchedly limited has been our ambition. 
 Parties are formed among us to compel the manufacture of our 
 own pots and kettles, our woollens and window glass ; parties 
 ready to revolutionize the country, and make all chaos again, if 
 these things be not of our own making : — made too, — such is the 
 peculiar excellence of the jest, at our own heavy cost and pecu- 
 niary injury ; — but never a word is said, whether by good sense 
 or patriotism, touching the grievous imposition upon us of foreign 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 
 
 opinion and foreign laws, foreign tastes and foreign appetites, taught 
 us through the medium of a foreign, and perhaps hostile and insult- 
 ing teacher. These, say these profound haberdashers in the wares 
 of patriotism, are really matters of slight concern. Thoughts are 
 common, say the paper manufacturers, and though we insist upon 
 supplying the paper from domestic mills, upon which such 
 thoughts are to be printed, yet these are quite as properly brought 
 from abroad, as conceived and put in proper utterance at home. 
 The European may as well do our thinking. The matter is not 
 worth a struggle. English literature is good enough for us for many 
 hundred years to come.* So, for that matter, are English woollens. 
 But this will not suffice. The question is one which concerns 
 equally our duties and our pride. Are we to aim and arrive at 
 all the essentials of nationality — to rise into first rank and posi- 
 tion as a people — to lift our heads, unabashed, among the great 
 communities of Europe — plant ourselves on the perfect eminence 
 of a proud national will, and show ourselves not degenerate from 
 the powerful and noble stocks from which we take our origin ? 
 This is a question not to be answered by the selfishness of the indi- 
 vidual nature, unless it be in that generous sort of selfishness which 
 is moved only by the highest promptings of ambition. It is an 
 argument addressed to all that is hopeful and proud in the hearts 
 of an ardent and growing people. It is not addressed to the 
 tradesman but to the man. We take it for granted, that we are 
 not — in the scornful language of the European press, — a mere 
 nation of shop-keepers :j" — that we have qualities of soul and ge- 
 
 * This language was actually employed by one of the American reviews of 
 highest rank. Yet these reviews, themselves are anticipated by foreign crit- 
 icism, as, in most cases, they expend their analysis, upon foreign publications. 
 I have heard an American author speak with wholesale scora of all American 
 art, and an American painter, of superior distinction, declare that he never al- 
 lowed himself to read an American book. Neither of these unfortunate per- 
 sons seemed to perceive, that, in thus disparaging the native genius, they were 
 effectually sealing their own condemnation. 
 
 t This language, originally applied by Napoleon to the English nation, at 
 the very time when his highest ambition was to transfer to France a portion 
 of that commerce upon which the great distinction and power of the rival 
 countiy was built up, — has been transferred, by the latter, in a sense still more 
 scornful, to our own. It is, perhaps, no bad sign of our successful progress as 
 a nation, that our national enemy shows herself more angry with us than ever. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 nius, wliicli if not yet developed in our moral constitution, are 
 struggling to make themselves heard and felt ; — that we have a 
 pride of character, — growing stronger (as we trust) with the prog- 
 ress of each succeeding day, — which makes us anxious to realize 
 for ourselves that position of independence, in all other depart- * 
 ments, which we have secured by arms and in politics. Mere polit- 
 ical security — the fact that we drink freely of the air around us, 
 and at our own choosing partake of the fruits of the earth — is not 
 enough, — constitutes but a small portion of the triumphs, and the 
 objects of a rational nature. Nay, even political security is tem- 
 porary, always inferior if not wholly uncertain, unless it be firm- 
 ly based upon the certain and constant vigilance of the intellec- 
 tual moral. A nation, properly to boast itself, and to take and main- 
 tain its position with other States, must prove itself in possession 
 of self-evolving attributes. Its character must be as individual 
 as that of the noblest citizen that dwells within its limits. It must 
 do its own thinking as well as its own fighting, for, as truly as all 
 history has shown that the people who rely for their defence in 
 battle upon foreign mercenaries inevitably become their prey, so 
 the nation falls a victim to that genius of another, to which she 
 passively defers. She must make, and not borrow or beg, her 
 laws. Her institutions must grow out of her own condition and 
 necessities, and not be arbitrarily framed upon those of other coun- 
 tries. Her poets and artists, to feel her wants, her hopes, her 
 triumphs, must be born of the soil, and ardently devoted to 
 its claims. To live, in fact, and secure the freedom of her chil- 
 dren, a nation must live through them, in them, and by them, — 
 by the strength of their arms, the purity of their morals, the vig- 
 our of their industry, and the wisdom of their minds. These are 
 the essentials of a great nation, and no one of these qualities is 
 perfectly available without the co-operation of the rest. And, as 
 we adapt our warfare to the peculiarities of the country, and our 
 industry to our climate, our resources and our soil, so the opera- 
 tions of the national mind must be suited to our charaetetistics. 
 r The genius of our people is required to declare itself after a fash- 
 » ion of its own — must be influenced by its skies, and by those nat- 
 ural objects which familiarly address themselves to the senses 
 from boyhood, and colour the fancies, and urge the thoughts, and 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 
 
 shape the growing affections of the child to a something kindred 
 with the things which he beholds. His whole soul must be im- 
 bued with sympathies caught from surrounding aspects within 
 his infant horizon. The heart must be moulded to an intense 
 appreciation of our woods and streams, oui; dense forests and deep 
 swa^mps, our vast immeasurable mountains, our voluminous and 
 tumbling waters. It must receive its higher moral tone from the 
 exigencies of society, its traditions and its histories. Tutored at 
 the knee of the grand-dame, the boy must grasp, as subjects of 
 familiar and frequent consideration, the broken chronicles of se- 
 nility, and shape them, as he grows older, into coherence and ef- 
 fect. He must learn to dwell often upon the narratives of the 
 brave fathers who first broke ground in the wilderness, who fought 
 or treated with the red men, and who, finally, girded themselves 
 up for the great conflict with the imperious mother who had sent 
 them forth. These histories, making vivid impressions upon the 
 pliant fancies of childhood, are the source of those vigorous shoots, 
 of thouo-ht and imagination, which make a nation proud of its sons 
 in turn, and which save her from becoming a by- word and re- 
 proach to other nations. In this, and from such impressions, the 
 simplest records of a domestic history, expand into the most rav- 
 ishing treasures of romance. But upon this subject let us 
 hearken to the writer of the eloquent discourse before us. 
 
 " Literature, in its essence, is a spiritual immortality : no more than religion 
 a creation of man ; but, like the human soul, while enduring the myster^^ of 
 its incarnation, is subject to the action of the elements, is the slave of circum- 
 stance. In the sense in wliich we would now view it, it is the expression of 
 the spiritual part of our nature, in its intellectual action, whether taking form in 
 philosophy, history-, poetry, eloquence, or some other branch of thought. The 
 sum of all tliis, in any nation, is what constitutes her literature, and it is 
 always modified and coloured by the peculiarities about it. As the river, 
 sliding under the sunset, imbibes for the time, the hues of the heavens, so the 
 stream of literature receives, from the people tlirough which it passes, not 
 only the images and shadows of their condition, but the very force and direc- 
 tion of i^ curren^. Every hterature, Greek or Roman, Arabic or English, 
 French, Persian or German, acquired its qualities and impression from the 
 circumstances of the time and people. The philosophic eye can readily de- 
 tect the key, cause and secret of each, and expose the seminal principle from 
 which they grew into their particular shape and fashion. The same scruti- 
 nizing analysis will enable us to determine the influences among ourselves, 
 
10 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 which are to operate in the formation of our Hterature ; as well as to decide 
 whether it will comport with those high spiritual rcquishions which I have 
 already avowed, should be demanded from it. Let us then attempt to see how 
 Americanism will develope itself in Literature." pp. 11, 12. 
 
 There is something equally thoughtful and fanciful in the pas- 
 sage which follows. It betrays a mind as sensible to the pictu- 
 re.sque, as it is searching and speculative. The writer proceeds 
 to illustrate his proposition by glimpses of the physical material 
 which our own country affords for the uses of the native poet. 
 
 " The physical attributes of our country are all partial to the loftiest mani- 
 festations of mind. Nature here presents her loveliest, sublimest aspects. 
 For vastness of extent, grandeur of scenery, genial diversities of climate, and 
 all that can minister to the comforts and tastes of man, this heritage of ours 
 is without a parallel. In its mountains of stone and iron, its gigantic and far- 
 reaching rivers, its inland seas, its forests of all woods, its picturesque and un- 
 dulating prairies, in all its properties and proportions, it might well be consid- 
 ered, in comparison with the eastern hemisphere, the work of a more perfect 
 and beneficent artist. To the eyes of the Genoese mariner, the wildest dreams 
 of Diodorus and Plato were more than realized. Seneca sang, — 
 
 Venient annis 
 
 SoBCula seris, quibiis oceanus 
 Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens 
 Pateat tellus, Typhisque novos 
 Detegat orbes:" 
 
 Yet, not even in the mirror of his prophetic fancy were these more than 
 Elysian fields glossed with all their beauty and sublimity. Even the bilious 
 British satirist, who could see no good in all our institutions, was compelled 
 to confess that here 
 
 " Nature showed 
 
 The last ascending footsteps of the God !" 
 
 Well nigh all this vast expanse of fruitfulness and beauty, too, has been sub- 
 ject to the control of civilized man. Our country has extended her jurisdic- 
 tion over the fairest and most fertile regions. The rich bounty is poured into 
 her lap, and breathes its influence apon her population. Their capacities are 
 not pent and thwarted by the narrow limits which restrict the citizens of other 
 countries. No speculative theorist, a Malthns, Stultz or Liceto, has cause 
 here to apprehend the dangers of over-population. Room, bountiful room, is 
 all about us, for humanity to breathe freely in, and to go on expanding in a 
 long future. Do these things afford no promise of intellectual improvement ? 
 Are they no incitements to a lofty and expanded literature ? Do they fur- 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 11 
 
 nish no materiel for active, g^cncrous, elevated thought ? Is there no voice 
 coming out from all this fragrance and beauty and sublimity, appealing to the 
 heart and fancy of man, for sympathy, utterance, embodiment ? Why, it 
 was once said, that the sky of Attica would make a Bceotian a poet ; and we 
 have seen even ' the red old hills of Georgia' draw inspiring melody from the 
 heart of patriotic genius. Physical causes have always operated in the for- 
 mation and fashioning of literature. In all the higher productions of mind, 
 ancient and modern, we can easily recognize the influence of the climate and 
 natural objects among which they were developed. The sunsets of Italy 
 coloured the songs of Tasso and Petrarch ; the vine -embowered fields of 
 beautiful France are visible in all the pictures of Rousseau and La Martine ; 
 you may hear the solemn rustling of the Hartz forest, and the shrill horn of 
 the wild huntsman tliroughout the creations of Schiller and Goethe ; the sweet 
 streamlets and sunny lakes of England smile upon you from the graceful 
 verses of Spenser and Wordsworth ; and the mist-robed hills of Scotland loom 
 out in magnificence through the pages of Ossian, and the loftier visions of 
 Marmion and Waverly. 
 
 " Our country, then, must receive much of the character of her literature 
 from her physical properties. If our minds are only origuial ; if they be not 
 base copyists, and servile echoes of foreign masters ; if we can assert an in- 
 tellectual as well as political independence ; if we dare to think for ourselves, 
 and faithfully picture forth, hi our own styles of utterance, the impressions our 
 minds shall receive from this great, fresh continent of beauty and sublimity ; 
 we can render to the world the most vigorous and picturesque literature it 
 has ever beheld. Never had imagination nobler stimulants ; never did nature 
 look more encouragingly upon her genuine children. In poetry, romance, 
 history and eloquence, what glorious objects, sights and sounds, for illustra- 
 tion and ornament ! I have stood, down in Florida, beneath the over-arching 
 groves of magnolia, orange and myrtle, blending their fair flowers and volup- 
 tuous fragrance, and opening long vistas between their slender shafts, to where 
 the green waters of the Mexican Gulf lapsed upon the silver-sanded beach, 
 flinging up their light spray into the crimson beams of the declining sun, and I 
 have thought that, for poetic beauty, for dehcate inspiration, the scene was as 
 sweet as ever wooed the eyes of a Grecian minstrel on the slopes of Parnas- 
 sus, or around the fountains of Castaly. 
 
 " Again : I have stood upon a lofty summit of the Alleghanies, among the 
 splintered crags and vast gorges, where the eagle and the thunder make their 
 home ; and looked down upon an empire spread out in the long distance be- 
 low. Far as the eye could reach, the broad forests swept away over territories 
 of unexampled productiveness and beauty. At intervals, through the wide 
 champaign, the domes and steeples of some fair town, which had sprung up 
 with magical suddenness among the trees, would come out to the eye, giving 
 evidence of the presence of a busy, thriving population. Winding away 
 through the centre too, like a great artery of life to the scene, I could behold 
 a noble branch of the Ohio, bearing upon its bosom the already active com- 
 
12 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 merce of the region, and linking that spot witli a thousand others, similar in 
 their condition and character. As I thus stood, and thought of all that was 
 being enacted in this glorious land of ours, and saw, in imagination, the stately- 
 centuries as they passed across the scene, diffusing wealth, prosperity and re- 
 finement, I could not but believe that it presented a nobler theatre, with sub- 
 limcr accompaniments and inspirations, than ever rose upon the eye of a gazer 
 from the summits of the Alps or the Appenines. 
 
 " Such are some of the physical aspects of our country, and such the in- 
 fluence they are destined to have upon our national mind. Very evidently 
 they constitute noble sources of inspiration, illustration and description. For all 
 that part of literature which is drawn from the phases of nature, from the 
 varying moods and phenomena of the outward world, the elements and the 
 seasons, they will be more valuable than all the beauties of the Troad or 
 Campania Felix. Rightly used, they would bring a freshness and spirit into 
 the domain of high thought, which would revive it like a spring-time return, 
 and we might take up, in a better hope, the exultation of Virgil, — 
 
 " Jam ultima istas Cumali carmidis venit, 
 Magnus ordo soeclorum nascitur abintegro, 
 Et jam Virgo redit, Saturnia regna redeunt I" pp. 12-17. 
 
 This is a long extract, but we have no apologies to make for it. 
 Its pictures will interest, its grace, glow and eloquence, delight 
 the 'reader7 until he forgets its length. No one can question the 
 fact that the scenery of a country has always entered largely into 
 the inspiration of the native genius. The heart of the poet is 
 apt to dwell frequently and fondly upon the regions on which the 
 eyes of his youth first opened, with a rare acuteness of delight, 
 even though these were wholly wanting in natural beauty and 
 grossly barren of all the accessories of art. What then must be 
 the effect upon the young genius where the scenery is beautiful 
 or imposing in itself — distinguished by sweetness, grace and love- 
 liness, or stirring deeper and sublimer sentiments by its wild and 
 awe-compelling attributes. That our scenery has not yet found 
 its painter on canvass or in fiction, is due to other than its own 
 deficiencies. It must be our care to prove that it is not because 
 the genius itself is not among us. 
 
 One remark may be offered here. In all probability, the 
 merely descriptive poet will be among the latest productions of 
 our land. Britain herself has not produced many poets of this 
 order, nor do they rank, with the single exception of Thomson, 
 amon"- the very noble of her train. Bloomfield was a driveller, 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 13 
 
 and the rank of Somerville is low. The genius of the Anfj-lo- 
 Saxon would seem to be too earnest, too intensely moral in its 
 objects, for the consideration of still life except as subordinate to 
 the action. He puts it in his story, as the painter upon his can- 
 vas, as a sort of back-ground, and he usually hurries from this 
 sort of painting to that which better tasks his more exacting 
 powers. In this characteristic the genius of the American is nat- 
 urally like, — with this difference, that the circumstances of his 
 career tends, still more to increase his love of action and his dis- 
 regard of mere adjuncts and dependencies. He has an aim, and, 
 eager in its attainment, he pauses not to see how lovely is the 
 lake and valley — how vast the mountain — how wild the goro-e, 
 how impetuous the foaming rush of the unbridled waters. If he 
 sees or feels, it is but for an instant, — and he is driven forward, 
 even as the cataract beneath his gaze, by a power of which he 
 is himself unconscious, and in a direction, the goal of which he 
 is not permitted to behold. Our orator has already, adequately 
 and sufRciently, instanced the various charms of scenery which 
 our country possesses. These will make themselves felt in due 
 season, when the national mind is permitted to pause in its careei 
 of conflict — for such is the nature of its progress now — for a sur- 
 vey of its conquests and itself. We pass, with him, to other con- 
 siderations of still more importance, as essential to Americanism 
 in our Letters. The extract which we make is brief: 
 
 " These pleasant anticipations are also justified in part, by the excellent and 
 diversified character of the population of our country. Herein will reside one 
 of the strong modifying influences of Americanism upon literature. Though 
 our population is composed principally of the several varieties of the Anglo- 
 Saxon stock, yet everj^ other race of Europe, and some from the other conti- 
 nents, have contributed to swell the motley and singular combination. Comino- 
 from every quarter of the globe, they have brought with them their diverse 
 manners, feelings, sentiments, and modes of thought, and fused them in the 
 great American alembic. The stern, clear-headed, faith-abiding Puritan, the 
 frank, chivalrous, imaginative Huguenot, the patient, deep-thoughted, contem- 
 plative German, — pilgrims from every clime, creed, and literature — are to be 
 found in contact and intercourse here. They interact upon each other to fash- 
 ion all the manifestations of society, in thought or deed. The contrasts and 
 coincidences, they present under our institutions, afford new and graceful themes 
 for the poet, the novehst and the philosopher ; and the historian will have to 
 give us pictures of life and humanity here, such as are found not elsewhere. I 
 
14 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 need but ulliido, in this connection, to the existence of three distinct races of 
 men upon our continent, with their strongly marked peculiarities of condition, 
 colour and historj'. The immense rapidity with which our numbers are increas- 
 ing — well nigh doubling in every fifteen years ! — will produce an unexampled 
 demand for knowledge, and act as a powerful impetus to its elevation. Al- 
 ready has the great and fluctuating intermixture of our population had an in- 
 fluence upon the English language. In no part of the world is our mother 
 tongue spoken with such general purity of pronunciation as in our country. 
 The constant tide of internal emigration tends to rectify the provincialisms into 
 which stationary communities so frequently fall. Otherwise is it even in Eng- 
 land. The whole kingdom is broken up into dialects as numerous as her coun- 
 ties ; and the respective inhabitants are almost as unintelligible to each other, 
 as if they spoke languages radically distinct. Is it Utopian to expect the 
 proudest results, when one common language shall be employed by the many 
 millions who are to occupy this almost illimitable republic? — But it is in the 
 strong, industrious and wholesome character of our population, that the best 
 hope for our national mind depends. Their habits of life will generate a mus- 
 cularity of intellect, becoming their position and destiny. No effeminacy of 
 thought or feeling will be tolerated among a people, composed of tlie choicest 
 varieties of every race, stimulating each other to mental exertion, and accumu- 
 lating wealth and power with almost miraculous rapidity and extent. Such a 
 people, if they should have no powerful impediments, are better fitted than any 
 other to render the world an intellectual illumination, and to bring round in 
 reality the poetic vision of the golden age." pp. 17-19. 
 
 But the most imposing considerations arrayed by our author in 
 tliis discussion, as indicative of the future resources of American- 
 ism in our Literature, are to be found in those passages in 
 which he considers the influence of our political institutions upon 
 the mind of the country. It would afford us great pleasure did 
 our limits suffice to give these passages, but we must content our- 
 selves with a bare glance at their prominent suggestions. Mr. 
 Meek justly draws our attention to the fact, that, of all the an- 
 cient tyrannies, but very few of them have contributed to the ad- 
 vancement of letters. He exhibits the baldness in literature of 
 Chaldea, Babylon, Assyria and Phoenicia, and hurriedly com- 
 pares their performances with the more glorious showings of the 
 free states of the past. And he argues justly that this result is in 
 the very nature of things ; — that, as liberty of opinion is favour- 
 able to thought and provocative of discussion, so also must it 
 favour the general development of intellect in all departments. 
 The deduction is absolutely inevitable. Tyranny, on the other 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 15 
 
 hand, always trembling for its sceptre, and jealous of every an- 
 tagonist influence, watches with sleepless solicitude to impose 
 every fetter upon the free speech of orator and poet. It would seem 
 almost impertinent to insist upon these points, were it not that there 
 really exists among thinking men a considerable difference of 
 opinion upon them, and this difference of opinion is the natural 
 fruit of a too hasty glance only at the surfaces. The friends of 
 aristocracy, lingering fondly over those bright but unfrequent 
 pages in literary history, as associated with a despotism, which 
 are adorned by the works of genius, hurriedly conclude that they 
 are the issues of that despotism itself. They point with confi- 
 dence to such periods as those of Augustus Caesar and Leo the 
 Tenth. The courtly sway of the one, and the magnificent ambi- 
 tion of the other, are sufficient to delude the imagination, and 
 hurry the reason aside from a consideration of the true analysis. 
 They overlook the important fact that, in all these cases, it has so 
 happened that men Qf literary tastes were themselves the despots. 
 It was not that the despotism was itself favourable to such per- 
 sons, but that the despotism, wielded by a particular hand, was 
 not unwilling to smile with indulgence upon the obsequious poet, 
 and the flattering painter. It so happened that an absolute tyrant 
 was yet possessed of some of the higher sensibilities of the intel- 
 lectual nature, and had almost as strong a passion for letters and 
 the arts, as for political dominion. Thus feeling, he rendered the 
 one passion in some degree subservient to the other. If it could 
 be shown that his tastes were transmitted with his robes, to his 
 successor, there might be some reason in the faith which we are 
 required to have in the benignant literary influences of such a 
 government ; but the sufficient fact that, in the histories of des- 
 potism, these brief and beautiful periods shine out alone, and rest 
 like green spots, at remote stages, through a long and lamentable 
 wilderness, would seem to conclude the question. 
 
 It was the wealth and taste of the despot that made him a pa- 
 tron, and not because he held the reins of government with a 
 rigorous or easy hand. The peculiar sort of rule in Rome and 
 Italy had no part in making the poet or historian ; and, for the 
 patronage itself, accorded by the despot, let the reader turn to the 
 histories of denied and defrauded genius, and see what a scorned 
 
16 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 and wretched beggar it has ever been in the courts of Aristocracy. 
 Let him look to the history of Tasso for example — let him turn 
 to that curious book of Benvenuto Cellini, — if he would see what 
 sort of countenance is that which mere power is apt to be- 
 stow upon tlie labours of the man of letters or of art. Great 
 wcaltli, — that of private persons — has done for them much more 
 in every nation. Spenser owed much more to Sydney, and 
 Shakspeare to Southampton, than either of them ever owed to Eliza- 
 beth. We need not multiply examples. The man of genius, in 
 all departments, has achieved his triumphs rather in despite and 
 defiance of despotism than because of its benign and genial atmo- 
 sphere. The true patron of letters is the lover of them, and where 
 are these persons likely to be more numerous, than in regions 
 uherc the great body of the people are lifted by the political in- 
 stitutions of the country into a responsibility which tasks the intel- 
 lect, and requires a certain amount of knowledge in every de- 
 partment. The despotism is apt to absorb in itself all the taste 
 and intellect where it governs. Democracy naturally diffuses 
 them. At first, the diffusion would seem to lessen the amount of 
 the whole, — to subtract from its spirit-— reduce its volume, and, 
 by too minute division of its parts, to render it feeble and inert for 
 active purposes. But the constant attrition of rival minds in a 
 country where the great body of the people are forced into con- 
 sideration, strengthens and informs, with a peculiar and quicken- 
 ing vigour, each several share of that capacity with which the 
 genius of the nation was at first endowed. The genius of the na- 
 tion does not the less act together, because it acts through many 
 rather than through one ; and, by insensible transitions, the whole 
 multitude rise to the same elevated platform, upon which, at the 
 beginning, we may have beheld but one leading mind, and that, 
 possibly, borrowed from a rival nation. It is a wondrous impulse 
 to the individual, to his hope, his exertions and his final success, 
 to be taught that there is nothing in his way, in the nature of the 
 society in which he lives ; — that he is not to be denied because 
 of his birth or poverty, because of his wealth or his family ; — that 
 he stands fair with his comrades, on the same great arena. — with 
 no social if no natural impediments, — and that the prize is al- 
 ways certain for the fleetest in the race. 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 17 
 
 This must be the natural influence of the democratic principle 
 upon the minds of a people by whose political institutions its su- 
 premacy is recognized. Let no man deceive himself by a glance 
 confined only to the actual condition of things around him. No 
 doubt that, in the beginning of a democracy, in that first wild 
 transition state, which follows upon the overthrow of favourite and 
 long acknowledged authorities, art and literature, alarmed at the 
 coil and clamour, will shroud themselves in their cells, venturing 
 abroad only in those dim hours of dusk and twilight, in which a 
 comparative silence promises comparative security. But this is 
 also the history of nearly all the arts of peace. Commerce and 
 trade, mechanical and mercantile adventure, show themselves 
 nearly equally timid. True, they are the first to recover from 
 tlieir panic, but this is solely because they belong to the more ser- 
 vile and earthly necessities of our nature. They are followed by 
 the gradual steps of art and science, and these in turn by the 
 lovelier and gentler offspring of united grace and muse. It is the 
 error of persons of taste that, shrinking themselves from the up- 
 roar of this transition period, they regard its effects as likely to 
 continue, as being not temporary only, and as destined to per- 
 petuate the commotion which, in our notion, is nothing more than 
 that natural outbreak of elements in the moral, which, in the nat- 
 ural world, almost always harbingers a clear sky and pure, sa- 
 lubrious and settled weather. Such, when the time comes, — 
 when the first rude necessities of a new condition are pacified, 
 and the machine begins to turn evenly and smoothly upon its 
 axis, — such will be the working of democracy. This is not less our 
 faith than our hope. The natural conclusions of reason lead us 
 directly to this confidence, even if the history of the past did not 
 afford us sufficient guaranties for the future. 
 
 Our orator next instances, with effect, the wholesome influences 
 in our government of the "let alone" principle. This, by the 
 way, is an important matter to be understood. Democracy goes 
 into society, with scarcely any farther desire than that men 
 should be protected from one another — left free to the pursuit of 
 happiness, each in the form and manner most agreeable to him- 
 self, so long as he does not trespass upon a solitary right of his 
 neighbour. This is the principle. We do not tolerate a,ny inter- 
 
 3 
 
18 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ference of government with those employments of its citizens 
 which violate none of the rights of others, and which do not offend 
 against the sense of a christian country. To protect or to dispa- 
 rage that occupation of the individual or the community, which, 
 in itself, is regarded as legitimate, is a power which, according to 
 our construction of the social contract in America, is wholly un- 
 warranted by our laws. Something is due certainly to the ne- 
 cessities of the whole ; but, for the " general welfare*' principle, 
 we insist that the " general necessity and exigency" is the true 
 standard by which we impose restraints, or hold out encourage- 
 ments. Mr. Meek properly insists upon the value of this " let alone" 
 practice, on the part of government, as vastly promotive of the in- 
 terests of literature ; and particularly dwells upon the advantages, 
 in this regard, which grow out of our system of confederated 
 sovereignties. The very inequalities of things in moral respects, 
 in employments, in climate, soil and circumstance, which we find 
 in these severalties, is at once calculated to provoke the mind in 
 each to exertion, and to endow it with originality. There is 
 none of that even tenour of aspect, in the genius of the country, 
 which somewhat monotonously distinguishes an empire the whole 
 energies of which spring from centralization. A natural rivalry 
 and emulation are the consequence of a form of political inde- 
 pendence, which, in all domestic subjects, leaves us utterly free 
 to our own pursuits. We watch the progress of our neighbour, 
 and strive rather to surpass than to follow. There is none of 
 that servile, blind adhesion to a superior, which, in Europe, inva- 
 riably brings the popular intellect, even in the most remote de- 
 pendencies of the nation, to the beaten tracks which conduct them 
 to the centre. The very divergencies of our paths are favourable 
 to the boldness, the freedom and the flights of the national intel- 
 lect. We make our own paths — we trace out our own progress 
 — and, just in due degree as we turn aside from the dictation of 
 those great cities, which, among us, are more immediately allied 
 with the marts of Europe, so do we discover marks of the most cer- 
 tain freshness and originality, though coupled with rudeness and 
 irregularity — a harshness which offends and a wildness which, we 
 are encouraged to believe, it is not beyond the power of time and 
 training to subdue to equable and noble exercises. To any one 
 
AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE. 19 
 
 who looks into the cliaracter of our people, — who passes below the 
 surface, and sees in what way the great popular heart beats in 
 the several States of the confederacy, — with what calm, consistent 
 resolve in some — with what impatient heat in others — how cold but 
 how clear in this region, — how fiery, but how clouded in that ; — 
 there will be ample promise for the future, not only in the value 
 of the material, but in its exquisite and rich variety. And, even 
 on the surface, how these varieties speak out for themselves, so 
 that it shall not be difficult for a shrewd observer of men to dis- 
 tinguish at a glance, and to declare from what quarter of America 
 the stranger comes, — whether from the banks of the Charles or 
 the Hudson, the Savannah or the Mississippi. 
 
 Our orator justly reminds us, while treating of this part of his 
 subject, that, by our compact, the interests of education and lite- 
 rature are left entirely in the control of the States. This vital 
 matter is in our own hands, and nothing but our lachesse or our 
 wilfulness, can possibly lose us the power of moulding the temper 
 of our people in due compliance with our peculiar circumstances, 
 whether moral or physical. We may make our literature what 
 we please if we do not neglect the interests of education. We 
 should confer upon it all the becoming characteristics of our sec- 
 tion — our social sympathies, our political temper, and those moral 
 hues and forms which the intellectual nature so happily imbibes 
 from the aspects which surround us in the natural world. The 
 airy structures of our imagination, born of a like sky and atmo- 
 sphere with that of Greece, should not shrink from comparison ■ 
 with those of Dodona and Hymettus. , Our Olympus rises at our 
 will, and the divine spirits which we summon to make sacred its I 
 high abodes, clothed in a political freedom superior to that of [ 
 Athens, with less danger of having their supremacy disputed and 
 their rites disturbed, should surely bring to their altars a priest- 
 hood no less great and glorious. N 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ARTICLE II. 
 
 THE EPOCHS AND EVENTS OF AMERICAN HISTORY, 
 AS SUITED TO THE PURPOSES OF ART IN FICTION.* 
 
 It was the reply of Sir Robert Walpole, — a shrewd observer 
 of men, a profound politician, and no shallow proficient in those 
 agencies which ordinarily affect human opinion — when, in his 
 last illness, his son proposed to read to him from some work of 
 history, — " No, sir, I have long since done with fiction." Such a 
 reply might well startle and bewilder that blind and credulous 
 multitude, who seem, ordinarily, to confound this species of wri- 
 ting with holy writ, and accord to it a degree of reverence which 
 they are quite unwilling to acknowledge in any consideration of 
 Belles Lettres and the Arts. But the opinions of such men as 
 Walpole, Raleigh, Bolingbroke and many others, of equally 
 brilliant intellect and profound knowledge of human affairs, all 
 of whom speak in very much the same language in relation to 
 the same subject, might well persuade us to renounce our blind 
 confidence in teachers, whose chief claim to our deference would 
 seem to lie in their overweening gravity ; or should, otherwise, 
 conduct us to a more perfect faith in what is due to that art which 
 draws, by a happy judgment, the matured fact from the embryo, 
 and, by a series of successful speculations, leads us to those per- 
 fect narratives of life in society which the world has agreed to 
 honour with the name of histories. A little modesty on the pan of 
 the mere historian in urging undue claims to consideration, based 
 
 * This paper forms the substance of certain lectures whicli were delivered 
 before tlio llistoriced Society of the State of Georgia. The purpose for which 
 they were prepared will excuse the somewhat too ornate character of the com- 
 position, which could only have been subdued to the usual style of essay or 
 review, by such a thorough revision, as would probably have robbed the per- 
 formance of all its freshness and freedom. 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 21 
 
 on grounds which are far less substantial than those which he 
 might assert, — and a more expanded survey of the characteristics 
 and objects of human genius, on the part of those who are much 
 more likely to be impressed with names than with things, — 
 might do much towards a solution of the difficulty under 
 which, in a splenetic mood and moment, Sir Robert Walpole de- 
 clared himself. The remark of this statesman, — considered the 
 Machiavel of his day and nation, and who is supposed to have 
 suffered great injustice in the final awards of public opinion in 
 respect to his career, — embodied his own experience in the vera- 
 city of politics, rather than in that of history. It was the history 
 of a small and selfish partisanship of his own time, and which 
 possibly exists in all times, which provoked his censure ; — and it 
 will not need that we should here stop to inquire in what degree 
 he himself contributed to render it deserving of his own sar- 
 casm.* His commentary calls for our notice only as it affords 
 us an approach to another discovery which is also due to modern 
 times. From certain venerable Cantabs of our own age we are 
 astounded, for the first time, to learn that there is very little an- 
 cient history of any kind that is worthy to be relied on ; — that, 
 what we have hitherto been reading with such equal delight and 
 confidence — those exquisite and passionate narratives of Greece 
 and Rome — narratives of soul and sweetness, which have touch- 
 ed our hearts with the truest sympathy and enkindled our spirits 
 with the warmest glow of emulative admiration — are, in reality, 
 little more than the works of cunning artists — eloquent narrators 
 and delicious poets, who have thus dishonestly practised upon our 
 affections and our credulity, making us very children through 
 the medium of our unsuspecting sympathies. Stripped of its 
 golden ornaments of rhetoric and passion, the tale which we are 
 now permitted to believe, is one from which the most hearty lover 
 of the truth may well recoil in disrelish or disgust. Where now 
 are those glowing pictures over which our eyes have glistened — 
 those holy traits of unbending patriotism and of undying love — 
 
 * It is to this statesman, the reader will remember, that we are indebted for 
 the political axiom, — tnxe or false, which is so popularly believed — that " every 
 man has his price." This result Sir Robert is said to have arrived at by his 
 own experiments. 
 
22 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 of maternal courage, and of filial sacrifice — of a valour that 
 knew not self, and of an endurance that confessed no pain ? — 
 Those touching instances of social excellence and loveliness which 
 make of the patriarchal life — the first life of civilization, — one 
 of the loveliest periods in the whole broad province of romance ; 
 — those instances, fertile in all that is dear to fancy and affection, 
 which have moved us to share in all the ebullitions of joy and of 
 suffering of which we read — now striving with the patriot ana 
 now yielding with the lover — enduring with the unshaken con 
 stancy of the matron, and kneeling with the pious devotion of th( 
 son ! Alas ! for all these we have no authorities. We are with- 
 out those grave and reverend witnesses which a court of Nis^. 
 Prius would suffer in evidence under the general issue — and, 
 thus, we are called upon to deny those histories to be true, which 
 have awakened our souls to the first consciousness of the holiest 
 kinds of truth — the truths of the greatest purpose, — the purest 
 integrity, the noblest ambition, the most god-like magnanimity. 
 We go back with the rigid historian to the axemarks in this an- 
 tique wilderness, and we look for these generous instances and 
 proofs in vain. We are shown the withered branches and the 
 prostrate trunks, the blasted forms and the defaced aspects, the 
 dry-bones of the perished humanity ; but the breath of life is 
 gone from its nostrils, — the heart that beat, the head that planned, 
 the eye, the voice, that willed and commanded. The God-stamp- 
 ed visage and the animating action, are no longer heard and vis- 
 ible ! 
 
 " Its bones are marrowleas, its blood is cold ; 
 It has no speculation in those eyes, 
 Which it doth glare with." 
 
 And we may well add, with the terrified usurper — " let the earth 
 hide thee!" — For there can be no friendly or genial influence to 
 man in the resurrection of this miserable mock, and complete 
 wreck, of all that was a people or a life ! But not so, say these 
 sage historians of modern times. We are to believe in the dry- 
 bones, since our eyes have present proof of their existence. We 
 are to recognize the articulated skeleton, — nay, having strung it 
 together on certain wires, and subjected it to a sort of moral gal- 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 23 
 
 vanism, by whicli an occasional spasmodic action is betrayed, we 
 shall even be suffered to conjecture that these dry-bones were 
 once covered with flesh, and were informed by sense and feeling. 
 But we may go no farther. When we would demand more, and 
 assert more, we are met by a question as keenly decapitative in 
 historical criticism, as any which debars disquieting debate in the 
 halls of our legislation : — " where are your authorities ?" Alas ! 
 for the student who lives only by authorities ! Alas ! for the ge- 
 nius who fears them ! The one may become dry-bones himself 
 before he conquers his accidence ; and, for the other, if he leaves 
 aught behind him, coupled with his name, it will be in such mar- 
 rowless fragments, such empty relics of past emptiness, that 
 even that class of pur-blind chroniclers, of which we have spoken, 
 will scarcely be at the necessary pains to disinter them.* 
 
 The truth is — an important truth which seems equally to have 
 escaped the sarcastic minister and the learned German, and which 
 the taste that prefers the ruin to its restoration will be the very 
 last to appreciate, — the chief value of history consists in its proper 
 employment for the purposes of art ! — Consists in its proper em- 
 ployment, as so much raw material, in tlie erection of noble fab- 
 rics and lovely forms, to which the fire of genius imparts soul, 
 and which the smile of taste informs with beauty ; — and which, 
 thus endowed and constituted, are so many temples of mind — so 
 many shrines of purity, — where the big, blind, struggling heart of 
 the multitude may rush, in its vacancy, and be made to feel ; in 
 its blindness, and be made to see ; in its fear and find countenance ; 
 in its weakness and be rendered strong ; in the humility of its 
 
 * The allusion here is to tliat class of modern historians, the professed scep- 
 tics of all detail in ancient history', of whom M. Niebuhr is the great example. 
 It is not our purpose to disparage the learned ingenuity, the keen and vigilant 
 judgment, the great industry, the vast erudition and sleepless research of this 
 coldly inquisitive man ; — yet, what a wreck has he made of the imposing struc- 
 ture of ancient history, as it comes to us from the hands of ancient art. Whether 
 the simple fact, that what he gives us is more certainly true than what we had 
 such perfect faith in before, is, or should be, sufficient to compensate us for that 
 of which he despoils us, cannot well be a question with those who have a bet- 
 ter faith in art, as the greatest of all historians, and as better deserving of our 
 confidence than that worker who limits his faith entirely to his own discoveries. 
 We prefer one Livy to a cloud of such witnesses as M. Niebulir. 
 
24 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 conscious baseness, and be lifted into gradual excellence and 
 hope ! These are the offices of art for which she employs history, 
 and it is these which make her not only the most lovely but 
 the most legitimate daughter of heaven. It is through her that 
 the past lives to the counselling and direction of the future, and 
 if she breathe not the breath of life into its nostrils, the wires of 
 the resurrectionist would vainly link together the ricketty skele- 
 ton which he disinters for posterity. 
 
 Considered with reference to its intrinsic uses, the bald history 
 of a nation, by itself, would be of very little importance to man- 
 kind. Of what use to know the simple fragmentary fact, that 
 Troy — a city we no longer find upon the maps — fell, after a siege 
 of years — the proud and polished city before the barbarian and 
 piratical foe ? Of what use, or whence the satisfaction, placed 
 upon the summits of Taygetus, to hear the long catalogue of 
 names — names of men and nations — which the historian may, 
 with tolerable certainty, enumerate and perhaps assign to each 
 narrow spot within the range of his vision ; — or, astride some 
 block which hopeless conjecture may assume to be the site of the 
 once mighty capital, to turn to our Lempriere and learn that 
 here once dwelt a great people who were overthrown by a greater. 
 We know this fact without Lempriere. Ruins speak for them- 
 selves, and, to this extent, are their own historians. They equally 
 denote the existence and the overthrow ; — the was and the is not 
 — and the dry, sapless history, tells us nothing, which can tell us 
 nothing more ! But, musing alone along the plain of the Troad, 
 — or traversing the mountain barriers of Parnes, jEgaleus, and 
 Hymettus ; looking down upon the sterile plains of Attica, — sterile 
 in soil, but O ! how fruitful in soul, — or sitting among the dis- 
 membered fragments which made the citadel in Carthage, — each 
 man becomes his own historian. Thought, taking the form of 
 conjecture, ascends by natural stages into the obscure and the 
 infinite. Reasoning of what should have been from what is be- 
 fore us, we gather the true from the probable. Dates and names, 
 which, with the mere chronologist are every thing, with us are 
 nothing. For, what matters it to us, while tracing hopes and 
 fears, feelings and performances, the greatness which was, and 
 the glories which exist no longer, to be arrested in our progress 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 25 
 
 by some cold and impertinent querist, who, because we cannot 
 tell him whether these things took place, one, two or three thou- 
 sand years before Christ, — and because we cannot positively as- 
 sign the precise name to the hero, — accurately showing this or 
 that combination of seven or more letters — forbids our inquiry as 
 idle. The inquiry is not idle, and history itself is only valuable 
 when it provokes this inquiry — when it excites a just curiosity — 
 awakens noble affections, — elicits generous sentiments, — and 
 stimulates into becoming activity the intelligence which it in- 
 forms ! 
 
 Hence, it is the artist onl y who is the true historian. It is he 
 who ^ives shape to the unhewn fact, — who yields relation to the 
 scattered fragments,- — who unites the parts in coherent dependen- 
 cy, and endows, with life and action, the otherwise motionless 
 automata of history. It is by such artists, indeed, that nations 
 live. It is the soul of art, alone, which binds periods and places 
 together ; — that creative faculty, which, as it is the only quality 
 distinguishing man from other animals, is the only one by which 
 he holds a life-tenure through all time — the power to make him- 
 self known to man, to be sure of the possessions of the past, 
 and to transmit, with the most happy confidence in fame, his own 
 possessions to the future. 
 
 For what is the philosophy of history but a happy conjecturing, 
 of what might have been from the imperfect skeleton of what we 
 know. The long analysis of probabilities keenly pursued through 
 buried fragments and dissolving dust, is the toil of an active 
 imagination, informed by experience, obeying certain known 
 laws of study, and recognizing, as guiding rules, certain gen- 
 eral standards of examination. The dull seeker after bald and 
 isolated facts is no philosopher, nor can he claim even the doubt- 
 ful merit of being a pioneer. He is a digger merely ; — no more 
 a discoverer than the hireling whom superior taste and wealth 
 have employed to disencumber the buried city, Pompeii or Her- 
 culaneum, from its ashes ; — careless where he explores, indif- 
 ferent to what he sees, and only solicitous of the amount of la- 
 bour done, which secures him, at the end of the day or week, his 
 miserable compensation. That keen thought and pressing study, 
 which, heaping conjecture upon conjecture, identifying facts with 
 
26 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 their classes, tracing concealed character through a long series 
 of details, educing causes from associated results, and tracing 
 upward, step by step, by plausible suggestions, the several poli- 
 cies by which nations are built up and made famous, or over- 
 thrown and dismembered, would disdain the preparation of his- 
 tory if privileges such as these were denied to the historian. 
 And, in the exercise of these privileges, he asserts and acquires 
 nwre. He learns to speak with a familiar confidence of his sub- 
 ject. His imagination takes part with his judgment, officers and 
 counsels his thought, wings it to the desired fact, and vividly 
 pourtrays to the mind's eye the hero and the event. Thence he 
 becomes a limner, a painter, a creator ; and the picture glows be- 
 neath his hand, and the drama dilates in action under his glance, 
 and he becomes a living and authentic witness of the past, and 
 of all the circumstances which he has undertaken to unfold. 
 Such is the true historian, and such is the sort of genius which it 
 requires ere we shall dare to say that any history can live. 
 
 To such an intellect, it must be permitted to argue his case as 
 an advocate, to choose his favourite personages from the chron- 
 icle, and to make perfect his ideals, by a nice adaptation to their 
 known characteristics, of such as are essential to the completion 
 of the model. In proportion as his work conforms to known pro- 
 prieties and generally recognized probabilities, and in proportion 
 as it makes favourably for the cause of humanity and virtue, 
 upon the understandings of those to whom his labours are ad- 
 dressed, are his performances well or badly done, — and in just 
 such degree will he be found to live in the regards of future ages. 
 These, and these only, are his standards, speaking now only with 
 a moral reference ; — his taste, his skill, his eloquence, his powers 
 of compression or dilation, of grouping and relief, being of course 
 artistical requisitions, which are all essential to his success in 
 every other respect. It is really of very little importance to 
 mankind whether he is absolutely correct in all his conjectures 
 or assertions, whether his theory be true or false, or whether he 
 rightly determines upon the actor or the scene. Assuming that 
 the means of his refutation are not to be had, that he offends 
 against no i'acts which are known and decisive, no reasonable 
 probabilities or obvious inferences, — it is enough if his narrative 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 27 
 
 awakens our attention, compels our thought, warms our affections, 
 inspirits our hopes, elevates our aims, and builds up in our minds 
 a fabric of character, compounded of just principles, generous 
 tendencies and clear, correct standards of taste and duty. This, 
 in fact, is the chief object with wiiich all history is studied — the 
 curiosity which impels the desire being equally moral and hu- 
 man, and having reference to the effect, upon character, of les- 
 sons drawn from the experience and the deeds of some superior 
 branch or persons of the great human family. We care not so 
 much for the intrinsic truth of history, as for the great moral 
 truths, which, drawn from such sources, induce excellence in the 
 student. The study of mere facts which do not concern our own 
 progress, unless such results are designed to follow, would be as 
 utterly unimportant to ourselves and children, as the solution of 
 the much vexed question — " who built the pyramids, — Cheops or 
 Cephrenes ?" There they stand, and the philosophical historian, 
 who really knows nothing beyond, has already declared the only 
 really important fact in their history — namely, that they were 
 the work of a merciless despotism — an equal trophy of miserable 
 vanity and of absolute power; — a vanity not less absolute than 
 the power which it exercised, but certainly far less productive of 
 results, since the pyramids are no longer monuments ! The phi- 
 losopher reaches this conviction by a survey of the vast structures 
 themselves. Their useless bulk provides a sufficient commentary 
 on the labour which produced it ; — and, even though the veracious 
 chroniclers of the past were here — if we could trace, step by step, 
 the progress of events by which they were raised to what they 
 are — the great moral truth respecting them, of which we are al- 
 ready in possession, would receive no additional weight of sug- 
 gestion. That moral truth, educed by thought _frorrL_conjecture, 
 is one wholly independent of details. Nay, even should the de- 
 tails become known, and conflict with the frairmentarv facts 
 which we have been accustomed to believe, they could not dis- 
 turb a faith which they could never have established. To lay 
 bare the tombs of their buried kings, to find their names, to re- 
 trace their experience, to declare their histories, would really add 
 no desirable measure to the amount of human knowledge. It 
 would only be multiplying a number of like facts and histories, 
 
28 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 of which we have more than enough in possession for all the pur- 
 poses of moral and human analysis. The profligacy of nature, 
 even in lier tombs, and wrecks, and disasters, leaves us nothing 
 to desire, in the way of material, whether for conjecture, or phi- 
 losophy, or sympathy. A natural curiosity may prompt us to 
 inquire, as we loiter beside the unknown tumulus, " who sleeps 
 below ?" — but a conviction quite as natural, that there are thou- 
 sands of inquiries to be made besides, of far more importance even 
 to our tastes, for which life leaves us but little leisure, soon recon- 
 ciles us to the necessity of yielding the solution of our doubts to 
 that genius which seems especially appointed for such a purpose ; 
 — a genius which acknowledges no obstruction in the otherwise 
 dark and frowning barriers set up by the huge and shapeless 
 sphinx of oblivion, which presides over so vast a portion of the 
 globe, — the genius of romance and poetry ! — the genius of crea- 
 tive art ! And well does he satisfy our doubts. Let us instance 
 one among a thousand histories to which we may refer as preg- 
 nant with examples. A statue, one of the most exquisite remains 
 and trophies of ancient art, is rescued from the undeserving but 
 protecting earth. The sages gather round it, the high priests of 
 civilization and philosophy, and each has his doubts, and each 
 has his conjectures. The study is an elaborate one, of some 
 complexity and finish, with certain insignia. One claims it as a 
 Grecian Herald, another will have it a Laquearian Gladiator, 
 while a third makes it a barbarian shield-bearer from Sparta. A 
 host of other gray beards discover a host of other similitudes. 
 Now, the mere conclusion of this doubt, is about the least im- 
 portant of the facts in this exquisite clief-d'oRuvre. Solve the 
 doubt, ascertain the fact, and we know nothing after all. Yet, 
 what a tale is it found to embody. The poet interposes while the 
 strife is loudest, and furnishes the perfect history. 
 
 " I see before me the Gladiator lie : 
 He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 
 Consents to death, but conquers agony, — 
 And his droop'd head sinks, gradually low — 
 And through his side, the last drops, ebbing slow, 
 From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 
 Like the first of a thunder-shower : and now, 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 29 
 
 The arena swims around him — he is gone 
 
 Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. 
 
 He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes, 
 
 Were with his heart, and that was far away ; 
 
 He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize, 
 
 But where his rude hut by the Danube lay ; — 
 
 There were his young Barbarians, all at play, — 
 
 There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire, 
 
 Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday !" — 
 
 What a history is here ! — how complete — how true ! What a 
 long narration of events is brought before us by a word — what a 
 variety of character and fortune, — associations how gorgeous and 
 how terrible, in the ie\w, brief, moving lines which embody the 
 revelation of a great artist. The circus opens upon us as we 
 listen ! We see the awful preparations for the strife — we note, 
 with suppressed respiration, the bloody progress of the combat ! 
 We hear the buz of the eager multitude ; — 
 
 " The murmured pity or loud-roared applause, 
 As man is slaughtered by his fellow man." 
 
 Rome is in our eyes, — that city of equal crime and empire. We 
 see, at a glance, all her exulting pride and the hellish magnifi- 
 cence of her daily exercises. There are hosts of valiant men, 
 there are troops of lovely women ; — there is the pomp of purple, 
 the blinding glare of jewels, and, in the midst, is one, — 
 
 " Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday." 
 
 But the divine skill of the artist does not suffer us to linjrer too 
 long upon the guilty glory, and the tpo seductive aspects of this 
 awful spectacle. The moral requires that we should behold the 
 inevitable concomitants. He hurries us from the scene of terror 
 and of triumph. We fly, with the last thoughts of the dying 
 victim, to the banks of his paternal Danube. His unconscious 
 children are at play. There too is their Dacian mother. She 
 knows not of their father's fate, but her thoughts are still heavy 
 and with him. Even at that moment, a fear of the truth, a 
 dreadful presentiment of evil, is rising within her heart, and she 
 turns away, with a soul that sickens at all she sees, from the 
 
30 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 sports of her orphan barbarians. Such a history, thus told us, is 
 complete in all its parts. It embodies many histories. Shall we 
 consider it less true because it is attested in ihe undying measures 
 of verse ! Nay, should it liereafter be discovered that the exquis- 
 ite performance of art by which the poet was provoked to history, 
 was no victim to the infernal sports of the amphitheatre ; — should 
 it be shown tliat he was a Spartan shield-bearer, or herald, slain 
 by sudden shaft upon the road-side, and not a barbarian dragged 
 from the Danube ; — will such a discovery, in any respect, impair 
 the touching truths of such a history ? Not a whit ! The truth 
 /^is still a truth apart from its application. The moral objects of 
 I the poet and the historian concern not the individual so much as 
 the race, — are not simply truths of time, but truths of eternity, and 
 can only cease to be truths in the decay of all human sensibilities. 
 The historian then must be an artist. All of the great writers 
 of history deserve the title. Livy in past, and Gibbon in modern 
 times, were artists of singular ability in the adjustment of details 
 and groups, and in the delineation of action. Of the extent of 
 their powers of conjecture, — their capacity for supplying appro- 
 priately ihe unsuggested probability, of filling the blanks in his- 
 tory with those details without which the known were valueless 
 — it needs but to say that the facts in ancient history, compared 
 with what is conjectured of the facts in their connection, were 
 really very few, if not very unimportant. Original, or transmit- 
 ted authorities, must always have been very vague and uncertain 
 prior to the discovery of printing. Tradition then v/as the 
 chronicler, and the poet was the historian. What fell in broken, 
 mumbled sentences from the toothless gums of the one, was 
 moulded into undying periods by the peculiar genius of the other, 
 and Homer became a great master of history from no better 
 sources of authority. We should be grateful to such historians 
 and chroniclers. Would that they had left us a thousand more 
 such histories. The languao-e of Wordsworth, is not too fervent 
 for the expression of our gratitude. 
 
 " Blessings bo with them, and eternal praise, 
 Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares, — 
 The poets ; — who on earth have made us heirs, 
 Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays I" 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 31 
 
 But, if the composition of history be the work of an artist 
 rather than of a mere chronicler — if it be permitted to him to 
 speculate upon the unknown, and to assume the fact from the 
 probable — there is yet, in tliis respect, a limit to his progress. 
 There is a God Terminus for the dom.inions of art, as there is for 
 each subdivision of earthly empire. The appetite which calls 
 into existence the artist of history, is not satisfied with what he 
 achieves. He provokes a passion which he cannot gratify, and 
 another genius is summoned to continue the progress into those 
 dominions of the obscure and the impalpable, which he fears to 
 penetrate. The one is no less legitimate than the other, — and the 
 province of the romancer, if its boundaries be not yet generally 
 recognized, at least leaves him large liberties of conquest. It is 
 difficult to say what seas shall limit his empire — what mountains 
 arrest his progress, — what elements retard his flight — or 
 
 " Who shall place, 
 
 A limit to the giant's unchain'd strength, 
 Or curb his swiftness in the forward race I" 
 
 The liberties of conjecture which are accorded to the historian, 
 become, in his case, liberties of creation. So far as the moral is 
 concerned, the difference of privilege is no ways important. 
 Their privileges differ only in degree. We permit the historian 
 to look from his Pisgah into the land of equal doubt and prom- 
 ise ; but the other is allowed to enter upon its exploration and to 
 take formal possession of its fruits. Both, however, are required 
 to recognize a law in common — that, namely, which rules that the 
 survey and the conquest shall be made for the benefit and the 
 blessing of the races which they severally represent. The fruits 
 of their toil and talents, — by that decree of providence, which 
 has fitted each of us for a special and peculiar labour — are 
 meant for the human stock ; — and when they have warmed our 
 curiosity in what concerns the great family to which we belong 
 — strengthened our faith in what are its true virtues, and what, 
 under proper cultivation, it may become — excited our sympathies 
 in the cause of its leading minds — filled our hearts with gentle 
 hopes, and stimulated our souls to ardency in the grand and un- 
 ceasing struggle after perfection which is the great business of 
 
32 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the ages — then have they severally executed the holy trusts of 
 art which have been committed to their hands. The one employ- 
 ment, in these several toils, is quite as legitimate as the other. 
 Thev both demand the most varied talents and the hicrhest attri- 
 butes of mind, which have been, or possibly can be, conferred 
 upon the creature. If the historian is required to conceive 
 readily, and to supply the motive for human action where the 
 interests of a State, or a nation, are concerned, — a like capacity 
 must inform the novelist, whose inquiries conduct him into the 
 recesses of the individual heart. Both should be possessed of 
 clear minds, calm, deliberate judgments, a lively fancy, a vigor- 
 ous imagination, and a just sense of propriety and duty. In de- 
 gree, both should be endowed with large human sympathies, 
 without which neither of them could justly enter into the feelings 
 and affections, the fears and the hopes, of the persons whose char- 
 acters they propose to analyze. If the subject of the historian is 
 one of more dignity and grandeur, that of the romancer is one 
 of more delicacy and variety. If the task of the one is imposing 
 because of its gravity, and the vast interests which are involved 
 in the discussion, — the other is more attractive as it admits of so 
 much more of that detail, in the affairs of a favourite, whicli 
 brings us to a familiar acquaintance with the graces of the family 
 circle, the nice sensibilities of the heart, the growth of the purest 
 affections, and those more ennobling virtues of the citizen, which, 
 as they are seldom suffered to show themselves beyond the sphere 
 of domestic privacy, are not often permitted to glide into, and re- 
 lieve the uniform majesty of, history. To show what are the priv- 
 ileges and performances of the romancer, imbued with a just 
 sense of his rights and resources, is to provide the most ample 
 justification of his claim to rank with the noblest workers in all 
 I lie fields of art. On this subject we are daily growing more and 
 more enlightened. The puritanism which, (because of certain 
 vague religious scruples of the class which destroyed the ancient 
 abbey and altar because of its forms and peculiar service,) felt 
 itself shocked at the story, is no longer heard to complain ; and 
 the stale outcry of a class, no less bigoted, by which it was sup- 
 posed that romance was a disparagement to history, or led only to 
 a perversion of the truth in history, is pretty much at an end, — 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 33 
 
 silenced by the certain tendencies of romantic narrative to 
 heighten the taste for history itself. Pliilosophy, to say nothiim- 
 of common sense, begins to discover that Shakspeare's Chronicles 
 of England, are not only quite as true, substantively, as those of 
 Hume, but that they are decidedly more true to the great leading 
 characteristics of society and human nature ; and, in more recent 
 days, it is found that Scott's uses of skeleton history have been to 
 furnish it with life and character, to reclothe its dry-bones, and 
 to impart a symmetry and proportion to its disjointed members, 
 which, otherwise, were as unnatural and formless as that creation 
 of the shambles, the modern Prometheus of Mrs. Shelly.* It 
 was, for example, only with the publication of Ivanhoe, one of 
 the most perfect specimens of the romance that^ve possess,f that 
 the general reader had any fair idea of the long protracted strug- 
 gle for superiority between the Norman and the Saxon people. 
 Nay, it was not till that stately creation of art, with all its towers 
 and banners, blazed upon the eyes of the delighted nations, that 
 the worthy burghers of London and Edinburgh were made 
 aware that there had been any long continued conflict between 
 these warring races. The general opinion was that the Saxons 
 had yielded the struggle with the fatal field of Hastings, and that 
 the hope of their empire had gone down forever with the star of 
 the intrepid Harold. It was reserved for the romancer to show 
 how very different was the truth — how reluctant was the Saxon 
 to forego his hope of the final expulsion of the intruder, and the 
 restoration of his sceptre in the hands of a native. It is, in all 
 probability, to this very story that we owe the re-opening of the re- 
 cent inquiry, and the discussion of the events of this period, and in 
 particular the very charming history of the Norman conquest and 
 
 * Let us not be understood as meaning to disparage any thing in this re- 
 rnarkable production, beyond the ckimsy manner in which a daring conception 
 has been worked out. It is evidently a crude and shapeless contrivance, which 
 a httle more preparation might have licked into better shape and more rea- 
 sonable symmetry. In spite of the abortivene^s of tho details, and the total 
 want of a scheme in the creation of the man, the story betrays, on ever)' page, 
 proofs of a real genius in the writer. 
 
 t Impaired, however, by the single piece of mummery toward the close, 
 which embodies the burial rites of Athelstane and his resurrection. But for 
 this every way unbecoming episode, the romance would be nearly perfect. 
 
 5 
 
34 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 sway, from the pen of Monsieur Thierry. In this work, the 
 writer, borrowing something of the attributes of the poet, has 
 contrive(L.to clothe his narrative with an atmosphere which con- 
 fers upon it a rich Inellowness not to be found in the works of 
 the ordinary historian ; and, with the advance of the popular 
 thoun-ht, and the attainment of a just judgment in respect to the 
 legitimacy of art in the delineation of history, shall we recover 
 from the past many more perfect narratives concerning periods 
 in our chronicles, of which, at this moment, we scarce acknowl- 
 edge any want. As it was to Shakspeare's Richard that we owe 
 that of Horace Walpole, so, to similar provocation, shall we be 
 indebted for the restoration of all the British Kings from the old 
 Saxon heptarchy. What glorious histories are in reserve for us, 
 of the Edwards' and the Henrys, — the Tudors and the Plantag- 
 enets — 
 
 " those rival roses, red and pale, 
 
 That wrought our island's wo, iu bloodiest fray." 
 
 It will not need, in determining generally the legitimacy of ro- 
 mantic art, to analyze its several classes and distinguish between 
 their rights and privileges. Definitions poorly supply the place 
 of general reading, and, even could ours answer the end proposed, 
 it would make no part of our present design to undertake "them. 
 That much of most histories is built upon conjecture — that this 
 conjecture, assuming bolder privileges, becomes romance — that all 
 ages and nations have possessed this romance — that many ages 
 and nations are now known only by its vitative agency — are mat- 
 ters which we have sought rather to suggest than to establish -, — 
 and, these being understood, we come now to the question — where, 
 in our history, are the epochs, and what the materials, which, in 
 the hands of the future poet and romancer, shall become the mon- 
 uments of our nation — shall prove the virtues of our people, — de- 
 clare their deeds, and assert, to the unborn ages, the fame of our 
 achievements ? We take for granted that all hearts, not abso- 
 lutely base and slavish, will yearn for such future chronicles j — 
 will throb, with a natural pulse of enthusiastic hope, in the per- 
 suasion that we are to have a song, and a statue, and a story, — 
 which, when our political name shall be an echo, will make it 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 35 
 
 one that the generations will delight to prolong along with those 
 of Greece and Ilium. It would be no less painful than unpatri- 
 otic to doubt that all who yield to the subject a thought or an af- 
 fection, will feel with us, that, next to the prayer of a glorious 
 immortality for our own soul, will be that which we prefer to heav- 
 en for the soul of our mother country.* 
 
 In entering upon this enquiry, we discard entirely the suppo- 
 sition that any thing has yet been done with these epochs and 
 materials. We shall say nothing, as well from motives of deli- 
 cacy as to avoid unnecessary discussion of any of our achieve- 
 ments, whether of pen or pencil, whether of prose or verse. We 
 prefer looking at the country, naked as it is, unadorned, a 
 rough, unhewn mass — shapeless to the eye, — unsightly, perhaps, 
 in other eyes, not blinded by our feelings of sympathy and home ! 
 We look at the waste map from Passamaquoddy to the Sabine, 
 and ask, — where are our treasures, — our jewels of song and story, 
 — which, when our country shall have become venerable with 
 years, — in ruin perhaps from frequent overthrow, — shall inform 
 the groping nations what she has been, and yield to them, even 
 in her decay and desolation, models of excellence not inferior to 
 those which we owe to the genius of the East ; — song and story 
 which shall enchain the ear of future admiration, — telling of our 
 endurance and our deeds — how we toiled and how we triumphed 
 --what bards have sung in our glory, what statesmen have strug- 
 gled in our behalf, — what valour was in the hearts of our war- 
 riors, — what purity and constancy in the souls of our women ! 
 
 Let your grave lovers of skeleton history ask if these questions 
 have ever been answered by the dry-bones for which they dig. 
 Look for yourselves and behold, — in the long tract of ages which 
 have vanished — at the mighty nations which have lived and live 
 no longer, — behold the glorious record of the past, preserved to 
 the future, only by the interposition of creative art. The states- 
 man and the chronicler are dust, but the pictured story of the 
 painter still speaks from the canvas, — and what an undying strain 
 
 * This epithet is employed here in a dii-ect sense, as used by the citizen in 
 reference to our own soil. Our note is intended to prevent the recognition of 
 the old conventional phrase of the provincial, into which, as a people, we are 
 but too ready still to fall. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 of song, peals, echo upon echo falling, — prolonged without faint- 
 ness, and felt without fatigue, — in the ears of the succeeding ages, 
 from the heaven-touched lips of the inspired minstrel ! What a 
 voice for the ages have these ! How they clothe their several 
 empires with an unfading halo ! How they govern the infant 
 ^ nations with a deathless moral ! How they sway our hearts with 
 their sweetness ; — how^ they counsel our spirits with their strength ! 
 How we turn to them in our ignorance for our models — how we 
 invoke them in our timidity for our inspiration ! They preserve 
 the treasures, — they provide the jewels of a nation, when they 
 embalm, in the " cedar oil" of immortality, the great deeds which 
 have done honour to mankind ! 
 
 In asking for the materials of art which are afforded us by our 
 own history, we must not be thought friendly to the notion that it 
 is a sort of patriotism, amounting almost to a duty, that the Amer- 
 ican author should confine himself exclusively to the boundaries 
 of his own country. Every man of genius has a certain charac- 
 ter of independence, any attempt to confine which, would be as de- 
 trimental to his genius as it would be derogatory to his independ- 
 ence. This independence imparts to his mind an impulse, whose 
 operations are very much like those of instinct. He cannot, if 
 he would, withstand their influence ; and if he seeks to obey the 
 old law in such cases, and looks into his heart at all, he cannot 
 help but write after its suggestions.* We should regard the doc- 
 trine of resolutely restraining ourselves to the national materials 
 as being rather slavish than national, unless the native tendencies 
 of the writer's mind carried him forward in their peculiar contem- 
 plation. But, at the same time, it must be remembered that the 
 national themes seem to be among the most enduring. The most 
 popular writers of all periods have been always most successful, 
 whenever they have addressed themselves to either of three great 
 leading subjects, — their religion, their country and themselves ! 
 We need not particularize, but such, in great degree, are the 
 themes of Homer, of Dante, of Milton, Shakspeare, Byron, Burns 
 and Scott, and, indeed, of almost every writer who has possessed 
 
 " Fool ! ' said my Muse to me,' look in thy heart and write." — Sir Philip 
 Sidney — Astrophel and Stella. 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 37 
 
 any marked individuality of character. We state this proposi- 
 tion broadly, without deeming it necessary to suggest the several 
 exceptions and qualifications which a very close scrutiny might 
 detect. That sort of poetrj' or^ romance which isof.a jdidactic 
 or merely morar character, never can possess individuality — will 
 be as characteristic of one country as another, and will fail, there- 
 fore, to excite a very strong enthusiasm in any. The writings 
 of Cowper — a master in his way — are of this kind. Wordsworth, 
 in our own day, though probably the greatest contemplative poet 
 that has ever lived, labours to a considerable degree under the 
 same deficiency. The thoughtful minds of all nations will yield 
 him a sacred place in their regards. They will go with him to 
 the haunted well in secret — they will linger with him, till after 
 nightfall, for the Egeria of the grove, — and adopt his musings 
 with a ready faith which shall prove how true to the moral nature 
 were the sources of his inspiration. But he will arouse no im- 
 pulses, waken no heart to enthusiasm, enkindle no generous im- 
 patience, lead to no mighty action. His faith is not of a kind 
 to provoke his own fervour, or to move, by his impulse and exam- 
 ple, the zeal of those whom he teaches. His faith lacks equally 
 in depth and elevation. 
 
 The contemplative writer is usually a phlegmatic in tempera- 
 ment, who kindles no eyes, stirs no souls, touches none of the 
 more vital strings of the passions and the heart. This is reserved 
 ^or writers vv'ho appeal to the blood and the brain in common — 
 writers of great personal courage and character — who seem ever 
 eager for action, and whose themes will be found, as instanced 
 already, either in themselves, their country, or their religion. It 
 is such songs as theirs that become songs of a whole people — 
 it is their names that are never suffered to die from remembrance ; 
 and when they yield to the common lot, the voice of their de- 
 parture thrills through the great world's heart as if an exquisite 
 nerve, necessary to its sweetest functions, were suddenly smote 
 asunder. How touchingly was this illustrated in the feeling 
 among the humbler classes in London, as they gathered silently in 
 groups beneath the windows of the house in which Scott lay 
 dying, and pointed out the sacred mansion to one another. They 
 had a personal interest in the genius that had wound himself into 
 
38 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the recesses of their own souls, and planted there the choicest 
 seeds of new and grateful emotions. And so of one, of whom the 
 moral world deems far less tenderly. We can all remember 
 what a pang went through this wide western land when the news 
 was brought us that Lord Byron was no more. He had made 
 himself, in spite of his many weaknesses and vices, a part of our 
 personal nature. His genius was a spell, which, speaking through 
 warm and passionate blood, had appealed to similar passions, so 
 effectually, as to command their sympathies even in spite of the 
 truth. To all those to whom poetry constituted one of the neces- 
 sary ingredients of life, his loss was personal. It was, as if all 
 eyes had, on a sudden, beheld some great and customary light go 
 out in darkness from the sky. 
 
 A superficial criticism might object that Lord Byron yielded 
 but a small part of his genius to the illustration of his country's 
 history, and that, of the plays of Shakspeare, the Chronicle Tra- 
 gedies constitute but a small, and, perhaps, inferior portion of his 
 mighty labours. We trust that we shall not surprise too many of 
 our readers, when we assert that there is very little substantial 
 difference, in reference to what is individual in the revelations of 
 the artist, between the several topics of one's self, one's country, 
 and one's religion ! They produce like effects upon the mind of 
 the writer — bring into activity the same intense individuality of 
 feeling, — and, consequently, find that energetic and passionate 
 utterance which will always commend the story to other minds. 
 It is only a more noble egotism which prompts us to speak of our 
 country, — to make its deeds our subject, and its high places our 
 scene. It is because it is our country — because its high places 
 have been present to the eye of our childhood, and all its triumphs 
 and interests have been incorporated, by the silent processes of 
 memory and thought, into the very soul of our personal existence. 
 And, what can be more wholly personal to us than our religion ? 
 Identified with our country, — for the religion of a nation is the 
 most subtle and widely diffused element in its whole character 
 and history — it is yet the distinct possession and duty of each in- 
 dividual man ! It appeals hourly to his hopes and fears, and all 
 his deeds, whether of shame or greatness, necessarily refer to its 
 holy and dread tribunal for that verdict upon which the vast in- 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 39 
 
 tere sts of t he future life depend. Whether, therefore, the poet 
 speaks directly of himself, his country, or his religion, he speaks 
 in the fulness of his own soul, and from the overflowings of a bur- 
 dened heart. His song is that of an aroused and earnest mind, 
 deeply excited, and earnest in its least impassioned language. 
 And he who speaksyVo/zi the soul, we need hardly say, speaks to 
 the soul. He who shows himself to be in earnest in what he says, 
 cannot fail to produce earnestness in those who hear him. This, 
 indeed, is the great secret of the orator — it is the great secret of 
 success in all labours of the intellect which are addressed to the 
 feelings or the understandings of men. The hearty expression of 
 the iMuse of Shakspeare, still declares the thorough English senti- 
 ment and feeling, even where his writings fail to contemplate 
 English history ; — and so, also, does every breathing of Lord Byr 
 ron's egotism and passion — his vain pride — his intense kindlings 
 — his stubborn resolution not to do right because his enemies cen- 
 sure his wrong doing — declare the genuine English character. 
 Addressing himself to this character in the usual language of 
 English earnestness, he enters, every where, most readily, into 
 the Eno-lish sense. The commonest man in England, though he 
 knows and cares little for the Muse, can yet understand such a 
 song as that of Byron. It speaks the language of his own pas- 
 sion — his impulse — his confidence in his own strength — his bull- 
 dog powers of endurance— his stubborn consistency in error, 
 from the false pride which makes him reluct at confession, 
 and his resolution to persevere in wrong, for no better rea- 
 son than because his neighbours have presumed to set him 
 right.* All his great characteristics, his strength and his in- 
 tensity, his scorn of the merely frivolous, his sense of the supe- 
 
 * We have an amusing instance of this characteristic national trait in the 
 notes of a late English traveller in our countr)'. It is Col. Hamilton, we be- 
 lieve, who somewhere tells us that he refused to seek or to hear Daniel Web- 
 ster, though very anxious to do so, simply because every body in America as- 
 sured him that this was absolutely necessary. What could be more thorough- 
 ly English than this mode of convincing every body that they laiew nothing of 
 the matter, and were guilty of impertinence. True, we are too much given to 
 this sort of impertinence, but really Mr. Hamilton need not have pmiished us 
 so severely. And so, Mr. Daniel Webster — to his own great mortification, 
 doubtless remains to this day unknown to Col. Hamilton I 
 
40 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 rior — his appreciation of virtue, even where it is unpractised. — 
 his susceptibility to tenderness even in his pride and selfishness — 
 the boldness of his aim, and the inflexible eagerness with which 
 he pursues it — are embodied in the verse of this great but erring 
 master. 
 
 The true and most valuable inspiration of the poet will be found 
 either in the illustration of the national history, or in the devel- 
 opment of the national characteristics. His themes, if unallied 
 to these, will be very likely to lack permanence and general in- 
 terest. The advantages afforded by national themes, have, there- 
 fore, seldom been disregarded by that class of writers whose ge- 
 nius is distinguished by much enthusiasm. They all feel, as if 
 by instinct, the desire of Burns, who tells us, in his own artless 
 manner, that his longing from childhood, had always been to make 
 some song which should live " for poor old Scotland's sake." Put- 
 ting aside the patriotism of this suggestion, it has its policy also. 
 Poetry or romance, illustrative of those national events of which 
 the great body of the people delight to boast, or of which they 
 have only a partial knowledge, — possesses a sort of symbolical 
 influence upon their minds, and seems, indeed, to become a visi- 
 ble form and existence to their eyes. As in the gorgeous rites 
 of the Catholic Church, the God first enters the mind through the 
 medium of the eye. The passion and the agony of Christ, having 
 a lively representation to the sight, imparts, in turn, a vivid con- 
 viction to the heart ; and the events of a national history, which 
 we can associate with a place and with a name, endowed with 
 vitality by the song of the poet, — will make that place sacred, as 
 a shrine for far seeking pilgrims, and will render that name 
 famous as a sound, for deep-feeling and warm-loving spirits. A 
 national history, preserved by a national poet, becomes, in fact, a 
 national religion. Taught by him, we every where behold the 
 visible monuments of the agonies of our martyrs. In England, 
 we rush to the Abbey and the Tower, to Kennil worth and the Old 
 Bower at Woodstock. In Scotland, with the help of Burns and 
 Scott, we traverse the fields of Bannockburn and Flodden — we look 
 over the lonely Loch to the ruins of Castle Douglas ; and stoop, 
 with shuddering, and half averted gaze, over the blood-stains of 
 Holyrood, which we arc told, by the genius of the place, streamed 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 41 
 
 from the heart of David Rizzo. The spell of genius, in thus 
 making sacred the ruins of time, preserves itself from oblivion. 
 What would be the homage of our children, down to the four'h 
 and fifth generation of those, born after, who will love us, — to 
 that inspired bard, who shall conduct them to the high places of 
 our glory — who shall lead them to, and designate, by a song and 
 by a sign, the old fields of Eutaw and Saratoga — who shall say, 
 in a glorious burst of lyrical lament, mixed with exultation — 
 " there, even beside yon hillock, fell the veteran De Kalb,* and 
 here — possibly on the very spot over which we stand — the death 
 wound was given to the intrepid Jasper and Pulaski. "f 
 
 II. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 BENEDICT ARNOLD AS A SUBJECT FOR FICTITIOUS STORY. 
 
 We assume that the man of genius inclines, by reason of natu- 
 ral affection, to do honour to his birth-place. Such an inclination 
 belongs to the enthusiastic nature, and this is a sufficient reason 
 why it should be indulged, since enthusiasm very rarely expends 
 itself on objects of an unworthy character. Looking forward 
 then to the future labours of the artist who shall preserve and 
 adorn our histories, we turn to the histories themselves, — even as 
 the sculptor, in whose mind reposes the perfect ideal of the statue, 
 turns to the rude masses of the quarry from which it must yet be 
 
 * The Baron De Kalb was slain near Camden, in South Carolina, in 1780. 
 
 t Count Pulaski, the famous Pole, whose attempt upon the person of Stan- 
 islaus Poniatowski had so nearly proved successful. Pulaski distinguished him- 
 self as a partisan in the war of our revolution, and led a very efficient force 
 of cavalry. He fell, with Sergeant Jasper — a hero in the ranks, whose extra- 
 ordinary courage and conduct have lifted him into a fixed place in the national 
 memor\' — before Savannah, in Georgia, (where these lectures were delivered,) 
 then in possession of the British forces, while gallantly sharing in the assault 
 made upon that city by the combined armies of America and France. 
 
42 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 hewn. Have we these masses, — does our material answer for 
 such purposes, — and in what quarter does it lie ? The artist, it 
 must be remembered, is a seer ! He must be able to discover 
 that which is hidden from all other eyes — which other minds have 
 not conjectured — which other persons have not sought. If he fail 
 in this, he is not the man to preserve a nation's history. You 
 may be sure he is no genius. He may be clever, and not wanting 
 in a certain sort of talent ; but, with all his cleverness, he is not 
 the person for a work like this. He is only an ordinary workman, 
 in common clay, and his achievements will turn out common- 
 places. It is in the exercise of the " vision and the faculty di- 
 vine," that the seer is made conscious of one of the leading diffi- 
 culties in the way of American romance. What portion of our 
 history remains unwritten ? What portion of it is so obscure that 
 all may not equally see ? — for, it need scarcely be said to the 
 reader, that, if the ordinary citizen is at liberty to contravene 
 your facts and dispute your premises, there is necessarily an end 
 to your story. There must be a faith accorded to the poet equal- 
 ly with the historian, or his scheme fails of effect. The privi- 
 leges of the romancer only begin where those of the historian 
 cease. It is on neutral ground alone, that, differing from the 
 usual terms of warfare, as carried on by other conquerors, his 
 greatest successes are to be achieved. 
 
 A certain degree of obscurity, then, must hang over the realm 
 of the romancer. The events of history and of time, which he 
 employs, must be such as will admit of the full exercise of the 
 great characteristic of genius — imagination. He must be free to 
 conceive and to invent — to create and to endow ; — without any 
 dread of crossing the confines of ordinary truth, and of such his- 
 tory as may be found in undisputed records. He must not ex- 
 pose himself to suspicion by his facts — he must not fear dispute 
 upon his grounds and premises. His materials must be of such 
 a kind as to leave him without danger of rebuke for impropriety ; 
 and the only laws and criteria against which he must provide, 
 must be those of good taste and probability, with such other stand- 
 ards as he himself sets up in his progress, as guages by which 
 to work, himself, and by which others are to judge of his per- 
 formances. Wlien we are told that a history is too fresh for fie- 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 43 
 
 tion, it is because of this danger that it is so. When it is object- 
 ed that America is too young for the production of a national lit- 
 erature, it is chiefly because of this difficulty, which fetters and 
 defies domestic invention. Genius dare not take liberties with a 
 history so well known, and approaches her task with a cautious 
 apprehensiveness which is inconsistent with her noblest execu- 
 tions. It is asserted of our men of letters, particularly our poets, 
 that their performances are simply English — that they have none 
 of those distinguishing traits which might separate them from 
 their great originals, and identify them immediately with the soil 
 which they claim more particularly to represent. It would, per- 
 haps, be matter of greater surprise were the fact otherwise. The 
 reasons why such should be the case, are obvious when we re- 
 member v/hat language it is we speak, and hov/ recent is the 
 period which first severed our ancestors from the great maternal 
 nation. There are yet other reasons, the examination of which 
 would carry us too largely aside, into the consideration of society 
 in general ; a task which would be equally inconsistent with our 
 duty and present limits. It is enough to say that our history is 
 English down to a very recent period — our infancy and child- 
 hood were wholly so, and such also are the most obvious traits in 
 the character of our individuals, — particularly in the southern 
 parts of the republic, where sparse settlements and the employ- 
 ments of agriculture, tenaciously retain for us the traditional pe- 
 culiarities of the race. We have a perfect right to European 
 materials in all moral respects — its histories, its achievements, 
 its great names ; and it is just as legitimate, on the part of our 
 poets, to model themselves upon the great masters of the stock to 
 which they originally belonged, and to employ their fashions and 
 develope their conditions, as it is with those whose immediate sires 
 preferred the more quiet and less courageous duty of clinging still 
 to the ancient firesides. We have all our rights, as Europeans, 
 to the stock of national character as acquired before our ances- 
 tors departed from the soil, as thoroughly as any Briton that re- 
 mains. The past is ours, of English history, so long as a com- 
 mon ancestry toiled together in its acquisition. We shared a 
 common birth, a common infancy and joint heritage, — and their 
 Chaucers and Spensers, — their Shakspeares and Miltons, — are 
 
44 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ours, down to the moment when the besotted ministry of George 
 the Third determined to spoil us of this heritage. As Americans, 
 we sprang into birth, full grown, if not in panoply. Our political 
 existence, as a nation, is not to be confounded with our existence 
 as a people. The difficulties of the critics, foreign and domestic, 
 and most of the blunders which the former make in regard to our 
 country, are almost wholly in consequence of their confounding 
 two moral propositions which are wholly irreconcilable. They 
 insist upon an originality in our characteristics which is incom- 
 patible with our condition. They assume that our peculiarities 
 must be as decidedly foreign to their own as if we were a people 
 of Owyhee, and reproach us with a likeness to themselves, when, 
 in fact, we claim those attributes and features to be as decidedly 
 our right as theirs. That we should think and write, according 
 to the examples and lessons of our ancestors, is not a whit calcu- 
 lated to impair our originality. As Americans, merely, the case 
 is different, and there are peculiarities which we may engraft 
 upon our ancient models, whether in literature or the arts, which 
 would not impair their symmetry, and would not be amiss as re- 
 gards our independence. We might also shake off some customs 
 and practices, some laws and fashions, which, brought by our 
 European ancestors to America, are yet unnatural and unfriend- 
 ly to the soil. Our parents were English, but our garments need 
 not be made by an English tailor. Our language is English, but 
 such need not be the case with our literature. Our sense of lib- 
 erty is English, but it does not follow that we might not rid our- 
 selves of some of the brutalities of English law. Our education 
 is in some respects too little, in others too much English ; and 
 many of our social and political strifes and troubles arise from 
 the strange anomaly of a republican people borrowing their edu- 
 cational forms, their laws and models, from an aristocracy — from 
 those of a nation whose objects do not seem the same as ours, and 
 whose aims and performances have been so repeatedly hostile. 
 
 Such being our history as Americans — at once brief in term 
 and deficient in independence — it is very obvious that, as a whole, 
 it will lack, for the purposes of literature, much of that important 
 obscurity — 
 
 " That little glooming light, most like a shade," 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 45 
 
 which is so necessary to the invention, and so delightful to the de- 
 sires and the instincts of the artist. That twilight of time, that 
 uncertainty of aspect and air in history, which so provokes curi- 
 osity, and so encourages doubt — that moving, morning hour, grey 
 and misty, which precedes and follows the dawn, but melts away, 
 with all its vague outlines and wondrous shadows, in the broad 
 bright blaze of the perfect day; — or that other kindred period, at 
 its close, when the imperfect shadows reappear, and, in the ob- 
 scurity of the twilight, once more leave fancy free to her sports, 
 and imagination to his audacious dreams and discoveries ; — these 
 are the periods of time, in history, which, illustrated by corres- 
 ponding periods of light and darkness, afford to the poet or the 
 artist of a nation, the proper scope for his most glorious achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 The discovery of America, and its conquest, as a history, seem 
 to have been a day perfect from the beginning. Compared with 
 ancient histories, with those of Greece and Rome and Troy, there 
 is very little of that twilight uncertainty in the events preceding 
 and attending it, which corresponds with our similitude drawn 
 from the history of our solar dawn, and which leaves the romancer 
 at liberty to conceive his schemes, and embody with courage his 
 own inventions. Our country, as a system, sprang up at once 
 before the nations, a wild and wondrous form, rich in all the at- 
 tributes of European lore, her arts, her philosophies, her religion. 
 We had to pass through no periods of probation in compassing 
 these attainments. There were none of those humanizing super- 
 stitions by which the infant heart of the nation was to be oppress- 
 ed, before it could seek for, or receive the clearer light of a per- 
 fect religious inspiration. And the wild struggles of rival chiefs, 
 the reckless passions of opposing despots, conferred upon us no 
 such numerous histories of civil conflict, such as, during the mid- 
 dle ages, furnished unnumbered themes to the eager bard and 
 novelist of every land in Europe. All this period of probation 
 and childhood, of feebleness and ignorance, of power unknown to 
 law, and laws unknown to reason or propriety, through which 
 other nations have had to pass, and by which they have been en- 
 dowed with marvellous treasures for the employment of superior 
 ages, — was denied to ours. And what was not denied of the bold, 
 
46 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the wild, the strange or the terrible, — is, unhappily for present 
 uses, a written record. We may lake no liberties with it, — ' no- 
 thing extenuate, nor set down aught' — for which there is not 
 proper authority in the state papers. We had our beginning not 
 only in an age when the intellect of Europe was every where ac- 
 tive and curious, but after the discovery of printing and when the 
 diffusion of the art had been so general, that, to see, and hear, and 
 publish, beyond recall and suppression, were operations in their 
 nature identical. These influences, while they render our facts 
 less questionable than those of other nations, for this very reason, 
 deprive the artist of his resources and his courage. Tradition is 
 denuded of his stores, and the audacity of invention is paralyzed on 
 the threshold. The poet who sings of Anglo-American achieve- 
 ments, must sing in fear and trembling, — and such a feeling, we 
 need scarcely say, is a sad weight to be carried by the Muse. 
 Her genius is nothing without her impulse, and the caution which 
 ties her wings, keeps her back from that heaven of invention, the 
 exploration of which is the only assurance for her fame. Her facts 
 must be those which inspire doubt, not those which lead to con- 
 viction ; and the narrowing records which furnish full details of 
 a history, so far from helping her progress, in the construction of 
 her divine fabrics, are, in reality, so many stumbling blocks in 
 her path. The single leading fact in her possession, or the glimpse 
 of such a fact, is worth to her ten thousand of the accompanying 
 particulars. '' It is not possible," as Lord Jeffrey somewhere sar- 
 castically remarks, " to invest with epic or tragic dignity, the 
 brigadiers of Bunker Hill or Saratoga, or to shed a poetical halo 
 round a successful cruise of Commodore Rodders or Decatur." 
 Perhaps not, and for the very reasons which we have given ; but 
 the sneer of Lord Jeffrey will equally apply to Generals Bur- 
 goyne and Cornwallis ; to Captain Dacres and Sir James Yeo. 
 The very fact that we can couple these English names with those 
 of our own countrymen, as sharing a common unfitness for the 
 purposes of poetic composition, renders it very clear that it is be- 
 cause of the proximity of the events and persons to our own times, 
 by which we are made too familiar with all the details in their 
 histories, and not because of any intrinsic defect in the material 
 itself, — that such is the case. Removed by time from any search- 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 47 
 
 'ing analysis of curious people, — with but a name, and little more 
 of a history, upon record, — a vague tradition alone declaring ,he 
 patriot hero, or the tyrannical invader — and Decatur and Dacres 
 might occupy a place in epic fiction quite as noble as that of Troi- 
 lus and Ajax. And, even now, something in the way of song and 
 story may be done with materials even so unpromising as these. 
 If they cannot furnish themes for the epic and dramatic poet, 
 they are yet not wholly ineligible to other artists ; and the lyrist, 
 and the novelist, may achieve a triumph in exercises, in which 
 the more rigid laws of the Epopee would provoke failure and 
 contempt. When Campbell sings 
 
 " Of Nelson and the North," 
 
 we do not find our poetic sensibilities set at defiance. Our tastes 
 are not offended. The theme is in unison with the strain, and we 
 acknowledge a pliancy in the rules of art, in this respect, which 
 we should fail to perceive in other branches. It might be more 
 difficult to make Nelson the hero of a drama, or of a poem, the 
 laws of which were even so indulgent as those of Scott's ballad 
 romances. We know too much of Nelson for this, and the author 
 could take no such liberties with his biography as to render his 
 deeds and character symmetrical. The song of Campbell shows 
 us his hero but at a single moment, — speaks of him rather than 
 presents him ; and, in terms of vague eulogium, clothed in poetic 
 beauty, renders him a graceful abstraction, the ideal of a hero, 
 rather than the hero whom we know — and to this we can oppose 
 no objections whether drawn from propriety or history. The 
 same personage would be susceptible of still better use in the mod- 
 ern novel. Such material would be more corrigible in the hands 
 of the artist of prose fiction. This species of composition, as it 
 combines some of the qualities of almost every species of imagina- 
 tive art, whether prose or verse, painting or statuary, so is it sus- 
 ceptible of far more various employment than any. More pliant 
 in the hands of the master, it is more universal in its appreciation 
 of the desires of the multitude. It enters more readily into the 
 general sense, and, to a certain extent, has superseded, and must 
 continue to supersede, in some degree, the uses of all others. To 
 its influence may be ascribed, in part, the decline of the drama in 
 
48 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 popular estimation ; and, it is scarcely possible that, while its 
 sway continues, there will be any return to the elaborate works 
 in poetry, which distinguished periods of less diversified forms of 
 literature. That such has been the effect of this species of com- 
 position, may be to be regretted by those who confide entirely in 
 the arbitrary manifestations of form in the classic genius ; but 
 that such is its effect and influence, must be regarded as no small 
 proof of its legitimacy as a genuine offspring of art. Insisting 
 upon this particular, we shall consider the prose romance of mod- 
 ern periods, along with the attributes of poetic art as known to 
 former ages, in discussion of the pliancy, for their common pur- 
 poses, of the materials which may be furnished by American his- 
 tory. 
 
 We have said, differing from high British authority, that 
 something, even now, might be done with our Brigadiers of the 
 Revolution. A single instance, by way of illustration, may 
 passingly be examined. We will select one the events in whose 
 history we consider particularly susceptible of use, even at this 
 early day, by the novelist ; — but by the novelist only, for the 
 mellowing hand of time is necessary to effect its entire prepara- 
 tion for the hands of other artists., whose laws are much more 
 arbitrary, and whose province is necessarily more confined. Our 
 instance shall be drawn from the most exciting period of the 
 Revolution. Our subject shall have been one of its proudest 
 spirits — a gigantic aspect in our ranks — a man who, 
 
 — "in valour proudly eminent, 
 Stood like a tower !" 
 
 His deeds shall have been of the last importance to the country. 
 They shall relate to a series of the most vivid and interesting 
 transactions — distinguished by an action, lively, painful, and 
 pathetic, — uniting the extremes of glory and of shame, the highest 
 and the lowest purposes of human ambition. We speak now 
 of the deeds and history of Benedict Arnold — of Arnold the 
 Traitor ! 
 
 Perhaps, were the question put suddenly, without concert, to 
 any group of literarj'- men, promiscuously assembled throughout 
 the United States— were they required at once to designate the 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 49 
 
 one man of the revolution, whose history beyond that of all 
 others, furnishes the most obvious materials for the romancer — 
 ttie probability is that the great majority would agree upon this 
 man ! No other series of events, in all that history, seem more 
 naturally to group themselves in the form of story. TJone were 
 of a more important character — none endowed with a more tragic 
 interest. The fate and fortunes of Benedict Arnold, are, indeed, 
 such as, beyond all others, seem meant " to point the moral and 
 adorn the tale." Brave to desperation, heroism was with him a 
 natural and noble instinct. Among the first to take up arms in 
 the cause of his country, he was the first to lead into the thickest 
 ranks of danger. Privations only seemed to heighten his capa- 
 city for endurance, while opposition warmed his valour into a 
 flame which his own streamincp blood could never extinguish . 
 Gallantly leading on the charge, vigorously heading the assault, 
 the epic hero of antiquity never presented a more exquisite 
 instance of fortitude, conduct and audacity of valour, such as 
 bestows animation upon song and imparts impulse to the creative 
 glow of the inspired genius. We behold him at Quebec and at 
 Saratoga, and still he appears the same generous and fearless 
 hero, — as bold as Hector, as unyielding as the greater Ajax. 
 What a character for the first grand opening scenes of the drama 
 — what swelling acts for the great theatres of patriotism and song I 
 — Sure, to secure the admiration of the spectator, as Arnold him- 
 self, most certainly, did, at this period, secure that of the Ameri- 
 can people. Doubtful of their great hope — suffering from priva- 
 tion — harassed by frequent defeat — it is not wonderful that the 
 brilliant career of Arnold — particularly the great share which he 
 had in winning the field of Saratoga — should have dazzled their 
 eyes and baffled their judgments. His star continued to rise in 
 the ascendant, like the sun, — 
 
 " when his beams at noon 
 
 Cubninate from the equator, — " 
 
 till, almost alone, it fixed the admiration of the people, who began 
 to regard the calmer and the colder Washington as the stalking 
 horse of the pageant — wanting in heroism as conduct, — the mere 
 presentment of the king — the Agamemnon, perhaps, but not the 
 
 5 
 
50 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Achilles — the jEneas, but not the Hector, of our Troy ! And 
 the cry runs on Arnold.* Evep those who possess an abiding 
 faith in the triie virtues and the real greatness of Washington, 
 begin to address him in the language of expostulation, such as 
 the Prince of Ithaca employs when he would provoke Achilles to 
 exertion. 
 
 " Then marvel not, thou ^eat and complete man, 
 That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax ; 
 Since tilings in motion sooner catch the eye, 
 Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee, 
 And still it might ; and yet it may again, 
 If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive. 
 And case thy reputation in thy tent." 
 
 It was the good fortune of America, as it was the true greatness 
 of Washington, that he was not impatient of himself — that he 
 could resist equally the entreaties and the arguments of friends, 
 and the goadings of his own ambition — that, heedless of the cry 
 which ran on Arnold, he could content himself, cased in his tent, 
 waiting his hour, until the time for proper action had arrived ; — 
 while his less circumspect rival, encouraged to presumption by 
 success and the adulation of blind worshippers, maddens with an 
 equal blindness ; and, first intoxicated by hope, then furious by 
 disappointment, grasps the torch of the incendiary for the destruc- 
 tion of the high temple in which he had been sworn the officiating 
 priest. His hand is lifted, but his deed still cloaked, and the hour 
 is fast speeding whose entire revolution is to bring about the 
 catastrophe, equally fatal to his honest fame, and to the liberties of 
 his country. The interest grows naturally with the struggle 
 
 * Speaking with strict propriety the cry ran on Gates, with whose name the 
 Convention of Saratoga was more particularly coupled. But, in point of fact, 
 the mere individual makes but little difference, since it was with the caution 
 and prudence of Washington, that the impatience of the public found fault. 
 His Fabian policy did not suit the impetuous tomperameiit of the people, 
 though it saved them. Besides, Arnold was the true hero in the overthrow of 
 Burgoyne, and this is now the popular conviction, though it was not so at the 
 time of the occurrences. Gates was never any thing better than a name. His 
 talents were small, and his behaviour to Washington extremely little and un- 
 worthy. 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 51 
 
 which is in progress, equally in his mind, and between the advo- 
 cates of the rival heroes. The people, like the ancient chorus, 
 clamour their wishes, and bemoan their disappointments. Unlike 
 the ancient chorus, however, they soon begin to take an active 
 part in the events of the drama. The result is doubtful. Am- 
 bition begins to rear his crest in triumph, while patriotism trembles 
 with numerous and growing apprehensions. Faction exults in 
 confidence, while affection falters in the trust which it once had in 
 the genius of Washington. For a moment — for a moment only — 
 the fate of this great nation swings doubtfully in the balance ! 
 The catastrophe follows ! — none more sudden, — none more com- 
 plete in the whole wide world of scenic exhibition. The fall of 
 a great man ! — not by death, for death is no foe to the fame that 
 is already sure in past performance ! — not by the jealous rival, or 
 the dark assassin ; — but by the rapid spreading of the single 
 plague-spot — the inherent baseness in his own soul. And such a 
 fall ! — To what utter perdition, not only of all future fame, but 
 of all past achievement — the annihilation of that hope which 
 lived in coming days and deeds, and the overthrow of those high 
 monuments which men had raised up as trophies to denote the 
 deeds already done ! A mighty, an irrevocable fall — total to the 
 hero — terrible to the spectator — like that of Lucifer — " never to 
 rise again," — yet not such a fall as would satisfy the catastrophe, 
 or furnish an appropriate denouement for the dramatic scene. A 
 fall to be stigmatized by the curses of the chorus — to be moral- 
 ized by the didactic poet into a thousand homilies for the ears of 
 reverent youth ; — but utterly insusceptible of use upon the stage 
 — having no outward action, no results corresponding with the 
 crime — no punishment which human eye might follow, propor- 
 tioned to the extent of his deserving ; — a fall of the soul rather 
 than of the frail body which it informs — a conflict of the wild, 
 benighted heart, ending in moral discomfiture and shame, — not of 
 the muscular and mighty frame overborne by superior skill and 
 power, and yielding but fighting bravely to the last. 
 
 And with what adjuncts of poetry and feeling — of tears and 
 tenderness — of pride and passion — may that dark conflict be 
 allied ! His was not the single ruin. It is coupled with the fate 
 of Andre — a mournful story of the blight of early promise. 
 
52 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Young and full of genius — loving and full of hope — brave and 
 burning with ambition — he too falls with the traitor — is dragged 
 down to the same dreadful moral death ! He perishes — a sad 
 catastrophe, — but one from which the human spectator recoils 
 with horror. The chorus must close the narrative. The scene 
 which degrades the hero must not offend the audience. Andre 
 upon the dishonouring tree, like Hector roped to the car of 
 Achilles, is a spectacle which may be spared the eyes which have 
 previously been delighted with his youth, his beauty, his generous 
 virtue, and his noble valour and devotion ! 
 
 There is surely much that is dramatic in this history. The 
 leading events, thus grouped in general terms to the entire exclu- 
 sion of details, are particularly imposing in their aspects, — many 
 of them are startling and full of consequences. The deeds of the 
 hero are as brilliant as his treason is utter and unqualified. Ai'- 
 nold was no imbecile in action. He was only so in morals. His 
 courage was unquestionable, and he exposed himself personally 
 in battle, as was the case with the valiant man in ancient war- 
 fare. His audacity was immense, and he entertained along with 
 it a love of approbation, an appetite for praise, which, had his 
 culture been of a better sort, would have been the most impas- 
 sioned love of glory. But, with all these circumstances in its 
 favour, his story, as at present known, is essentially undramatic. 
 It will not always remain so. The objections to its present 
 employment for the drama arise from our familiarity with the de- 
 tails, many of which, to make the subject available for the stage, 
 must be made to yield place to others more tractable and appro- 
 priate. When these details shall be no longer present to the 
 memories of men, — when but little more shall be remembered 
 than the bold, but impressive fact, that one among our bright and 
 shining lights, — one of the noblest in seeming and in promise, — 
 went down from our sky, in shame and darkness, at the very mo- 
 ment when all eyes were fastened upon it in hope and admiration, 
 — then, doubtlessly, the future Shakspeare of our land, — if we 
 are ever to be blessed with such an advent, — will seize upon the 
 event and shape it into some long and enduring chronicle. And 
 this he will do, however his details may vary from the history, by 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 59 
 
 no such violations of* general truth as should outrage propriety. 
 He will be conscious of no such barriers as restrain us now. He 
 will exercise such privileges of art, legitimate for his purpose, as 
 the living generations will not tolerate, and the living author, con- 
 scious of the true facts, will not venture to assert. He will de- 
 pict the hero in his day of completest triumph, — no stain upon his 
 shield, — watched, almost worshipped, by the admiring multitude, 
 and with none of those misgivings of success which embitter the 
 hopes and disturb the moral equilibrium of the ambitious nature. 
 The philosophic observer alone may be permitted to see, lurking 
 close, — possibly, in the shape of a virtue, — the single plague-spot 
 in his soul, which is destined to spread, with a rank rapidity, over 
 the growth and freshness of the better nature, — latent, however, 
 — not spreading," — perhaps not to spread, — but depending for its 
 growth or its suppression, upon the chances of a wild and never 
 to be satiated appetite for sway. Grant him what his ambition 
 seeks, and seeks worthily, and we shall see no more of his inhe- 
 rent canker. It will be wholly conquered by the triumphant vir- 
 tues, which have no need to succumb in the easy gratification of 
 his heart's prevailing passion. Such is the moral portrait of Ar- 
 nold, as he appears, and may be made to appear, in the opening 
 scenes of the drama. It may be that the future poet who thus 
 undertakes his delineation, — uninfluenced by that feeling of rev- 
 erence which fills our hearts, when we approach the great hero 
 of civilization, — will venture to delineate, as in honourable conflict 
 for the ascendancy, the rival stars of Washington and Arnold. 
 The one, calm, and cold, and haughty, in his serene pride of 
 place ; — the other, fiery and impetuous, hot with haste, spurring 
 forward, sleepless always, to that glorious eminence which the 
 jealous fate denies that he shall ever reach. It will not per- 
 haps be difficult, a hundred years hence, to make it appear that 
 Arnold was the victim of some great injustice, — to show that his 
 rightful claims were denied, — at all events, to make it appear that 
 such at least was his own conviction, — a conviction not uncom- 
 mon to the nature covetous of fame and jealous of any division, 
 however small, of those rewards of glory, on the attainment of 
 which the whole affections of his beinfj have been set. He shall 
 be baffled in these desires. He shall be defrauded of these hopes. 
 
54 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Fate shall war against him, — his best merits shall fail of their 
 fruits, — he shall aim in vain, — he shall toil honourably and with- 
 out purpose ; while the better fortunes of his rival carry him on- 
 ward, with swelling sails, in his own despite, to the haven of their 
 mutual ambition. The star of Washington rises, and gathers 
 hourly increasing lustre, in due degree as his declines from the 
 summit, — waning away, under a cruel destiny, in mockery of all 
 his merits and all his achievements. Such are the frequent vi- 
 cissitudes of fortune, and no probabilities would be violated by 
 the artist who shall thus depict, to remote ages, the career of this 
 unhappy hero. What follows from such a history ? The bitter- 
 ness of a proud heart, denied ! The misanthropy, the jaundiced 
 green of envy and mortification, discolouring to his mind all the 
 objects of his thought, and working, subtly and strongly, upon 
 that little, latent, plague-spot in his soul, till his passions break all 
 bonds, — unleashed tigers, — a gnawing fury and a howling hate 
 urging them on, scorning the reason that would guide and mock- 
 ing the power that would restrain. The temptation follows, — and 
 the fall ! That temptation may be made to work upon nobler 
 feelings than any which we are accustomed to associate with the 
 auri sacra fames ! In this respect, alone, the true history of Ar- 
 nold should be ennobled for the sympathy and commiseration of 
 less knowing periods. The tempter, clothed in the British uni- 
 form and armed with the signet of his king, shall be made to ap- 
 proach the denied and wronged ambition with the deference of 
 an admiration only so far subdued as to forbear offence, — shall 
 dilate only upon the inappreciating injustice of a country which 
 refuses to recognize and properly to honour such superior merits; — 
 shall adroitly exaggerate to the proud, vain man, the paramount 
 importance of his services, the wonder of his achievements and 
 the glory which they have rightly gathered in the world's esteem. 
 Then, by adroit insinuation, the better justice shall be shown which 
 rewards such heroism in the opposing service. It will be part 
 of the tempter's scheme to insist that the war is merely a civil 
 contest between rival parties in the same nation, — a dispute in- 
 volving only the success of contending factions, not a principle, — 
 not the liberties or safety of a people bravely contending for their 
 rights. It will not be difficult for the spectator to imagine how 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 55 
 
 such a man as the poet has already described, stung by a sense 
 of injustice and neglect, — which, in the case of merit, is the worst 
 injustice, — will give greedy ear to the solicitations and sugges- 
 tions of the tempter. Supposing the serpent to approach his task 
 with even ordinary ingenuity, it will not be difficult to see that 
 such a man, thus endowed, and with a latent defect of the moral 
 nature already shown, must fall ! Thus far, the story, even as 
 we read it now, is dramatic in its character. The difficulty lies 
 in what remains. The treason of Arnold was that of the cabinet, 
 — of the politician — and not the hero. There is no grand action, 
 addressing itself to the eye of the spectator, corresponding with 
 the extreme self-sacrifice of the subject, and the general alleged 
 importance of the events. The mere surrender of an impregna- 
 ble post, though the key of the country, — and the delivery of a 
 brave army into unmerited captivit)'", — are not events which can 
 be made imposing before an audience, however great may be 
 their real interest to the fortunes of a nation. They equally lack 
 the two greatest essentials of dramatic art, individuality of devel- 
 opment, and an action, continually rising in interest, to the close 
 of the catastrophe. The flight of Arnold from the scene, and the 
 degrading death of Andre upon it, are other difficulties which can 
 only be overcome by the dramatist who shall address himself to 
 an audience totally ignorant of or indifferent to these details — 
 which, he may then so vary as to accommodate to the requi- 
 sitions of the stage. When the grandson of the last revolu- 
 tionary soldier shall be no more, — when the huge folios which 
 now contain our histories and chronicles, shall have given way to 
 works of closer summary and more modern interest, — the artist 
 will find a new form for these events, shape all their features 
 anew, and place the persons of the drama in grouping more ap- 
 propriate for scenic action. There will be a more individual 
 character given to the history, — the general events will be thrown 
 out of sight, — the personal will be brought into conspicuous relief 
 in the foreground, — the rival heroes of the piece will be forced 
 into closer juxtaposition, and the treason, detected in the moment 
 of its contemplated execution, will be crushed by the timely in- 
 terposition of Washington himself. He will be made to have 
 seen the true nature, and to have suspected the purpose of the 
 
56 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 traitor, even from the moment of his very first lapse from honour, 
 — to have had his eyes upon the tempter, — a stern, cold, silent 
 watch, — keen and vigilant, and the more terrible from its very 
 silence and unimposing calm. His watch will have been main- 
 tained with an interest no less personal than patriotic. It will 
 not impair the character of Washington, to show that he too had 
 his ambition ; — and, serving glory as well as his country, was 
 filled with a two-fold jealousy of him who, in striving with him 
 for the one, was doing so, fatally and criminally, at the expense of 
 the other. It may be that, in the hands of the future dramatist, 
 the sword of Washington himself shall be made to do justice 
 upon the head of the traitor, — as, by a similar license, Richmond 
 slays Richard, and Macduff the usurper of Scotland, in the pres- 
 ence of the audience. It will only be doing justice to the real mer- 
 its of Arnold, to show him at least fighting bravely to the last, and 
 proving the possession of a stout spirit, even though he falls the 
 victim of a corrupt and dishonest heart. Or, with a slight varia- 
 tion from this denouement, and with some nearer approximation 
 to the historical facts, while his sword achieves the death of the 
 foreign emissary, (Andre,) his stern voice, rising pre-eminent over 
 all the sounds of battle, shall send the baffled traitor, (Arnold,) — 
 hell in his heart and curses on his lips, — to the inglorious scaf- 
 fold which the audience does not see. The fate of Andre may 
 be woven in with such a history, in the form of an under-plot, by a 
 process well known to the dramatic artist. You have but to endow 
 Arnold, or his wife, with a sister, who, won by the love of Andre, 
 shall be made the instrument for bringing about the treachery of 
 the hero. The exercise of her affections and their defeat, may 
 be employed to impart tenderness and animation to the subordi- 
 nate scenes ; while the wife of Arnold, whether described as a 
 patriotic matron, like Portia, or a woman devoted to her lord, like 
 Medora, whether " guilt's in his heart" or not, — will, like the 
 Belvidera of Jaffier, or the unsexed companion of Macbeth, fur- 
 nish all that is needful for the interest in the domestic relations of 
 the hero. Such departures from the absolute history, as are here 
 suggested, will not offend the spectator some hundred years from 
 now. They would not even now offend a British or a Continental 
 audience who know nothing more than the simple fact, — if they 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 57 
 
 know even that, — that the American Revolution was distinguish, 
 ed by one great traitor whose name was Benedict Arnold. But 
 such freedoms with details with which we are all so familiar, 
 would scarcely do with us. So fresh in our memories are all the 
 facts in this connection, that any such violations of the written 
 record would convert into a hostile critic every sturdy militiaman 
 from Maine to Mississippi. 
 
 But, even with our present familiarity with the particulars in 
 the life of Arnold, it would not be difficult for the art of the novel- 
 ist to endow them with the highest tragic interest, and to give 
 that dramatic value to his materials, which is the great distin- 
 guishing charm, in this form of composition, as it is known to re- 
 cent times. This could be done without comincr into conflict, in 
 the smallest degree, with the written history. In this fact we are 
 led to see how very superior are the privileges of the prose ro- 
 mancer. His realm is wider and more various in its possessions. 
 His wing is more excursive. He possesses a right of way into re- 
 gions in which other artists possess not — by reason of their own 
 self-made impediments — even a right of entrance. The laws by 
 which he is bound are less rigid and restraining. He may be 
 tragic or comic as he pleases. He may depict in action, or de- 
 scribe in narrative as best suits his purpose. He may employ dia- 
 logue in such portions of his work as suggests the use of dramatic 
 materials, and, when the action subsides, be simply narrative and 
 descriptive ; while, serving as Coryphoeus, he may provoke 
 among his auditors a personal interest in himself, by the running 
 commentary with which he delineates the characters, and dis- 
 courses upon the moral of the events which he relates. He is 
 neither limited by localities nor by time ; — nor bound, as 
 in the case of the dramatist, to concentrate his interest upon 
 the fortunes of some one conspicuous personage. He may 
 carry his story through a period of many years, — may con- 
 duct his actors into many countries, — may indulge in numer- 
 ous digressions, — may require the sympathies of his audience 
 for many persons at the same time, and does not need to haz- 
 ard his strength upon those events only which conduce to the 
 catastrophe. In brief, the art of the novelist enables him to con- 
 form his writings more nearly to the form and aspect of events 
 
58 VIEWS AND REVIEW^. 
 
 as they really happen, than can ever be the case with the dra- 
 matist and poet, — and this very conformity to nature is a source 
 of vast freedom and flexibility. His laws are not only less arbi- 
 trary than those of other artists, but his privileges combine, in 
 turn, those of all the rest. He may contend with the painter in 
 the delineation of moral and natural life, — may draw the portrait, 
 and colour the landscape, as tributary to the general vraisemblance 
 which is his aim. He may vie with the poet in the utterance of 
 superior sentiment and glowing illustration and description ; with 
 the dramatist in his dialogue and exciting action ; with the his- 
 torian and philosopher, in his detail and analysis of events and 
 character. Shall we doubt the legitimacy, or marvel at the prog- 
 ress, of an art, which, while asserting these high powers, not 
 only of its own, but in common with other arts, — conforms, in its 
 delineations, more decidedly than any other, to the various as- 
 pects of man, and nature, and society ? It is not improbable, in- 
 deed, as has elsewhere been suggested, that the decay of the 
 drama, as a popular amusement, is, in some degree, to be attrib- 
 uted to the general prevalence in modern and recent periods of 
 this species of composition. An inquiry into the facts necessary 
 to this suggestion, would be one of immense interest, but would 
 lead us greatly aside from our present argument. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 THE FOUR PERIODS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 We have passed over many topics, illustrative of our subject, 
 suggestively, and without seeking to discuss them. Our limits 
 would not suffer more. Having intimated to you that the poet 
 and romancer are only strong where the historian is weak, and 
 can alone walk boldly and with entire confidence in those dim 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 59 
 
 and insecure avenues of time which all others tremble when they 
 penetrate ; having arrived at the conclusion that, in the employ, 
 ment of historical events, for the purposes of art in fiction, a con- 
 dition of partial obscurity and doubt in history being that which 
 Jeaves genius most free to its proper inventions, is the one which 
 is most suitable for its exercise ;-;— it becomes necessary, if possible, 
 to ascertain and to define those periods in our history which 
 are most distinguished by this palpable obscurity — which are 
 the most coupled with this condition of picturesque doubt 
 and uncertainty — ^and which, hereafter, or even now, may be 
 found most eligible for the uses of the muse. This suscepti- 
 bility of the materiel of fiction, is, of course, a matter of degree. 
 The real genius wants but little of the absolute in fact upon 
 which to work. It is his rare endowment to subject the most 
 stubborn events to his purposes — to mould the most incorrigible 
 forms, and, out of truths the most ungracious and little promising, '"^ 
 to evolve the most imposing and delightful fabrics. A happy 
 thought, an inspired fancy, brings out to his mind the form and 
 the colour in the mass, and teaches him to throw off the incum- 
 brance, and in what way to relieve from its impediments, the ex- 
 quisite ideal that his imagination has pictured in the rock. But, 
 even for him the way may be made smooth, as the French and 
 Italian novelists opened paths for Shakspeare. The grosser diffi- 
 culties of the work may be overcome, and some of the barriers 
 thrown down, though by the rudest workman, for the uses of the 
 mightiest master. 
 
 To facilitate our examination of this subject, we propose to 
 divide the history of our country into four unequal periods. This 
 division, however arbitrary it may seem, is one tbat belongs nat- 
 urally to our modes of progress, and would suggest itself to the 
 most casual inquirer into the moral steps by which we attain the 
 several successive epochs in our national career. The first period 
 should comprise the frequent and unsuccessful attempts at colo- 
 nization in our country by the various people of Europe — the 
 English, French and Spaniards — from the first voyage of the Ca- 
 bots, under Henry the Seventh, — and should include all subse- 
 quent discovery and exploration, by whatever people, down to 
 the permanent settlement of the English in Virginia. This pe- 
 
60 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 riod involves a term of seventy-five years, and abounds in roman- 
 tic detail and interesting adventure. This was a time when the 
 fountains of the marvellous seemed every where to be opened upon 
 mankind — when, on the eve of wonderful discoveries in the natu- 
 ral, the people of Christendom lent a greedy ear to every sort of 
 legend which held out similar assurance in the spiritual world — 
 when popular faith reposed without a doubt upon the very bosom 
 of fancy, and sucked in the wildest superstitions from the breast 
 of the most prolific invention ; — when the search after the improb- 
 able and the impossible prompted a singular disregard to the 
 wonders that were real and every where growing, broad cast, 
 around the very footsteps of adventure. All the pulses of mortal 
 imagination seemed to have quickened at this period under a like 
 maternal influence. Man was alive and eager in the thirst after 
 great truths, and his progress was in due correspondence with the 
 ambitious and restless nature of his desires. If he found not ex- 
 actly what he sought, he yet laid his hand upon treasures which 
 time has shown him were inappreciable in value. The real ad- 
 vantages of printing were then for the first time beginning to dis- 
 play themselves. The great but degraded masses were slowly 
 realizing its fruits, and the popular imagination seemed to expand 
 with new wings and eyes, dilating in the far survey of its newly 
 opened possessions, in all the provinces of art and office. It will 
 be sufficient to illustrate from one department for the rest — to 
 show, by the achievements of the muse — as we well may — how 
 active, on a sudden, had grown that impatient genius of uprising 
 Europe (in England at least,) to which the present owes so many 
 trophies and delights. The period we have indicated was the great 
 period in the literary history of Great Britain — vulgarly and im- 
 properly called the Elizabethan period. We have but to name 
 the masters of that day — to point to Marlowe, Ben Jonson and 
 Shakspeare ; — to Spenser and to Sidney ; to Bacon, and to him — a 
 genius no less noble than hapless — whom Spenser has so felici- 
 tously called the " Ocean Shepherd." Never was era, in any 
 country, more rich than this, in the one designated — in the abun- 
 dant variety, the matchless beauty, the masculine pathos, the 
 grace, the strength and the originality of its productions. Nay, 
 never was period half so rich. What was true of its poetry, was 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 61 
 
 scarcely less true in otlier respects. Li fact, it is usually a pe- 
 riod most rich in poetry, that is most prolific in progress and dis- 
 covery. The offices of the imagination are much more various 
 than men ordinarily suppose. It is her eye and her wing that guide 
 and impel genius in all of her departments. It is her sensibili- 
 ties that quicken the impatient pulses of all adventure — her yearn- 
 ings that prompt the hopes, and warm the courage of the builder 
 and the battler, whether his province be the conquest of empires, 
 or the more humble desire which contents itself with the plant- 
 ing of towns and the rearing of shrubs and gardens. The spirit 
 therefore which constitutes the soul of poetry, and urges the un- 
 wearied labours of the poet, is shared in some degree by all who 
 work, in all the branches of human industry. The labour which 
 is undertaken con amore, is a labour which originates in the im- 
 agination solely ; and we shall take but an imperfect view of the 
 European mind, as exhibited in what may be termed the more 
 national progress of the age indicated, if we fail to see in it the 
 strong proofs of sympathy with that more ethereal working of spirit, 
 in the same nation, to which we are indebted for its poetry and 
 art. Kindred with the poetry of a race is its religion : and this 
 also was a period when, in England, under the impulse of a fresh- 
 er spiritual yearning, the religion of the age, taking its direction 
 from the unregulated passions of the popular mind, grew more 
 than usually active in the great struggle with the inner world — 
 when, the same imagination, unschooled and untutored in the 
 popular mood, grew wild with misdirected enthusiasm — when, ac- 
 cordingly, the dark spirits seemed to receive a call to new exer- 
 tions in consequence of the dangers from this very passionate ac- 
 tivity of the common mind — when there were witches in the land 
 — sorcerers needing to be baffled — devils to be cast forth — all an- 
 grily striving for continued possession of their ancient strong-holds 
 in the troubled heart of man. A transition state, in a people, is 
 thus always one of excited imagination. All the waters become 
 lurbid. But their commotion, though in storm, is the proof of 
 new and more hopeful life. It is the sign of a new spirit abroad. 
 There are clouds — there is blackness — gloom in the sky — error 
 on the face of the land — but the winds and the waters sweeten 
 themselves by progress, and the thunderbolt which rends the spire, 
 
62 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 purifies the atmophere which envelopes the stagnant city. In the 
 history of the being whose law of life is eternal progress — from 
 province to province, and from empire to empire — it is the calm 
 alone that we have any need to fear. 
 
 The vigorous wing put on by the mind of Europe in the six- 
 teenth century, might well lead the nation into cloud and frequent 
 obscurity. And thus it is that we find King James — a sovereign 
 who shared the excursive imagination of his age, without its judg- 
 ment — writing with equal enthusiasm against witches and tobacco. 
 His superstitions were those of wiser men who did not share in 
 his antipathies. Thus, and then it was, that Bacon had his super- 
 stitions also — that Columbus meditated the restoration of the Holy 
 City, and dreamed of the Golden Chersonesus — when Marco Polo 
 was the popular authority — when Sir John Maundeville was the 
 very ideal of the traveller — when Raleigh asserted the existence 
 of the Anthropophagi, and told of a people who wore their eyes 
 in their shoulders, and carried their heads under their arms. 
 
 Every working age and people must have their superstitions. 
 Their superstitions are at the bottom of the work and impel it. 
 But for the exaggerations of the imagination, we should lose the 
 chief incentives to endeavour. It is by these that we are deluded 
 to achievement. The objects which reward our toil, are not those 
 which provoke it. The chemist was first a seeker after the phi- 
 losopher's stone. It was pursuing Raphael that he met with 
 Hermes. We must be careful then, in all our studies of the ac- 
 tual, in the history of the past, not to forget the apparent, by 
 which it was enveloped as in a luminous garment, dazzling the 
 eye from afar, and inviting the enterprise. The superstition is 
 *not the less a part of the religion, because, when we have attained 
 to the real, we can separate it from the luminous atmosphere by 
 which it was made to loom out upon the imagination. The faith 
 of a time, by which a people works, is a truth, though it teaches 
 ' many falsehoods. The artist who would employ the materials of 
 American history for his purposes, must be an earnest student of 
 the lore — must warmly sympathize with the spirit — by which all 
 Europe was governed at the same corresponding period. There 
 are no absurdities in a time, when a people is alive and in action, 
 which the true philosopher can despise. The absurdity which 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 63 
 
 moves the national heart, has always a real foundation, and, to 
 the writer of fiction, it affords the best material by which to work 
 upon the hearts, and lessen the superstitions of other periods and 
 people. He must seek deeply to imbue himself with all the 
 workings of their spiritual nature — what they hoped and what 
 they dreaded — how deep were their terrors, how high their an- 
 ticipations. It is in the god and..the deyil of a race that you can 
 behold the truest ptclifre of themselves. Here you may see the 
 extent of their ambition, the degree of purity in their hearts, the 
 things that they are, and the things which are dearest to their 
 pursuit. These subjects, in English history, from the time of the 
 Eighth Henry to the First Stuart, will be best read in the records 
 of the courts, and in the dramatic literature of the same period. 
 They should be studied by him who seeks to turn to account our 
 first American period in history. The analysis of the properties, 
 of the constituents and causes of national character, belongs to the 
 first duties of the philosophical poet, and is absolutely essential to 
 the successful labours of any architect who would build his fabric 
 out of the materials of history. This analysis of the time of 
 which we speak, will lead, as we have already said, to those 
 wonders, crude and shapeless, which, embodied in the faith of the 
 past, may become, made symmetrical by the hands of imaginative 
 art, a wondrous study for the future. The popular credulity is 
 so much fairy-land itself — a land of twilight and uncertain shad- 
 ows — to every shooting star of which a name and office may be 
 given, and whose phosphorescent ignes fatui, may each, in turn, 
 be translated to a star. 
 
 Our second period should comprise the history and progress of 
 British settlement down to the accession of George the Third, and 
 to the beginning of those aggressions upon the popular liberties in 
 America, which ended in the revolutionary conflict. It will be 
 readily seen what a marked difference of characteristic is that of 
 this period in comparison with the preceding. The discovery of 
 the country has been made, and there is an end to speculation on 
 the subject of those wonders which the popular credulity of Eu- 
 rope was prepared to see. America was no longer El Dorado ! 
 —or. if it was recognized as substantially possessing a claim to 
 be considered a land of golden treasure, it was only among that 
 
64 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 sober, second-thoughted few, whose expectations were based upon 
 the effects of sturdy labour and industrious enterprise. The idle 
 exploration which set forth on adventures in the vain hope to real- 
 ize its own dreams, had given way to a cooler and more reason- 
 able pioneer ; and the steel which had been employed by the one 
 for the slaughter of the savage, was employed by the other in lay- 
 ing their forests bare to cultivation. The truth remained — a great 
 truth — but freed from its superstition. The romance which gave 
 impulse to the wing of adventure was happily diminished, and 
 what remained, though of a character which might still excite in 
 a subdued period, was of far more phlegmatic character. But it 
 still possessed the features of romance, was still full of aspects 
 highly novel, persuasive and interesting, to the European. Ad- 
 venture was no longer a phrenzy. It had become a duty. The 
 explorer did not so much seek for gold, but he sought for that 
 which was still more precious — freedom. It was not the con- 
 quest of a mighty empire that was in his aim — it was a home — a 
 secure and happy homestead that won his hopes and stimulated 
 his enterprises. If he no longer went forth glittering in armour, 
 and to the sound of the trumpet, there was yet a stateliness in his 
 simplicity, a nobleness and a majesty in his firm aspect — a glory 
 in his strength and hardihood — a brightness in his hope and a 
 beauty in his faith — such as might well beseem the classical 
 simplicity of subject as chosen by the old Grecian masters — such 
 as might well be chosen to adorn and give dignity to the choicest 
 annals of future song. His career will be found not without its 
 attractions. The adventure of a life in the wilderness — the lone- 
 ly travel through unbroken forests — the musing upon the tumu- 
 lus of ancient and unbroken tribes — the conflict with the wolf, 
 and the midnight whoop of the savage — these are all incidents, 
 which, however hacknied they may seem, shall yet be grouped 
 in happiest combination by the hand of genius. The period of 
 which we now speak was full of incident — a rare life, teeming in 
 animation and exertion, derived from sources of this character — 
 from the inevitable progress of the Anglo-Norman — from the in- 
 evitable fate of the Indian — a fate as relentless as that of the vic- 
 tim in the Grecian drama, and which, coupled with the history 
 of his own gods, may be wrought into forms as nobly statuesque 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 65 
 
 as any that drew a nation's homage to the splintered summits of 
 Olympus. Following this almost individual struggle of the white 
 man with the red, a larger field opens upon us. The conflict is 
 no longer individual. New interests have arisen, and Christian 
 Europe fmds it politic to send her rival armies across the waters, 
 in search of battle grounds, upon the soil of heathen America. 
 How strange the sight to the savage — that of war to the knife, 
 waged for supremacy between opposing nations in a realm so re- 
 mote from their own several empires, and upon which they have 
 scarce won foothold. Beneath the same sign of mercy and of 
 blessing, he sees them encounter with hate and curses. He 
 sees, but is not suffered to look on unemployed. He is marshalled 
 in the opposing ranks, and, under the banners of the Cross, the 
 singular and sad spectacle is presented to our eyes of the Chris- 
 tian employing the savage for the murder of his brother Christian. 
 Those old French and Spanish wars, involving the fine trials of 
 strength between Wolfe and Montcalm, the feebler warfare in 
 which Braddock fell, and, nearer home, the frequent conflicts of 
 Virginia, Carolina and Georgia, with the Apala chiantribes, in- 
 fluenced to hostility by the machinations of French and Spanish 
 leaders — are all so many vast treasure-stores of art — stores which 
 you may work upon for ages, yet leave still unexhausted to the 
 workmen of succeeding ages. This period, dating from the set- 
 tlement of Virginia to the beginning of the popular discontents in 
 the reign of George the Third, will be found to comprise a term 
 of nearly two hundred years. 
 
 A tliii'd division would cover the preliminaries to the revolutionary 
 war — preliminaries which are not always to be found originating 
 in the aggressions of the British parliament, but will be traced to 
 the increasing power of the colonies, and their reluctance at be- 
 ing officered from abroad — the sentiment of independence grow- 
 ing in their feelings long ere it ripened into thought, and making 
 them jealous of, and hostile to, their foreign governors and officers, 
 long before the popular will had conceived any certain desire of 
 separation. The same period would carry us through the war of 
 the revolution, and include our brief passages of arms with the 
 Barbary powers and with France under the Directory. For the 
 merits of this period, in serving the purposes of art, we have but to 
 
 6 
 
66 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 refer you to the partisan conflict in the South — the wars of rifle- 
 men and cavalry, the sharp shooter and the hunter, and the ter- 
 rible civil conflicts of whig and tory, which, for wild incident and 
 daring ferocity, have been surpassed by no events in history. 
 
 A fourth and last period would bring us to the present time, in- 
 clude our transition experience from the colonial to the republican 
 condition, illustrate the progress of interior discovery and settle- 
 ment, comprise our Indian wars, the settlement of Kentucky and 
 Ohio, the acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, the war of 1812 
 with Great Britain ; the conquest of Texas, and the final and 
 complete conversion to the purposes of civilized man, of that vast 
 wild tract, that 
 
 " Boundless contiguity of shade," 
 
 spreading away from the Altamaha to the Rio Bravo ! 
 
 These tracts of time, indicated according to these divisions, may 
 not be equally fruitful and diversified. The materials differ in 
 character, but are in all sufficiently abundant. The future ro- 
 mancer will find them so. With the future Homer, the thousand 
 barbarian tribes by which these woods and wilds were traversed 
 before the coming of our ancestors — their petty wars, their various 
 fortunes, their capricious passions, their dark-eyed women, their 
 favourite warriors — will, like those of Greece, be made immortal 
 on the lips of eternal song. Their dark and gloomy mythologies — 
 not gloomier nor less pleasing than those of the Scandinavian — 
 will receive some softening lights, some subduing touches, from 
 the all-endowing spells of genius, which shall make them quite as 
 imposing, if not so graceful and ethereal, as those of the people 
 who prostrated themselves in worship along the banks of the Pe- 
 neus. The future descendants of our line, stretching along the 
 great blue heights of the AUeghanies, may be persuaded and fond 
 to believe that they sprang from the loins of two mighty and rival 
 races — the one, the fierce ViKingr of the northern ocean, — and 
 not less fierce but less adventurous, some haughty Mico or Cas- 
 sique of Apalachy — the Powhatan, the Pontiac, or the Tecumseh 
 of future romance.* 
 
 * To those who read and confide in the claims set up by Professor Rafn, 
 and others, to the first discovery and partial settlement of America by the 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 67 
 
 We leave these speculations for another time. Having indica- 
 ted our separate eras, as suggestive, each of separate resources, 
 and suitable, severally, for distinct kinds of illustration, we will 
 devote the rest of our essay to a brief examination of such speci- 
 mens, from these materials, as occur to us, passingly, as proper 
 subjects for the exercise of art. These are by no means limited 
 during the first of our epochs. We consider the whole history of 
 discovery, as commenced by the Northmen, as pursued by Co- 
 lumbus, and followed by the Portuguese and Spanish nations 
 with a religious sort of enthusiasm that partook of the aspects of 
 a sacred fury, to be, in itself, a long and wonderful romance — 
 furnishing resources the most ample, events the most startling — 
 sometimes grand, frequently pathetic and always picturesque 
 and new : — in almost all of their details, suitable for the poet, and 
 requiring for successful elaboration less of genius than of taste. 
 The artist will need to study the events of this period, not as a 
 narrow student of the events themselves, but in all their connec- 
 tions. The collateral histories must be familiar to his mind. He 
 must exercise the philosophic vision which looks deeply down, for 
 the sources of mere facts, into the hearts of the people whom they 
 concern. A profound inquiry into the moral and social character- 
 istics of the several nations engaged in these discoveries — the 
 English, French, Spanish and Portuguese — is an absolutely in- 
 dispensable preliminary. Above all, he must feel their religious 
 characteristics, in his own spirit, before he can boldly enter upon 
 the delineation of the spirit of their time ! This, alone, can lead 
 to a just comprehension of their various motives — their strange 
 phrenzies — their implicit faith — their sleepless jealousies — their 
 fanatic enthusiasm — their curious inconsistency of performance 
 — and the singular union, so frequently found in the same per- 
 sonage, of so much that is base and bloody, with so much that is 
 magnanimous and great ! With this preparatory knowledge, the 
 artist possesses that " open sesame" of character, without which, 
 
 Northmen, long before the voyages of Columbus, there is nothing extravagant 
 in this conjecture. On the contrary, the traditions of the northern savans are 
 exceedingly plausible, and the poet will make no scruple of insisting upon 
 them if his scheme and genius leads him to their use. The material is sufl- 
 ceptible of admirable handling. 
 
68 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 as he could not comprehend, himself, he could never make his 
 readers feel, the truth or the propriety of those anomalies which 
 would otherwise be crowded in his story. For there is yet a la- 
 tent probability at the bottom of all that is extravagant among the 
 absolute performances of man ; and it becomes a first duty of the 
 philosophical artist to search out, and to find, this latent probabil- 
 ity, as a key positively essential to the analysis of his subject. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 THE EARLY SPANISH VOYAGERS. HERNANDO DE SOTO AS A SUBJECT 
 
 FOR ROMANCE. 
 
 From the first dawning of that era of discovery which led the 
 European to our shores, the aspects were strange and strangely 
 beautiful. We may compare them to those of a day, dim, indis- 
 tinct, perhaps dark with many clouds at first ; — illumined only 
 by occasional flashes of summer lightning ; — growing gradually 
 clearer with the day's advance, — the clouds passing off slowly to 
 the distant west, and the gay, bright, oriental sun finally looking 
 down, with the smile of a satisfied conqueror, over the new 
 empires which have submitted to his sway. What happy flights 
 of song, — what bursts of admiration, — may be supposed to have 
 flowed from the spontaneous Frenchman as he watched the prog- 
 ress of this day of revelation in the new world ; — and how did 
 the solemn and swelling soul of the Spaniard dilate with im- 
 measurable emotions as he sang Te Deum from the wild and 
 narrow heights of Darien. The very conception of such a scene 
 — the presence of the conqueror, not only in a world which he 
 has conquered, but a world which, so far as he knows, has just 
 come from the forming hands of God — looking down upon new 
 oceans, — beholding a new and subject race, approaching him with 
 a reverence which, in turn, almost makes him feel himself a 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 69 
 
 God ! — such a scene is a wondrous story in itself, — a story to 
 burn upon the canvas, and breathe in life and beauty from the 
 chiselled lips of stone ! And how many scenes like these — what 
 vast materials are here, — not only for brief description and happy 
 apostrophe, but for elaborate and numerous verse ! There are 
 the voyages of Verazzani, of Cartier, of Roberval, of De la 
 Roche, and Champlain ; — and the history and fate of the French 
 settlements in Acadie, form a lovely story to themselves which 
 may be made the parent of a race of lovely stories. But a still 
 richer and riper interest attends the history of Spanish discovery 
 in our own immediate neighbourhood.* Conspicuous as the firsi, 
 Ponce de Leon was not less conspicuous among the discoverers, 
 when we reflect upon the motive of his adventure. In his mind's 
 eye rose ever the image of a mysterious fountain ; its springs in 
 earth, its wondrous properties directly caught from Heaven. The 
 fountain of perpetual youth ! Waters of life, and youth, and 
 unfading beauty ! What a dream of poetry was this ! — none 
 more delicious, none more chaste, or noble, in the whole compass 
 of ancient fable. But the dream was a faith Jn those days, 
 w^hich, if it led not to the-thrng^l fancied, ledTo^'objects and dis- 
 coveries scarcely less wondrous ; and the fountain of youth and 
 eternal beauty which inspired the adventure of Ponce de Leon, 
 may not seem wholly an irrational vision if we regard it as an 
 allegory, promising to the nations a new empire for the liberty of 
 the intellectual man. It may be held as the image of other moral 
 objects scarcely less grateful and attractive when we remember 
 that the infant was already in the cradle whose future fearless 
 voice was destined to shake the mitred city upon her seven-hilled 
 foundations.! In those days of gloom, gorgeous and romantic, 
 the image of a glorious fountain rising suddenly upon the land- 
 scape, throwing up amidst the dark ancestral shade trees of a 
 thousand years, the gracious and bright waters of a new principle 
 and promise,— drops of pearl and diamond, — drops of fire and of 
 light — sparkling with myriad scintillations, — blessing with fresh- 
 ness, and an odour that might well have been caught from rosy 
 clouds hanging close about the heights of Heaven ! — such a fancy 
 
 * Speaking for the State of Georgia. t Martin Luther. 
 
70 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 might well allegorize and declare the approaching enlargement 
 of the moral aim, and the religious action of the age ; and such a 
 fountain might appropriately grow in the new hemisphere, since 
 the spiritual hopes of men depend so greatly upon the political 
 freedom and the social comforts which they are permitted to 
 enjoy. It is from its faith, even in such visions, that a people 
 advances to achievement. It is from such fancies that the poet 
 plucks his richest chaplets of romance and song. His mines of 
 legendary lore are there — his brightest pendants and pearls of 
 fancy ! — and there they still lie awaiting his spells to unveil, 
 awaiting his hand to gather, — the waters untasted, the fruits 
 unplucked, — unsought and unregarded — along the melancholy 
 shores of Florida. Shall the witch hazel conduct any of our 
 brothers, in our time, to these precious but unvalued treasures ? 
 Shall we see these jewels of Tampa glittering around the brows 
 of our triumphant minstrel ? Shall none of us behold, — shall 
 none of us partake them ? Will there come after us the Bards 
 who shall grow great and glorious in spoils which might have 
 been ours, and mock that blindness which leaves to them, what 
 had given to us the perfect realization of the very faith which 
 moved the enterprise of Ponce de Leon — youth, life and per- 
 petual beauty ? We must not wait for the answer ! 
 
 The fate of Ponce de Leon — the fading of his dream of youth 
 — the baffling of his fervent and phrenzied hope — the pang of his 
 defeat — the loss of his life, — these are things of which the artist 
 may weave the most beautiful forms and substances which shall 
 delight the souls of coming generations. We pass over the 
 adventures of Diego Miruelo, of Grijalva, and Garay. We must 
 pass without regard other names, which, hereafter, shall be 
 guide-stones to many a buried treasure. We can only sample 
 from the vast masses which lie around us. We linger for an 
 instant upon the two voyages of Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, since 
 his adventures have for us a local interest, and would of them- 
 selves furnish materials for a story equally picturesque and tragic. 
 The scene of his story is in our immediate neighbourhood. His 
 business was that of a piracy which cupidity had legalized. He 
 enters the waters of the Combahee in Carolina, beguiles the 
 unsuspecting natives on board his vessel, and suddenly sets sail 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 71 
 
 carrying two hundred of them into captivity. One of his vessels 
 founders with the loss of crew and captives. Such of the latter 
 as survive are doomed to perpetual bondage in the slave markets 
 of Hayti. But his profits far exceed his losses, and he determines 
 upon a repetition of the game. His lionourable achievement is 
 rewarded by his monarch with a commission which confers upon 
 him exclusive powers of robbery along the shores which he has 
 already ravaged. He prepares himself for the conquest of the 
 country, and appropriating his whole foftudie to the enterprise, 
 descends with a powerful fleet to his cruel work. But he came 
 not to conquer. He was destined, under the decree of a mightier 
 monarch, to a far different reward. As if by the overruling will 
 of Providence, his largest vessel was stranded in the very river 
 where his first crime had been committed. In the moment of 
 storm and peril, while his people are struggling in the waters of 
 the sea, they are set upon by the natives of the country. Mercy 
 is none for the unmerciful, and the people of Combahee amply 
 avenged themselves in the blood of the pirates. But few escaped 
 the slaughterous hands of the savage, and we may fancy the 
 wild whoop of the red man, as, with hand wreathed in the hair of 
 his victim, and knife at his throat, he recognized the pale features 
 of the mercenary spoiler who had dragged from him, into hopeless 
 foreign captivity, the sister or the brother of his love. The pecu- 
 liar fate of De Ayllon is left in doubt, but is supposed to have 
 been suited to his deserts. That he perished here is understood. 
 The tradition is that, less fortunate than his comrades, he was 
 made captive by the Indians, and reserved for the terrific horrors 
 of the fiery torture. At all events, whatever may have been the 
 manner of his death, it is involved in that happy obscurity which 
 leaves the poet at perfect liberty so to shape his catastrophe as to 
 adapt it to the general exigencies of his story. 
 
 The fortunes of Pamphilo de Narvaez, interesting as they may 
 be made in the hands of a skilful artist, will not detain us; but 
 passing rapidly over our records, we pause and linger upon the 
 history of an expedition, of which, it appears to us, the material 
 for romance is at once conspicuous and complete. Hernando de 
 Soto was an accomplished cavalier and an ambitious warrior. 
 He had won the laurels of battle, — he had won the favours of the 
 
72 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 court. He was generally regarded as a fine ideal of the noble 
 Spanish gentleman ! A courtier in high esteem, the smiles of 
 beauty had not enfeebled his military enterprise. As a compan- 
 ion of the famous Pizarro, he had acquired high reputation in 
 Peru ; — had surpassed his comrades in valour, and returned to 
 Spain equally fortunate in the spoils and the honours of adventure. 
 But these do not suffice. He is unsatisfied. The glorious deeds 
 of Cortes and Pizarro keep him feverish and sleepless ; and he is 
 seized with the fancy of finding, in Florida, a second Tenochtitlan 
 or Peru. Florida, in that day, it must be remembered, was con- 
 sidered, par excellence, the peculiar world of romance. A melan- 
 choly cloud-land it was, not the less suited because it was cloud- 
 land, for the purposes of fiction. Its sun-bright hues and sullen 
 shadows, mingled in singular unison, seemed to promise the pos- 
 session of vast and mysterious treasures. V^ashed by the blue 
 waters of the Gulph, itself a wonder — its shores dotted with 
 innumerable little, sudden uprising islands, that lay like so many 
 bright gems along the surface of the deep — its margins covered 
 with rich wild flowers that perfumed the summer breezes an 
 hundred miles from land — its forests, and green tracts of equal 
 sea and forest* — filled with birds of strangest voice and most 
 glorious plumage, that rose in flight, at the approach of the 
 stranger, almost unscared in chattering clouds whose wings 
 seemed borrowed of the rainbow and the sun : — these, and other 
 wondrous peculiarities, were only so many proofs of an indefinite 
 and attractive promise. Surely, said the European, — surely, 
 there are great cities, empires like those of Peru and Mexico, 
 hidden deep among these mighty retreats of shadow. These 
 dark grey mountains along the Apalachian chain, are surely 
 fruitful in the precious minerals and metals ! Such were the 
 convictions of ©e Soto, — and, with a mighty train, — men in 
 armour — shining with the rich plumage and gay panoply of a 
 court, — wearing the spurs of knighthood, and decorated with the 
 favours of beauty — a thousand noble cavaliers ! — he set forth, as 
 if upon some pleasant masquerade, — some gay carnival procession 
 — to explore those dark, mysterious forests, — to find out those hid- 
 
 * The Eveirgladee. 
 
• HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 73 
 
 den cities of the Floridian — to conquer their wild, plume-browed 
 warriors, and to dive, with greedy haste, into the bowels of their 
 treasure-keeping mountains. From first to last, his progress is a 
 long and touching story. Seeking empire, his first step is made 
 upon the neck of affection ! He heeds neither the prayers, nor 
 the tears of love, and dreaming only of the sordid objects of his 
 search, he tears himself away from the wife of his bosom. 
 Such are the usual sacrifices which diseased ambition is called 
 upon to make. It is not wealth, nor life merely, that he 
 risks. He sets at hazard the dearer treasures of love in his 
 insane search after more precious jewels, — as if any jewels 
 of the sight deserved to be named as precious with the price- 
 less jewels of the heart ! What must have been his parting with 
 that wife ! How touching, — if he held in her heart the same high 
 place which he seems to have held in the hearts of all others. She, 
 — sinkins: forward, sinkino- downward, in her agony — with out- 
 stretched arms, and streaming eyes which vainly strain and fol- 
 low, long after the white sails have set which bear iiim forever 
 from her sio;ht. He, — looking only alonor his path — hurryingr 
 his departure, — proud in hope, and flinging from him the sweet 
 restraints of love with as much haste as if they had been so 
 many fetters keeping him back from his true performance. Thus 
 he passes from Cuba to the sea, and our next scene beholds him 
 descending upon the lonely shores of Tampa, — that wild but love- 
 ly region, whose subdued but picturesque beauties have been mar- 
 ried to a sweet song by one of our own Southern minstrels.* 
 But the plaintive musings of our Bard are not those of the fierce, 
 ambitious Spaniard. The thoughts of De Soto do not dwell on 
 the decay of mortal life, or the disappointments of human hearts. 
 These are musings from which he rather shrinks, whether in 
 scorn or self-rebuke, as by no means suited to the purpose in his 
 soul or the adventure which lies before him. If his mind medi- 
 tates at all upon the blue waters of the gulf as they break, 
 mournfully sounding, upon 
 
 " Tampa's desert strand," 
 
 it is with no moral contemplation. He thinks only of the golden 
 
 * Richard Henry Wilde. 
 
74 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 treasures which they wash, and of the proud, opulent cities which 
 are supposed to lie, hidden deep, annong the far hills and forests 
 from which their tributary streams descend. A fearless and high- 
 spirited warrior, there is a touch of lofty character, visible even 
 in the most mercenary movements of his mind. Uninfluenced by 
 any such necessity as governed Cortes — for the soldiers of De 
 Soto shared in all his hopes and expectations, and eagerly adopt- 
 ed the adventure, — he yet emulates that admirable conqueror in 
 one of the grandest acts of his life. De Soto does not destroy his 
 shipping, but he as effectually deprives himself of its help. He 
 dismisses it, — peremptorily commands its return to Cuba, leaving 
 himself no means of flight. It was not that he distrusted his peo- 
 ple or himself. It was in the dilatings of a proud soul that he 
 thus resolved, emulous of a career and deeds like those of Cortes 
 and Pizarro. He will not suffer any feeble longings for home to 
 baffle his ungovernable ambition and, depriving himself of all mo- 
 tive to fear, cutting himself off* from all succour, he turns his 
 back upon the vacant sea, and gives the signal for his march to 
 conquest. To this moment, all is bright and encouraging before 
 his eyes. Who, looking on such an array, — a thousand gallant 
 warriors — the very pride and flowerof the court of Spain, — could 
 otherwise than feel exultation ! With less than one hundred men 
 had Pizarro commenced his march through the empire of the In- 
 cas. What was that force to his ? — those men, the outcasts, and 
 offscourings of earth, to the high-spirited chivalry which he com- 
 manded. He had but to compare them, their character and num- 
 bers, to rejoice in all the assurances of hope. He did not ask, — 
 though this inquiry was of the very last importance — whether the 
 people of Apalachia were like the descendants of Manco Capac. 
 He was yet to learn the vast difference between the most timid 
 and the most fearless races in the world ; — between the gentle 
 people, whose nature seems to have been drawn in the likeness 
 of their own innocent animal, the Llama, — and that fierce nation, 
 whose kindred tribes, stretching from the mountains of Virginia 
 to those of Guatemala, were as tenacious of their soil, as impatient 
 of intrusion, and as deadly in their blow, as their own emblematic 
 rattle-snake. The Floridian warrior met De Soto on the very 
 threshold of his country, and never failed to meet him at every 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 75 
 
 step which he took into the interior. The days of the Spaniard, 
 from the first of his landing at Tampa, were numbered by battles 
 — liis path-way, every where, was mapped out in blood ! Still 
 he marched, still he battled, and still he bled ! It was the saddest 
 sort of consolation, to himself and followers, that he always con- 
 que red. A conquest which secures nothing but a temporary respite 
 from blows and exertion, is scarcely cause for human exultation. 
 We follow him through this march of conquest as through the 
 second act of a great drama. He reaches the mountains of Apa- 
 lachy. He looks down on the waters of the Mississippi. He 
 finds a great city ! — but not such as were great in Peru ! — great in 
 wealth and splendour, the magnitude and durability of their fabrics 
 and the gorgeousness of their materials ; but great in great hearts, 
 brave warriors and sagacious men ! — a sort of greatness which 
 most effectually baffles the ambition of the adventurer, and sub- 
 dues the audacity of Spanish knighthood to the unwonted modesty 
 of fear. The stern savages of the Mississippi, while the Spaniards 
 occupy their city from which the proprietors have been expelled, 
 — anticipate that wondrous achievement of the Russian, which, in 
 recent times, baffled the genius of Napoleon and drove him home- 
 ward, palsied, panic-stricken, pursued by arrows of ice and fire. 
 In the still hour of midnight, while sleep hangs heavy over the 
 camp of the wearied conquerors, while the sentinels drowse, sat- 
 isfied that the victory is complete and all is secure, — the brave 
 and still undiscomfited v/arriors of the Chickasah, gather in si- 
 lence to their prey. In a moment, at a given signal, — the wild 
 howl of the wolf which calls for the corresponding clamours of 
 the herd, — they surround their enemies and apply the torch to the 
 crowded tenements of thatch and reed. The conquerors awaken 
 in a sea of flame. A sky of fire is above their heads, a bed of 
 fire is beneath their feet, and the terrible war-whoop of the des- 
 perate savage, rings, peal upon peal, resounding in their ears. 
 What a scene for the poet and the painter ! The fright of the 
 conquerors as they start in terror from their sleep — seeking for 
 flight with outstretched arms — stunned and blinded — running to 
 and fro, amid the flames, pursued by their thousand tongues, — 
 shrieking with feeble cry, — stammering with bewildered question 
 — while, all in vain, the voice of discipline strives to recall and 
 
76 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 rally the scattered senses of valour. Over all, that terrible cry 
 prevails — a howl fit only for the midnight — by which the savage 
 increases the terrors of his foe, while announcing his own desper- 
 ate revenge. Amidst the clamour and confusion, he alone pre- 
 serves his senses ! With busy hand, and greedy hate, and prompt 
 direction, he penetrates the narrow streets. With stone hatchet 
 and shortened lance, he rushes from victim to victim, with a fury 
 as wild as that which his own brands have kindled. He has no 
 mercy in his mood. All is death and vengeance, and the Span- 
 iard can save himself only by the veteran resolution — the better 
 armour — the more efficient weapons of his time and country. 
 That was a night for the painter of the wilder passions ! — a night 
 not less terrible and cruel than the famous trisie nocJie, so prover- 
 bial for the retreat of Cortes over the causeways of Mexico. It 
 will glow upon the canvas a fit parallel with that, — so like it in its 
 cause and consequences — the struggle of the freeman against the 
 tyrant — the citizen against the invader — in both cases, the victim 
 being the Spaniard, and the conqueror, in all probability, the de- 
 scendant of a common stock. The streets of the Apalachian, 
 traversed by fire and watched by the savage warrior, formed pas- 
 sages as grim with death as the narrow causeways of Mexico, the 
 sluggish lake on either hand, and the fierce Mexican crowding 
 close in his canoe for the first glimpses of the hated fugitive. In 
 both cases, the Spaniard could boast of a victory in his escape. 
 But the victory was like that of Pyrrhus, which leaves the con- 
 queror undone. The scene closes in the momentary triumph of 
 the European — discipline, which succeeds always, enabling De 
 Soto to shake himself free from the flames and from his enemy, 
 and to rally his surviving warriors for newer marches, and perils 
 equally severe. 
 
 The last act in the melancholy drama of De Soto's fortunes is 
 at hand. But, even while dying, he is not permitted the mourn- 
 ful consolation of feeling that he remains the conqueror. A mes- 
 senger from the warriors of Apalachy seeks his bed of death. He 
 comes, as the Spaniard fondly believes, to make submission — to 
 tender the earth and the water of his realm in tribute to the su- 
 perior genius of European civilization. But he has mistaken the 
 spirit of his foe. Instead of submission, — instead of bent knee and 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 77 
 
 suppliant aspect — the fearless representative of this fearless race, 
 breathes nothing but defiance ! Standing over the miserable 
 couch which sustains the feeble form of the dying Hidalgo, he 
 sounds within his shuddering ear the fearful war whoop of his 
 tribe — that cry so well known, so suddenly heard, so terribly re- 
 membered, in the awful conflict of the melancholy night; — then, 
 dashing through the assembled but astounded captains, regains 
 his native wilderness in safety. 
 
 What a death bed was that of Hernando de Soto ! There, on 
 the banks of the Mississippi — his most memorable discovery — in 
 whose waters he is to find a grave — his hopes baffled — his people 
 thinned by slaughter to a timid, trembling few — conscious himself 
 of approaching death — dreaming no longer of empire and con- 
 quest — gold or golden cities — but only how the remnant of his 
 band shall be rescued from the savage ! That savage, too, even 
 in that moment, plumed and powerful, bending down above his 
 couch, and shrieking in his ear that proverbial whoop of death 
 which has so often chilled the heart of valour, and palsied the 
 arm of strength. How easy to associate and to contrast this scene 
 with the first ; — this scene of hopelessness, defeat and death, with 
 that first setting forth, all music and exultation, of his gorgeous 
 expedition. 
 
 But the moral rests not in this single contrast. The eye of the 
 poet will not confine itself to these. He will look above and be- 
 yond them. He will go back to the desolate wife, — meek and 
 mournful. — standing on the shores of Cuba, and lookinor forth, 
 late at evening, for the return of the dusky white sail which her 
 eyes shall never see. Oh ! how dearer to him, where he lies, 
 than all his dreams of ambition, were she but nigh in that parting 
 moment — bending over his bed of death, wiping the cold dews 
 from his clammy forehead, and catching the last broken accents 
 of his late returning love ! 
 
78 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 THE SETTLEMENTS OF COLIGNY. 
 
 Comprehended within the same period of time which we have 
 ventured to describe as the most valuable in all our history for 
 the general purposes of art in fiction, are to be found a series of 
 events, which, as they took place in our own neighbourhood, and 
 seem to be singularly susceptible of poetic arrangement and illus- 
 tration, will demand our passing consideration. Our allusion 
 now is to the famous settlements — famous because of their objects 
 and melancholy termination — which were made in Florida, under 
 the auspices of Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France. These 
 colonies were composed wholly of that class of religionists who 
 were known as Huguenots — a name, the origin of which, though 
 universally employed then, and since, in designation of this peo- 
 ple, is buried in impenetrable obscurity. We take for granted 
 that it will not need that we should dwell upon the history of this 
 people, or upon the particular policy which governed their great 
 leader in determining to plant them in Florida. We have no 
 reason to suppose that a period of such great importance in 
 French history, to say nothing of our own, has been left unex- 
 amined by any intelligent American. Enough for us to remind 
 him of the single event that most concerns us, — the fact that such 
 a policy was carried out to experiment, — to a series of experi- 
 ments, — which, under the most cruel auspices, failed entirely of 
 their expected fruits. 
 
 The Huguenots, led by Ribault and Laudonniere, appear to 
 have traversed no inconsiderable portions of Carolina, Georgia 
 and Florida — countries, all of which were, at that time, distin- 
 guished by the common name of the latter. Finally, settling on 
 the frontiers of the former State, they proceeded to entrench them- 
 selves and to explore the country. These leading facts are suf- 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 79 
 
 ficiently well known. It is not so well known, however, what a 
 fine series of romances belongs to this history, needing only the 
 most ordinary developments of art, to render them as highly dis- 
 tinguished and delightful as those of any history, the foundations of 
 which were laid in the most adventurous and primitive periods of 
 society. Let us trace, with hurried pencil, the events in this 
 connexion. The spot is chosen for the fortress of our Huguenots 
 — an island in the friendly waters of an Indian territory, to which, 
 from the magnificence of the bay, the French give the name of 
 Port Royal. The fortress of La Caroline springs up amid the 
 shade. Its cannon are mounted, its magazines prepared, its cab- 
 ins raised, its provisions stored, and then, the duties which he had 
 undertaken being all completed, Ribault departs for France, leav- 
 ing a small colony of twenty-four men under the command of one 
 Captain Albert. His purpose is to report progress at home, and 
 to return with new supplie-s. Our interest lies not in his path, 
 along the dark waters of the deep, but lingers over the spot which 
 has so strangely, of a sudden, been transferred from the care of 
 its savage to that of its Christian masters. A colony so small, 
 and so thoroughly isolated from its accustomed world — thousands 
 of miles from home and help, surrounded by herds of savages, — 
 few in number, feeble in resource, — poorly supplied in provisions, 
 and depending, in so many words, purely on themselves for all of 
 comfort and safety they could know — would,— so one might rea- 
 sonably suppose, — harmonize in their objects, and yield a hearty 
 and affectionate support to the common interests. This would 
 seem to be due equally to the social tendencies, as to the obvious 
 necessity, for security, of a perfect and habitual unanimity among 
 them. Such, however, was not the case. It is not so sure, at 
 this late period, and in the imperfect condition of our authorities, 
 where and with whom the error lay by which this hopeful scheme 
 was defeated. By the colonists themselves, such as survived the 
 expedition, the guilt of its failure is ascribed to their superior. 
 Albert, their Captain, seems to have been one of those ordinary 
 men whom it is easy to spoil by elevation. He soon converts his 
 authority into a despotism. With a feeble and wanton passion 
 for the display of his power, — under some slight provocation, — 
 he singles out one of his men, who happens to be a favourite 
 
80 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 among the people, as a proper object for its exercise ; and sub- 
 jects him to a penalty, — something short of death, indeed, bul 
 which, in the condition of the colony, seems to have been worse 
 than death itself At least, it appears to have been thought so. 
 He sends the offender nito banishment. He is exiled from his 
 Christian comrades, consigned to the dangers from wild beasts of 
 the forest, or to dangers scarcely less terrible, at the hands of the 
 capricious savage. It is the cruel resolve of Albert that he shall 
 perish. No food is allowed him beyond the supply for a few- 
 days, with which he is furnished when first expelled from the 
 walls of La Caroline ; and his comrades are forbidden, under 
 like penalties, to extend him any relief. It is the liope and the 
 conviction of the cruel despot, that his victim must die of starva- 
 tion. He is deceived ; — he lives. He is provided against hun- 
 ger, — he is consoled by society. We know this from the chron- 
 icles, but nothing farther. The poet alone, or the romancer, can 
 declare boldly by whom he is succoured — who brings him nour- 
 ishment and food, — who cheers him in the lonely haunts of the 
 forest, who encourages him to live and to hope, in despite and de- 
 fiance of that tyrant who had decreed that he should despair and 
 die. Was not his exile shared by some gentle damsel of the 
 woods — some Pocahontas of St. Helena — nay, was it not because 
 of the smiles of some such bright humanity that he first suffers 
 the doom of banishment. There is some faint tradition that will 
 justify this conjecture. Now, — should the poet ever avail him- 
 self of this suggestion — should he venture, in song, to insist upon 
 this, as, in truth, the history, where is the Niebuhr to start up and 
 gainsay it with a solemn chronicle ? Where is the critic who, 
 if the artist shall have performed his work with reasonable skill, 
 shall dare to insinuate a doubt of his veracity ? It is by the ex- 
 cellence of the art that the fiction is converted into truth ; and all 
 malleable conjecture, not conflicting with the unquestionable and 
 the known, is truth sufficient for all the purposes of poetry. 
 
 But the exile is consoled and succoured — we will suppose, in 
 the absence of any certain particulars, by the sympathies of the 
 Indian damsel. But this is not all — he is avenged. Hated by 
 his commander, he had qualities to endear him to his comrades 
 as well as to the dusky beauty of the savage. They rise in arms 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 81 
 
 against the tyranny which oppresses them, and Albert perishes in 
 the conflict which ensues. 
 
 Such a story miglit end here. Properly grouped, and with the 
 addition of such other persons of the drama as the action must 
 have possessed, — though history does not deem it necessary to re- 
 cord their names — and the parts have quite a dramatic finish, and 
 maintain the epic fitness and dependency. The action being sin- 
 gle, that of the recall of the banished man from exile, and the over- 
 throw of the oppressor, affords the happiest opportunity to the art- 
 ist to introduce and ally with the events, whatever adjuncts of 
 terror or of tendei'ness he pleases. Captivity by the Indians, his 
 rescue by the dusky maiden, — their mutual loves, — the jealousy 
 of Albert, etc., — these are all topics which suggest themselves 
 naturally for employment, in the development of this little history, 
 in a form either narrative or dramatic. 
 
 But this story of Albert forms but a single scene in this domes- 
 tic history. The residue, if less dramatic, will prove itself 
 scarcely less full of susceptibilities for other forms of art. Let 
 us continue the narrative. Albert being slain, the insurgents 
 choose a successor ; but this event, though it quiets the strifes 
 among themselves, is very far from bringing peace to the little 
 colony. Their exile has been protracted — their supplies from 
 France have failed them — they have made enemies among the 
 Indians, and, yearning with the maladie du pays, they resolve 
 upon returning to their European home. But how ? They are 
 without ships and without architects. But where the inclinations 
 of the heart are fervent, the mind readily furnishes, in most cases 
 within human power, the agents by which its desires may be 
 realized. The simple narrative which tells us of the modes and 
 substitutes which they employed in building and rigging up their 
 little brigantine, with which to traverse the long ways of the At- 
 lantic, is pleasingly pathetic. How, without artificers of any kind, 
 they yet ventured upon one of the most noble of the mechanic 
 arts. How they gathered from the oaks the moss, and from the 
 pines the resin, with which to make tight the seams of their ves- 
 sel — how the Indians brought them cordage for tackle, made 
 doubtlessly out of moss also ; — and how their own garments fur- 
 nished the frail canvas. These are all minutise which, however 
 
 7 
 
82 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 work upon our sympathies with an influence such as belongs to 
 the pages of that dear little book of details, the Robinson Crusoe 
 of our childhood. Drunken with joy, according to the old chron- 
 icler — a joy that grew out of the simple fact that they had once 
 more turned their eyes in the direction of La helle France, — they 
 put to sea, rashly, like greedy and thoughtless children, without 
 any adequate supply of food, without giving any heed to the as 
 pects of wind and weather. The usual narrative of ocean caprice 
 ensues. Tossed about and baffled by storm, — out of provisions 
 and out of water — despair seizes upon their hearts ; and here fol- 
 lows one of those terrible events which we shudder to imagine can 
 ever occur to add to the thousand humiliations which sometimes 
 track the footsteps of unfortunate humanity — 
 
 " Savagely 
 They glared upon each other — all was done — 
 Water and wine and food — and you might see 
 The longings of the cannibal arise, 
 (Although they spoke not,) in their wolfish eyes." 
 
 One of their number is demanded, as a victim, to pacify the 
 now frenzied appetites of the famished wretches who remain. — 
 
 " At length one whisper'd his companion, who 
 Whispered another, and thus it went around, 
 And then into a hoarser murmur grew 
 An ominous, and wild and desperate sound ; 
 And when his comrade's thought each sufTrer knew, 
 'Twas but his own, suppress'd till now, he found ; 
 And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, 
 And who should die to be his fellow's food." 
 
 Lots were not necessary in the present instance. The brave 
 fellow whom they had rescued from the tyranny of Albert, proves 
 his gratitude, and justifies the interest which they had shown in 
 his behalf, by voluntarily subjecting his own bosom to the knife. 
 Here is the exhibition of a magnanimous soul, surrounded by ter- 
 ror and agony, yet rising up without fear, and utterly superior to 
 both. What a model of manly defiance, and strength of heart, 
 for the genius of painting or sculpture, — what a scene for Michael 
 Angelo or Fuseli. How the poet of the terrific and intenser pas- 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 83 
 
 sions, Milton or Dante, would have given this terrible scene, in a 
 few bold touches, as Byron has given it in details. What a pic- 
 ture of the wild phrenzies of the heart — its deep desolation — its 
 fierce despair — its degrading willingness to prolong life on any 
 terms, — and its individual example, worthy of record in all ages, 
 of that sublime resignation of soul, which scorns to struggle against 
 fate with the impotent blindness of fear, and disdains the life which 
 can only be preserved by a loathsome sacrifice of all its human- 
 ity. The offer of the victim is accepted. The sacrifice of their 
 brave companion is made ; and, strange to say, these miserable 
 outcast Huguenots — denied, as it would seem, by the shores of 
 two continents — finally reach Europe in safety. 
 
 But this issue does not conclude the enterprise, the history of 
 which is much more full of the tragic than has been shown al- 
 ready. Ignorant of the fate of the former, and too late to afford 
 them succour, a second colony repairs to La Caroline. Laudon- 
 niere, their new Captain, finding the place abandoned, is dis- 
 couraged from any attempt to renew the settlement in the same 
 spot. He views it as of evil omen, and, proceeding farther south, 
 builds a second fortress, and the Indians, as in the case of his pre- 
 decessor, gather to his assistance. An error in his policy and 
 humanity, is yet a source of poetic and romantic material, which 
 the imaginative writer will readily conceive. Laudonniere fo- 
 ments wars among the natives, selects one tribe for his alliance, 
 lends the force of his arms to the support of one faction against 
 another, and converts crowds of willing friends into troops of 
 watchful enemies. It is not easy to secure the affections even of 
 the tribe which he sustains. The Indians withhold their supplies, 
 and his people suffer accordingly. Insurrection, among them, is 
 the natural fruit of privation. They conspire against him — pen- 
 etrate his tent in armour, at midnight — drag him on shipboard, 
 and, with weapon at his throat, extort from him a regular com- 
 mission of piracy. How they coursed, whom they captured, and 
 by what means they were finally destroyed, are all facts of cu- 
 rious interest and value which may be found in the record. It 
 is not for us to dwell more particularly on them, or to do more 
 than suggest their susceptibilities. It needs not even that we 
 should say, that — in the materials indicated, — in the novelty of 
 
84 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the events — their exciting character, — the daring temper of the 
 persons concerned, — the various passions brought into play, and 
 the final and highly tragic issue which closed the deeds of the 
 adventurers — to say nothing of the privileges afforded by that 
 condition of palpable obscure which is due to the absence of all 
 details — will be found all the resources and facilities, which, in 
 the case of preceding histories, have been as the canvas and the 
 colour in the hands of the successful artist. 
 
 But the truly sublime and terrible catastrophe to this sad tale 
 of colonial enterprise, is yet to follow. The closing portion of 
 this history is one of peculiar grandeur — bright with a lurid sort 
 of brightness, — a strange, wild mixture of glare and gloom, such 
 as startles us at first, then half offends and repels, and half de- 
 lights, in the audacious pictures of John Martin. We have said 
 that the colonists of the French were Huguenots — another name 
 for a sect of religionists professing the protestant faith. We need 
 not remind the reader of history, of the melancholy truth, that 
 religious conflicts are, of all others, distinguished by the most 
 shocking disregard of all the principles and precepts of humanity. 
 That these poor adventurers were protestants and French, were 
 twofold reasons why they should be put under the ban of the 
 Spanish Catholics, by whom, in the name of Spain, a vague title 
 was asserted to the whole of the vast country, into a few acres of 
 which they had driven their stakes. This claim was now to be 
 asserted, and this hate satisfied, by deeds which seem to have 
 been almost peculiar to the Spanish practice in America. There 
 was a famous, or rather an infamous, Captain of that tinTe — a 
 man, cold, dark and designing, who was chosen to assert the 
 rights and the religion of Spain, in reference to the Huguenot set- 
 tlers in Florida. Brave, indeed, as was unquestionably the 
 Spanish distinction in those days, this man was totally wanting in 
 those gentler graces of character which subdue the asperities of 
 valour, and soothe, where they cannot soften, the severities of 
 war. Pedro Melendez was not less a bigot in religion, because 
 he had been heavily amerced for crime. He prepared to atone, 
 to his king and his religion, by the commission of a darker crime 
 than any in the already long black catalogue of his past offences. 
 He descended upon the Huguenot settlement with a superior 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 85 
 
 power. Unhappily, the forces of the latter were divided. One 
 portion maintained their fortress, while another, and the larger, 
 kept the sea. The fierce valour of Melendez, aided by a cruei 
 fortune, and stimulated by the fierce fanaticism of religious hate, 
 enables him to storm the fortress. That he conquers, offers no 
 reason to his bigot nature, why he should spare his foes. Such 
 of them as escape the sword in the assault, and yield to his mer- 
 cy, are hurried to the neighbouring tree. None were permitted 
 to live who confided to his faith. In this bloody manner nearly 
 two hundred persons perished. This auto dafe accomplished. 
 High I^Iass was celebrated upon the scene of massacre ; and 
 while the earth was yet smoking with the blood of the innocent, 
 the place was dedicated to God by this miserable butcher ! 
 
 The fate of those who had sought safety on the seas, was not 
 more fortunate. Pursued by the Spanish armament, and scatter- 
 ed by storm, they abandoned their stranded vessels and sought 
 safety along the shore. They had weapons in their hands, they 
 could fight, they were still free, and resolved with desperate 
 valour that they would die like men. It was in an evil hour that 
 they altered this resolve. But the constant pressure of ill fortune 
 had chilled their hearts and subdued the courasre in their souls. 
 They hearkened to, they treated with, the murderer. They 
 knew and feared his faithlessness, yet they listened to his words. 
 The false-hearted Spaniard invited them to seek his mercy. A 
 few of them suspected, as well they might, the value of his as- 
 surances. These held themselves aloof, and found their safety 
 only as they did so. The greater number, worn with toil, sink- 
 ing from famine, and hopeless of better things, resigned them- 
 selves to their fate, rather than prolong the exhausting conflict 
 with necessity. They complied with the invitation of the Span- 
 iard to treat for their surrender. A curious scene now followed. 
 A small river ran between the opposing armies, while the confer- 
 ence between their chiefs proceeded on its banks. On one side 
 stood Melendez, sternly phlegmatic, coldly resolute in all his re- 
 quisitions. He provides a boat, and offers to the French officers 
 every facility for passing to and fro, while the treaty is in prog- 
 ress. Nay, he even goes farther — he sets food and refreshments 
 before them, and, with a rare exhibition of the demoniac spirit, 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 he conducts them to the plain where lie the carcasses of their 
 comrades, yet ungathered, in their gore ; and, after all, coldly re- 
 quires that they shall confide in his mercy — that mercy, of 
 which, he himself, in the same moment, affords them the most 
 terrible spectacle. In vain do they expostulate. He demands 
 that they shall surrender at discretion. Certainly, with this 
 bloody evidence before their eyes, it was the strangest fatuity^ 
 that which prompted them to give ear, for a single instant, to the 
 cruel monster. But that despair which enfeebles the heart, as- 
 serts a still more tyrannical force upon the judgment. Perhaps 
 they even gathered hope from that frank exhibition which he pre- 
 sented them of his former cruelties. It would seem by this that 
 he meant to say, " my anger is pacified.'' At all events, by 
 whatever process of thought they were persuaded to a compliance 
 with his will, it is very certain that they yielded for themselves 
 and people. In small detachments, just so many as the boat can 
 carry, they are ferried across the river. Each division, as it ar- 
 rivcfe, is conducted out of sight, to the plain where their comrades 
 were butchered, and there, man by man, subjected to the same 
 bloody doom. Melendez superintends the execution. He is de- 
 scribed as deliberately drawing, with his cane, a line along the 
 sands, and thus designating the precise spot where the butchery 
 must be done. He has no relentings. No generous impulses 
 soften his stony heart, at any moment, in this dreadful execution. 
 He spares none — placidly superintends the crime till it is finally 
 complete in the silence of the last expiring victim, and turns 
 away with the spirit of one well satisfied that he has done a work 
 as acceptable to Heaven, as it was to the kindred soul of his sov- 
 ereign. 
 
 It is grateful to know that all were not thus confiding — that all 
 did not perish in this wretched manner, the tame victims to their 
 own imbecility and the tiger fury of their foe. One small body of 
 men, endowed with a nobler spirit than their comrades, confiding 
 to their own weapons rather than to the words of the Spaniard, com- 
 pelled him to terms of safety and comparative indulgence. Another 
 band of twenty men, following the suggestions of their brave cap- 
 tain, disdaining the terms wiiich their comrades had secured — 
 perhaps, and properly, despising their securities — preferred rather 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 87 
 
 to trust themselves to the deep thickets of the wilderness, with all 
 their savage possessors, than the faith of their Christian enemies. 
 Separating themselves from those who submitted, they disappeared 
 from sight. The Spaniards sought for them in vain. Their far- 
 ther history is a blank. They were never heard of more ! What 
 was the fate of this little band of Huguenots ? There may be 
 an answer, hereafter, to this question. It may be that their prob- 
 able fortunes, rich in variety of adventure, and glorious by the 
 golden tints of romance, shall yet delight the fancfes of our chil- 
 dren. They may be made to see, in all the colours of the Epic 
 muse, that terrific picture of sacrifice which we have feebly shown 
 — that strange, dark strife — so cruel yet so picturesque. In the 
 fore-ground, that fierce fanatic warrior, standing, cane in hand, 
 upon the shores of the San Matheo, and marking along the sand 
 that slight but dreadfully intelligible line, to be afterwards made 
 more lea^ible in blood. In the distance, the little boat bringing 
 
 O ' DO 
 
 the captive Frenchmen, ten by ten, little dreaming of the fate 
 that awaits them, unconscious, like sheep to the slaughter, moving 
 on to perish by sudden stroke where that unseen line is drawn. 
 
 It is something to know that this massacre was avenged. The 
 soul feels a fierce delight, which even Christian tuition does not 
 always subdue, when it is told of the vindictive retribution which 
 follows the deeds of the cruel upon the unoffending. Man's blood, 
 shed by his brother, does not often cry in vain to Heaven ! A 
 hero as religiously resolute in vengeance as Melendez had been 
 in crime, took upon him the work of retribution, and carried out 
 the ends of justice, in punishment, upon the murderers. The 
 single spirit of retributive justice by which the valiant Gascon, 
 Dominique de Gorgues, was led to peril himself in battle with the 
 Spaniards of Florida, to forfeit the protection of his own country, 
 and win the admiration of all the states of Christendom but Spain, 
 has given him a rank in chivalry not inferior to that of Bayard 
 and Duguesclin. It might be no difficult matter, even now, to 
 make his deeds the subject of story, and himself the hero of an 
 epic song ! 
 
 We must not linger upon this period, nor dilate upon its incidents, 
 passionate and touching though they be. If we insist that there 
 are thousands such during this epoch in our history, we deal in 
 
88 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 no unfounded exaggerations. It would be easy for the romancer 
 even now — the poet — such poets as we already possess — pursuing 
 the proper methods, devoting himself, soul and body, to his art, 
 and properly sustained by the sympathies, and encouraged by the 
 obvious wants of the people, to work such details inio a thousand 
 exquisite and truthful fictions. He need not turn his eyes for the 
 crude material to the obscure chronicles of foreign lands. That 
 which we possess, is not less susceptible of artistic elaboration ; 
 nay, in many instances, it is not only quite as good as the exotic, 
 but rudely developed in the block, and ready to our hands. The 
 outline of the statue is already in the stone — the image is half 
 starting from the shade, and the divine conception looks out from 
 its cloud, with eyes of sweetest soliciting, only waiting for the 
 endowing hands of art to become a living and a loving soul. 
 The studies yielded to the master of fiction by our moral progress, 
 are not less numerous than those which the painter may gather, 
 on every hand, from the matchless forest land through which he 
 wanders. He has but to follow a like direction — to cut away the 
 under-growth — to cast down the offensive and obtrusive object — 
 to bring out into bolder relief such forms as merit to be made 
 particular — to be raised into superiority, and elevated by appro- 
 priate tributaries — and the work is done as he could wish it. The 
 creation is here — already in our possession ! — it is the clearing-^ 
 the clearing only — which has need to follow. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 POCAHONTAS : A SUBJECT FOE THE HISTORICAL PAINTER. 
 
 We have already dwelt so long upon the events of the previous 
 periods, that we shall be compelled to hurry somewhat rapidly 
 over those which remain. It will be conjectured, from what has 
 been already said of the characteristics of this epoch, that we re- 
 gard its materials, not only as decidedly superior, at present, to 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 89 
 
 those which follow, but as being quite as much adapted, even now, 
 to the purposes of fiction as those of any other history. The events 
 are equally curious and copious, full of vivacity, and glowing 
 with the most various and striking traits of human passion and 
 performance. Leading personages may be found in their de- 
 velopment, endowed with all those attributes of character which 
 constitute the moral of the heroic. Their deeds provide as noble 
 and imposing action as romance has ever esteemed the most pro- 
 per upon which to build her inventions of '• lofty rhyme" and 
 " stately tragedy," — and there is quite enough, in the detail, of 
 that ductile obscurity, which we have insisted upon as so necessary 
 to the full exercise of all the privileges which are asked by the 
 original artist. We commend the study of this period, down to 
 the date of English settlement in Virginia, to the peculiar care of 
 the American student — satisfied, as we are, tliat he cannot fail to 
 find among its chronicles a body of crude material, virgin and 
 fertile, fresh and blooming with the beauty of its dawning youth, 
 and susceptible to all the maternal uses which grow naturally 
 from the embrace of the prolific genius. 
 
 The epoch which follows is one of more narrow privileges, cir- 
 cumscribing our progress by the absolute and well known in 
 those facts, which are of value in proportion to their obscurity, 
 quite as much as because of their intrinsic capabilities. Its as- 
 pects are sharper and more repulsive — its outlines more decisive 
 and angular — its incidents too clearly stated upon the record, 
 and abridged by those definitive boundaries of the real, which im- 
 pair the courage of him who seeks after the ideal. The softening 
 effects of distance, and the mellowing influence of time, are 
 equally needed to reconcile us perfectly to the beautiful in its as- 
 pects, and the pliant and the graceful in its forms. There are 
 intrinsic deficiencies also. We feel, as we examine the moral of 
 its history, that a harsher and a severer judgment has made its 
 way among men, lessening their faith in the fancies of the past, 
 disparaging authority and tradition, and disturbing that repose 
 among ancient things in which the meditative and endowing ge- 
 nius takes most of its delight. Chivalry had given way to more 
 mortal politics, and, standing in the presence and beneath the 
 freezing countenance of the bigoted Philip of Spain, or wearied 
 
90 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 with the caprices of one quite as selfish, if less bigoted — Elizabeth 
 of England — we feel those frigid influences which were destined 
 to pass like a blight over the social character of Europe. Not 
 that we mean, now, to indicate any preference, except in a sim- 
 ple reference to the objects of art in fiction, for the condition of 
 the social world in the days of chivalry over those of the reform- 
 ers of the Christian Church. On the contrary, the study of the 
 middle ages, obliges us to conclude with Sismondi, in disregard 
 of Burke — " Cet heroism universe!, nous avons nomine la chevale- 
 rie n exista jamais commes fictions hrillantes.^' But it is precisely 
 because of the paralyzing influence of these and other powers, 
 upon the habits and condition of the world, then and afterwards, 
 that we are made conscious of the want of the proper materials 
 for a fiction as brilliant as was found, the spontaneous production 
 of society, in the previous epochs of its history. We have now 
 reached a period when commerce begins to assert a claim to be 
 an estate among those long before acknowledged among the pow- 
 ers of Christendom — helped wonderfully in the assertion of this 
 claim by the sudden and surprising progress of maritime discov- 
 ery. We are on the eve of those great social and moral changes 
 which led to the catastrophe in the career of Walter Raleigh — to 
 the heartless and senseless profligacy of the Stuarts — to the sub- 
 stitution, in England, of French for English poetry — the clinquant 
 of a false, for the hearty ring of the genuine metal — and — not to 
 class things so utterly dissimilar in every point of view-j — the, 
 anomalous growth of the demure and sly, the daring but cal- 
 culating ambition of the Puritans. Virginia has been discovered, 
 named and colonized — inadequately colonized, as were all of the 
 settlements in America ; — a fact which led to that deplorable 
 waste of blood and treasure, that prolonged struggle in arms, 
 which naturally ensued from the painful contest for ascendancy, 
 between the red men of the country and their pale invaders. But 
 this, which provokes the censure of the philosophical statesman, 
 as the very last of social misfortunes, is hailed as a source of in- 
 vention and exercise by the professor of art in fiction. A vast 
 store-house of material is laid opan to us by the struggles between 
 these warring races; and over its heaps the future genius of our 
 romance shall hang with the fond avidity of him who gloats above 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 91 
 
 the discovery of an unknown treasure. Our limits will not suffice 
 to enable us to indicate more than a single topic in the history of 
 our sister State ; but this shall be one admirably adapted to the 
 purposes of poetry and art. This story is that of Pocahontas, 
 with which every native is familiar. It is one which has been 
 frequently attempted, and unhappily, in most cases, by very feeble 
 hands. It has never been put to proper use by the pen or pencil 
 of any ; yet there is scarcely one, in all our history, at this second 
 period of which we speak, which seems to us better adapted to the 
 equal purposes of the painter and the poet. Let us endeavour to 
 sketch from it a single scene for each. The painter, it must be 
 remembered, has but a moment of time for his delineations — but 
 a single moment — and if he fails so to select this moment as to 
 compel the picture to tell its own story, the subordinate merits 
 of exquisite elaboration will not avail to maintain his claims as a 
 builder and a master. The dramatic requisitions of his art — 
 which are the most stringent, for the just reason that the depart- 
 ment which delineates human passion is necessarily the most no- 
 ble — require that he shall seize upon that moment in the event he 
 seeks to celebrate, which, because of the intenseness of the inter- 
 est felt by the several parties to his group, shall present the spec- 
 tator with the most impressive and intelligible action. It is when 
 the struggle is at its height, when face and form, and eye and 
 muscle, in each of the dramatis personae, are wrought upon by 
 the extremity of the action — when the crisis is reached of human 
 hope, or fear, or endurance, and nothing that follows, can, by any 
 possibility, add to the acuteness of that anxiety with which the 
 beholder watches the scene — that the artist must snatch the occa- 
 sion to stamp the story in life-like colours upon the canvas. It is 
 the judgment which he exhibits in this particular — in thus choos- 
 ing his moment — in the sensibility and the imagination which 
 prompt him to catch the vivid emotion and the hungry passion, ere 
 they subside into the repose which follows from natural exhaus- 
 tion — that he establishes his pretensions as the poet of his art. To 
 show his story at the extreme and doubtful instant, when hope 
 can no longer admit of increase, when fear can bear nothing more 
 without pain, and both, in the spectator, begin to merge in that 
 anxiety to behold an issue, the approaches to which he can no 
 
92 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 longer endure without suffering too deeply for any sentiment of 
 pleasure — this is the great merit which places the dramatic painter 
 far above all other professors in his art. That moment, in the 
 history of Pocahontas, is when Smith is rescued by her interposi- 
 tion from the stroke of the executioner. Our artists, generally, 
 have shrunk from this subject. We know not one, endowed with 
 any of the necessary attributes of genius, taste and imagination, 
 by whom it has been attempted. 
 
 Mr. Chapman, a southern artist, whose large and peculiar 
 merits it gives us pleasure to acknowledge and assert, has given 
 us a lovely picture of the reception of the Indian princess into 
 the bosom of the Mother Church ; but it is to the reproach of this 
 gentleman* that he has avoided the nobler event which first 
 brought us to the knowledge of her character. Certainly, it is 
 one of singular difficulty, demanding the highest powers of art, 
 and an imagination equally warm and courageous, to say nothing 
 of the inevitable requisites of the exquisite colorist and draughts- 
 man ; but it is this very difficulty, and the danger which attends 
 it, which commend the subject to the affections, and stimulates the 
 ambition of the proper genius. He, therefore, whether painter or 
 poet, who shrinks from the task because of its hardships or its 
 dangers, has a better reason for his timidity in the absence of his 
 capacity. He is not the genius to obtain a mastery over the grand 
 — not the soul to conceive what belongs to the sublime and the 
 majestic — not that seer who alone carries the true divining rod — 
 upon whose eye the dim creation of the mind irresistibly fixes 
 itself, not only as the unavoidable presence, but as one which can 
 be treated only in one manner. It is when the subject forces 
 
 * Mr. Chapman is one of our best painters. He has a vivacious and an abun- 
 dant fancy, an exquisite tastej and more industry than half of our artists put 
 together. We are indebted to him for several Indian pictures, in all of which 
 he has been singularly successful. But his genius inclines him rather to the 
 pleasing than the passionate — rather to the soliciting and the sweet in nature, 
 than the stern and terrible. Pocahontas, entering the English settlements at 
 night to warn the colonists of the intended massacre — or the same lovely crea- 
 ture made captive by the artifice of Argall and the treachery of .Tapazaws — 
 would be subjects more agreeable to his genius, than the terrible scene in which 
 ehe rescues Smith. Still, we should like to see the attempt, made by his hands, 
 upon this difficult but noble subject. 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 93 
 
 itself, with all its particular aspects, unchangeably, before the eye 
 of the imagination, that we can be altogether sure of its grandeur, 
 its efficacy, and the propriety of that attennpt which seeks to em- 
 body it in physical material in the sight of eyes to whom its 
 beauties never came before even in their dreams. 
 
 Let us now endeavour to suggest this event by a skeleton 
 draught of its deeper outlines — to sketch this picture, feebly of 
 course, and very faintly — in crayons rather than in oil — but suf- 
 ficiently, we trust, to commend it to those by whom the elaborate 
 achievement may yet be wrought. We trust, in what we say, 
 to make good the assurance with which we set out, that the sub- 
 ject of Pocahontas, rescuing Smith from the executioner, is worthy 
 of the great historical painter. 
 
 Our back-ground is one familiar to you all. It lies in the un- 
 broken forest, yet undishonoured by the axe. Great oaks, moss- 
 bearded and grand, like Hebrew prophets and patriarchs, stretch 
 their shadowy arms above the scene. Gigantic pines group them- 
 selves behind them, and tower up and away in emulation of the 
 hills. There you may see the green vine gadding from bough to 
 bough ; — the green thickets are burdened with the weight of blos- 
 soms which persuade usthat the atmosphere is faint with a sweetness 
 all its own. The sward is similarly rich beneath our feet — a car- 
 pet of emerald with tiny flowers, purple and yellow, here and 
 there saddening into brown under the melancholy smiles of au- 
 tumn. Such is our landscape, the still life present, unavoidably 
 perceptible, but not in its details, and only as subordinate to the 
 human action. That fixes and fascinates the glance. There we 
 see, crowding the intervals beneath the trees of the forest, a thou- 
 sand human forms — the wild people of the woods — stern and dark, 
 proud and fiercely frowning warriors, armed after their own fash- 
 ion, looking the more terrible, perhaps, because of the absence of 
 all armour ; — with — only half seen among the groups — some less 
 dusky visage which heaven has benignly touched with features of 
 more human sweetness. Woman appears upon the scene, half 
 shrinking back even while she advances, as fearing to be seen while 
 anxious to see ; — and boyhood stands forward, eagerly, before all 
 the rest. Curiosity is in all, anger and exultation in many, faces. 
 All eyes turn to one centre, where, conspicuous in the fore-ground 
 
94 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 — the sunlight streaming down through a broad opening of that 
 natural amphitheatre upon the spot — lies one 
 
 " Destined to make an Indian holiday." 
 
 It is the pale, the European face, that lies beneath that oppressive 
 sunlight. The captive is bound and prostrate upon the earth — 
 the strong man, conscious of all his strength, in the same moment 
 in which he feels all its impotency. He constitutes the centre 
 of that eager group that fascinates every glance — to whom every 
 eye addresses itself — some with hate and eager ferocity, some 
 with curiosity simply, and, possibly, some few with pity and re- 
 gret. Perfectly helpless, quite hopeless, his face turns upward 
 to that sun which is about to set forever on his sight. Such, at 
 least, is his conviction. The pity which has power to save rises 
 not in that dark assemblage ; and he has prepared himself with 
 the courage of the soldier, and the patient confidence of the 
 Christian, to await the cruel death which hangs above his head. 
 His manly cheek does not pale with apprehension. His eagle 
 eye makes no appeal for mercy, and, when his lips unclose, it is 
 only to utter themselves in the language of defiance. His mus- 
 cular form, though fettered with gyves from the neighbouring vines, 
 subsides nevertheless into an attitude of grace, consistent with the 
 reputation of the courtier. Patiently he awaits the stroke of death. 
 A jagged rock sustains his head. The executioner stands above 
 him with his mace — a stalwart savage, who has no shrinkings of 
 the heart or muscles — who will be only too happy when bade to 
 strike — w ho will drink in, with a fierce phrenzy, the groans of 
 the victim — nay, bury his hand within his bosom and pluck the 
 heart from its quivering abode, while life yet speaks in the pulses 
 of the dying man ! He waits, he looks, with impatience to the 
 savage monarch for the signal when to strike. That signal is 
 made — the word is spoken ! — 
 
 " The arm that holds the mace is bending, 
 The heavy stroke of death descending." 
 
 What arrests the blow ? Why does the eager savage, anxious 
 for blood, panting for vengeance;^ forbear to execute the bidding of 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 95 
 
 his cruel sovereign ? Lo ! tlic miracle, at once, of loveliness and 
 mercy ! What has arrested the stroke of the murderer, so fre- 
 quently, and in all lands and ages ? What, but the interposition 
 of an angel ! A form of light — that loveliest creation of mortal 
 beauty, a young girl just budding into womanhood — is this inter- 
 posing angel. With what a sinking, terror-stricken heart, has 
 she sat at her father's feet, watching the whole dark proceedings. 
 What a strife has been in progress the while, between her timid 
 sex and years, and the holy strength of maternal nature in her 
 heart. The maternal nature is at last triumphant. She darts 
 from her seat — voiceless — gasping with new and convulsive emo- 
 tions, which lead her, she knows not whither, while she flings her- 
 self between the captive and the blow. One arm is thrown up- 
 ward to preven*; the stroke — one covers the head of the victim — 
 while her dilating but tearless eyes, turn in fear and entreaty to 
 the spot where sits the fierce old monarch, Powhatan ! This is 
 the moment of time for the painter. It is the crisis in the fortunes 
 of the scene. Will the interposition of that angel prevail — will 
 the sire relent — will they not drag her from the prisoner, heedless 
 of her entreaties — heedless of her shrieks and prayers ? These 
 are the enquiries in every face. All eyes turn with hers to the 
 rock where the monarch sits — all eyes, but those of the captive ! 
 He looks only upon her. He has forgotten that he is to die in the 
 advent of that unexpected vision of light and beauty. A pleasing 
 wonder is in his heart — he doubts, indeed, whether the blessed 
 form has not really descended from the skies ; and his memory 
 carries him backward to the days when a like vision of beauty in 
 the east, once cheered him with delivery even in a moment of 
 trial as terrible as that which still hangs above him in the west. 
 From this recollection he gathers hope and heart, and the most 
 assuring auguries — and they do not betray him ! 
 
 And what of Powhatan, that hard-souled, iron-browed old des- 
 pot ! W^hat are his emotions ? He has started from his seat. 
 The conflict in his soul speaks fully out in hi? countenance. To 
 be thwarted in his vengeance, and by a child, is something new 
 in his experience ! But the child is his child, and such a child ! 
 Her sweet nature is written in her most innocent deeds. He looks 
 upon her kneeling form, and his face is full of surprise and anger. 
 
96 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 His right foot is thrown behind him — his arm, grasping the toma- 
 hawk, is uplifted to strike — his form swings upon its centre, to 
 give fatal impetus to the blow ! Shall he strike or spare ? Here 
 is another issue of doubt and curiosity, most favourable to the paint- 
 er. How shall the question be determined ? What hopes, what 
 fears, depend upon this question. What feelings of vengeance 
 and of mercy, of hate and tenderness, are in conflict. How com- 
 pletely would such a picture, though grasping but a single mo- 
 ment of time, tell its own history ! Need we say that the angel 
 of mercy must finally prevail ? 
 
 With these, our examples must conclude. Our limits do not 
 suffer us to carry out our first design of presenting such an analy- 
 sis of this delightful story, as would show its admirable suscepti- 
 bility for poetic illustration. For the border romance — the free 
 and easy narrative of the wild and startling, such as Scott has 
 rendered so familiar to us, in that happy combination of the epic 
 and the ballad which is destined to a long association with his 
 peculiar genius — the life of the Virginia princess furnishes other 
 materials like this, and not much inferior to it in dramatic respects 
 — which are fully equal, in intrinsic capabilities, to any of those 
 which have been employed by Scott. The tone of the story may 
 be pitched with that of the Lady of the Lake — the characteristics 
 of the people and the country are not dissimilar — but the events in 
 our Virginia legend are of a nobler sort ; and the wretched fail- 
 ures which have followed every attempt to work them into song, 
 are due entirely to the inadequacy of those writers who have pre- 
 sumptuously addressed themselves to the task. When our peo- 
 ple shall really have acquired some intellectual appetites in suf- 
 ficient number to make and mould the popular taste ; and books 
 shall have become an aliment as absolutely necessary to us as 
 brandy and tobacco — we shall then have the poet and the song. 
 The laws of demand and supply govern this subject, in most of its 
 respects, as thoroughly as they govern in the market place. It is 
 a consoling part of tlie faith which it is the purpose of these papers 
 to teach, that we shall not always slumber — that we are at last to 
 have an awakening — not, certainly, to be put off to the indefinite 
 period of the Greek Kalends. 
 
 It needs not that we should review the remaining periods of 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 97 
 
 time which have been assigned to the materials of our history, in 
 considering them with regard to their susceptibility for the pur- 
 poses of art. We have not the leisure for this task, nor, indeed, 
 is it at all essential to our purpose. Having already indicated 
 the disabilities of these epochs, in general terms, such a perform- 
 ance would seem unnecessary — the more particularly, indeed, as 
 the task would be endless of sampling from our staples, and. dis- 
 fincruishino; the most elif^ible and excellent for the use of the 
 artist. Besides, the independence of character which every 
 where makes the individual mind, would render this a gratuitous 
 and unwelcome labour. The subject must suggest its own modes 
 of treatment to him who conceives it. What would strike one 
 mind as sincrularlv suitable for the uses of the artist, would scarce- 
 ly commend itself to the peculiar genius of another. Of these 
 periods, therefore, which we leave unexamined, it will suffice to 
 say, that, however inferior to the two first, they are yet very far 
 from deficient in that boldness of event, and warmth of colouring, 
 which are demanded by the worker in the fields of fiction. Their 
 chief difficulties lie, as we have said before, in their too close 
 proximity to our own time. But these difficulties are neither 
 permanent in their duration, nor total in their exactions. It 
 would be easy to enumerate hundi'eds of events, in the wars of 
 the Revolution, which would amply answer for the experiments 
 of novelist and poet. Partisan warfare, itself, is that irregular 
 and desultory sort of life, which is unavoidably suggestive of the 
 deeds and feelings of chivalry — such as gave the peculiar char- 
 acter, and much of the charm, to the history of the middle ages. 
 The sudden onslaught — the retreat as sudden — the midnight 
 tramp — the moonlight bivouack — the swift surprise, the desperate 
 defence — the cruel slaughter and the headlong flight — and, amid 
 the fierce and bitter warfare, always, like a sweet star shining 
 above the gloom, the faithful love, the constant prayer, the devoted 
 homage and fond allecriance of the maiden heart ! These are all 
 to be made available, as the ordinary characteristics — all of them 
 highly susceptible of the uses of romance — which must inevitably 
 distinguish a domestic warfare carried on in a country such as 
 ours — full of forests, sparse of population — where the march 
 must needs be wearisome and long — where the foragers must 
 
98 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 wander far in search of provisions with clangers necessarily 
 increasing at every mile in their progress, and where no army 
 can be secure from capital misfortunes, even through a single 
 night, unless by an equally stern energy and a sleepless vigilance. 
 The comparison of such a warfare to that of the middle ages, 
 derives no small additional force from the fact that so much of it 
 must needs be performed on horseback. The partisan warrior 
 combines, in his own person, the man at arms and the bowman 
 of ancient chivalry. He is at once the cavalier and rifleman, 
 uniting in himself the eye and the wing of battle, having the un- 
 erring and fatal directness of the one, with the untiring velocity 
 of the other. 
 
 It will have been seen, in the progress of these pages, that we 
 have confined our examination entirely to such events as have 
 taken place within our own geographical limits. We have, in 
 order to take the subject in its least copious and least prepossessing 
 aspects, recognized the political boundaries of our republic as 
 boundaries also for its muse ! We have not yielded any consid- 
 eration to the vast resources, for the artist who works in the realm 
 of fiction, which lie, broadcast, among the countries between us 
 and the Pacific. Peru with her wealth of tradition and history — 
 Mexico with her pictured treasures — and the collateral and de- 
 pendent provinces, many of which possessed a sway and a story 
 which may be yet found to be very far superior even to those 
 which we find so wonderful in the greater states by wdiich they 
 were afterwards overshadowed. These are empires which, in 
 future days, shall be far more prosperous and productive in the 
 hands of fiction, than they were in the iron grasp of their Spanish 
 conquerors. Nor has that race, rapidly tending to the chambers 
 of the setting sun, but still lingering like a mournful shadow 
 upon our horizon, left the student of the muse no treasures. 
 Their melancholy story, even in our own day, will yield to the 
 gleaner the living sweetness of some touching song. As yet we do 
 no justice to this material. We see nothing but the squalid poverty, 
 the wretched destitution, and the baser passions of this failing 
 race. We have yet to learn the truth in regard to their charac- 
 teristics, in many particulars equally important to the poet and 
 the philosopher. We are burdened with many conflicting and 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 99 
 
 false ideas of their moral and social constitution, which have 
 hitherto furnished barriers, and not helps, to the progress of dis- 
 covery. With solemn gravity we have pronounced upon their 
 insensibility to the ordinary passions of- mankind. We shall 
 grow wiser upon reflection, and gather, as we proceed, from the 
 lips of tradition, some of those better histories which shall long 
 survive the certified chronicles of the historian. Much of those 
 that we have already at its hands, may resolve themselves into the 
 finest notes of fancy. The very fortunes of their people — doomed, 
 as they are, and desolate ! — their fierce wars and faithless loves, 
 — their unbending justice — their primitive love of truth — their 
 firm endurance of toil and torment — their tenacity of purpose — 
 their sleepless vigilance — wonderful self-esteem, and never-dying 
 thirst of revenge ! Nay, the very doubt and obscurity which 
 envelope their history — the who, the whence and the whither of 
 their race — their long legends of strife and invasion, seen only 
 in the most imperfect glimmerings of assertion — these, not only 
 yield scope, but furnish provocation to conjecture. The imagina- 
 tion, left free to spread its most daring wing, darts forward with 
 the Phosnician adventurer on the countless ocean. Taking a 
 bold flight from the pillars of Hercules, it never rests till it places 
 a free foot on the highest peaks of Chimborazo and Darien ! With 
 such a wing, and such a flight, what a bird's eye view of won- 
 ders shall we attain ! What a world of romance and song shall 
 then lie open before us ! We shall then trace the fortunes of 
 those very people whose great cities lie buried among the moun- 
 tain passes of Guatamela. We shall pursue the story through 
 the chambers at Palenque, and around the strange altar places, 
 raised to false gods, in the desert regions of Copan ! 
 
 We do not despair of these discoveries ; but they will be due, 
 rather to the Homer than the Champollia'i of future times. We 
 doubt not that, even now, we are on the eve of the most wonder- 
 ful discoveries — treasures of story and of song which we may 
 not live to enjoy, but which shall gather our children together, 
 in sweet suspense and tearful expectation, around the family al- 
 tar-place. No nation of our magnitude — sprung from such fa- 
 mous stocks — having such records of the past — having such hopes 
 of the future — with our enthusiasm of character, and with our bold- 
 
100 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ness of design — can long remain without its Genius loci f It is 
 in our hearts, that, even now, he breathes and burns ! — for, what 
 are all these strivings and aspirations, whicli, every where, in our 
 day and country, are bringing together the select few — working 
 in their academies, their societies, their libraries and their ly- 
 ceums — to emulate the good and the great things of older nations. 
 It is the struggle of that infant genius of place — the only genius 
 which makes place holy, and preserves it from degradation and 
 decay ! That genius, thus feebly striving now, and with a faint 
 torch burning in his infant grasp, is yet destined to grow mighty 
 — yea, mightiest among the mighty. Already we behold his 
 chosen altar-place on the blue summits of Apalachy ! — already 
 we gaze upon his marble watch-towers and golden heights. The 
 flame, lighted from heaven, sheds its crimson splendours, far off, 
 to the hills of New Hampshire, and glows, with the triumphant 
 beauty of an unclouded sunset, over the purple waters of the gulf. 
 We may see his worshippers, as they march in ceremonial pro- 
 cession from our kindred republics, bringing tribute and music, 
 and incense to his shrine ! Nor, last among these — nor least — 
 we may count among the proudest of these shining hosts, our 
 own dear brothers of the south — our offspring — the blessed sons 
 and daughters of the muse ; — stately in step, noble in aspect, and 
 with eyes that flash like the lightning from our own summer 
 heavens. They march, as to a conquest ! Their banners wa- 
 ving — their music sounding — their high hearts beating — in holy 
 sympathy with that white robed genius of our land, which alone 
 shall confer upon it the richest trophies of renown — the renown 
 which follows frohi the achievements of creative art. We have 
 a faith in this vision ! We cannot — we dare not — for your sakes 
 — for the sake of our common mother — be unbelievers ! We feel 
 that we are men — sprung from the greatest men — and destined to 
 execute all the trusts, and \o secure all the triumphs, that God has 
 ever permitted to the powers of humanity. This is a faith which 
 will most surely realize its own predictions. We must enjoy 
 these triumphs — these treasures must be ours. We should be- 
 lieve, though our eyes may never behold them ! It is by a bless- 
 ed instinct from heaven that we feel and know this prediction must 
 be true ! We know that we shall yet behold the advent of this 
 
HISTORY FOR THE PURPOSES OF ART. 101 
 
 genius of place ; — that, penetrating the antique forests, he shall 
 drag the old tradition from his Druid cavern, and compel him to 
 deliver up his secrets. We shall yet hear the incantation uttered 
 by some mighty voice, not unworthy of the greatest masters who 
 have spelled the departed in their urns. We shall see the cavern 
 unsealed, its ponderous jaws distend, and, in a dim glory 
 like that which hangs about the line of successive kings on the 
 vision of Macbeth, we shall number the great spirits of the past, 
 issuing forth and trooping in review before us ! We shall see 
 the Montezumas, the Quaghtimozins, and the Atabalipas of our 
 own land, re-enacting their exploits — exploits not less marvellous 
 than those which have already found their Homer ! The hope 
 which is based upon a noble ambition, is always sure to realize 
 itself. The faith which is felt in sincerity, and which leads to 
 work, is a faith which will assuredly bring down the god to its 
 temples ! Let this faith be ours and we shall be sure of the deity 
 to whom we proffer the service of our hearts. We have but to 
 build the altar, and he will send us the prophet and the priest. 
 Let us only prepare the sacrifice with clean hands, and the fire 
 which is to consume it, thenceforth to become our peculiar and 
 eternal light, will, as surely as the rising and the setting of the 
 sun, come down to us from heaven. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ARTICLE III. 
 
 LITERATURE AND ART MIONG THE AI^IERICAN ABORIGINES. 
 
 I. — Oneota, or the Red Race of America ; Their Histor}', Traditions, 
 Customs, Poetry, Picture Writing, &c. By Henry R. Schoolcraft. New 
 York : Burgess, Stringer & Co. 1845. 
 
 II. — Algic Researches. By Henry R. Schoolcraft. 2 vols. Harper & 
 Brothers. New York. 
 
 The vitality of a people, their capacity to maintain themselves 
 in recollection and to perpetuate a name through all the ordinary 
 vicissitudes of empire, is in just proportion to their sensibilities; 
 and these are shown in due degree with their susceptibility to the 
 impressions of art. The highest manifestations of this susceptibil- 
 ity are those of invention — the faculty to combine and to compare, 
 to adapt, endow, and, from the rude materials furnished by the 
 experience of the nation, to extract its intellectual and moral re- 
 sources, whether of pride or of pleasure, of triumph, or simple 
 consolation. The humblest manifestation of this sensibility is 
 that of music, since this is one of the most universal known to 
 man, and may be entertained, even in large degree, by nations 
 wholly barbarous in every other respect. There is, perhaps, no 
 primitive people so very rude and wretched, as to be wholly with- 
 out one or other of these manifestations. In all probability music 
 is one of the iirst. If not exactly a substitute for thought — as 
 one of the British poets would seem to affirm, — it is yet apt to 
 precede the toils of thought, and, possibly, to pave the way for 
 it. Appealing directly to the senses, it serves to chasten and re- 
 fine them, and, by subduing or mollifying the passions, it leaves 
 the intellectual nature free to assert itself, and to maintain, by 
 other processes, the ascendancy which it thus acquires over the 
 brutal. Other developments follow which are more or less mod- 
 ified according to the circumstances and condition of a country. 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. 103 
 
 These declare themselves, first, in rude attempts at material art ; 
 in outlines upon the wall ; in figures wrought in clay ; in uncouth 
 attempts to connect narrative with music ; — the germs, not to be 
 overestimated in the analysis of a national mind, of its romance 
 and poetry. These are all bald or copious, fluent or constrained, 
 wild or soft, according to the necessities, the habits, and the cli- 
 mate of a people. Where the nation, either directly, or tlirough 
 individuals whom it sends forth, have contact with strangers who 
 are superior to themselves in art and civilization, the exercise of 
 a rude faculty of imitation necessarily precedes all native and 
 original endeavour. Where this is not the case, the art springs, 
 slowly and painfully, from the usages of the tribes, from their 
 sports, their toils, their religion, the egotism of the individual, or 
 the pride of the stock, — to all of which it imparts, or seeks to im- 
 part, by little and little, the attributes of form, grace, colour and 
 dignity. At first, no higher object is aimed at than simply to 
 reconcile the struggling and impatient nature, yearning for better 
 things, to a fate which seems unavoidable, and to a toil which 
 needs assuasion. The shepherd is thus taught to find a solace, 
 and perhaps a charm, in his rusting and wretched life among the 
 bleak passes of the Alps ; persuaded by his Melibosus of the su- 
 perior loveliness of a condition, — with crook, and pipe, and dog — 
 from which he feels it impossible to escape ; — and the squalid 
 fisherman who draws his nets, and pursues his miserable occupa- 
 tion, along the gloomy edges of the northern seas, may well yield 
 himself to those assurances of song which can only reconcile him 
 to his own land and labour by disparaging those of other nations 
 as more wretched still. And thus it is that the poet becomes the 
 first minister of a people, either to find a solace for the present, or 
 to provoke prouder and more attractive hopes in another and more 
 fruitful condition. Thus it is that we have the pastoral and pis- 
 catory Muse, — the Muse of a humble nature and inferior pursuits 
 — to which it seeks to impart beauty and a grace which nothing 
 but the growing fancy, under this tutelage, enables the miserable 
 labourer to behold. In this manner are the rude nomadic tribes 
 hurried forward under the stimulating entreaties of the lyrist, — 
 himself a hunter and a warrior, — to the invasion of distant for- 
 ests. Thus the young savage grapples vrith the grisly bear, and 
 
104 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 confronts the she wolf in her den. War thus, is made to look 
 lovely in spite of all its terrors ; its dangers are wooed with the 
 eager impetuosity of the bridegroom — its achievements form the 
 objects of glory which a tribe most sedulously preserves for imita- 
 tion — and the Bard justifies the crimes which are committed with 
 this sanction — stimulates resentment, and impels the passions of 
 the living to emulate, by similar atrocities, the terrible actions of 
 the dead. The Greeks, sung by Homer, were neither more nor 
 less than highwaymen and pirates ; — the chiefs and demigods of 
 the northern nations, honoured by Odin with highest places in Val- 
 halla, were of the same kidney ; — and both find their likeness in 
 the hunter of the American forest — the dark, fierce, barbarian, 
 Choctaw or Cherokee — whom we are apt to consider nothing 
 more than the barbarian. But he too had his song, his romances 
 and his deities — good and evil — even as the Hellenes and the 
 Northmen ; and his deeds were just as deserving as these, of their 
 Saemund and Melesigenes. That they would have found their poet 
 and historian to have given them as admirable a record as any of 
 those which recount the deeds of Greek and Trojan, was a cer- 
 tainty to have followed hard upon their progress to that degree of 
 civilization which would have brought with it the higher efforts 
 of invention. The Greeks had no Homer till their wanderings 
 were over ; and, with the concentration of their affections and 
 their endowments upon a fixed abode, the American aboriginals 
 would have then looked back upon the past, gathering up, with 
 equal curiosity and industry, its wild fragmentary traditions. 
 These, in process of years, they would have embodied in a com- 
 plete whole, and we should then have been as rigidly fettered by 
 its details as we are now by those of Livy and Herodotus. First, 
 we should have had the crude ballads, the border minstrelsy, of 
 the several tribes, descriptive of their wild and bloody encounters 
 for favourite hunting grounds, or for the revenge of a wrong done 
 to the honour of a proud ambitious family. These would have 
 been welded together by a better artist in a more refined period, 
 and a still superior genius, seizing upon this labour as so much 
 crude material, would have remodelled the action, improved upon 
 the events, brought out the noble characters with more distinct- 
 ness, adorned it with new fancies and episodes, and sent it forth 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. 105 
 
 to admiring posterity, stamped with his own unchallenged im- 
 press. The rough story from which he drew, would, in the 
 course of a century, have been as completely forgotten as were 
 the still ruder ballads from which that was originally wrought ; 
 and nothing would have remained to future history but the sym- 
 metrical narrative, too beautiful for fact, which we cannot wil- 
 lingly believe, yet know not how to deny — a work too rich for 
 history, yet too true to art, to be approached with anything short 
 of delight and veneration. 
 
 That these materials were in the possession of the North Amer- 
 ican Indians, — that these results might have followed their amal- 
 gamation into one great family, — in a fixed abode — addressed to 
 the pursuits of legitimate industry, and stayed from wandering 
 either by their own internal progress, or by the coercion of a su- 
 perior power — are conclusions not to be denied by those who have 
 considered the character of this people. They had all the sus- 
 ceptibilities which might produce this history. Eager and intense 
 in their feelings, lofty and courageous in spirit, — sensible in high 
 degree to admiration, — ambitious of fame, — capable of great en- 
 durance, in the prosecution of an object, or in the eye of an ad- 
 versary, — they were, at the same time, sensible to the domestic 
 influences — were dutiful to the aged, heedful of the young, — rigid 
 in their training and hopeful of their offspring, — with large faith 
 in friendship, — large devotion to the gods, — not cold in their reli- 
 gion, and with an imagination which found spirits, divine and evil, — 
 as numerous as those of the Greeks or Germans — in their groves, 
 their mountains, their great oceans, their eternal forests, and in 
 all the changes and aspects of their visible world. Their imagi- 
 nations, which carried them thus far, to the creation of a vast 
 pneumatology of their own, did not overlook the necessity of fur- 
 nishing their spiritual agents with suitable attributes and endow- 
 ments ; and a closer inquiry than has yet been made into their 
 mysteries, their faiths and fancies, will develope a scheme of sin- 
 gular imaginative contrivance, with wide spread ramifications, 
 and distinguished by a boldness of conception, which will leave 
 nothing wanting to him who shall hereafter contemplate a dream 
 in mid-summer for his Chickasah or Choctaw Oberon. These 
 traits and characteristics of mind and temperament, constitute the 
 
106 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 literary susceptibilities of a people. These susceptibilities are the 
 stuff cut of which Genius weaves her best fabrics, — those which 
 are most truthful, and most enduring, as most certainly native and 
 original — to be wrought into symmetry and shape with the usual 
 effects of time and civilization. Cultivation does not create, nor 
 even endow the mind with its susceptibilities ; — if simply draws 
 them forth, into sight, and stimulates their growth and activity. 
 Nor, on the other hand, does repose lose or forfeit the germinating 
 property which lies dormant in the core. Like those flower seeds 
 plucked from the coffin of the mummy of the Egyptian Pyramids, 
 where they have lain sapless and seemingly lifeless for three 
 thousand years, — they take root and flourish the moment that they 
 feel the hand of the cultivator — springing into bud and beauty, as 
 gloriously bright as the winged insect darting from his chrysalis 
 cerements with the first glimpses of that warming sunlight which 
 is kindred in its sympathy to the secret principle suspended in its 
 breast. Time and change are necessary to these results. As 
 the flower seed which had no light in the waxen grasp of Egyp- 
 tian mortality, transferred to the sunny plains of Italy, or even 
 nursed in the warm flower palaces of England, shoots out into in- 
 stant vitality — so, the nature of the savage, sterile while travers- 
 ing the wide prairies of Alabama, or ranging the desert slopes of 
 Texas, subdued and fettered by the hand of civilization among the 
 hills of Apalachy, becomes a Cadmus, and gives a written lan- 
 guage to his hitherto unlettered people.* The most certain 
 sources of a national literature, are to be found in the denseness 
 of its population, in its readiness to encounter its own necessities — 
 in other words, its willingness to labour in the domestic tendencies 
 of the citizen — in the growth of intellectual wants — in the neces- 
 sity of furnishing a stimulus to pampered and to palsied appetites, 
 and in the sympathy of the community, thus needing provocatives, 
 with the talent which is required to provide them. These condi- 
 tions obtained, — with the sensibilities already insisted upon, — and 
 the literature of a people is a growth too natural in its rise, too 
 gradual in its progress, to be traced easily in its transitions. All 
 
 * The allusion here is to the invention of the Cherokee Alphabet by Gess, 
 a half breed — an event quite as worthy of commemoration among his people, 
 as the achievement of Cadmus was among the Greeks. 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. 107 
 
 other conditions fulfilled, and its growth follows the requisitions 
 of its people. In their summons, in their sympathy, the poet finds 
 his birth and provocation. He scarcely asks their rewards. The 
 eagerness of the Athenians after news — an eagerness which moves 
 the patriotic indignation of the orator — was yet one of the prime 
 sources of the popular intelligence, — by which the orator himself 
 obtained his audience — which furnished strings to the grand or- 
 gan of iEschylus, and filled the mouth of the Bee of Colonus with 
 that honey which other bees can find there still. To this very 
 appetite, this thirsting for the novel, they owed the beginnings of 
 their drama, and all their other glorious arts. The exquisite fin- 
 ish of their first conceptions, was the duty of successive periods. 
 As invention began to stale, taste ripened into fastidiousness. 
 The massive outline, wholly beyond human ability to rival or sur- 
 pass, was left in its acknowledged supremacy ; and Genius, ex- 
 hausted in the struggle for original conquest, settled down to the 
 perfection of details. This is a history. These are all achieve- 
 ments of the city, of the crowded mart, of struggling, toiling, con- 
 flicting masses. It is the progress of those masses, writing itself 
 in stone, in tower, in temple, in all sorts of monuments. These 
 are the signs of permanence, of a fixed condition, drawing reso- 
 lutely from itself and from the narrow empire to which its domain 
 is circumscribed. We can hope for nothing of this sort from a 
 wandering people. They build no monuments, rear no temples, 
 leave no proofs behind them that they ever had a faith, or an af- 
 fection, a hero or a God ! The hunter, and even the agricultural 
 life, is necessarily thus sterile. Their capacities, — such as de- 
 pend on the studious cultivation of their sensibilities, — are dead- 
 ened and apathetic by disuse. But that we reason from first prin- 
 ciples and just parallels, we have no right to know that they ever 
 had sensibilities, — that they are not obtuse and incapable by na- 
 ture, — an inferior order of creation having difierent uses, and a 
 far inferior destiny. But we know better, and justly ascribe to 
 pursuit and condition that which the unobserving judgment would 
 refer to native incapacity. That sort of mental flexibility and 
 aptitude, which, in a state of crowded society, is the necessary 
 result of attrition with rival minds, conflicting temperaments, and 
 continually arising necessities, yields, in their cases, to a cold 
 
108 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 shyness of character, a stern and jealous self-esteem, a hard and 
 resolute reserve and haughty suspiciousness of mood, which leaves 
 tlie individual wholly deficient in all the arts of conciliation. 
 Confident in himself, his own strength and individuality, he lacks 
 that love of approbation, that concern for the opinions of others, 
 which is at the bottom of much of the ambition by which poet and 
 painter are drawn to their tasks. He asks for no sympathy, does 
 not expect it, perhaps scarcely cares for it in any degree. Is he 
 not himself? — Equal to his own wants, fearless of foes, wholly 
 indifferent of friends ? It matters not much what you think of 
 him, so that you do not question him. If he has a merit, a fac- 
 ulty, it is enough, for his own gratification, that he is conscious 
 of its possession. 'He does not feel or find it necessary that you 
 should quaff at his fountains. His light, if it burns at all, is care- 
 fully hidden beneath his own bushel. He has virtues, but they 
 are not those which belong to, or spring from society. He is 
 proud, and this protects him from meanness ; generous, and capable 
 of the most magnanimous actions ; hospitable, — you shall share 
 his bread and salt to his own privation ; — loves liberty with a pas- 
 sion that absorbs almost all others — and brave — rushing into bat- 
 tle with the phrenzy of one who loves it — he prolongs the conflict, 
 unhappily, long after mercy entreats to spare. 
 
 Such is the North American Indian. He probably bore an 
 equivalent relation to the original possessors of this continent, with 
 the barbarians of the Northern Hive to Italy, in the days of her 
 luxurious decline. At the time of the discovery of America, he 
 was very much the sort of savage that the historians represent the 
 Gaul, the Goth, and Cimbrian to have been during the wars of 
 Camillus and of Catulus, of the Scipios and of Caius Marius. 
 The Teutones — the great German family, with all its tribes — 
 were all of this complexion ; — neither braver, nor wiser, nor bet- 
 ter, nor more skilful in the arts, nor possessed of a jot more of 
 imagination and letters, at the moment when they first became 
 known to civilization. The Saxon Boor when first scourged by 
 the Norman into manhood and stature, moral and physical, had 
 given scarcely more proofs of intellectual endowment tlian the red 
 men of the great Apalachian chain. He was a christian, it is 
 true, after a fashion ; but Christianity is properly the religion of 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. 109 
 
 civilization, and he was not a civilized being — far less so, as we 
 know, in the time of Rollo, than was the Mexican during the 
 reign of Montezuma. Of all these nations, North and South, the 
 North American Indian — keeping in mind the parallels of time 
 already indicated — was probably the superior person. He was 
 quite as valiant, quite as venturous — had probably overthrown 
 the more civilized nations of Central and of South America, and, 
 as dim glimpses seem to assure us, had been the conqueror of a 
 highly civilized and even white people in North America. He 
 was fleet of foot, strong of frame, capable of great enterprises ; of 
 great powers of endurance ; equally erect, large, and symmetri- 
 cal — a model, according to West, for the conception of a god ;* — 
 and not without some few of the arts of civilization, whether ac- 
 quired by conquest, or by his own unassisted genius. His bow 
 and arrows, his war club, his canoes, his own garments and dec- 
 orations, were wrought, not only with considerable dexterity and 
 ingenuity, but with an eye to the beautiful and picturesque. He 
 had a picture-writing like the Mexicans, and was not without 
 very decided beginnings of a literature. This may have been 
 rude enough, — not so rude, however, as we are accustomed to 
 think it — but it is sufficient that he had made a beginninor. His 
 genius answered for the rest. This differed considerably in the 
 several families. Among these, the Catawbas and the Natchez, 
 seem to have been most distinguished for an elasticity and grace 
 of manner, which separated them widely from the sullen and fe- 
 rocious Muscoghee. The Cherokees, however, had taken the 
 most certain steps towards civilization. Their structures were 
 more permanent, their towns more populous, and a large portion 
 of their people had engrafted the farmer upon the hunter life. The 
 laws of nature are so mutually provocative, that one step cannot 
 well be taken without another. The moment that the habitation 
 and limits of the barbarian become circumscribed, he begins to 
 labour. This i^ of necessity. The extension of the abodes of man, 
 
 * The reader need not be reminded of the famous anecdote of the American 
 painter West, who, on seeing the statue of the Apollo Belvidere, exclaimed, 
 " My God I how like a young Mohawk warrior !" The coincidence was not 
 in the mere symmetry of frame. It was the eye, the breathing attitude — the 
 mind and music in the air, action and expression. 
 
no VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 and the increase of his numbers, is fatal to the wild beast of the 
 forest, — to the forest itself — and it becomes really easier to find food 
 from labour, in the earth, than to wander remotely, into distant 
 regions, to the probable encounter with superior enemies, furious 
 at any intrusion upon their hunting grounds. This, in fact, was 
 the secret cause of the moral improvement of the Cherokees. The 
 Creeks boasted to have made women of them. They had whipt 
 them into close limits, where they were compelled to labour, — and 
 labour, — a blessing born of a penalty, — is the fruitful mother of 
 all the nobler exercises of humanity. Hence, the progress of the 
 Cherokees — their farms, their cattle, their manufactures, their 
 discovery of the alphabet, their schools, their constitution, and 
 newspaper, — all the fruit of their subjection, by the Muscoghees 
 and other nations, just before the first English settlements in Vir- 
 ginia and the Carolinas. Had these English settlements been 
 such as a mighty nation should have sent forth — had the colonies 
 been such as issued from the fruitful ports of Carthage, — thirty 
 thousand at a time, as were sent out by Hanno, — what would 
 have been the effect upon the destinies of the red men of America. 
 They would have been rescued from themselves and preserved, — 
 a mighty nation, full of fire, of talent, of all the materials which 
 ensure long life to the genius and to the eminence of a race. The 
 good people of England were not the morbid philanthropists that 
 they have become in latter days — latter day saints, putting to the 
 blush such poor pretenders as those who read the golden plates of 
 Mormon, and look out for the fiery advents which disturb the 
 dreams of Parson Miller. They would have subdued the abo- 
 rigines, as William of Normandy subdued the Saxons. An Eu- 
 ropean colony of ten thousand men would have done this. They 
 would not have paltered with the ignorant savages, flattering their 
 vanity in order to conciliate their prejudices and disarm their 
 anger, as was done by the feeble settlers at James Town, and 
 other places. They would have overrun them, parcelled them 
 off in tens, and twenties, and hundreds, under strict task masters, 
 and, by compelling the performance of their natural duties — that 
 labour which is the condition of all human life, — would have pre- 
 served them to themselves and to humanity. Properly diluted, 
 there was no better blood than that of Cherokee and Natchez. It 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. Ill 
 
 M'ould have been a good infusion into the paler fountain of 
 Quaker and Puritan — the very infusion which would put our na- 
 tional vanity in subjection to our pride, and contribute to keep us 
 as thoroughly independent of the mother country, in intellectual, 
 as we fondly believe ourselves to be in political respects. But we 
 are becoming too discursive. 
 
 Our imperfect knowledge of the Indian, — the terror that he in- 
 spired, — the constant warfare between his race and our own — 
 have embittered our prejudices, and made us unwilling to see any 
 thing redeeming either in his character or intellect. We are apt 
 to tliink him no more than a surly savage, capable of showing 
 nothing better than his teeth. The very mention of his name, 
 recalls no more grateful images than scalping knife and tomahawk ; 
 and, shuddering at the revolting associations, we shut our eyes, 
 and close our ears, against all the proofs which declare his better 
 characteristics. We are unwilling to read his past as we are un- 
 able to control his future ; — refuse to recognize his sensibilities, 
 and reject with scorn the evidence of any more genial attributes, 
 in his possession, which might persuade us to hope for him in after 
 days — for his natural genius and his real virtues — when, shut in 
 by the comparatively narrow empire which we have allotted him 
 — barred from expansion by the nations which are destined to 
 crowd upon him on every hand, — the people of Texas, of Oregon 
 and Mississippi, — he will be forced to throw aside the license of 
 the hunter, and place himself, by a happy necessity, within the 
 traces of civilization. 
 
 Regard ed^^w it hput prejudice, and through the medium even of 
 what we most positively know of his virtues and his talents, and 
 the North American Indian was as noble a specimen of crude 
 humanity as we can find, from history, any aboriginal people to have 
 been. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that he laboured 
 under any intellectual deficiency. On the contrary, the proofs 
 are conclusive, that, compared with other nations — the early Ro- 
 mans before their amalgamation with the great Tuscan family ; 
 the Jews prior to the Egyptian captivity ; — the German race to 
 the time of Odoacer, — the Saxon, to the period of the Heptarchy, 
 and the Norman tribes in the reign of Charlemagne ; — he pre- 
 sented as high and sufficient proofs of susceptibility for improve- 
 
112 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ment and education, as any, the very noblest stocks in our cata- 
 logue. In some respects, indeed, the Indians show more impres- 
 sively. The republican features in their society — their leagues 
 for common defence and necessity, and the frequency of their 
 counsels for the adjustment of subjects in common — led to the 
 growth of a race of politicians and orators, of whose acuteness, 
 excellent skill in argument, and great powers of elocution, the 
 early discoverers give us some of the most astonishing examples. 
 The samples of their eloquence which have come down to us, are 
 as purely Attic as the most severe critic could desire — bold, ear- 
 nest, truthful — clear in style, closely thought, keenly argued, con- 
 clusive in logic, and, in the highest degree, impressive in utterance. 
 That their action was admirable, and would have delighted De- 
 mosthenes, we know from authorities upon which we would as 
 cheerfully rely as upon the assurances of the great Athenian 
 orator himself. Now capacious and flowing, now terse and epi- 
 grammatic, adapting the manner to the matter, and both to the 
 occasion, — sometimes smooth and conciliatory, anon searching and 
 sarcastic — now persuasive and adroit, and again suddenly start- 
 ling because of their vehement force and audacious imagery ; — 
 these were the acknowledged characteristics of their eloquence, 
 which awed the most fearless spectator and v/ould have done 
 honour to the noblest senate. An eloquent people is capable of 
 taking any place in letters — in mastering all forms of speech, in 
 perfecting any species of composition — history, or poetry — the 
 one faculty, indeed, somewhat implying all the rest, since to be a 
 great orator, imagination must keep pace with thought, — and rea- 
 son, and the capacity for historical narration, must contribute to 
 the embodiment of the argument, to which a warm fancy must 
 impart colour and animation, and which great energies of char- 
 acter must endow with force. All of these qualities and constit- 
 uents were in possession of our aborigines. They had all the 
 requisites, shown by their speeches only, even if there were no 
 other proofs, for intellectual development in every species of lit- 
 erature. Tecumseh was a very great orator, — so was his brother, 
 the prophet. The Cherokee, Attakullakullah, was one of the 
 most persuasive and insinuating of speakers ; and the renown of 
 I Logan, of the Shawanee, is already a proverb from the single 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. 113 
 
 speech preserved by JefTersoii. Some of the sayings and orations 
 of the Seminoles and Creeks, are equally remarkable for their 
 significance and poetical beauty. Of the Six Nations we have 
 numerous fragments, and the Catawbas had a reputation of this 
 sort, among the tribes of the South, though but few specimens are 
 preserved to us. Wetherford, who roused the Southern Indians 
 to war, while Tecumseh and his brother were fomenting the west- 
 ern nations, v/as not inferior to either of these as a statesman 
 and an orator. His speech to Jackson, when he surrendered him- 
 self, voluntarily, a willing sacrifice, in order that his country 
 should obtain peace, is at once one of the most touching and 
 manly instances of eloquence on record ; and, in recent times, 
 Osceola of the Seminoles, and Mooshalatubbee of the Choctaws 
 — the one a bold, and the other an adroit speaker, — are proofs in 
 point, showing that the faculty was not one to die utterly out in 
 the emasculation of their several people. We should be pleased, 
 did our space suffice, to give examples from each of these remark- 
 able men. Enough to say, that they betrayed the possession of 
 a power of logical thinking, lively fancy, subdued good taste, 
 cool judgment, and lofty imagination, such as, addressed to liter- 
 ature, in a community even partially civilized, would have been 
 worthy of all fame and honour in succeeding times. And that we 
 should doubt or be insensible to this conclusion, is only to be 
 accounted for by reference to our blinding prejudices against the 
 race — prejudices which seem to have been fostered as necessary 
 to justify the reckless and unsparing hand with which we have 
 smitten them in their habitations, and expelled them from their 
 country. We must prove them unreasoning beings, to sustain 
 our pretensions as human ones — show them to have been irre- 
 claimable, to maintain our own claims to the regards and respect 
 of civilization. 
 
 We commend to some of our clever compilers, — Mr. Griswold, 
 for example — the plan of an Indian miscellany, in which choice 
 specimens of their oratory, their fable, their poetry, — shall appear 
 together, in judicious opposition. The material for a goodly vol- 
 ume is abundant. Golden, Hecke welder, Adair, Jefferson, Hew- 
 att, Lawson, Duponceau, and many others, may be examined 
 with this object ; and, among recent writers, there is Mr. School- 
 
 9 
 
114 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 craft, — a host in himself — whose passion for the subject will make 
 him a willing contributor to any plan for doing it justice. Such 
 a miscellany will prove the native North American to have been 
 an artist, a poet, a painter, and a novelist. His abilities were not 
 confined to oratory alone. His faculties were exercised in other 
 kinds of composition. He was no barren churl — no sullen, un- 
 productive savage — such as we are too willing to suppose him. 
 He had the necessary sensibilities for literature, and was not 
 wholly without the performance. His affections were deep and 
 lively, and stimulated his genius to other utterances than those of 
 the Council House. These sensibilities, though perhaps less nice 
 and active than they would have been were he less the hunter — 
 less fierce and intractable in war — were not utterly subdued by 
 his more prevailing passions. His superstitions alone are in 
 proof of his spiritual susceptibility. It has been commonly in- 
 sisted that these were of a cold and brutal character, at best re- 
 sembling those of the Northmen — a savage mythology, filled with 
 gods like Odin and Thor, — bloody, dark, malignant, and gratified 
 only by the most horrid rites and festivities. This is only true in 
 part. They had gods of terror it is true, as the Etrurians had — 
 but like these people and the Greeks, they had others of gentle 
 and benignant influence, smiling, graceful, fantastic, who watched 
 over the happier hours of the race, promoted their kindlier for- 
 tunes, and gave countenance to the better feelings and habits of 
 the individual. Their pantheon was quite as well supplied as 
 the Greek, though they had not lived long enough to have it ar- 
 ranged, and made immortal, by their dramatists and poets. They 
 had their ruling, their unknown god — their good and evil genii — 
 their demons of the elements — of earth and air, of fire and water, 
 of hill and valley, and lake and wood ; and the lively genius of 
 the people, in moments of danger or delight, created new deities 
 for the occasion, consecrating the hour and the place to that wor- 
 ship which had been ordained by their passing necessities or 
 moods. For all of these they had names and veneration. Offices 
 were assigned them, adapted, each, to their several attributes and 
 station, the analysis of which constantly reminds you of those so 
 common among the Germans, by means of which their modern 
 writers have framed so many fanciful and delightful histories. 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. 115 
 
 The Kobolds, and Ondincs, and Salamanders, might find their 
 parallels among the personifications of the Indian — and their 
 spirits of the mine and the river, of the forest and the mountain, 
 bearing Indian epithets quite as musical as any in the language 
 of the Teuton, attest all the preliminary conditions of an intellect 
 that needed but little help from civilization to grow into a vast 
 and noble literature. His gods were hostile or benignant, cold or 
 affectionate, hateful to the sight and mind, or lovely to the im- 
 agination and the eye. He addressed them accordingly. To 
 some he urged solicitations, and implored in song. Others he 
 deprecated, and addressed in prayer and expostulation. He had 
 his burnt offerings also, and no idea could have been more happy, 
 than that of fumigating his deity with the smoke of that precious 
 weed, whose aroma, so pleasant to himself, was to be extorted 
 only by his own lips. The operation was thus never wholly in 
 vain, whether the god accepted the sacrifice or not. The spirit 
 of the cape and headland, of the battle and hunting ground, of 
 peace, and war, and fortune ; of love, and of hate ; — commanded 
 thus his homage, and received his devotions. Extraordinary 
 events or achievements ; a spot rendered peculiar by circum- 
 stance, or b}^ its own aspect ; the wild beast that baffled his skill, 
 or the bird that appeared to him on frequent occasions, when he 
 was troubled, or very joyful ; — these were all fixed in recollection 
 by some spiritual name and emblem. His omens were not a 
 whit less picturesque, or imposing, less reasonable, or less im- 
 pressive, than those of the Greeks and Romans. The vulture 
 spoke to him in a language of command, as it did to the wolf- 
 suckled children of Rhea Sylvia. His prophets were quite as 
 successful as the augur, Attius Navius, and practised, with equal 
 success, the art of bringing the gods to a participation in the af- 
 fairs of State. The favourable response cheered, and the un- 
 friendly paralyzed his valour ; — and, altogether, with faith and 
 veneration, the character of the North American Indian exhibited, 
 not merely in common but in large degree, all of those moral and 
 human sensibilities, out of which art has usually fashioned her 
 noblest fabrics. The capacities and the sensibilities were there, 
 present, in mind and heart, waiting but the hour and the influ- 
 ence which come at length to every nation, thus endowed, which 
 
116 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 is permitted to survive long enough in independent career. Their 
 growth and just development, must have followed tlie first steps 
 of civilization. We have noted their oratory, and their spiritual 
 exercises ; but their songs might teach us something farther. 
 What was the song of war, of victory, and the death song, but 
 strains, each, like those of the Jews and the Northmen, on simi- 
 lar occasions, under similar exigencies, combining history with 
 invocation. The exploits of their warriors, thus chaunted in the 
 hearing of the tribe, and transmitted through successive genera- 
 lions, would, if caught up, and put in the fashion of a living lan- 
 guage, be not unanalogous to those rude ballads, out of which 
 Homer framed his great poem, and the German his Nibelungen 
 Lied. They embodied the history of the race, with its groups of 
 gallant warriors, and one great commanding figure in the fore- 
 ground. If the chief filled the centre, emulous and admiring sub- 
 ordinates grew around him, and the correspondence of all fur- 
 nished a complete history. How such a history, chaunted by a 
 famous chief on his bed of death and glory, could be made to ring, 
 trumpet like, in a modern ear, by such a lyre as Walter Scott. 
 We should not need a Milton, or a Homer, for the performance. 
 The material would have suited Scott's poetical genius better, 
 perhaps, than that of better bards. And how rich must be that 
 material ! How wild were the conflicts of our Indians — how nu- 
 merous — with what variety of foes, under what changing cir- 
 cumstances, and how individual always ! What is there improb- 
 able in the notion that Powhatan, in his youth, was at the sacking 
 and the conquest of some of the superior nations in the Southwest 
 — the Biloxi for example, — of whom the tradition goes that they 
 were a rich and populous people, accomplished in the arts, who 
 were overrun by an influx of strange barbarians and driven into 
 the sea. His ancestors may have brought their legions to the 
 conquest of Palenque — may have led the assault upon the gloomy 
 towers of Chi Chen — may have been the first to cross the thresh- 
 hold of those gloomy and terrible superstitions, whose altars have 
 so strangely survived their virtues. It is a somewhat curious 
 fact, in connection with this suggestion, that Opechancanough — a 
 famous warrior — a man of very superior parts who usurped the 
 sway of the Virginia Indians after the death of Powhatan, and 
 
INDIAN LITERATURE AND ART. 117 
 
 probably disputed it while he lived — was described by them as 
 having been the " Prince of a foreign nation," — and as having 
 " come to them a great way from the southwest." Beverly adds, 
 — " And by their accounts, we suppose him to have come from 
 the Spanish Indians, somewhere near Mexico, or the mines of St. 
 Barbe : — but be that matter how it will, from that time (his usur- 
 pation) till his captivity, there never was the least truce between 
 them and the English."* We reserve to another paper our no- 
 tice of the miscellany, by which the preceding remarks have been 
 occasioned. Mr. Schoolcraft is an authority, in Indian history, 
 upon which we are permitted to rely. He has passed more than 
 thirty years of his life, chiefly in an official capacity, among 
 the red men of the continent. He married an Indian woman of 
 great intelligence and beauty, and was thus placed in a position 
 to see her people, if we may so phrase it, without disguise. He 
 was admitted to their privacy, and informed in their traditions 
 and character. He has accordingly written, at frequent periods 
 upon these subjects, and, we may add, exhibits no larger predi- 
 lection in their behalf, than the proofs which he produces can 
 fairly justify. A few years ago, he put forth two interesting vol- 
 umes of Indian traditions, under the title of " Algic Researches." 
 We doubt if the publication attracted much attention, though 
 quite worthy to do so in the eyes of the student. The title prob- 
 ably discouraged the ordinary reader. Of the work before us, 
 we are in possession of the first number only, though a second 
 has recently been published. A detailed notice of these shall be 
 given in future pages, when it will be seen that nothing has been 
 urged in our text, whether for the capacities of the red men, or 
 their actual performance, for which there is not good warranty 
 in the records. 
 
 * Itopatin, the brother of Powhatan, succeeded to his empire, but was dis- 
 possessed by Opechancanough, who was remarkable for his talents, his address, 
 his large stature, noble presence, and the terrors of his name. Here now is 
 material for fiction. Why should not Opechancanough have been a prince in 
 Mexico, flying from the Spaniards? Why should he not have been a captive 
 to the sire of Powhatan, while he and the latter were yet cliildren ? How 
 easy to form a romance upon this conjecture ! How easy to convert his cease- 
 less struggle against the English invader into another story. Then, there is 
 the overthrow of Itopatin — ^but 
 
118 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ARTICLE IV. 
 DANIEL BOON; 
 
 THE FIRST HUNTER OF KENTUCKY. 
 
 " Of all men, saving Sylla the man slayer, 
 
 Who passes for in life and death most lucky, 
 Of the great names which in our faces stare, 
 
 The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky, 
 Weis happiest among mortals any where ; 
 
 For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he 
 Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days 
 Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze." 
 
 Don Juan 
 
 These verses are not to be counted among the very happiest 
 of Lord Byron's muse, and he has, in one small particular at 
 least, sacrificed the truth to the rhyme — a matter in which poets 
 are supposed, though incorrectly, to be somewhat privileged. It 
 is for us to correct these errors. Our Boon was never more than 
 a Colonel. We are, as a people, so liberal in conferring this dis- 
 tinction, that it has ceased almost to be one ; and this is one reason 
 why we are rather slow in getting beyond it. Whether Boon 
 was even a Colonel, except by the courtesy, is another question 
 which it is scarcely possible at this late day to answer. It was 
 as a Captain, that he received Governor Dunmore's commission 
 in ante-revolutionary times, during the war with the Shawanee 
 Indians ; and, in his frequent conflicts with the Indians, he rather 
 led in the sudden emergency, at the head of his neighbours, 
 aroused by savage incursion, than because of any military com- 
 mission or special legal authority. In such cases, distinguished 
 by promptness of character, coolness and ready courage, and 
 frequently summoned to the field, a leader receives his title, as 
 
DANIEL BOON. 119 
 
 such, by the spontaneous impulse of those whom he conducts. 
 He is their Captain, their Colonel or their General, as the case 
 may be ; and such, in all probability, was the origin of Boon's 
 military title — deserved, certainly, much more than that of thou- 
 sands more formally bestowed ; for our backwoodsman did famous 
 good service without beat of drum, and probably was one of the 
 most modest leaders of men that the world has ever seen. That 
 he ever won the style of General, even by the courtesy, is, how. 
 ever, very doubtful. 
 
 Lord Byron has committed another error of much more impor- 
 tance. Boon's rifle occasionally made free with much nobler vic- 
 tims than bear and buck. He was a hunter of men too, upon oc- 
 casion. Not that he was fond of this sport. His nature was a 
 gentle one — really and strangely gentle — and did not incline to 
 war. But he had no shrinkings, no false tendernesses, no scru- 
 ples of feeling or of conscience in the moment of necessity. He 
 was a man, albeit one in whose bosom the milk of human kind- 
 ness still flowed copiously and warm. He could be a warrior, 
 ay, and take his rank among warriors, where the stakes of the 
 game were death. He smote the savage man, as well as the 
 scarcely more savage beast of the same region ; and, though the 
 fact is not expressly written, yet there is no reason to suppose that 
 he forbore to do battle after the Indian fashion. He could take 
 a scalp with the rest, and might feel justilied in the adoption of a 
 practice which, when employed by the whites, had its very great 
 influence in discouraging the Indian appetite for war. With 
 these exceptions our epigraph may stand, and we make two-fold 
 allowance in the case of a poet and an Englishman, in all matters 
 that concern history and America. They both claim privileges 
 in these respects, with which, at this moment, we are in no mood 
 to quarrel. Boon v/as all the rest that Byron writes him — lucky 
 that he lived to a good old age — that his heart was not rendered 
 callous by strifes or years, but was true to the last hour to the holi- 
 est humanities — that his desires were few, his appetites modest, his 
 ambition humble, and his manhood prolonged to the latest moment 
 of his existence. His fortunes were thus far good, though he 
 died penniless. 
 
 Boon was one of those remarkable men whom Providence 
 
120 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 seems to have endowed with a special restlessness of character, 
 in order to the performance of certain tasks necessary for the 
 human race, but from which the greater proportion of mankind 
 / shrink in dismay. He was born to be a pioneer. It is useless to 
 talk about training here. A man like Boon is as much the crea- 
 ture of a special destiny as the poet or the painter. He has his 
 ofRce appointed him — and the mere influences of the community 
 in which he is reared, though these may contribute to his passion, 
 cannot at any time subdue it. In an age of chivalry — during the 
 Crusades — Boon would have been a knight errant, equally fear- 
 less and gentle. That he would have been much of a Squire of 
 Dames, is very uncertain — but he loved his wife, and he risked 
 his scalp more than once to rescue beauty from the clutches of 
 the savage. His native mood prompted his adventure. He had 
 an eye for the picturesque in nature, as is the marked character- 
 istic in all very great hunters — a characteristic of which Mr. 
 Cooper has given us an exquisite ideal in Leather Stocking. His 
 mind was of a contemplative character, and loved to muse undis- 
 turbed by contact with man, upon its own movements, as influ- 
 enced by the surrounding atmosphere. A constant desire for 
 change of scene and object, is the natural growth of a passion for 
 the picturesque, and an impatience of the staid and formal monot- 
 onies of ordinary life, springs with equal certainty from an eager 
 temperament, great elasticity of muscle, great powers of endu- 
 rance, and an eye that seems to discern and detect, rather by an in- 
 stinct of its own, than by the ordinary exercise of vision, objects in 
 forest or prairie much too obscure for the common sighted mortal. 
 These were among the moral and physical characteristics of our 
 hunter. Add to these, that he was a dead shot, an active man 
 with the tomahawk, tall, erect, of powerful frame and exquisite 
 symmetry, and you have one of the most perfect specimens of the 
 class to which our adventurer belongs. 
 
 Daniel Boon was a Virginian, born somewhere about the year 
 1737.=^ Of his early life nothing is known. He emigrated to 
 
 * Marshall, in his History of Kentucky, represents him as bom in Maryland, 
 somewhere about the year 1746, and emigrating, without his parents, to Vir- 
 ginia while yet in the gristle of his youth. With regard to his birth-place, we 
 have followed the more popular account. The period of his birth, as set down 
 
DANIEL BOON. 121 
 
 North Carolina in his youth, and here we find him, in 1769, a 
 married man, with children, on the banks of the Yadkin. It is at 
 this period that his own narrative begins. This production is a 
 small octavo pamphlet of thirty or forty pages, and embodies his 
 adventures from the period of his arrival in Kentucky to the close 
 of the year 1782. It is probably not the production of his own 
 pen, since it bears marks of ambitious composition quite unlike 
 our hunter — sometimes it aims at eloquence and poetry, and at all 
 limes it lacks that simplicity of manner which belonged to the 
 character of Boon. In all likelihood he furnished the material 
 to some young lawyer or editor, who dressed it up with rhetoric 
 and made it fine for company. With all these (supposed) advan- 
 tages it is an exceedingly unsatisfactory performance. Its details 
 are wholly in its flourishes, and never in its facts, and this is per- 
 haps a sufficient reason why we should deny the paternity of it to 
 Boon himself. The events are meagre and few — a skeleton only 
 of a biography, which, properly filled out, would no doubt have 
 been as ravishing as any romance. But we must make the most 
 of it, such as it is. 
 
 " It was on the first of May, 1769," that our hunter " resigned 
 his domestic happiness for a time, to wander through the wilder- 
 ness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucky." He 
 assigns no motive for the pursuit. He urges no reason for this 
 " resignation of domestic happiness." He simply acknowledges an 
 impulse and he must obey it. His companions were five in num- 
 ber — John Finley, John Stewart, Joseph Holden, James Monay 
 and William Cool. Finley, of whom unfortunately nothing 
 more is known, had visited the country two years before. He 
 was now something of a pilot. The party was on foot. They 
 burdened themselves neither with clothes nor provisions, with no 
 unnecessary equipage, whether for day or night. The curtains 
 
 in the text, Is estimated from the supposed period to which he had reached at 
 the time of his death. He was then said to be eighty-five, and he died in 1822. 
 IJis oldest son was killed by the Indians, fighting bravely, on his second visit 
 to Kentucky, in 1773. Supposing this son to have been sixteen, and Boon to 
 have been a father at twenty — both reasonable estimates — and we arrive at & 
 very probable result. If he were born in 17 IP, he could scarcely have had a 
 son old enough for Indian warfare in 1773. 
 
122 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 of heaven and the trees of the wood were their canopy, and they 
 slept among the long grasses of the slopes, or amongst the dried 
 leaves of the forest, without fear. Their food was taken by the 
 way-side. Their stealthy feet came upon the deer as he couched 
 in the stunted thicket, and the wild turkey was easily shot from 
 the branches of the high tree under which they had slept through- 
 out the night. In this manner they went forward in a westwardly 
 direction, until they crossed the wilderness bordering on the 
 Cumberland mountains. At last, standing upon a gentle but 
 commanding eminence, on the seventh day of June, thoy looked 
 down with delight upon the lovely levels of the Kentucky. Here 
 they paused and proceeded to encamp. The weather was grow- 
 ing unfavourable, and they built themselves a rude but sufficient 
 shelter. Their temporary settlement prepared, they sallied forth 
 to reconnoitre the country and seek their game. The forest had 
 never before echoed to the footsteps of the white man. Wild 
 beasts of all sorts were in abundance, the deer, the bear, and 
 mighty herds of the buffalo, cropping the herbage of the plains or 
 browsing upon the cane tops in the morass. From June to 
 December, did our hunters prosecute their sports with great satis- 
 faction, and in perfect safety. But a change was at hand. On 
 the twenty-second of the latter month. Boon and John Stewart 
 went forth together. The scene had never been more grateful 
 to the eyes of our adventurer. The day was a pleasant one, and 
 their rambles brought them to a close of it, through a region of 
 incomparable beauty, upon the banks of the Kentucky river. 
 Here, at sunset, as they ascended the brow of a hill, they were 
 descried by a party of Indians concealed in a neighbouring cane- 
 brake. These rushed suddenly out upon them. Their surprise 
 was complete, and the next moment found them prisoners. But 
 Boon and his companion betrayed no uneasiness. The manly 
 philosophy which teaches to wait patiently and to endure without 
 complaint, was that which constituted the chief strength of our 
 hunters, as it is that of every heroic nature. They submitted 
 without a murmur to captivity, and were kept for seven days in 
 the usual Indian sort of confinement. The cheerfulness which 
 they manifested, their fortitude and gentleness, disarmed some- 
 thing of the watchfulness of their captors. They relaxed in their 
 
DANIEL BOON. 123 
 
 vigilance, and Boon was soon enabled to take advantage of the 
 change. In the dead of night, as the party lay in a thick cane- 
 brake by a rousing fire, our hunter touched his companion 
 quietly and thus awoke him. The Indians were in a deep sleep. 
 A whisper sufficed for a proper understanding between the cap- 
 tives. They rose to their feet and departed, leaving the savages 
 to take their rest. And here we see a proof of the gentle nature 
 of our hunter. Many of the fierce spirits of our forest land, 
 soured by captivity, and reared with a constant hate and appre- 
 hension of the Indians, would have been as eager for revenge as 
 for escape, and, once in possession of their freedom, with their foes 
 sleeping around them, would never have been satisfied to leave 
 them in possession of their scalps. They would have deepened, 
 with their hatchets, those slumbers which the more human nature 
 of Boon forbore to disturb. 
 
 Our hunters returned to their camp, but found it abandoned. 
 Their companions were dispersed and on the way for home. 
 While they hesitated, to the surprise of Boon, his brother, Squire 
 Boon, accompanied by a stranger, made his appearance in the 
 camp. The party now consisted of four, but was soon to be 
 thinned. The stranger who came with Squire Boon, soon left 
 them and returned to North Carolina, and John Stewart was 
 shortly after killed by the Indians. The little party of three 
 suffered surprise. The first intimation which they had of the 
 proximity of the foe, was by the fire from a cane-brake. Stewart 
 fell mortally wounded. The two Boons remained unhurt, but the 
 Indians showing themselves numerously, with a shout, they were 
 forced to precipitate flight, compelled from a distance to behold 
 the savage as he stripped the fresh scalp from the bleeding skull 
 of their comrade. They were only too well satisfied at being 
 able to save their own. Stewart was the first anglo-norman vic- 
 tim of the red man, in the lovely wilds of Kentucky. Hitherto, 
 it had been their practice to make prisoners of their foes, rather 
 than to despatch them. They preferred bondsmen, and the tri- 
 umph, such as always awaited them, when they brought home 
 captives to the wigwam. But they had grown embittered by 
 intrusion. The party assailing them may have lost in recent 
 combat one of their warriors, whose manes it was necessary to 
 
124 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 appease by a victim ; or they inay have recognized their former 
 captives in Stewart and his companion. Enough, however, 
 that the tradition asserts the blood of John Stewart to be that of 
 the first white man ever shed upon a soil which was destined, for 
 long years after, to be annually watered from the same generous 
 fountains. 
 
 The two Boons succeeded in making their escape. Their dis- 
 asters did not discourage them. They fled, but did not leave the 
 wilderness. A howling wilderness it was, but, not without its 
 attractions for the peculiar nature with which they were endowed. 
 If we can believe our hunter, they were still quite happy. "You 
 see," said Boon to the Squire — " You see how little human nature 
 requires. It is in our own hearts, rather than in the things around 
 us, that we are to seek felicity. A man may be happy in any state. 
 It only asks a perfect resignation to the will of Providence." 
 
 It does not appear that Squire Boon disputed this philoso- 
 phy, which was no doubt felt by his brother. But they spent 
 no time in the discussion. They built themselves a cottage 
 against the winter, and devoted themselves wholly, day by day, 
 to the one, but various toil, of hunting. They remained without 
 disturbance through the winter. On the first of May, 1770, Boon 
 sent his brother home for supplies and recruits, leaving him, as 
 his narrative mournfully expresses it, " by himself, without bread, 
 salt or sugar, without company of his fellow creatures, or even a 
 horse or a dog." A few days of this lonesomeness were passed 
 uncomfortably enough, exercising all the courage and philosophy of 
 our hero. Thinking of his wife made him melancholy ; for, as 
 Childe Harold has it — 
 
 " Thinking on an absent wife 
 Will blanch a faithful cheek." 
 
 A thousand vague apprehensions filled the brain of our hunter, but 
 he was not the man to indulge them long. Besides, he had really 
 too many pleasures where he was. His life was one of excite- 
 ments, and a certain sense of insecurity heightened his enjoyment. 
 He lived in sight of loveliness, but on the verge of danger. 
 Beauty came to him, with Terror looking over her shoulder. The 
 wilderness was charming to the senses and the mind, but its thick- 
 
DANIEL BOON. 125 
 
 ets of green concealed the painted and ferocious savage ; and he 
 wiio hunted the deer successfully through his haunts, might still, 
 while keenly bent upon the chase, be unconscious of the stealthy 
 footsteps which were set down in his own tracks. With the dawn 
 of day he arose from his couch of leaves or rushes, and started 
 upon the chase. New groves, and woods, and hills, and plains 
 salute his vision with each returning dawn. lie pursues no old 
 paths, but, reconnoitering the country, gathers a new horizon with 
 every sunrise. Boon describes these wanderings as perfectly de- 
 licious. The swelling of the breeze, the repose of the leaf, the 
 mysterious quiet of the woods, the chaunt of the birds, or the long 
 melancholy howl of the wolf at evening — these are among the ob- 
 jects, the sights and sounds, which stir his sensibilities and move 
 him to the happiest meditations. He tells of the delight which he 
 feels as he ascends the great ridges, and looks over the fertile 
 vallies, and the ample wastes before him. How he follows the 
 Ohio — la Belle Riviere of the French — in all its silent wander- 
 ings — how he sits and studies the huge mountains as they cap 
 their venerable brows with clouds. That he should find a pleas- 
 ure in such contemplations, declares for his superior moral nature. 
 He was not merely a hunter. He was on a mission. The spirit- 
 ual sense was strong in him. He felt the union between his inner 
 and the nature of the visible world, and yearned for their intimate 
 communion. His thoughts and feelings were those of a great dis- 
 coverer. He could realize the feelings of a Columbus or a Bal- 
 boa, and thus, gazing over the ocean waste of forest which then 
 spread from the dim western outlines of the Alleghanies, to the 
 distant and untravelled waters of the Mississippi, he was quite as 
 much isolated as was ever any of the great admirals who set forth, on 
 the Atlantic, still dreaming of Cathay. His fire at noon is kindled 
 near some sweet water, and his meal is made from the loin of the 
 buck which his rifle has just stricken in the forest. And his fast 
 broken, he goes on his way rejoicing, ignorant of fatigue while the 
 day lasts, still pressing forward, so long as the scene is lovely, and 
 the wild deer darts across his path. With the approach of night 
 he retires to the cane-break rather than to his camp. He sleeps 
 there infrequently. He has reason to believe that it is visited in 
 his absence, and a new resting place receives him every night. 
 
 J 
 
12G VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 How this very insecurity sweetens his adventures ! He sleeps 
 not tlie less soundly under these circumstances. He does not fear, 
 for, in his own words — " How unhappy such a situation for a man 
 tormented with fear, which is vain if no danger comes, and if it 
 does only augments the pain." It is his boast to be free from this 
 humiliating passion — he speaks of being " diverted^' by the wolves 
 howling about his den by night ; and it was at their own peril 
 they crossed his path by day. "I had plenty," he says, " in the 
 midst of want ; was happy, though surrounded by dangers ; how 
 should I be melancholy ? No populous city, with all its struc- 
 tures and all its commerce, could afford me so much pleasure as 
 I found here." / 
 
 And thus, lonely but not unhappy, he remained until July, 
 when his brother returned to him at his old camp. Here it was 
 now thought imprudent to linger longer. The Indians were 
 probably awakened to his proximity. They set out accordingly 
 for Cumberland river, bestowing names, like other founders of 
 nations, upon heights, and plains, and waters. No event occurs 
 of interest in the life of our hunter, until, in the latter part of 1771, 
 v/e find him once more at home, from which he had been absent 
 more than two years. He finds his family in happy circum- 
 stances, but is not satisfied to leave them so. The destiny must 
 be obeyed. That restless impulse to change will admit of no ex- 
 cuse, and he sells his farm on the Yadkin, and all his unneces- 
 sary baggage, and, with five families more, leaves home in Sep- 
 tember, 1773, for a final remove to the lovely forest land which 
 has delighted him so much. Before the party had left the settled 
 regions, it was joined by another, consisting of forty men. The 
 solitude of Kentucky was about to be broken. The seal had 
 been taken from the fountain. But the numbers which increased 
 the strength of the Colonists diminished their security, and left them 
 fewer chances of concealment and escape. A melancholy finish 
 was about to befall this journey. On the tenth of October, they 
 were surprised by the Indians. The rear of the party — probably 
 less vigilant than the advance — was attacked, and six of the whites 
 were slain. The Indians were repulsed, yet the cattle was dis- 
 persed, and the company so dispirited that they retreated forty 
 miles to a settlement on Clinch river. 
 
DANIEL BOON. Ul 
 
 But Boon ceased to be alone in this march of discovery into 
 the Kentucky wilderness. There were other spirits like himself, 
 destined to open the way for the thronging multitudes that began 
 to cry aloud for homes of their own. In 1770, an expedition 
 consisting of forty stout hunters, set out from the western settle- 
 ments of Virginia, for the purpose of trapping and shooting upon 
 the other side of the Cumberland mountain. Of these, thirty 
 may have fallen by the hands of the Indians. We lose sight of 
 them altogether. Nine of them reached Kentucky under the 
 command of Col. James Knox. They were so long gone from 
 home, that they acquired the proverbial name of " the Long 
 Hunters.^' Thus it was that Boon was not the sole white occu- 
 pant of Kentucky as he imagined. The two parties never met. 
 They might well pass each other a thousand times in those path- 
 less wilds, as ships scattered over the broad waste of ocean, yet 
 never come in sight of their mutual fires. From this period, 
 every successive season sent forth its new explorers and many of 
 them men of remarkable courage and capacity; but our consid- 
 eration must now be yielded entirely to one. Boon continued 
 with his family at Clinch river until 1774, when he accepted an 
 appointment of Governor Dunmore, of Virginia, to conduct a 
 brigade of surveyors from the falls of the Ohio into the new set- 
 tlement. His reputation was evidently spreading. Without the 
 slightest ambition for notoriety, flying, as it were, from his kin- 
 dred and society, he was rapidly and in spite of himself acquir- 
 ing fame among them. He executed his mission with success 
 and in safety, completing a tour of eight hundred miles, through 
 a wilderness, in sixty-two days. His duties were so well per- 
 formed, that his Excellency extended his confidence, and confer- 
 red upon our pioneer the military command of no less than three 
 garrisons, with the rank and commission of Captain. These gar- 
 risons were upon the Virginia frontiers, and meant to protect them 
 from the incursions of the Shawanees, who had broken out in bloody 
 war. This outbreak is one that will be remembered by the reader, 
 when told that it originated in the wanton butchery, by Colonel 
 Cresap, of the family of the friendly chief Logan. The speech of 
 this famous warrior, as preserved by Jefferson, will never be for- 
 gotten, so long as natural eloquence, enlivened by the most cruel 
 
128 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 provocations, and sharpened by justice, holds a place among the 
 recollections of men. This pathetic performance furnishes the 
 justification of a war begun by the Shawanees. They were de- 
 feated, but not till after a bloody struggle. Several severe bat- 
 tles took place between them and the border militia, and one, in 
 particular, at the mouth of the Great Kenhawa, in which the In- 
 dians were heavy sufferers. What share Boon had in these con- 
 flicts is not told us by himself. His modesty only permits us to 
 know that he had a responsible command in the hour of danger ; 
 and we know that he acquired the confidence of the authorities 
 for the execution of his trusts. He gives us no details, and as 
 his position was a subordinate one, the chronicles are silent on the 
 subject of his claims. But his fame had spread and was still 
 spreading. Already the tradition had reached the settlements 
 of a great and fearless pioneer — the first white man who had 
 ever dared to pass alone into that howling wilderness, upon 
 which even the Indians themselves had agreed to confer the ter- 
 rible name of the " Dark and Bloody Ground." Such is the 
 signification of the Indian word, " Kentucky" — a name conferred 
 rather in regard to the uses of the region, than to its real cha- 
 racteristics or external appearance. It had been the battle 
 ground for a thousand years, of as many different nations. Un- 
 occupied by any, it was a debateable land, to which they wan- 
 dered constantly, in squads varying from three persons to as 
 many hundred, with a view to the spoils of tlie chase or of war. 
 War, in short, is an absolute necessity of all the Indian tribes, 
 as it is the simple consequence of the life of the hunter. When, 
 in pursuit of game, two tribes encounter in the same hunting 
 grounds, conflict is inevitable. And in proportion to the increas- 
 ing scarcity of game, will the feelings of hate become embitter- 
 ed. A people who live by the chase must always be savage. 
 
 Our hunter next appears in a somewhat more dignified capa- 
 city. He is solicited by a company of North Carolina gentle- 
 men to attend a treaty at Watauga, to negotiate with the Chero- 
 kees for the purchase of a tract of land on the south side of the 
 Kentucky river. He did so in March 1775 — made the purchase, 
 and was appointed to explore the country and open the way for 
 the proprietors. Discretionary powers were given to our hunter, 
 
DANIEL BOON. 129 
 
 and with a number of chosen men, well armed, he sets out upon 
 the expedition. At the treaty thus made at Watauga, when the 
 instrument was signed, a venerable Indian took Boon by the 
 hand, and said to him — " Brother, we have given you a fine land, 
 but I believe you will have much trouble in settling it." The 
 first steps which he took for this purpose, proved the justness of 
 this opinion. Within a few miles of the site of Boonsborough, a 
 settlement which he subsequently made, the party was fired upon 
 by the Indians, two men slain and two wounded. Boon stood his 
 ground and beat off the enemy. Three days after, they had 
 another attack, in which two more were slain and two wounded. 
 The Indians were again defeated, and the party succeeded in 
 reaching the Kentucky river without further loss. On the first 
 day of April, they struck the first axe into the timbers from 
 which rose the fortress of Boonsborough. On the fourth day, 
 the Indians slew one of their men, but the work advanced to com- 
 pletion. Boon then proceeded to remove his family to the spot, 
 which he did in safety. " My wife and daughter," he exclaims, 
 with, as we may suppose, a natural exultation, " were the first 
 white women that ever stood on the banks of the Kentucky 
 river." 
 
 But the establishment of the fortress was the signal for war. It 
 immediately drew, as to a centre of attraction, the roving tribes by 
 which the country was traversed. They harassed the settlers 
 while building it, and now maintained almost constant watch 
 about the precincts ; and every inadvertence of the emigrant — if 
 lie forbore for a moment his precautions — if he wandered beyond 
 a certain limit — he paid the penalty with wounds or death. Their 
 hostility was still farther stimulated by British and Tory influence. 
 Tlie revolutionary war had begun, and our benign mother of 
 Great Britain had already filled the forest with her emissaries, 
 fomenting their always eager jealousy, and the common appetite 
 for war and plunder. While Congress were making the declara- 
 tion of independence, at Philadelphia, Boon was already waging 
 the conflict. One of his severest trials was now at hand. On 
 the fourteenth of July, 1776 — his daughter, with two other girls, 
 the children of Col. Calaway, were made captives by the Indians, 
 within gun shot of the fort. The alarm was soon given, and 
 
 10 
 
130 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Boon, with a small party of eight men, immediately began the 
 pursuit. A keen hunter, well versed in Indian customs, cool and 
 determined, he pressed tlie chase with an acuteness and earnest- 
 ness that soon brought him within sight of his object. He over- 
 took the Indians two days after, brought them to battle, slew two 
 of their number, and recovered all the girls. These are the sim- 
 ple facts. The reader must conceive for himself the feelings of 
 the father, the terrors of the children, the skill of the hunter, the 
 courage of the pioneer — all brought into liveliest action, and form- 
 ing a natural romance not less full of interest because, in the his- 
 tory of our forest settlements, it has become a very common one. 
 
 The year of 1777, found Kentucky sprinkled with settlements 
 of the whites — rude block-houses, isolated out posts, that specked 
 the wilderness imperceptibly, like dots that stand for islets on 
 some great map of the nations. Among the new settlers follow- 
 ing the example of Boon, may be mentioned as particularly dis- 
 tinguished by the chief characteristics of their predecessor, the 
 names of James Harrod, Benjamin Logan, and Capt. Thos. Bul- 
 litt. Harrod, like Boon, was a man framed in the very prodi- 
 gality of nature. He was six feet high, and straight as an ar- 
 row. His muscular power and activity were immense. His eyes 
 and hair were dark, his face animated, but his deportment grave 
 — as is usually the case with persons of great pride of character, 
 who have been reared in seclusion. This is a trait of the aborigines, 
 and of all people living in communities sparsely occupied. Gentle 
 and conciliating in manner, frank in conversation and very fluent, 
 Harrod, who had never known any thing better in the way of educa- 
 tion than an " old field school," was yet a highly accomplished gen- 
 tleman. He was schooled by those influences that best bring into 
 exercise the capacities of the man. He had lived among men, 
 had been taught by the pressing necessities of life, and what he 
 knew was known thoroughly, as the result of his own experience. 
 His courage was generous to the last degree. He seemed as su- 
 perior to selfish fears as to selfish gains, and was ever on the 
 alert to serve and to save the suflering. Tidings are brought 
 him that a party of Indians, four miles ofl", have murdered one of 
 their neighbours. " Boys," he says to those about him — " we will 
 go and punish the red rascals." He is the first in danger, the 
 
DANIEL BOON. 131 
 
 last in retreat. Does a poor family need food, he volunteers his 
 rifle in their behalf, seeks the forest, kills the game and brings it 
 home to the destitute. Does a horse wander beyond the range, 
 and into forests in which the savage is just as likely to lurk as not, 
 he mounts his own, and dashes boldly into the thicket. Harrod 
 was a true specimen of our forest gentleman — a man above mean- 
 ness — a frank and earnest nature — with impulses the most gen- 
 erous, and a courage the most spontaneous — independent in 
 thought, fearless in action, frank in council, modest in opinion, 
 and always manly in behaviour. His memory, as it should be, 
 is still properly honoured in Kentucky. 
 
 Not unlike him, in many respects, were the other pioneers, 
 whose names have been given. Benjamin Logan aimed at high 
 distinctions in military and civil life. He was a man of thought as 
 well as action — a firm, clear-headed man, of large executive mind, 
 a decided will, great fortitude, courage and judicious conduct. He 
 was of Boon's exploring expedition, in 1773, and subsequently 
 had a share in that of Lord Dunmore, in 1774. 
 
 Of Captain Bullitt we have a few particulars which sustain 
 fully his claim to rank honourably with the first and master spirits 
 of this forest region. He was one of the first to approach the 
 rapids of the Ohio — a scene of terror to the inexperienced boatmen 
 of those days, in their boats hollowed from logs, or in the frailer 
 vessels of bark employed by the Indians, which effectually par- 
 alyzed the courage of those who sought to descend the stream. 
 A torrent that rushes at the rate of ten miles an hour, down a 
 succession of rocky ledges, foaming white through their dark 
 passages, and sending up a roar as of dreadful strife, might well 
 discourage and daunt the inexperienced boatman. But Bullitt 
 explored the channel, and was the first to conduct the bark of the 
 way-farer to security in a port, in the very mouth of the warring 
 waters — a safe and commodious harbour on the side of the Ken- 
 tucky river — safe from the danger and rendered more lovely by 
 the contrast of its sweet repose with the chafing billows beside 
 which it seemed to nestle. Here, the explorer made his settle- 
 ment. He died prematurely, after having won, by his judgment, 
 his courage, his address, and great resources, the complete con- 
 fidence of all with whom he came in contact. Other names 
 
132 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 might be given, bold, strong hearted and adventurous spirits, 
 framed like these for enterprise and endurance, who had ah'eady 
 dotted the face of the great Kentucky wilderness, with the fires 
 of a rude civilization. Their settlements united the fortress with 
 the wigwam. The fort of the white man, in those days and re- 
 gions, consisted of a central block house and contiguous cabins 
 enclosed with palisades. The woods were cut down within a 
 given distance, and none were permitted to straggle beyond cer- 
 tain limits. These were the places of safety and rendezvous — 
 the stages made by all new comers — the places of refuge upon 
 alarm — points of as much importance as the isolated chalet 
 amonii the mountains of the Swiss, 
 
 While Boon was rescuing the girls from a small party of the 
 savages, this wily enemy had simultaneously scattered numerous 
 bands over the wilderness. These, at nearly the same moment, 
 proceeded to attack the various settlements. The general move- 
 ment was politicly conceived, in order to prevent the relief of one 
 post by another. They did not succeed against any of the posts, 
 except in the murder of an occasional settler, and the destruction 
 of cattle ; and the year passed off in continual alarms, unattended 
 by any serious injuries. But, on the 15th April, 1776, Boons- 
 borough was beleaguered by a considerable force. Indian weap- 
 ons and warfare are not particularly adapted to sieges. They 
 have neither battering rams nor cannon, and that caution which 
 is one of their characteristics, forbids any attempt at escalade, 
 even if the use of the scaling ladder were known. In besieging 
 an armed station, therefore, the Indian seldom exposes himself to 
 danger, and as seldom betrays his real numbers. But every 
 shrub and hollow in the neighbourhood, tree or rock, dell or din- 
 gle, conceals its man — vigilant in watch, prompt to take advan- 
 tage, and ready for flight or conflict, according as opportunity or 
 Jiecessity counsels. He crawls from bush to bush in his approach, 
 he crouches behind stump or shrub — his patience is inexhaustible 
 while his prey is before him, and while it is possible that victory 
 vvili reward his vigilance. His wars were seldom bloody until he 
 encountered with the Anglo-Norman, and then he paid the penalty 
 of an inferior civilization. The loss of a warrior was a serious 
 event — the taking of a single scalp was a triumph. To gain but 
 
DANIEL BOON. 133 
 
 one shot at a foe, an Indian would crouch all day in a painful 
 posture ; and the loss of five warriors, would greatly discourage 
 a daring war party. To contend properly with such foes, needed 
 a patience and vigilance like their own, and the exhibition of these 
 qualities on the part of the whites, very soon depressed their au- 
 dacity. Boon was too familiar with their character to be led into 
 error, and they soon abandoned the leaguer of his post. He lost 
 but one man slain and four wounded. Their own losses were 
 carefully concealed from the garrison. A second attempt was 
 -nade by double their former number — two hundred Indians — in 
 the July following. They maintained the siege but forty-eight 
 hours and had seven men killed, when ihey departed precipi- 
 tately. The loss of the garrison was but one man slain, and two 
 wounded. Boonsborough had a garrison of but twenty-two men. 
 Logan's fort was besicijed on the nineteenth of the same month, 
 by another party of two hundred Indians. The garrison consisted 
 of fifteen men; of these, two were slain and one wounded. The 
 assailants were baffled in every instance, but nevertheless wrought 
 considerable mischief to the infant settlements. But these were 
 now beginning to be strengthened from the frontiers. Emigrants 
 frequently joined their ranks. Boon had scarcely been freed from 
 the immediate presence of his foes, when forty-five men came in 
 from North Carolina, succeeded, a month after, by a party of one 
 hundred under Col. Bowman from Virginia. But, in due pro- 
 portion to their increase of numbers, were the increased hostility 
 and numbers of the savages ; and, for the term of six weeks from 
 this accession of strength, scarcely a day passed without some 
 skirmish, in some quarter, between the parties. But the " Long 
 Knife," as the borderers had been for so long a time called by 
 the Indians, at length proved their superiority in spite of their in- 
 ferior numbers. The latter no longer ventured on open warfare 
 — no longer attempted sieges, but, placing themselves in ambush 
 along the paths, lay in waiting for chance successes. Boon was 
 destined, in person, to reward the patience and vigilance of one 
 of these parties. He had been fighting day by day against the 
 enemy, and always with success. He tells us none of his achieve- 
 ments. But he who has any conception of the peculiarities, the 
 terrors and the vicissitudes of savage warfare, can readily conjee- 
 
134 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ture the scout by night, the ambuscade by day, the surprise, the 
 sortie, the fierce hurra of the borderers, and the ghastly whoop 
 of the savage. Our forest hero had braved or displayed all these, 
 with the coolness of one whose composure of nerve nothing could 
 disturb, and the enemy had disappeared fi'om before his face. 
 His fortress was no longer threatened, and the infant colony be- 
 gan to flourish in such a manner as to inspire the inhabitants with 
 too much confidence in their fortunes. Whether Boon himself 
 too soon relaxed in his vigilance — whether it was by his own or 
 the neglect of others that the event happened which we are about 
 to relate — cannot now be determined. But on the seventh of 
 February, 1778, he was captured by a party consisting of one 
 hundred and two Indians and two Frenchmen. He had gone out 
 with a force of thirty men to the Blue Licks, on Licking river, to 
 make salt for the several garrisons. Finding himself without 
 power of escape, he capitulated for the safety of his party, and 
 was treated well by his captors. How the Frenchmen came to 
 be assailants against the American settlers, at a time when France 
 and the United States were on friendly terms, and about to form 
 an alliance ofiensive and defensive against the British, it is not 
 easy at this time of day to guess. In all probability, the French- 
 men in question were mere renegades, indifferent to all European 
 authority, and seeking the gratification of a passion for strife and 
 plunder fully equal to that of the savages ; or they may have 
 been captives to the Indians on some previous occasion, and, 
 adopted into the tribe, had readily amalgamated with the red men. 
 It is known that the French, in all their intercourse with the In- 
 dians, proved themselves much more flexible than the more stub- 
 born Anglo-Saxon, were more popular with the natives, and fre- 
 quently led their warriors to battle. In the Cherokee wars of 
 1757-8, French oflicers were scattered all over the interior, coun- 
 selling and fomenting the savages to strife. 
 
 Boon and his party were treated with kindness by his captors. 
 They were conducted first to Old Chilicothe, the principal Indian 
 town on Little Miami, and, subsequently. Boon, with ten of his 
 men, were conveyed to the British post of Detroit, held by Gover- 
 nor Hamilton. On these two journeys, Boon's deportment was 
 such that the Indians became absolutely charmed with him ; so 
 
DANIEL BOON. 13: 
 
 much so, that they refused to leave him with Hamilton, though 
 that officer offered them one hundred pounds sterling for his ran- 
 som with no other view than to give the Captain his parole. 
 Boon also acknowledges the kindness of several English gentle- 
 men who offered to supply his wants, and would have pressed 
 many gifts upon him — all of which, however, with the simple pride 
 which formed so large an element of his character, he firmly hut 
 thankfully declined. His valour, his fortitude, his skill, his integ- 
 rity, had all impressed themselves upon the Indians with whom 
 these are the paramount virtues. His fame had evidently reached 
 the remotest parts of the northern British settlements, and his per- 
 sonal deportment, when he was encountered, had justified the gol- 
 den opinions he had won. 
 
 His ten followers were left as prisoners at Detroit, but he was 
 taken back to Chilicothe. Here he was adopted into a family, 
 became a son, and won greatly upon the affection of his new pa- 
 rents, his brothers, sisters, and their friends. He preserved his 
 cheerfulness, and this was a great virtue in their eyes. He had 
 no complaints, no murmurs, put on no evil brows, obeyed their 
 instructions, and grew friendly and familiar with all around him. 
 He won their applause at their shooting matches, though, as it 
 would seem, rather by shooting ill than well. The Indians, vain 
 of their skill, do not like to be beaten, and the good sense and tact 
 of our forester never suffered him to show the superiority which 
 he possessed. " I was careful not to exceed many of them in 
 shooting, for no people are more envious than they in this sport. 
 I could observe in their countenances and gestures the greatest 
 expression of joy when they exceeded me ; and when the reverse 
 happened, of envy." The King of the Shawanees treated him 
 with particular favour, and, after awhile, he was sufiered to hunt 
 alone, and at liberty, as one in whom they had entire confidence. 
 For a time he maintained his fidelity, and brought in regularly 
 the spoils of his hunting, but he meditated escape the while. 
 They take him to the salt springs on Scioto, where his time, for 
 ten days, is employed either in hunting, or in making salt. When 
 he returns to Chilicothe, he was alarmed by the sight of four hun- 
 dred and fifty chosen warriors, armed to the teeth, and covered 
 with war paint, preparing to go against Boonsborough. This, dis- 
 
136 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 covery precipitates his resolves. On the sixteenth of June, circum- 
 stances seeming to favour his design, he leaves his tribe before 
 day, and reaches Boonsborough on the twentieth — a distance of 
 one hundred and sixty miles. In this flight he ate but one meal. 
 He found the fortress in bad condition, but immediately proceeded 
 to its repair, strengthening the gates and posterns and forming 
 double bastions. Fortunately, the Indians gave him time for this. 
 His flight had determined them to delay the proposed assault. In 
 the mean time their spies cover the country, and the council house 
 is frequently opened for discussion. The savage tribes are get- 
 ting more and more anxious, as they view the daily progress of 
 the " Long Knife." They begin to dread his number as they 
 dread his peculiar resources, and to see in the presence of such 
 hunters as Daniel Boon, a fearful augury, against which they 
 cannot shut their eyes — a sign of their own extermination, and 
 of that 
 
 " Advancing multitude 
 Which soon shall fill these deserts." 
 
 They were preparing for a last grand eflbrt, in which they were 
 to make their resources, as they fondly thought, commensurate 
 with their object. But Boon was not intimidated, and while their 
 preparations were yet in progress, he carried the attack into their 
 own country. Meeting with a party of thirty near the " Paint 
 Creek Town," on their way to join the Chilicothians, he gave 
 them battle and dispersed them, without losing a man. Eluding 
 the main force of the savages, then on their march for Boons- 
 borough, he reached that post in safety, and in season for its de- 
 fence. The enemy appeared before it on the eighth of August. 
 They were four hundred and fifty- four in number, under the com- 
 mand of Capt. Duquesne and eleven other Frenchmen, beside 
 their own chiefs. They had British and French flags flying, 
 though the fort was summoned in the name of hi.*; Britannic 
 majesty. These were Canadian Frenchmen. 
 
 The danger was a threatening one. The force in the garrison 
 was small. The number of the enemy was unusually large for 
 an Indian force, and they were led by European officers. But 
 the hearts of our people did not fail them. They had succeeded 
 
DANIEL BOON. 137 
 
 in securing their horses and cattle within the pickets, and Boon 
 was soon ready with his answer to the stern summons of the foe. 
 " Death," he says to himself, " is better than captivity !" Ho 
 had already tasted enough of that bitter draught. " If taken by 
 storm, we are doomed to destruction ; but we must prevent that 
 and preserve the fort, if possible." His answer to the enemy, 
 whose chief came himself beneath the walls to receive it, — was 
 after a very plain, but a very manly fashion. " We shall defend 
 our fort while a man of us lives. We laugh at your preparations. 
 We are ready for you, and thank you for the time you gave us. 
 Try your shoulders upon our gates as soon as you please ; — they 
 will hardly give you admittance." 
 
 They knew Boon's firmness of character, and were discouraged 
 by his answer. They resolved to try the effects of cunning rather 
 than valour. Another interview was obtained, and Boon was as- 
 sured that, by the special instructions of Governor Hamilton, they 
 were only to take captive, and not to destroy them. But of this they 
 declared themselves hopeless, and would be content to treat for 
 peace, and depart quietly, if nine of the garrison would come 
 forth for this purpose. The artifice did not deceive our bor- 
 derers, but they prepared to comply with the proposal, relying on 
 their caution, their courage, the vigilance of the garrison, and 
 other circumstances, for their safety. The conference was to be 
 held within sixty yards of the garrison, — within rifle-shot, in 
 short, — and this arranged, Boon, with eight others, advanced from 
 the fortress into the plain. Here, at the given distance, the chiefs 
 of the besiegers were met, — the terms of amnesty agreed on, pa- 
 pers drawn, and regularly signed and delivered. " And now," 
 said the Indians with delightful simplicity, — " it is customary on 
 all such occasions for hands to be shaken, in token of future 
 friendship." It was with a rare confidence in the physical strength, 
 the muscle and activity of himseVf and men, that Boon agreed to 
 this also; — " for," says he, "we were soon convinced that they 
 sought only to make us prisoners." The gripe of friendship, in- 
 deed, became a grapple, and the little party of nine were sur- 
 rounded by the greater part of the Indian army. But, the con- 
 fidence of our borderer in the courage and conduct of his men, 
 did not deceive him. They threw off* their assailants, broke 
 
138 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 through the throng, and amidst a heavy but random fire, suc- 
 ceeded in reaching tlie fortress. But a single man was wounded. 
 Then ensued the battle. The fort was completely environed, and 
 the fight continued with little intermission for nine days. Finding 
 that they made no impression by this mode of warfare, the enemy 
 opened a mine, the shaft advancing from the Kentucky river, 
 which was but sixty yards from the fort. The garrison discovered 
 their object by the discoloration of the river, and proceeded to 
 baffle them in this object by cutting a trench across their subter- 
 ranean passage. This proceeding became revealed to the be- 
 siegers by the clay thrown out of the fort, and effectually served 
 to discourage the further prosecution of their attempt. So far 
 they had gained nothing. They had slain but two of the garrison, 
 and wounded twice that number. They had made no impression 
 upon the firmness of Boon and his companions. Their own loss- 
 es were veiy great for an Indian army, — thirty-seven killed, and 
 more than twice that number wounded. Sick of a game so un- 
 profitable, they suddenly disappeared on the 20th of the month, 
 after a leaguer of thirteen days. This was the last attempt upon 
 Boonsborough. It has been asked why the Frenchman who led 
 this force did not attempt escalade. The stockades were but 
 twelve feet high, and every Indian had his tomahawk. The force 
 was five times that of the garrison. But it must be remembered 
 that an Indian army has no men to lose. They will never rush 
 on death. They employ no forlorn hopes. Their policy is never 
 to engage in battle, unless with the chances wholly in their favour. 
 To mount battlements in the teeth of ninety rifles, was a game 
 too hazardous for them to play ; and it is scarcely possible that, 
 even if Duquesne counselled the attempt by storm, the savage 
 chiefs listened to him one moment. That they were busy enough 
 in their own way may be guessed from the fact that the garrison 
 picked up one hundred and twenty-five pounds weight of bullets, 
 to say nothing of the greater number that were buried in the logs 
 of the fortress. 
 
 During Boon's captivity at Chilicothe, his wife, despairing of 
 seeing him again, returned with her family to "the settlements." 
 — It was thus that our foresters called the abodes of civilization. 
 As soon as Boonsborough was relieved from its leaguer, and there 
 
DANIEL BOOX. 139 
 
 seemed no immediate call for his presence, he followed her thith- 
 er, and once more removed bag and baggage to the wilderness. 
 In the meantime, the war became scattered over the whole face 
 of Kentucky. The white intruder became the common enemy, 
 and the numerous Indian tribes which had heretofore fought 
 among themselves, now concentrated their arms upon him only. 
 Numberless were the conflicts, bloodless or bloody, which con- 
 stantly took place, in which new men were making themselves 
 distinguished while they laid the foundation for social securities 
 which they themselves were destined never to enjoy. The return 
 of Boon was not a return to quiet or inactivity. He was forever 
 on the alert, — on the watch to assist the stranger, to rescue the 
 captive, to help the distressed. He was always rangino-, now as 
 a hunter, and now as a spy, — no region too wild for his adven- 
 ture, no danger too threatening for his courage and confidence. 
 He passed from duty to duty with a readiness and promptitude 
 that left him no time for repose, and as little for apprehension. 
 Wonderfully fortunate, he did not always escape with impunity. 
 On the sixth of October, while returning with his brother from a 
 scout, they were fired upon from an Indian ambush. His brothei 
 was shot down at the first fire, and Boon was closely pursued for 
 three miles, — the Indians trailing with a dog. Availing himself 
 of the first chance. Boon succeeded in shooting the dog, and thus 
 escaped. 
 
 The winter which followed was early and severe. The inhab- 
 itants suffered greatly, as the corn of the previous season had been 
 very generally destroyed by the Indians. The people lived chief- 
 ly on buffalo flesh. But there was a consolation even in the se- 
 verities and privations of the season, since it confined the savao-es 
 to their wigwams. With the spring they re-appeared, and ob- 
 tained some advantages. Captain Ashton, with twenty-five men, 
 was worsted in a fight with a superior number. Ashton was slain, 
 with twelve of his men. Capt. Holden was defeated in like man- 
 ner with seventeen men, and every day resulted in new disas- 
 ters. The Shawanees, the Cherokees, Wyandots, Tawas, Dela- 
 wares, and several others on the northern frontiers, were united 
 igainst the settlers ; and, under the influence of two renegade 
 vbite men, McKee and Girty, whose deeds have made their 
 
140 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 names infamously known throughout the West, were inflamed 
 to constant and bloody activity. The prospects of the new colo- 
 nies were gloomy enough, and it was equally necessary to inspir- 
 it the settlers and to check the Indians. On the 18th August, 
 1782, Boon, with Colonels Todd and Trigg, and Major Harland, 
 collected one hundred and seventy-six men, and took the trail af- 
 ter an army of five hundred Indians, who had but a few days be- 
 fore assailed Bryant's Station, near Lexington, but without suc- 
 cess. They pursued this body beyond the Blue Licks, to a re- 
 markable bend of the main fork of Licking river, and overtook 
 them on the 19th. At first the savages gave way. The pursuers, 
 ignorant of their number, passed the river, pressing the pursuit. 
 The enemy rallied, in a good position, formed the line of battle skil- 
 fully, and, satisfied of their great superiority, awaited the attack. 
 It began very fiercely and lasted for fifteen minutes, when Boon's 
 party were compelled to retreat with a loss of 67 men, seven of whom 
 were prisoners. Cols. Todd and Trigg, and Major Harland, were 
 all slain. Boon was the sole leader surviving, and he lost his 
 second son. The battle was terribly bloody while it lasted. The 
 Indians, having lost 64 men slain, put to death four of their prisoners, 
 that the number lost on both sides should be equal. Boon says, that 
 the Indians acknowledged that another fire would have caused 
 their dispersion. The fugitives were met by a party led by Col. 
 Logan, but they came too late ; a little sooner, and the defeat 
 must have been a victory, and no such loss would have been sus- 
 tained. The principal slaughter was made during the flight. 
 When the whites gave way, they were pursued with the utmost 
 eagerness. The river was difficult of passage and some were 
 killed as they entered, some as they swam, others as they ascend- 
 ed the opposite cliffs. The melancholy news was brought in a 
 few hours to Lexington, which it left full of widows. 
 
 Boon immediately joined another expedition under Gen. Clark, 
 and once more went in pursuit of the same body of Indians. The 
 pursuit was commenced with great secresy and promptness, and 
 the savages were overtaken within two miles of their towns, but 
 not before they had received the alarm from two of their runners. 
 They fled in confusion, dispersing on all hands, not waiting the 
 attack, and leaving their villages and all they possessed to the fury 
 
DANIEL BOON. 141 
 
 of the whites. These hurried, winged with rage and eager for 
 revenge, through many of their towns on the Miami. Nowhere 
 were they withstood. They slew but kw of the enemy and took 
 but few prisoners ; but they burnt the towns where they came, 
 destroyed their corn, fruits and provisions, and swept the country 
 with desolation. This inroad had its efiects. It dispirited the 
 savages, broke up their plans, dissolved their confederacy, and 
 taught them the impossibility of contending, with any hope of suc- 
 cess, against the superior resources of the white man. It was 
 Boon's last campaign. But he still remained a v/andcrer. As 
 Kentucky grew populous, he passed to less crowded regions, re- 
 moved finally to the Missouri territory, and in upper Louisiana 
 received a grant of 2000 acres of land from the Spanish authori- 
 ties. He settled at Charette, on the Missouri, some distance from 
 the inhabited parts of the country, and followed the habits of life 
 which delighted his early manhood. He was still the hunter and 
 the trapper, and continued so to the day of his death, which occur- 
 red in 1822. A newspaper account represents him as having 
 been found dead in the woods with his rifle in his grasp. Such 
 a finish to such a life, would have been equally appropriate and 
 natural. It is related that, some time before his death, he had his 
 coffin made out of a favourite cherry-tree, upon which, for several 
 years, he bestowed a course of rubbing, which brought it to an 
 exquisite polish. He had reached the mature term of eighty-five 
 years, through vicissitudes, toils and dangers which are apt to 
 abridge greatly the ordinary length of human existence. It will 
 not be thought extravagant, if, in addition to the merits of being a 
 brave and good man, and a great hunter, we consider him a great 
 discoverer also. Standing upon Cumberland mountain, and looking 
 out upon the broad vallies and fertile bottoms of Kentucky, he 
 certainly thought himself so. We have no doubt he felt very 
 much as Columbus did, gazing from his caraval on San Salvador ; 
 as Cortes, looking down from the crest of Ahualco, on the valley 
 of Mexico ; or Vasco Nunez, standing alone on the peak of Da- 
 rien, and stretching his eyes over the hitherto undiscovered waters 
 of the Pacific. 
 
142 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Note to the preceding article. — A friend writes us in regard to one item of 
 the preceding article, that we are possibly in error in our description of the 
 physique of Boon. We represent him as a tall man of powerful frame. This 
 description was drawn from various sources which have hitherto been acknowl- 
 edged as adequate authorities on this subject. Still the point is one which, 
 whatever may be its importance, can scarcely be considered concluded. Our 
 correspondent is not prepared, of his own knowledge, to say that the descrip- 
 tion is not correct ; but he gives a pleasant account of one of his neighbours, 
 on the banks of Pacolet River, in South Carolina — one James Moseley — an 
 old man, truthful, honest, and highly esteemed by all around him, who claimed 
 to have known Boon well, to have frequently slept in his cabin, and been the 
 companion of his wanderings. Moseley died in Union District at tlie mature 
 term of eighty-four years. He came from the Yadkin to the Pacolet, and 
 lived on the former river, in Boon's neighbourhood, when he made his first trip 
 to Kentucky. Describing him at that period — and he was then in the very 
 fulness of his vigour — Moseley said that he weighed about one hundred and 
 fifty-five, that he was not above five feet eight or nine inches high — was mark- 
 ed by a lively, sparkling blue eye, was very active, a tight, well-made fellow, 
 athletic, and, as we may well suppose, capable of enduring any degree of fa- 
 tigue within the compass of mortal muscle. We have no reason to suppose 
 that a description so precise, is not in the main correct. Our friendly corres- 
 pondent answers for Moseley as a witness ; — and there is no reason for sur- 
 prise, when we learn that a great hunter is not a plethoric and over-fed person. 
 Where the labours of the chase are taken on foot, it is but reasonable to sup- 
 pose that the hunter is a lean man. Such is always the case with the Indians 
 and with our own people, where they attract our attention for their expertness 
 in the woods. Little flesh, a frame rather slight than slender, broad shoulders, 
 narrow hips, and a wiry muscle, are the usual marks of the keen and active 
 hunter. " James Moseley," says our correspondent, " was himself something 
 of a Leather Stocking. He had been a great huntsman in his time, had 
 fought frequently with the Indians, as frequently with the Tories, lived forty 
 years in the same log cabin, was received as a welcome guest by the wealthiest 
 of our people, and died, as he began the world, in poverty, with an unblem- 
 ished character, and without an enemy. To the last hours of life, he lived 
 upon his own labour, and was indebted for no obligations which he could not 
 and did not recompense." He deserves this record. 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 143 
 
 ARTICLE V. 
 
 * CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 
 
 I. — TiiR Despatches of Hernando Cortes, the Conqueror of Mexico, ad- 
 dressed to the Emperor Charles V., written during the conquest, and con- 
 taining a narrative of its events. Now first translated into English, from 
 the original Spanish, with an Introduction and Notes, by George Folsom, 
 one of the Secretaries of the New York Historical Society, Member of the 
 American Antiquarian Society, of the Archaiological Society of Athens. 
 etc. New York : Wiley &, Putnam. London : Stationers' Hall Court. 
 1843. 
 
 II. — History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a preliminary view of the 
 ancient Mexican civilization, and the Life of the conqueror, Hernando 
 Cortes. By William H. Prescott, author of the " History of Ferdinand 
 and Isabella." " Victrices aquilas alium laturus in orbem." — Lucan. In 
 three volumes. New York : Harper & Brothers. 1843 
 
 Spain, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was the great 
 military nation of Europe. She had served a long and painful 
 apprenticeship, very equally marked by triumphs and abasements, 
 in order to arrive at this proud distinction. Her training had 
 been as severe as it was protracted, and it was not until her 
 petty independent and frequently conflicting states, had become 
 imited under one rule, in the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic, 
 that this reputation was rendered unquestionable by her complete 
 ascendancy over foes and rivals. In glancing over the long cata- 
 logue of events, the long train of causes and their consequences, 
 by which this happy consummation was at length made sure, the 
 historian almost fears lest he should become the romancer. With 
 all his forbearance, unless the reader will travel with him through 
 the venerable chronicles, he cannot well escape the imputation of 
 having yielded his convictions to his theme, and embarked on the 
 wide sea of historical speculation, rather with the wing of the 
 imagination than the sober, questioning mood of a conscientious 
 
144 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 judgment. The temptation to rise above the usual subdued 
 forms of utterance, requisite for history, is equally pressing and 
 peculiar. Never was history, in itself, more thoroughly like ro- 
 mance ; never was the narrow boundary between the possible 
 and the certain, more vague, shadowy and subtle. Truth seems 
 to hang forever over the abyss of doubt ; — the probable loses it- 
 self in a wide empire of uncertainties, in which the historian, 
 trembling always lest h^ should lose his guide, grasps unscrupu- 
 lously, at last, upon the nearest forms which promise a refuge for 
 his thought; and is delighted, finally,, to lose himself in any faith 
 which will put at rest his incredulity. Well may the reader, as 
 he lingers over the story of wild revenge, chivalrous adventure, 
 and faithless or audacious love, pause and wonder if it be not, 
 indeed, the cunning fiction of the poet, which, through the medium 
 of his fancy, endeavours to beguile his judgment. From the year 
 712, when Gebel-al-Tarik, — the one-eyed Tarik, — Tarik El 
 Tuerto, — first planted his flag and footstep upon the rocky heights 
 of Calpe, threatening with the pale terrors of the crescent, the 
 fairest regions of the cross, to that day of triumph when Boabdil 
 el Chico, the last and feeblest of the Moorish kings of Spain, turn- 
 ed his back upon the green plains and gave his last sigh* to the 
 gay and gorgeous towers of Granada, — her history was a long 
 march of battle, — a fierce and protracted struggle, day by day and 
 year by year, in which her mightiest and meanest mingled with 
 equal ardour ; rejoicing, as it were, in a strife which partook in 
 no small degree of the character of a sacred war, — fought, as it 
 was, against a people who were equally the enemies of their 
 country and religion. The Gothic dynasty, under which the soil 
 of Spain fell into possession of the Moors, though previously long 
 declining, enfeebled by the grossest vices, corrupt by luxury and 
 sloth, and deserving if not ready for a foreign master, did not sink 
 without a noble struggle, — would not have fallen, in all probabili- 
 ty, but for the treachery of some of its most trusted captains. 
 The stock, however abused, however forgetful of itself in the 
 hour of prosperity, was a good one, and its virtues survived the 
 
 * " El ultimo suspiro del Moro,'" is tho poetical title pven by the Spaniards 
 to the rocky eminence from which Boabdil took his last look of that city which 
 he " could weep for as a woman, not having the heart to defend as a man." 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 145 
 
 nation. In the extinction of the tyranny of Roderick the king, 
 dom perished, but the sacred principle of liberty was saved ; and, 
 in the wild recesses of the Asturian mountains, under the patriotic 
 guardianship of native princes, the seeds of a mighty empire were 
 planted, whoso dominion, in the end, and for a time, like that of 
 Great Britain in present times, bade fair to overshadow, with its 
 wings of conquest, the remotest regions of the habitable globe. 
 The kingdom which was founded in blood by Pelayo, — the great 
 sire of guerilla warfare in Spain, — could only be maintained by 
 his followers with valour. Fortunate was it for the future that 
 it was sustained and strengthened by necessity. Poverty and 
 privation seemed to purify the souls, while they rendered hardy 
 the sinews of the defeated race. With daily struggle came daily 
 increase of viitue, not less than strength, — vigilant instincts, 
 habitual courage and increasing numbers. Eight centuries of 
 conflict brouD[ht its fruits, and the long; chronicle of wars between 
 the rival races was gloriously finished in the final conquest which 
 rewarded equally the valour and the virtue of the Christian. This 
 long period, distinguished by the most remarkable achievements, 
 whether of masses or of individuals, — achievements in which the 
 stubborn and faithful courage of the Spaniard, was admirably 
 matched by the generous ardour and intrepid spirit of the Moor, — 
 leaving it long a doubt on which banner victory would at last 
 settle with its sunshine, — presents us with one of the grandest ro- 
 mances of military history, second to none of which we read, and 
 fully equal to the Jewish, — from the time of the Kings to the Cap- 
 tivity, — which it somewhat resembles. The empire of Spain, 
 once more rendered unique by the possession of her ancient geo- 
 graphical limits, was prepared, by the training of her sons, for 
 their wide extension. The Moor of Granada sullenly yielded up the 
 lovely regions which he had crowded with the trophies of his pe- 
 culiar genius, and rendered classic by his peculiar arts and tastes. 
 The Spaniard was at length free to repose from a conflict, which 
 had tried equally his patience and his courage for seven hundred 
 years. 
 
 But he had no desire for repose. The labours of his life had 
 not prepared him for the arts of peace. He succeeded to the 
 possessions, but not to the genius of the Moor. He conquered 
 
 11 
 
146 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the works, but not the arts, of his accomplished enemy. Skilled 
 in arms, and skilled in little else, his long wars and constant con- 
 quests had endowed him with a swelling and elevated spirit. 
 Something of this temperament might also have been caught from 
 the oriental genius of the people he had overcome. Was he, then, 
 to retire from the triumphs of the field to its miserable toils, — 
 from the glorious enterprises of war, to the meaner arts, the in- 
 significant objects of trade, — from the noble task of conquering 
 kingdoms, to the lowly struggle after petty gains ? There was 
 not a Spaniard in the army that witnessed the surrender of the 
 keys of Granada, that would not have wept bitter tears, like those 
 of the Macedonian, if told that this was to be the last victory he 
 should behold, — that he was to have no more triumphs, — that 
 there were no more cities to fall, — no more foes of the faith to 
 overcome, — no more worlds for conquest. 
 
 He was destined for better revelations. Happily, as it were, 
 to save a victorious people from the mortification of falling into 
 undignified repose, — at the very moment while their salvos yet 
 rang along the banks of the Xenil from the courts of the Alham- 
 bra, announcing the fall of the last fortress which the enemy 
 possessed in Spain,— and while the question might naturally be 
 supposed to address itself to the heart of the ancient veteran, and 
 the bold young cavalier — what next are we to do, — whither shall 
 we now turn, — where seek the foe, — in what quarter achieve the 
 conquest ? — even at such a moment, and as if in order to answer 
 these doubts and inquiries, a strange prophet rose up amongst 
 them, — a noble, grey-headed and grey-bearded prophet, after the 
 fashion of the ancient Jewish patriarchs, — a mild and gentle 
 father, sweetly faced, sweetly spoken, who spoke as one filled 
 with a faith, — confident as from heaven, — not to be driven from 
 his purpose, — not to be baffled in the new truths, however dis- 
 putable, which he came to teach. He preached a new crusade, — 
 he announced new empires yet to be gathered within the blessed 
 fold of Christ, — empires of the sun, of a nameless splendour, such 
 as might well throw into shadow and forgetfulness even the lovely 
 region just rescued from the Moslem grasp. Lucky was the 
 moment, as well for himself as for the conquering army, when 
 Christopher Columbus presented himself, for the last time, before 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 147 
 
 the sovereigns of Leon and Castile. It was, perhaps, quite as 
 much to give employment to restless enterprise, as with the hope 
 of conquests in new lands, that rendered his painful pilgrimages 
 at last successful. Strange as were his promises and predictions, 
 — grossly improbable and evidently imperfect as his theories 
 appeared when examined by the lights, in that early day for 
 science, in the possession of Christian Europe, — there was some- 
 thing in the assurance which it gave of valorous employment, too 
 grateful, too glorious, not to compel a certain degree of credence 
 in the hearts of a military nation. It was to the hope rather than 
 to the faith of Spain, that the great prophet of American dis- 
 covery addressed himself; and, only half believing, yet yearning 
 to believe, they permitted him to throw open to their arms and 
 eyes, the ponderous and immeasurable gates of the Atlantic. It 
 would be perfectly safe to assume, that, as no nation but Spain 
 could be persuaded to attempt the discovery of the new world, so 
 no people but hers could, at that period, have succeeded in its 
 conquest. Hers alone was the sufficient training for such bold 
 designs, — such a grasp of ambition, such habitual and enduring 
 courage in pursuit. The protracted struggle with the Moors, 
 at which we have briefly glimpsed, had prepared her for the most 
 audacious adventures. It was in consequence of the severe 
 lessons acquired in that school of chivalrous courage and military 
 conduct, that she was able to send forth such a throng of captains, 
 — and such captains, — worthy of her people and of the wondrous 
 empires which they were yet to win. The conquest of America 
 — Peru and Mexico — was only the last act in the conquest of 
 Granada. They were parts of the same great drama, which, 
 compressing epochs into hours, and the events of long ages into a 
 life, we might properly entitle, " The last days of Spanish glory." 
 The spirit which effected the delivery of Spain from the footsteps 
 of the heathen, was the same spirit which impelled her arms 
 against the heathen who was yet unknown. In many instances 
 the performers were the same. The scene was varied, not the 
 action. The heroes, but not the ideal sentiment of heroism 
 which prevailed with both. Had Granada not fallen, Spain would 
 not have dared to take the seal from the unknown waters. The 
 enterprise might have enured to John of Portugal or Henry of 
 
148 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 England, or might have been left over to the present days of 
 steam and commerce. 
 
 It does not affect the propriety of this opinion, that the persons 
 most prominently distinguished in the Spanish wars with the 
 Moors, do not appear in the first enterprises of Columbus. The 
 spirit of an age is something which, happily, survives a genera- 
 tion. It was but natural that the war-worn captain should retire, 
 and yield place to his successor, the page and esquire, who had 
 buckled on his harness. They had been taught by his skill, 
 stimulated by his example, counselled by his precept. With his 
 banner, they caught up his enthusiasm. They were not un- 
 worthy of their training. The pupil did rare honour to his mas- 
 ter by surpassing him, — carrying his deeds of daring and chivalry 
 to a pitch of splendour, which must preserve the history of both, 
 with the greatest and noblest of the past, to all succeeding times. 
 Spain was one great school of romance and romantic daring. 
 The spirit which had led the crown to conquest was a common 
 possession of the people. Such a possession is not easily extin- 
 guished, it goes on, working silently, perhaps, but still working, 
 and still producing fruits. For ages after the extinction of na- 
 tional freedom, this spirit will break out, reviving all the past, and 
 rescuing a people from their thraldom. In Spain, when Colum- 
 bus preached the new world, and long after, it was a triumphant 
 spirit, working wonders, and every where astonishing the world 
 by its successes. Such captains as Gonzalvo de Cordova, — the 
 Great Captain, as they fondly style him, — then busy in the wars 
 of Italy, — Hernando Cortes, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the Pizar. 
 ros, De Soto, Almagro, Ojeda, Ponce de Leon, etc., were all 
 remarkable men, — worthy to take rank in the best military annals 
 of the Roman Republic. Distinguished by rare courage, they 
 were not less so by their great coolness and sagacity. They were 
 no boy-warriors, famous at a charge, but feeble in every other 
 respect. They could think as well as strike — endure as well as 
 inflict, — of admirable judgment in moments of doubt, — of martyr- 
 like firmness in moments of depression. We do not often meet 
 with such men, even singly, in the liistory of other nations.. 
 Here we encounter them in groups, in families, of unequal merit, 
 perhaps, as individuals, yet how distinguished — how superior, 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 149 
 
 even when least prominent. It is usual to ascribe to the sagacity 
 of Ferdinand — himself no warrior — the immense power and 
 height to which Spain arose under his administration, and after it, 
 in the hands of his successors ; — but we should be doing great 
 wrong to history, were the concession to be made to the sovereign, 
 without specially referring to these mighty subjects, — if we passed 
 regardlessly their claims, nor yielded to them the high and palmy 
 merit of having done for their master all that the most loyal 
 attachment, seconded by the most liberal endowment, as well of 
 nature as of art, could possibly bring to the support and glory of 
 a sovereign. If the distinguishing test of gi'eatness be held, as it 
 has been, to be the ability, in the worst times, and with the worst 
 means, of achieving the most wonderful results, — then, certainly, 
 it cannot be denied that these Spanish captains, whether the 
 theatre of action be the sierras of Alpuxarra, or the wild passes 
 of Central and of North America, not only proved themselves 
 great, but the very greatest of warriors — distinguished by an au- 
 dacity which seemed to regard no achievement worthy of attempt, 
 which danger did not absolutely environ, — no danger, as beyond 
 the endeavours and aims of a fortune, which had already plucked 
 its brightest honours from the worst ! 
 
 Were we in the mood, after the fashion of Mr. Carlyle, to en- 
 dow a modern Pantheon with Hero-divinities, we should not hes- 
 itate to choose, from the crowd of heroes who might fairly present 
 themselves for this distinction, as ranking honourably with the 
 worthies of the past, the young adventurer from Medellin, Spain, 
 by name Hernando Cortes. In making this selection, however, 
 we must not be misunderstood. We are expressing, by this pref- 
 erence, only that sort of admiration which we yield to military 
 greatness, — to the man of mere performance, — the hero, — in the 
 case of Cortes, we may say, the politician, — the man of iron 
 nerves, of inflexible composure and fortitude, — doing without 
 questioning, — prompt, brave, cruel, — resolute to win the game, 
 once begun, at whatever sacrifice, the prize of which is to be the 
 great and perhaps unenviable distinction of which we have spoken. 
 Our eulogium, therefore, is necessarily qualified. We must not 
 be understood as regarding this species of greatness, as the high- 
 est, — as deserving our unmixed acknowledgments, or, as at all 
 
150 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 comparable with that which arises from moral endeavour, — the 
 achievement of intense thought, — of an original framing and en- 
 dowing intellect, — the soul, living and labouring only for the ben- 
 efit and the blessing of mankind. The creative mind must always 
 rank very far above the destructive. We have no purpose of 
 confounding these moral distinctions of fame, upon which the bet- 
 ter lessons of Christianity are now beginning very generally to 
 insist. The greatness which we now discuss is that of a class, — 
 
 " From Macedonia's madman to the Swede," — 
 
 whose renown is acquired, and, perhaps, deservedly, in periods 
 of society Avhich need a scourge, an avenger, an executioner ; 
 whose claims to renown rest upon the fact that they are them- 
 selves superior to the exigencies of their times, make them sub- 
 servient to their genius, and out of their blind strength and brutal 
 excesses, evolve a power which, in some degree, contributes to the 
 great cause of human progress. Keeping this distinction and 
 limitation in mind, we do not scruple to declare that the greatest 
 of these modern men was Hernando Cortes, — a man great in a 
 period of great men, — achieving wondrously at a time of won- 
 drous achievement, — displaying the very highest of those mental 
 attributes which give elevation to the brutal deeds of war, at a 
 period when these attributes were numerously possessed by others, 
 — and holding his triumphs with a firmness, and wearing his hon- 
 ours with a meekness, which leaves nothing to be wished for, 
 which sees nothing wanting, in making the comparison of his 
 character, as a whole, with that of any other conqueror, whether 
 of ancient or modern times. Compared with that of Alexander 
 of Macedon, and the career of Cortes will be found to be marked 
 by performances in no respect inferior to those of his predecessor, 
 —in many superior, — in all those, in particular, by which rare 
 endowments are rendered useful and their fruits permanent. 
 Among his virtues, which the other had not, were coolness, 
 modesty, self-restraint and religion. And who shall venture to 
 compare the conquest of a feeble race like the Persian, enervated 
 by the most effeminate luxuries, and emasculated by the most de- 
 grading influences of slavery, with the fierce people of Montezu- 
 ma ; — a people by nature warlike, and rendered terribly so by 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 151 
 
 their sanguinary religion, and the constant domestic conflicts which 
 their religious sacrifices and cannibal appetites equally required 
 them to maintain. It was only in the approach of the Macedo- 
 nian to the wastes of Scythia, that he found an enemy worthy to 
 be mentioned in the same breath with the warriors of Tlascala 
 and Tenoclititlan ; and these, if comparable to the Mexican, in 
 mere hardihood and brute courage, were very far inferior to them 
 in the arts, — wanting utterly in those resources of invention and 
 ingenuity which the latter possessed, — upon which valour falls 
 back from defeat, and provides itself anew, by fresh agents and 
 implements, for baffling the progress of a conqueror. 
 
 The life of Cortes writes itself. We have long been in pos- 
 session of its details and of its claims. The works before us 
 scarcely add any thing to our former possessions. They correct 
 small inaccuracies perhaps, they supply some minute deficiencies, 
 they give us a few more details; — but, so far as the achievements 
 and fame of Cortes are interested, they were unnecessary. His 
 name and that of Mexico, are coupled for eternity. They sur- 
 vive together ; and the books of his contemporaries, even when 
 written in his studious disparagement, are unavoidably memorials 
 of his greatness. These " letters of Cortes," by Mr. Folsom, are 
 for the first time in an English dress. They are useful, — they 
 facilitate the progress of the student- The translation is neatly 
 and faithfully done. The style is simple, direct and unambitious. 
 The introduction, by which the translator supplies the omission 
 caused by the loss of the first letter of the conqueror, leaves nothing 
 to be desired by the reader. His compilation is equally succinct 
 and comprehensive. The work of Mr. Prescott possesses higher 
 claims to our regard as an original narrative. It is an elegant 
 and eloquent production, rich and copious in expression, yet dis- 
 tinguished by a grace and simplicity worthy of any English his- 
 torian. It is in the clearness and beauty of his style, and his 
 conscientious and careful analysis of authorities, that Mr. Pres- 
 cott's chief excellencies lie. We may travel with him confidingly, 
 and yield our faith without hesitation, whenever his conclusions 
 are declared. We have reason to be proud of his production. 
 
 Most readers are acquainted with the general facts of this his- 
 tory. The grand outlines of the conquest of Mexico are familiar 
 
152 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 to all. They are, perhaps, equally well prepared to believe, that 
 it was one of the most remarkable events on record, whether in 
 ancient or in modern annals. As a study, it cannot be too closely 
 read by him who would learn from example tiie best lessons of 
 circumspection; of deliberate foresight, governing prudence, and 
 that audacity, which, as i^f by inspiration or instinct, discerns, at 
 the proper moment, when mere habitual courage and ordinary 
 effort will no longer suffice. To the lover of romance, this is one 
 of the most brilliant — full to overflow, of the very material which 
 his passionate nature most desires — of those 
 
 " disastrous chances 
 
 Of moving accidents by flood and field ; 
 
 Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach ; 
 
 Of beinor taken by the insolent foe, 
 
 And sold to slaveiy — " 
 
 Ay, indeed ! and somiCthing worse than slavery : of being hurried 
 to the highest towers of Moloch, — stretched out on the bloody 
 stone of sacrifice, and impaled, — head downward, perhaps, — 
 flayed alive before the most horrid of all blood-smeared, brutal 
 divinities, — the breast laid bare, — the heart plucked forth, hot 
 and quivering, and flung to the savage god, even while the flick- 
 ering consciousness yet lingers in the straining eye-balls of the 
 victim. These, and such as these, — terror-rousing, horror-rais- 
 ing pictures, — are to be read in this most wondrous history, — a 
 history, we may say again, almost without a parallel. 
 
 Cortes was the born- hero of this history. We have a faith in 
 this providential adaptation of the agent to the work. We believe 
 that each great man has his mission. We are not now speaking 
 of great men in the newspaper sense of the term, — not your little 
 great men, — great on the stump, in the canvass, in the manage- 
 ment of parties and committees. Of the kind of greatness to 
 which we now allude, the world is never overstocked. Our great 
 men are not men of every day. They arise once in an age, and 
 are the saviours — at least, the representatives of that age. They 
 distinguish it by a mark, and it thence remains unforgotten. 
 They embody its highest virtues, its most eminent characteristics. 
 They do for it what cannot be so well done by any other person 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 153 
 
 — what is done by no other person — and what, until they have 
 shown the contrary, is thought by all other persons to be beyond 
 the reach of performance. They are the people who show, like 
 Alexander, how the knots of Gordius may be untied ; like Co- 
 lumbus, how eggs may be made to stand on their own bottoms; 
 like Cortes, how the fierce, gold-loving Spaniard, faithless to all 
 beside, may yet be won to follow the footsteps of one man, in the 
 face of seeming certain death, with almost worshipping fidelity. 
 
 Hernando Cortes was the chosen -hero of this great conquest. 
 He had all the requisite endowments for the work. The eye of 
 foresight, directing with the most consummate prudence ; the de- 
 liberate resolve, which never changes its aspect nor swerves 
 from its course when it has once received its impulse from ma- 
 tured reflection ; the capacity, so to fathom the souls and re- 
 sources of the men, his subordinates, as to be able to assign, at a 
 moment, the particular duty to each which he is best able to per- 
 from ; the nerve, never to falter or suffer surprise ; the will, never 
 to recede when taught by deliberate conviction to advance ; the 
 courao-e, which, not shrinking from fearful deed w^hen necessary 
 to be done — when necessary to safety and success — yet never 
 indulges in wanton exercise of power; — yields to no bloody 
 mood, no wild caprice of passion, ajid is beyond the temptations 
 of levity ; great physical powers for performance and endurance; 
 a valour swift as light ; a soul as pure as principle ; a quickness 
 of thought ; a promptitude of perception ; a ready ingenuity ; a 
 comprehensive analysis of difficulties and resources ; — these, 
 with many other virtues of character, active and passive, might 
 be enumerated, to establish his claims to the high place which 
 we are prepared to assign him. Of the great moral question, 
 whether the conquest itself might not properly have been for- 
 borne, — whether it were justified, not merely by the morals of 
 nations — such morals as nations then possessed — but under the 
 intrinsic and inevitable standards of right and religion ; — we shall 
 say nothing. This is a question which we need not here discuss. 
 Tried by the moral judgments of our day, and there would be 
 but one opinion upon the Mexican conquest ; such an opinion as 
 we are all prepared to pronounce upon the murderous warfare 
 recently pursued by the English among the junks and cities of 
 
154 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the Chinese. The mind naturally revolts from the idea that jus- 
 tification can be found for any conqueror, wantonly overthrowing 
 the altars, defiling the homes, and slaughtering thousands of a 
 people who have offered no provocation to hostility, — whose lands 
 lie remote from the invader, — whose interests and objects conflict 
 not with his, and, whose whole career has been, so far as he is 
 concerned, of an equally innocent and inoffensive character. 
 And, when this invasion and butchery occur in the history and 
 at the expense of a people so far advanced in the arts of civiliza- 
 tion as the Mexicans, the enormity becomes exaggerated, and — 
 were we not to consider the standards of morality prevalent in 
 the time of the conquest, and the farther apparent justification to 
 be found in the sanguinary and horrible practices of the Mexicans 
 themselves — our sentence would be one of instant and unqualified 
 condemnation. But, discarding this inquiry, and leaving the 
 question open for future moralists, let us pass to a rapid survey 
 of the prominent events in the life of the remarkable man by 
 whom the conquest of Mexico was undertaken and achieved. 
 
 Hernando Cortes was born at Medellin, a little town of Estre- 
 madura, in the year 1485. He sprung from the people. When 
 he grew famous, the biographers, as if anxious to show that na- 
 ture could not be the source of greatness, contrived to discover that 
 he was of noble family and illustrious connections. The prob- 
 ability is that this is mere invention. Enough for us that he 
 v/as a man. Fortunately for him, he v/as a poor one. The en- 
 ergies of his original nature were not sapped away by artificial 
 and enfeebling training. He had all the proofs, in his character, 
 of having come from sturdy stocks, with a genius uncrarfiped by 
 sophistication. Nature was left tolerably free to work her own will 
 on her favourite. Happily, if schools and colleges did little to 
 improve, they did as little to impair his genius. At an early 
 period, he gave proof of some of those qualities by which he was 
 finally distinguished. With great ardency of temper, he betray, 
 ed a resolute will and an independent judgment, — qualities which, 
 though they may sometimes arise from mere blood, are yet quite 
 as frequently the distinguishing attributes of inherent capacity, 
 which, in the consciousness of its own resources, is anxious for 
 their development and irks at all restraint which delays their 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 155 
 
 exercise. They would make him a student of law at Salamanca, 
 but, though the age and country were decidedly military, Spain 
 was already overstocked with lawyers. Cortes felt no call to this 
 profession, let his parents call never so loudly. He was sent 
 into the world for very dilTerent uses. He was a man of action, 
 rather than a wrangler, — of deeds, not of words. His words, 
 however much to the purpose, were usually but few ; and the 
 profession of law, in Spain then, as in our day, called for unnat- 
 ural copiousness. The motives were sufficient for eloquence, 
 then as now, to swarms of hungry seekers ; but these motives 
 moved not him. His soul needed a higher stimulus than avarice. 
 He obeyed his destiny, abandoned the pen for the sword, and, at 
 seventeen, we find him preparing to join the army of the great 
 Gonsalvo. But Italy was not to be the theatre of his performance. 
 Fate interfered to keep him from that subordinate position, into 
 which, at his early age, and in the ranks of a warfare filled up 
 with the veterans of the time, he must have fallen. Nay, a far- 
 ther training was necessary in less arduous employments. His 
 sinews were not yet sufficently hardened, his frame not sufficient- 
 ly formed, his temper not enough subdued, for fields of active 
 warfare. Napoleon, in after days, said to the French, " send me 
 no more boys — they only serve to fill the hospitals." The mili- 
 tary career of Cortes, the work for which he was wanted, needed 
 more time, more preparation, a better training than had been his. 
 He fell sick, and, before he recovered, the time for marching had 
 gone by. Italy was no longer open to the adventurer, and he 
 turned his eyes upon the Atlantic. Impatient for action, circum- 
 stances seem about to favour his desires. His kinsman, Ovando, 
 is made governor of Hispaniola. With him he determines to set 
 sail. All things are in readiness, but his fortune, as if the fruit 
 were not yet ripe for his hands, again interposes, and again, 
 through the medium of suflering, prevents his departure. It is 
 one characteristic of heroism, that it must be doing. The blood 
 of Cortes required to be kept in exercise. Your knight-errant, 
 fierce in conflict, is equally fond in dalliance with the fair. Love 
 seems naturally to supply the intervals of war. Nothing, indeed, 
 would seem more natural than that the ardency of the warrior 
 
156 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ehould be equally great in all fields of combat. It is Mr. Moore 
 who sines — 
 
 '&' 
 
 " 'Tis always the youth who is bravest in war, 
 That is fondest and tniest in love." 
 
 Of the truth of our hero's passion in the present instance, but 
 little need be said. Of its earnestness, we may make the most 
 ample admissions. It must be remembered that he was still only 
 seventeen. Impetuosity of character is scarcely matter of re- 
 proach at such a period. As eager after beauty in that day, as, 
 in after years, in pursuit of less hazardous conquests, we find him 
 incurring, with blind passion, dangers almost as serious. He must 
 serenade his mistress before parting. Nay, there are fond last 
 words to be spoken, — and he attempts to scale her windows. We 
 must not look too austerely on this achievement. The gallantry 
 of Spain was never of a very sensual order. It was so much 
 mingled with pride and romance, that it became elevated with 
 sentiment. The guitar and the serenade, borrowed from the ten- 
 der and voluptuous Moor, implied, in the practice of the graver 
 Spaniard, little more than a- platonic passion. At least, it is but 
 charity, at this late period, and in the case of a person so very 
 young, to prefer such a Conclusion. Besides, in the absence of 
 any knowledge on the subject of the damsel, it would be improper 
 to put any scandalous interpretation on the adventure. A last 
 song, a last sigh — nay, a last kiss — may be permitted to the part- 
 ing lover, about to pass, seeking his fortune, over that wilderness 
 of sea, into that wilderness of .savages that lay beyond. Certain 
 it is, that, whether encouraged or not, our hero, hurried by passion 
 beyond propriety, was precipitated from a crumbling wall, and 
 spared more serious injuries at the expense of a broken limb. 
 
 The expedition sailed without him, and, tossing with feverish 
 fiery pulses on a bed of sickness, he was compelled to stifle his 
 impatient yearnings for adventure with what composure was at 
 his command. His eager, impetuous nature, drew good from 
 these disappointments. They formed portions of a necessary 
 training for the tasks that were beyond. They taught him to curb 
 his eager soul, to submit to baffling influences, to meditate calmly 
 his resolves, to wait upon events and bide his time. Did the 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 157 
 
 world go smoothly with the boy, lie might never be the man. 
 Rough currents bring out the strength, and teach the straining 
 muscles of the swimmer. 
 
 But Cortes was not always to be baffled. He sailed for His- 
 paniola in 1504, when but twenty years of age, and reached 
 tlie desired port in safety. Here he was well received by his 
 relation, Ovando, honoured with a public office, with lands and 
 slaves assigned him. He became a farmer. In this mode of 
 life we may well ask what becomes of his ambition, — his mili- 
 tary passion, — that eager temperament whose tides were perpet- 
 ually driving him upon the rocks.* The life of agriculture seems 
 an unperforming one. Its requisitions are grave, subdued and 
 methodical. A quiet nature, a dogged devotion to the soil, would 
 seem its chief requisites. And yet, a purely agricultural people, 
 particularly where they possess slaves, is usually a martial one, 
 — delighting in exercises of the body, — famous in the chase, — ad- 
 mirable in the use of weapons. The management of slaves, — 
 such slaves as the Spaniards had to subdue, — the restless, roving 
 savage of the Mexican archipelago, the blood-thirsty Caribbean, 
 the revengeful and kidnapped native of the Combahee, — required 
 the vigilant eye of a master-spirit. We are not to suppose that 
 the true nature of Cortes was left unexercised while he clung to 
 the sober tastes of agriculture. For six years he pursued this 
 vocation, showing no impatience, — none of that feverish, froward 
 temper which had marked his boyhood. He indulged, as far as 
 we can learn, in no repinings. That he learnt many good lessons 
 in the management of his subjects, — many useful lessons of gov- 
 ernment as well as of patience and forbearance, — schooling into 
 strength that fiery nature, which, as we have seen, was only apt 
 to lead him into mischief, — we may not unreasonably imagine. 
 At all events, we may conclude him to be exercising a necessary 
 nature in all this period, as it is at variance with all human ex- 
 perience to suppose a great mind to remain satisfied, for any 
 length of time, with a condition which is uncongenial with its 
 ruling characteristics. In 1511, we find him connected with a 
 military expedition for the conquest of the Island of Cuba, — but 
 not in a military capacity. This duty over, he resumed his 
 farm with a diligence that looked like devotion. He was sue- 
 
158 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 cessful as a planter. He was the first among the Spaniards to 
 stock his plantation with cattle, — to raise sheep, cows and horses, 
 — in the management of which he betrayed equal pains-taking 
 and success. This was showing singular thoughtfulness in one 
 so young; — singular flexibility of the mental nature, which could 
 thus so readily adapt itself to tasks and exercises in which it had 
 never had any training. Stran.^e, too, that one so ardent, so am- 
 bitious, so eager, should thus so easily content himself. We are 
 reminded of other great men ; — of Scipio, and Cincinnatus, and 
 Washington. The list might be extended. In this very flexibility 
 — in this singular capacity to subdue and keep himself back until 
 the coming of the proper season, — this resolute forbearance of all 
 vain and immature endeavour, — we behold the essential proofs 
 of greatness. He was able to wait — the most difficult duty of 
 the ambitious. He was able to conceal his true desires — without 
 which capacity few succeed in their development, surrounded as 
 they are by a world of rivals. Very like, there was no v>^iil of 
 our hero in this forbearance. This passiveness was none of his 
 own. His moods were in abeyance, under the control of influ- 
 ences, moral and social, to which he was ready to submit, and 
 which he might not seek to fathom. It will not lessen the merits 
 of a great man to believe that he is patient under the direction 
 of a destiny which can better determine than himself the true 
 modes and periods for the application of his powers. To submit, 
 while in the full consciousness of his powers, is, in itself, no small 
 proof of superiority. 
 
 But agriculture, however successfully conducted, did not fur- 
 nish the necessary employment for his genius. His will was 
 shaping out another course. He embarked in commerce, — and 
 prospered as he had done in planting. He was a man to prosper. 
 He carried into trade the same keen vigilance, fixed resolve, per- 
 severing endeavour, watchful forethought. This field afforded 
 him occasions for enterprise — brought him extensively known 
 among the men whom he was to guide, — increased greatly the 
 resources of money and credit, without which, at that time and 
 in that community, the opportunity for great adventure was not 
 easily to be found. Fie became a man of substance, a capitalist, 
 and was called and considered, accordingly, as he would be now, 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 159 
 
 a very reputable person. So his neighbours thought him. He 
 every where secured their confidence, — his word became an au- 
 thority, — his word had a significance. He, somehow, compelled 
 their regard and veneration, and his judgment swayed that of 
 older men. That they knew the audacious character of his mood, 
 we may also infer, as we find them choosing him as their repre- 
 sentative when a great danger was to be incurred. He did not 
 shrink from the trust, offended Velasquez, the Governor of Cuba, 
 and was honoured with imprisonment in consequence. 
 
 From this imprisonment he was soon set free. He was not a 
 man to remain long in any meshes. But this governor of Cuba, 
 who was of a temper equally mean, jealous and virj^ictive, was 
 of capricious humours, which constantly found cause of annoy- 
 ance in the character of Cortes. One of these provocations sprang 
 from a cause equally natural and vexing. The constitutional 
 infirmity of our hero — his passion for the sex — does not seem to 
 have suffered much abatement in his farmer and merchant life. 
 An intrigue with Dona Catalina Xuarez de Pacheco, a lady of 
 noble blood — a sister of whom had been married by Velasquez — 
 was revealdd to this suspicious dignitary. The governor " was 
 something more than wroth," and the storm which ensued was 
 only hushed by the marriage of Cortes with the lady. This 
 union, which he seems to have been reluctant to approach, he 
 had no reason to regret. Dona Catalina made him a good v/ife, 
 and followed him to Mexico, where she died some years after the 
 conquest. He was wont to say that he prized her as highly as 
 if she had been the daughter of a Duke. 
 
 Though not yet a conqueror, Cortes, as we have seen, has not 
 been living entirely in vain. His career, though comparatively 
 kumble, has yet been honourable. It is worthy of remark, that, 
 in all this period — a space of nearly eight years since his arrival 
 in America, — he has not only achieved no military enterprises, 
 but has shown no disposition for arms ; a fact sufficiently striking 
 when his previous aspirations are remembered, — doubly so, now 
 that his after career is known, and particularly surprising when 
 we consider how frequent were the examples of military adven- 
 ture, shown daily by the daring hidalgos of Cuba and Hispaniola. 
 The singular avidity with which, in tliat day, Spaniards of all 
 
160 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 classes embarked in schemes, however wild and visionary, which 
 involved peril, stimulated avarice and gave provocation to valour, 
 might well, we may suppose, awaken that impatient temper 
 which we have seen breaking away from academic walks in 
 eager desire for fields of war, — scaling walls in obedience to the 
 working passions of youth — and, altogether, betraying that for- 
 ward impetuosity of character which seldom desires weightier 
 suggestion to action than what springs from its own inner ten- 
 dencies. It would be idle, at this late moment, to seek to account 
 for this remarkable forbearance, or to endeavour to reconcile those 
 seeming caprices of temper, which, w^ere we more familiar* with 
 the moral influences acting on his moods, might show them all, 
 however apparently in contradiction, to be working harmoniously 
 together. It is the superficial judgment that finds inconsistencies 
 in character, simply because it never looks below the surface. 
 The restraints on the mind of Cortes, arising from his duties, his 
 interests, or, it may be, and probably was, from a real conviction 
 of his own temporary deficiencies, — compelling patience, must 
 naturally have brought him wisdom. He saw, from the numer- 
 ous failures and baffling defeats of the cavaliers around him, that 
 the day had not yet arrived, — that the fruit was not ripe, — that 
 there was an accepted season of action, for which courage must 
 be patient. To know " when,"' is quite as important to achieve- 
 ment as to know '' how." Every day sent forth its novel arma- 
 ment from Hispaniola and Cuba. Brave preparations distin- 
 guished each adventure, — worthy and valiant cavaliers led the 
 enterprise, — yet how few attained the goal, — how many perished 
 in sad defeat, — how many more came back with ruined health, 
 fame and fortune. The keen, vigilant eye of Cortes, took coun- 
 sel of strength for th.e future, as he beheld the weakness of those 
 who went before him. He saw that the hour was yet to come, — 
 they had shown that they were not the men for the hour. May 
 we not suppose, knowing as we do his career, that, at such mo- 
 ments, with such reflections, a fond but secret emotion in his soul 
 informed him, that the hour and the man were destined to co- 
 operate hereafter in his own patiently-abiding self! 
 
 It is said by some of the historians that his greatness, in spite 
 of the generosity which he showed, or seemed to show, to his 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 161 
 
 companions, was tainted by the miserable vice of avarice, — per- 
 haps the meanest and least manly of all vices. To this passion, 
 they allege, are we to ascribe his persevering devotion to his ag- 
 ricultural and commercial pursuits. His liberality to his com- 
 panions, say they, was only a superior sort of policy, by which 
 he attached them to his person, making them the subservient 
 creatures of his ambition. But the statement involves many con- 
 tradictions, and assumes for Cortes a variety of passions, all earn- 
 est and in action, such as we rarely discover in any person, and 
 which, if in possession of the mind of any man, would be apt to 
 leave him unperforming, a constant victim to the most momentary 
 caprices. Ambition and avarice seldom work together. We are 
 not satisfied that there is not some great mistake in the usually 
 received biography of Marlborough, who is on record for a rare 
 union of these natures, so at conflict, — the one soaring to the sum- 
 mit, the other grovelling at the base of all human appetites and 
 aims. The passions are foes, not twins. There is no affinity 
 between them. The frank, impulsive nature of that sort of am- 
 bition which seeks for renown through the medium of arms, is 
 hardly capable of that cold consideration of small gains, — that 
 petty, slavish, matter-of-detail spirit, which is for realizing the 
 pounds by a constant jconcern for the pence. Ambition is a thing 
 of large generalization, which usually scorns details, and shrinks, 
 with a sort of disgust, from all servile literalnesses. It looks up- 
 ward, and not, as Mammon, that " least exalted spirit of heaven," 
 upon the gold of the pavement beneath his feet. If its glance is 
 ever cast below, it is only because, perched like thje eagle on some 
 sky-uplifting eminence, there is nothing farther to be sought or 
 seen above. 
 
 It would be more easy to believe, in the case of Cortes, that he 
 was not understood by his neighbours. As nobody at this period 
 suspected the great military and statesman-like genius which he 
 possessed, so no one could reasonably determine upon those pro- 
 ceedings in his career, the objects of which were latent, and only 
 determinable by the grand results. It is not easy to look back, 
 after the grand march of a conqueror, and sit in just judgment on 
 his first beginnings. It would not, perhaps, be easy for himself 
 to do so, and determine accurately upon his own motives. We 
 
 12 
 
162 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 are all so much the creatures of circumstances, — so much led by 
 our own instincts, — that we seem motiveless in a thousand move- 
 ments, when, in fact, we have been impelled by a secret nature, 
 superior to mere worldly deliberation, — a nature which operates 
 like an instinct, with all the energies, and, seemingly, with all the 
 prescience of a god. Doubtless, Cortes worked under some such 
 influences, without well knowing why he worked and wondering 
 sometimes at his own passivity. Supposing that he conjectured 
 something of his future career, it is natural he should seek the 
 acquisition of forturte, — nay, that he should hoard and secure it 
 with all prudential care, in contemplation of the wondrous enter- 
 prises which lay before him. We find him, when the time for 
 these enterprises arrived, frankly embarking all of his fortune in 
 their prosecution. Keeping this fact in mind, there will be no 
 difficulty in accounting for the two-fold desire which he showed, 
 at once to accumulate money, and by the generous use of ;it, at 
 times, to attach his companions to his arms. There is yet another 
 consideration which needs only to be entertained for an instant, 
 to make it doubtful whether he is justly liable, at any time, to the 
 charge of withholding his resources, or betraying any uncommon 
 or close regard to acquisition. Liberality of mood, like most ob- 
 jects of moral analysis, is a thing of relative respect. Among 
 one set of people, a person shall be held selfish whom another 
 class will esteem as generous in a high degree. Cortes, differing 
 largely from the usual profligacy of Spanish cavaliers, — men 
 reckless equally of past, present and to come, — might naturally 
 enough suffer from their denunciations, yet deserve no reproach 
 of avarice in any justly-minded community. He certainly dif- 
 fered from themselves, — he was no profligate, — he respected laws 
 which they despised, — he was prudent when they were profligate, 
 — sober when they were intoxicated, — firm when they were wild, 
 — and, consequently, triumphant when they failed. 
 
 The circumstance that strikes us, over all, and as wonderfully 
 significant of his character, is the calm, unchanging quiet of his 
 life, during the long period of— as we must regard it — his proba- 
 tion. Believing as we do that every great mind has not only 
 some partial knowle ge of its own endowments, but some strong 
 presentiments of what are to be its future performances, we are 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 163 
 
 half disposed to ascribe this seeming lethargy, in his career, to a 
 deliberate purpose of self-training and self-preparation, for the 
 work which was before him. No great mind is entirely without 
 a knowledge of its deficiencies. The greatest minds are those 
 who first and most fully discover them. Cortes felt his infirmities 
 of temper. His nature was originally too fierce and intractable. 
 His blood needed schooling. His impetuosity — and this was the 
 disease of Spanish heroism — would have been the greatest impedi- 
 ment to his conquest of Tenochtitlan. It was only by restraining 
 and subjecting his own, that he could hope to subdue the minds 
 of others to his will. Will is not yielded in the attainment of pa- 
 tience. It is strengthened, made consistent, and doubly intense 
 from its habitual compression. If there were no secret sugges- 
 tions of his own nature, counselling him to this result, the observ- 
 ant thought of Cortes would have received the lesson from in- 
 stances hourly before his eyes. It was in consequence of this 
 deficient training, that the brave and gallant cavaliers who pre- 
 ceded him in the march of discovery, and helped to prepare his 
 way, sufl^ered all their disasters. He saw them daily returning 
 in poverty and mortification, who had set forth in all the pride 
 and insolence of spirit which characterized the Spanish chivalry 
 at that wondrous period. He saw that it was not from want of 
 skill or deficient courage, or inferior numbers in the field, that 
 they failed, — but of the proper temper, of the adequate reflection, 
 of the decisive judgment, all of which, operating equally upon the 
 minds of one's followers and foes, make victory inevitable, and 
 reap certainly its fruits. 
 
 There were yet other considerations, natural enough to an intel- 
 lect so well balanced and so greatly endowed as that of Cortes, 
 by which his patience was induced and his career influenced. 
 Conscious that his extreme youth was unfavourable to his claims 
 to command and lead, and unwilling to go upon great enterprises 
 in a subordinate capacity to those by whom they were most likely 
 to be rendered futile, he preferred to wait upon time, and prepare 
 for the more favourable progress of events. The born-leader of 
 men is always thus content to wait, conscious that his mission 
 cannot be wrested from his Jiands. It is only your spirit, doubtful 
 of itself and destiny, that is forever forestalling time and hurry- 
 
164 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ing prematurely into the field, for the real dangers of which it 
 has made no preparation. In truth, Cortes had been in the field 
 from the beginning, even as the race horse is already master of 
 the prize, whose previous training and exercise has made him 
 sure of it, the moment that the time of trial has arrived. In his 
 seclusion he had been at work. In his retirement he had been 
 making the preliminary conquests which were to secure the 
 greater. His regular habits of industry, his stability of charac- 
 ter, his uniform good sense, had secured him friends among the 
 cooler, the more sober and reflective of the population of Cuba 
 and Hispaniola, — so that they were all ready to say, when a man 
 was needed for man-work — this is our man ! His generosity to 
 his companions, admitted even by those who dwell upon his ava- 
 rice, had won him other affections among the ardent. He himself 
 was ardent without being insane. Frank in his deportment, easy 
 of address, ready in his intercourse, unassuming even when 
 firmest, and gracious even when unfamiliar, he had contrived to 
 win golden opinions from all sorts of people. Besides, though as 
 yet quite unknown in a military capacity, he had yet, strange to 
 say, acquired the popular confidence in his self-possession, forti- 
 tude and courage. His conversation, though animated, was 
 always sensible, and one trait, given by Solis, is worthy of being 
 remembered : " He always spoke well of the absent." With a 
 vigorous constitution, unimpaired by dissipation or disease, he was 
 possessed of great physical strength, and accomplished in all 
 martial exercises. His stature was good and well proportioned, 
 active and robust. His chest was broad and prominent, — his 
 countenance clear, bright and intelligent, — his beard strong and 
 black, — the expression of his eyes lively and amorous, — and, to 
 conclude in a word, and to show the fruits of that period of pro- 
 bation, which, to the careless mind, would seem to have been 
 utterly without fruits, — he was a general favourite with both 
 sexes. Verily, we may begin to conclude, that our farmer and 
 merchant-hero, so far, has not been working entirely in vain. 
 Let the future speak for itself. We are not to forget, however, 
 among the essential and important qualities in the moral constitu- 
 tion of Cortes, that he entertained an abiding sense of the pres- 
 ence of the Deity in all the concerns and workings of humanity. 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 165 
 
 He was of that earnest, concentrative nature, that all operations 
 of his thoughts were impressed with the serious influences of a 
 deep and still dependent faith. The Deity was always present to 
 his imagination as a constituent motive in his ownj proceedings. 
 Like Columbus, even when he wrought in error, he flattered 
 himself that he wrought for truth ; and it was in some sort a holy 
 sense of indis^nation at the atrocities which he beheld amono- the 
 pagan nations, in their loathsome worship, that reconciled him on 
 some occasions to his own savage excesses. These were occa^ 
 sional only. Cortes was among the most indulgent of the cap- 
 tains of the time. He was merciful beyond his age, and could 
 forbear to claim its sanction for crime, even when his own per- 
 formances would seem to have required it. This religious faith 
 which he possessed, it may be remarked, was one of the chief 
 sources of the audacity of his courage. How should he doubt 
 of the result, who, adopting the banner of Constantine, sees, ever 
 visible in its awful folds, the inscription which pious zeal may 
 well assume to embody an encouraging assurance from, Christ 
 himself, — " Amici, Crucem sequamur, et in hoc signo vincemus." 
 Such was Hernan Cortes, — thus prepared and thus encouraged 
 — when it became his part to enter actively upon that theatre of 
 performance for which his whole nature had been craving. 
 He was called into action at a period most opportune for his am- 
 bition. Hitherto, the result of Spanish discovery in the new 
 world, had failed of its expected fruits. The predictions and 
 hopes of Columbus had been verified in part only. The ocean 
 had been disarmed of its terrors, — the gates of the Atlantic had 
 been rolled back, never again to close, — a new world had beea 
 given to the empires of Castile and Leon — but the more worldly 
 appetites of the discoverers remained in a great degree ungrati- 
 ficd. The fruits of adventure had not recompensed the voyagers. 
 The crown had not realized its outfit. The possessions were bar- 
 ren. Instead of the precious metals and minerals, the drugs and 
 spices, the gems and treasures of the golden Chersonesus, which 
 had been liberally promised by the hopeful imagination of Colum- 
 bus, a few small and comparatively unproductive islands, in a 
 waste ocean, dependencies of sea and sky alone, were all that he 
 yielded, in confirmation of his dreams and theirs, to the royal 
 
166 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 sovereigns whom he represented. He took from the gold of the 
 sceptre in the extension of its sway. He himself never knew the 
 extent and importance of his own discoveries. Within a stone's 
 throw of Yucatan, he veered about capriciously, as if under the 
 wing of a mocking fortune, like another prophet, not permitted to 
 set foot in the Canaan to which he had pointed out the way for 
 his people. Some glimpses of the wonders of Mexican civiliza- 
 tion were all that was vouchsafed him, in his last disastrous voy- 
 age. He picked up a canoe of unusual size, while on the upper 
 coast of Guatemala, in which were found cotton coverlets, tunics 
 ■without sleeves, mantles, coverings for the loins, — garments of 
 happy fashion and exquisite texture, wrought with nice skill and 
 delicately dyed in various colours. There were other commodi- 
 ties, weapons of war, choice viands, wines and fruits, and instru- 
 ments of copper. The great results enured to other men. They 
 penetrated the same waters, and finally made the discovery of 
 Yucatan, — a realm of immense population, filled with cities of 
 equal wealth and pomp and magnitude. But their discoveries 
 bore no fruits corresponding with the promise which they held out 
 to enterprise. The eager avarice, the yearning ambition of the 
 Spaniard, groans with the very impatience of desire at the new 
 prospect. Diego Velasquez, the Governor of Cuba, a man of 
 whom we have already spoken, as mean, avaricious and incon- 
 stant, dazzled with the golden and other ornaments which had 
 been plucked from the shrines of false gods in Yucatan, prepared 
 to attempt the conquest of that country. A small armament was 
 sent forth which did not succeed to his desires. His captains did 
 not obey his wishes. Another was prepared, and the command 
 of it was finally given, though slowly and with many misgivings, 
 to his brother-in-law, our farmer, merchant-hero, Hernan Cortes. 
 Appointed to this command, Cortes entered upon his tasks with 
 all the energies of his nature. He yielded his whole fortune to 
 the adventure, — he contracted debt in the more earnest prosecu- 
 tion of his work. The enterprise in his hands became popular. 
 Men flocked from the standards of other and long-practised lead- 
 ers, to follow under his. The dignity, resolution, skill, judgment, 
 with which he proceeded, now alarmed the fears and suspicions 
 of Velasquez. The popularity which he suddenly seemed to ac- 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 167 
 
 quire, was itself an annoyance. Even the employment of liis 
 own wealth in the adventure prompted the capricious governor to 
 apprehend that Cortes designed to make it entirely his own, and 
 cut him off from his share of the profits. The admirable energies 
 put in requisition by our hero, confirmed this fear ; and there 
 were not wanting those to whisper in his ears such doubts and 
 suspicions of his captain, as strengthened all his own. Besides, 
 it was remarked that a wonderful change of air and manner had 
 suddenly taken place in our hero. It seemed as though his soul 
 had risen into the consciousness of a new strength. There was 
 a serious elevation of bearing, — a massive and noble-looking lofti- 
 ness, now distinguishing his deportment — that amply spoke fbr 
 high and hopeful purposes. Whatever might have been the levi- 
 ties and frivolities of his character before, these immediately gave 
 way to a conduct such as might well become a consciousness of 
 the great achievements which he was about to execute. He was 
 no longer the mere tradesman, chaffering in the thoroughfare, — 
 no longer the plodding farmer, tenacious of his petty cares and 
 sovereignty. Velasuuez saw in his newly-assumed carriage, a 
 spirit too strong for ms control, — too independent and too inflexi- 
 ble to submit patiently to the will of an inferior. Weak and 
 irresolute himself, he trembled for his share in the enterprise, and 
 heartily repenting of the trust confided to Cortes, he determined to 
 withdraw from him its command. But this was not so easy of ex- 
 ecution as resolve. While yet he hesitated, not daring to proceed 
 openly, dreading a rupture with a person equally adroit and popu- 
 lar, Cortes saw into the secret misgivings and purpose of his nar- 
 row and apprehensive spirit. He was, perhaps, apprized of it by 
 others, for he had friends on every side. His resolves were 
 prompt and decisive of his character. He suddenly set sail fbr 
 the port of St. lago, contenting himself with a courteous but dis- 
 tant salute to the governor, who watched his progress at some dis- 
 tance from the shore. The latter had not anticipated this pro- 
 ceeding, or his own might have been more prompt. He knew 
 that the preparations of Cortes were far from complete, and fan- 
 cied that he should have sufficient time at any moment to arrest 
 him. But the jealousy which waits upon time, is apt always to 
 lose the occasion, and he who deals with rival or suspects him, must 
 
168 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 never postpone perfoi'mance till the sunlight. Of the various 
 attempts made by Velasquez to defeat the enterprise, or, at least, 
 to deprive Cortes of all participation in it, details are unnecessary. 
 They were equally ungenerous and unsuccessful, and Cortes 
 seems to be wholly justified in the opinions of the moralist, in 
 finally throwing off all connection with his brother-in-law. His 
 keen vigilance, resolute character, and, we may add, his favouring 
 fortune, enabled him to baffle all the efforts of his enemy, and 
 these were continued with equal pertinacity and spite long after 
 our hero had won his way to the city of Montezuma. Some of 
 these efforts may command our more particular notice hereafter. 
 Enough, however, that, in defiance of strifes on shore and storms 
 at sea, we find the fleet of Cortes, early in the year 1519, safely 
 moored at the appointed rendezvous at the island of Cozumel. Of 
 this place, which is now deserted, the reader will find some in- 
 teresting particulars, in the late work of Mr. Stephens on the an- 
 tiquities of Yucatan. 
 
 Thus, then, at the age of thirty-three, Cortes stood on the 
 threshold of his great career. We have s||oken of his physique 
 and personal appearance, — of his great vigour and elasticity of 
 frame, — of his pleasing countenance, and the general attractive- 
 ness of his bearing. It remains to say, that he excelled in fen- 
 cing, horsemanship, and all other of the military and chivalrous 
 exercises of the age. He was temperate, indifferent to what he 
 ate, regardless of privation, capable of enduring any toils in com- 
 mon v/ith the meanest foot-soldier. He was not heedless of the 
 impression produced by fitting costume, and wore ornaments, 
 which were usually more remarkable for their richness and value 
 than their show. 
 
 His armament consisted of eleven ships, under as many cap- 
 tains. On the 10th February, 1519, he reviewed his forces at 
 Cape St. Antonio. "They amounted to one hundred and ten 
 mariners, five hundred and fifty-three soldiers, including thirty- 
 two cross-bowmen, and thirteen arquebusiers, besides two hundred 
 Indians of the island, and a few Indian women for menial offices. 
 He was provided with ten heavy guns, four lighter pieces called 
 falconets, and a good supply of ammunition. He had besides six- 
 teen horses." With this force did this great man enter upon the 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 1G9 
 
 conquest of the magnificent, the strong, the warlike and numerous 
 people of Tenochtitlan, and tlie contiguous nations. His review 
 was closed with a speech, almost the only speech on record of a 
 great warrior, the promises of which were amply verified by the 
 result. He told them, just as if he had himself beheld it all, of 
 the extent, the danger, the glory of the enterprise in which they 
 v.-ere about to engage. He was about to lead them, he said, to 
 countries more vast and opulent than any they had known, and 
 the conquest of which must make them famous to all succeeding 
 ages. "But," said he, "these are to be won only by incessant 
 toil. Great things are achieved only by great exertions. Glory 
 was never the reward of sloth. If I have laboured hard and 
 staked my all in this undertaking, it is for that renown which is 
 the noblest recompense of man. But, if any among you court 
 riches more, be but true to me, as I will be to you and to the oc- 
 casion, and I will make you masters of more than Spain has ever 
 dreamed of. You are few in number, but strong in resolution. 
 If this does not falter, doubt not that God, who has never failed 
 the Spaniard in his battle with the infidel, will shield you, though 
 encompassed by a cloud of enemies. Your cause is just — you 
 fight under the banner of the Cross. On, then, with alacrity and 
 confidence, and carry to a glorious issue the work so auspiciously 
 begun." 
 
 At Cozumel, Cortes soon proved to his soldiers, that, while he 
 disdained to follow in the steps of other cavaliers, so also did he 
 reject many of their practices. One of his captains, arriving at 
 the island first, displayed the red hand to the natives, drove them 
 from their homes, and despoiled their temples. Cortes rebuked 
 his follower, restored the spoils, and succeeded in recalling the 
 Indians to their homes, and converting them, after the fashion of 
 the time, to the faith of Christ. Their uncouth idols, tumbled 
 from their teocallis, made way for the Virgin and the Child. 
 Here, Cortes was fortunate in recovering a Spaniard who had 
 been captured by the Indians in a previous expedition,, who had 
 acquired the Maya language, and was thus of great importance 
 to the intercourse carried on with the natives of Yucatan. He 
 had been eight years in captivity. Cortes proceeded from Cozu- 
 mel, by water, to Campeachy, in the neighbourhood of which he 
 
170 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 found one of his ships which had been missing. He then pro- 
 ceeded to the river Tabasco, which had been penetrated by Gri- 
 jalva, one of his predecessors. This river he ascended with a 
 considerable force in boats and brigantines, until he discovered a 
 town, built of bricks, and surrounded by a wall of timber, through 
 loopholes in which it could be defended by missiles. Failing, 
 after entreaty, to procure the supplies of water and provisions 
 which he required, and defied by the savages, he dispersed his 
 troops in several divisions and succeeded in storming the place, 
 which was gallantly defended. The savages fought with equal skill 
 and bravery, and, singling out Cortes, who particularly distin- 
 guished himself in the conflict, they addressed themselves with 
 special ferocity to his destruction. " Strike at the chief," was 
 their cry — which drew upon him attentions equally honourable and 
 dangerous. He lost his sandals in the struggle, and fought bare- 
 foot in the mud. A second battle followed in the plains of Ceutla. 
 The Indians marshalled their legions, — legions indeed, — stretching 
 out in dusk array to the very edge of the horizon. The fight 
 which followed was a terrible one, but, in the most trying moment 
 of the encounter, the eye of faith, among the more superstitious 
 Spaniards, discovered a sacred ally from heaven fighting in their 
 ranks, — no other than the blessed St. James, the patron saint of 
 Spain, — who, mounted on a grey horse, conducted, to the shame 
 of all other captains, to the final overthrow of the infidel. As far 
 as we can see, Cortes himself wrought as effectually to this con- 
 summation, as the blessed saint whose business it does not seem to 
 have been. He contented himself with victory, and forbore unne- 
 cessary slaughter. His mercy had its effect, not less than his 
 valour. The savages felt their inferiority to the strange invader. 
 Their chiefs sent in their submission, and appeared with the usual 
 tribute of gold, slaves, and garments of feathers and cotton. 
 Among the female slaves thus tendered, was one, the possession 
 of whom, by the Spaniards, was soon ascribed to the particular 
 interposition of heaven. She proved to be a native Mexican, ta- 
 ken by the Yucatanese when young, who still preserved her own 
 language, and was capable of translating for the conqueror, where 
 his recovered Spaniard failed, — namely, when they came in con- 
 tact with those who spoke the Aztec dialect. She was baptized 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 171 
 
 at Tabasco, and took the name of Marina. The Spaniards after- 
 wards called her Dona Marina, and the Mexicans Malinche. We 
 are compelled to state, moreover, that she soon attained a closer 
 personal relationship to the captain-general than good morals will 
 justify. The amorous nature of our hero was not more subdued 
 by trade and agriculture than his military ambition. Marina was 
 beautiful and attractive of person. Her temper is described as 
 generous and gentle. She was equally faithful to the chief and 
 useful to the expedition. She had a quick mind, and soon acquired 
 the Castilian. Love may have helped greatly to facilitate the 
 study of the language. The Spaniards held her name in high 
 veneration. She bore a son to Cortes, of whom the historian re- 
 marks, that he \vas " less distinguished by his birth than his un- 
 merited persecutions." 
 
 From the conquered people of Tabasco, Cortes received his first 
 intimations of that great empire which he was destined to conquer. 
 His yearning spirit suffered no delay. A day of solemn festivity 
 was spent among the conquered savages, to whom he gave the 
 rites of the Catholic faith. The breeze favoured, and, re-embark- 
 ing, he held his way along the coast until he reached the island 
 of San Juan de Ulloa ; and here the Aztec dialect succeeded to 
 that of the Mayan, and Dona Marina as interpreter to Aguilar. 
 Here, something more was learned of Mexico, and of Montezu- 
 ma, its potent sovereign. Cortes was pleased with the country, 
 and landed on the very spot which is occupied by the modern city 
 of Vera Cruz. At this place he founded a settlement and opened 
 an intercourse with the natives. To the chief of these he decla- 
 red his purpose of meeting their monarch, — a resolution which 
 provoked the scorn of the savage who had no notion that the 
 world could contain a prince so powerful as his own. Of the 
 Aztec civilization at this period, Mr. Prescott has given us an 
 elaborate and interesting picture, to which we commend the read- 
 er. It would too greatly expand our article, were we to attempt 
 to say any thing on this subject, or on the kindred topic which in- 
 volves the history of those wondrous ruins of civilization which 
 make conspicuous and curious the whole face of the adjoining 
 country. Enough for us that Mexico was, in one sense, the mis- 
 tress of the neighbouring nations. Montezuma was a sovereign 
 
172 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 of considerable ability and acknowledged bravery. But his reign 
 was troubled. Cortes arrived at a happy juncture. The inter- 
 nal condition of Mexico was not one of repose. The elements 
 of discord were at work. She was surrounded by enemies, 
 who hated as they feared her power; and discontents with- 
 in the kingdom were the natural consequence of a condition 
 of unexampled prosperity, — of an iron-browed despotism, and 
 of nobles, haughty and aspiring, who possessed equal motives 
 and facilities for revolt. The success of the Spaniards was ne- 
 cessarily facilitated by these influences, and the superstitions of 
 the Mexican monarch were of a kind particularly to favour the 
 progress of the invader. Venerable predictions taught him to 
 fear the presence of a white and bearded people, and numerous 
 omens occurring at the period of their arrival on the coast, quick- 
 ened the apprehensions of a monarch, whose nature seems to have 
 been morbidly alive to such influences. How he strove, — by 
 what arts, falsehoods and open violence, — to retard the approach 
 of the Spaniards to his capital, must be sought in the elaborate 
 histories before us. But the resolution of Cortes was no less fixed 
 in the attainment of that object. He pressed forward with a will 
 as absolute as that of death, and the Aztec monarch, beholding in 
 him the very fate that he feared, ceased, of a sudden, to exercise 
 those qualities of courage, prudence and decision by which he 
 had made himself feared of other foes, and by which the present 
 might have been baffled. We see him yielding, hour by hour, 
 and step by step, to the progress of a power, the very glance of 
 which seems to, have paralyzed all his own, as that of the serpent 
 is said to paralyze the faculties of the trembling song-bird upon 
 whom he fastens the fascinating terrors of his eye. Great were 
 the mistakes which he made in his futile endeavours to arrest the 
 approach of the Spaniards. The very presents by which he re- 
 vealed the wealth of his kingdom, furnished an irresistible im- 
 pulse to the object which they were meant to divert and to dis- 
 suade. His expressed wish that the invaders should not advance, 
 betrayed his terrors ; and his terrors, seen not less by the sur- 
 rounding natives than by the Spaniards, while they encouraged 
 the revolt of the one, stimulated the audacity of the other. The 
 reader has a sufficient idea of the splendour of the presents sent 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 173 
 
 by Montezuma to Cortes, the survey of which did not lessen the 
 resolution of the latter to see the other in person, and express his 
 acknowledgments. Other gifts followed, with a renewal of the 
 refusal of the Aztec monarch to suffer the Spaniards to penetrate 
 liis empire. But the very terms of the refusal betrayed his timid- 
 ity, and it was unavailing with the invader. As well might the 
 puny fawn in the jaws of the carcajou, deny that he should finish 
 the repast the flavour of which is already on his palate. 
 
 While Cortes hesitated to advance, rather in consequence of 
 some discontents among his troops than because of any doubts or 
 apprehensions of his own, he became aware, by certain ambassa- 
 dors from the Totonacs, of the domestic relation of Mexico with 
 the surrounding nations. Taught that the conquered and ill-used 
 people who had been brought by force of arms beneath the rule 
 of IMontezuma, were prepared to avail themselves of the first op- 
 portunity for throwing off the yoke, he at once grasped the grand 
 idea of using them against their conquerors, of fighting the one 
 people against the other, and thus economizing, for final issues, the 
 strength and valour of his own. Ingeniously suppressing the dis- 
 contents in his camp, occasioned by the fears of some, and, in 
 part, by the machinations of certain friends of Velasquez, he 
 founded a city to which was given the name of Villa Rica de 
 Vera Cruz. A magistracy was set over it. To this magistracy 
 he surrendered the powers obtained from the Governor of Cuba, 
 and received from them, in return, in the name of the sovereign, a 
 similar authority. The more violent of the friends of Velasquez 
 were put in irons and sent on ship-board, where they soon learn- 
 ed to moderate their hostility, and join with their comrades in the 
 common cause. It was no hollow peace. The wonderful ad' 
 dress of Cortes secured their affections, and they were ever after- 
 wards faithful to his fortunes. 
 
 We hurry over, as unnecessary to our narrative, the. minor 
 events which followed. He passed into the territories of the To- 
 tonacs, estimated to contain a hundred thousand warriors, with the 
 Cacique of whom he formed an alliance, and from whom he ob- 
 tained four hundred tamanes, or burden bearers. Passing from 
 the city of Cempoalla to that of Chiahuitzla — both Totonac — he 
 found frequent occasion to display his admirable judgment and 
 
174 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 sagacious policy. In the latter city, an adroit movement commit- 
 ted this people to his cause, in such a manner as to make him very 
 sure of their fidelity. At Cempoalla, as at Cozumel, he overturn- 
 ed the idolatrous and blood-smeared altars of the Indians, even 
 though at the worst hazards of insurrection, and set up the gentler 
 images of the virgin and child in their place. The savages seiz- 
 ed their arms to prevent the indignity, but Cortes, with his wonted 
 decision, having arrested the Cacique and principal inhabitants, 
 subdued the tumult without bloodshed, and the fact that the divin- 
 ities lately held so potent, did not avenge their own dishonour, 
 tended, very naturally, to lose for them, in the eyes of their wor- 
 shippers, the odour of their sanctity. It is to be remarked that, 
 wherever he came, our hero seemed to have shown himself quite 
 as solicitous for the diffusion of the true faith, as for the exten- 
 sion of his own conquests; and he sometimes pursued this object, 
 at risks which, as a mere leader of armies, he would never have 
 incurred. 
 
 His " City of the True Cross " fairly built, or rather begun, 
 he prepared for his great movement. Despatches were sent to 
 Spain containing his proceedings. His first letter is not now to 
 be found. But Cortes wrote well, in a frank and direct manner, 
 with a good natural style, forcibly, fluently, and sometimes with 
 eloquence. With this letter he sent the treasures which he had 
 obtained, the rare stuffs, sundry Mexican manuscripts, specimens 
 of their picture writing, and four Indians, who had been rescued 
 from cages where they had been kept for sacrifice to the bloody 
 divinities of Aztec worship. Thus assuring himself, as well as 
 he might, that the record of his discoveries, so far, was rendered 
 safe, he proceeded to the performance of one of those daring acts 
 by which the character of the man is at once stamped, with the 
 signet of greatness, for the wonder of his age. He destroyed his 
 shipping, and thus deprived himself and followers of all means of 
 escape. There was now no possibility of retreating from the 
 work. Triumph now was necessary to safety — tne conquest of 
 Mexico to life itself. Not to advance would be to revive the 
 courage of Montezuma, to impair that of his allies, and to bring 
 upon his little colony the united forces of both, by which he must 
 be overwhelmed or driven into the sea. Terrible was the con- 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 175 
 
 sternation, and wild the rage of his followers, when the ships were 
 sunk. But one small vessel remained. Their mutinous arms 
 were lifted against him — he had led them, they cried, to the sham- 
 bles — to butchery ! But he quieted them, even as the waters sub- 
 side from storm, after a breath from heaven passes over them. 
 But one small vessel was suffered to remain, and this he yielded 
 to the irresolute who were willing to depart. " As for me," said 
 he, " my part is chosen. I remain here while there is one to 
 bear me company. For those who shrink from the dangers of . 
 our glorious enterprise, let them go in God's name. Let them 
 take the one vessel and depart for Cuba. There, they can re- 
 late where they left their commander and their comrades." " To 
 Mexico !" was the unanimous answer to this speech. The proper 
 chords were touched. The enthusiasm of the soldiery responded 
 to their chief, and all their confidence in his skill and in his star 
 at once revived in their bosoms. The destruction of his fleet was 
 an act, not only of wondrous courage, but of admirable fore- 
 thought. The fortunes of all were now staked upon the same 
 cast, and a death-blow was given to the faction of Velasquez. In 
 the absence of all means of escape, the inferior mind at once 
 turned in hopeless dependence upon the master spirit of the com- 
 pany. 
 
 On the 16th of August, 1519, Cortes commenced his march for 
 Mexico. His force amounted to four hundred foot, and fifteen 
 horse. Thirteen hundred Totonac warriors and a thousand ta- 
 manes, accompanied the expedition. The latter w^ere employed 
 to transport the cannon, seven in number, and the baggage of the 
 army. Forty of the chief citizens attended his march as guides 
 and counsellors, not to say hostages. The garrison at Vera Cruz, 
 was left in charge of Juan de Escalante, an officer at once pru- 
 dent and skilful, and warmly attached to his commander. The 
 advance of Cortes was marked by great vigilance. He was al- 
 ways guarded against surprise. His maxim, to his soldiers, was, 
 " We are few against many, my comrades — be prepared, then, 
 not as if you are going into battle, but as if actually in the midst 
 of it." His course was first for Xalapa, a city which has given 
 its name to a valuable medicine — thence for the martial republic 
 of Tlascala — a people who still preserved their independence in 
 
176 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the face of continual conflict with the greater power of Mexico. 
 To this people Cortes sent despatches. They were important to 
 his enterprise. His object was to use them against their neigh- 
 bours, to employ their understood hate of the Mexicans as a 
 means of his own progress. The Senate of Tlascala was divided 
 in its opinion as to the reception to be given to the Spaniards. A 
 party was favourable to their application, but another opposed it ; 
 and it was first determined to try the strength of the Spaniards 
 before making any concessions. Twice, thrice did the brave 
 savages meet him, without any decisive results. The Tlascalans 
 were beaten on all occasions, but they were still unsatisfied. 
 Thousands fell, but they always left the field in good order, ready 
 to resume the struggle next day. On the 5th September, 1519, a 
 terrible battle was fought, giving the Spaniards a conclusive vie- 
 tory. But the conflict had been marked with such vicissitudes, 
 as more than once moved the invaders to despair. Numbers 
 nearly reconciled the inequality of weapons. Masses almost suc- 
 ceeded in overpowering individual prowess. Faction in the Tlas- 
 calan ranks helped the Spaniards ; and the failure of a last hope 
 and effort, in which, according to the advice of their priesthood, 
 they had substituted cunning and artifice for arms, subdued their 
 hostility. They became firm allies and fast friends of the Span- 
 iards, and one of the greatest obstacles to the great conquest was 
 finally overcome. 
 
 But the followers of Cortes began to despond. If they had 
 met such enemies in the people of Tlascala, what might they not 
 fear in the Mexican. Our hero had his answer to their fears, and 
 it was again successful. He showed them that their only hope 
 was in progress. They must go forward to find safety. Flight 
 and fear would only bring upon them Mexican, Tlascalan, Toto- 
 nac, the numerous herds of foes which covered the face of the 
 country, all united, and all against the common enemy. 
 
 . Their successes against Tlascala, that formidable foe whom he 
 himself had never been able to conquer, increased the apprehen- 
 sions of Montezuma. He saw, in Cortes, the creature of destiny — 
 his own fate — appointed to realize all the vague terrors of the old 
 tradition. Feeble and trembling still, he despatched new embas- 
 sies and otlicr presents to the advancing chieftain — congratulated 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 177 
 
 him upon his victories — and concluded, as before, by regretting 
 that it was not possible to receive him in his capital. But Cortes 
 was just the man to overcome the impossible. What was not 
 possible for Montezuma was easy for him. He said as much in 
 his reply — and the devoted Mexican now saw that his fate was 
 unrelenting. The issue was no longer to be avoided, and he 
 strove to make a merit of the necessity. Another Aztec embassy 
 soon followed the preceding. It spoke a different language. The 
 sovereign now declared his wish to see the strangers, and his am- 
 bassadors were instructed to conduct them to the capital. His 
 policy, still insincere and vascillating, was yet rendered some- 
 what bolder from his necessities. Other suggestions had spoken 
 to his fears. His purpose now, in urging their coming, was two- 
 fold — not only to get the Spaniards more completely into his power, 
 but to prevent them from forming any alliance with his Tlascalan 
 enemies. He was too late for the latter object. In prosecuting 
 the former, he suggested their route by the city of Cholula, and 
 there made his arrano;ements for their destruction. The Tlas- 
 calans exhorted Cortes against compliance with this suggestion. 
 But his will was stronger than their fears. He was quite as much 
 the creature of his destiny as Montezuma. He must go onward 
 by that very route, by Cholula, and it was at the peril of the Az- 
 tec monarch if he played him false. It proved so. 
 
 Cholula was the sacred city of the Mexicans as Mecca is of 
 the Mohamedans. It was under the particular protection of Quet- 
 zalcoatl, their god of air, whose mystic attributes embodied unex- 
 ampled powers. There was a superstitious hope, entertained by 
 the Aztec monarch, that this dehy would contribute to free him 
 from the man of destiny whose iron hand was lifted over his em- 
 pire. His altars were raised upon the loftiest mound of the 
 place, and thousands of human victims annually bled upon his 
 shrines. The city, embosomed among volcariic mountains, lifted 
 four hundred sacred towers in their emulation. The population, 
 was one hundred and fifty thousand. These were warlike, inu-- 
 red to arms, fierce and fanatic. To these, add thousands more^ 
 trained soldiers, concealed within and without the city, sent by 
 Montezuma to make sure the cruel purpose of his mind. Yet,, 
 into this city, thus provided for his reception, thus strenghtened 
 
 13 
 
178 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 within and without, hating and fearing him, and sworn vassals to 
 the will of their sovereign, the resolute conqueror threw himself, 
 with his little band of Spaniards. Six thousand Tlascalans at- 
 tended him, whom, however, as their presence seemed to offend 
 the Cholulans, he left without the walls. 
 
 The reception was glorious and without a cloud. Admirably 
 could these cunning enemies disguise their hate. Their faces 
 were wreathed in smiles. They covered the Spaniards with gar- 
 lands, even as the lamb is dressed for the slaughter. The Span- 
 iards were no lambs, true, but they were welcomed as victims, 
 and conducted, as in a sort of triumphal procession, with every 
 show of ostentatious honour and affection, to their appointed 
 quarters. 
 
 But a few days changed the aspect of affairs, and the deport- 
 ment of the Cholulans. They were now ready for the destruction 
 of the strangers. Their plans were ripe for execution. The city 
 was filled with armed men. The streets were barricaded, stones 
 were carried to the house tops, missiles accumulated, and vast 
 cavities dug in the thoroughfares and planted with upright and 
 pointed stakes, the better to defeat the movement of the cavalry. 
 To crown and complete all, a great sacrifice of children was made 
 to propitiate the favour of their cruel gods ! 
 
 The star of Cortes prevailed ! His own suspicions excited, 
 were confirmed by tidings afforded by his mistress, who had 
 wormed the secret from an indiscreet Cholulan woman. Great 
 were his anxieties in consequence, but he was equal to the exi- 
 gency. He dissembled with the Caciques, and got them into his 
 power. His plans were laid with equal skill and secrecy, and 
 the event was a massacre rather than a conflict. The Holy City 
 was sacked, and in the flames of its ruined temples, and the blood 
 of three thousand worshippers, the imbecility of their false deity 
 was fully shown to the wretched conspirators. Cortes seems to 
 have stayed the havoc the moment he conceived the safety of his 
 people to be certain. He suffered no women to be slain, and pre- 
 vailed upon his Tlascalan allies, who had joined him at the first 
 sounds of danger, to liberate their captives. How far his conduct 
 deserves reproach — in how much it may be justified by the ne- 
 cessity of the case — is not a question for us. The first step of 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 179 
 
 Cortes was the true offence. The attempt at conquest, not a 
 crime in his day, is one in ours. Once within the walls of Cho- 
 lula, as- a guest, he had the most perfect right to anticipate the 
 treachery of those who had sought only to make him the victim 
 of his confidence. 
 
 The fall of Cholula carried a terrible fear to the heart of Mon- 
 tezuma. If he was in doubt before, he trembled now. Despon- 
 dency took the place of fear in his soul, and the oracles of his 
 gods, whose altars were made to smoke hourly with the blood of 
 their human victims, yielded no encouraging response. Another 
 embassy to the Spaniards disavowed any share in the conspiracy 
 of the Cholulans. Cortes, meanwhile, was acquiring newer 
 strength. Terrified by the vengeance inflicted on Cholula, other 
 cities sent in their submission. To treat with these, to purify the 
 teocaUis of the conquered city, and establish Christian, upon the 
 ruins of the pagan, churches, employed the conqueror a few 
 weeks, and he then led his army on the route to Mexico. 
 
 .What plains he passed, — what mountains he overcame, — what 
 toils he suffered, — what snares he escaped, — these must be read 
 in the more copious histories. Suffice it, they were such as 
 might well have discouraged any ordinary valour, — might well 
 have baffled a common genius, and set at nought every ambition 
 less honoured with the favourino- smiles of fortune. But the star 
 of Cortes prevailed. His followers had learned, even as those of 
 another mighty spirit of modern periods, to confide in his destiny. 
 No fatigues made them weary, — no dangers appalled. Their 
 hopes grew with their toils, — their courage with the difficulties in 
 their progress. The very wonders by which their dangers were 
 attended, seemed to expand their souls with sentiments of daring, 
 which rendered progress itself something superior to triumph. 
 At length, passing an angle of the sierra of Ahualco, they sud- 
 denly beheld the beautiful valley of Tenochtitlan unbosomed 
 before their delighted eyes. 
 
 The sight compensated for all their toils. Never was prospect 
 more beautiful. Woods, waters and cultivated plains — glowing, 
 glorious cities, girdled by shadowy hills, gathered, in picturesque 
 dependency, lovely in tint and hue, and exquisitely imposing in 
 distinct and noble outline. Immense plains of forest stretched 
 
180 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 away beneath their feet m a wondrous circle, spanning the slopes 
 that led downward to the valley. Within this circle, another, of 
 cultivated fields — maize and maguey, tracts of luscious fruits 
 and realms of delicious flowers, — seemed alone sufficient to re- 
 ward the human sense for all human privation. In the centre of 
 tliis great basin lay the wondrous lakes and lakelets of Anahuac, 
 their borders " studded with towns and hamlets, and in the midst 
 — like some Indian empress, with her coronal of pearls, — the fair 
 city of Mexico, with her white towers and pyramidal temples, re- 
 posing as it were upon the bosom of the waters." 
 
 We know, from the days of Ca3sar, that, with a great genius, 
 to come and see, is to secure the conquest. Cortes looked down 
 upon the lovely realm before him, and his eagle eye at once 
 marked it for his own. While he gazed upon his prey from the 
 slopes of Ahualco, where was the sovereign of Tenochtitlan ? — 
 where was Montezuma ? — with what thoughts, what last hopes, 
 what final purposes ? Sacrificing before his impotent deities el- 
 bow-deep in human blood, — summoning them in vain to his res- 
 cue, — and groaning over the approaching cloud, from whose aw- 
 ful bosom the thunders of fate were about to vomit ruin on his 
 kingdom. Never did brave monarch more completely cower be- 
 neath the arm of that destiny to which he was yet most reluctant 
 to submit. Cortes is at length in Mexico — within the palaces of 
 her kings, — a sovereign over the very soul of her sovereign. 
 "The gods have declared against us," said Montezuma mourn- 
 fully, to those who counselled resistance ; " the gods have de- 
 clared against us, — we should only fight in vain." In the advent 
 of superior divinities, the savage deities might well be silent. 
 Milton embodies the idea very nobly, in his hymn on the Na- 
 tivity : 
 
 " The oracles are dumb, 
 
 No voice or hideous hum, 
 Runs through the arch6d roof in words deceiving, 
 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 
 Can no more divine, 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving." 
 
 The genius of the Christian faith had as effectually cowed that of 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 181 
 
 the Aztec religion, as that of Cortes had overcome the spirit of 
 their otlierwise brave and despotic sovereign. 
 
 For the description of Mexico itself, — for the details of its won- 
 drous magnificence, — the reader must be referred to the glowing 
 narrative of Mr. Prescott. We can say as little^of the mod^-^of 
 life, — the manners and customs of its people. As in a drama, 
 we must confine ourselves to the action, the development of the 
 leading characters, and the several prominent events which con- 
 duct to the catastrophe. Montezuma received his guests with a 
 lofty hospitality. But he disguised the suffering, and, perhaps, 
 the evil passions, at his heart. He was munificent, indulgent, 
 conciliatory, — but these weie only so many proofs of the awe 
 which he entertained of these mysterious strangers, of whom an- 
 cient prophecy had taught him to apprehend so much. Thev 
 had shown themselves heedless of his power ; they were in his 
 palaces, self-invited guests ; and what he beheld of them in per- 
 sonal interview, — their strange and wondrous music, their horses, 
 their artillery belching forth such thunders as shook the walls 
 of his temples, — were all significant of attributes, with which, in 
 all his wealth and magnificence, he felt it would be idle to con- 
 tend. Unwilling to submit, yet not daring to defy, the unhappy 
 monarch sunk, no less in his own, than in the sight of his people. 
 The indiscretions of his troops precipitated events, and gave a 
 colour to the more decisive proceedings of Cortes. An Aztec 
 chief had ventured to murder two Spaniards near Vera Cruz, un- 
 der circumstances of particular atrocity. This brought on a 
 pitched battle between the Mexicans in that neighbourhood, and 
 Juan de Escalante who had been left in charge of Vera Cruz. 
 The former were defeated, and the prisoners referred the whole 
 proceeding to the instigation of Montezuma himself. One of the 
 Spaniards had been taken captive. His head, cut off, was sent 
 to the Aztec emperor, no doubt as a decisive proof of the mortal- 
 ity of the invaders, — a matter about which the Indians were nat- 
 urally doubtful. Cortes received this information very nearly as 
 soon as Montezuma. He resolved on the boldest measures. His 
 own safety required it. He was in the midst of powerful foes. 
 He was in the palace of a subtle and deceitful prince, — one of 
 great power and matchless cruelty. His followers were few. 
 
182 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 There was no possibility of flight. It was equally impossible 
 that he should remain long in Mexico, unperforming. a dependent 
 on the doubtful fidelity of its monarch. Neither his genius nor 
 his policy was prepared for this. His plan was soon conceived, 
 but it was one to task all his courage and resolution. His design 
 was to seize upon the person of Montezuma, and hold him as a 
 hostage for the good conduct of his people. A day was appointed 
 for this purpose. The night preceding, we are told by the his- 
 torian, " he was heard pacing his apartment to and fro, like a 
 man oppressed by thought, or agitated by strong emotion." He 
 might well feel the struggle with himself. What might the mor- 
 row not bring forth, of tremendous struggle with his fate ! 
 
 Mass was heard by Cortes and his soldiers in the morning. It 
 was quite as well that the saints should be on their side. An au- 
 dience was asked of Montezuma, and Cortes, with five chosen 
 cavaliers, all in armour, appeared in the palace of the monarch. 
 Small armed parties of the Spaniards, were also ordered to drop 
 in, as if by accident, while the conference was in progress. 
 When all seemed ripe for the development, the Spanish chieftain, 
 changing his tone, abruptly accused the Aztec monarch with his 
 treachery. Cortes required that the cacique, with his accom- 
 plices, by whom the Spaniards were murdered, should be brought 
 to justice. The king consented, and the messenger was despatch- 
 ed with the royal signet. The next demand of Cortes, that Mon- 
 tezuma should take up his abode in his quarters, found less ready 
 compliance. " When was it ever heard that a great prince, like 
 myself, voluntarily left his own palace to become a prisoner 
 in the hands of strangers." Cortes assured him it was but a 
 change of residence, not imprisonment. " If I should consent to 
 such a degradation," replied the monarch, " my subjects never 
 would." He offered his sons and daughters as hostages, but the 
 Spaniards were inflexible. The conference lasted two hours. 
 Vexed at the fruitless discussion, an impatient cavalier, Velas- 
 quez de Leon, cried out, — '' Why waste more words on the bar- 
 barian. If he resists us, we have but to plunge our swords 
 through his body." The unhappy monarch submitted. His hour 
 was come. The hand of destiny was upon his forehead. He 
 left the palace with his conqueror, drooping in behaviour, deject- 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 183 
 
 ed and downcast in visage, — a sovereign in name only, and fully- 
 conscious of the cruel dishonour which his cowed spirit left him 
 no power to resent. His people would have rushed to arms for 
 his rescue, but the pusillanimous monarch quieted the tumult 
 which his more noble ancestors would have directed. The pro- 
 ceeding of Cortes is justified on the score of policy, — but he was 
 guilty, subsequently, of one seeming inhumanity, the justification 
 of which may be as complete in this case as in the other, but 
 which has not come down to us. When the criminal cacique by 
 whom the Spaniards had been murdered, was brought to execu- 
 tion, fetters were put upon the wrists of the captive sovereign. This 
 indignity completed the terribly humbling lesson which he had 
 undergone. He wept unmanly tears which were only less un- 
 becoming than the gratitude he expressed — the undignified joy — 
 when the fetters were at length removed by his conqueror. 
 
 But the indignity to which Montezuma submitted, aroused a 
 different feeling among his people. His caciques and lords were 
 a high spirited and valiant race. They looked on the Spaniards 
 with detestation, and longed to resent the shame which they had 
 brought upon the kingdom. Their first movements to insurrec- 
 tion were promptly suppressed by Cortes, aided by Montezuma 
 himself. Several chiefs were placed in confinement, and the 
 threatened commotions happily subdued. Meanwhile, the Span- 
 iards had covered the lakes of Mexico with their vessels, were 
 in the receipt of the public revenues, and Montezuma had sworn 
 fealty to the crown of Spain. But one thing yet remained to be 
 done, which the wild and inconsistent fanaticism of the Spaniards 
 conceived to be absolutely essential to the completion of a con- 
 quest undertaken in the name of God. This was the overthrow 
 of the Aztec worship, and the substitution for it of that of Jesus. 
 It was in vain that Montezuma pleaded against the innovation, — 
 urging the strongest arguments of policy against it. Cortes was 
 unyielding, and one of the teocallis was purified and converted 
 into a Christian temple. The discontents of the Aztecs increased, 
 and Montezuma formally announced to Cortes the necessity for 
 his departure. An insurrection was preparing which he could not 
 control, — in which the whole spirit of the people, wrought upon 
 at once by patriotism and the priesthood, was about to declare 
 
184 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 itself by a final resort to arms. There was no repose for the in- 
 vaders. Their conquest was insecure. By day they grasped, 
 by night they slept upon, their weapons ! 
 
 While such was the relation of Cortes to the Mexicans, he was 
 troubled with other tidings from his own countrymen. His emis- 
 saries, sent to Spain, had not been successful in procuring a sanc- 
 tion for his proceedings ; and Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, fu- 
 rious at his exclusion from enterprises which had already borne 
 such famous fruits, fitted out a new expedition, the command of 
 which was entrusted to a brave but rash cavalier, named Panfilo 
 de Narvaez. This person was to supersede Cortes, to deprive 
 him of his command, and proceed against him as a rebel. But 
 Narvaez, lax in discipline, shallow in judgment and arrogantly 
 confident of himself, was not the man to cope with Cortes. Yet 
 he was provided with an overwhelming force ; his squadron con- 
 sisted of eighteen vessels, carried a thousand Spaniards, and as 
 many Indians : eighty of the former were cavalry, eighty arque- 
 busiers, and one hundred and fifty cross-bowmen. The expedi- 
 tion was amply supplied with heavy guns, military stores and 
 ammunition. It was one of the bravest armaments that had ever 
 ridden in the Indian seas. 
 
 Cortes was seasonably apprized of his dangers. His people 
 were true to him, and he had friends, or soon made them, among 
 the followers of Narvaez. Conscious that he risked all that had 
 been gained in leaving Mexico, he was yet equally aware of the 
 necessity of meeting his new enemy. His precautions and prep- 
 arations for all events, the details of which must be sought in 
 the history, were all singularly admirable and effective. Under 
 Alvarado, one of his best captains, he left one hundred and forty 
 men in the capital — two-thirds of his whole force. With these 
 he left his artillery, and the greater part of his horse and arque- 
 busiers. Fie took with him but seventy soldiers, but they were 
 picked men, — veterans, whose sterling mettle had been tried in a 
 thousand dangers. Six months after his entry into Mexico, about 
 the Middle of May, 1520, he went forth, the master of an Indian 
 empire, to save it from the rapacious hands of his own country- 
 men. His march was rapid. In celerity lay his safety. On 
 his way he was joined by Sandoval, another of his captains, with 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 165 
 
 a body of soldiers from the garrison of Vera Cruz, and several 
 deserters from Narvaez. His force was now increased to two 
 hundred and sixty-six men. Frequent embassies had passed 
 between himself and his enemy. The latter was reported to be 
 puffed up with conceit, and unpopular with his soldiers. Cortes 
 declared himself willing to submit, if he could produce a royal 
 commission. But that of Velasquez, he was not prepared to 
 recognize. The parties could not be reconciled. Arrived at the 
 Rio de Canoas, Cortes was but a league distant from the camp 
 of Narvaez, which was at Cempoalla. The river was swollen 
 by recent rains. The storm had not spent its fury. He paused 
 for a while, and suffered his men to rest till night. Then, he 
 resumed his march, and, crossing the river with difficulty, in the 
 very highest of the tempest, he penetrated the camp of his un- 
 conscious foe. No sound was made, no drum beaten, no trumpet 
 sounded, until each division of his little force had reached the 
 point assigned it. Then came the storm of men and weapons 
 with that of the elements. Stupified by sleep, blinded by the 
 tempest, uncertain where to go, or who to strike, the soldiers of 
 Narvaez rose from their repose only to be overcome. The fight 
 was not of "long duration. Narvaez was struck down by the 
 thrust of a spear which deprived him of an eye, and his cry of 
 pain and terror was followed by the triumphant shout of Cortes, 
 which announced the easy victory. The proud Narvaez, in 
 chains, suffering from the mortification of defeat and wounds, 
 said to Cortes when they met, — " You have great reason to thank 
 fortune for having given you the day so easily, and put me in 
 your power." " I have much to be thankful for," said Cortes in 
 reply, " but, for my victory over you, I esteem it as one of the 
 least of my achievements since my coming into this country." 
 The truth embodied in the repartee, gave peculiar force to its 
 sting. The affair, notwithstanding the modest pride in the an- 
 swer of Cortes, was a most brilliant piece of generalship. 
 
 The conquered troops became his own, and in good season. 
 Mexico was in revolt. The Spaniards were assaulted in their 
 quarters, — the brigantines burnt upon the lakes, — several of the 
 garrison were killed, and many wounded. The work of conquest 
 was to be begun anew. The forces of Cortes, on reaching Tlas- 
 
186 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 cala, were a thousand foot and one hundred horse. He obtained 
 two thousand soldiers from the Tlascalans. With these he ad- 
 vanced upon Mexico. His garrison there was closely besieged. 
 His presence relieved it. Mexico was re-entered by the Spanish 
 chieftain, without fighting, on the 24th June, 1520. The rash- 
 ness, if not the cupidity, of Alvarado, had occasioned the out- 
 break. But the Aztecs were ripe for it before. A massacre of 
 the people took place, by the Spaniards, at one of their public 
 festivals, in which many of their nobility were slain. Alvarado 
 excused himself by alleging that he had proofs that this festival 
 was to be made an occasion for insurrection. He had simply 
 anticipated their purpose. In all probability there were mixed 
 motives at work, producing the event. Cupidity on the one hand, 
 provocation on the other, and the natural jealousy of two rival 
 races, so closely in contact, yet entertaining such sentiments of 
 mutual distrust and hate. The judgment of Cortes upon Alva- 
 rado, may be recognized as just. " You have done badly," said 
 he, after he had heard his explanation. " You have been false to 
 your trust. Your conduct has been that of a madman." Vexed 
 with himself, and at the unhappy choice which he had made in the 
 captain of his garrison, Cortes was betrayed into unusual impa- 
 tience of manner and remark. The dangers were accumulating 
 around him, — among them that of famine. The Mexicans no 
 longer supplied their markets ; and when he spoke angrily and 
 contemptuously on the subject to the attendants of Montezuma, 
 they disappeared only to make the matter worse. The next day 
 the city was in rebellion, — the drawbridges were raised, — the 
 great avenues leading to the capital were swarming with war- 
 riors, — the terraces and azoteas, or flat roofs, in the neighbourhood 
 of the quarters of the Spaniards, covered with combatants, watch- 
 ful of every opportunity to wing a shaft or missile. The whole 
 immense population of the valley of Tenochtitlan, was in arms 
 for the expulsion of the invader. 
 
 We cannot linger for details. The war was begun with all the 
 energies of a vast military nation thoroughly excited, — a proud 
 people, wounded to the quick in all their sensibilities, — pride of 
 character, religious sentiment, reverence for their kings and for 
 their deities, — affection and patriotism. Mexico alone contained 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 187 
 
 a population of three hundred thousand souls, and the cities by 
 which she was encircled, though greatly inferior, were also 
 greatly populous. They were all united for the common object. 
 Generalship there was none. The masses swarmed around the 
 Spanish quarters, and were mowed down in battalions by the 
 musketry and cannon. It was the old contest of the naked man 
 against the armed — the highest form of European civilization 
 against the untaught savage. But numbers reconciled this ine- 
 quality. Thousands perished, but the Mexicans were undismay- 
 ed, and strove against death at the very muzzles of the blazing 
 guns. The conflict only ended with the night. With dawn the 
 battle was renewed, and ended with the day, to be resumed again 
 with the morrow. The Spaniards were again victorious, but the 
 Mexicans were not to be defeated. Cortes sallied forth with his 
 horse, exhibited prodigious valour, committed immense havoc, 
 and, with a chivalrous disregard of himself, encountered the 
 greatest dangers in defending the meanest of his men, which en- 
 deared him the more deeply to their affections. He was severely 
 wounded ; but his reflections after the fight occasioned sufferings 
 more severe. His eyes at once opened upon all his dangers. 
 He felt how much his impatience had erred — how much he had 
 mistaken the Aztec character ; and he resolved to conciliate their 
 monarch whom he had rather avoided since his return. When, 
 therefore, the return of the ensuing day showed that the fight 
 was to be renewed, Montezuma was required to interpose between 
 the invaders and his subjects. He consented with reluctance, 
 declaring his belief that the effort would be in vain — that the 
 Mexicans would not give ear to his entreaties. Surrounded by a 
 guard of Spaniards, and several Aztec nobles, clothed in the im- 
 perial robes, with a diadem upon his head, he ascended the cen- 
 tral turret of the palace. As he advanced along the battlements, 
 a change like that of magic, overspread the combatants. The 
 strife ceased, the cries of battle were silenced, many prostrated 
 themselves upon their faces before a monarch, once, and still, so 
 much venerated. But when he spoke for peace, and for the 
 strangers, a murmur ran through the multitude. Their furious 
 passions were not to be restrained— overleapt all barriers, and the 
 cries of scorn and bitterness which replied to his address, were 
 
188 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 followed by a cloud of missiles. The Spanish guards interposed 
 their bucklers, but too late. Three of the nnissiles took effect 
 upon the monarch, and he fell to the ground from a stone, which 
 struck him on the temple, and left him senseless. Shocked at 
 their own passionate deed, the Mexicans dispersed in terror from 
 the spot. The last scene in the destiny of Montezuma, followed 
 soon. He died, rather of a brokeij heart, than of his injuries. 
 These might have been cured but he refused help — tore away 
 the bandages from his wounds, and declared his anxiety to die, as 
 the only means of escaping from disgrace. He rejected the prof- 
 fered rites of Christian salvation, saying — " I have but a few mo- 
 ments to live, and will not, at this hour, desert the faith of my 
 fathers." He was the victim of a fate which a less superstitious 
 mind must easily have baffled. 
 
 The hours that he yet lingered, after his injuries, were em- 
 ployed by the Spaniards in fighting. The panic of the Mexicans 
 was of short duration. They had returned to the conflict. Op- 
 posite to the Spanish quarters, at the distance of a few rods only, 
 there stood the great teocalli of an Aztec god. The mound, with 
 the sanctuaries that crowned it, completely commanded the pal- 
 ace occupied by the Spaniards. This position was taken by a 
 select body of Mexicans, five or six hundred in number, directed 
 by many of their nobles, and warriors of the highest distinction. 
 From this elevation they hurled their missiles upon the Christians, 
 with equal certainty and profusion. It was necessary to dislodge 
 them. Cortes assigned this duty to Escobar, with a hundred 
 men. But he was thrice repulsed. It was necessary that he 
 should himself undertake the enterprise. His left hand was bad- 
 ly wounded, but he fastened his buckler upon the arm and thus 
 made it useful. We cannot narrate the particulars of the conflict 
 which ensued. Enough that, fighting step by step, he gained the 
 summit of the teocalli, one hundred and fifty feet in air. Here, in 
 the sight of the whole city, Cortes and his comrades met in deadly 
 and close combat with the best warriors of Mexico. The hostile 
 parties forbore the struggle below, to gaze, terrified and anxious, 
 upon that above. The area was large enough for the meeting of 
 a thousand combatants. It was paved with broad flat stones. 
 The edge of the area was without parapet or battlement. 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 199 
 
 " Quarter was neither asked nor given ; and to fly was impossible. 
 The least slip would be fatal ; and the combatants, as they strug- 
 gled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the steep 
 sides of the precipice together." Cortes himself narrowly esca- 
 ped this dreadful fate. Two of the Aztec warriors had devoted 
 themselves to his destruction. They were willing to perish for 
 this object. They were men of great muscle and vigour, and, 
 simultaneously seizing upon him, they dragged him towards the 
 brink of the precipice. But Cortes was a man of wonderful 
 strength and agility. The struggle was one of giants — of life 
 and death. By an earnest concentration of all his vigour, at the 
 happy moment, he succeeded in releasing himself from his assail- 
 ants, one of whom he hurled, with his own arm, into the terrible 
 abyss. The battle lasted three hours. The teocalli remained in 
 the hands of the Spaniards. The gods and shrines of the Aztecs 
 were delivered to the flames in their fight. But they were un- 
 subdued, unshaken, and a new day only opened upon newer con- 
 flicts. We cannot pursue these issues, the result of which was 
 that Cortes must abandon his conquest for the time. But if ever 
 mortal genius warred valiantly against necessity, it was his. 
 There is a point beyond which human strength may not prevail, 
 and this only did the Spanish General forbear. Mind and body 
 strove, equally strong, against the iron fate which impelled his 
 departure, and it was with the composure of a mighty spirit that 
 he at length resigned himself to a necessity which he was no 
 longer able to avert. Compelled to fly from Mexico, every pre- 
 caution was taken to render flight successful, and, on the night of 
 the first of July, 1520, the gates of the Spanish quarters were 
 silently thrown open, and the Christian army set forth amid clouds 
 and rain, only too happy if, in the gloom which covered earth and 
 sky, they should escape the keen eyes of their vigilant enemies. 
 But they were not fortunate in this hope. Their flight was dis- 
 covered, and the huge drum in the temple of the Aztec war god, 
 announced to the exulting Mexicans the departure of the hated 
 strangers. Rising at the signal, the masses poured forth from 
 street, and house, and citadel — from lake and suburb, like a for- 
 est of hungry wolves, infuriate in winter for their prey. The 
 horrors of that night, to this day known in Spanish chronicle as 
 
190 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 " the melancholy night " — Noche Triste — who shall describe ? 
 We are reminded but of one parallel to its terrors in the wide 
 pages of modern history — the passage of the Beresina — the flight 
 from Moscow ! The details alone, copious, peculiar, full of won- 
 drous struggles of man for life, man against his deadly enemy, 
 man maddened by desperate fear and by a hate as desperate — 
 would suffice for its proper comprehension. We shall attempt no 
 particulars. The history, itself, will but imperfectly describe the 
 dreadful character of that night-long conflict, ended not with 
 dawn, and arrested only by the sheer exhaustion of the Aztecs. 
 Freed, at length, from the press of enemies, Cortes could look 
 about him and comprehend the full extent of his disaster. He 
 wept at the survey, but his tears were those of manhood, that 
 weeps only the irreparable. His soul was still unyielding. His 
 depression never impaired the hope that looked forward to the 
 raising of the curtain which kept the wondrous drama from its 
 glorious denouement. Already he meditated the means for the 
 re-conquest of the great city which he had been just compelled 
 to abandon. And yet his present escape was still doubtful. The 
 Mexicans, in small bodies, hung upon his steps, assailed his flanks, 
 and vaunted his destruction as an approaching event. " Go on," 
 they cried, " go on ! You go to your doom." Their meaning was 
 soon read as the weary Spaniards reached the heights that looked 
 down on the valley of Otumba. The whole force of Mexico 
 awaited him in this spot. Far as the eye could reach were to 
 be seen the white garments, the waving banners, the shining hel- 
 mets and shaking spears, of the Aztec chivalry. They had 
 gathered, in confident hope, as the eagles to their prey. Perilous, 
 indeed, was the prospect for the weary and dispirited Christians. 
 But Cortes addressed himself to the danger, with all the manhood 
 of his most hopeful hours. A few words to his followers, and a 
 short prayer to God — commending himself and people to His pro- 
 tection and the care of the Virgin — and the fearless captain led 
 his small battalions into the very heart of the enemy's array. 
 The day went against him. Slaying was not conquering. 
 Where hundreds of the Aztecs fell, thousands rushed to fill the 
 ranks. The Spaniards were engulphed by the myriads with 
 whom they fought. Most of them were wounded — Cortes, him- 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 191 
 
 self, twice, and upon the head. His horse, wounded also, was 
 abandoned for another. The field seemed no longer doubtful. 
 The event was almost decided against him, when the keen eye of 
 the Christian chief distinguished, by the peculiarity of his deco- 
 rations, the commander of the Aztec forces. A body of young 
 warriors — the flower of the Indian nobles — guarded his person 
 and the sacred emblem of Aztec sovereignty which he bore. 
 The value of this badge was known to our hero. A single 
 glance sufficed, and the instant mind of Cortes conceived the 
 mode of extrication. Turning quickly to a select number of his 
 cavaliers, he exclaimed — " There is our mark ! Follow me !" 
 His war cry rose again above the clamour, and, striking his iron 
 heel into his steed, he plunged into the thickest array, solicitous 
 only of the one object. Fie attained it ! The ferocity of his attack 
 was successful. His lance struck the Mexican commander to the 
 ground, and, in the loss of their sacred banner, the Mexicans lost 
 the victory. All was panic in their ranks. They fled in the 
 blindest terror, and, wondering at their own unlooked for success- 
 es, the Spaniards remained to reap the rich spoils with the glory 
 of the field. They reached the friendly city of Tlascala with- 
 out farther annoyance. 
 
 Of the subsequent jealousies of the Tlascalans, of the discon- 
 tents among the Spaniards, it needs not that we should say more 
 than that the genius and the star of Cortes, succeeded in soothing 
 the one and subduing the other. He himself was prostrated on a 
 bed of sickness, and the events around him, and the tidings from 
 abroad, seemed to work adversely to his fortunes. But, let not 
 the brave mind tremble in adversity. Great men are strength- 
 ened by trials, as muscle is made by toil. It is the pressure upon 
 the soul that makes it speak and work, and bound and glow, in 
 the consciousness of the resources that might else rest in inglo- 
 rious repose within. The mind of Cortes rose above its difficul- 
 ties. His good star was not to be baffled. " Fortune," says he, 
 in a letter to Charles the Fifth, " favours the brave. The Span- 
 iards are the followers of the cross. Trusting in the mercy of 
 God, I cannot believe that He will suffer them and His own good 
 cause to perish among them. I am resolved not to descend to the 
 coast, but, at all hazards, to retrace my steps, and once more 
 
192 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 beard the foe in his capital." How admirably does ambition de- 
 ceive itself with the words of piety. If Cortes was not a Chris- 
 tian, he certainly believed that he was doing the work of one. 
 And who shall say that he was not ? Who shall say that a less 
 determined warrior, a less sanguinary people, could have suc- 
 ceeded in the overthrow of those bloody superstitions which daily 
 immolated thousands of God-made men, on the shrines of the hor- 
 rid Moloch of Aztec superstition ! 
 
 We pass over subordinate events, including his conquest over 
 certain of the Aztec allies and tributaries, in which his followers 
 regained their former confidence in the superiority of their arms. 
 The details are replete with proofs of the wonderful sagacity and 
 resource of their leader. It is not the least remarkable feature in 
 the history of a great conqueror, that the tribes which submit to 
 his arms, are always made faithful by his moderation and justice. 
 His men were recovered from their wounds. They had regained 
 their courage. Fortune had brought unlooked for reinforcements 
 to their strength, and, confident of support from the Tlascalan and 
 other neighbouring people, and taught by experience in what man- 
 ner to avoid former errors, Cortes prepared to resume his design 
 against Mexico. But the boldest conception of purpose, as essen- 
 tial to his object, was that of framing vessels at Tlascala, to be 
 taken in pieces, on the shoulders of ^he tamanes, to the lakes of 
 Mexico. A fleet was to be borne on the shoulders of naked men, 
 across forest and mountain, for a distance of sixty miles, before it 
 could be launched upon its destined waters. The conception was 
 worthy of the genius of a great captain. It is not surpassed in 
 history. Yet, what a proof of the prescience of Cortes, that he 
 should, when commanding the destruction of the fleet at Vera 
 Cruz, have insisted upon the preservation of the iron, the bolts, 
 the sails and cordage. Without this fleet, he could not have 
 succeeded against the capital. While his workmen were busy in 
 its preparation, he commenced his march. His force of Span- 
 iards fell little short of six hundred men. He had been fortunate 
 in adding to his strength by the acquisition of more than one 
 small body of adventurers, who, cast upon the shores at Vera 
 Cruz, readily agreed to follow his superior fortunes. Forty of 
 his men were horse, eighty arquebusiers and crossbow men — the 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 193 
 
 rest were armed with sword and target, and with a long copper- 
 headed pike which Cortes had borrowed from the people of Chi- 
 nantla. He had nine pieces of cannon, but his supply of powder 
 was small. To this force was added a multitude of native warriors, 
 from Tlascala, Cholula, Tepeaca, and other territories. Before 
 setting out on his expedition, he published a code of ordinances 
 for his army which remarkably display his character. These in- 
 sist upon order as the great law, equally divine and human — upon 
 the conversion of the heathen as the great object of the expedition 
 — prohibit blasphemy and gambling, brawls, and private combats, 
 with other laws of a like nature equally calculated to promote 
 discipline, general propriety, temperance and honesty, and to ele- 
 vate the character of the common soldiery. The ordinances, we 
 may add, were enforced with undeviating severity. The march 
 took place in December. It was tedious and painful, rather than 
 dangerous. Clouds of dusky warriors hung upon his footsteps, 
 but afforded no serious obstacle. His cavalry brushed them from 
 his path in a few resolute charges. The policy of the Mexicans 
 does not seem to have designed meeting their powertul enemies in 
 open field. Their present sovereign was Guatemozin, a nephew 
 to the last monarch, but very much his superior. His supersti- 
 tions did not maim his courage. He was young, not more than 
 twenty-five, •- elegant," says Bernal Diaz^ '• in his person, for an 
 Indian, valiant, and so terrible, that his followers trembled in his 
 presence." He had considerable military genius, great sagacity, 
 and if any Aztec could have retrieved the fortunes of his country, 
 and remedied the disasters of the preceding reign, he was the man. 
 He had distinguished himself in battle, and, hating the Spaniards 
 with the sort of reliij;ious hate which Hannibal is said to have had 
 against Rome, he accepted the sovereignty of his country at a 
 time when its perilous honours might well have discouraged the 
 ambition of any common spirit. He was not unworthy to oppose 
 the genius and the arms of Cortes. 
 
 On the 31st December, 1520, the Spaniards once more entered 
 the venerable city of Tezcuco, once the rival capital to Mexico, 
 eminent upon one of the lakes which occupy the basin of Tenoch- 
 titlan. The place was comparatively deserted. Its lord had 
 fled, and Cortes elevated another to the throne. His next move- 
 
 14 
 
194 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 merit was upon the city of Iztapalapan, which he took after a des- 
 perate resistance. But the fierce resolve of the savages almost 
 converted his victory into a defeat. While the soldiers were en- 
 gaged in the sack and destruction of the city, the Aztecs had 
 broken down the mole which fenced out the waters of Lake 
 Tezcuco. The country was laid under water, and the Span- 
 iards, loaded with booty, and struggling waist deep in the lake, 
 were assailed by their enemies, who, swarming the basin with their 
 canoes, assailed them with deadly missiles. Their escape was 
 difficult, and their Indian allies suffered prodigious loss. It was 
 evident to Cortes, not only that the Aztecs were counselled by 
 captains of great character and spirit, but that they had come into 
 the field with that self-sacrificing spirit of patriotism from which 
 it is scarcely possible to expect too much. It was equally neces- 
 sary that he should be wary as well as brave. 
 
 The fate of Iztapalapan helped his progress. It struck terror 
 to the hearts of the other cities, and gained him allies among the 
 contiguous tribes. Other battles followed, and the town of Chalco 
 was added to his conquests. The war had no respite, and the 
 progress of the Spaniards was continual. Every day gave them 
 new victories and new allies. The policy of Cortes conciliated 
 friends quite as rapidly as his arms overthrew enemies. He ex- 
 tinguished the hereditary feuds of ages, and united tribes in a 
 common object, which had been at variance a thousand years. 
 In the full tide of his successes, he sent an embassy of captive no- 
 bles to Mexico, proposing favourable terms for its surrender, — pro- 
 posing the confirmation of Guatemozin in his authority, if the city 
 would return to its allegiance. To this the brave Aztec deigned 
 no answer. His determination was made to defend the empire to 
 the last. 
 
 With the arrival of the brigantines from Tlascala, Cortes pre- 
 pared to prosecute the conquest. There were thirteen vessels of 
 different sizes. They were yet to be put together, rigged, equip- 
 ped and made ready for service. A canal was to be dug for the 
 purpose, — a work of immense labour ; and, while thousands of the 
 allies, and a select body of Spaniards, were assigned these duties 
 at Tezcuco, Cortes resolved on reconnoitering the capital. Early 
 in the spring, he left Tezcuco, with three hundred and fifty Span- 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 195 
 
 iards, and the main strength of his allies. He had advanced but 
 a few leagues, when he vvas compelled to skirmish with a consid- 
 erable body of Mexicans. These he drove before him. At the 
 insular town of Xaltocan, a fierce battle took place, in which he 
 was again successful. Other towns were abandoned at his ap- 
 proach, — the enemy hovering in dark masses in sight of his ad- 
 vance. After two fierce conflicts, he occupied the town of Tacu- 
 ba, a portion of which was burnt by his wild allies. Every day, 
 during his halt in this place, was employed in fighting with the 
 unwearied Aztecs. In one of these combats, which almost uni- 
 formly terminated in favour of the Spaniards, the courage of Cor- 
 tes had nearly led to his destruction. Heated with the ardour of 
 pursuit, he followed the flying foe upon the great causeway which 
 had once been so fatal to his army. He was led into an ambus- 
 cade. When far advanced, the Aztecs, strengthened by fresh 
 troops, turned upon him, and swarms of boats suddenly covered 
 the waters on either hand. A storm of missiles, from lake and 
 causeway, rained upon the Spaniards. Nothing but their cool- 
 ness and indomitable courage saved them in the retreat. Cortes 
 received, in this affair, another intimation of the superior military 
 conduct of the Aztec warriors. While at Tacuba, he made a 
 second attempt at accommodation with the Indian emperor, but 
 without avail. He was told by the chiefs that Mexico was not 
 now governed by Montezuma ! That city was now in a good 
 state of defence. The havoc which had swept its streets was not 
 apparent, — its injuries had been repaired, and the taunts of their 
 warriors invited him once more to penetrate its dangerous passages. 
 He needed no exhortation on this subject. But the time for his 
 battle was not come, and, constantly busy in coercing the towns 
 around, and controlling the avenues to the capital, he waited, with 
 the patience of resolve, the launching of his brigantines. His 
 deeds, meanwhile, were securing him all the results of fame. His 
 name, and the reputation of his armies, had penetrated the whole 
 country. Ambassadors from Indian States on the remotest shores 
 of the Gulf of Mexico, tendered their allegiance, and sought his 
 protection ; and reinforcements of Spaniards — a more important 
 acquisition — reached him from Vera Cruz. Cortes employed 
 himself and men in a second reconnoitering expedition, marked by 
 
196 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 constant conflicts with the savages, in most of which he was suc- 
 cessful. These conflicts were no child's play. They were mark- 
 ed by indomitable courage on the part of the enemy, and dangers 
 to the Spaniards which tasked all their own courage and the ge- 
 nius of their leader. But their march was onward, and conquest 
 followed their footsteps. Cuernavaca, a nuDuntain city, was taken, 
 after great labour and a snnguinary conflict. A battle followed at 
 Xochimilco, or " the field of flowers," in which Cortes made an- 
 otlier narrow escape. In the thick of battle his horse lost footing 
 and fell. Before he could rise, he received a severe blow on his 
 head. It was with difficulty, assisted by a Tlascalan and two of 
 his servants, that he could regain his feet, shake off" his enemies, 
 recover his saddle, and brandish his lance in the face of his ene- 
 my. But for the desire of the Aztecs to make him prisoner, he 
 could not have escaped. His life was in their hands. The re- 
 sult of the affair was, as usual, a victory to the Europeans. 
 
 This battle was followed by others. Guatemozin made stren- 
 uous efforts to recover Xochimilco from the conqueror. His poli- 
 cy was to send detachment after detachment against the Span- 
 iards, so that, even though victorious, they might be wearied out 
 by the war. But he gained nothing by this policy. The succes- 
 sive defeats only served to dispirit his warriors, and confirm them in 
 their belief of Spanish invincibility. Not caring to continue this 
 warfare, Cortes set fire to the captured city, and returned, though 
 not without frequent fighting, to Tacuba, where he found the ca- 
 nal completed, and his brigantines rigged and equipped, and ready 
 to descend upon the lake. But, before this event could take place, 
 another, of less grateful character, was in progress. Cortes re- 
 turned to Tacuba to discover conspiracy in his army. A danger- 
 ous design was set on foot, menacing his authority and life. 
 It was headed by one Villafana, a common soldier. We need 
 not ask his motives. They may be conjectured. The good star 
 of Cortes prevailed for his safety. One of the conspirators, touch- 
 ed with compunction, betrayed the secret. Without losing a 
 moment, — with that decision which marked his character, — Cor- 
 tes, attended by a few of his favourite officers, proceeded at once 
 to the quarters of Villafana. The criminal, confounded at the 
 sudden apparition of his commander, and confused by his guilt, 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 197 
 
 endeavoured to swallow a paper which he snatched from his bo- 
 som. The prompt grasp of Cortes arrested the movement. Look- 
 ing over the fatal list, it was with equal surprise and mortifica- 
 tion that he read the names of several in whom he had every con- 
 fidence. But his sagacious mind instantly comprehended the 
 necessity of keeping this discovery to himself. He destroyed the 
 scroll, and contented himself with the execution of the one ring- 
 leader. The conspirators trembled, but without cause. The 
 magnanimous judgment of Cortes forbore farther inquiry. In an 
 address to his troops he told them that the guilty man had made 
 no confession. His admirable policy never once suffered them to 
 suppose that he had any suspicion of the guilty parties ; but his 
 vigilant eye watched them nevertheless, — they were never per- 
 mitted to see how closely. 
 
 At length, the curtain rose upon the last act in the great drama 
 of the conquest. On the 28th of April, 1521, the brigantines 
 were borne through the canal upon the lake. The event was 
 marked by due solemnity. Mass was said, and the whole army 
 received the sacrament ; prayers were offered up, and a benedic- 
 tion invoked upon the little navy, the first ever launched by Euro- 
 peans upon the waters of America. It was a proud moment for 
 Cortes. It was the triumph of his peculiar genius, — the harbin- 
 ger of its final triumph over fortune and Tenochtitlan. His forces 
 numbered more than a thousand men. His material and appoint- 
 ments were superior to what they had ever been before. Three 
 hundred of his men were assigned to the vessels, each of which 
 carried a heavy piece of ordnance. His Indian confederates 
 were summoned to the siege. Fifty thousand of these came from 
 Tlascala. But, we hurry over the preparations, — over numerous 
 events, highly interesting in themselves, but too much calculated 
 to crowd our pages and distract the single interest which is our 
 object. The first opposition which the Spaniards met from the 
 Aztecs, was when they attempted to " cut off the pipes that con- 
 ducted the water from the royal streams of Chapoltipec to feed 
 the numerous tanks and fountains of the capital." The Aztecs 
 knew the importance of this work, and fought desperately to save 
 it, but the Spaniards prevailed. A part of the aqueduct was de- 
 molished, and water, from this source, no longer found its way to 
 
198 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the capital. The flotilla of Cortes, commanded by himself, was 
 soon environed by clouds of canoes ; but there was no fight. 
 The frail vessels of the savages were overswept by the advancing 
 brigantines, and such a slaughter followed, as to leave the Span- 
 iards forever after in full possession of the Aztec Sea. This af- 
 forded them vast advantages in every conflict along the cause- 
 ways leading to the capital. But the courage of the Indians 
 seemed to increase with their disasters. The fighting was inces- 
 sant, by night as well as day. The two principal avenues to 
 Mexico were soon in the hands of the assailants. There yet re- 
 mained a third, by which the besieged could still maintain their 
 communications with the country, and effect their escape. This 
 was finally taken possession of by the Christians, and, with these 
 avenues in their power, and in full command of the lakes, the 
 blockade of the capital was complete. 
 
 But Cortes was not the man to carry on the war by blockade 
 merely. His warfare was active also. His vessels on the lake 
 were made to co-operate with his troops upon the causeway, un- 
 til, step by step, the Aztecs were driven from every position along 
 the avenues. The breaches which they had left by tearing away 
 the bridges, were filled up, and, securing a solid and secure pas- 
 sage for his horse and artillery, Cortes at length confined his op- 
 ponents to the limits of the city, into which he penetrated, destroy- 
 ing the dwellings as he advanced, that they might give no shelter 
 to his numerous enemies. In this way, the Spaniards reached 
 the old quarters which they had held in the time of Montezuma. 
 The Mexicans fled for refuge into the sacred enclosure of the teo- 
 calli. Here the priests, from the terraces, in their wild and bloody 
 vestments, chanted to their gods, and shouted encouragement to 
 their warriors. The Spaniards poured into the area, and a party, 
 rushing up the winding steps of the teocalli to its summit, hurled 
 the priests headlong down the sides of the pyramid, and stripped 
 the horrid image of the Aztec war-god of its gorgeous decorations. 
 This profanation aroused the fury of the Aztec warriors, and re- 
 invigorated their courage. A dreadful fight ensued, in which 
 their reckless desperation proved more than a match for Spanish 
 discipline. A rout ensued. The voice of Cortes was no longer 
 heeded by his men in the eagerness of their apprehensions. Noth- 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 199 
 
 ing saved them but tlic sudden appearance of a small body of cav- 
 alry, by which they were rescued. The horse and rider were 
 still objects of terror to the Mexicans. Cortes beheld their hesi- 
 tation, availed himself of the movement, and drove them back to 
 the enclosure, while he ordered a retreat. 
 
 A second attack upon the capital soon followed, distinguished, 
 like the former, by a struggle, step by step, in which the immense 
 numbers and dogged valour of the foe, atoned for their inferior ca- 
 pacity for war. This time, however, in penetrating into the city 
 as he had done before, Cortes resolved upon a measure by which 
 the more completely to intimidate, and perhaps impress the su- 
 perstitious feelings of the Aztecs. He fired the venerable abode 
 of their raonarchs, — the House of Birds, — and other fabrics equally 
 dear to the eyes and imaginations of their people. The result 
 was not what he expected. It made them desperate rather than 
 desponding ; and the task of extrication, that night, from their 
 thronging myriads, was equally difficult as on the day before. 
 Day by day, in the same manner, was the assault continued, and 
 each day brought him nearer to his object. 
 
 Guatemozin, meanwhile, was doing all wathin the province of 
 Indian warfare to save his empire. We cannot detail the process 
 by which he contrived to relieve the labours and maintain the val- 
 our of his men. His conduct w^as conspicuous in all their efforts, 
 and his adroitness enabled him even to capture one of the Span- 
 ish brigantines, and render another useless. The contest was 
 waged at the same time on the lake, on the causeways and in the 
 city. The Aztec monarch was true to himself and empire. But 
 famine began to press upon his people. Deserted by their allies, 
 hemmed round by hostile legions, unsuccessful in the fight and 
 unable to escape, they yet betrayed no terrors. Their spirits were 
 unbroken, even though pestilence began to show itself among 
 them — the most terrible of all the allies of famine. 
 
 Cortes strove vainly to save them. He offered to spare their 
 lives and city. He implored them, by means of captives whom 
 he dismissed, to be merciful to themselves, and, by timely conces- 
 sion, to avoid their own and the destruction of their country. But 
 they heard his proffers with scorn — they had no thought of sub- 
 mission. 
 
200 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Impatient of this obstinacy, the higli-mettlcd cavaliers of the 
 Spanish army urged tlieir General to a coup-de-main. To this 
 he was opposed. The time had not come. He allowed himself, 
 however, to be overruled, and the result confirmed his opinions. 
 The army entered to the assault in three divisions — one of which 
 he led in person. The others were entrusted to brave, but hot- 
 headed officers, who rushed head-long into a cunning snare laid 
 for them by the Aztecs. The division led by Cortes, himself, was 
 successful in its objects ; but terrible was the result to the others. 
 His whole efforts were now addressed to saving them from the de- 
 struction by which they were threatened. " I will die rather 
 than desert my poor followers in extremity !" And narrow, in- 
 deed, was his escape in this magnanimous endeavour. He be- 
 came a conspicuous mark for his enemies. " Malinche ! Malin- 
 che !*' was their cry, as they hurled their missiles and darts, their 
 stones and arrows, at his person. Six of their most athletic war- 
 riors rushed upon him at the same instant, striving to drag him 
 into their boats by which the causeway was environed. He was 
 disabled by a severe wound in the leg, and, prostrate, was only 
 saved by the desperate exertions of two devoted followers. These 
 baffled the enemy for a moment, and gained time for the approach 
 of the captain of his guard, who, with several others, succeeded 
 in tearing hini from the grasp of the enemy who were struggling 
 with him in the water. He was once more raised upon the cause- 
 way. One of his pages, leading him a horse, was struck down 
 with a javelin. Guzman, his chamberlain, seized the bridle, but 
 as Cortes mounted, the faithful attendant was snatched away by 
 the Aztecs, and dragged to their canoes. While the General lin- 
 gered, unwilling to leave the spot, his bridle was seized by a faith- 
 ful follower, who hurried him away from a conflict in which no 
 skill or valour could well prevail against the immense numbers 
 which opposed them. The danger was not even then over, nor 
 the escape easy. Cortes, at length, regaining finn ground, ral- 
 lied his broken squadrons under the lire of liis artillery, and, 
 charging at the head of a body of horse, which had not been in 
 the action, beat off the infuriate enemy. Speaking comparatively, 
 the Spaniards had suffered a terrible defeat. " It is for my sins," 
 said Cortes, " that it has befallen me !" That night the war 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 201 
 
 drum in the great temple of the Mexicans was lieard. It deno- 
 ted some solemn ceremonial, — and as the Spaniards looked out they 
 could behold a long procession, winding up the steps of the great 
 pyramid — and could detect among the figures, the white skins of 
 their brother Christians — captives taken in the dreadful conflict 
 of the day — stripped to tiio waist, and decorated for the horrid 
 sacrifice of the Aztec Moloch. 
 
 The Mexicans, elated by these events, gave themselves up to 
 unmeasured exultation. The priests assured them that tlie wrath 
 of their offended deities was appeased. They predicted that, 
 before the end of eight days, all their enemies should be delivered 
 into their hands. This prediction had an equal efTect upon the 
 Mexicans themselves, and upon the superstitious allies of the 
 Spaniards. Company after company deserted. But a few faith- 
 ful chiefs, with their followers, remained, and these were not 
 wholly uninfluenced by the prediction. Cortes was firm under 
 tills defection. He treated the prophecy with scorn, and simply 
 requested the retreating squadrons to halt upon the road until its 
 falsehood should be shown by the lapse of the appointed time. 
 The Spaniards themselves, encouraged by the constancy of their 
 General, were undismayed. They yielded none of their resolu- 
 tion, relaxed in no degree the severity of the blockade, and still, 
 with prompt carnage, of musketry and cannon, s\\'ept away the 
 long files of the Aztecs at every fresh assault. The brigantines, 
 still in possession of the lake, made effectual the cordon about the 
 beleaguered city. 
 
 That great triumph of Guatemozin was his last. His priests 
 had blundered in fixing the time of their prediction. Supplies of 
 ammunition and military stores came from Vera Cruz. The war 
 was to be resumed with new re.solve. The determination of 
 Cortes, now, was to advance no step without securing the safety 
 of the army. Every breach in the causeway, every canal, was 
 to be filled up as soon as it was gained. The buildings were to 
 be pulled down for this purpose. Palace, temple, hut — all were 
 to be demolished in his path. The cavalry and artillery must 
 have room for exercise. This was a painful necessity which 
 Cortes was slow to admit. He wished to spare the city, which 
 he styles '' the most beautiful thing in the world," but this desire 
 
202 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 was inconsistent with its conquest. His losses and defeats had 
 arisen only from this anxiety, which, springing from a moral 
 emotion — the love of the beautiful — is one that should escape the 
 censure, even of the mere man of policy. The war was renewed. 
 The work of desolation advanced. The Mexicans struggled on, 
 in spite of famine and other woes. Their provisions were ex- 
 hausted. They lived on rats and reptiles, on the mucilaginous 
 weeds and scum which floated upon the lake. Verily, their reso- 
 lution was worthy of that ancient Spanish town, which, in the 
 wars of Rome, opposed itself, through like perils and necessities, 
 to the conquests of the great Scipio. One more effort was made 
 by Cortes to subdue the resolution of Guatemozin. But in vain. 
 The stubborn Prince forbade that any of his followers should 
 hereafter, on pain of death, speak of surrender. The answer of 
 the Mexicans, for which the Spaniards waited two days, was 
 spoken with their weapons in a general sortie. Their strength 
 was not equal to their fury. The attempt betrayed their impo- 
 tence — they recoiled from the dreadful fire of artillery and mus- 
 ketry from causeway and brigantine. which received their col- 
 umns — recoiled and shrunk back into the yet secure quarters of 
 the capital, wearied and fainting with their futile endeavours. 
 
 These were not destined long to be secure. The work of de- 
 molition went forward. Cortes, with all the inflexibility of a de- 
 stroying angel, steadily pursued his plan for making sure his 
 footsteps. The citadel whence he drove the savages, was imme- 
 diately cast down by his pioneers. Palace, and temple, and 
 dwelling, shared the same fate. Daily, with this labour before 
 them, the several divisions of the Spanish entered the departments 
 of the city which were assigned them for destruction. Their 
 progress was slow^ but terribly certain. The very slowness of 
 the operation, as it betrayed the patience of the invader, declared 
 his unyielding determination. Vainly did the Aztecs rage from 
 their high places where they yet lingered. Their lordly edifices 
 were tumbled into the canals before their eyes. Dry land occu- 
 pied the place of water. Ruin raised his mutilated front where 
 stood the consecrated tower. There was fighting still, daily and 
 continued struggles, but it was without effects, save where it 
 helped on the invader. Weeks were consumed in these struggles 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 203 
 
 and these labours, and the Aztecs were as unyielding as the Span- 
 iards. We should occupy too much space to attempt the de- 
 scription of even tlie most terrible of their conflicts. Devoted as 
 they were to death, they might well figlit to desperation. The 
 ordinary means of subsistence had long since failed them. They 
 gnawed the bark of trees, the roots of the earth — llicy drank 
 brackish water from the lakes. Pestilence followed in the train 
 of famine. They sickened and died in the highways, their bodies 
 lying, unburied and putrifying, in court yard and canal. The 
 famishing survivors looked like spectres, but without the power 
 to affright. Their dwellings presented yet more appalling sights. 
 While some were struggling in the agonies of death, others were 
 festering in corruption. Women and children perishing of hun- 
 ger, men mangled in battle, and crawling from sight, on the ap- 
 proach of the invader, as it were, in the very mockery of life. But, 
 impotent as they were, and amidst all this suffering, the Aztecs 
 breathed nothing of submission. They had imbibed the indomi- 
 table spirit of their monarch, and the people were as one man. 
 The women shared their spirit, and standing by their feeble war- 
 riors in battle, prepared their slings, supplied their stones and ar- 
 rows, and confronted all danger at their sides, with the constancy 
 of a temper that already k«ew the worst. 
 
 At length, the invaders reached the market-place of Mexico, a 
 vast inclosure covering many an acre. They had gained it after 
 a dreadful struggle. They had passed the single canal which 
 lay in their way. They had won the huge teocalli of the Aztec 
 war god, and consigned its sanctuary to the flames. These suc- 
 cesses were not of easy achievement. The defence of these 
 shrines called forth all the spirit of superstition and patriotism. 
 They fought as in the best days of their valour : but they fought 
 against the fates. The genius of the invader mocked their strug- 
 gles, as impotent against his fortune. They could only howl in 
 piteous lamentations, as, baflling their skill and valour, and defy- 
 ing their deities, they beheld the conquerors firing the consecrated 
 dwellings of gods to whom they had vainly given their faith and 
 confidence. 
 
 The young Emperor of the Aztecs, meanwhile, remained 
 courageous and immovable. His capital was in ruin before his 
 
204 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 eyes. His nobles and subjects were dying around him. The 
 limits of his reign were so narrowed that he might stretch forth 
 his hand, and on every side feel the superior presence of the foe. 
 But he was still unconquered. When Cortes, in the hope that 
 his extremities might induce his submission, persuaded one of his 
 noble captives to bear to Guatemozin proposals to that effect, the 
 stern young monarch, at once commanded the sacrifice of the 
 messenger. Thus baffled in his desire to save and to spare what 
 remained of tiie city and its defenders, Cortes resolved upon a 
 general assault. The fleet and army prepared to co-operate. 
 While the latter penetrated the city, the brigantines were ordered 
 to batter the houses near the water. At this moment some over- 
 tures were made by the Aztecs for accommodation. " Why," 
 said some of the chiefs, stretching forth their emaciated arms to 
 him as he entered their precincts — " Why,'' said they, " are you 
 slow. Why not put an end to our miseries !" Cortes, moved by 
 the piteous appeal, replied, " I wish not to destroy but save you. 
 Why is your master obstinate ? Why will he not treat with me ? 
 I wish for this — a single hour will suffice for me to crush him and 
 his people." But the fierce young monarch could not be per- 
 suaded to a conference. He remembered the fate of Montezuma, 
 and distrusted the faith of the Spania^^s. Chagrined at an ob- 
 stinacy which at once baffled his humanity and policy, Cortes 
 ordered the assault. His confederate tribes were unleashed for 
 the conflict, and he penetrated the last hold of the Aztec warriors. 
 They were ready to receive him — their most able bodied warriors 
 in the van, covering their feeble and crippled comrades. The 
 women mingled in their ranks, in the streets, and on the house 
 tops, looking a fury in their eyes, which, it was lucky for the 
 Spaniards, could be declared in no more formidable manner. 
 The fury of men and women was alike impotent. In vain did 
 they rain their arrows — in vain did they hurl their missiles upon 
 the invader. They were sent by feeble sinews. Famine, which 
 had failed to subdue their souls, had most effectually sapped the 
 vigour of their arms. But when did men fight more valiantly, 
 and with so little loss of resolution, from the conviction of its fruit- 
 lessness ? The inequality of power was too great between them- 
 selves and the invaders. While the Spanish arquebusiers poured 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 205 
 
 in their deadly fire on one hand, the brigantines replied by suc- 
 cessive vollies on anotlier. The besieged, hemmed in on every 
 side, girt by death, opposed themselves in vain to the torrent. 
 The carnage was horrible ; the ground was heaped with slain, 
 and the maddened combatants could only meet in conflict by 
 climbinsfover the mortal mounds which havoc had raised between 
 them. The narrative, as given by JMr. Prescott, is a terrible one. 
 We had marked it for extract, as a fair specimen of his writing, 
 but our space will not suffer its insertion. Enough that, when 
 sated with slaughter, the Spanish retreat was sounded. Forty 
 thousand men are said to have perished in the work of that one 
 dreadful day. 
 
 Such conflicts must soon terminate. No courage, no resolve 
 or resource, can stand them long. The next day, which was the 
 13th of August, 1521, a day memorable as the close of this dread- 
 ful struggle, Cortes prepared to renew the assault. But, willing 
 to afford one more chance of escape to the wretched Aztecs, he 
 sent another message to Guatemozin. The answer was, " Gua- 
 temozin is ready to die where he is — he will hold no interview 
 with the Spaniard. It is for him to work his pleasure." " Away, 
 then," said the stern conqueror, " away to your countrymen, and 
 let them prepare for death. The hour is come !" He neverthe- 
 less postponed the assault for several hours, in the hope that some 
 change might be induced in the inflexible spirit of the Indian. 
 He seemed reluctant to urge the last desperate measures against 
 so brave an enemy. But his troops murmured at the delay. 
 Rumours were spread that the Aztec monarch was preparing to 
 escape across the lake, and the Spanish General reluctantly gave 
 the signal for the assault. This was, in other words, the signal 
 for massacre. Cortes placed himself upon an azotea, which com- 
 manded the scene of operations. The Spaniards found their en- 
 emy huddled together in a confused crowd of all ages and sexes, 
 in masses so dense as to seem designed less for the purpose of 
 combat, than to facilitate the expected carnage. The causeways 
 were crowded to the water. Some had climbed the terraces ; 
 others feebly supported themselves against the walls of the build- 
 ings. Their garments were squalid and tattered, and the famine 
 glaring from their eyes, only served to heighten the spectral fe- 
 
206 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 rocity of their expression. They possessed the ancient spirit but 
 not Its strength, and met the assailants M-ith a flight of arrows. 
 But these feebly seconded their hate. They fell ineffectual from 
 the padded coats of the Spaniards. Then followed the crash of 
 more potent implements of war — the peals of cannon, the sharp, 
 rattling discharge of fire arms, and the shouts, hellish and infuri- 
 ate, of the herds of Spanish allies, exulting in the near accomplish- 
 ment of their long contemplated hope of vengeance. Why at- 
 tempt the description of the horrible scene that followed. Why 
 show the last hopeless struggle of the Aztecs, butchered on the 
 causeways, or gasping in the overwhelming waters in which they 
 sunk on either hand. The battle raged equally on lake and land. 
 The last hope of the lordly race of Tenochtitlan, was extinguished 
 in the bloody horrors of that day. It was at its close when Gua- 
 temozin was taken. Bravely, indeed, with a stern resolution wor- 
 thy of the greatest times and people, had this gallant Indian clung 
 to the falling fortunes of his country. He had done all that man 
 could do in the circumstances under which he stood. He was no 
 mere savage ; — but, with the indomitable obstinacy of one, he 
 united large resources of civilization, and superior powers of in- 
 tellect and observation. His defence of the capital had been sin- 
 gularly adapted, in jnost respects, to his own and the condition of 
 his enemy. As we have seen, it was unavailing. It was only 
 then that he attempted flight, and this attempt may have contem- 
 plated the safety of his wife and followers rather than his own — 
 may have contemplated nothing less than future struggles with 
 the invader, in other places of security and strength. He was 
 not the Roman fool, 
 
 " To die by his own sword," 
 
 so long as there were hopes of good battle, yet in reserve for his 
 countrymen. In the moment of danger and captivity, he betrayed 
 no apprehension. His surrender was much more dignified than 
 that of Santa Anna at Jacinto. When his piragua was encoun- 
 tered by the brigantine of Garci Holguin, and the Spaniards were 
 about to fire, he was the first to rise, armed with buckler and 
 maquahiiUl, in defiance to the assailants. But the cry of his fol- 
 lowers declared him to be their lord. They could implore mercy 
 
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 207 
 
 for him, having no prayer for themselves. The Spanish captain 
 arrested the fire of his soldiers. At this command, the young 
 monarch lowered his weapons. " I am Guatemozin," he ex- 
 claimed, " lead me to Malinche, (Cortes.) I am his prisoner. 
 Let no harm come to my wife and followers." When Ilolguin 
 told him to command the people in the other canoes to surrender, 
 he replied, with a dejected air, — " It is not necessary. They will 
 fight no longer, when they see that their prince is taken." The 
 fight ceased from that moment. In the conquest of Guatemozin, 
 that of Tenochtitlan was complete. He had been the soul of his 
 empire. It was now a corse, at the mercy of the Spaniard. 
 
 When brought into the presence of Cortes, Guatemozin be- 
 trayed no sort of apprehension. Emotion he must have shown. 
 His deportment was dignified and modest. As Cortes came 
 forward to receive him, he broke the silence by saying, '• I have 
 done all that I could for the defence of my people. I am your 
 prisoner. Deal with me as you list. Dispatch me with this" — 
 laying his hand upon the hilt of a poinard in the General's belt — 
 " and rid me of life at once." Cortes could appreciate the noble 
 character of his captive. " Fear nothing," he replied ; " you 
 shall be treated with honour. You have defended your capital 
 like a brave warrior. A Spaniard knows how to respect the 
 valour of his enemy !" 
 
 This assurance was unhappily forfeited in the sequel. It is^ 
 the reproach of Cortes that his noble captive fell a victim to sus- 
 picions which do not seem to have been justly founded. He was 
 kept, in a sort of honourable captivity, for some time after the 
 conquest. But, insurrections among his countrymen were laid to 
 his charge. He was put to the torture, arid subsequently execu- 
 ted, professing his innocence, reproaching Cortes for his perfidy, 
 and dying like a Prince. Whether the charge were true or not, 
 the better nature of Cortes, when time was allowed for reflection, 
 recoiled at the cruel severity of his proceedings. His conscience 
 smote him for the too ready credence he had given to the accusa- 
 tion, — for the too stern penalty with which he had visited the sup- 
 posed criminal. He suffered bitterly from a natural remorse, 
 which, while it testifies to his consciousness of crime, at least 
 
208 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 equally declares the acuteness and justness of his sensibilities, 
 and, we trust, the merit of his repentance. 
 
 Thus fell the wondrous empire of the Aztecs, — an empire of 
 the greatest magnificence, great numbers, and immense resources, 
 — an empire upheld by crime, and maintained by cruel wars, — 
 stained by the most shocking rites and governed by the most 
 relentless tyranny, — the wonder of its own people, — the terror of 
 its neighbours, — the admiration of the European. Its destiny 
 was fulfilled by the stranger, as shadowed out by its own tradi- 
 tions. The great drama which began with the fall of Montezuma, 
 by the hands of his subjects, was carried out to stern completion 
 by the sacrifice of the nobler Guatemozin, to the suspicions of 
 the conqueror. And here our narrative miglit properly conclude. 
 The triumph of our hero is complete. The object of the grand 
 action which makes the glory of his career, is attained. He is 
 at the summit of his conquests. There is no point of elevation, 
 yet beyond, attainable, which is desirable for him to reach. The 
 further survey presents him in less favourable lights, — shov»s him 
 struggling against injustice, and finally its victim. The last days 
 of a great man, " fallen from his high estate," have something 
 mournful in them, particularly if he shall have been one accus- 
 tomed to command. Yet, a biographical propriety hurries us for- 
 ward. A few paragraphs must suffice to close a history, the leading 
 events of which have been already absorbed in the narrative. 
 
 Of the subsequent career of Cortes, in fixing the civil power of 
 Mexico and in extending and making sure his conquests, it will 
 be enough in this place to say, that they prove his resources 
 as a statesman to have been quite as remarkable as those 
 which he had shown in the character of the conqueror. He 
 secured the submission of the country, suppressed insurrection, 
 rebuilt the capital, and, by well conceived expeditions, explored 
 its remotest provinces. When this difficult work was all complete, 
 he returned to Spain, where he found a most brilliant reception. 
 His presence confirmed his conquest over his enemies, who were 
 numerous in that quarter. All jealousy of his designs was set 
 at rest. The Emperor ennobled him, and with the title of " Mar- 
 quess of the Valley of Oaxaca," conferred upon him a princely 
 domain in Mexico. But the future government of the country he 
 
CORTES xVND THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. SOD 
 
 had won, was not confided to his hands. In his respect, the sus- 
 picious policy of Spain differed in no particular from what it had 
 been in the case of Columbus. Greatness is very apt to be dis- 
 trusted the moment it ceases to be necessary to conquest, — the 
 moment its achievements and discoveries are sure. A military 
 command was given him. He was named Captain-General of 
 New Spain and of the coasts of the South Sea, — a dignity which 
 simply conferred upon him the privilege of making new conquests 
 — if he could. He subsequently married into a noble house and 
 returned to Mexico, where he was regarded with distrust by the 
 authorities. His eager and proud spirit did not suffer him to 
 remain long in unperformance. He fitted out new expeditions, 
 whicli were only partially successful. He returned to Castile, 
 where he was received with coldness by the Emperor. His 
 offence was two-fold. He had claims upon the crown, and he 
 was no longer fortunate. We pass over the melancholy history 
 of entreaty met with indifference, and complaint answered with 
 impatience. The fate of Cortes, in seeking justice, is a story 
 which is often read. The aged veteran was thrust aside to make 
 way for younger spirits. The monarch found it easier not to ac- 
 knowledge obligations which he could not recompense ; and, after 
 a fruitless prosecution of his claims for three years, Cortes deter- 
 mined to abandon them and return once more to Mexico. But 
 mortification and disappointment had impaired his health. He 
 was not permitted to re-visit the scene of his conquests, but, taken 
 with a mortal illness, while making preparations for his voyage, 
 he died near Seville, on the 2d December, 1547, in the sixty-third 
 year of his age. He met his end with the same composure with 
 which he had gone into battle, — he made his will, a remarkable 
 document, — confessed his sins, received the holy sacrament, and 
 yielded himself meekly, and with humble confidence, into the 
 hands of his Maker. We read his character in his story. It 
 has been our purpose to make this speak for itself, — to select and 
 bring out the prominent performances of his life, and educe the 
 moral of his life from its successive scenes and performances. 
 What is wanting to our analysis must be supplied by that of Mr. 
 Prescott, to whose delightful history, we trust, we have shown 
 the way to numerous readers. 
 
 15 
 
210 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ARTICLE VI. 
 THE WRITINGS OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.* 
 
 We are among those who regard Mr. Cooper as a wronged and 
 persecuted man. We conceive that his countrymen have done 
 him gross injustice — that they have not only shown themselves 
 ungenerous but ungrateful, and that, in lending a greedy ear to 
 the numerous malicious aspersions which have assailed his per- 
 son and his reputation, they have only given confirmation and 
 streniith to the proverbial reproach, of irreverence and ingratitude, 
 to which countries, distinguished by popular governments, have 
 usually been thought obnoxious. We do not mean to regard him 
 as wholly faultless — on the contrary, we look upon Mr. Cooper as 
 a very imprudent person ; one whose determined will, impetuous 
 temperament, and great self-esteem, continually hurry forward 
 into acts and expressions of error and impatience. We propose 
 to compare sides in this question : — to put the case fairly between 
 himself and countrymen, and show where the balance of justice 
 lies. 
 
 Of Mr. Cooper, little or nothing was known, by the American 
 people at large, until the publication of "the Spy." To a kw, 
 perhaps, the novel of" Precaution" had brought him acquainted. 
 That was a very feeble work — coldly correct, elaborately tame 
 — a second or third rate imitation of a very inferior school of 
 writings, known as the social life novel. In works of this class, 
 the imagination can have little play. The exercise of the crea- 
 tive faculty is almost entirely denied. The field of speculation is 
 limited ; and the analysis of minute shadesof character, is all the 
 privilege which taste and philosophy possess, for lifting the narra- 
 
 * The Two Admirals. A Talc. By the Author of the PUot, &c. Phil- 
 adelphia : Lea &. Blanchard. 1842. 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 211 
 
 tive above the province of mere lively dialogue, and sweet and 
 fanciful sentiment. The ordinary events of the household, or of 
 the snug family circle, suggest the only materials ; and a large 
 gathering of the set, at ball or dinner, affords incident of which 
 the novelist is required to make the highest use. Writers of much 
 earnestness of mood, originality of thought, or intensity of imagi- 
 nation, seldom engage in this class of writing. Scott attempted 
 it in St. Ronan's Well, and failed ; — rising only into the rank of 
 Scott, in such portions of the story as, by a very violent transi- 
 tion, brought him once more into the bolder displays of wild and 
 stirring romance. He consoled himself with the reflection that 
 male writers were not good at these things. His conclusion, that 
 such writings were best handled by the other sex, may be, or not, 
 construed into a sarcasm. 
 
 Mr. Cooper failed egregiously in " Precaution." So far as we 
 know, and as we believe, that work fell still-born from the press. 
 But for the success of "the Spy," and the succeeding works, it 
 never would have been heard of But •' the Spy" was an event. 
 It was the boldest and best attempt at the historical romance 
 which had ever been made in America. It is somewhat the prac- 
 tice, at this day, to disparage that story. This is in very bad taste. 
 The book is a good one, — full of faults, perhaps, and blunders • 
 but full also of decided merits, and marked by a boldness of con- 
 ception, and a courage in progress, which clearly showed the con- 
 fidence of genius in its own resources. The conception of the 
 Spy, as a character, was a very noble one. A patriot in the 
 humblest condition of life, — almost wholly motiveless unless for 
 his country — enduring the persecutions of friends, the hate of ene- 
 mies — the doomed by both parties to the gallows — enduring all in 
 secret, without a murmur, — without a word, when a word might 
 have saved him, — all for his country ; and all, under the palsy- 
 ing conviction, not only that his country never could reward 
 him, but that, in all probability, the secret of his patriotism must 
 perish with him, and nothing survive but that obloquy under 
 which he was still content to live and labour. 
 
 It does not lessen the value of such a novel, nor the ideal truth 
 of such a conception, that such a character is not often to be 
 found. It is sufficiently true if it wins our sympathies and com- 
 
212 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 mands our respect. This is always the purpose of the ideal, 
 which, if it can effect such results, becomes at once a model and a 
 reality. The character of the " Spy" was not the only good one of 
 the book. Lawton and Sitgreaves were both good conceptions, 
 though rather exaggerated ones. Lawton was a somewhat too 
 burly Virginian ; and his appetite was too strong an ingredient 
 in his chivalry. But, as his origin was British, this may have 
 been due to the truthfulness of portraiture. 
 
 The defect of the story was rather in its action than its charac- 
 ters. This is the usual and grand defect in all Mr. Cooper's 
 stories. In truth, there is very little story. He seems to exer- 
 cise none of his eenius in the invention of his fable. There is 
 
 o 
 
 none of that careful grouping of means to ends, and all, to the one 
 end of the denouement, which so remarkably distinguished the ge- 
 nius of Scott, and made all the parts of his story fit as compact- 
 ly as the work of the joiner, — but he seems to hurry forward in 
 the delineation of scene after scene, as if wholly indifferent to the 
 catastrophe. The consequence is, that his catastrophe is usually 
 forced and unsatisfactory. He is, for this reason, compelled fre- 
 quently, at the close, to begin the work of invention ; — to bring 
 out some latent matter, — to make unlooked for discoveries, and 
 prove his hero, be he hunter or pirate, to have been the son of 
 somebody of unexpected importance ; — a discovery which, it is 
 fancied, will secure him a greater degree of the reader's favour, 
 than he could have before commanded. Mr. Cooper seems to 
 rely wholly on the spirit and success of certain scenes. Take, for 
 example, the work before us. Analyze the parts of the Two Ad- 
 mirals. The action of the several fleets in the several progresses 
 of the sea, is, in truth, the only portion of the work on which Mr. 
 Cooper has exercised himself. We may see, also, in the pur- 
 poseless career of young Wychecombe, the true, and Wyche- 
 combe, the pretender, how little pains the author has taken, 
 either in determining, from the first, what they shall severally be 
 and do, or by what performances their conduct, respectively, shall 
 be distinguished. It is very evident, from the first introduction 
 of the American Wychecombe, that he was to become a per- 
 son of some importance — the hero, in fact ; and, for this, the mind 
 of the reader is insensibly prepared by the first chapters of the 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 218 < 
 
 story. Had Mr. Cooper planned any story at all, this young man 
 must have been the hero — must have maintained throughout, and 
 concentrated within himself, the chief interest of the performance. 
 So, on the other hand, the false Wychecombe, the bastard, was 
 to be his foil — the villain of the piece — and the conflict between 
 the two for masterv, is the great issue for which the reader of the 
 book prepares himself. But, unwilling to give himself the trouble 
 of inventing situations, by which this issue could be made up or 
 carried on, Mr. Cooper surrenders himself to the progress of events. 
 He leaves to one to beget and occasion the other. Hence the de- 
 sultory character of his writings ; the violence of transition \ the 
 sti'ange neglect to which certain of his characters are destined, in 
 whom he at first strives to interest us ; and the hard scramble, 
 which the persons of the drama are compelled to make, each to 
 get into his proper place, for the tableau vivant, at the falling of 
 the curtain. This young man, Wychecombe, the American, is 
 nothing, and does nothing ; and what a poor devil is his foil or 
 shadow, Tom, the nullus — '' nulhis'' indeed. These persons, 
 brought in with much care, and elaborately pourtrayed to the 
 reader, are yet — so far as the valuable portions of the story are 
 concerned — left entirely unemployed. The despatching of Wy- 
 cherley Wychecombe, in the Druid, by Admiral Bluewater, to 
 Admiral Oakes, was one of those simple schemes by which the 
 author still endeavoured to maintain an interest in the youth, in 
 whom he felt that he had, at the beginning, too greatly awakened 
 the interest of the readers. The whole machinery here is feeble, 
 and a writer of romance cannot more greatly err than when he 
 subjects his hero to the continual influence of events. We have 
 no respect for heroes placed always in subordinate positions — sent 
 hither and thither — baffled by every breath of circumstance — 
 creatures without will, and constantly governed by the caprices 
 of other persons. This was the enfeebling characteristic in 
 Scott's heroes. Hence it was that the true interest seldom settled 
 on the person whom he chose to be his hero. Look, for example, 
 at his Waverly, — who, contrasted with Claverhouse, or the broth- 
 er of Flora Mac Ivor, shrunk into a very petty person. How 
 small a person is his Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, in comparison with 
 Brian de Bois Guilbert : — his Morton with his Burley ; his Ro- 
 
214 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 land Graeme, his Quentin Durward, and, indeed, mdst of his 
 chosen heroes, in comparison with numerous other characters 
 employed as their companions and opposites. This defect, which 
 would be fatal always to purely dramatic composition, must be 
 equally injurious to works of romance, in which, to a certain ex- 
 tent, all the standards are dramatic, and from the somewhat dra- 
 inatic development of which, by continual action, the chief inter- 
 est and anxiety of the reader are maintained. Availinoj ourselves 
 of the dramatic aside, we may remark en-passant, that the con- 
 ception of situation in which the two admirals are placed, in the 
 progress of this story, is particularly admirable and touching. — 
 Their respective characteristics are fairly drawn and nicely elab- 
 orated, and whenever they have anything to do with the action, 
 they appear to advantage, and operate in a manner equally char- 
 acteristic and effective. It is, perhaps, the great fault of Mr. 
 V Cooper, that, conceiving some few scenes, or even a single one, 
 with great beauty and boldness, he discards from his mind all se- 
 rious concern for the rest — for all those by which they are intro- 
 duced and finished. These scenes, in consequence, rise up ab- 
 ruptly — and so far imposingly — like an isolated mountain wall 
 from the dead level of a plain. We are astonished when we see 
 them, — we wonder and admire, — but our feet have grown weary 
 in the search for them, — we have had a long journey, — and the 
 querulous will be apt to ask, as now they do — " fine sight, indeed, 
 very lofty and imposing, but, was it worth while to come so far in 
 search of it ?" An equal care in the invention of the fable, at 
 the beginning, would obviate this question. The traveller would 
 start, as it were, in the morning of the day — a cheering sunshine 
 above him — the green woods around him, and some merry song- 
 birds, inviting his forward progress with the most seductive notes. 
 Watchful when he is about to grow weary, his conductor (the 
 novelist) suddenly points his eye to a sweet stream, which glides, 
 like a silvery serpent, through the forest, — seen only at moments, 
 and stealing from sight with a slow sounding but musical murmur 
 which insensibly invites to follow. Easily beguiled, the wayfa- 
 rer turns aside for an instant, and makes other discoveries. Step 
 by step he is won along — now ravished by flowers, now startled 
 by dreary caverns, wild precipices, and mysterious shadows of rock 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 215 
 
 and forest. Now he passes rivers, and anon the cultivated fields; 
 now he looks on lake or prairie, and now ho starts with the sud- 
 den rush and tumble of the cataract. At length, towards the 
 close of the day, he arrives at the object of his quest. The de- 
 sired spectacle, whether grand and terrible, or simply beautiful 
 and sweet, unfolds itself before him. The awful mountain, tow- 
 ering in forbidding grandeur before his eye, or the snow white 
 cottage, smiling in imploring sweetness, at his feet. Around him 
 are the companions of the day — the persons of his story — those 
 who have joyed and those who have wept — the noble hero who 
 led, and the envious rival who would have destroyed — the vener- 
 able form that counselled wisdom, or the dear woman that, with 
 greater success, counselled only love. The denouement, whether 
 grave or gay, has taken place, and we rejoice in a progress which 
 has warmed our sentiments, inspired just and generous thoughts, 
 informed our affections, and raised our minds in the contempla- 
 tion of the noblest images of intellect and feelings. Such were 
 Scott's stories. In the gradual progress of the reader, as of a 
 traveller through a new country, the tale carried us on, step by 
 step, from beauty to beauty, from event to event, each beauty be- 
 coming brighter and dearer, each event more exciting and inter- 
 esting, until we reach the crowning event of all ; completing, in 
 a fitting manner, and with appropriate superiority, the whole con- 
 tinuous and marvellous history. There was no violence done to 
 the reader's judgment — his sense of propriety or of justice. So 
 insensible was the progress, so natural the transitions, that we 
 gave ready faith to all his wonders ; and the eyes became filled 
 with tears, and the breathing suspended, as the events thickened 
 and strove together; generating in our souls, hope and fear, anx- 
 ious apprehensions, and those emotions, equally exciting and hon- 
 curable to our nature, which awaken, in unavoidable testimony, 
 to the skill of the consummate artist. This is the harmonious 
 achievement. It is a tolerably easy thing to write a spirited sketch 
 — a startling event — -a hurried and passionate delineation of an ac- 
 tion, which, in itself, involves, necessarily, strife and hate, and the 
 wilder phrenzies of the human heart and feeling. But the per- 
 fectingof the wondrous whole — the admirable adaptation of means 
 to ends — the fitness of parts, — the propriety of the action — the 
 
216 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 employment of the right materials, — and the fnie architectural 
 proportions of the fabric, — these are the essentials which deter- 
 mine the claim of the writer to be the Builder ! — by whose stand- 
 ard other artists are to model, — by whose labours other labourers 
 are to learn. 
 
 The success of the " Spy" was very great, and it at once gave 
 Mr. Cooper reputation in Europe. It may be said to have occa- 
 sioned a greater sensation in Europe than at home ; — and there 
 were good reasons for this. At that period America had no lite- 
 rature. Just before this time, or about this time, it was the fa- 
 vourite sarcasm of the British Reviewers that such a thing as an 
 American book was never read. Mr. Irving, it is true, was 
 writing his sweet and delicate essays ; but he was not accounted 
 in England an American writer, and he himself, — no doubt with 
 a sufficient policy — his own fortunes alone being the subject of 
 consideration — took no pains to assert his paternity. The publi- 
 cation of the " Spy" may be assumed to have been the first prac- 
 tical reply to a sarcasm, which, since that day, has found its am- 
 ple refutation. It was immediately republished in England, and 
 soon after, we believe, found its way into half the languages of 
 Europe. Its farther and more important effect was upon the in- 
 tellect of our ow^n country. It at once opened the eyes of our 
 people to their own resources. It was something of a wonder, to 
 ourselves, that we should be able — (strange, self-destroying humil- 
 ity in a people springing directly from the Anglo-Norman stock) 
 — to produce a writer who should so suddenly, and in his very first 
 work (" Precaution" was not known and scarcely named in that 
 day) rise to such an eminence — equalling most, excelling most, 
 and second to but one, of the great historical romance writers of 
 Britain. This itself was an important achievement — a step 
 gained, without which, no other step could possibly have been 
 taken. It need scarcely be said, that the efforts of a nation at 
 performance, — particularly in letters and the arts, — must first be 
 preceded by a certain consciousness of the necessary resources. 
 This consciousness, in the case of America, was wantins;. Our 
 colonial relation to Great Britain had filled us with a feeling of 
 intellectual dependance, of which our success in shaking off her 
 political dominion had in no respect relieved us. We had not 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 217 
 
 then, and, indeed, have not entirely to this day, arrived at uny 
 just idea of the inevitable connexion between an ability to niciin- 
 tain ourselves in arts as well as in arms — the ability in both cases 
 arising only from our intellectual resources, and a manly reliance 
 upon the just origin of national strength, — Self-dependence ! To 
 Mr. Cooper the merit is due, of having first awakened us to this 
 self- reference, — to this consciousness of mental resources, of which 
 our provincialism dealt, not only in constant doubts, but in con- 
 stant denials. The first step is half the march, as in ordinary 
 cases, the first blow is half the battle. With what rapidity after 
 that did the American press operate. How many new writers 
 rose up suddenly, the moment that their neighbours had made the 
 discovery that there were such writers — that such writers should 
 be. Every form of fiction, the legend, tale, novel and romance — 
 the poem, narrative asd dramatic — were poured out with a pro- 
 lific abundance, which proved the possession, not only of large re- 
 sources of thought, but of fancy, and of an imagination equal to 
 every department of creative fiction. It will not matter to show that 
 a great deal of this was crude, faulty, undigested — contracted and 
 narrow in design, and spasmodic in execution. The demand of the 
 country called for no more. The wonder was that, so suddenly, 
 and at such short notice, such resources could be found as had not 
 before been imagined. The sudden rise and progress of German 
 literature seems to have been equally surprising and sudden — 
 equally the result of a national impulse, newly moved in a novel 
 and unexpected direction. The wonderful birth and progress of 
 American letters in the last twenty years — and in every depart- 
 ment of thought, art and science, so far from discouraging, be- 
 cause of its imperfections, holds forth the most signal encourage- 
 ment to industry and hope — showing most clearly, that the defi- 
 ciency was not in the resource but in the demand, not in the in- 
 ferior quality, or limited quantity, but in the utter indifference of 
 our people to the possession of the material. 
 
 Having struck the vein, and convinced the people not only that 
 there was gold in the land, but that the gold of the land was good, 
 Mr. Cooper proceeded with proper industry to supply the demand 
 which his own genius had occasioned in the markets, as well of 
 Europe as his own country, for his productions. " The Spy" was 
 
218 VIEWS AND REVIEWS 
 
 followed by Lionel Lincoln, the Pioneers, the Last of the Mohi- 
 cans, the Pilot, Red Rover, Prairie, Water Witch, &c. We speak 
 from memory — we are not so sure that we name these writings in 
 their proper order, nor is this important to us in the plan of this 
 paper, wliich does not contemplate their examination in detail. 
 All these works were more or less interesting. In most of them, 
 the improvement in style, continuity of narrative, propriety of in- 
 cident, &c., was obvious. In all of them were obvious, in greater 
 or less degree, the characteristics of the author. The plots were 
 generally simple, not always coherent, and proving either an in- 
 capacity for, or an indifference to the exercise of much invention. 
 The reader was led through long and dead levels of dialogue — 
 sensible enough, — sometimes smart, sarcastic or playful, — occa- 
 sionally marked by depth or originality of thought, and occasion- 
 ally exhibiting resources of study and reflection in the depart- 
 ments of law and morals, which are not common to the ordinary 
 novel writer. But these things kept us from the story, — to which 
 they were sometimes foreign, and always in some degree, unne- 
 cessary. His characters were not often felicitous, and, as in the 
 case of most writers, Mr. Cooper had hobbies on which he rode 
 too often, to the greut disquiet of his friends and companions. He 
 rang the changes on words, as Scott once suffered himself to do, 
 in the " Prodigious" of Dominie Sampson, until readers sickened 
 of the stupidity ; and occasionally, as in the case of David Gamut, 
 mistaking his own powers of the humorous, he afflicted us with 
 the dispensation of a bore, which qualified seriously the really 
 meritorious in his performance. But, to compensate us for these 
 trials of our tastes and tempers, he gave us the most exquisite 
 scenes of minute artifice, as in his Indian stories, — in which the 
 events were elaborated with a nicety and patience, reminding us 
 of the spider at his web, that curious and complicated spinner, 
 which may well be employed to illustrate by his own labours and 
 ingenuity the subtle frame-work of Indian cunning — the laby- 
 rinth of i)is artifice, — his wily traps and pitfalls, and indomitable 
 perseverance. In these details of Indian art and resource, Mr. 
 Cooper was inimitable. In his pursuits, flights, captures, — in his 
 encounters, — cunning opposed to cunning, — man to man — the 
 trapper and the hunter, against the red man whose life he envies 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 219 
 
 and emulates, — Mr. Cooper has no superior as he has had no mas- 
 ter. His conception of the frontier white man, if less true than 
 picturesque, is also not less happy as an artistical conception of 
 great originality and effect. In him, the author embodied his ideal 
 of the philosopher of the foremast — Hawkeye is a sailor in a hunt- 
 ing shirt — and in this respect he committed no error in propriety. 
 The sailor and the forester both derive their philosophies and 
 character from the same sources, — though the one disdains the 
 land, and the other trembles at the sight of the sea. They both 
 think and feel, with a highly individual nature, that has been 
 taught, by constant contemplation, in scenes of solitude. The 
 vast unbroken ranges of forest, to its one lonely occupant, press 
 upon the mind with the same sort of solemnity which one feels 
 condemned to a life of partial isolation upon the ocean. Both are 
 permitted that degree of commerce with their fellow beings, 
 which suffice to maintain in strength the sweet and sacred sources 
 of their humanity. It is through these that they are commended 
 to our sympathies, and it is through the same medium that they 
 acquire that habit of moral musing and meditation which ex- 
 presses itself finely in the most delightful of all human philoso- 
 phies. The very isolation to which, in the most successful of his 
 stories, Mr. Cooper subjects his favourite personages, is, alone, a 
 proof of his strength and genius. While the ordinary writer, the 
 man of mere talent, is compelled to look around him among masses 
 for his material, he contents himself with one man, and flings him 
 upon the wilderness. The picture then, which follows, must be 
 one of intense individuality. Out of this one man's nature, his 
 moods and fortunes, he spins his story. The agencies and depen- 
 dencies are few. With the self-reliance which is only found in 
 true genius, he goes forward into the wilderness, whether of land 
 or ocean ; and the vicissitudes of either region, acting upon the 
 natural resources of one man's mind, furnish the whole material 
 of his work-shop. This mode of performance is highly dramatic, 
 and thus it is that his scout, his trapper, his hunter, his pilot, all 
 live to our eyes and thoughts, the perfect ideals of moral individ- 
 uality. For this we admire them — love them we do not — they 
 are objects not made to love — they do not appeal to our affections 
 so much as to our minds. We admire their progress through sea 
 
220 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 and forest — their strange ingenuity, the skill with which they pro- 
 vide against human and savage enemies, against cold and hun- 
 ger, with the same sort of admiration which we feel at watching 
 any novel progress in arts or arms — a noble ship darting like a 
 bird over the deep, unshivering, though the storm threatens to 
 shiver every thing else around it — a splendid piece of machinery 
 which works to the most consummate ends by a modus operandi, 
 whicii we yet fail to detect — any curious and complex invention 
 which dazzles our eyes, confounds our judgment, and mocks the 
 search which would discover its secret principles. Take, for ex- 
 ample, the character of the " Pilot," in the rapid and exciting 
 story of that name. Here is a remarkable instance of the sort of 
 interest which Mr. Cooper's writings are chiefly calculated to in- 
 spire. Marble could not be more inflexible than this cold, im- 
 movable, pulseless personage. He says nothing, shows nothing, 
 promises nothing. Yet we are interested in his very first appear- 
 ance. Why and how ? Naturally enough by the anxiety with 
 which he is sought and looked for ; — by the fact that he promises 
 nothing, yet goes to work, without a word, in a manner that pro- 
 mises every thing. We feel, at a glance, that if any mortal man 
 can save the ship, he is the man. Why is this ? Simply be- 
 cause he goes to work, without a word, as if it was in him to do 
 so ; — as if a calm consciousness of power was his possession ; as 
 if he knew just where to lay his hands, and in what direction to 
 expend his strength. H6 shows the capacity for work, and this 
 constitutes the sort of manhood upon which all men rely in mo- 
 ments of doubt or danger. Yet he gives you no process of rea- 
 soning — he has no word save that which commands obedience, — 
 he neither storms, implores, nor threatens — he has no books, — he 
 deals in no declamation. He is the ideal of an abstract but in- 
 nate power, which we acknowledge and perhaps fear, but cannot 
 fathom. All is hidden witliin himself, and, except when at work, 
 he is nothing — he might as well be stone. Yet, around him, — 
 such a man — a wonderful interest gathers like a halo — bright and 
 inscrutable, — which fills us with equal curiosity and reverence. 
 With him, a man of whom we know nothing, — whom we see now 
 for the first time, — whom we may never see again, — whom we 
 cannot love — whom we should never seek ; and with his ship, — 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 221 
 
 timbers, tackle, ropes, spars and cordage, — a frail fabric, such as 
 goes to and fro along our sliores, in our daily sight, without 
 awakening a single thought or feeling ; — with ship and man we 
 grow fascinated beyond all measure of ordinary attraction. In 
 his hands the ship becomes a being, instinct with life, beauty, 
 sentiment — in danger, and to be saved ; — and our interest in her 
 fate, grows from our anxiety to behold the issue, in which human 
 skill, courage and ingenuity, are to contend with storm and sea, 
 rocks and tempest — as it were, man against omnipotence. Our 
 interest springs from our curiosity rather than from our affections. 
 We do not care a straw for the inmates of the vessel. They are 
 very ordinary persons, that one man excepted — and he will not 
 suffer us to love him. But manhood, true manhood, is a sight, al- 
 ways, of wondrous beauty and magnificence. The courage that 
 looks steadily on the danger, however terrible ; the composure 
 that never swerves from its centre under the pressure of unex- 
 pected misfortune ; — the knowledge that can properly apply its 
 strength, and the adroitness and energy, which, feeling the force of 
 a manly will, flies to their task, in instant and hearty obedience ; — 
 these form a picture of singular beauty, and must always rivet 
 the admiration of the spectator. We regard Mr. Cooper's " Pilot" 
 — breasting the storm, tried by, and finally baffling all its pow- 
 ers, as the Prometheus in action — inflexible, ready to endure, — 
 isolated, but still human in a fond loyalty to all the great hopes 
 and interests of humanity. 
 
 Hawkeye, the land sailor of Mr. Cooper, is, with certain suita- 
 ble modifications, the same personage. We see and admire, in 
 him, the qualities of hardihood and endurance, coolness, readiness 
 of resource, keen, clear sighted observation, just reflection, and a 
 sincere, direct, honest heart. He is more human than the other, 
 since, naturally of gentler temperament, the life-conflict has not 
 left upon his mind so many traces of its volcanic fires. He has 
 had more patience, been more easily persuaded; has endured with 
 less struggle if not more fortitude, and, in his greater pliancy, 
 has escaped the greater force of the tempest. But he is, in all 
 substantial respects, the same personage, and inspires us with like 
 feelings. In the hour of danger, — at midnight, — in the green 
 camp of the hunter, — trembling women, timid men, and weeping 
 
222 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 children, grouped together in doubt, — all eyes turn to him, as, on 
 the sea, in storm, all eyes address themselves to the " Pilot." If 
 any one can save them he is the man. Meanwhile, the shouts 
 of savages are heard on every side, — the fearful whoop of slaugh- 
 ter ; — as, on the sea, the wind howls through the ship's cordage, 
 and the storm shrieks a requiem, in anticipation of ultimate tri- 
 umph, around the shivering inmates. It is only upon true man- 
 hood that man can rely, and these are genuine men — not blocks, 
 not feathers — neither dull, nor light of brain, — neither the stub- 
 bornly stupid, nor the frothily shallow. Now, as nothing in na- 
 ture is more noble than a noble-minded, whole-souled man, — how- 
 ever ignorant, however poor, however deficient in imposing cos- 
 tume or imposing person, — so nothing, in nature, is better calcu- 
 lated to win the liomage and command the obedience of men, than 
 the presence of such a person in their moments of doubt and dan- 
 ger. It is inevitable, most usually, that such a man will save 
 them, if they are to be saved by human agency. To Mr. Cooper 
 we owe several specimens of this sort of moral manhood. It 
 does not qualify our obligation to him, that they have their little 
 defects, — that he has sometimes failed to hit the true line that di- 
 vides the simplicity of nature, from the puerility of ignorance or 
 childhood. His pictures are as perfect, of their kind, as the artist 
 of fiction has ever given us. We say this after due reflection. 
 
 The Sea and American Forest Tales of Mr. Cooper, were at 
 length superseded, when this gentleman visited Europe, by others 
 of a very different class. Travelling on the continent, with ob- 
 jects of interest and novelty continually before his eyes, it was 
 very natural that he should desire to try his hand at objects of 
 foreign mould and material. The institutions of Europe, where 
 they differed from our own, were also subjects provoking curi- 
 osity and calling for examination. These might be discussed in 
 story ; — the old traditions and institutions of a country naturally 
 go together, either in connexion or contrast ; — and the genius of 
 our countryman conceived the novel idea of so framing his nar- 
 rative, as to make it illustrate the radical differences, in operation 
 and effect, of the policy of the new world, in opposition to that 
 of the old. There was yet another reason for this change of 
 scene and material. Mr. Cooper entertained a notion, expressed 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 223 
 
 in some one or more of his prefaces, that the literary material of 
 his own country was too limited and too deficient in variety, to 
 admit of frequent employment. He thought it too easily ex- 
 hausted, and though he did not say so, it was very evident, at that 
 time, that he thought he himself had already exhausted it. We 
 need scarcely say that we think all this a very great error. In 
 Mr. Cooper's hands, no doubt, there would be a want of variety ; 
 not because of any deficiency in the material, but, simply, be- 
 cause the mind of Mr. Cooper is limited in its grasp. It is too 
 individual in its aims and agencies, — does not often vary, but ra- 
 ther multiplies the same forms, characters, images and objects, 
 through different media — now enlarging and now depressing them 
 — now throwing them into greater shadow, and now brino-ing them 
 out into stronger light — seldom entirely discarding them for others, 
 and we should think not easily capable of doing so. His charac- 
 ters are uniformly the same, his incidents are seldom varied ; — 
 the whole change which he effects in his story, consists in new 
 combinations of the same circumstances, heightened, now and 
 then, by auxiliary events, which are seldom of much additional 
 importance. In Indian life and sailor life, he was almost uni- 
 formly successful — for the simple reason, that such stories called 
 simply for the display of individual character. They enabled 
 him to devote his genius, as would be always the desire of his 
 mind, to a single object. He took a single captive, after the man- 
 ner of Sterne, and drew from him, whether in success or suffer- 
 ing, the whole interest of his story. Whenever it became neces- 
 sary to deal with groups, as in Lionel Lincoln, he failed. To 
 manage the progress of one leading personage, and to concentrate 
 in his portraiture his whole powers, has been the invariable secret 
 of Mr. Cooper's success. We very soon lose all interest in his sub- 
 ordinates. Take away from his stories one or two of the person- 
 ages, and the rest are the merest puppets. The Spy contained the 
 best specimens of his grouping, but a large portion of it depended 
 entirely on Harvey Birch, and, to so great a degree was this dis- 
 parity carried, in the use of his dramatis personoe, that, in some 
 of the scenes between the Spy and Henry Wharton, the latter al- 
 most sinks into contempt, in consequence of his strangr feebleness 
 or deficiencies of character. Mr. Cooper possesses some of the 
 
224 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 mental and physical characteristics of Lord Byron, in similar de- 
 gree. He is equally a person of strong will, great impetuosity 
 of character, and intense self-esteem. Such persons inevitably 
 concentrate themselves upon a few objects of interest ; and to 
 these they devote themselves wiih a gush of enthusiasm, which, to 
 minds of less one-sidedness, is either amusing or astonishing. So 
 in their social characteristics, — so in their loves and hates, — the 
 one object of regard, for the time being, driving out of sight every 
 other. This is caused by a peculiar organization. It is the pre- 
 ponderance of blood, which, not preventing or baffling the mind, 
 yet impels its exercise in one direction, and confers upon it a mar- 
 vellous strength in doing so. Such writers — and Milton partook 
 of this — and hence his tragedy of Paradise Lost became a poem 
 — and hence his dramas are all monologues — such writers, throw 
 their whole souls into one or more characters, and make all the 
 rest subordinate. Such was particularly the case with Lord By- 
 ron. His Harold and Giaour, and Lara, and Manfred, and Se- 
 lim., are all, in greater or less degree, modifications of the same 
 character. His Sardanapalus and Juan, are the same persons 
 also, though in a rather better humour, possibly, from the better 
 digestion of the author at the time of writing. It would not be 
 difficult to trace Mr. Cooper's one ideal through all his novels. 
 Even in the Bravo, one of his European works, we find the Pilot 
 and Natty Bumppo, where we should least look for them, in the 
 person of Jacopo, the assassin of Venice. 
 
 The writer of European romance, unquestionably, possesses 
 greater resources in history than he who confines himself to what 
 is purely American. Time, which hallows all that he touches, 
 had there laid away precious stores for centuries, long before the 
 new world was opened to the eye of European day. The an- 
 tiquities of the old world are so many treasures of fiction, to at- 
 tain which, the critic of the American story, must task his inven- 
 tion. But this privilege is left him — this cannot be denied ; and, 
 ])0Rsessed of the requisite resources of imagination, he needs but 
 a slender skein of raw material — a solitary item — a fragmentary 
 fiict — a word — an action, — and his mind instantly conceives the 
 plan and purpose, out of which he fabricates the divine, and most 
 enduring forms of art. 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 225 
 
 Persuaded of the inadequacy of native resource, — struck with 
 the novelty of European customs and superstitions, — and, most 
 probably, anxious to measure lances, on their own ground, with 
 the great masters of the art in Europe, Mr. Cooper followed up 
 his American stories, with a series which were wholly foreign. 
 The first and best of these was the Bravo. This was succeeded 
 by the Heidenmauer, the Headsman, &c. It is doubtful whether 
 these works maintained the reputation of Mr. Cooper abroad. 
 They certainly failed to do so at home. Yet they were not fail- 
 ures. They contained many beautiful scenes, — .some fine m.oral 
 and dramatic pictures — occasionally a touching, and sometimes, 
 a thrilling incident, managed with great art, and of excelling 
 beauty — such, for example, as was the murder of the Fisherman 
 by the Venetian Police on the lagune at midnight, contained in the 
 Romance of the Bravo. In some respects these works were an 
 improvement on the American. Their style was better, the plots 
 more intricate, and, though still inartistical, showed more pains- 
 taking and better management. Their stories, however — overlaid 
 with discussion and remarks on the effect of laws and institutions 
 upon countries, men and rhanners — were inferior in interest — 
 there was less felicitous display of scenery, and, as the author was 
 less confident of his knowledge, much of the description was vague, 
 and the characters, framed under hurried glimpses and imperfect 
 observation, were necessarily formal and frigid, wanting in earn- 
 estness and life, slow in action, and feeble in will and purpose. 
 
 To these succeeded a satirical work entitled the 'Monnikms, 
 which was followed by a " Letter to his Countrymen." These 
 performances, which are among the least popular of the numeroufs 
 writings of our author, are among those which have contributed 
 in latter days to lessen his popularity and subtract, whether justly 
 or not, from his well earned claims to pre-eminence, as among the 
 first writers of his age. For the proper understanding of Mr. C.'s 
 position we must rise to a consideration of other subjects. jj 
 
 Mr. Cooper is a man, as we have already indicated, very much 
 given to intensifying every subject which affects his mind ; — a 
 man of that earnest, and not easily satisfied temper, who reso- 
 lutely perseveres in what he undertakes, and in the prosecution 
 of inquiry or argument, is very apt to probe a matter to the 
 
 16 
 
226 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 bottom, without giving much heed to the sensibility he wounds. 
 Such men are necessary in every age for the progress of truth, 
 and they incur always the penalties of the reformer. If not cru- 
 cified or stoned, they are pelted by missiles of one sort or an- 
 other, the principal of which, in our day, are defamation and 
 slander. In Europe, Mr. Cooper was soon made aware of the 
 humble, and even contemptuous estimate, which was every where 
 put upon the American character. We, at home, urged by our 
 own vanities, and miserably bemocked by the spurious flatteries 
 of false prophets, — scbool-boy orators and selfish demagogues, — 
 are really of opinion that we not only are, but are universally re- 
 garded as, one of tlie greatest people on the face of the earth. 
 Of this folly and falsehood, Mr. Cooper undertakes to disabuse us. 
 He discovered, very soon after being in Europe, that we were 
 thought a very small people. Our national and narrow economy 
 seldom permitted any proper displays abroad of our national po\ver, 
 and such as were made were supposed to be rather discreditable 
 than otherwise. The people of the Continent knew us chiefly by 
 British opinions, which were, usually, not merely unfavourable, 
 but scornful in the last degree. This opinion found its expres- 
 sion in a thousand ways. It was the habitual language of the 
 Englishman when the name of American was spoken ; and Mr. 
 Cooper records it as a fact, known to himself as to every body 
 that ever travelled on the Continent, that nothing was more com- 
 mon than the practice of the British traveller, to write, on the 
 books kept at the public houses in the chief cities, the most con- 
 temptuous comments, on himself and country, in connection with 
 the recorded name of every American. The people of the Con- 
 tinent could easily believe the propriety and justice of this scorn; 
 for, as the Englishman himself was odious among them, by rea- 
 son of his bad manners, and as they just knew enough of our 
 history to know that we are sprung from the same stocks with 
 him, it was not difficult to arrive at the conclusion, that, what he 
 himself said of his descendant was likely to be true enough. 
 Ther~ were other reasons why they should be easy of faith on this 
 subject Certain young Americans had been behaving badly 
 among them ; thrusting themselves by various arts upon society; 
 begging and borrowing money, and indulging in other practices, 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 227 
 
 scarcely less dishonourable, which naturally cast a stigma upon 
 the nation with which they were identified. Mr. Cooper, a proud 
 man, felt this condition of things like a pang : — an impetuous 
 man, he undertook, in some measure, to correct them. He spoke 
 out his defiance to the English, by whom his nation was slander- 
 ed ; and freely denounced the spurious Americans, by whom the 
 country was disgraced. After this, it did not need that he should 
 publish satirical books in order to make enemies and meet de- 
 nunciation. His hostility to the English secured it to him in suf- 
 ficient abundance from the British press ; and his unsparing re- 
 proof of the young Americans, provoking not only their anger, 
 but that of their friends, was quite enough to engage against him 
 the active hostility of numberless enemies among the newspapers, 
 and even the literary journals, in this country. Our readers 
 need not be told, that, in such a torrent of news and literary papers 
 (so called) with which the American w'orld is flooded, it is not 
 possible for many among them to possess a tone or character of 
 their ow-n. In opinion, as in action, a few lead the way and the 
 rest follow. It was enough that the British press denounced Mr. 
 Cooper, for the American press, very generally, to denounce him 
 likewise. It would be a day of independence, truly, when we 
 should throw off our servile faith in the justice of British judg- 
 ment, and the superiority of British opinion. To this, the vir- 
 ulence of personal and party antipathy gave additional tongues, 
 and the consequence was, that, while Mr. Cooper was most busy 
 in asserting our character and defending our institutions abroad, 
 the press at home was equally busy in denouncing him for his pains. 
 It might have been an easy part for an ordinary American 
 writer to have played in Great Britain. It is so still. You have 
 but to frame your books so as to flatter English nobility — concili- 
 ate their prejudices, — show the most habitual deference for their 
 preposterous claims to controlling dignity — studiously forbear all 
 freedom of opinion — all independence of thought — and let them 
 see that you value a breakfast with Mr. Rogers, as a matter of 
 too serious importance to be foregone for the pitiful object of prov- 
 ing that you are at once a man and an American. If you caa 
 wholly suppress the latter fact, it is all the better for you — for 
 your success, at least, in getting your breakfast with Rogers or 
 
228 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Christopher Nortli, and partaking of the splendid enjoyments of 
 Almacks, under the auspices of Lady Jersey. 
 
 Mr. Cooper was not the man for this. He was not the man to 
 make improper and unbecoming concessions, either on his own 
 part, or on the part of his country. His nature led him to defi- 
 ance, to resistance, to the unmeasured language of his resent- 
 ment. We do not say that he was altogether wise in this. It is 
 one thing to submit to indignity — it is another to be forever on the 
 look-out, as if expecting to meet it. We are not so sure that Mr. 
 Cooper was not wrong sometimes in his impetuosity — in his vio- 
 lence of tone and manner. There are some things in his deport- 
 ment, as shown in his own travels, which we are constrained to 
 disapprove and censure ; and we are apprehensive that he some- 
 times mistook the burly defiance of the backwoodsman for the 
 calm, manly tone of gentlemanly independence. This charge 
 has been made against him. We do not make it. We are 
 afraid, however, that the inference may be drawn fairly from 
 some passages of his own writings, in his book of travels in 
 England. His game, while in that country, for the proper de- 
 fence of his own, was to " carry the war into Africa." To re- 
 tort upon them their own charges, — to show them the mirror for 
 self-reflection, — and to prove that they, too, were made of pene- 
 trable stuff. Mr. Cooper, of all our literary men abroad, seems 
 to have been almost the only one who did not sink his American- 
 ism — who strove to maintain it, and employed his cudgel, when- 
 ever his country was defamed, with the able hand and the hearty 
 good-will and courage of a sailor. Whatever his errors may 
 have been, they are more than redeemed in our eyes by his stur- 
 dy, uncompromising attachment to his country. And who can 
 prescribe to the wronged and the indignant, what shall be the 
 measure of his anger? — who shall say, in such and such terms 
 only shall you speak out your feelings ? It is for the greatly in- 
 jured to determine for themselves what shall be their measure of 
 redress. At all events, it was the unkindest fortune, that, while 
 Mr. Cooper was thus doing battle for his countrymen, abroad, — 
 whatever may have been the propriety of his course, — he should 
 not only not find sympathy at home, but, on the contrary, rebuke. 
 At that time, several of our newspapers were either wholly, or in 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 229 
 
 part, conducted by foreigners. These naturally had sympathies 
 only with the countries from which they came. They naturally 
 watched the progress of the foreign controversy, and took sides 
 with their own countrymen. Communications from abroad ap- 
 peared in our literary and other journals, furnishing accounts of 
 the affair, as may be supposed, hostile to Mr. Cooper. Among a 
 class of our literary papers, such communications were particu- 
 larly acceptable. No matter whom they disparaged, in what de- 
 gree of defamation — no matter what prurient displays of vice 
 were made, — what morals' suffered here, or what character was 
 defamed or slandered in Europe. It was taken for granted — and 
 was, indeed, a truth too little to be questioned — that there was a 
 morbid hungering, on the part of a large class of American pre- 
 tenders, to be duly apprized of the doings abroad, particularly of 
 the excesses of the English fashionable world; and some of the 
 most atrocious revelations, fatal to female character, and garnish- 
 ed with the most brutal details of vice, were made by anonymous 
 foreign correspondents, in publications which were especially ad- 
 dressed to American ladies. With foreign editors and foreign 
 correspondents, each having, it would seem, carte hlanchej Mr. 
 Cooper, like every other subject of notoriety or distinction, had 
 the usual risk of defamation to encounter. To these, in his case, 
 is to be added the hostility of party, which he had provoked by an 
 imprudent pamphlet, the " Letter to his Countrymen." This 
 performance took the republican or democratic side with the 
 Jackson dynasty, at the time of its fierce conflict with the old 
 United States Bank. It was not wanting in ability. Some 
 portions of the writer's argument were new and ingenious, and 
 much of it was interesting. But the performance, as a whole, 
 was in bad taste. It lacked congruity. It mixed up various 
 matters of examination and complaint, — an olla podrida of litera- 
 ry, personal and political grievance ; which, however well enough 
 discussed, if separate, were yet oddly put together, in such a 
 manner as to impair the value and the force of all. The supe- 
 rior egotism of tone which pervaded it, was not its least misfor- 
 tune and defect. This brought into the field a new and more 
 bitter host of enemies — unscrupulous as the first, and with inter- 
 ests more actively involved in the pressing concerns of party,— ^' 
 
230 VLEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 such as never suffer any resti'aints of justice or veneration to 
 impede them in their utterance. Nobody thought much of com- 
 bating Mr. Cooper's opinions, but all seemed at once impressed 
 with the impertinence of a literary man presuming to entertain a 
 political opinion at all. Even those who concurred whh the 
 views of Mr. Cooper, seemed equally to concur with his assail- 
 ants, in the absurd notion that his literary pursuits effectually ex- 
 cluded him from any right to give them utterance. Of his pru- 
 dence in doing so, as a selfish man, thinking only of the success 
 of his forthcoming publication, we, of course, offer no opinion. 
 Enough, in this place, to add, that it is to be regretted, not that 
 our literary men do not more frequently engage in politics, but 
 that our politicians are not more generally literary men — at all 
 events, not so \ery illiterate. Some increase of political decency 
 might be the fruit of their improvement in this respect. 
 
 The warfare waged against Mr. Cooper was neither just nor 
 generous. Envy loves always a shining mark. Dulness hates 
 distinction. He had offended party, which is the most brutal of 
 all assailants — a gross, blind savage, equally curbless, pitiless 
 and conscienceless. He had offended some small Americans 
 abroad, who were eager, under the cover of patriotism, or any 
 Other cover, to revenge their petty personal grievances. Besides, 
 he had reached that eminence, which, making his name a famil- 
 iar and accepted word, was the sufficient reason with the envious 
 and the mean for passing upon him the sentence of ostracism. 
 He must be voted into banishment. This, perhaps, is the ordi- 
 nary penalty of distinction. It is the fate of all superiority. 
 The lot of genius is most commonly isolation. It is not a charge 
 which can be peculiarly addressed to the American people, that 
 they leave their own prophets to disesteem. But Mr. Cooper, 
 lacking the humility of the prophet, was necessarily exposed to 
 that greater odium with which injustice resents every effort to 
 disparage or deny its judgments. His egotism of character lefl 
 him particularly exposed to the missiles of their ridicule. He 
 had conceived the notion that foreign governments were concern- 
 ed and busy in putting him down ; and that, to this cause, he 
 was indebted for the daily assaults to which he was subjected. 
 But for the intense self-esteem which distinguishes his mind, this 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 231 
 
 notion never would have troubled it. He would have kndwn, in 
 the first place, that politicians generally have been of that mole- 
 breed, which knows nothing of the above-ground workings of lit- 
 erature. They annex too little importance, for their own and 
 the good of the country, to the makers of books and ballads — 
 though these build up and overturn empires. Motives much 
 more reasonable, and sufficiently numerous, were not wanting for 
 these attacks. We have, in part, already assigned them. But 
 malice, envy, vanity and party, are never in want of motives for 
 the destruction of those who stand in their sunshine, or obstruct 
 their performances ; and with their victim pointed out, the " little 
 dogs and all, Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart," were soon in full 
 cry after their distinguished and common enemy. The little 
 dogs of literature needed but to be set on. It was quite an event, 
 calculated to raise them vastly in their own eyes and that of their 
 neighbours, to be seen engaged in the noble business of worrying 
 any more majestic form ; and half the two-penny sheets, of dirty 
 yellow, from Squam Beach to Little Harkaway Swamp, on the 
 elbow of Oregon, were eager in squirting out their small supplies 
 of storm, from the tubs in which they churned it, as the weekly 
 periodical supply was demanded. The impatience of Mr. Cooper, 
 which would not suffer him to wait, and his self-esteem, which 
 would not suffer him to place a just estimate on his assailants, 
 hurried him still farther into this unwise controversy. When 
 we use the word controversy, we do not employ it in a very 
 literal acceptation. He did not challenge them to, or meet them 
 in, any direct discussion. But he put them into his books, and 
 this was quite a compliment, which, however unintended by him, 
 was very undeserved by them. Besides, of what avail to show up 
 one of these creatures in his proper light, when the country is so 
 full of them, that they are sufficiently numerous and strong to 
 give one another support and countenance. This, by the way, is 
 one of the greatest evils to which our American literature is ex- 
 posed. The pretender-critics are so numerous and so noisy, that 
 it is no wonder they succeed so frequently, and for so long a 
 time, in imposing false standards upon the several circles which 
 look to the current press for all the supplies of literary aliment 
 which they crave. It is a question with many on which side to 
 
232 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 look for their authorities. With a poor people, now for the first 
 time beginning to have a hankering after letters, nothing can be 
 more natural than that they should turn lo those who, while sell- 
 ing their wares at the most moderate price, are, at the same time, 
 the most clamorous on the subject of their merits. Quack litera- 
 ture resorts to the same arts with quack medicine, and quacks of 
 all sorts have been, from all times, the most pompous and presu- 
 ming. They making up in mouthing what they lack in merit ; 
 in insolence what they lack in strength ; and are hostile to the 
 really honest and intellectual, in due degree with the conscious- 
 ness of their own lamentable deficiencies. It did not diminish 
 the rancour of this tribe, in regard to Mr. Cooper, tliat he singled 
 out one of their number as a victim. His Mr. Editor Dodge, 
 making some small allowances for the usual exaggerations of 
 satire, was a very just portrait. There are many such scatter- 
 ed broad-cast over our country — living on its vices — its gross ap- 
 petites, its base passions, and numerous irregularities; and pan- 
 dering to tastes and desires, which are equally shocking to man- 
 hood and morality. The prying presumption of this person ; his 
 utter want of principle ; his arrogance at one moment, and syco- 
 phancy at another ; his blind allegiance to majorities; and the ig- 
 norance which keeps equal pace with, and affords at all times the 
 happiest commentary on, his pretension, — all these characteristics 
 were well hit off, and happily illustrated, in the example selected 
 by Mr. Cooper. This character, as a character, has been loudly 
 denied vraisemhiance by all those who must have felt its truth. It 
 is an exaggeration, certainly, but in all substantial respects it is 
 true. The exaggerations were only such as were necessary to 
 raise the relief, and bring out the person into that pillory sort of 
 prominence which was desirable for the purposes of satire. But 
 the books in which this character was made to play so notorious 
 a part, were unwise and improper books. In writing them, Mr. 
 Cooper proved that he was angry — in publishing them, he proved 
 that he was unjust. The satire which was deserved by his edit- 
 or, and the sarcasm which was justly due to a particular set, or 
 entire sets, in his own neighbourhood, was a slander upon the 
 country at large. Mr. Cooper committed the precise error which 
 is so much the error and offence of British travellers among us, 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 233 
 
 that ot confounding the commercial metropolis with the country. 
 We protest, again and again, against the false assumption, that 
 the city of New York is to be taken as a fair sample of the char- 
 acteristics of the United States. Will Boston suffer the compar- 
 ison, or Baltimore ? Sure are we that there is nothing of the 
 same local and moral influences predominating in Charleston and 
 Savannah ; and that the sturdy and simple agricultural popula- 
 tion of our vast interior, — a sincere and manly people — generous 
 and just — incapable of fraud and falsehood — ignorant of any of 
 the arts by which these are made successful and maintained 
 without discredit — that these should be supposed guilty of the 
 rank vices and excesses, and miserable vanities, which lead to 
 worse vices and excesses in city life, is beyond all doubt a calum- 
 ny, and beyond all measure an injustice. True it is, that, in the 
 smaller cities, a class will be found always, who, ignorant of 
 any other means of acquiring distinction, emulate the gaudy follies 
 of the metropolis, — and seek by queer equipage and dress — by 
 monstrous fashions, and affectations, which discredit decency and 
 sense, — to draw upon themselves attention. But this notice is 
 generally contempt. The great body of the people go on their 
 way, and smile, if scorn will let them, at the miserable vanities 
 which betray a man into a monster, — a god into the fashion and 
 appearance of an ape. Such persons, in all the smaller commu- 
 nities, are few in number, and totally without influence. They 
 neither control in society, in morals or in politics, and live apart, 
 keeping each other in heart and company, by that sympathy and 
 support which they could never derive from any other quarter. 
 Their insignificance should secure a community from any gene- 
 ral sarcasm and discredit which their doings may have provoked. 
 It may be urged that Mr. Cooper had no design in " Home as 
 Found," to make his satire general, — that his home, as found, 
 was meant to be the small province in which his domestic gods 
 were set up; and that his satire was purely local, instead of gen- 
 eral. Unhappily, then, he has so managed his work, that his 
 censure sweeps every thing before it. This is the great danger 
 in the preparation of such works. It is difficult to say where the 
 line is to be drawn which limits the application of the satire. One 
 is scarcely prepared, in the first place, to believe that a man of 
 
234 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 genius and judgment is willing to expend so much thunder on so 
 diminutive an object. The foreigner certainly does not believe 
 ^ it ; and for us at homo, we are apprehensive that, in the hurry of 
 Mr. Cooper's indignation, and the warmth of his anger, he con- 
 founded with his particular enemies the whole American people, 
 and made comnion war against them. It is in the nature of such 
 a mind as Mr. Cooper's to do. heartily, as well as hurriedly, what- 
 ever he undertakes. He is apt to generalize too much from small 
 becinnings. His " Travelling Bachelor" was full of proofs to 
 this eflfect. That was published as " Notions of the Americans." 
 It was very evident that the work should have been called, " No- 
 tions of the New Yorkers and New Englanders." It showed 
 very little acquaintance with the South and West. " Homeward 
 Bound" and " Home as Found," were no doubt true to a certain 
 extent. We do not speak of them now as stories. We presume 
 the author never considered them as such. They were truthful, 
 so far as the satire was confined to certain classes and circles. 
 They were false, so far as they were made to apply to the char- 
 acteristics of the American people. . It was Mr. Cooper's error to 
 have written these books in a moment of great personal feeling — 
 when the freshness of provocation was stirring in his mind, — 
 when, suffering from injustice, his anger was naturally without 
 measure. There was unquestionably much that deserved the 
 keenest satire and the severest censure. The chief cities were 
 diseased to an enormous extent. Their evil influences were 
 spreading to the country. The rankness of trade and speculation 
 had overrun the land ; its vices were fast usurping the place of 
 virtues — fraud was a bold politician, prescribing laws for the peo- 
 ple, and matters for government, as if the propriety of his exist- 
 ence were no longer matter of dispute ; — bankruptcy was the most 
 profitable of all pursuits — labour was every where driven out of 
 sight as too base for toleration ; and sleight-of-hand was the great 
 principle which determined the degrees of eminence and the re- 
 wards of service. The most dextrous was the best man, and his 
 profits were assigned accordingly. Verily, a censor was needed ; 
 a terrible censor, dreadful in rebuke, armed with a flail of thun- 
 der, for the work of retribution. It was not in the power of an 
 ordinary satirist to do this work. Long impunity, and constantly 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 235 
 
 increasing numbers, had made the criminals bold and reckless. 
 They laughed at ordinary reproof, they mocked at wisdom, and 
 despised censure. Mr. Cooper would have written in vain, as 
 others did, but that providence works out the good of man by 
 laws, which, however natural, are not so obvious to him in the 
 blindness of his passion, or the greedy hurry of his avarice. A 
 terrible punishment was preparing for the excesses of our people, 
 — unhappily, a fate which has made the innocent pay the debts 
 of the guilty, — which has swept all with a common besom. The 
 laws of industry, common sense and common honesty, are not 
 to be long outraged with impunity ; and the recoil came and the 
 retribution, — and we are — w^hat need not be said — what we are 
 now, and — so far as mere social prosperity is concerned — what, it 
 is feared, we must very long remain. In morals, we trust there 
 is improvement. God works out his purposes to this end, and he 
 does not often work in vain. We are pleased to think, and some- 
 \vhat proud to say, that, touched by adversity, scourged by the 
 just judgments of Heaven, we are an improving people. Vice is 
 less audacious, — pride less boastful, — labour more honourable, — 
 truth better esteemed, if not yet wholly triumphant. 
 
 Mr. Cooper committed two errors when he wrote his satires — 
 the one much more decided than the other. He wrote them at 
 the wrong time, and he wrote them in the wrong spirit. Vanity 
 listens to no homily in the full sunshine of its day. Pride hears 
 no warninsr, when the homage of vulgar admiration fills its ears. 
 Trade hearkens to no admonitions of prudence, or of principle, in 
 the full tide of a seemingly successful speculation. Mr. Cooper 
 wrote the books which proved so offensive to the American people, 
 at a time when an angel from heaven would have spoken to them 
 in vain, — when, besotted with the boldest dreams of fortune that 
 ever diseased the imagination of avarice, they seemed to have lost 
 the usual faculties of thought, prudence and observation — when, 
 they appeared to think they had but to will, and presto, they won 
 — to lift a finger, and, as at the wand of a magician, the waters 
 flowed with sparkling treasures, and the sands glittered with the 
 precious metal. The Spaniards in Peru or Mexico were never 
 half so bedevilled with their own imaginings, as were the people 
 of our trading cities within our recent remembrance. Our mer- 
 
236 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 chants assumed the port of princes, and the Merchant-Princes of 
 the Adriatic never loomed out with a more dazzling and deter- 
 mined ostentation. 
 
 Was it likely, that, swollen with prid^ gloating over their im- 
 aginary treasures, and swaggering with the affectations of fashion, 
 borrowed from the old fools — and young ones — of older countries, 
 they should listen to any censor, receive any counsel, tolerate 
 with patience any rebuke ? The attempt of Mr. Cooper was un- 
 seasonable, and only vexed them. They wished praise only, — 
 nothing more, — praise from any quarter, — they had stomachs for 
 no stronger aliment. They had flattered the foreigner to secure 
 this praise. They had run with headlong speed to hail the ad- 
 vent of English Lord and English Lady, — had spread their din- 
 ner cloths, and thrown wide their saloons and ball-rooms and 
 theatres — asking only for praise. That their own countrymen 
 should withhold the precious condiment — should, like the foreign- 
 er, find fault only — was an offence not to be forgiven. Nay, 
 there was some reason for their anger. The censure of Mr. 
 Cooper was not expressed in the right spirit. The tone of " Home- 
 ward Bound," and " Home as Found,'*' was bad. It expressed 
 the language of querulousness and distaste, if not disgust. It was 
 written less in sorrow than in anger, as if the writer took a ma- 
 licious delight in singling out the sore spots, which it had been 
 the better purpose of the patriot to hide if he could not heal. He 
 showed himself more disposed to revenge his own hurts and inju- 
 ries than to amend the faults of his countrymen. Besides, as we 
 have already said, he was unjust because too sweeping in his con- 
 demnation. This was the consequence of writing in his anger. 
 Passion has no powers of discrimination, and the wilful mind 
 will exercise none. But if Mr. Cooper's censure had been just 
 in all respects, and in its entire application, it must have failed 
 of any good result at the time of its utterance. It was unseason- 
 able, and therefore impolitic and unwi.se. 
 
 We give Mr. Cooper credit for good motives in spite of this im- 
 prudence. We regard the promptings as patriotic which drove 
 him to his task. These, no doubt, were farther stimulated by his 
 personal feelings. But this does not alter the case. In the in- 
 stance of the sanguine temperament, the personal man always 
 
THE WRITINGS OF J. FENIMORE COOPER. 237 
 
 enters actively into the principles. The heart co-operates with 
 the head, the blood impels the intellect, and hence the rare ener- 
 gy with which sucli persons commence and carry on their works. 
 The patriotism of Mr. Cooper has always been a'striking trait in his 
 character and writings. It is conspicuous in all his performances. 
 How fondly he dwells, even in his foreign books, while discus- 
 sing their in.stitutions, on the superiority of our own. How ready 
 he is to do battle in their behalf. This very readiness was one 
 of the first occasions of offence which he gave to those cold-blooded 
 Americans, who were content to truckle abroad for their porridge, 
 silent when their nation was openly scorned, and snatching their 
 miserable pittance of bread and society from the very hands that 
 were lifted in I'eprobation of their country. As we have already 
 said, the Americanism of Mr. Cooper would move us to forgive 
 him all his faults, were they twice as many. That he should 
 come home to censure ours, was equally the proof, though an un- 
 wise one, of his honest and fearless patriotism. 
 
 Of this patriotism he has given a noble instance in his hearty 
 and well-told history of our navy. In this book he has shown 
 himself an equally good critic and historian. We commend 
 him to the similar duty of preparing a select biography of 
 our noblest naval commanders. The subject is worthy of his 
 pen, and can no where find a better biographer. Our limits do 
 not suffer us to remark upon his several works of foreign travel, 
 and those tales which have succeeded them. The former labour, 
 ed under the misfortune of being published long after the period 
 when they were written, — thus, losing in their freshness, and being 
 necessarily imperfect with regard to the existing facts, — speaking 
 for a past and not a present time. Of the novels, " Mercedes of 
 Castile" and the " Path-Finder," we need only say that our gene- 
 ral remarks on the structure of Mr. Cooper's former stories, will 
 equally apply to them. Of the " Two Admirals," we have al- 
 ready expressed all the opinion necessary for the reader's judg- 
 ment. Neither of these works do we regard as comparable to 
 his " Spy," " Pilot," " Mohicans," and " Pioneers." Still they 
 are all interesting, — full of the picturesque, full of sense, and con- 
 taining matters for reflection, which deserve, and will reward, the 
 attention of any reader. We see with satisfaction that we are 
 
238 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 soon to have another story fronn his pen. We are glad of this for 
 two reasons. We always read his books with great pleasure; 
 and we rejoice at this annunciation, as it affords another proof 
 that the terms of relation between this favourite author and his 
 countrymen, are becoming every day more and more grateful to 
 the amenities, equally of patriotism and letters. 
 
WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 
 
 LIBRARY OF 
 
 AMERICAN BOOKS. 
 VIEWS AND REVIEAVS 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS 
 
 IN 
 
 AMERICAN LITERATUEE, 
 
 HISTORY AND FICTION. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE YEMASSEE," " LIFE OF MARION," "HISTORY OP SOUTH CAROLINA, 
 " RICHARD HURDIS," &c., &.c. 
 
 SECOND SERIES. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 
 
 1845. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 
 
 WILEY AND PUTNAM, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
VIEWS AiND REVIEWS. 
 
 ARTICLE I. 
 DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS.* 
 
 We do not review this volume with any particular v/ish to set 
 Mrs. Trollope right in any of her errors and misstatements. She, 
 we are disposed to think, from the temper betrayed in her narra- 
 tive, would be very loth to be deprived of the peculiar and 
 perhaps valuable literary capital with which she enters the Lon- 
 don market. That she scarcely goes abroad with a good con- 
 science ; that she is not the one who travels to learn, and studies 
 to amend — herself as well as others — need not be shown to 
 those who undertake the perusal of her book. Its blunders 
 might escape detection among the ignorant : her tastes and moods 
 could scarcely be so fortunate. We confess to the absence of 
 any charitable desire, in what we have to say, of showing her 
 the error of her ways ; — not only because we fancy the work 
 would be one of utter supererogation — a sheer waste of benevo- 
 lence and Christian temper, — but because there might, even in a 
 successful endeavour of the sort, be supposed a somewhat un- 
 patriotic concession to that hostile temper, which brings us, in the 
 shape of travellers, so many representatives annually from Great 
 Britain, whose dislikes and prejudices are too notorious to leave 
 it becoming in the American to meet them with other feelings 
 than those of indifTerence and scorn. They do not come to form 
 opinions, but, if possible, to confirm them — not to dissipate preju- 
 
 * Domestic Manners of the Americans. By Mrs. Trollope. London: Whit- 
 taker, Treacher & Co. New York : reprinted, 1832. 
 PART. II. 1 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 dices, but to fortify thein by all that ingenuity can torture into 
 proofs in support of antipathies which seem to be the natural re- 
 sult of the peculiar relationship between this and the mother 
 country. Mrs. Trollope possesses all the virtues of this class, 
 with some, the fruit of her personal fortunes, which are honestly 
 her own. Slie carries with her all those characteristics of mood, 
 common to the Bull family, which leaves it doubtful whether 
 they could travel any where, into whatever country, without the 
 too conspicuous exhibition of tlicir horns. The mistakes of this 
 good woman are numerous enough, but ratlier, we are inclined 
 to think, the fault of licr education, — wliich seems to have been 
 pure Cockney, witii a little more of flippancy than the usual in- 
 anity of such a training seems to require, — and not because of 
 any perverse or malicious inclination to do mischief, or to wan- 
 der from the truth. She is simply one whom previous studies 
 and associations have left peculiarly unprepared for any compre- 
 hensive survey of her kind and kin. She is a person of quick, 
 but vulgar intelligence ; a lively but a coarse fancy ; a shrewd 
 thinker where her personal interests are involved, but just with 
 that degree of shrewdness, born of the narrowest devotion to 
 self, which opens its eyes only on tlie one side of the matter 
 most agreeable, and shuts them obstinately against every thing 
 that makes against it. AVith a will of her own, a frank and for- 
 ward spirit, some small literary acquisitions, such as enable her 
 to know what has been done by genius, without being a sharer or 
 sympathizer with the sublime nature which it embodies and aims 
 to bring into fit development, she may be considered a very clever 
 person of her class — has a talent for coarse satire — can depict an 
 every-day scene with considerable spirit, spicing it with mali- 
 cious interpretation, and colouring it with those hues of jaundice 
 which alone can make an American landscape tolerable to a Bri- 
 tish eye ; and, altogether, she can manufacture a volume for the 
 press, which, like the present, shall have a run, and by its viva- 
 city, its lively satire, and its very coarseness, find readers whom 
 it will amuse even among those who are most slandered in its 
 pages. Such is her talent, and such the temper in which she 
 employs it in her comments upon the manners of the Americans. 
 It does not n])pear that she has any misgivings that she is not al- 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 3 
 
 ways right. Her mind is too eager, too masculine, too little scru- 
 pulous for that. But, with a sort of modesty which is purely con- 
 ventional, she begs us to make this reservation in her favor. It 
 is possible that she may have erred here and there in her pro- 
 gress —she may have jumped to the wrong conclusions. This is 
 possible — barely possible ; and she begs us, occasionally, as we 
 advance, to ascribe all such inaccuracies to the simple and single 
 defect of vision, mental or physical. She goes even farther, and 
 is assiduously urgent — in the hearing of her company, at least — 
 in discarding from her speech all shows of those preferences and 
 prejudices, whether of birthplace or of education, which she seems 
 sometimes disposed to admit, may have the effect, even in a Bri- 
 tish eye, of giving their own hues and aspects to many of the ob- 
 jects of foreign survey and speculation. This, too, is a very 
 British practice. Most of the English travellers, about to set forth 
 for other countries, begin by telling you how utterly free they 
 have made themselves from all prejudices. Believe them, and 
 they have put off the training, the impressions, the modes of think- 
 ing and feeling, natural to a long life, with as much coolness and 
 ease as if they were so many worn-out and unfashionable gar- 
 ments. Some of them, the better to secure confidence in the ve- 
 racity of their representations, in regard to America, go so far as 
 to insist upon their own pure democracy while at home; of which 
 (their blessings be to Providence for the revelation which unseals 
 their eyes !) their experience of democracy, as shown by its work- 
 ings in America, has had the effect of curing them forever. It does 
 not strike us that the good woman who writes this book ventures 
 upon a farce quite so broad as this ; but she requires us to confide 
 in assurances that are substantially quite as absurd, since this di- 
 vesting ourselves of the prejudices of a life, when setting forth 
 among strangers, is a moral impossibility. It is just at such a 
 time that the prejudices of home and early training become stron- 
 ger than ever. The mind studiously brings them forward in re- 
 sistance and actual opposition to the novel aspects of society — the 
 novel assaults of opinion which it is always destined, in foreign 
 places, to encounter ; and the traveller becomes more and more 
 solicitous to maintain his preconceived opinions in proportion to his 
 own individuality and the degree of self-esteem which distinguishes 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 his mental organization. Mrs. Trollope is one of the most stub- 
 born of this (k'scrij)tiun. IJer self-esteem, modified by her sex 
 into a quality not less aetivc and influential because less dogged 
 and obtrusive, is perhaps more subtle because of this very modifica- 
 tion ; and it makes its appearance in all lier wanderings, whatever 
 may be the scene, and no matter who may be the parties to the 
 action. We are sorry, for her sake, that such is the case ; since 
 the just mind is but poorly compensated by the success of its la- 
 bours, and the approbation of those to whom they are addressed, if 
 disturbed by a solitary doubt of the perfect truth of those state- 
 ments by which wrong may be done toothers. We are not unwil- 
 ling, as an oflset to this disturbing doubt, that she should enjoy the 
 full benefit of those reservations to which she begs our attention. 
 We are not unwilling to suppose that her errors have been the 
 fruit of her blindness rather than her wilfulness ; that she has wan- 
 dered from the truth even when she strove to find it, and that she 
 has honestly striven to banish from her heart the vexations and 
 the antipathies which it is but too certain that she very strongly 
 felt. With these reservations clearly made and understood, we 
 proceed to the examination of her volume, which, if it has not, 
 to employ the language of the writer in regard to the reception 
 among us of the book of Basil Hall, of a similar order, been 
 productive of a moral earthquake, has, nevertheless, to the infi- 
 nite amusement of the well-informed persons of the country, occa- 
 sioned much distress among many of that thin-skinned gentry, the 
 journalists. If it be the subject of any gratification to Mrs. Trol- 
 lope, as doubtless it will, to know that she has fully succeeded in 
 stirring up the bile of this honorable class, she may felicitate her- 
 self thereupon with all the pride and triumph of an Englishwoman. 
 It is, indeed, the chief objection to the reprint before us, that it 
 has been thought proper, by the American publishers, to preface 
 it with an introduction, conceived in a peevish and fretful spirit, 
 and altogether written in very puerile taste. The irony is not al- 
 ways perceptible, and is calculated immediately to provoke the 
 sneer and sarcasm which it would seem to have been the devout 
 desire of the writer to avert. 
 
 The travels of Mrs. Trollope have been neither very various 
 nor very wide. Indeed she has merely skirted a small frontier 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 
 
 of our country, in its least cultivated and settled parts ; and, 
 if we except a few weeks passed in some of the eastern and mid- 
 dle regions, can scarcely be said to have been in it at all. She 
 entered the Mississippi at New Orleans — made a pause of some 
 seventy hours in that city — sympathized with a little negro, who, 
 though a slave, appeared to be most unreasonably contented and 
 happy — became acquainted with a milliner, and. through her, 
 with a venerable gentleman of the New-Harmony faith, who 
 dealt freely in maxims, " wise saws and modern instances ;" and, 
 thus prepared and provided with this amount and specimen of 
 New Orleans society, took her departure. To a lady of her tact 
 and talent, this glimpse of three days was enough, undoubtedly, 
 to enable her to know all that was to be known, and to speak 
 confidently and freely upon the characters, manners, and condi- 
 tions of the place ; and, accordingly, with the aid of a steamboat 
 traveller, who happily fell in with her on her departure from 
 Orleans, she details to us something of those distinctions which 
 make the various classes of its society. She speaks with sove- 
 reign contempt of the Creole aristocracy, who, it seems, have the 
 audacity to give " grand dinners and dine together," and com- 
 miserates the fate of the " beautiful and amiable quadroons," 
 who are not admitted even to a glimpse of the secret doings of 
 this ultra aristocracy ; — yet, strange to say, who are silly enough 
 to be satisfied and even pleased with their own condition, subject 
 to a privation so very humiliating as is this. Mrs. Trollope's 
 own facts betray the impertinence of all her opinions in regard to 
 New Orleans. She herself sees nothing. What she dilates 
 upon is second-hand matter, obtained from a stranger whom she 
 picks up in a packet on the Mississippi. Who is this stranger ? 
 The absurdity of quoting the anonymous, unless in connection 
 with other and less questionable authorities, calls for no remark ; 
 but we may venture one or more of a general description which 
 will afford a key to these statements, which will materially 
 assist the reader to a correct judgment. The creole population 
 of New Orleans is the native population. The word crcoIe sig- 
 nifies native. These natives are of French and Spanish origin 
 chiefly — the greater number being French. These people, at 
 the time of Mrs. Trollope's visit, constituted an exclusive class 
 
6 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 for many reasons. They were particularly jealous of the Anglo- 
 American population of the Eastern States. These were gene- 
 rally tradesmen — adventurers who devoted themselves to the in- 
 terests of trade — who brought no society with them, and, with 
 comparatively few exceptions, had enjoyed, in their training, none 
 of the advantages of good society. They were bold and adven- 
 turous in business, — eager at gain, — acute in the highest degree, 
 with the natural siirewdness of tlie Anglo-Saxon race, sharpened 
 by the necessities of a new condition and in a strange place — 
 forward in tlicir manners, — wanting grievously in the polish of 
 conversation, and, what with their energy and hardihood, — their 
 rudeness and successful prosecution of business, — as unlike the 
 French creole as one social being could well be unlike another. 
 The latter was courtly in his manners, nice in his tastes, a slug- 
 gard in his labours, fond of fashion, frivolous perhaps, — taking 
 his tone from Paris, and looking with scorn and dislike upon the 
 " rough and tumble" intruders, by whom, with the instincts 
 of the lymphatic nature, he felt that he was destined to be thrust 
 aside, his ' occupation' usurped, and his high places taken from 
 his possession. The antagonist nature of the churches in 
 which the parties separately worshipped, constituted another wall 
 and barrier between the two, over which it was not easy for 
 either party to pass. The fellow traveller from whom Mrs. 
 Trollope derived her facts, might well speak indignantly of this 
 Creole aristocracy. We know that, at this period, nothing was 
 more common than such Ian2;ua2:e. Denied to enter the circle 
 of the local aristocracy, wliich, because of its deficient energies, 
 the intruder was apt to despise, the latter was only too well 
 prepared to believe in any statement which disparaged their 
 pretensions. Of their duelling, their gambling, their cruelties, 
 and debaucheries, he made a very copious, if not a very charita- 
 ble collection ; and, in his own denial and vexation of heart, with- 
 out considering the wrong which he thus inflicted on the reputa- 
 tion of one portion, at least, of the common country, he regaled 
 the ears of all the TroUopes that would listen to his tales. With 
 some truth, he mingled much falsehood, and his detailed instances 
 were gladly received as histories, inclusive of a people, when 
 they were only solitary cases and exceptions. 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 7 
 
 The "Quadroons" arc persons of mixed colour, of illegitimate 
 birth, and constitute in New Orleans a class, which exists, precisely 
 to the same extent in other cities, except that, in these, they are in- 
 discriminatcly borrowed from the community at large. To speak 
 of their exclusion from the higher circles of society in New Orleans, 
 with the indignation which Mrs. Trollope uses on the present occa- 
 sion, is just as absurd as it would be to complain that the New 
 York fashionables object to the obtrusion of the people of the Five 
 Points into their drawing-rooms, or in London that tlie women of 
 the pave were denied entrance to Almacks and other fashionable 
 places. If our good Englishwoman had not set out with a vexa- 
 tious idea that in America there should be but one class — that it 
 was quite an impertinence in an American to presume upon any 
 cxclusiveness, the absurdity of her complaint, in this instance, 
 would have needed no answer to expose it. She devotes not quite 
 a chapter to New Orleans, and, for the materials in her posses- 
 sion, of her own acquisition, upon which she could rely, she need 
 not have given it a single page. Her narrative here is filled with 
 her own speculations, generally absurd enough, upon what she 
 sees and what she hears. She gets the surface of a fact, without 
 looking for its sides, or depth, or weight. In fact, knowing how to 
 talk only, she never seems to have learned the first duty of a trav- 
 eller — how to observe. She seeks only just enough of a truth, 
 upon which to found a disquisition. Some of lier peculiar hos- 
 tility to the Creole aristocracy of New Orleans, and of her sym- 
 pathy for the denied but still very happy quadroons, may be as- 
 cribed to the fact which here escapes her for the first time, that 
 her companion from Europe, was the somev/hat celebrated Frances 
 Wright, (^ladame D'Arusmont.) With the peculiar notions of !\Iiss 
 Wright, particularly in regard to marriage, and the rights and 
 privileges of the sex, it will not be difficult to see why the quad- 
 roons should rise into objects of such special commiseration in 
 the mind of our traveller. But, until INIiss Wriijht shall sue- 
 ceed in effecting the reforms for wjiich she has been so long 
 struggling, with a talent and energy worthy of a better object, 
 we must be permitted to think that Mrs. TroUope's sympathy is 
 entirely thrown away, and would be much more appropriate, if 
 yielded to the wretched outcasts, thousands in number, doomed 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 to a condition of whicli no class in our country has the smallest 
 conception, among tlie sinks and stews of London. 
 
 Tlie objects of Miss Wright seem to have been wholly baf- 
 fled and finally abandoned, — still treasured in her fancy and her 
 memory, as some precious moral problem, to be solved by future 
 experiment, based upon the philosophies which she so vainly strove 
 to teach. Whctlicr her schemes, generally, were of good or evil 
 import to society, it is not in our province just now to discuss 
 them. Of the peculiar objects which Miss Wright had in view, 
 in coming to this country, Mrs. Trollope gives us the following 
 account, in which she appears only as an amiable enthusiast, led 
 away by a warm, zealous and humane heart, which lacked no- 
 thing but a modest and calmly-judging mind, by which to regu- 
 late its eccentricities. 
 
 " Instead of becoming a public orator in every town throughout America, she 
 was about, as she said, to seclude herself for life in the deepest forest of the 
 western world, that her time, her fortune, and her talents might be exclusively 
 devoted to aid the cause of the suffering Africans. Her first object was to show 
 that nature had made no difference between blacks and whites, excepting in 
 complexion ; and this she expected to prove by giving an education perfectly 
 equal to a class of black and white children. Could this fact be once fully es- 
 tablished, she conceived that the negro cause would stand on firmer ground 
 than it had yet done, and the degraded rank which they have ever held among 
 civilized nations would be proved to be a gross injustice. This question of the 
 mental equality or inequality between us and the negro race, is one of great in- 
 terest, and has never yet been fairly tried ; and I expected for my children and 
 myself both pleasure and information from visiting her establishment, and 
 watching the success of her experiment." — pp. 33, 4. 
 
 The history of Miss V/right, while in America, is already in 
 the possession of our readers ; and this wild scheme, sanctioned 
 as it is by an unfeigned if not a proper philanthropy, is well 
 known to have shared the fortune of all her innovations upon the 
 order of established things. Of course sucli an experiment could 
 not properly be made in this country. To put it on a fair foot- 
 ing, it would have been essential, as a first step, that the teacher 
 should have chosen a section of tlie world, utterly ignorant of the 
 distinctions which all civilized society has thought it proper to 
 make between members of the human family, so divided and set 
 apart by distinctions not only visible, but imposing and impressive, 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICAN.S. 
 
 as the difference of colour. Wliile in contact, a sense of rela- 
 tive superiority and inferiority would be forever active with both 
 classes, forcing the one, whether so disposed or not, into the atti- 
 tude of the master, and subduing the other, in spite of every 
 elfort on his own part, into the condition of the slave, or, at all 
 events, into that of a degraded caste. The instincts of the infe- 
 rior, even if colour were not an absolute badge and bond of dif- 
 ference, would of themselves subject him to the mastery of the 
 dominant intellect, and the nature more vigorous and more bent on 
 conquest than his own. But we shall not pursue a topic which is 
 scarcely legitimate in the condition of public opinion in our coun- 
 try. The subject is one which, if not utterly beyond the reach 
 of experiment, seems not likely to have its aspects materially 
 altered by anything that can be done with it ; and we prefer, in 
 a case about which so many doubts prevail, and upon which 
 such mighty destinies depend, not to disturb it by speculations 
 which can not well be profitable and may be hurtful. Where so 
 much is at stake, and where there is such diversity of opinion, 
 the wise man will prefer to remain silent in waiting for the supe- 
 rior intelligence, which never fails to be vouchsafed for the uses 
 of mankind, whenever the absolute need of humanity shall ren- 
 der the dispensation proper. 
 
 From New Orleans, our traveller proceeds to Memphis. The 
 steamboats on the Mississippi are probably the noblest in the 
 world, in point of size, speed, finish and proportion. They are, 
 indeed, so many floating palaces. But even a floating palace in 
 America will not satisfy Mrs. TroUope, — no, — not even when its 
 peculiarities indicate the higher civilization of the people. The 
 fact that the spirit of accommodation in America, goes so far as 
 to furnish separate cabins for the ladies and the gentlemen, is of- 
 fensive in her eyes. This division of the sitting and sleeping 
 apartments of the sexes, is an arrangement which the English lady 
 does not seem willing to approve. Ordinarily, the English accu- 
 sation against us is, that we are too much given to living in com- 
 mon — that there is no security from intrusion — that no place is 
 sacred from vulgarity, and no person, whatever his tastes, can be 
 safe from the impertinence of his neighbour. Here is an excep- 
 tion which proves not less offensive to the stranger. Mrs. Trol- 
 
 1* 
 
10 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 lope dislikes the stiffness and formality of the thing. The popu- 
 lar manners lack freedom in consequence of this barrier; and, 
 insisting upon finding and forming society wherever she goes, — 
 even in a steamboat which brings from distant quarters crowds of 
 the most dissimilar people in the world — the great fondness of this 
 lady for perfect flexibility of mood and manner — a notion caught 
 in all probability from tlic great social projector, her companion — 
 our excellent English lady proceeds to do what she can to set the 
 simple Americans right in their frigid notions of what is proper. 
 But she finds the fjentlemen somewhat uawillinf; lo fall into her 
 way of thinking. They insist somewhat too tenaciously upon 
 the exclusive possession of their quarters. It is not permitted to 
 them to penetrate the apartment yielded to the other sex, and Mrs. 
 Trollope, for this very reason, passes into theirs. Here she finds 
 them in all attitudes, — heels in air, perhaps, — some smoking, 
 some chewing, — all at ease, and possibly some in dishahillc. It 
 is not possible to maintain her ground, however much she hankers 
 after her male companions, when it is very evident that these re- 
 ally do not desire her presence. There are moments, we can as- 
 sure Mrs. Trollope, when the most devoted lover of the sex would 
 scarcely desire their visits. The fact seems but slowly to have 
 reached the scnsorium of our traveller. She leaves the ground 
 reluctantly, but not before she has satisfied all on board that she 
 is a legitimate member of the Pry family. Nothing seems to 
 have escaped her search. She has pressed into forbidden places 
 — pried and peered into cranny and crevice, to the great contu- 
 sion, no doubt, of the occupants — 
 
 " Pcep'd in the baths, and God knows where beside," 
 
 and, in all probability, has been taught in plain terms, by some of 
 the sturdy Kentuckiansor Tennesseans, that a lady, though curious 
 and eager after knowledge, and an Englishwoman, must really not 
 expect to thrust her noss everywhere. Mrs. Trollope does not rel- 
 ish this plain speaking, and her book is swollen accordingly by a 
 peevish and querulous complaining. It is uncourteous indiffer- 
 ence here, and repelling coldness there, and absolute rudeness 
 and denial, and some shocking impertinences, which, we may 
 assume to have grown out of her resolute purpose to violate all 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 11 
 
 the existing forms of society where she found herself, as if there 
 was nothing which she might not sliglit or despise among a peo- 
 ple, whom she set out to believe no better than barbarians. With- 
 out heeding the necessary forms of introduction — forms of which 
 no people are more tenacious than the English, — she makes her 
 acquaintance v/herever she goes, — compels acquaintance — and, as 
 a next step, natural enough from such a beginning, she institutes 
 a rigorous inquiry into concerns and customs which are com- 
 monly held private and domestic. But she is not all, nor always 
 wrong in what she says and sees. We must, in some cases, ad- 
 mit the justice of her censure. It is on this route, on board this 
 boat from New Orleans to Memphis, that she remarks, with a 
 severity but too strictly proportioned to its justice, upon the habit 
 of tobacco chewing, so vile and so general among us. Her lan- 
 guage here is not too strong. Her censure not overstrained nor 
 undeserved. She speaks little more than the truth, with an ex- 
 aggeration (if any) of which we have nothing to complain, of the 
 gross inditference to decency, which is manifested by so many 
 thousands of our people, who should know better, in voiding their 
 offensive juices without regard to propriety or place. On this 
 subject Mrs. Troliope has our thanks, and well deserves the hear- 
 ing of our people. If her rebukes shall have any effect (which 
 we doubt) in lessening the number of those, accursed and curs- 
 ing, who have yielded themselves up to this noxious indulgence, 
 we shall gladly forgive her all the follies and the falsehoods of 
 her volume. Her sarcasms on this filthy subject run all through 
 her book, and are properly conceived and generally well written. 
 We cannot complain that she herself finds as much seeming 
 pleasure in the ungrateful topic, as those do in the filthy weed 
 who are the subjects of her censure. We quote from these nu- 
 merous instances but a single specimen, not so much to illustrate 
 her mode of treating this subject, as because it affords us an op- 
 portunity of indicating one of the most fruitful sources of error 
 in the European who travels in this country. 
 
 " I hardly know any annoyance so deeply repugnant to English feelings as 
 the incessant, remorseless spitting of Americans. I feel that I owe my readers 
 an apology for the repeated use of this, and several other odious words ; but I 
 cannot avoid them, without suffering the fidelity of description to escape me. 
 
12 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 It is possible that in this phrase ' Americans,' I may be too general. The United 
 States form a continent of almost distinct nations, and I must now and always 
 be understood to speak only of that portion of them which I have seen. In 
 conversinir with Americans, I have constantly found that if I alluded to any 
 thing which they thought I considered as uncouth, they would assure me it 
 was local and not national ; the accidental peculiarity of a very small part, and 
 by no means a specimen of the whole," (Soc. — pp. 31, 5. 
 
 Dismissing the disgusting subject vhich is the burden of the pre- 
 ceding paragraph, with a sense of loathing at its associations quite 
 as decided as that which tlie good Uidy herself expresses, — v/e pro- 
 ceed to direct the reader's attention to the fact, that Mrs. Trollope 
 herself is compelled occasionally to acknowledge certain misgiv- 
 ings that she may have generalized too extensively in her de.scrip- 
 tions ; — that, in short, she has had her fears that these descrip- 
 tions are not wholly given to a native population in America, and 
 that they certainly do not indicate that population from which our 
 nation is to derive its character. Whether it be an effort of con- 
 scientiousness, or simply that she does now and then perceive a 
 glimmering of the latent truth for which, it is very certain, 
 that she never seriously looks, — it is very clear, by this and 
 other paragraphs similarly slight and brief, scattered throughout 
 the volume, — that she herself is made to entertain some doubts, 
 or some shows of doubt, that the American people are not legiti- 
 mately represented by her chewing and spitting companions on 
 the Mississippi. It is our regret, for her sake at least, that she 
 so soon forgets all her conscientiousness and caution, and, be- 
 guiled by the malicious passion for the satirical, which proves so 
 large an element in her genius, — or well aware how gratefully 
 received is all this species of writing among her countrymen, 
 where the United States is the victim, — she waives all her reser- 
 vations on the score of her limited experience, and does her best 
 to make it appear that the minds and morals of a numerous peo- 
 ple, — the descendants of British loins, — achieving with British 
 vigour wherever they go, — throwing off British supremacy, and 
 defying her at periods when she mocked the powers of all other 
 nations — that the impelling moral of such a people is properly 
 indicated by the rude borderer who gropes for new tracks in the 
 unknown wilderness — by the wild boatman of a frontier river— 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 13 
 
 or the drunken ditcher in some remote canal of the interior, 
 who, in most, if not in all cases, is a faithful scion of British 
 growth — a foreigner at all events — and just as likely as not, to 
 have gathered his first lesson of propriety and purity in her own 
 exclusively temperate and grateful regions of Wapping and the 
 Strand. The conjecture is a vastly prohable one in ninety-nine 
 of tiie hundred cases, where the physical labourer is the object 
 of consideration in America. It is the misfortune of the Ameri- 
 can people — the native population be it understood — that they 
 skulk the more heavy tasks of the soil. The grosser labour of 
 the country, devolves, in great degree, upon the foreigner. The 
 Yankee has too much genius for drudging. He is usually adroit 
 enough to shift this to other shoulders than his own. He is a 
 lawyer, a doctor, a divine, a manufacturer, a merchant, a 
 builder, a schemer, a pedlar, — never a ditcher or a drudge. 
 He will invent a thousand machines sooner than toil ; and, 
 place him in connection with a thousand Englishmen, in a mo- 
 ment of emergency, and, ten to one, you will see him directing 
 the toils of all the rest, accordintr nothinjr but his surveillance to 
 the common necessity. This is his art. He is a genius. It is 
 his subject, not himself, that Mrs. Trollope beholds waist deep in 
 the mud and mire of the western canals — it is the drudge that 
 he has summoned from other parts of the world to do those of- 
 fices for his people, to which they feel themselves superior. 
 That portion of the spitting and the blackguardism which is done 
 by him — offensive enough, we confess, to decency and common 
 sense — is yet but a small portion of that which she beholds ; and 
 the wallow in which she sees the creature whose habits and 
 manners thus compel her loathing, is but the sink and sewer 
 through which the evil humours of the country are suffered to 
 pass off. It was this good lady's misfortune, — possibly the result 
 of her peculiar tastes, — to have confined herself to the back 
 parts of his establishment, instead of seeking him in his parlour, 
 and at the proper entrance where company is expected. 
 
 We do not propose, step by step, to pursue the route which 
 was taken by this worthy woman. Her course is easily indi- 
 cated, and the merest glance at the map will satisfy any one, 
 however little familiar with our geography, how very small. 
 
14 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 comparatively speaking, are the portions of the country which she 
 has deigned to visit. It will be seen, by one at all familiar with 
 our history, \\ho condescends to examine hers, that the greater part 
 of the three years which she wasted within our limits, was em- 
 ployed in going to and fro, in and about a region, which, until 
 the last twenty years, gave little or no sign of civilization — was 
 partly in possession and under the conlroul of the Indians, and 
 was, up to the period when she wrote and travelled, almost as 
 little known to the natives of the country, as to Mrs. Trollope 
 herself. We have already glanced at the heterogeneous condi- 
 tion of society at large in New Orleans. The habits of two for- 
 eign people were there for a long period in absolute conflict. 
 Manners and customs of a kind singularly grateful to the tastes, 
 were to be found everywhere among the Creole communities ; 
 but these, according to Mrs. Trollope's own confession, she was 
 not permitted to penetrate. Nor was she more able, than were the 
 native Louisianians willing, to do justice to the intelligence and 
 enterprise of the Anglo-American population, which crowded there 
 for business. A better knowledo;e of the mutual claims of the 
 two parties — the inevitable intimacies which must follow absolute 
 and daily contact in business — these have led to the overthrow of 
 many barriers, which were as injurious to the interests of the 
 country as they were to civilization. The discontents and disaf- 
 fected of Louisiana, among the Creoles, which, in the war of 
 1815, forced upon Jackson the necessity of imposing martial law 
 upon New Orleans, were really due to the social prejudices of 
 the one class vexed at the intrusive energies of the other. Be- 
 sides, allowances were to be made in regard to the freshness of 
 the transaction with Napoleon, by which the people of the tlien 
 French colony, were suddenly transferred to the control of a race 
 against which it had been the constant policy of Napoleon to en- 
 courage the most fervid hostility and dislike. 
 
 Ohio, which Mrs. Trollope made her resting place, was ceded 
 as a derelict territory as late as the year 1789 by the several 
 states of Virginia and the Carolinas, by whose people it was ob- 
 tained by conquest from the Indians. It was formed into a state 
 in 1802; receiving, as a matter of course, as is the universal his- 
 tory, not only here, but in every country in the world, for its 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 15 
 
 first population, the hardy, the reckless, and the profligate — the 
 baffled and the denied elsewhere — the outcast, the outlaw, and 
 the adventurous — it matters not from what or any cause — his 
 crimes, his necessities, or simply his caprice and mood. For 
 twenty years after tlie purchase of Louisiana, the great Missis- 
 sippi valley was the favourite thoroughfare, the refuge, and the 
 hiding place for all the discontents of Europe. Much of the 
 country has been settled by the destitute myriads of foreigners 
 who are ingrate and foolish enough, if we are to believe this 
 lady, annually to fly from tlie fine feelings, the fertility, and the 
 fashions of their European dwellings, — preferring plenty, ease, 
 and independence, on the Ohio and the Mississippi, though coupled 
 with rudeness of speech, and uncouth manners, to a condition 
 "which, whatever may be its attractions, must certainly have had 
 its drawbacks and disqualifications also. Many of its peculiar 
 features are decidedly foreign, — and we have more than once 
 been amused with the complaint of our lady-traveller, uttered in 
 reproof of some custom decidedly European in its origin, and, in 
 all probability, a direct importation from her own country. Our 
 English, in particular, are apt to insist upon provincialisms in 
 America, which, if they were more familiar with their own lan- 
 guage, they would find written on some of its noblest pages. A 
 little study of the old English drama would suffice to open the 
 eyes and shut the mouths of many a bullheaded traveller, who 
 fancies that the atmospliere of the fast-anchored isle, entitles him 
 when he goes abroad to presume upon the airs of one having uni- 
 versal knowledge. We might bestow, by means of Greene, 
 Peele, Marlowe, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, some useful lessons, 
 in their own language, upon such truly conceited and inflated 
 persons as come out among us in the guise of British sea-cap- 
 tains, and honourable colonels of the army, whose valour we 
 have no question, (it certainly is to be hoped,) will always be 
 found more ready than their wit. Where the censured and sup- 
 posed peculiarity is not foreign, not drawn from Great Britain or 
 the Continent, — where the squatter is the poor defeated adven- 
 turer from another and a neighbouring state, driven out into the 
 wilderness by excess, by poverty or crime, and seeking that ob- 
 scurity in the kindred glooms of the wilderness, which his ill 
 
16 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 habits or ill fortunes have denied that he shall find in that he 
 flies, — the race thus formed is one, sui generis, for which the 
 United States arc us little responsible as civilization itself. It is 
 indeed tlie civilization of the country which has placed him where 
 he is, in a sort of exile, — ^justly suited to his nature, and causing 
 the development of all his faculties of usefulness. Here, his wild 
 temper finds appropriate exercise; and, in rude conflict with the 
 savage necessities of the forest, he prepares the wild realm which 
 he penetrates, for a gentler people. He is not the only person 
 whom Mrs. TroUope met in our mighty forests, though she shows 
 a genuine British reluctance in acknowledging the claims of a 
 better; — which, however, she is occasionally compelled to do. 
 The squatter is followed by a noble class, who soon improve tlie 
 morale of the land of which they take possession. These are the 
 hardy settlers of the west, — the real population, — whom the phil- 
 osopher, aye, and the simply honest man, would delight to en- 
 counter among any people, with a hearty love and veneration. 
 Had Mrs. TroUope not been blinded by her national bigotries, 
 she would scarcely have seen the miserable wretch whom she 
 lingers to delineate, while beholding the more manly and useful 
 race, which followed upon his footsteps. These are the men 
 who, taking the axe on the shoulder, with a spirit of adventure 
 which, at this day, we are proud to say, is almost entirely Amer- 
 ican, have gone cheerily, with a song of hope and courage, into 
 the venerable forests, undiscouraged by their repelling silence, — 
 by the wild beasts, and the wilder savages that fill them — unre- 
 pining at the fortune that calls for these privations, and demands 
 these perils — and,striking their resolute shafts deeply in wilderness 
 and mountain, who have torn from the bosom of the soil, count- 
 less proofs of its own wealth and their industry and valour ; — 
 thus affording to the world a pledge, the surest that a people can 
 ever make to the race from which they spring, and the govern- 
 ment which protects them, of an energy, an ability and pairiot- 
 ism, which as certainly will make them great, as it has made 
 them independent. It is of a people, such as these, that Mrs. 
 Trollopc makes merry because they are uninformed in the trim 
 and petty conventionalities of the great foreign cities, of which 
 she affects so much the spirit and the tone, and in which, by the 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 17 
 
 way, her own manners and spirit would show her to be an in- 
 truder only. It is to this class, in a spirit of rebuke and ridicule, 
 which finds its true and sufficient commentary in the present con- 
 dition of her own country and its population, that this refined 
 lady so violently objects. She can see notliing in the bold daring 
 — the firm courage — the strong nerve — the cheerful industry — 
 the perseverance and tenacity of this people, triumphing, as they 
 do, over the almost inaccessible bulwarks of nature. No nation 
 ever came to its birthright through a more perilous time of trial, 
 than did the United States ; and when she shall be reproached 
 •.vith what is left undone, in the perfecting of her institutions, or the 
 amending of her morals or her manners, her sons will have made 
 a reply, more than sufiicient, if estimated comparatively with the 
 deeds of any other nation, in pointing to what she has done in the 
 teeth of poverty, and the oppressions and privations of two pro- 
 tracted wars with a nation whom we are still pleased, in our hu- 
 mility, to style by the endearing appellative of mother — but whose 
 "boon and birthgift were the stepdame's curse:" — a nation 
 which first drove our ancestors from her arms, then sought them 
 out, with the unrelenting ferocity of the wolf, even in the wilder, 
 ness to which she had exiled them. It is not enough, in the 
 viev/ of Mrs Trollope, that, under a fate such as ours, we have 
 been enabled to do so much. It is not enouijh that we have built 
 the cottage ; — we have not yet taught the wild vine to gather 
 and to gad around it. Life is without its city decorations on the 
 Ohio. Society lacks the finish of the old world on the banks of 
 the Mississippi. The fine arts have not yet deigned to hang their 
 trophies on the clay walls of the borderer. Music stirs not 
 his vallies in the depth and silence of the midnight. The gay 
 masquer, the giddy trifier, the voluptuous dancing girl, — these 
 crowd not yet to the forest dwelling of the bee and the bear- 
 hunter. The gaiety and the glitter are yet to come. Life for 
 him wears still the aspect of a stern necessity. He is yet to 
 strive and struijo-le. The warfare of his race is but bejjun. 
 Doubtless he will have his triumph. He will wear his trophies. 
 He will enjoy his repose, and this will be followed by his luxu- 
 ries. Mrs, Trollope, however, cannot wait for these. She is an 
 impatient lady. She must have them now. What he has, and 
 
18 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 what he has done already, in his condition, are of no import in 
 her eyes. Her selfish desires are not friendly to right seeing, 
 and to justice. She hungers and thirsts, and will not philoso- 
 phize. She cannot. She has appetites to be pacified, and mor- 
 bid tastes to be indulged, and is plethoric and fat like Hamlet — 
 ' scant of breath' — and the coarse fare that Jonathan proffers, 
 and the crazy vehicles which he offers for her use, and the vil- 
 lainous rough roads over which she must go, and the simple 
 steamboat society which she finds, — these, as they combine to 
 keep the sense of English self uppermost at every movement of 
 her mind and body, render her sensible to discomforts only. In 
 this condition of mood, shall we wonder, that, in our lady-travel- 
 ler's eyes, all the toils, all the achievements, all the triumphs of 
 infant America, go absolutely for nothing. 
 
 From Memphis Mrs. Trollope proceeds to Cincinnati. She 
 touches, en route, at various places upon the rivers Ohio and Mis- 
 sissippi. She sees pretty much what travellers may look to see 
 along the rivers of every newly-settled country — nothing remark- 
 able, perhaps, unless in the mood that makes it so. It may be 
 admitted, that the pictures which she gives us of the miserable 
 condition of certain of the settlers along this region are natural 
 and true enouo;h. Of this somethino; has been said before. We 
 have already indicated the sort of persons usually found in the 
 condition she describes. The wretched life thus followed is a con- 
 elusive proof of the utter worthlessness of the individual who pur- 
 sues it ; for such is the facility with which the means of life may 
 be procured in any part of the United States, that no citizen, who 
 pleases, need be left without employment, at once easy, honest, 
 and profitable. Tlie mistake which Mrs. Trollope makes in her 
 delineations — a mistake which may be readily made by one who 
 seeks only to make a case against the country — is in so hastily 
 seizing upon the fortunes of the single individual or family, and 
 making this the standard and sample of the people of the region. 
 As well might the American in England, with like temper and truth, 
 from the stews of London, produce and set up the model and draw 
 the character of that nation in whose happy limits our excellent 
 lady writer never seems to have heard of anytliing amiss — never 
 a word of boxing and bruising, of blackened eyes and faces — faces 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 19 
 
 in the image of God, battered out of all shape of humanity by mauls 
 of flesh and blood — flesh and blood looking on, thousands in num. 
 ber, men and women — looking on with delight, refreshed by these 
 rare proofs of British blood, if not of its sensibility. Her ears 
 have never been outraged at home by such narratives, her eyes 
 never been sliocked by such exhibitions. She has not heard of 
 mobs and individual ruffians that terrify the citizens and need the 
 military ; nor of crimes that require a penal code more sanguin- 
 ary than that of Draco ; criminals, of whom a single item will 
 suffice, in the recognized existence of a class in London alone, 
 who, as the statistical writers of that region assert, are at least 
 five thousand in number, and who would cut one's throat for a 
 shilling. If she had ever heard of thiswoful history, of the squal- 
 id poverty, the ill manners, the brutal licentiousness which her 
 own historians tell of this otherwise blessed region, she might have 
 suddenly recalled it to memory while in the border and forest 
 country of America, and spared the exhibitions of a mood and 
 temper which, with such histories in view, are surely to her shame. 
 But, assuming her ignorance — and really it is surprisino- how 
 largely the beams may grow in one's own eyes while pluckino- 
 the motes from those of other people — and we must not wonder 
 that she is startled and shocked, in the wilderness of a new world, 
 by the boorishoess of those men who are unwilling that strano-e 
 M^omen should enter their chambers while yet in their dishabille, 
 and before the beds are quite made up ; — and by the mock modesty 
 of those damsels who are not anxious to talk about the petticoats 
 which they are yet content to wear. Had she but been at the 
 pains to assure Jonatlian that in Paris nothing was more common, 
 among th.e fashionables, at least, than that the chambers should be 
 free to either party, at particular hours of the morning, and that 
 the gentle cavalier might be frequently found officiating as a lady's 
 maid, lacing her bodice, and othcrv/ise disposing of her dress, he 
 probably might not have been so tenacious of his own cabin on the 
 steamboat. A like statement, to the young rustic damsel of the 
 Ohio, suffering her to see what choice privileges were accorded to 
 her sex in other countries, might, in like manner, have effected a 
 large reform in respect to that mauvaisc honie which the more 
 knowing lady found so distressing ; but whether Jonathan the 
 
20 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Rude, or his simple daugliter, would have been really improved 
 by the changes in their primitive condition, let the chronicles of 
 crim. con. in the older countries answer. 
 
 Mrs. Trollope is sometimes pathetic. She has some of the en- 
 dowments of the artist. She has invention. She can combine 
 and compare. She has fancy. She can embellish. Her skill 
 in grouping is not small, and she excels in generalization. Some- 
 times, too, she can individualize with quite a felicitous pencil ; 
 always understanding that, in such cases, her imagination lends 
 rare succour when the actual in her subject fails. Some of her 
 pictures of this sort are quite ravishing; and, were she content to 
 leave them as pictures — isolated, rare and remarkable instances, 
 curious even where she finds them, and put on record, conspicu- 
 ously displayed, for this very reason, — we certainly should find 
 no fault with her for portraiture. One of these is that of a Mis- 
 sissippi wood-cutter. A woful subject, surely, and woful is the 
 picture made of it. The text of our traveller is illustrated by a 
 rude engraving from the drawing on the spot of a male compan- 
 ion of the lady, a Frenchman of talent named Hervieu. Both 
 delineations are correct. We ourselves have beheld such a 
 group ; have gazed upon such wretched conditions of humanity. 
 The parties here represent a class. Separated from society, 
 without motive to endeavour, living miserably, in compai'ative 
 idleness, breeding and rearing their young, — for, possibly, a like 
 destiny with their own, — sickly, half-starved always, and deriv- 
 ing their petty gains, and satisfying their wretched wants, by fur- 
 nishing the passing steamer with her fuel — we behold a sample 
 of our human kindred from which we turn in loathing and dis- 
 may. It is the penalty of vice and indolence to be thus destitute 
 and desolate ; and people of this description, who incur this pen- 
 alty, naturally — for they must live somehow — sink into such sub- 
 ordinate situations, such as are necessary to the human family, — 
 that even those whom they serve, turn away from their presence 
 with revolting. But the class is not a large one in America. 
 Tlie groups occur at long intervals along the waste of river and 
 forest, and every year lessens their number with the advance of 
 an active population. The children, tlius reared, finally break 
 away from the connexion, as, with the impulses of youth still ac- 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 21 
 
 tivc, and, with the progress wliich they make in the knowledge of 
 other uses to which they may put themselves, in contact with the 
 world, they perceive openings to more profitable employments ; 
 and those who are found continuing a life so wretched as the text 
 describes, are generally persons beyond middle age, of impaired 
 strength and courage, and with habits of indolence or drunkenness, 
 so inflexible, that no influence can possibly lift them into exertion 
 and hope. Could J\Irs. Trollope, while she drew this picture, 
 have turned her eyes to the collieries of Great Britain, and beheld 
 the misery of those drear abodes — could she have read that wo- 
 ful history of man, woman, and tender infant, hopelessly doomed 
 to the vilest and most unremitting labour, in cells and caverns as 
 fatal to youth, health, strength, and happiness, as ever human 
 society invented for its worst criminals, she would have seen in 
 the condition of the Mississippi woodman, a fate which the worker 
 in a British coal-mine would gaze upon with envy, rather than 
 commiseration. She would have torn her picture, or have 
 coupled it with the parallel portraiture which we thus hint to her 
 to supply. At all events, she would have spared the eflbrt to 
 confound the country with its profligates and destitutes, assured 
 of this, that a condition, however low or wretched, being neces- 
 sary or unavoidable to every nation, it is so ordered that there 
 shall be persons by whom such a condition will naturally be 
 filled. It may safely be said of the United States, that, in com- 
 pa risen with other nations, and in proportion with its own popu- 
 lation, it possesses few conditions of a character so degrading, 
 and a small number of persons prepared to enter upon their 
 tasks. 
 
 Of the three years which Mrs. Trollope passed in our country, 
 nearly two of them were spent in Cincinnati. In all this period 
 she never beheld a beggar ; and this little fact, which of itself 
 speaks volumes for the nation of which it is written, not only fails 
 to elicit from this very partial narrator the applause for our policy 
 and people which any spirit less jaundiced than hers would most 
 certainly have expressed, but actually, by a tortuous exercise of 
 ingenuity, furnishes her with an occasion to sneer at our deficien- 
 cies in other matters. The absence of the arts and sciences amonor 
 us, of literature and amusements — gratuitously asserted, by the 
 
92 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 way — she avers, witli a most strange philosophy, to result entirely 
 from the national distaste to beggary — a feeling, in turn, solely 
 attributable to the auri sacra faincs, the vile and besetting sin, even 
 before tobacco-chewing, according to her estimate, of Americanism. 
 The very industry of the people — their anxiety for independence 
 and social comfort — is thus made an argument against them ; 
 and that very condition of things for which the British people are 
 now sighing, if not absolutely struggling, is described, to this same 
 people, as far less necessary and grateful than the absolute pov- 
 erty and destitution, crime and misery, which, in their own and 
 in every country, must be the certain result of the many living and 
 labouring only for the ease, the luxuries and refinements of the 
 few : in other words, not labouring wholly for themselves, as is 
 the rare privilege which American democracy accords to our peo- 
 ple. To labour for self, is, after all, the only way to acquire the 
 means of luxury. However degrading the passion for wealth, con- 
 sidered without reference to its uses, it v.'ill be found in the end to 
 have its uses, precisely in this manner, in the attainment of the 
 refining and the social arts. Those in America, whose aims go no 
 farther than the acquisition of money, and the attainment of the 
 creature comforts, are really very few. The ambition of our 
 people is very far superior to this. The struggle is for the one 
 agent which brings the rest. This is granted. But the Ameri- 
 can hoards nothing : he rather wastes. He builds ; he buys. He 
 makes a show. He is fond of parade. He is ostentatious. He 
 is too British not to love to enjoy himself; and he passes with 
 great rapidity from one source of enjoyment to another. He pulls 
 down one house to put up a better and a bigger. He furnishes it 
 only too frequently. He must see company, and he stores wine. 
 Anon, his daughters have a piano, and you soon find a picture on 
 his walls. The taste which is afl^ected at first, is unfeigned 
 with a second generation ; and two or three admirable sculptors 
 and painters whom America has already sent to Europe from the 
 banks of the Ohio, are proofs illustrative of this history. But, to 
 reach this condition, the necessities and the comforts must first be 
 won. Mrs. TroUope is but little of the philosopher, nay, she is but 
 little of the observer, if she has not seen that this is the inevitable 
 course in the history of every nation. A people, wanting bread, 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AjW^RICANS. 23 
 
 will listen to no poetry, liowever fine — will look at no picture, 
 though from the hands of Titian or Claude Lorraine. If you would 
 understand what America should be at this moment, you must com- 
 pare her people with the working-classes and not the aristocracy 
 of Europe. This is the only safe and just comparison. Com- 
 pare the character and condition of the British labouring and tra- 
 ding classes, and the people of America at large, who are, all of 
 them, workingmen in a greater or less degree. Properly, we 
 have no aristocracy. A few old families, whose pride of charac- 
 ter has survived their means, are to be found in all the old 
 States; whose tastes, whose bearing, and general resources of in- 
 tellect and accomplishment, will compare favourably with any 
 community in any portion of the world ; and these tacitly influ- 
 ence the masses around them, to a small extent, precisely (though 
 not in the same way nor in the same degree) as, in Europe, the 
 masses are influenced by a nobility at once set above them by the 
 resources of wealth and the authority of law. Our military dis- 
 tinctions, which some European travellers regard as constituting 
 a sort of aristocracy, have become, among ourselves, because of 
 their frequency, rather objects of ridicule than reverence. A cit- 
 izen preserves his title after leaving office, not because it is matter 
 of distinction, but simply because of the habit v»'hich his neigh- 
 bours have formed of approaching him through its medium. 
 With the great body of the people — though our simplicity of car- 
 riage is not what it was in the days of Franklin — it is yet ridicu- 
 lously frank, unaffected, and seemingly rude in the eyes of those 
 who are accustomed to the slavish deference of the European 
 masses to all superiority. We see but little luxury ;* our refine- 
 ments are not much beyond a love of decorum and cleanliness: 
 we know nothing of the artifices and ultra-graces of a long stand- 
 ing conventional arrangement among old families possessed of im- 
 mense wealth : we have no glorious pictures, no cultivated scenes, 
 no marble dwellings, no entire communities devoted to the crea- 
 tion of new luxuries, by which to provoke into activity the palled 
 
 * This article was written in 183'3. A considerable change has come over the 
 habits of the people since that period — a change, we are sorry to say, which, in 
 due proportion as it apes the manners and habits of foreigners, has iuipaired 
 what was proper in our own. 
 
24 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 and palsied appetite ; but, on the other hand, we see no shelterless 
 misery, no squalid want and degradation, no riotous and reckless 
 masses of starving fathers and mothers, and fatherless children, 
 crying out for bread to their rulers, and, in the blindness and wan- 
 tonness of their desperation, tearing away the pillars of peace, and 
 order, and religion. Jonathan has his faults, it is true ; and they 
 arc bad cnougli to need amendment. He chews his tobacco and 
 drinks his whiskey, though not more liberally, we believe, than 
 his British brother — still, however, in quantities far beyond the 
 boundary of propriety and prudence. He thinks highly of his 
 country — perhaps too highly. He is vain and boastful of the free- 
 dom he possesses ; believes, or affects to believe, his sky as fine as 
 the Italian ; his mountains as high, his rivers as broad, long, and 
 deep ; his fields as fair and fertile, and his fruits and crops as abun- 
 dant as any in the world ; and in all this he is not unwilling to be 
 put to the proof. In much of it he could maintain his ground as a 
 challenger against all comers. He does sometimes strain his faith 
 in his own possessions, but this is only when provoked by Mrs. 
 Trollope and persons of her dimensions. Then it is that his halls 
 of legislation are unrivalled for the excellence of the laws which 
 they devise, and for the bursts of eloquence which they give out: 
 then it is that he swaggers about the poets whom he never reads, 
 and insists upon the fame of his writers, whom, speaking in 
 domestic ears only, he is apt to decry with a spirit born entirely 
 of his own individual jealousy and ambition : then it is that he 
 lustily swears by the village artist, whose chef-d^couvre, the tavern 
 sign-boaixl, he holds to be a sufficient promise that Italy and Eng- 
 land shall yet be made to blush at their inferiority ; and in all 
 this he aims rather to display his patriotism than his judgment. 
 But for the English temper which studiously tells him of his infe- 
 riority, he never would dream of asserting these wild pretensions. 
 Certainly, John Bull has a most provoking habit, on his very 
 entrance into another nation, of declaring his convictions aloud, 
 of the wretched condition, in comparison with his own country, 
 of everything which he beholds. He takes a malicious pleasure, 
 if he finds the simple native satisfied with his condition, to make 
 him ashamed of it. " You think yourself very happy here," he 
 exclaims ; *' but that is all owing to your ignorance. Poor devil ! 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OP THE AMERICANS. 35 
 
 You should see England." This speech is written on his £i*ont, 
 speaks in his eyes, and looks out in every movement of his frame, 
 as he steps from the ship upon the threshold of the foreign coun- 
 try. Hence his nom de guerre. Bull, it is, wherever he goes, with 
 a seeming anxiety, whenever he can, to thrust his horns into your 
 bowels. 
 
 Nor is Jonathan so presumptuous as Mrs. TroUope and the rest 
 of the Bulls would have him appear. He has some claims to be 
 heard on the score of his possessions. He has some possessions 
 of which he may be proud. The natural world in which he 
 lives, and for which, perhaps, he takes quite as much credit to 
 himself, as a respect for the great original will permit, — defies, 
 and fully justifies any comparison with the features of the old 
 world which it presumes to rival ; — and so long as Jonathan may 
 refer to his patriots — his Washingtons (for the American Revolu- 
 tion brought forth others worthy of the name) — his warriors, (for 
 have they not contended, and successfully, even with those of 
 Great Britain ?) — his authors, as well on government as in etliics, 
 as well in speculative and abstract philosophies, as in imaginative 
 and occasional productions — (for has not Great Britain adopted 
 and recorded them among her classics, and does she not honour 
 them daily by reference, appropriation, and applause ?) — her 
 painters, her Wests, her Alstons, her Leslies, her Newtons, (for 
 are they not among the elite, and at the very head of British art?) 
 so long as this long and brilliant catalogue is spread before him, 
 — may he not claim a portion of the honours — may he not reach 
 his hand to the prize — may he not stand up in the great arena of 
 competition and glory, among the patriots of Europe, and her he- 
 roes and statesmen, her authors and her artists, and, with conscious 
 pride and honest enthusiasm, exclaim, '• anch' lo son pittore ?" 
 These are the triumphs of his people. There is something yet 
 wanting, perhaps. For himself, he has not yet learned to enjoy 
 a fine picture, or a delicious poem. The duty of going 
 forth at sunrise, and labouring till sunset, day by day, for his 
 bread, keeps him ignorant of those refinements which belong not 
 to his situation. He has some idea that there are such refine- 
 ments, and he may possibly crave them at times ; but the neces- 
 sity of providing for his children and himself is before him ; he 
 
 PART. TI. 2 
 
fSO VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 seizes his axe, and, in the hollow echoes which it calls up in the 
 woods, he finds company that makes him forget, or willingly 
 forego, the thousand and one nameless enjoyments of ease and af- 
 flucnce. When Mrs. Trollope shall describe that working class 
 in Great Britain with whom the arts, sciences, and literature — 
 the muses and the graces — have taken up their abodes ; refining 
 vulgar asperities, rounding the rough features of the boor, and 
 softeninir the savacje manners of the hodman — it will be time 
 enough then, to account for the deficiencies, and to seek an apol- 
 oiTV for the rouf;hncsses of Jonathan. When it shall be shown 
 to us, that, from one end of Great Britain to the other, there is a 
 less ignorant, more honest, more enlightened body of artisans 
 and labourers than in the territory of the United States, compass- 
 ing our most remote extremes and dependencies, it will be quite 
 time enough to enquire into the condition of our people, and to 
 make a like provision for their minds, with that which the British 
 government is now called upon to make for the bodies of its 
 grieving and groaning population. W^e have not the slightest 
 doubt, and certainly entertain no fear, that, in a comparison, man 
 for man, and woman for woman, America, the child of a most 
 unnatural and vindictive parent, will be found fully to acquit 
 herself, with credit and eclat, of all the high, social, and political 
 duties. To those which ai'c insisted upon by fashion and mere 
 convention, it is scarcely necessary that we should seek an 
 answer. Not a few of Mrs. Trollope's leading and standing 
 topics of complaint, in relation to the United States, are comprised 
 in the following passage : 
 
 " The simple manner of living in western America, was more distasteful to 
 me from its levelling effectrf on the manners of the people, than from the per- 
 sonal privations lliat it rendered necessary ; and yet, till I was without them, I 
 was in no degree aware of the many pleasurable sensations derived from the 
 little elegancies and refinements enjoyed by the middle classes in Europe. There 
 were many circumstances, too trifling even for my gossiping pages, which 
 pressed themselves daily and hourly upon us, and which forced us to remember 
 painfully that we were not at home. It requires an abler pen than mine to 
 trace the connexion which J am persuaded exists between these deficiencies and 
 the minds and manners of the people. All animal wants are supplied profusely 
 at Cincinnati, and at a very easy rate ; but alas! these go but a little way in the 
 history of a day's enjoyment. The total and universal want of manners, both 
 in malos and females, i< so remarkable, that I was constantly endeavouring to 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OP THE AMERICANS. 27 
 
 account for it. It certainly docs not proceed from want of intellect. I have 
 listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that 
 I could strictly call silly, (if I except the every where privileged class of very 
 young ladies.) They appear to me to have clear heads and active intellects; 
 are more ignorant ttpon subjects that are only of conventional value, than on such 
 as are of intrinsic importance; but there is no charm, no grace in their conver- 
 sation. I very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence 
 elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American. 
 There is always something either in the expression or the accent that jars the 
 feelings and shocks the taste." 
 
 This is sweeping enough, in all conscience ; it requires but 
 little efibrt, however, to understand it. Much of the complaint 
 comes under the description contained in the querulous and fa- 
 miliar verse — 
 
 " I do not like you Doctor Fell, 
 The reason why, I cannot tell, 
 But — I do not like you Doctor Fell ;" 
 
 and, of course, requires no remark. Yet it is very proper that 
 it should have one. Mrs. Trollope was the very woman to over- 
 awe the simple people of western America. She was, no doubt, 
 a very talkative person, and could overwhelm them with European 
 topics of which they had not the most distant idea. There are 
 no people so distinguished by self-esteem as those who lead the 
 secluded life of the forest. The Indian who is very chatty at 
 home, and with his own people, only becomes exceedingly taci- 
 turn when in the presence of the whites. If very eloquent, very 
 imaginative, very ingenious, when in his private circle or on 
 great occasions, — he becomes rather dull out of it, and when 
 there is no provocation to his utterance. The white man of the 
 frontier partakes largely of this character and for the same rea- 
 son. It is a distinguishing mark of the female. The effect 
 upon such persons of the presence of a lady of Mrs. Trollope's 
 dimensions, full of London and Paris, breathing her distaste and 
 dislike of every thing she saw and heard, was calculated to render 
 the women cautious and suspicious — to hush their merriment as 
 she approached — to make them desist in her presence, and 
 confine themselves, in all their intercourse with her, to what was 
 simply necessary in suggestion and reply. Mrs. Trollope finds 
 
28 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 them sensible, clear-headed, with active intellects, and chiefly ig- 
 norant upon subjects of mere conventional value. She does not 
 seem to iiave suspected tlieir reserve in her instance. She does 
 not seem to conjecture tiial she was not the person to prompt them 
 readily to unfold themselves at her approach ; — that her very 
 knowledge on conventional subjects, so superior to theirs, was, of 
 itself, sufficient to produce a reluctance to converse, — the natural 
 fruit of an apprehension that their ignorance might be shown. 
 There is a question always to be asked in such cases before we 
 proceed to judgment. Are we the persons to bring out the secret 
 nature of our companion ? One man shall be very silent in the 
 presence of another, while a third shall find him fluent and even 
 eloquent of discourse. It is not every person in whose hand the 
 witchhazel will revolve, showing where the secret waters lie hid- 
 den out of sight. 
 
 Mrs. Trollope makes no reservations on these accounts; — and, 
 while we are in for it, we may as well suggest a few other con- 
 siderations which will yield a probable solution of her difficulties. 
 She finds herself, not only among strangers, but in a new country, 
 where all but herself are busied, not so much in making money 
 as in making bread. It is with a view to putting her son in a 
 like way that she took up her abode in Cincinnati — that place 
 having been recommended to her, esi^eclally as a ncio communily, 
 where adventure and industry might do well. It is highly prob- 
 able that she met with few or no persons, while there, who were 
 natives of the place. All were strangers like herself — some 
 probably from foreign countries, and all seeking the object which 
 was the prime consideration with herself, in behalf of her pro- 
 geny. Her obvious inference should have been, that there were 
 few other than needy and busy people in the place — that these 
 people had all along been a needy and a busy people. We do 
 not look among such for the refinements of luxurious leisure. 
 She was not in their category. What had been her rank in Eu- 
 rope — what her wealth, family and fortune — we know not ; but 
 she had been in the enjoyment of leisure ; she had travelled ; 
 she had possessed the advantages which spring naturally from a 
 residence in the great city, and from frequent intercourse with 
 books, pictures and society ; and, though coarse by nature, vul- 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 29 
 
 gar in her pretensions, and masculine in her tastes, she, at all 
 events, was prepared to see and to feel the wants of a re- 
 gion, in which it was inevitable, from the nature of things, that 
 there should be deficiencies. It was her misfortune to be found 
 there, — to place herself in a world so utterly uncongenial, without 
 taking with her into it a certain sufficiency of good sense, char- 
 ity and indulgence, by which all other deficiencies would have 
 been easily set at naught. But garrulous, restless, with but little 
 to do, and amazingly assured of her own claims to be heard, 
 she seems to have regarded the new settlement on the Ohio, as 
 so much malleable material which she was to mould and form 
 into consistency and shape after the fashion of her own fancies 
 and desires. At all events, here was to be her field of exercise, 
 in which all her talents were to be brought into full play, and 
 where, at least, she was to find a wondering and submissive au- 
 ditory. How many of Fanny Wright's notions she brought 
 along with her, in the attainment of these objects, and in moving 
 the antipathies of her neighbours, we are left to conjecture. On 
 this head she is circumspectly silent. Among this busy and 
 needy population, she was probably the only one having leisure to 
 take into her hands the important business of giving to society its 
 fine and shapely aspects. We may fancy her industry at this vo- 
 cation. It will not be difficult to bring the restless, portly, talkative 
 lady before the mind's eye, — in mixed London and Paris costume, 
 issuing from the " Bazaar,"* looking rather dizarre, as you may 
 suppose, sallying forth through the great avenues of lordly trees, 
 — for Cincinnati was still measurably in the forest — to set the 
 simplicity of her unsophisticated neighbours properly before their 
 eyes. She is not choice at her game, and exacts her toll of at- 
 tention from all sorts of wayfarers. Male and female equally 
 contribute to her auditory, impatient enough of the twattle that 
 keeps them from their thousand avocations. They pause at her 
 beck, hear civilly what she has to say, and hurry oft' with thanks- 
 givings that they have escaped so easily. They have no time for 
 chat, and but little taste for such as she has to bestow. Even where 
 
 * Such was the name given to a large fashionable warehouse which this good 
 lady built in Cincinnati, to her own ruin and the merriment of her neighbours, 
 by whom she was looked upon as equally silly and conceited. 
 
30 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 they miglit have betrayed the graces of speech, they do not care 
 
 to respond to a person who is herself without any attractions. 
 The greater number of them — speaking now for the men — were, 
 perliaps the merest men of business, having no advantages 
 whether of travel or education, as suspicious of the arrogant 
 airs of the traveller, as were the females, — and able to contribute 
 nothing but their experience and mother wit in the way of con- 
 versation. This, no doubt, when the hours of business are over, 
 they are quite willing to do. But Mrs. Trollope is not the per- 
 son to wait for hours. She asserts her consciousness of her own 
 claims, by striving to subject all conditions to her will. She of- 
 fends by what is arbitrary in her nature, in spite of what may 
 even be attractive in her resources. But, really, to any body at 
 all familiar with the country, knowing how it was settled, how 
 newly, and by what classes of persons, generally, — what are its 
 exigencies and what its poverty, — the reproach is simply absurd 
 and laughable, when Mrs. Trollope tells us that she could not 
 possibly meet witli any idle, intelligent people. To look for a 
 higbly polished circle of society, in the enjoyments of ease and 
 affluence, in the settlements along the Ohio, in 1827, might not 
 be an absurdity nor an extravagance in the case of many travel- 
 lers, but Mrs. Trollope was not certainly among the number. 
 
 We have alluded to what is so frequently charged upon the 
 Americans, by foreigners, in regard to the extravagance of their 
 supposed claims to position in comparison with other nations ; 
 how they assert claims which are preposterous, and triumphs 
 which have no foundation in the truth. Mrs. Trollope has the 
 happy knack of repeating everything which has ever been said to 
 the prejudice and discredit of the country. She exclaims, with 
 no little of a lofty complaisance which is peculiarly English — 
 
 ".Jonathan must remember, that if lie will challenge competition with the old 
 world, the old world will now and then look out to see how he supports his 
 pretensions." 
 
 Now, we take leave to say that Jonathan otlers no such chal- 
 lenge ; and, only suffer him to speak for himself, makes no preten- 
 sions for which he cannot nhe at least considerable show of rea- 
 Kon. It is Mrs. Trollope, on the contrary, who seeks the poor fel- 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OP THE AMERICANS. 81 
 
 low out in his hovel on tho banks of the Ohio ; talks to him of the 
 miserable servitude of his condition, compelled, as he is, to labour 
 from dawn to dark for the vile grain and gruel of existence ; 
 \yonders at the content whicli he exhibits with such a fate ; en- 
 deavours to provoke his envy at the luxuries and the glory and 
 lionour he has lost in not being, or not having been born, an Eng- 
 lishman ; talks largely about the polish of court society, as if the 
 mass of iier people, any more than ours, see or know anything 
 about it ; of the happy condition of those progenitors — their pride 
 of place and numerous pleasures — from whom he has so lament- 
 ably degenerated ; assures him that his log house is not fit for the 
 pigs ; that his wife talks in the most horrible and discordant pa- 
 to'is ; and, if his daughters happen, most unluckily, at that mo- 
 ment to make their appearance, lectures them upon the hoidenish 
 manners, the unpractised gait, the awkward and shocking sim- 
 plicity and rude speech of themselves and countrywomen. And 
 when Jonathan, in the bitterness of his heart, turns about and re- 
 torts with a comparative picture of the blessings of his own, and 
 the miseries of the mother country — of the tyranny of its few, 
 and the pauperism, the prostration and pollution of its many — 
 why then, the wretch grows brutal, and ill-mannered, and cublike, 
 and is said to have thrown down the gauntlet to that kind parent 
 who has done so much for him — in drivino; him into a wilderness 
 where he does so much for himself^ — in huntii»ff him with arms 
 and savages, and, failing, in this way, utterly to tear him from the 
 strong root vvhich he has taken — in denying him his honest trophies, 
 and envying him the substance which his own vigorous manhood 
 and independence liave won from the wild and rugged nature on 
 the waters of the Ohio, and in the bosom of Illinois. Well may 
 Jonathan distrust — happy, indeed, if he come not in time to hate 
 — this people, whom he vainly seeks, but without any reason or 
 necessity, to soothe and conciliate. Long may he continue to re- 
 gard the perils and privations of his own wilds and waters as 
 a boon and blessing compared with the lock-and-collar refine- 
 ments, the servitude, the strife and struggle for existence in the 
 refreshing and polite circles of a British loom or colliery, an Irish 
 bog, and a parish poorhouse, so necessary a concomitant of both. 
 Wc take from this volume another passage, which illustrates 
 
33 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Mrs. Trollope's strong disposition to quarrel with the rustics among 
 whom she loiters, for the strangely perverse taste which enables 
 them to be content with their institutions and mode of life. She 
 regards it as perfectly horrible that a woodcutter of the Mississippi 
 and a ditcher of the Ohio should feel none of the cravings of a 
 London appetite. 
 
 " We visited one farm, which interested us particularly, from its wild and 
 lonely situation, and from the entire dependence of the inhabitants upon their 
 own resources. It was a partial clearing in the very heart of the forest. The 
 house was built on the side of a hill, so steep that a high ladder was necessary 
 to enter tlie front door, while the back one opened against the hill-side ; at the 
 foot of this sudden eminence ran a clear stream whose bed had been deepened 
 into a little reservoir, just opposite the house. A noble field of Indian corn 
 stretched away into the forest on one side, and a few half-cleared acres, with a 
 shed or two upon thorn, occupied the other; giving accommodation to cows, 
 horses, pigs, and chickens innumerable. Immediately before the house was a 
 small potato garden, with a few peach and apple trees. The house was built 
 of logs, and consisted of two rooms, besides a little shanty or leaii-io, that was 
 used as a kitchen. Both rooms were comfortably furnished with good beds, 
 drawers, &c. The farmer's wife, and a young woman who looked like her 
 sister, were spinning, and three little children were playing about. The woman 
 told me that they spun and avovc all the cotton and woollen garments of the 
 family, and knit all the stockings ; her husband, though not a shoemaker by 
 trade, made all the shoes. She manuflxctured all the soap and candles they 
 used, and prepared her sugar from the sugar trees on their farm. All she wanted 
 with money, she said, was to buy coffee and tea and whiskey, and she could 
 ' get enough any day by sending a batch of butter and chickens to market.' 
 They used no wheat, nor sold any of their corn, which, though it appeared a 
 very large quantity, was not more than they required to make their bread and 
 cakes of various kinds, and to feed all their live stock during the winter."' — 
 pp. 58, 9. 
 
 One would say that this was a pretty fair specimen of plenty, 
 ease, and the "all in all, content." But it would not be Mrs. 
 TroUope unless there was some serpent iti this elysium — some 
 blight among the buds — some strange alloy, carrying with it a so- 
 ber warninsc that " all is not jrold that ffli.stens." Hear what she 
 says on this point : 
 
 "These people were indeed independent, Rol)inson Crusoe hardly more so — 
 and they eat and drank abundantly ; but yet it seemed to me that there was 
 something awful and almost unnatural in their loneliness. No village bell ever 
 summoned them to prayer, where they might meet the friendly greeting of their 
 fellow men. When they die, no spot sacred liy ancient reverence will receive 
 
DOMc:STIG MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 33 
 
 their bones. Religion will not breathe her sweet and solemn farewell upon the 
 grave ; the husband or the father will dig the pit that is to hold them, beneath 
 the nearest tree; he will himself deposite them beneath it, and the wind that 
 whispers through the boughs will be their only requiem. But, then, they pay 
 neither tythos nor taxes, are never expected to pull off a hat or make a courtesy, 
 and wUl live and die without hearing or uttering the dreadful words, ' God save 
 the king.' " 
 
 We are not prepared to treat with less regard and afTection than 
 our traveller, the exquisite associations, so grateful to a people of 
 long-establishcd usages and society, with which the tastes are 
 made to minister to the offices of religion. But Mrs. Trollope is 
 no great deal of a philosopher, and certainly but little read in the 
 progress of society, not to perceive that the exhibitions of taste, 
 upon which she here insists, are about the very last to which a 
 community ever attains, in its advances, from the satisfaction of its 
 mere necessities to tlie enjoyment of objects of fancy of which 
 it did not dream at first. Religion seems to be the first moral 
 necessity of the human nature. Tlie conviction of the necessity 
 might be called an instinct, if revelation had not better prepared 
 us to consider it an inspiration. In newly-established countries, 
 as in old ones, where the inhabitants are poor, thinly settled, and 
 simple, the dwellings assigned to the worship of God are rude and 
 unsightly. The inartificial tastes of the people call for nothing 
 better, and the deity endows no architect in advance of the exi- 
 gency. Sometimes the hill-tops and the forests serve the purpo.se: 
 sometimes the plains and valleys ; the blue sky forming the glo- 
 rious ceiling, and the great mountains or the huge, gigantic trees 
 the props and pillars of the edifice. It does not appear that the 
 tributes of praise and thanksgiving brought to these wild altar-"^ 
 places are a jot less pure and godworthy than those which ascend 
 in incense from the majestic tabernacles of the European world. 
 On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that a service so 
 entirely free from externals, so stripped of the pomp and ceremo- 
 nials of worship, is apt to be the purest, as it is the simplest, tes- 
 timony which the naked heart can offer to its Maker. The pride 
 of display, the attractions of gorgeous instrumental music, the 
 blinding glare with which wealth and refinement contrive to 
 clothe all the objects of survey in the temples where they period- 
 
 2* 
 
34 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ically assemble, are not here to ofTer inducements which religion 
 itself fails to supply. The motives to attendance upon divine ser- 
 vice in a forest country, such as our vast interior, are very few, 
 apart from the simple desire for the worship itself; and the ser- 
 vice and the scene, for the present at least, amply satisfy the de- 
 mands as they meet the exigencies of the forest settler. It is his 
 exigency that is consulted, not his tastes ; and the substantive 
 want which he feels being satisfied — his absolute necessity being 
 answered — we must permit his tastes to make their progress, as 
 slowly as they will, towards the decorations which, in older coun- 
 tries, sometimes obscure and conceal the substances around which 
 they are accumulated. The tastes of men who gather the means 
 of mere life in abundance, arc never very long in making them- 
 selves felt. These tastes have a regular progress through rela- 
 tive degrees, all depending, from low to loftier, from high to high- 
 est, in the inevitable progress of the moral seasons. Gradually, 
 with increasing means, a simple people come to feel increasing 
 wants. Religion herself, the contemplative and devotional sensi- 
 bilities, have a large influence in prompting the growth of the 
 purer and more symmetrical tastes. The rude church, after a 
 few years, gives place to something better : some village artist sug- 
 gests the plan, and begins the work of improvement. The trav- 
 eller comes and tells of what exists, in the shape of Grecian or 
 Gothic temples, in other lands, and new and emulous improve- 
 ments follow ; and the affection which weeps over its young and 
 kindred, is apt to linger in the quiet graveyard, and to plant wsome 
 tribute and holy-shadowing tree within its sacred pale. This is a 
 history. Could Mrs. TroUope revisit the scenes, ten years hence, 
 which were so cheerless and wanting in her eye, she would then, 
 in all probability, behold some ambitious approach to her lamented 
 ideal. Time alone would be wanting to ivy and to moss the tower, 
 to people the yard with tufted hillocks, and to make the young 
 tree, planted above the child or parent, look like the gray and 
 ghostly Druids that thus contribute to make holy the venerable 
 parishes of old England. Her parochial graveyards have been 
 thus crowned for centuries. At first they were rude like ours. 
 Her people were similarly cold, rough, and ignorant of the gen- 
 tler and soothing offices of taste, even as a minister of religion. 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 35 
 
 Time wrought its work with them, when the family became sta- 
 tionary, and could chronicle its past and living generations, on a 
 Sabbath, in the one enclosure. The affections themselves are a 
 work of time. The sensibilities spring up only in a race which 
 has gone through long periods of probation. The first founders 
 of a family are usually cold and stern, looking frowningly on the 
 trivial, the merely sportive, the timid and the tender-hearted. Time 
 works wonders on the spirit of such a race and subdues the blood, 
 as it works through the bosoms of successive generations. Shall 
 the forest fastnesses of infant America be allov/ed no time for a 
 work which in Europe required ages ? Why will not England 
 send us some few thinkers among her travellers, instead of so 
 many mere prattlers, giddy-pated old women, and pragmatical and 
 consequential half-pay officers — persons who never begin "to learn 
 before they also begin to teach. The moral of American history 
 and American society furnishes a study for the philosopher, in 
 which the great history of civilization, its laws and progress, may 
 be thoroughly canvassed and beheld almost from its first beginnings. 
 In our forests, and remote from the Atlantic seaboard, it is some- 
 times the history of first human steps and necessities, almost totally 
 separated from the influences of European history and civilization. 
 Shall it be tried by such standards ? Must not the traveller, on 
 the contrary, become a devout student, on first principles, and on 
 ground totally intrinsic and individual, before he can hope to dis- 
 cern with correctness, and see the quality in its proper aspect ? 
 
 The objects for which Mrs. Trollope sighs are not available 
 to her, in the very nature of things, in the world in which she 
 looks to find them. They were not certainly at the period when 
 she began the search. The case, we may assert with confi- 
 dence, is somewhat altered now.* But the region even where she 
 wrote was not so very cheerless, nor so wanting in its grateful 
 though sad associations. If the husband or the father committed 
 his loved one to the charge of earth beneath the forest tree, that 
 tree was thenceforward sacred to his veneration. No axe de- 
 faced the mighty shaft that stood as a head stone over their re- 
 mains. No stroke severed its protecting branches ; and his 
 footsteps lingered, morning and evening, as he drew near the si- 
 
 * Now,— in 1847. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 lent place, and he was reminded of the treasure that made it to 
 him as precious as any deposite that ever kept man's treasuie. 
 Why will not Mrs. Trollope make these reflections. Why not 
 infer thus favourably of the human nature of the pioneer of the 
 western wilderness. The suggestion would seem natural enough 
 to one whose heart was not overflowing with a hostile bitterness, 
 that found a ' marah' in all waters of America. 
 
 Let her be sure that the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman nature 
 in our country — a nature stern at first, — fierce, rugged and im- 
 petuous — will work out its deliverance here, and assert its charac- 
 ter, finally, as it did in Britain. In courage and enterprise, in 
 skill and vigour, v/e have already shown our paternity — in good 
 sense, too, that will not suffer imposition, — in strength that will not 
 bear with overthrow, — we have written our English history on 
 the world's annals. We shall, even in our wildest abodes, prove 
 our possession of all those germs of character, now subdued and 
 hidden it may be, which constitute the ample fund of English 
 sensibilities. That our forest dwellers have not reared them set 
 places and lovely temples, is because of their poverty and isola- 
 tion. When it shall be the case with us that mountain, forest, 
 and river shall maintain and send forth their thousands and tens 
 of thousands to swarm and to people the vast space over which 
 our sway is destined to extend, as in the glorious little garden 
 island* from which they originally sprung — when our wilds, 
 thick with human habitations, shall be made to teem and blos- 
 som with the fruits of human industry — when the axe of the 
 pioneer shall cease to shake the woods, giving place to a less fatal 
 music ; — and when the desolate and destitute pauper from a for- 
 eign empire, shall have grown prosperous with plenty, on the 
 banks of the Wabash, the Arkansas, and the Mississippi, — then 
 we doubt not that the village, will take place of the lonely cabin 
 of the squatter, — that its white church-spire, peeping out of green 
 thickets, will cheer the eye of the wanderer as he ascends the 
 distant hill — that its sweet bell will call to Sabbath service, even 
 
 * We recal, as we write this phrase, the fragment of an American ballad (an 
 old one too) to which we listened in our childhood : 
 
 "Oh! England is a lovely garden, 
 But many a bitter weed grows there." 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 37 
 
 as in 'merrie England,' (Is she merry now?) — and all the 
 tastes, and all the materials of taste, — and all the luxuries, 
 whether of the fashions, the fancies, or the heart, in the utmost 
 width, and in the fullest sense of European perfection, — will be 
 seen among us, preventing the censure, and possibly even pro- 
 voking tiie applause of the future Mrs. Trollopes, however un- 
 willing they may be to yield their stubborn English prejudices. 
 Nor, we make bold to say, will our improvement be limited to 
 these respects only. Some vital charities, we think, have al- 
 ready taken up their abodes, and planted their seeds, among a 
 people, for whose ease, affluence and content, nature and an in- 
 dulgent plan of government have done so much. Religion too, 
 will assert her offices, and bring, to crown her homes and temples, 
 the numberless and beautiful associations, that endear her to the 
 tastes of the devotee, as she is precious to his hopes and sensi- 
 bilities. 
 
 There is one sentence, one poor sarcasm, with which Mrs. 
 Trollope concludes the paragraph already quoted. This sarcasm 
 proves that neither her tastes nor her religion were rightly felt 
 at the moment when she penned the remarks that relate to both. 
 Why should not the American say, " God save the King !" God 
 knows he needs a good deal of saving ; and unless the intei'po- 
 sition and the prayers of others avail for him, it is very doubtful 
 if his own will have the desired effect. " God save vour kino- !" 
 say we — " such as he is !" But we propose not to write his his- 
 tory, or that of his predecessor. Our ink is scarcely dark 
 enough for the task, and we should seek to borrow for this pur- 
 pose that of the British journalist when he writes about x^merica. 
 We have little reason as a people to pray for King or Regent,* 
 but our prayers are given to their need rather than their desert. 
 We pray for them most heartily. We scarcely give ourselves 
 much concern about either, but have not the slightest objection 
 
 * The Georges, Third and Fourth. The fonner, a vindictive enemy of 
 America; the latter, — but why speaJi of him. For the present incumbent of 
 the throne, Victoria! — God bless the girl! — we say this from the bottom of our 
 hearts, and all America has said it from the moment that she received the 
 crown. It is the error of British rule and British writers that they will not 
 suffer England to be loved by America. 
 
38 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 that the Deity would have them all in his special keeping. It 
 is only in a political sense that we forbear this prayer. We re- 
 gard the relations of the monarch and his subjects, as derogatory 
 to the latter — (much less at the present day than when George 
 IV. was king — thanks, may the Briton say, to the progress of 
 opinion in America,) and calculated, through its caryatides of 
 nobility and aristocracy, to create and to keep up a condition of 
 things, hollow, corrupt, and artificial. We have no more hos- 
 tility to his name or person, than we have fear or affection for his 
 power. 
 
 One of the subjects in this volume, in which Mrs. Trollope is 
 rather right than wrono^, is that of " relisfious revivals." These 
 proceedings afford her, unhappily, biit too much just occasion for 
 censure. Her description of their ill effects upon society, mo- 
 rals and manners, in certain portions of the country, is scarcely 
 exaggerated. The extent to which this fanaticism has prevailed, 
 and still measurably prevails, among the ignorant, the morose, 
 the distempered of our population, is sometimes productive of the 
 most humiliating exhibitions, such as she describes. The readi- 
 ness with which the unconscious, the young and timid, fall vic- 
 tims to wild and exaggerated sentiments — startling delusions — 
 gloomy and desolating terrors, and the chimeras of a deeply 
 aroused imagination ; and the great growth of fanaticism, which, 
 in substituting cant and clamour and ostentatious prayer, for the 
 quieter and more gentle rites and ofhces of a pure and proper 
 religion, tend necessarily to overthrow the latter — are all too evi- 
 dently before our eyes, not to awaken serious alarm among the 
 intelligent and truly pious for the safety of that scheme of civil 
 and religious tolerance, which has been thought, and with pro- 
 priety, one of the most grateful features in our government and 
 constitution. The only security, indeed, for our social and civil 
 welfare — apart from the reliance to be placed upon the daily 
 increasing intelligence of the people — is to be found in the great 
 variety and number of religious sects which fill up our coun- 
 try ; neutralizing, necessarily, the influences and efforts of one 
 another, and preventing that degree and kind of concert and co- 
 operation, necessary to the full success and predominance of 
 either, should their tendency be to the acquisition of a political 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 39 
 
 ascendancy. But this very fact, to which we refer in some de- 
 gree for our political security, is probably one of the causes that 
 lead to the fanaticism complained of. These excitements fre- 
 quently originate in the struggles of sects to outdo each other in 
 their efforts at popular conversion. Is it said that one denomina- 
 tion has been particularly successful in bringing the sinner to his 
 knee, — then the elfort follows on the part of the rival sect, to 
 achieve even superior successes after the same fashion. There 
 is a rivalry in the churches as well as in other classes of the 
 body social ; and in the business of emulation, religion, which is 
 the^pretext, is mistaken, and even the common proprieties of life 
 are set aside and forgotten. Something, too, may be ascribed to 
 the irregular manner in which church service is vouchsafed to 
 people living in remote districts — to the gloomy temper which 
 flows from extreme loneliness where the temperament is morbid, 
 and the humours are corrupt and fermenting — and something to 
 the eager and mercurial temper of our people, who, with an im- 
 agination continually on the stretch, achieving, or impatient for 
 achievement, carry with them into all their aims and performances 
 a sanguine and fervent zeal, always ready to overboil and over- 
 flow, and continually turning, for new outlets, to novel occasions 
 for excitement. Hence, the rage with which strange doctrines 
 are seized upon and adopted, — the more extravagant, seemingly 
 the more popular — hence Millerism, and Mormonism, and 
 Wrightism, — month's phrenzies which serve the purposes of 
 moral safety-valves, and carry off the overflow of blood and bile, 
 at periods when, without such agents, they might endanger the 
 wholesome condition, and even the safety of the commonwealth. 
 The excesses of the regular sects in religion are of this complex- 
 ion. They rarely last long, and are lessening yearly in the 
 number and the excess of their exhibitions, in proportion to the 
 spread of our population and of the popular intelligence. 
 
 Mrs. Trollope, with much truth and justice, attributes the 
 undue and sometimes improper influence of the clergy over the 
 American women to the attentions which they receive from this 
 class. We have italicised a few of her opinions on this particu- 
 lar, in the selected passages, by which her meaning and ours may 
 be the more easily understood. In speaking of the Cincinnati 
 
40 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 theatre, slie tells us that "ladies are seldom seen there ;" and " hy 
 far the larger portion deem it an offence to religion to witness dra- 
 matic representations." " It is," says she, "m the char dies and 
 chapels thai the ladles arc io be seen in full costume ; no evening 
 in the weeic but brings throngs of the young and beautiful to the 
 chapels and niccling-houses, all dressed with care, and sometimes 
 with great pretension : it is there that all display is made — all fash- 
 ionable distinction sought.'^ " The {)roporiion of gentlemen," she 
 proceeds, " attending these meetings is very small ; but often, as 
 might be expected, a sprinkling of smart young clerks makes the 
 display intelligible and natural." Of the truth of this, and its ap- 
 plication, with some qualifications, to almost every section of the 
 Union, there is not the most distant question. Mrs. Trollope might 
 have eone farther. She mi(j;ht have traced to the influence of 
 sectarianism the absence of all popular amusements in America, 
 those excepted which are brutal, and which we have borrowed 
 from her own country, where a like influence, though j)erhaps to 
 a more limited extent, has been productive of similar results. As 
 she has properly remarked, the working-people must have some 
 relaxation. They must have amusements of one kind or another ; 
 and, being denied those which are innocent, they necessarily seek 
 those which are vicious and of easy attainment. Th^e rigid ex- 
 actions of the clergy, who set their faces studiously against every- 
 thing which savours of pleasantry and play, have driven thousands 
 from the enjoyment of less dangerous luxuries to the gambling 
 table and the tavern ; and until we shall provide for our youth of 
 both sexes places of common resort, where innocent recreations, 
 free from any grave and gloomy influences, shall satisfy the de- 
 mand which nature herself appears to make for such indulgencies, 
 we shall continue to see thousands of the one falling victims to 
 the merest cant and the most drivelling fanaticism, and even a 
 greater proportion of the other class prostrating the noblest facul- 
 ties of mind and body alike to the excesses of the brothel and the 
 bottle. Until we confine religion to its ofiices of unpretending 
 charity, and quiet and persuasive tuition — until we restrain it in 
 its more ostentatious and intolerant exiiibitions, and, with a sense 
 sufficiently enlightened, learn to hold in becoming scorn and con- 
 tempt the vulgar and tyrannical superstition which makes all 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 41 
 
 amusement synonymous with crime — the evil will go on increas- 
 ing, until all the choice and generous charities, all the pure offices 
 of society, all its arts, all its polish and politeness, will be made 
 to fraternize with those characteristics of a slavish zeal, which, in 
 all times and nations, have made ultraism, in matters of religion, 
 the most malignant and bitter despotism that ever afflicted or de- 
 graded man, and misrepresented and defamed his Creator. 
 
 The following brief reference to our literature will amuse 
 many readers. There is some reason in the idea that the maga- 
 zine character of our newspapers, and the very general diffusion 
 through them of a false standard, as well in taste as in doctrine, 
 has been the greatest enemy to its value and increase. It may 
 be doubted, however, whether this evil be not, in great part, coun- 
 terbalanced by the large circulation among the people, through 
 the same media, of a general, though perhaps a superficial, know- 
 ledge of things. The anecdote touching the shoemaker poet is 
 doubtless a caricature. The lady thought perhaps of Bloomfield. 
 
 " In truth there are many reasons which render a very general diffusion of 
 literature impossible in America. I can scarce!}' class the universal reading of 
 newspapers as an exception to this remark ; if I could, my statement would be 
 exactly the reverse, and I should say America beat the world in letters. The 
 fact is, that throughout all ranks of society, from the successful merchant, 
 which is the highest, to the domestic serving man, which is the lowest, they 
 are all too actively employed to read, except at such broken moments as may 
 sufSce for a peep at a newspaper. It is for this reason, I presume, that every 
 American newspaper is more or less a magazine, wherein the merchant may 
 scan, while he holds out his hand for an invoice, ' Stanzas by 3Irs. Hemans,' 
 or a garbled extract from ' Moore's Life of Byron ;' the lawyer may study his 
 brief faithfully, and yet contrive to pick up the valuable dictum of some Ameri- 
 can critic, that ' Bulwer's novels are decidedly superior to Sir Walter Scott's ;' 
 nay, even the auctioneer may find time as he bustles to his tub or his tribune, to 
 support his pretensions to polite learning, by glancing his quick eye over the 
 columns, and reading that Miss Mitford's descriptions are indescribable.' If 
 you buy a yard of riband, the shopkeeper lays down his newspaper, perhaps 
 two or three, to measure it. I have seen a brewer's drayman perched on the 
 shaft of his dray and reading one newspaper while another was tucked under 
 his arm ; and I once went into the cottage of a country shoemaker of the 
 name of Harris, where I saw a newspaper half full of 'original' poetry directed 
 to Madison F. Harris. To be sure of the fact, I asked the man if his name 
 were Madison. ' Yes, madam, Madison Franklin Harris is my name.' The 
 last and the lyre divided his time, I feax too equally, for he looked pale and 
 poor."— pp. 88, 9. 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS, 
 
 All this is clearly satirical ; but an important fact escapes from 
 beneath the chuckle of the traveller, and leads us to conjectures, 
 and to a course of reasonmg, which scarcely disturb her progress. 
 If English literature be so accessible to our people, and if the ap- 
 petite for reading be so universal that the riband merchant and the 
 brewer's drayman couple their studies with their servile occupa- 
 tions, and, in their appetite for the former, scarcely afford them- 
 selves time for the latter, what must be the final effect upon the 
 intelligence of the great body of the people ? If English litera- 
 ture can bestow wisdom, or good taste, or knowledge, or nice sen- 
 sibilities, it is very sure that we are to have them ; and the gene- 
 ral diffusion of literature, so far from being impossible in Ameri- 
 ca, is, under these suggestions, the most probable thing in the world. 
 Here, too, it would seem that our lady traveller somewhat conflicts 
 with her own previous statements, that money-making, without 
 regard to any other object, was the great pursuit in America. It 
 does seem not only that this is not the case, but that the working- 
 man is unwilling to lay down his newspaper in order to secure 
 money. But nothing is more absurd than Mrs. Trollope's mode of 
 reasoning for the whole from the few. This worthy lady, with an 
 adroitness peculiarly her own, always contrives, when compelled 
 to state something praiseworthy or good of the country or its insti- 
 tutions, to couple it with some alloy, by which the admission shall 
 finally tell against us. Some of these instances are worthy of 
 attention. We cannot say that siie often suggests the false, but 
 she too frequently suppresses the true ; and this our charity would 
 not so much ascribe to the wish to misrepresent, as to an unqual- 
 ified ignorance of the subject. Her deficiency seems to bring no 
 misgivings to her mind ; indeed, tlie desperate desire to prate on 
 all topics, so peculiar to her, has not suffered her to perceive or 
 regard it, and will scarcely permit her American reader to set it 
 down to the right score, or to justify her on any. The following 
 passages should surely bring us large accessions of emigrants, 
 since the evils of the country, as detailed in the text, are those, 
 not of its resources or its institutions, but rather of the simple or 
 stiff-necked people who cannot comprehend, and who do not know 
 how to appreciate its advantages. 
 
 '• ^lerhanic.-^. if good workmen, am ccrliiin of ciiip'.oymont. and good wacres 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 43 
 
 rather higher than with us; the average wages of a labourer, throughout the 
 Union, is ten dollars a month, with lodging, boarding, washing, and mending; 
 if he lives at his own expense he has a dollar a day. It appears to me that the 
 necessaries of life, that is to say, meat, bread, butter, tea, and coffee, (not to 
 mention whiskey,) are within the reach of every sober, industrious, and healthy 
 man who chooses to have them ; and yet I think that an En^glish peasant, with 
 the same qualijications, would, in coming to the United States, diange for the 
 teorse." — pp. 104, 5. 
 
 And again : — the only mistake in this passage is that of the 
 general for the exception ; the assertion that the following is a 
 sin^Tular and not the universal case — the oasis shinino; forth amid 
 the sands and solitudes of barrenness and desolation : — 
 
 " There was one man whose progress in wealth I watched with much interest 
 and pleasure. When I first became his neighbour, himself, his wife, and four 
 children, were living in one room, with plenty of beefsteaks and onions for 
 breakfast, dinner, and supper, but with very few other comforts. He was one 
 of the finest men I ever saw ; full of natural intelligence and activity of mind 
 and body, but he could neither read nor write. He drank but little whiskey, 
 and but rarely chewed tobacco, and was therefore more free from that plague- 
 spot of spitting which rendered male colloquy so difficult to endure. He 
 worked for us frequently, and often used to walk into the drawing room and 
 seat himself on the sofa and tell me all his plans. He made an engagement 
 with the proprietor of the wooded hill before mentioned, by which half the 
 wood he could fell was to be his own. His unwearied industry made this a 
 profitable bargain, and from the proceeds he purchased the materials for build- 
 ing a comfortable frame or wooden house ; he did the work almost entirely him- 
 self He then got a job for cutting rails, and as he could cut twice as many in 
 a day as any other man in the neighbourhood, he made a good thing of it. He 
 then let half of his pretty house, which was admirably constructed, with an 
 ample portico that kept it always cool. His next step was contracting for the 
 building of a wooden bridge, and when I left the Mohawk, he had fitted up his 
 half of the building as an hotel and grocery store ; and I have no doubt that 
 every sun that sets sees him a richer man than when it rose. He hopes to 
 make his son a lawyer, and I have little doubt that he will live to see him sit in 
 conrfress; when his time arrives, the wood-cutter's son will rank with any other 
 member of congress, not of courtes)', but of right, and the idea that his origin 
 is a disadvantage will never occur to the iaiagination of the most exalted of his 
 fellow citizens." — pp. 108, 9. 
 
 Of course, this condition of things, which is one, certainly, not 
 only of une?iampled prosperity, but within the reach and at- 
 tainment of any and every person of worth and character, has 
 its qualifications in the jaundiced vision of the London lady. 
 The affluence brings with it vicious excesses; the equality, 
 
44 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 coarse familiarity, etc. We forbear multiplying quotations of 
 this description, numerous as they might be, exhibiting the great 
 advantages held out to the industrious and honest, by the young 
 and flourisliing states, which seem to be censurable only because 
 they are not old and in decay. 
 
 We shall merely advert to a long notice of the acted drama, 
 and condition of theatricals at Cincinnati, the fine arts, and 
 misnamed delicacy of demeanour and thought, which puts all 
 good manners and modesty to the blush. The whole is a broad 
 English caricature, grounded possibly in truth, but forfeiting, in 
 the variety of its decorations, all distinctive claim to that charac- 
 ter. The chapter is illustrated by a lithograph, exhibiting the 
 interior of a box and part of the pit of the Cincinnati theatre. 
 Five persons occupy the former — two of the gentler sex, and 
 three — so called — gentlemen. The feet of one of the latter are 
 protruded, parallel with his head, over and in front of the box. 
 His person exhibits a crouching outline, not unlike that of a frog 
 when about to make his leap. His two male companions occupy 
 seats equally conspicuous with the feet of their comrade ; — one 
 of them with his jacket off and placed under him, his back to 
 the house and his face to the ladies of his own box; the other 
 holding an oblique position, which enables him to behold the per- 
 formance and the fair at the same moment. It may not be out 
 of place to add, that the artist has made the prominent — that is to 
 say the unjacketted — gentleman, purely British in his frame of 
 body — as unlike the American figure as it could possibly have 
 been drawn. It would be quite amusing were it to appear, that, 
 in this description of American manners, a regular representa- 
 tive of John Bull had sat for the picture. The whole afl?air, 
 however, we take to be the broadest fun and fancy ; though we 
 are far from thinking it impossible to find a theatrical, or, indeed, 
 any kind of exhibition, in either nation, into which some person- 
 ages do not sometimes penetrate, neither prepared by fortune, 
 birth, or education, to appreciate the performances or do credit to 
 the company. If by this picture we are to understand that the 
 family of Jonathan is one siii generis, and there is no member, 
 indigent, vulgar, or brutal, in that of John Bull, why then, the 
 humours of Mrs. Trollope are certainly legitimate ; but if this 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 45 
 
 be not the case, if some Britons are now and then to be found, ill- 
 graced, ill-dresscd, ill-mannered, grog-drinking, and tobacco- 
 chewing — John himself will be somewhat at a loss to comprehend 
 the peculiar point and application in this description. 
 
 The fact is — and hence the difference wherever it exists — the 
 poor man in America is prosperous enough, occasionally, to in- 
 dulge in some things rather beyond the common necessaries of 
 life ; while the English labourer, in the land which he so much 
 loves, has but little from his daily toil beyond his daily bread. 
 Jonathan can occasionally take his wife and sons and daughters 
 to the play-house, while John Bull, unless he break in upon his 
 main comforts, or deny himself some of his usual cravings, 
 must be content to leave all such spectacles to the elder brothers 
 of his feudal family. The false delicacy among our females, 
 of which Mrs. TroUope speaks in the same passage, is properly 
 a subject of reprehension and rebuke. A few years of increased 
 prosperity and increasing population, will, however, have reme- 
 died in great part the evil. The reason of it may readily be 
 found in the seclusion and solitude which distinguish, and must 
 for a long time distinguish, the greater portion of western Ame- 
 rica — where the lack of society — its mutual attritions which 
 provoke improvement, and the absence of that social scrutiny, 
 which leaves nothing amiss without its becoming censure — has 
 necessarily left certain features of primitive life, upon which the 
 future satirist may declaim at leisure. 
 
 We had marked for selection a chapter on the subject of a 
 methodist camp meeting, written with some felicity, and, we 
 fear, too much truth. Our limits warn us, however, of the 
 propriety of its suppression. The reader of Mrs. TroUope will 
 do well to linger upon this chapter, and inquire in how much the 
 national manners — not to speak of national morals — are liable to 
 perversion and prostration by such practices in general. We 
 have already remarked upon the absence of popular amusements 
 in our country, and the unhappy, and we may add, the unavoid- 
 able consequences to public virtue and the nation at large, of 
 their exclusion. On this head, in the course of a chapter de- 
 voted to a notice of the city of Baltimore, we find the following 
 passage. 
 
46 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 " The theatre was closed when we were in Baltimore, but we were told that 
 it was very far from being a popular or fashionable amusement. We were, in- 
 deed, told this every where throughout the country, and the information was 
 generally accompanied with the observation, that the opposition of the clergy 
 was the cause of it. But I suspect that this is not the principal cause, espe- 
 cially among the men, who, if they were so implicit in their obedience to the 
 clergy, would certainly be more constant in their attendance at the churches ; 
 nor would they, moreover, deem the theatre more righteous because an English 
 actor or a French dancer performed there ; yet on such occasions the theatres 
 overflow. The cause, I think, is in the character of the people. / never saw a 
 people so totally divested of gaiety ; there is no trace of this feeling from one end 
 of the Union to the other, (rather sweeping, we should say, though nearly cor- 
 rect for one who has been only at one end of it.) Tliey have no fetes, no fairs, 
 no merry makings, no music in the streets, no punch, no puppet slwws. If they 
 sec a comedy or a farce, they may laugh at it, but they can do very well with- 
 out it, &c., &c. A distinguished publisher at Philadelphia told me that no comic 
 publication had ever yet been found to answer in America." — pp. 170-1. 
 
 A due regard to the establishment of a regular system of popu- 
 lar sports, would drive intemperance out of the land, and render 
 perfectly unnecessary those badges (however valuable and neces- 
 sary now) of national shame and dishonour, the temperance so- 
 cieties. 
 
 Washington pleased our traveller. Upon that part of our con- 
 stitution, which will not permit our government agents abroad, 
 to receive, or rather to retain, presents, of whatever value, from 
 any foreign potentate, Mrs. TroUope remarks that " it would be 
 a better way to select for office such men as could not be se- 
 duced by a sword or snuff box." Perhaps so — but it may be 
 that the American congress looked deeper than the dread of cor- 
 ruption in the adoption of tliis law ; and yet, recognising this as 
 their sole reason. Sir Robert Walpole should be authority for its 
 propriety — in the estimation of an English lady, at least. 
 
 Mrs. TroUope has spoken some truth at the end of the follow- 
 ing passage : — 
 
 " I can by no means attempt to describe all the apartments of this magnifi- 
 cent building, (the Capitol,) but the magnificent rotunda in the centre must not 
 be left unnoticed. It is indeed a noble hall, a hundred feet in diameter, and of 
 an imposing loftiness, lighted by an ample dome. Almost any picture (except- 
 ing the Centaurs) would look paltry in this room, from the immense height of 
 the walls ; but the subjects of the four pictures which are placed there, are of 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 47 
 
 such high historic interest, that they should certainly have a place somewhere as 
 national records. One represents the signing of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence ; another, the resignation of the presidency by the great Washington ; 
 another, the celebrated victory of General Gates at Saratoga ; and the fourth — 
 I do not well remember, but I think it was some other martial scene commemo- 
 rating a victory ; I rather think that of Yorktown. 
 
 " One other subject in the Capitol must be mentioned, though it occurs in so 
 ol)scure a part of the building lh:it one or two members to whom I mentioned 
 it, were not aware of its existence. The lower part of the edifice, a story be- 
 low the r«tunda, &.C., has a variety of committee rooms, courts, and other places 
 of business. In a hall leading to some of these rooms, the ceiling is supported 
 by pillars, the capitals of which struck me as peculiarly beautiful. They are 
 composed of the ears and the leaves of the Indian corn, beautifully arranged, 
 and forming as graceful an outline a.s the acanthus itself This xcas the only 
 instance I saw in uhich America has ventured to attempt a national originality ; 
 the success is perfect. A sense of fitness always enhances the eflect of beauty. I 
 will not attempt a long essay on the subject ; but, if America, in her vastness, 
 her immense natural resources, and her remote grandeur, would be less imitative, 
 she would he infinitely more picturesque and interesting." — pp. 185, 6. 
 
 We might dilate on this lesson, but it is one which our people 
 have already begun to con for themselves. With them the be- 
 ginning is all. They will scarcely need a second suggestion. 
 
 The notes on slavery are full of errors, and scarcely deserve 
 a mention. The details are many of them false — the lady 
 knows nothing of the subject, as it obtains, and is regulated in 
 the United States ; and her speculations upon it are only the 
 commonplaces of the philanthropists, such as we have been ac- 
 customed to hear in all ages. But that the topic is an irksome 
 and ungracious one, in many sections of our country, we should 
 be pleased to give it a place, were it only to alFord our readers a 
 fair specimen of the numerous and gross absurdities into which 
 r superficial and flippant writer is so likely to fall, in the discus- 
 sion of institutions which lie so far below the surface as ours — 
 which may not be seen, and can only be judged of and known 
 by those who feel them. 
 
 The facility is truly ludicrous, with which Mrs. TroUope, 
 when pleased with an unknown object, discovers it to be any 
 thing but American. She appears to have been fortunate in her 
 visits to Washington Square, Philadelphia, in finding unoccupied 
 benches. The general complaint i.s, at this period, that they 
 
4» VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 are not provided in sufficient numbers to meet the demand for 
 them. At the Chesnut street theatre, she saw one man " delibe- 
 rately take off liis coat tlmt he might enjoy the refreshing cool- 
 ness of shirt sleeves." Here too, as in all other places, the men 
 wore their hats and spat incessantly. 
 
 A great deal in relation to Philadelphia, its manners, customs, 
 refinement, and pretension, is said by the writer ; but as the lar- 
 ger portion of this has found its way into tlie journals of the coun- 
 try, and contains, amidst some truth and point, much that is false 
 and foolish, we forbear to notice it. For the rest, we have no ap- 
 prclicnsions that it will eitlier mislead or materially provoke. Slie 
 compliments the manners of the Philadelphians — their freedom 
 from affectation, their simplicity of dress, but inveighs against 
 the coldness and dryness of the gentlemen — the absence of warmth, 
 heart, and enthusiasm on all points, national independence and 
 emancipation excepted. 
 
 We will not be thought to speak slightingly of our women 
 when we confess ourselves to have been struck, in many parts 
 of this volume, with those frequent references which the writer 
 has made, and often so correctly, to their condition in the United 
 States. Much of this stuff is undoubtedly without foundation as 
 it relates to the habits among the better classes of our country ; 
 and many of the particulars dwelt upon by Mrs. Trollope only 
 prove the very equivocal character of that society into which she 
 seems most generally to have fallen. Much, however, is stub- 
 bornly true, and might, and should, with all due alertness, be rem- 
 edied and amended by those whom it most immediately concerns. 
 
 The great difficulty in the way of the sex in the United States, 
 is a result of its present physical prosperity. It is because of 
 the small amount of responsibility which is thrown upon them. 
 They do not take their appropriate place in society, as their social 
 tasks, ordinarily, are so very small. They are the ornaments 
 rather than the agents of society — the decorations rather than the 
 vital instruments for the maintenance and the improvement of the 
 social moral. Their influence, acknowledged while they are girls, 
 is apt to be wholly lost when it is most important — when they be- 
 come wives and mothers. The importance of an individual among 
 us is in just proportion to his usefulness. But woman forms an ex- 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 49 
 
 ception to this law, and we demand that she shall not be useful. 
 For this there is a present reason. So readily are the necessaries 
 of life provided in our country, by its energetic industry, by its 
 fruitful soil, by its benignant climate, that the particular duty of 
 providing them, which involves so many other duties, is rarely 
 suffered to devolve upon her. She is too much kept apart from 
 those trials and toils with which the man has to contend. She 
 shares too little in his out-door interest — too little of his cares, and, 
 consequently, too little of liis real affections. Kept carefully from 
 that active training which schools him from his birih, her mind 
 has no corresponding development with his, by which, matching 
 his fttirly in tlie knowledge and appreciation of his interests, she 
 can become an help-meet unto him — without becoming which, 
 she cannot arrive at her legitimate sphere, or take that fast hold 
 upon his respect without which there is no security in the affec- 
 tions. She is his pet, his plaything, rather than his companion. 
 She brings him music rather than succour and counsel ; and it is 
 only while she is beautiful and young, and gentle and winning, 
 that she secures that homage which involves an extreme defer- 
 ence to her while a girl, for which she pays terribly when she be- 
 comes a mother. She is then banished to the nursery, which 
 would perhaps be no improper place in which to find her, had it 
 been that her own training had properly prepared her for tliat of 
 her children. By removing her from the ordinary duties of so- 
 ciety, while she is young, her intellectual and her moral strength 
 is enfeebled and impaired ; and this deficiency is fatal to her just 
 ascendancy with the man the moment that the rose of girlhood has 
 faded from her cheeks. This is one of the causes which leave so 
 many American firesides cheerless — which yield to the clergy 
 such large and despotic influence over the sex — which lessen the 
 deference of the young to parental authority ; all of wliich evils, 
 and many others, though not to the extent complained of in the 
 book of Mrs. Trollope, are evils that we must deplore, and cannot 
 too hurriedly set ourselves to amend and remedy. 
 
 We must now finish v.ith the work of our fair enemy. It is a 
 book with many faults, many follies, miuch truth, and certain 
 merits, — a lively tone, a satirical humour, — some picturesqueness, 
 and a style which is suited to the masculine and rather coarse 
 
 PART. II. 3 
 
50 VIEWS AISD REVIEWS. 
 
 character of her tastes and intellect. Our object has been rather to 
 let our own people see a little of what is said about them abroad 
 — whether just or unjust, well or ill-founded, — without troubling 
 ourselves to offer any vain qualifications of the one, or equally 
 vain defences or denials of the other. We had our purpose 
 also in availing ourselves of the occasion to dwell upon certain of 
 our unquestionable defects and faults, glad of any foreign ally by 
 whose oi^oncy the more earnestly to impress them upon the atten- 
 tion of our people. In the performance of this duty, we have 
 freely spoken of our censurable peculiarities ; not, as we have 
 already slated, with an}- desire to set i\Irs. Trollope right, or to 
 console our j)coi)le for the slight consideration which she yields 
 their claims and merits. The national improvement has been 
 our better object ; and tor this object v.e can forgive many worse 
 oiTenccs against our «/;/o/t'r proj;re, than has been committed by 
 this venerable lady. Her revenges for numerous disappointments 
 may be of service to us in the end. Some of her suggestions are 
 worthy our heed, and would have been far more valuable and 
 useful had they been dictated by a less spiteful and malicious 
 temper. She has looked on all things in an unquiet and vexing 
 spirit, and with a jaundiced and ungracious eye. Her chief sub- 
 jects of complaint, in the review of the Americans and their cus- 
 toms, other than those to which we have especially directed our 
 attention — and the truth of which, ni a spirit of equity rather than 
 of law (for it would be difficult, under the general issue, for the 
 lady to prove much of her assertions) we have freely admitted, — 
 are apt among all reasonable and not ill-tempered people to pro- 
 voke a smile. They are evils mostly of the toilet and tea-table, 
 — subjects of infinite importance, we grant, — but important, we 
 should suppose, rather to the young and budding of her sex, than 
 to an ancient and wise woman of Mrs. Trollope's make and dimen- 
 sions. Few of our national defects, as urged by this lady, seem 
 material ones, — none are vital, — none, according to her own ad- 
 missions, are irremediable ; and yet, when you look at her sum- 
 mary of our offences, you find them sufficient in her regard to 
 subject us to the seven-fold curse, — the doom of sores, a capite 
 ad calccm, such as John Bull loves to visit upon the nations against 
 whom he makes Wiir. She admits the country to be " fair to the 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OP THE AMERICANS. 61 
 
 eye, and most richly teeming with the gifts of plenty." Slie 
 " has never seen a befjgar within its limits." We have been less 
 fortunate, — having seen many, — but they chiefly came from that 
 fast-anchored isle which is so blessed bright to her imagination ; 
 she beholds all prospering who desire and deserve to be so — many 
 wise, intelligent and agreeable ; most virtuous ; all solicitous to 
 please ; and yet, what with the lack of the arts and sciences, 
 which she notes in the western mud hovel, — the absence in the 
 same reirions of that fashionable trainino; which in London and 
 Paris denote a conventional arrangement which has been matu- 
 ring a thousand years — the dearth of " snug, coterie and literary 
 lady," in all the strange places into which she has thought it 
 fitting to lift her forehead — "she has seen nothino^ to soften the dis- 
 taste which the aggregate of her recollections has left upon her 
 mind." But some of her recollections which cause this distaste 
 have not been recorded in this volume. We might supply them 
 at large, were we to adopt the frequent on dit of the region where 
 she hung out the banner of the " Bazaar," but we prefer simply 
 to glimpse at the circumstances to which the " aggregate" of her 
 distastes was due. 
 
 It is impossible for us to say w^iat were the wild anticipations 
 of Mrs. TroUope on coming to this country : we can gather some 
 of her objects. We are not accountable for her disappointments. 
 What did she expect to see or find ? What were her ideas of a 
 youthful people, whose history is peculiar in only one respect, that 
 of the extreme severity and hardship of their early fortunes ? 
 Knowing little or nothing of this history, she looked for everything 
 — not merely the things to which in her own land she had been 
 faimiliar, but those after which her fancy sighed ; and, cmne 
 ignotum 'pro magnijico, she calculated upon an equal grasp of the 
 two worlds, so hostile elsewhere, of reality and romance — the lat- 
 ter for her own enjoyment, the former, in the trading world of Cin- 
 cinnati, for her son. From her own and other accounts, she found 
 neither, besides, as she grumblingly admits, " spending a great 
 deal of money." 
 
 Here, no doubt, was the mischief. That spending a great deal 
 of money, where one sets out with the pleasant expectation of 
 making it only, is monstrous — well calculated to impair one's tern- 
 
52 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 per, to defeat the judgment, and give to all objects of sight the as- 
 pect of things " seen through a glass darkly." In consideration 
 of her pecuniary losses in America, Mrs. Trollope lias a custom- 
 ary j)rivilege of grumbling. We can read the philosophy of all 
 her humours in the elongation of her purse as well as her coun- 
 tenance. She hath had losses, and she hath the right of the loser 
 to complain ; and she does this with a cordial courage that is ab- 
 solutely refreshing. It is quite as surprising as amusing to what 
 an extent of absurdity — having at any time recognized her as a 
 rational woman — this sort of courane carries her. How wilful 
 blind it makes her, as well as wilful wrong ! It was one blunder, 
 writing such a book, to let us know how long and in what parts of 
 the United States she sojourned ; it was another to afford us such 
 frequent glimpses, as she does, of what her own training for soci- 
 ety and education had been ; but to show by what standards she 
 gauges the American objects of her survey, was, blunder upon 
 blunder, the very worst of all. What would be, in the eyes of 
 other justly-minded persons, standards of simple contrast, she 
 adopts as standards of comparison. She plants, side by side, tlie 
 miserable township on the Ohio and the Mississippi — its streets 
 scarcely hewn out from the forests, and great cumbrous trunks 
 still rising dark and unsightly in their midst — and the stately av- 
 enues of the British and tlie French metropolis. She puts in op- 
 position the manners and habits of a poor and scattered peasantry 
 along our frontiers, not to those of the working-classes, the peas- 
 antry and small farmers at large in Great Britain and upon the 
 Continent, but with the wealthy and well-educated classes of these 
 countries — those who, if not wholly above the necessity of daily 
 toil for daily bread, have at least a thousand advantages of capi- 
 tal, study, society, of which the simple people of our new States 
 have never had the slightest glimpes. If, in her seclusion at Cin- 
 cinnati, a small country town of 30,000 inhabitants, she suffers a 
 tedious evening, she exclaims, particularly if any of the luckless 
 natives shall happen to be present, " Ah ! how different in Lon- 
 don ! There," &c. ; and this sort of reminiscence continually 
 stares us in the face in her volume, as no doubt it was made to stare 
 a hundred times a day into the faces of the Cincinnati. Cin- 
 cinnati has no Tower and no Lions ; no Westminster Abbey ; no 
 
DOMESTIC aiANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 53 
 
 glorious parks and public squares ; no carefully trimmed and gar- : 
 nished walks ; no singular and fascinating luxuries, such as con-'f 
 sole fashion and frivolity amidist the numerous pangs of idleness 
 and deficient motive ; no lofty palaces and abodes, such as make 
 Cockaigne an eternal boast among the sons thei'eof, and a by-word 
 with many others : no towers ; no pillar like that which mounts 
 aloft, "like a tall bully," in violation of one of the commanrlments ; 
 no places of refuge fur the ennuyee — of provocation for the hlase 
 — of easy lounge, like Almack's, where nobility, and beauty, and 
 grace, by the despotic magic of wealth, may realize, in dreamy 
 hours of the midnight, the fairy-like delights of oriental magnifi- 
 cence ; nothing, in short, of that happy social experience which 
 suffers no secrets and no scenes, and is seldom outraged by such 
 exhibitions o^ mauvaise horde as, in the United States, continually 
 come to disturb our lady traveller with doubts or memories of a 
 past when fig-leaves were not at all essential to her own toilet — 
 which is never shocked by petticoat, however short, nor beguiling 
 bust, however boldly and openly displayed — and which yields it- 
 self, happy as languid sensibilities will allow, to the insidious waltz, 
 in contact with the avowed and advertised roue. Such, we are 
 prepared to admit, were the fashionable deficiencies of Cincinnati ; 
 and there were others also, the existence of which it is less pleas- 
 ant to allow. Doubtless there were deficiencies of societv — so- 
 ciety in its proper acceptation — a life of genial neighbours, drawn 
 together by pleasant sympathies, of gentle and affectionate nature, 
 soothed by mutual and superior tastes, and elevated by the influ- 
 ences of art and letters. The country was too new for this, at 
 that period, or to any considerable extent ; and such a circle, 
 wdierever found in such a region, is always apt to be jealous of the 
 intrusion of rude and inconsfenial elements. The stranger docs 
 not easily find access to its sanctuaries ; and the peculiar charac- 
 teristics of Mrs. Trollope, seen at a blush, were not sucli as to 
 entitle her to the entree in these circles ; and tliere are many to 
 be found in the very regions which our lady traveller, moving as 
 one from Dan to Beersheba, pronounced wlioll}' barren, which 
 would do honour to the nicest tastes and acquirements of civiliza- 
 tion in any country. Here she might have found hospitality min- 
 gled with grace, society without restraint, virtue that scruples not 
 
54 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 at the innocent freedom of social intercourse, and the charm of a 
 conversation uiiich none but the rudely passionate would ever re- 
 gard as lacking in geniality and warmth. But, as we have said 
 before, it is not every hand in which the witch-hazel will exhibit 
 its properties of magic. The treasure is for him who can find, 
 not him who vainly summons it from the keeping of the master- 
 spell. 
 
 Ordinarily, we are quite willing to believe, and scarcely hesi- 
 tate to admit, that there is quite too much of the stift' and the 
 starched (which is sometimes confounded with the stately) among 
 the American women, particularly in the agricultural regions. 
 In the commercial and the manufacturing our complaint would 
 be the other way. The worst consequence of this frigid and 
 frozen demeanour, apart from v,hat it subtracts from tlie sweeter 
 graces of society, is that of prompting the other sex to seek 
 elsewhere, and in places of less questionable propriet}^ for that 
 ease and gentleness of speech and habit, which constitutes so 
 much of the nameless charm in v/oman. We are also per- 
 suaded, as our author particularly asserts, that our men suffer 
 from like deficiencies of manner, by which society puts on an 
 aspect of sterility, looks unproductive, is fettered when it should 
 be flexible, and gives a wintry aspect to a sky which might easily 
 be rendered as sweet and serene as summer. But tliis subject of 
 society is one of many difficulties, and if we look heedfully at the 
 condition of morals in those parts of the world v,'here civilization 
 claims to have achieved its last best triumphs of society, we shall 
 be apt to hesitate in the desire for a change in that condition of 
 things, which, v>'hile confessedly a great improvement in some re- 
 spects, involves the loss or insocurit}^ of treasures, in virtue and 
 domestic happiness, infinitely more precious and desirable. 
 
 Seeing these histories elsewhere, (though admitting what we 
 sometimes — nay frequently — lack ourselves.) we are slow to admit 
 that, in the uiuin, we are not — perhaps by reason of tliis very lack 
 — greatly the gainers in a true and genial morality, and in a solid 
 and manly firmness and resolve of character, which, if sometimes 
 rugged and ungenial in its aspect, is nevertheless far more like- 
 ly to be virtuous and patriotic. Our women may lack tiie vo- 
 luptuous grace, but they are also free from the shameless practice 
 
DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS. 55 
 
 of the courtesan. Our men may indulge in the use of a loath- 
 some and unnecessary weed, — but they are nevertheless men, — 
 shrinking from no toil, asserting tlieir manhood with courage, — 
 patient under trial, steadAist in .struggle, — cool, clear-headed, — 
 doing always, and always indomitable. It is a curious fact that 
 you seldom see a native American beggar, and never hear of a 
 native highwayman. It is surely unnecessary, until we know 
 what in reason may be required of us as a nation, to undertake 
 either to account for or to excuse our deficiencies. What, let us 
 ask, should be required at our hands ? What should the English- 
 man require — he who, at no very remote period, emerged from 
 barbarism himself — if indeed he has yet done so, with his 
 prize fighting, liis most fmious pastime, and the brutal clamour 
 of the " ring," forming a music so precious in his ears. The 
 badges of his savage state are not yet entirely stricken from his 
 limbs. He still wears the chains and collar of destitution and 
 ignorance. He is still '• Gurth, born thrall of Cedric the Saxon," 
 groaning under a despotism which he has not yet discovered to 
 be illegitimate, or which, having made the discovery and having 
 the power, he lacks the necessary courage to remove — clinging 
 still to his liereditary fictions, his feudal bonds, as tenaciously as 
 if he loved them, and as their cruel consequences are destined, 
 while he remains thus impotent, to cling to his progeny, even to 
 the third and fourth generation. It is, indeed, marvellous to be- 
 hold, liovv^, v/ith a momently increasing conviction of their equal 
 weight and weakness, he sustains the laws and statutes which 
 had their unnatural birth in a period of barbarian lawlessness and 
 insecurity; and prefers them, v/ith all their antediluvian inapti- 
 tude to his present wants and condition, simply because he dare 
 not venture upon the deep and stormy waters — though with the 
 successful example of the American pilgrims before his eyes, — of 
 a toilsome but glorious experiment. What should such as he 
 demand or expect from the hand of America? He, who, still 
 lingering in mournful apathy, is unwilling to go back to what he 
 was, unable to remain where is, and yet trembles to go forward ! 
 It is of him that we should ask, Wliat are the expectations which 
 he entertains of what is to be done by infant America before she 
 can possibly commend herself to his gracious judgment ? What 
 
56 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 should be her progress, what her triumphs over, and what her re- 
 lation to, the countries around her. and the nations from which she 
 sprung ? We are not ashamed, and certainly not unwilling, to an- 
 swer, to him, the inquiry into what we ha\ e done and what we have 
 become. The book of Mrs. Trollope, full as it is of malignant 
 exaf^<^eration, adroit sarcasm, and paltry inucndo, will, of itself, 
 triumphantly for America, re})ly to the question if put by him. It 
 is only necessary to say what he is and to indicate wiiat ice are. 
 It is enough to describe him struggling without avail for those priv- 
 i]e<res of life and freedom, given him at his birtli, but wrested from 
 his possession and enjoyment by the very nation to wliicli he gives 
 up liis ener.fjies, and for which he has spilt, and continues to spill, 
 his blood like water, on the deeps and on the deserts, many a league 
 from the narrow boundary vvhicii takes his labour without grati- 
 tude, and appropriates his spoil and liis glory without honour or 
 reward. He cries out for liis Inj-tliright, and cunning, and cus- 
 tom, and an artificial inequality of condition, deny him his prayer ; 
 and we see him raving with desperate hopelessness, like a famish- 
 ed lion in his native forest, from v.hicli the more adroit hunter has 
 carried off all the prey. Let Mrs. Trollope draw for him the pic- 
 ture, and present to his eyes the compaiison between the Briton 
 and the American. She will describe — she does describe for the 
 latter — a numerous and a contented people, increasing in pov/er, 
 in population, and prosperity — happy in the institutions, which, if 
 they show no pampered and isolated classes, arlbrd equal protec- 
 tion to the liberties of all, and strangle not their industry, and oh- 
 struct not their enterprise. She depicts them resolute in over- 
 coming obstacles, energetic and fearless in the pursuit of their own 
 happiness amidst dangers and difficulties, ambitious of glory and 
 applause, emulous of other nations, and, though they may have 
 but just begun the march, advancing on their way with a keen 
 diligence which promises neither to fail nor falter until they shall 
 have attained the high eminence of a perfect equality with the 
 very best and bravest among them. 
 
ARTICLE II. 
 THE AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHiVIEN/ 
 
 I. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 It is something, surely, to be able to boast that we have an 
 American antiquity, — even though it be of a sort which cannot 
 materially assist our claims to social rank in the great family of 
 nations. The fact is important to our literature. It is so mucli 
 rav/ material to our artists in fiction — a quarry to which the poet 
 and novelist may repair witli confidence, without much fear of 
 exhausting tlieir resources. The more rude the annals, the more 
 susceptible of an original polish ;-r— the more imperfect the history, 
 the more encouraging to the genius which adventures boldly. 
 The mounds and fortifications of North, and the ruined cities of 
 Central America, silent to the historian, have a voice for the artist 
 which he will surely hear. There will be a life one day put into 
 these old idols and images of Palenque, which will resuscitate the 
 wondrous past, which is now buried in their strange decay. 
 
 It is in this point of view that we are interested in the antiqui- 
 ties of America. It is not because we would learn their history, 
 though, to the curious, this is desirable also. It is because we 
 shall, from these shapeless masses, erect new fabrics, as from the 
 ruins of ancient Rome, a new and scarcely less magnificent Rome 
 is made to rise. Doubtless, there shall be incongruities in our 
 structures. We shall see strange and solemn sculptures, looking, 
 out of place, from walls which they do not beautify. But the new 
 
 * The Discovery of America, by the Northmen, in the Tenth century ; with 
 notices of the early settlements of the Irish in the western hemisphere. By 
 North Ludlow Beamish, Fellow of the Royal Society, and member of the Royal 
 Danish Society of Northern Antiquaries, &c. London : T. & W. Boone. 1841. 
 
 3* 
 
58 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 fabrics will slill tell us something of the old, and provoke that 
 spirit of contemplative inquiry wiiich peoples the past for itself, 
 and restores all its histories — histories not the less acceptable to 
 our thouirhts, because of the sweet, wild atmosphere of poetry 
 which encircles them with its own peculiar halo. 
 
 That we iiave an American antiquity is now beyond all ques- 
 tion. It will not lessen its value to us, that it belongs to our 
 country rather than to our race. But, of this doubt, even, we are 
 not certain. We are not sure to what people this history belongs. 
 That there is a history, yet to be put on record — a liistory of great 
 events, and of a very rcmarjcahlo people, of whom the only remains 
 are ruins — is a fact which taxes no credulity. These ruins are 
 tro})liies which declare for a large progress in arts and arms. 
 They speak for deeds, of \\ hich they are no longer the memo- 
 rials. They assert an existence, for which they provide no name. 
 The history may be quite as much our own as the ruins. It may 
 be that these are monuments of our own ancestors. Here our own 
 kindred may have set down their footsteps, and offshoots from our 
 own parent stocks may have wielded the chisel that carved into 
 an uncouth aspect of humanity this sad-looking and stone-eyed 
 representative, which gazes upward upon us from the embracing 
 earth. There is no evidence against this assumption. There are 
 some proofs which speak in its behalf. But notliing so certainly 
 as to deprive conjecture of any of her privileges. 
 
 Shall it be ours to find the key to this history, or shall the 
 secret be read by our poets only ? That these in time will reveal 
 its substantial merits, we have no question ; but shall their la- 
 bours be anticipated by the more sedate and deliberate studies of 
 the antiquarian ? Shall we have the history before the poem ? It 
 may be so. There is that in the progress of art and science in 
 the present day which offers large encouragement to curiosity and 
 hope. We are on the eve, in all probability, of great discoveries, 
 and need, possibly, nothing more than the smile of a happy inspi- 
 ration to find the key to treasures of history equally grateful to 
 the romancer and the sage. Shall we, through this medium, trace 
 the progress of the lost tribes of Israel, from the east to the west, 
 across the ocean straits v^'hich separate the continents ? Shall we 
 find the sources of American antiquity in the genius of the wan- 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 59 
 
 dering Phoenician, or in the bold adventures of tlie northern Vi- 
 kingr ? There is no good reason why all these races should not 
 have found their way, under dillerent circumstances of fortune, to 
 the western iiemisphere. Tliere are good reasons for the faith 
 that some of them have surely done so. The argument is strong 
 in favour of the Northmen. Their safjes assert a claim to have 
 discovered North America six Imndred years before the coming of 
 Columbus, tind to have found it, even then, in some degree, settled 
 by the genius of civilization. 
 
 Receiving on trust some very plausible conjectures, the claim 
 seems to be placed on good foundation. It is embodied fairly in 
 the able and elaborate work of Professor Rafn, of the Royal Dan- 
 ish Society of Northern Antiquaries, of which an analysis and 
 abridgment is now before us.* His facts and assumptions rest 
 chiefly on the authority of certain ancient Icelandic manuscripts. 
 These arc undoubtedly authentic. It is only within a very few 
 years that they have been made public and have undergone trans- 
 lation. Of this work there have been made two abridgments, 
 one of which is American and one English. These are both re- 
 spectable, and sufficiently satisfactory for popular use. The cost 
 of a reprint and translation of the original work would probably 
 be too expensive for either country. In the original, fac-similes 
 are given of the principal manuscripts, and maps are furnished, 
 which enable us to identify the places discovered by the Northmen 
 with the same regions as they are known to us in modern times. 
 These detailed statements are, of course, conjectural, and are to be 
 received with caution. But the documents upon which the maps 
 are founded have more certain claims upon our respect and atten- 
 tion. In brief, the greater number of savans, as well in Europe 
 as America, consider it a point which scarcely admits of question, 
 that the continent of North America was found and partially oc- 
 cupied by the Northmen fully five hundred years before the birth 
 of Columbus. So far as we can perceive, the fact is nearly if 
 not quite made out b}' the work of Professor Rafn. This work 
 consists of the Sagas or narratives of certain famous northern voy- 
 agers. A Danish and Latin translation follows the Icelandic text, 
 
 * ANTiaviTATES AMERICANS, sive Scriptores Septentrionales rerum antc- 
 Columbianarum in America. Copenhagen, 1837. 
 
60 VIEWS Ai\D IIEVIEWS. 
 
 and the whole is accompanied by the illustrations and commenta- 
 ries of the editor, by discussions historical and philological, and 
 by geographical and archccological disquisitions of equal interest 
 and value. It is something in favour of these sagas, that they do 
 not seem to have been written to assert a claim of discovery. The 
 attempts to colonize were few and feebly urged ; and the descrip- 
 tions given of the nev/ countries are generally slight, and are only 
 employed as tributary to the narrative of the achievements of some 
 favourite hero. The chronicles are, in fact, so many histories of 
 personal adventure. It is the deeds of the Viking, in a strange 
 land, that are recorded ; and what is said of the region where 
 they occur, is simply as a background for the picture. The de- 
 tails arc too artlessly stated, and the geographical features too care- 
 lessly sketched, to make these portions of the narrative obnoxious 
 to suspicion. 
 
 The first of these Sagas to which we will ask the reader's 
 attention, is that of Bjarni Herjulfson. This bold navigator was 
 preceded by Erik the Red, by whom Greenland was discovered 
 and colonized. His father had sailed with Erik, and the son set 
 forth on a voyage in search of him. He discovered, according to 
 our Professor, the region which is now occupied by Newfound- 
 land, Nova Scotia, and the States of New England. This was 
 A. D. 986. In 994, the track of discovery is taken up by Leif 
 Erikson, the son of Erik the Red. Old Erik himself was about 
 to- depart on the same voyage, but was discouraged by an omen. 
 Happening to tumble from his horse while on his way to the ship, 
 he concludes it better to remain at home. His son, however, 
 is not discouraged. With thirty-five men he sets sail, and makes 
 his way to Newfoundland. Upon this he confers the name of 
 Helluland, from Hella, a flat stone. His next discovery is that 
 of a country, " flat and covered with wood, and white sands were 
 far around where they went, and the shore was low." " Then," 
 said Leif, " this land shall be named after its qualities, and called 
 Markland," that is, " Woodland." Halifax is supposed to be the 
 region thus described. From hence, Leif sails into the open sea 
 with a north-east wind, and after being two days out sees an island, 
 lying east of the land, which is assumed to be Nantucket. From 
 the farther details, it appears that he " shaped his course through 
 
AMERICAN SAGES OF THE NORTHMEN. fil 
 
 Nantucket Bay, beyond the south-west extremity of the peninsula 
 of Cape Cod ; thence across the mouth of Buzzard's Bay to Sea- 
 connet Passage, up the Pocasset River to the Bay of Mount Hope." 
 Here he remained all winter, built houses, caught salmon, and got 
 up with the sun at half past seven in the morning. He made some 
 petty excursions into the country, gathered the grapes, and grovv- 
 ing merry upon the juice, called the country Vinland, in regard to 
 this grateful product. He departed in the spring for his own country, 
 where the intelligence of his discovery produced a sensation. 
 
 Thorwald Erikson, his brother, pursues the adventure in 
 1002. Taking charge of the ship of Leif, he finds the territory 
 upon which the latter had squatted, spends a winter in catching 
 salmon and enjoying the grape after the manner of his brother, 
 but is less fortunate in the issue of the expedition. In an encounter 
 with the savages, whom he defeats with great slaughter, he is 
 mortally wounded by an arrow. " I have gotten a wound under 
 the arm," says the brave fellow to his comrades, " and it will 
 prove a mortal wound to me. Nov/ get ye ready to depart in- 
 stantly, and bear me to that cape where I thought it pleasant to 
 dwell. A true word fell from my mouth that I should dwell 
 there for a lime, — for there shall ye bury me, and ye shall set up 
 crosses at my head and feet, and call the place Krossaness in all 
 time to come." The cape where he was buried is supposed to be 
 Cape or Point Alderton. 
 
 But Thorstein Erikson, his brother, is not willing that the 
 corse of Thorwald should rest in the spot which he chose for his 
 burial-place. He sailed in 1005, with his wife and twenty-five 
 men, with the affectionate purpose of bringing back the body to 
 the maternal earth. But the grave of Thorwald was not to be 
 disturbed. The voyage of Thorstein was unlucky. Baffled by 
 contrary winds, he wandered about the ocean during the whole 
 summer, and made Greenland, — " the first week of winter being 
 past." Here a mortality prevails which carries off many of the 
 voyagers, their chief among them. This Saga is marked by some 
 curious details of the northern superstitions. 
 
 These voyages open the pathway to Vinland. Other adven- 
 turers succeed, v/hose Sagas are more or less interesting. Among 
 the discoveries of these fearless seamen, — from whom the Anglo- 
 
63 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Norman race undoubtedly derive all their maritime characteristics 
 — is supposed to be that of the influence of the Gulf Stream, which 
 they described as "strong currents." During the autumn of 1007, 
 a man .hild was born to Gudrid, the widow of Thorstein, who had 
 married another chief. Tiiis child received the name of Snorri. 
 He was the first child of European parents born in America, and 
 his birth is remarkable for another reason. Up to this child, the 
 great sculptor, Tiiorwaldscn, traces his lineage, along with that 
 of many other eminent Scandinavians. 
 
 Among the most interesting of the Sagas at this period is that 
 of Thorfinn Karlsefne. — The word Karlsefne signifies "a man who 
 is destined to become great." Thorfinn was an Icelandic mer- 
 chant of royal descent. His deeds did not belie his nobility. He 
 was a famous voyager, and his discoveries in America were con- 
 tinued for a period of three years, from 1007 to 1010. He married 
 Gudrid, the widow of Thorstein Erikson, and to him it was assigned 
 to carry out the public wishes, in regard to the exploration of the 
 newly discovered countries. "People began to talk greatly that 
 Vinland the good should be explored." Karlsefne, with another 
 chief named Snorri, made ready their ship for departure in the 
 spring. They took with them no less than 160 men. Several 
 of these persons are described, and in characters and colours so 
 genuine, that they seem to rise before us like "'old salts," — such 
 as we may encounter at the present day in any of our sea-ports. 
 Thus, for example, we are told of a man, " Thorhall, who was 
 called the hunter. He had long been with Erik, and served him 
 as huntsman in summer, and steward in winter. He was a large 
 man, and strong ; black, and like a giant ; silent and foul-mouthed 
 in his speech, and always egged on Erik to the worst. He was 
 a bad Christian. He was well acquainted with foreign parts, and 
 had been in the ship with Thorslein and Thorwald, &c." Such 
 details will illustrate what we suggested at the beginning, that it 
 was a circumstance greatly in favour of the authenticity of these 
 narratives, taken as proofs of the discoveries of the Northmen, 
 that their objects are so generally personal, and the geographical 
 portions of the Saga are so entirely subordinate to the design. 
 
 The discoveries of Karlsefne are full of interest. His descrip- 
 tions of the savages, their manners, modes of traffic and war, cos- 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 63 
 
 tume, &c., correspond with the language of less questionable 
 narrators five liundrcd years later. But, though striking and 
 impressive, we forbear his details, and give but a single item from 
 the Saga furnished by his voyage. This is the substance of a 
 tradition well calculated to make us prick up our ears, and open 
 our eyes with expectation. It will lead us to another chronicle of 
 more interest hereafter. It was at Markland, in the third winter 
 of his wanderings, that Karlsefne encountered five Skrcelings, or 
 savages. One of them was a bearded man, two were females, 
 and two were boys. The boys were captured, the man and 
 girls succeeded in escaping. These boys were soon taught to 
 speak the language of the Northmen, and their revelations were 
 new and full of interest. They gave the name of their father as 
 Uvcege, tlieir motlier as Vatheldi. They said that their people 
 were ruled by two kings, one of them called Avaldania, the other 
 Valdidida. Their people built no houses, but dwelt in holes and 
 caverns. Beyond them, however, on the other side of a great 
 strait, just opposite their country, they described the people as being 
 white, — as icearing white garments, carrying fiags upon poles, and 
 shouting loudly. This description recalls to the Nortlnnen an old 
 tradition of their own people ; and they come to the conclusion 
 that the country thus described must be one of which they have 
 frequently heard before, and which they called '• Hvitramanna- 
 land eda Irland ed Mykla.'' that is, •' Whiteman's Land, or 
 Great Ireland !" 
 
 Here, then, is a subject-matter upon which the antiquary may 
 pore with profound delight. Here is tradition sufficiently startling 
 to provoke curiosity and wonder, and sufficiently well grounded 
 in authority to induce speculation and research. It is of unques- 
 tionable antiquity, and this is in its favour. It commends itself 
 specially to our interest, as it may possibly conduct us hereaftei 
 to the secret of our antiquities. The earliest tradition in regard 
 to Whiteman's Land, or Great Ireland, is found in the Landna- 
 mabok, A. D. 982. It appears that Ari ]\Iarson, one of the fear- 
 less adventurers of the northern seas, was driven b}' a tempest to 
 a country lying west in the sea, near to Yinland the Good, and 
 vi days' (supposed to be xi or xvi days) sailing west from Ireland. 
 This region, according to the calculations of Professor Rafn, must 
 
G4 VlEWfc) AND REVIEWS. 
 
 be that tract of country which is now occupied by the states of 
 South Carolina and Georgia ; the course of the vessel, and the 
 situation of the port in Ireland from which she sailed — that of 
 Limerick — leading irresistibly to this calculation. 
 
 Here, then, Ari Marson found a white people, such as were 
 described by the two ^Skroeling boys made captive by Karlsefne ; 
 habited in white, carrying banners, and speaking a dialect re- 
 sembling the Irish, and such as he could understand. Hence 
 was the country styled Wliiteman's Land, or Great Ireland, 
 Once in their custody, the people of this region would not suffer 
 Ari Marson to depart. They kept him, christened him, wived 
 him, and made a chief of him ; but, fearing another stress of wind 
 in the contrary direction, they took care never to let him go to 
 sea aijain. This narrative is founded on the statements of Rafn, 
 a merchant of Limerick, Thorfinn, Jarl of the Orkneys, and other 
 credible authorities. The tradition is quite too interesting to be 
 set aside at present, and we forbear the interesting details con- 
 tained in the further voyages of Karlsefne and Thorhall ; of 
 Freydis.Helgi, and Finnbogi, — tosay nothing of much other matter 
 of kindred interest and novelty, — but which fails to illustrate the 
 particular subject before us — and hurry to the singular legend of 
 one of the favourite heroes of northern narrative — a story equally 
 interesting in itself, and curious, because of its close connection 
 with the tradition under notice. 
 
 n. 
 
 THE SAGA OF BJORN ASBRANDSON. 
 
 THE HERO OF BREIDAVIK. 
 
 This is taken from the Fiyrbyggja Saga, or Early Annals of 
 the Western Coast of Iceland — a collection, the date of which is 
 certainly not later than the opening of the thirteenth century. 
 The contents of this Saga, have been carefully collated with 
 numerous manuscripts, by which its authority is confirmed an^' 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 65 
 
 strengthened. We skip unnecessary genealogies, and come at 
 once to our hero, BJorn, son of Asbrand, known accordingly as 
 Bjorn Asbrandson. He was a bard and a warrior, a great sea- 
 captain, a man of warm passions and vigorous frame. These 
 qualities rendered him rash and venturous, and, while yet very 
 young, he had provoked numerous enemies. But he had his 
 friends also. He liad a spell by which to secure hearts. Unhap- 
 pily, he was not always solicitous to win those only whom he might 
 lawfully take to himself. His blood sometimes triumphed over his 
 morality. 
 
 There was a great merchant, named Tliorodd, w ho married 
 Thurid, the widow of Thorbjorn the Fat, and sister of Snorri 
 Godi. It was unlucky that Thorodd was something less of a war- 
 rior than a merchant — still more unfortunate that he looked not so 
 pleasing in the eyes of Thurid as did the brave young chief Bjorn 
 Asbrandson. The parties grew intimate. Their intercourse be- 
 came a subject of remark to the people, and of suspicion to Tho- 
 rodd. He seems to have complained of it to his friends, but did 
 not, like a man, object to it frankly to the offending persons. He 
 was reproached for his imbecility. Thorer Vidlegg, one of his 
 neighbours, with his two sons, both stout and well-grown fellows, 
 being of that class of philanthropists who are apt to look more into 
 the concerns of others than their own, instructed him in the course 
 he should pursue, and were kind enough to proffer him their help. 
 He accepted it, and the parties laid a snare for the sinning but un- 
 suspecting Bjorn. 
 
 But the eyes of the wife were not so blind. Her heart was too 
 deeply interested in her lover not to see and to suspect the mis- 
 chief that was brewing. That Thorodd should nov/ leave her 
 alone with him when he came, was of itself a matter of surprise 
 and alarRi ; that he should, all of a sudden, seem so utterly in- 
 different to that intimacy which hitherto had been a source of con- 
 stant anxiety and discontent, startled all the keen instincts of the 
 feminine nature. She determined to observe him closely ; and 
 subtly as he had laid his schemes, and subdued the open expres- 
 sion of his feelings, he could not hide his heart from her scrutiny. 
 Bjorn found her anxious and alone. Her husband was nowhere 
 
66 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 to be seen. This was unusual. She drew her lover's attention 
 to the fact. She said to him : 
 
 " Beware, Bjorn, for Thorodd means you mischief. Take care 
 of your walks. He seeks to put an end to your visits. I suspect 
 that, even now, he has gone out with others to lay wait for you? 
 and take you at advantage." 
 
 The brave and daring fellow smiled at her apprehensions. He 
 answered her with a fearless, and something of an exulting spirit, 
 in the vein and with the lann-uage of the bards of the North : for 
 " he, too, was a poet." His answer comes to us in Runic rhymes^ 
 though our version must be in simpler language. 
 
 " It may well be that such is his purpose, but here, in the arms 
 of the beloved one, I cannot think of the danger. Do not shorten 
 the day in which I am blessed with such apprehensions. It will 
 come soon enough, the fate which robs me of thee, and dooms thee 
 to deplore my early death." 
 
 But the fair, frail woman, though pleased, was not pacified ; and 
 when they finally separated, Bjorn looked carefully to his weapons. 
 It was well he did so ; for he had not far advanced upon his way 
 when five men darted upon him from a covert. These were Tho- 
 rodd, the husband, tv/o of his servants, and the two stout sons of 
 Thorer Vidlegg. They grappled with Bjorn, but did not entirely 
 succeed in surprising him. This was due to the fears and coun- 
 sels of Thurid. Five to one were fearful odds, but Bjorn had al- 
 ready won the renown of a hero. His was already a favourite 
 name among his people. He fought for something more than life ; 
 and, though closely pressed, escaped the danger. The two sons 
 of Thorer Vidlessr he slew, and their fate finished the combat. 
 Thorodd, slightly wounded, fled witli his two servants. Wounded 
 also, Bjorn made his way home, and stole off to his own chamber. 
 But his mother heard him enter, and sent a maid-servant to attend 
 him. Terrified at seeing him covered with blood, the girl hurried 
 back and described his condition. This brought his father, As- 
 brand, to his apartment. 
 
 " You have fallen in with Thorodd," said the old man. 
 
 " Even so ;" was the answer. 
 
 " And how ended the business ?" 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 67 
 
 The reply of Bjorn was chaunted after the fashion of the sea- 
 kings : 
 
 " It is far easier to fondle a fair woman than to wrestle with a 
 valiant man. I have wounded Thorodd, and .slain the two sons 
 of Yidlegg.'' 
 
 Ills mother bound u}) hi.s wounds, which were not serious ; but 
 the matter did not end here. Thorodd, with Snorri Godi, liis bro- 
 ther-in-law, brought the death of Vidlegg's sons before the court of 
 Thorness. The upshot of the trial was, that Asbrand went secu- 
 rity for his son's good behaviour, and paid a heavy fine, while 
 Bjorn went into banishment for three }"ears. That summer, Thu- 
 rid, the guilty woman, became the mother of a male child, of large 
 and promising appearance, to whom they gave the name of Kjar- 
 tan ; but who was the boy's father, was the question. 
 
 Meanwhile, the exiled hero crossed the sea to Norway, went 
 southward to Denmark, and from thence to Jomsburff. Jomsburs: 
 was a strong castle, built by the Danish king, Harold Blaataand, 
 on the coast of Pomerania. Here Bjorn joined the community of 
 Vikings, by which the place was kept, under the command of a 
 famous chief called Palnatoki. This band of warriors were par- 
 ticularly famous, even in that day and region, for their fierce val- 
 our and hardy contempt of death. Their laws were of the strictest 
 character — their tests of merit of the most exacting description. 
 Bjorn soon proved his right to be of their order, and quickly won, 
 by his great qualities as a v/arrior, the rank of Kappi, or cham- 
 pion of the band. The deeds by which he obtained this distinc- 
 tion are not necessary to this narrative. 
 
 His fam.e preceded him in his return from banishment. Bjorn 
 Asbrandson, the cliampion of Breidavik, was everywhere wel- 
 comed with admiration. His taetes were magnificent, and the 
 pomp of his equipage, costume, and style — in which he imitated the 
 habits of the daring warriors v»'ith v»"hom he had dwelt — drew upon 
 him still more the admiring regards of his own simpler people. 
 Of a person at once handsome and powerful, he adopted the courtly 
 habits and usages of foreign chiefs. Skilled in all exercises, he 
 was everywhere conspicuous by his bearing ; and proud, in his 
 growth, and exuberance of blood, of his personal claims to regard, 
 he did not withhold himself from the popular gaze on great occa- 
 
68 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 sions which drew the multitude toii^ethcr. It was unfortunate that 
 he did not withhold himself from the sight of other eyes, into 
 which it was not so innocent for him to gaze. 
 
 It was in tlie summer first succeeding his return from banish- 
 ment that a great gathering of the people was held near the mouth 
 of the Froda. The occasion was one of great display, and drew 
 together multitudes of both sexes. All went in their best capari- 
 son. The costume at such gatherings was always particularly 
 rich. That of the champion of Breidavik may be supposed to 
 liave excelled his ordinary displays of grandeur. Thurid was 
 there also — the lady of his guilty love. The lovers again met. 
 Bjorn u[)proachcd her, spoke to her, and their conversation was 
 uninterrupted. The husband does not appear to have been pre- 
 sent to arrest their freedoms by his suspicions. The people seem 
 rather to have sympathized with the offending parties. The cham- 
 pion was a favourite ; and perhaps they thouglit that Thurid, the 
 widow of a sea chief, was unwisely matched with a selfish trades- 
 man, upon whom they had conferred the epithet of tribute-buyer — 
 alluding to a transaction in which he had exacted compensation 
 for doing an act of simple humanity. Long did Thurid and Bjorn 
 converse together. They had many things to relate. While the 
 interview lasted, there arose a fight, in which a mountaineer re- 
 ceived a mortal wound. This event was followed by an occur- 
 rence, in which the boy Kjartan, the son of Thurid, declared con- 
 vincingly to all around who was his real father. Armed with a 
 tiny axe — such a plaything as a Viking's son might well prefer 
 over all others — the boy ran to the spot wliere the man was slain, 
 and dipped the weapon in his blood! When the parties sepa- 
 rated, and Bjorn was riding southwards with his friend Thord Blig, 
 the latter asked him if he had seen the action of the lad Kjartan. 
 
 " I did," said Bjorn." 
 
 '• And what think you of it, and of him ?" was the farther 
 question. 
 
 " As of a stripling, who, with the features of a woman, and in 
 the lair of the wolf, proves that a Viking was his lather. But of 
 this the people say he knows nothing." 
 
 *' What will Thorodd say when he hears the story ?" 
 
 lijorn smiled, and gave his answer in song : 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 69 
 
 " Thurid will say, pressing the lad to her bosom, that her hus- 
 band had reason for all his fears." 
 
 " It will be much better for ye both," said the friend, " that you 
 have little to do with each other. Turn thy thoughts from Thu- 
 rid, Bjorn." 
 
 " Good counsel, but not so easy," said the champion. 
 
 " You will repent these doings," answered Thord. 
 
 " I have no fears of Thorodd," said the other ; " but there is 
 some difference when I have to do with such a man as Snorri Godi, 
 her brother." 
 
 Thus the conference ended. It proved the passion of the lov- 
 ers to be too strong still to be controlled by ordinary suggestions 
 of prudence; and in a short time the champion resumed his visits 
 to Thurid. His dwelling was at Kamb, the former residence of 
 his father, who was now dead. We are not told what space di- 
 vided him from his sweetheart ; but he had to cross a melancholy 
 tract of heath in approaching her habitation. Thorodd was no 
 better pleased with his visits than before ; but his failure in the 
 attempt upon the life of Bjorn, and the danger which he had then 
 incurred, led him to think of a very different mode of getting rid 
 of the disturber of his peace. It was the age, and Iceland was 
 the region, over all, where magic ruled triumphant in the popular 
 faith. The witch or wizard possessed a genuine sway in the heart 
 of the Northman. Thorodd consulted one of this class. Thor- 
 grim Galdrakin was a master in his order. He agreed to raise a 
 tempest against Bjorn while he was crossing the heath, which 
 should destroy him. He was to be suffered to visit the lady, and it 
 was on his return that the storm was to assail him. We shall not 
 trouble ourselves to inquire what share the magician Thorgrim Gal- 
 drakin had in the tempest which surrounded our hero's footsteps 
 when he left the dwelling of Thurid. But Bjorn was full of the 
 superstitions of his people. He believed in witchcraft ; and what 
 one believes has necessarily a power over him, for good or for evil. 
 The weather darkened in his progress. The skies grew thick 
 with rain ; the night was black ; the hour was late ; and when 
 Bjorn was fairly on the heath, he was enveloped in a snow storm. 
 He could no longer see the way before him. The drift of snow 
 was such, and so mingled with sleet, that he could scarcely keep his 
 
70 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Ie2s. His iiarments were frozen about him : and in this condition 
 he wandered about for several hours, in great peril, until he found 
 himself at tiie mouth of a cave — some friendly genius, perhaps, 
 who could not baflle the spells of the wizard, thus kindly assist- 
 ing him to elude them. Here the champion found shelter ; a 
 mclanclioly one, for he was cold, and weary, and without food. 
 But his courage had not deserted him. He knew, or believed, 
 that he was assailed by the spells of the wizard, bought by the 
 gold of the husband whom he had dishonoured ; but his solace lay 
 in the enthusiastic spirit of the scald. The bardic genius of his 
 country brought him consolation ; and he chaunted through the 
 night his wild runes, whenever the cold wakened him to a painful 
 consciousness, or when he would baffle its numbing and paralyz- 
 ing tendencies. Some fragments of the songs he chaunted are 
 preserved to us. Among the duties of hospitality, entrusted more 
 particularly to the women of a Northern family, is that of bring- 
 ing dry garments to the traveller. He at once recals the comfort 
 he cannot enjoy ; as, in the language of Rousseau, one loves to 
 paint the spring when it snows, and to dream of liberty in the 
 walls of a dungeon. " Fair one" — thus sings our Northern Vi- 
 king, half palsied with his sleety garments — 
 
 " Fair one, who tlost bear, 
 
 Vestments to the weary, 
 Little know'st thou where, 
 
 Close in dwelling dreary, 
 He that once o'er ocean. 
 
 Drove the fearless bark, 
 Now, with feeble motion, 
 
 Lies in cavern dark,'' 
 
 Another struggle against the apathy growing upon his limbs, 
 produces another chaunt in the same vein, though with somewhat 
 varied measure. 
 
 " I that have traversed the cold empire of the swan, the sea — 
 that have gone eastward with the goodliest freight — that have 
 braved the tempest, and sought the embrace of danger in the heady 
 currents of the Spear, — and all for the love of woman — Alas! for 
 me, no couch of woman is prepared — the cold chamber of the 
 rock alone receives my limbs." 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 71 
 
 And thus, cold and feeble, without, food, or fire, or light, our 
 Viking was kept for three days ; his courage strcngtiiened by his 
 songs, and his heart sustained by its own elastic impulses. The 
 storm which the wizard had raised, being assumed — we may 
 suppose — to have worked its purpose, was allowed to moderate 
 on the fourth day. Then he went home, much exhausted, to 
 Kamb. The servants asked him where he had been housed 
 during the tempest, and his answer — still embodied in the rude 
 chaunt which was so common a faculty with the Northmen of 
 this period — rather declared his mortification that so great a 
 warrior as himself should have been unable to contend with the 
 powers of the wizard. 
 
 *• Are not mv deeds known to you ? Fought I not under the 
 banner of Styrbjorn, when the steel-clad warriors were over- 
 thrown ! Yet could I not escape the spells of the witches, caught 
 by the magic shower in the wild passes of the hills." 
 
 Our hero remained quiet during the winter, but the evil was 
 already done. The resumption of his visits to Thurid, which her 
 timid husband had so completely failed to prevent or punish, had 
 goaded the latter to desperation. With the summer he made a 
 feast, and called to it his brother-in-law, Snorri Godi, with twenty 
 men. He disclosed to him the renewal of his wrongs at the hands 
 of Bjorn, the champion, and demanded that he should furnish a 
 remedy against the ill-doings of his sister. They remained in 
 consultation together several days. Thorodd, the husband, made 
 him many costly presents, for he was a man of great wealth. 
 Snorri Godi was a man of courage and honour. He felt the 
 necessity of putting a stop to the scandal in relation to Thurid. 
 Pat he kept his plans to himself until he had separated from 
 Thorodd. When he left the latter, he gave out that he was 
 going to his ship in the bay of Raunhafn, this being in an opposite 
 direction to Kamb, where dwelt the champion. As soon, how- 
 ever, as he had left the house of Thorodd fairly behind him, he 
 said to his followers, twenty in number, 
 
 " Now shall we ride down to Kamb, where I purpose to take the 
 life of Bjorn Asbrandson. We must watch our chance, and not 
 attack him in his house. The buildings arc strong, Bjorn hardy 
 and valiant, and we have no great force. Besides, it is well 
 
72 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 known, that men who have come in force, assailing those who 
 keep within doors, liave fought with little profit against valiant 
 men. There is tiie adventure of Geir Godi and Gissier the Pale. 
 They, with eighty men, attacked Gunnar of Liderend, who was 
 in his house alone, yet he slew and wounded many of his enemies, 
 and had utterly baffled and beaten them off but that his weapons 
 failed iiim. But, as it is now the season of haymaking, and good 
 drying weather, we may look to find our champion in the fields. 
 There we must surround him. I appoint thee, my kinsman Mar, 
 to fetch Bjorn the first wound. But consider well ere you strike, 
 for he is no man to trifle with. If he receives not such a wound 
 as will disable him, you may look for such danger at his hands as 
 from the fury of a wounded wolf." 
 
 Their plans laid and understood, they pushed onwards to the 
 farm of Bjorn, and, even as they anticipated, they found him in 
 the fields, busy witli the sled in which the hay was drav.n out. 
 He was alone, and had no weapons except a little axe, and a large 
 knife, a span in length from the haft. These, indeed, were simply 
 farmer's implements. Thus far, all turned out as the conspirntors 
 expected, and they evidently had our hero at disadvantage. But 
 it is never certain when the odds are fairly against a brave man, 
 who has a genius for war also. Such a person has resources of 
 thought and action which are never entirely foreseen. He is never 
 taken wholly at disadvantage. Bjorn was a quick-sighted warrior. 
 He beheld and knew his enemies almost as soon as they discovered 
 him. * He who rides in front,' said the champion to himself, — 
 'with the blue cloak — he is Snorri Godi.' His resolve was im- 
 mediate. He did not wait their approach — but, taking his knife, 
 he went straight towards the party. As they drew together, he 
 suddenly seized the arm of Snorri's cloak with one hand, while 
 with the other he so held his knife as to be able to pierce the 
 breast of Snorri, should anything provoke him to do so. In this 
 position the two exchanged civil greetings, while Mar, the kins- 
 man of Snorri, stopped his uplifted hand, forbearing to use his 
 weapon, as he saw that any attempt to do so would be certainly 
 fatal to his leader. The energy, promptness, and skill of Bjorn — 
 practised in all the feats and tricks of war — thus gave him an 
 oppertunity to prescribe the terms of mutual release. He was a 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 73 
 
 frank and generous fellow with all his vices. Clinging to Snorri, 
 as the other attempted to go forward, Bjorn took up the discourse 
 without any attempt at evasion, 
 
 '•' It stands truly thus, friend Snorri, that I have not borne my- 
 self towards you in such wise, but you may well accuse me ; 
 and I have been told that you iiave a hostile purpose towards me. 
 Now, it seems to me best, that, if you have any business with me, 
 other than that of passing me upon the highway, you should give 
 me notice of your intentions. If that be not the case, then would 
 I that you grant me peace, and I will then turn back, for you 
 know I am not the man to go in leading-strings.'"' Snorri an- 
 swered with equal frankness; — ''Such a lucky gripe didst thou 
 take of me at our meeting, that thou must needs have peace this 
 time, however it may have been determined otherwise before. 
 But this I beg of .thee, that, from henceforth, thou cease to in- 
 veigle Thurid, for it will not end well v.'ith us if thou continue in 
 this respect, as thou hast begun." 
 
 The answer of Bjorn to this entreaty, conveyed the strength 
 of his passion, and the conviction of his own weakness. 
 
 " That only will I promise thee which I can perform ; but I 
 see not how I could hold to this, so long as Thurid and I are in 
 the same district." " Thou art not so much bound to this place," 
 answered Snorri, " but that thou couldst easily leave it for an- 
 other." With the reflections of a moment, the manlier feelings 
 of Bjorn became triumphant. The justness of Snorri's demand 
 appealed forcibly to his conscience. The suggestion struck him 
 v/ith new force, and found favour in his sight. Perhaps, he felt 
 also that he could not always baflle the vengeance of an injured 
 husband ; — could not always contend successfully against his 
 myrmidons. It may be, that he had also become sated with his 
 criminal indulgences, and that his roving and adventurous spirit 
 had become impatient of the tame life of the farmer which he 
 was pursuing. At all events, by whatever considerations he may 
 have been governed, he answered the counsel of Snorri in a man- 
 ner to satisfy the latter. 
 
 " It is true what thou sayest, and thus shall it be, since you 
 have thus spoken to me. Thorodd and thou shalt have no more 
 trouble about my visits to Thurid." 
 
 PART II. 4 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS, 
 
 The day followingj Bjoni rode to Raunhofii, where he found a 
 ship, and was soon ready for departure. He put to sea with a 
 north-east wind, '' which wind lasted during the summer; but of 
 this ship,'' says the ancient chronicle, " was nothing heard since 
 this long time." Thus quaintly ends the narrative from which 
 our summary is made, but thus ends not the story of our cham- 
 pion. So gallant a Viking is not to go out of the world by a pufF 
 of north-east wind, even though it lasts the summer long ; and in 
 proof of this we cite the story of another chief. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE SAGA OF GUDLEIF GUDLAUGSON. 
 
 GuDLEiF was the son of Gudlaug the Rich. He was a great 
 merchant, a profession which, in those days, implied an active 
 commerce carried on in person upon the high seas. He owned 
 a merchant vessel, and, in the last years of the reign of Olaf, the 
 Saint, made a trading voyage to Ireland. This was A. D. 1029, 
 some thirty years after the disappearance from his country of 
 Bjorn Asbrandson, the Great Champion of Breidavik. Sailing, 
 on his return voyage, from a port in the west of Ireland, which is 
 conjectured to be Limerick — a port much frequented by the 
 Northmen — Gudleif met "with north-east winds, and was driven 
 far to the west and south-west, in the sea, where no land was to 
 be seen.'' But Gudleif, like a good Christian, fell to prayers, 
 " and it came to pass that they saw land. It was a great land, 
 but they knew not what land it was. Then took they the re- 
 solve to sail to the land, for they were weary of contending lon- 
 ger with the violence of the sea. They found there a good har- 
 bour, and when they had been a short time on the shore, came 
 people to them. They knew none of the people, hut it rather ap- 
 peared to them that they spoke Irish. Soon came to them so great 
 a number that it made up many hundreds. These men fell upon 
 them and seized them all, and bound them and drove them up 
 into the country. Then were they brought before an assembly 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 75 
 
 to be judged." The Icelanders understood enough of the lan- 
 guage in which the captors discussed their fate, to discover that 
 some were for putting them to death, others for distributing them 
 and subjecting them to slavery. But whilst the matter was yet 
 pending, they beheld where rode a large and dignified man, who 
 was much in years, and whose hair was white. To this man a 
 very marked deference is paid by the people of the country. 
 He is received with many outward shows of homage, and the 
 question, touching the fate of the captives, is, in some degree, sub- 
 mitted to his decision. This old man speaks to the Icelanders in 
 the Northern tongue. He asks them whence they come. They 
 answer that most of them are Icelanders. He demands that some 
 of Iceland shall be particularly pointed out to him. Gud- 
 lief, the chief of the expedition, presents himself accordingly. 
 The old man examines him with marked interest, and asks to 
 know from what portion of Iceland he comes. Gudleif answers, 
 " from the district bight Borgafjord." The stranger chief be- 
 trays an intimate acquaintance with Borgafjord, and proceeds to 
 ask after nearly all of the principal persons in that place, and in 
 Breidafjord ; — " and when they talked thereon, enquired he mi- 
 nutely about everything, first of Snorri Godi, and his sister Thu- 
 rid of Froda, and most about Kjartan, her son." These persons, 
 it will be recollected, are those with whom Bjorn Asbrandson 
 made himself too familiar, in former pastimes, as well in love as 
 in hate. But too much time is not allowed them to go over these 
 pleasant reminiscences. The people of the country become im- 
 patient, and suspicious of a conference between the strangers con- 
 ducted in an unknown dialect. They demand an instant decision 
 upon their fate ; and the venerable chief finds it his policy to com- 
 ply with their demands. Withdrawing himself, therefore, from the 
 Northmen, he selected twelve meri^ from the multitude, who went 
 aside, and sat with himself in secret conference. The discussion 
 
 * The trial by jury, and indeed most of those proofs of civilization, which we 
 have been accustomed to ascribe to the Saxons, and to their favourite king, 
 Alfred, are supposed to be traceable to the Northmen. For a highly interesting 
 examination of this subject, read the late work, the " Sea-kings of Norway," by 
 Mr. Laing, whose arguments, if not conclusive, are in most cases exceedingly 
 plausible. 
 
70 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 was continued for some time. It would seem to have been one 
 of considerable diiTiculties. When he rejoins the Northmen he 
 addresses them in the following language : 
 
 " I have talked with the people of the country about your bu- 
 siness, and they have left the matter to me ; and I give ye leave 
 to depart whitlier ye will. Yet must you immediately remove 
 from hence : let not the lateness of the summer discourage ye. 
 The people here are not to be trusted — are hard to manage ; and 
 they think, moreover, that their laws have been broken to their 
 injury by your coming." 
 
 Gudleif answers : '' What shall we say, should fate permit us 
 to reach our country in safety, of him who has given us our free- 
 dom ?"' 
 
 Tlie reply of the old chief is instant and discouraging : " That 
 will I not tell you. I do not wish to be followed by friends or re- 
 latives. Tiiey would only incur the fate from which I have saved 
 you with difficulty. I could not hope to succour them in like 
 manner. My years are now so much advanced that I may ex- 
 pect every hour that old age will overcome me ; yet, even could 
 1 live for a time, I am not supreme in this country. There are 
 chieftains here, though they be not just now in this neighbour- 
 hood, who are far more powerful than myself. They would show 
 little mercy to the stranger." 
 
 Only too glad to escape with whole bones himself, Gudleif quells 
 his curiosity, and proceeds to put his ship in order for the voyage. 
 The aged chief attends him during these preparations, and the 
 Northmen are assisted in getting ready by the people of the coun- 
 try. When they are ready to depart, the old man, taking Gud- 
 leif aside, puts into his hands a gold ring and a sword, with these 
 words : *' Should the Fates permit you to reach your own country, 
 then shall you take this sword to the yeoman Kjartan, of Froda, 
 and the ring to his mother, Thurid." " What shall I tell them," 
 demands Gudleif, " when they shall ask who sends them these 
 valuables ?" " Say that he who sends them was a better friend 
 to the lady of Froda than of her brother Snorri Godi of Helgafell. 
 But if any man, therefore, thinks that he knows who has owned 
 these articles, then saythnt I forbid anyone to seek after me; for 
 the expedition is most dangerous, unless it happens as fortunately 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 77 
 
 to them at the landing-place as it has done with you. The land 
 is of great extent, the shores afford few good harbours, and in all 
 parts may the stranger expect hostility." 
 
 And thus they parted. Gudleif returned home in safety, and 
 delivered the presents of the ancient chief to those for whom they 
 were destined ; and " people held it for certain that this man was 
 none other than Bjorn Asbrandson, the champion of Brcidavik," 
 a conjecture that will strike every reader of tiie narrative who 
 remembers that Thurid, to whom the ring was sent, had been his 
 mistress, and that Kjartan, who received the gift of the sword, was 
 the lad who proved the Vikingr to be his sire by dipping his in- 
 fant hatchet in the blood of the murdered man at the great gath- 
 ering at Haugabret. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE WHITE MAN,— NORTHMAN OR IRISH,— IN 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 Whatever may be our uncertainty, in regard to American an- 
 tiquities, it is scarcely possible to resist the conviction that we owe 
 them to a race, or races, other than the red men who were found by 
 the Spaniards in the country. They furnish proofs of a large pro- 
 gress in civilization, such as were not in possession of the Indians at 
 the coming of Columbus — and such as, if once possessed by any 
 people, they could scarcely have lost by any forfeiture of political 
 privilege, or by any overthrow of the national independence. 
 The arts, as we too well know, are apt to survive the freedom of 
 a nation, whose history they may yet fondly seek to perpetuate. 
 Political, and even social liberty, do not seem to be essential to 
 their vitality. On the contrary, the highest proofs which genius 
 has ever furnished of her resources, have been found to exhibit 
 themselves in the midst of nations who have undergone political 
 emasculation. The arts, once in existence, are of a much hardier 
 nature than is usually supposed to belong to them ; and actually 
 
78 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 derive some degree of their hardihood and muscle from the pres- 
 sure which a state of social degradation necessarily brings along 
 with it. Their moral strength is drawn from their burdens, and 
 ihe grief which glooms the general aspect in the works of genius, 
 is quite as much the sign of that capacity for a degree of endu- 
 rance, which seems to be essential to her vigour, as it is of any 
 inherent characteristics of her own nature. Her flowers are 
 watered by lier tears ; — her fruits are but too frequently the fruits 
 of denial rather than of sunshine. The genius of an oppressed 
 people, who have once been civilized and distinguished, is apt to 
 become more pure, vivid, and even energetic, in the midst of 
 bonds, than it ever proved itself in the day of its conscious free- 
 dom ; and nature, in this manner, seems to provide a compensa- 
 tive endowment, as well to console the suffering race in its priva- 
 tions, as to elevate the self-respect, and thus to prepare the mind 
 of its people for the efforts proper to their recovery of position. 
 As the genius of the individual man becomes refined by trial, and 
 grows at length into a noble and religious gravity, so that of a 
 people, subdued to humiliation by a sense of inferiority, chastened 
 by its overthrow, and the restraints of its new condition, acquires 
 strength for future greatness in the very necessity of endurance, 
 to which it yields passively and without a struggle. Patient work- 
 ing and waiting, in the one case as in the other, is apt, in the pro- 
 gress of events, to emancipate both, and to crown the virtue which 
 submits, even while it struggles, with the triumph which is its proper 
 boon and birthright. The genius of the Jews, the Saxons, the Irish, 
 and the Italians, has suffered no diminution, but has acquired 
 rather a large increase of its natural powers, by the subjection 
 which, at diiTerent stages in the progress of these several nations, 
 they have been made to undergo. Song and strength followed 
 the Egyptian bondage of the Hebrew. The philosopher and the 
 poet, the lawgiver and the w^arrior, were born among the children 
 of Israel in the clay-pits of the Egyptian. The Saxon, in all 
 probability, obtained his first lessons, as well of war as of civili- 
 zation, from the invasions of the northern sea-kings, as, in after 
 periods, he rose into the highest rank of humanity, by the scourge 
 and the bondage to which he was held in the grasp of the superior 
 genius of another portion of the same conquering stock. 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OP THE NORTHMEN. 70 
 
 If Italy and Ireland do not yet challenge their political eman- 
 cipation, witli the adequate energy with which to procure their 
 object, it is satisfactory to know that the genius of the respective 
 people has not died out, and does not slumber, but exhibits that 
 subtlety, vigilance, and general restiveness, which are the usual 
 signs of a presence in the hearts of their people, upon which hu- 
 manity may always build with liveliest hopes of the future. But 
 it will answer our present purpose to insist upon these four na- 
 tions as remarkably illustrative of the truth, that a people may 
 lose every political right or possession w'ithout impairing, in any 
 substantial degree, the strength and vitality of its intellectual na- 
 ture. The captive poet will sing with a sadder melody, perhaps ; 
 but he will still sing : the painter will still achieve his picture, 
 and it shall not be less fresh and beautiful than in the days of his 
 nation's superiority and safety, though heavier clouds and a deep- 
 er tone may give a gloomier aspect to his landscape : the genius 
 that has once v.rought nobly, will still be capable of as noble work, 
 though with a less youthful and exulting spirit. Neither his own 
 memories nor the will of the conqueror, unless the latter be whol- 
 ly barbarous, will deny to the captive or the slave the melancholy 
 privilege of still exercising his genius in the creation of the ex- 
 quisite in art and fancy. The memory of the bondsman will 
 turn to past exercises for its consolation ; and the very selfishness 
 of the conqueror will encourage the art which adds necessarily to 
 his own trophies. The Babylonian tyrant called for the songs of 
 Judah in his captivity : and, though the captive denied that he 
 could sing in his exile, yet his harp poured forth its most exquisite 
 harmonies while uttering the very language of its denial. 
 
 The conclusion from these premises, apart from any traditions, 
 would be adverse to the idea that the red men of America were 
 the source of its antiquities. That portion of the North Ameri- 
 can continent which is now occupied by the people of Anglo-Nor- 
 man origin was, at the first coming of the Spaniards, in the pos- 
 session of a wild, fresh population, as savage as the beasts upon 
 which they preyed. They could exhibit not only no present pos- 
 sessions of civilization, but it is very certain that they had never 
 been subjected by the hands of a master. They had evidently 
 lost no moral possessions. They exhibited no proofs of emero-in<T, 
 
80 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 remote or recent, from a state of bondage ; but were a wild, un- 
 tamed, and, seemingl)', untameable race, to whom the arts of civ- 
 ilized man were wholly unfamiliar. They had, it is true, natu- 
 ral endowments of the largest description. They had the rich 
 materials of song and eloquence in store. They were a people 
 like the Romans — a fierce democracy, wliose passion was con- 
 quest, and who needed a certain degree of physical exhaustion 
 before they could be subdued to a consciousness of the sweet and 
 glorious in art which were yet to be evolved from their own se- 
 cret nature. But, whatever may have been the endowments of 
 the stock for future developement, their whole story tells against 
 the notion that they were the proprietors of the antiquities found 
 in their possession. They had neither tools nor artificers. They 
 had no dense communities needing large cities or fortifications ; 
 and it is absurd to suppose that a wandering people should ever 
 cultivate a taste for possessions which they cannot carry along 
 with them. They had no agriculture ; and the cultivation of the 
 eartli must precede every other step in civilization, by making a 
 people stationary. The vast mounds, the extended lines of forti- 
 fication, the great excavations, the covered ways — certain proofs 
 of which still appear in numerous parts of our continent — indicate 
 a dense and stationary population — a people in possession of a con- 
 siderable degree of science, accustomed to labour, possessed of its 
 implements, and with the consciousness of a vital danger at hand, 
 and threatening, which they endeavoured but vainly to avert. So 
 much is clearly inferrible from the works which they have left be- 
 hind them. These v.'orks were in the country at the coming of 
 the Spaniards — were not works in the use of the red man — which 
 he knew not how to use — wliich did not suit his modes of war- 
 fare, or his modes of life, and must have belonged to a race hav- 
 ing, at the same time, far greater endowments and far greater ne- 
 cessities — by whom he was preceded, and whom lie, in all proba- 
 bility, not only overthrew, but massacred. A protracted struggle, 
 such as a vastly superior and proud, though feeble people, proba- 
 bly opposed to a barbarian invader, would naturally end in the 
 utter annihilation of the former. The traditions of the North 
 American savages are to this effect. The several Indian tribes 
 of Apalachia boasted themselves to be invaders of the country. 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 81 
 
 They described themselves as conquerors — described tlic people 
 ^vhom they overthrew as vastly superior in civilization to their 
 own ; and some of tlieni, the Shawanee (Chowannee ?) for exam- 
 pie, asserted them to have been a white people, in the possession of 
 iron or metallic implements. Numerous corresponding traditions 
 speak to the same eflcct. A curious and highly beautiful legend, 
 of the Bay of Biloxi, almost enforces this history ; and a tradition 
 of the people of Powhatan, on the borders of the Potomac, repre- 
 sented one of their greatest monarchs as coming, while yet an in- 
 fant, from the forests of the remote southwest. 
 
 If we turn our eyes to Central and to South America, there is a 
 parallel history. The evidences of civilization in these regions 
 are of a like nature with those which we find east of the Missis- 
 sippi, but they betray a more decided and various character. 
 They denote the same prompt performing and capable hand, but 
 exhibit much more detail, a greater ambition, and a far more 
 admirable finish. The fabrics of Central America and Mexico 
 declare a people in repose, and in possession of security. Their 
 works of art are much more impressive, and more durable ; de- 
 noting leisure as well as art, wealth, and undoubted position, not 
 less than capacity and taste. These facts — assuming the struc- 
 tures in both regions to have issued from the same hands — would 
 show that the people of the latter countries had been longer in 
 possession of the soil than those who occupied the country north of 
 the Mississippi — would show that they were conscious of no such 
 exigencies as pressed upon the former people. They seem to 
 have been surprised in their high places of security, in their noon- 
 day slumbers, at their temples and firesides, but not upon their 
 walls and fortresses. We may reasonably suppose them expelled 
 by the sudden and terrible inroad of vast swarms of savages, who 
 laughed at their luxuries, and surprised them in the midst of their 
 cflTeminate delights. The history is that of the northern hive of 
 Europe, falling sudden and terrible, in the force of savage strength 
 and uncounted numbers, upon the luxurious provinces of Italy — 
 a race who carried with them their wives and children to the 
 combat, and pitched their tents, and colonized the battle-field 
 which they had made fat with the blood of carnage. Expelled 
 from their pleasant homes, we may follow the footsteps of tJie 
 
 4* 
 
VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 fugitives, growing desperate in fligiit, growing hardier in a new 
 life of trial, and wandering away in scattered bands, seeking 
 places of repose and refuge — struggling, when pursued, by help 
 of earthen barriers rapidly thrown up, to retard the pursuit of 
 their more powerful enemies, and to obtain a temporary respite 
 from assaults wliich they could not hope to endure. Step by step, 
 in this manner — each step distinguished by its earthen fortress — 
 we find them passing to the East, from the waters of the Pacific 
 and the (lulf, to the vast barriers of the Atlantic, which denied 
 that they should travel farther. And here tiieir tiuces have been 
 lost. Here, with the first proofs of a certain European history, 
 we find the vestiges of a race which does not appear. In their 
 place we encounter only the grim warriors of Apalachia — the 
 fierce chiefs of the Muscoghee and the Mississippi, against whom 
 the Iberian chivalry of De Soto and Ponce de Leon urged their 
 mail-clad warriors in vain. These were no soldiers made effemi- 
 nate by the superior arts and luxuries of civilization. They 
 had lost none of the orimnal viijour of their frames — none of the 
 original force of blood, by their adoption of the pleasant and 
 flowery bonds of society. They had drank no enfeebling bever- 
 afjes. Tiiev had known no emasculatins; arts. Thev were an 
 original stock, who were only too soon to be overcome by the 
 temptations wliich civilization had never otfered them before. A 
 nation that has once possessed the arts of peace, never retains 
 those of war after the former have been lost. 
 
 Here, stretching along the shores of the Gulf, from Mississippi 
 to the Atlantic — followina!: the course of the former river until it 
 intersects with the Missouri, tlie Ohio, and other waters — we find 
 still the earthen traces of the fugitives in mound and fortification. 
 Here, in the brief pauses which were allowed them by their 
 pursuing enemies, they threw up their little ramparts, and raised 
 temporary altar-plaees, in honour of those feeble gods, who could 
 not preserve them in tiieir homes. The mounds of Apalachia are 
 probably in humble imitation of the great teocallis of Central 
 America — the one being raised of earth, in a country which had 
 no rock, and where little leisure was allowed the builders ; the 
 other of more durable materials, gathered at a time of leisure, from 
 vast und convenient storehouses in contiguous mountains. Some of 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE INOllTHMEN. 83 
 
 these mounds and artificial works of earth along the Atlantic are 
 actually to be found, deeply liidden in the dense fastnesses of the 
 swamp. Here, then, tiiey must have been chosen for tlie refuge 
 and secrecy which they attbrded. On these altars they raised their 
 feeble fires, trembling all the while lest the rising smokes should 
 betray them to their enemies. Why, if a people were not accus- 
 tomed to an elevated region, should they raise artificial mounds for 
 wprship ? Why, if they were not in dread of foes, should they 
 raise these altars of religion which all people are proud to ex- 
 hibit, in an unwholesome and difficult region of the swamp and 
 thicket I W'e may safely infer that the mound-builders were a 
 race who had been accustomed to a mountain region. With 
 equal safety we may assume that they occupied the territories of 
 Apalachia, with the consciousness of a pressing danger at their 
 heels. To such a tribe, thus apprehensive, the sudden appear- 
 ance of a strange people in their front, while the savages of 
 Apalachia were following close behind them, would naturally be 
 productive of a new terror; and the equally fearful Northmen, 
 under Gudleif Gudlaugsen, might well congratulate themselves 
 when tiiey were taken prisoners by a race of white men in the 
 territories lying between the Savannah and the Chesapeake, that 
 they had a friend at court, in the person of a favourite hero, who 
 could interpose, at the proper moment, and save them from death 
 or bondage. Tradition, reason, and the general aspect of the 
 case, bring us to regard some such as the probable history. 
 
 If, then, the antiquities of America, the leocallis of Central 
 America and Mexico, and the mounds and fortifications of Apa- 
 lachia, are thus the work of a people other than, and superior to, 
 those by whom all these regions were occupied at the coming of 
 the Spaniards, the question that next occurs to us is, Were these 
 a W'hite people ? We have already given the tradition of the 
 Northmen ; — a tradition, we repeat, derived from evidence which 
 almost entitles it to be called and considered a history. We have 
 also glanced at a tradition of the Apalachian Indians, whose pride 
 was wholly derived from their warlike properties, and whose 
 boast it was to have, only within a brief though uncertain period, 
 conquered the previous possessors of the country, whom they 
 represented as a white and highly civilized people. We have 
 
Hi VIEWS AND REVIEWkS. 
 
 only to advert to European traditions, such as that of the Welsh- 
 man, Madoc — undj j7ar parcnthese, we may ask, if there were not 
 such an affinity between the dialect of the Welshman and that of 
 the Irish, as might enable one familiar with the former, in some 
 degree to comprehend the language of the latter? Then, we are 
 not to forfjct what is said of the vacjue accounts which reached 
 Columbus fro!ii various sources, of a new continent ; — not to forget 
 that he visited Iceland in 1477 — had access to the archives of the 
 island, and must have heard of the former discoveries of its roving 
 sea-chiefs. The Sagas of the Northmen, from which we have 
 quoted, were then on record, and were in all probability studied 
 carefully by the adventurous Genoese. This does not lessen the 
 merits of Columbus, nor do we refer to it for this purpose, but 
 simply to show a frequent concurrence of tradition, in a matter 
 the clues to which must depend, in a great degree, upon the 
 sincerity and boldness with which the investigation is pursued. 
 We find, in brief, that the Northmen, the Welsh, the Italians, the 
 Irish, and other maritime nations, were more or less impressed 
 with the conviction of remote and unknown countries, lying in the 
 direction of the western continent, and occupied by a white people, 
 who were distinguished by a certain progress in civilization, 
 hundreds of years before the actual opening of the seals by the 
 hands of Columbus. And these traditions are sustained by the 
 proofs of civilization contained in the new world, and by the 
 traditions of a barbarous race occupying it, who were themselves 
 wholly unequal to their exhibition. 
 
 To this assumption, we are conscious that there is dissent. It 
 is plausibly claimed for the Mexicans, who were in possession at 
 the time of the Spanish conquest, that they were the proprietors 
 of the trophies of art contained in the country — that they were 
 the architects and builders — and that the amount of art obviously 
 in their possession at the time, was such as to justify the conclu- 
 sion that they were wholly equal to the erection of the ancient 
 cities which even then occupied the land. To this we shall ad- 
 vert hereafter. It is sufficient in this place to declare our con- 
 viction that this could not be the case, for various reasons — that 
 the antiquities were too widely scattered over the country — that 
 this fact alone precludes the probability of their being the work 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 85 
 
 of a cruel despotism — that the religious rites of the Mexicans 
 were too barbarous for the asserted degree of civilization — that 
 their constant wars, and human sacrifices, were inconsistent with 
 the refinement which such works attest — that they had but too 
 recently achieved their conquest of the country to have given so 
 much of their leisure to such achievements, which are equally 
 those of peace as of civilization — that they were without shipping, 
 which in the case of a people living long upon the shores of tv/o 
 oceans, who had been successful in some of the boldest specimens 
 of architecture, is scarcely within the compass of belief; and 
 that their tastes, pursuits, luxuries and amusements were those of 
 a race, just rising into the appreciation of arts to which they have 
 fallen heirs by conquest, and the true proprietors of which they 
 have probably banished or destroyed. We look upon the Aztec 
 race as having conquered the country of the superior people, — 
 to have caught up such arts as the fugitives left behind them in 
 their haste — to have occupied such of their cities as suited their 
 purpose, and to have abandoned such as they could not well 
 maintain, because of their remoteness. The Tlascalans and 
 other tribes, belonged probably to the Aztec family, but, under 
 rival chiefs, became detached, and, the common enemy with- 
 drawn, made war upon one another. The characteristics of the 
 several tribes are the same, and their conflicts with each other 
 were rather for the fairer possessions which some of them had 
 obtained, than because of hostile principles, or the indulgence of 
 adverse and differing habits. We find the Mexicans in posses- 
 sion of the salt, and monopolists of its trade, — provoking, by this 
 means, the warfare of their neighbours. That portion of the fam- 
 ily by which the immediate valley of Mexico was occupied, nat- 
 urally increased its numbers by the gradual absorption of tribu- 
 taries to whom its afiluence was desirable ; and, in proportion as 
 it obtained the ascendency of numbers, so it began the conquest 
 of more remote and independent branches of the original family. 
 But we content ourselves with the simple suggestion, in order to 
 pass on to certain curious traditions, which go to confirm the 
 presence of a white people, at an early date, upon the western 
 continent. These proofs are furnished to our hands by the vol- 
 ume before us. 
 
86 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 We forbear quoting from the work of Mr. Beamish, those por- 
 tions which seek to strengtlien his case by proofs of the strange 
 similarities which are to be found in the dialects of certain of 
 our Indian tribes, to that of the Irish people. Curious passages 
 are given from various authors, and a whole string of Indian and 
 of Irish words compels us to find, in one, the root of the other. 
 These are quite remarkable, and will help the philological anti- 
 quarian in prosecuting those discoveries on the very edge of 
 which our century seems to stand. Some very curious particu- 
 lars are accumulated from the narrative of one Lionel Wafer, 
 who lived for several months among the Indians of the Isthmus 
 of Darien. These tend, however indirectly, to give body to the 
 suggestions of Professor Rafn ; and go to show, at least, that there 
 were races of people in the country, preceding the Indians whom 
 we know, and who were remarkably unlike them in manners, 
 laneuag-e and costume. We take froni this narrative of Wafer, 
 one remarkable passage, which, though it relates to a people, at 
 that period, occupying Darien, furnishes, at the same time, some 
 singular coincidences with the notice given by the Northmen, of 
 the inhabitants of " Whiteman's Land." 
 
 " They have a sort of long cotton garment of their own, some white, others of 
 a rusty black, shaped like our carter's frocks, hanging down to their heels, with 
 fringe of the same of cotton, about a span long, and short, wide, open sleeves, 
 reaching but to the middle of the arms. These garments they put on over their 
 heads. When tliey are thus assembled, they will sometimes walk about the 
 place, or plantation, where they are, with these their robes on; and I once saw 
 Lacenta (a chief) thus walking about, with two or three hundred of these at- 
 tending him, as if he was mustering them; and I took notice that those in the 
 black gowns walked before him, and the ichite after him, each having their laiiccs 
 of the same colour with their robes. They were all in their finest robes, which 
 are long while gowns, reaching to their ancles, with fringes at the bottom, and 
 in their hands they hud half-pikes." 
 
 Lionel Wafer, it may be well to mention, is one of Dr. Robert- 
 son's authorities, and is described by that historian as " a traveller 
 of curiosity and intelligence." No doubt is expressed or enter- 
 tained of his claims to respect and confidence. 
 
 Wafer remarks a wonderful affinity between the spoken lan- 
 guage of the people of Darien, and that of the Highlands of 
 Scotland. He says : — " In my youth I was well acquainted with 
 
AMERICAN SAGAij OF THE NORTHMEN. 87 
 
 the Highland or primitive Irisli language, particularly at the Na- 
 van upon tlie Boyne, and about the town of Virgini upon Lougii 
 Rammer, in the barony of Castle Raghen, in the county of Cavan 
 — and I learned a great deal of the Darien language in a month's 
 conversation with them" — the Indians. Wafer, it must be re- 
 membered, had never heard of the traditions of the Northmen, 
 and has no theories to sustain. He starts with no preconceived 
 doctrines, and what he says is the casual utterance of a traveller, 
 who is simply struck with the coincidences which he puts on re- 
 cord. He mentions several affinities in the signification of words, 
 manner of pronouncing them, and the particular twang or accent, — 
 to say nothing of such resemblances as arise from peculiar modes 
 of computation — which his familiarity with the Plighlands of 
 Scotland, enables him to understand, and v/hich remind him irre- 
 sistibly of the people of that region. Curious statements of the 
 same nature are made by British writers of eminence in the sev- 
 enteenth century. The " Turkish Spy," speaking of the early 
 European settlers in America, says — " There is a region in that 
 continent inhabited by a people w^hom they call Tuscarards and 
 Doegs. Their language is the same as is spoken hy the British or 
 Welsh.''' The same writer asserts, that, in this region, occupied 
 by these tribes, '' the British language is so prevalent, that the very 
 toims, bridges, beasts, birds, rivers, hills, SfC. are called by British 
 or Welsh names.'^ The writer of this valuable and curious work 
 was an Italian — John Paul Marana. He could have no motive 
 for making a case for the Irish or the Welshman. The Mexican 
 tradition was, that they were taught in all they knew, of religion 
 and art, by a strange people, who formerly came to their country 
 in corraughs. It might be a subject productive of valuable re- 
 sults, to ascertain in what degree the religion of the Mexicans 
 resembled that of the ancient Druids, or that of the Irish before 
 the dawning of Christian civilization. The wild and cruel super- 
 stitions of the Druids, their stern, severe and mystic rites, might, 
 with some modifications, such as the change of climate and the 
 acquisition of strange arts would naturally induce, well furnish 
 the models for the terrible sacrifices and gloomy superstitions of 
 the Mexicans. 
 
 If then, the western continent furnished abodes for a white and 
 
88 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 comparatively civilized people, prior to the discovery of Colum- 
 bus, the question occurs whether this people were Irish ; and a 
 first inquiry which succeeds to this will determine the degree of 
 probability upon which this theory rests. What was the history 
 of the early Irish, and in how far were they likely to become ad- 
 venturers by sea ? Modern times do not recognize them as a 
 mercantile people, though we find them scattered over the sur- 
 face of the globe. Such, however, seems not always to have 
 been the case. The Irish claim to have been among the people 
 upon whom civilization dawned, long in advance of the surround- 
 ing nations. Numerous pages of the work before us, are given 
 to an array of proofs which are irresistible, that Ireland possessed 
 the most ample means in shipping, and was foremost at an early 
 period in the work of colonizing distant countries. However in- 
 capable and feeble now, she is shown to have been, at one time, 
 equally energetic and able in her progresses upon the sea. Her 
 intellectual superiority to most nations, — unless we except the 
 Saracens — was then conspicuous, and is now unquestionable. 
 Her learning furnished a storehouse, whence the continent of 
 Europe drew its supplies. As far back as the eighth century, we 
 are told by Moore, '-'that the high reputation of the Irish for 
 scholarship had become established throughout Europe." An- 
 other writer. Ware, tells us, "that, to the universities of Ireland, 
 the Irish and Britons, and at length the Gauls and Saxons, re- 
 paired as to marts of good literature." O'Halloran writes, that 
 when a man of letters was missing on the continent, or in Britain, 
 it became a proverb, " Amandatiis est, ad disciplinam in Hiher- 
 nia.^' Sixty-five years previous to the discovery of Iceland by 
 the Northmen, in the ninth century, Irish emigrants had visited 
 and inhabited that island. About the year 725, Irish ecclesias- 
 tics sought seclusion upon the Faroe islands. In the tenth cen- 
 tury, voyages between Ireland and Iceland were of ordinary oc- 
 currence, and in the eleventh century, a country west from Ireland 
 and south of that part of the American continent which was dis- 
 covered by the adventurous Northmen, in the preceding age, ivas 
 known to them under the name of Albania, Whiteman's Land, or 
 Great Ireland. 
 
 These facts are certain, whether as absolute truths or as recog- 
 
AMEHICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 89 
 
 nizecl traditions. The italicised portions of the above summary 
 were firmly believed among the Northmen and the Irish. The 
 preceding parts belong to the pages of received and unquestiona- 
 ble history. We have foreborne unnecessary details, contenting 
 ourselves with indicating rather than supplying the true sources 
 of speculation and research. These particulars present a reason- 
 able tlieory, that a settlement of Irish, or of some kindred Euro- 
 pean tribe, had been made, and had grown into power in the south- 
 ern portions of the North American continent, extending from the 
 Chesapeake to the Isthmus of Darien, hundreds of years before 
 the era of Spanish discovery. The traditions of the Northmen — 
 the same chronicles which record the discovery of xsew En^jland 
 by this people, and which are now generally regarded as vera- 
 cious, affording the same sort of evidence of the fact — the tradi- 
 tions of the Irish — the traditions of the red men of America — nu- 
 merous affinities of names and dialects, tending to confirm the 
 belief, against which there does not weigh a single human proba- 
 bility. The Irish settlers, like the merchant Northmen, might 
 have been driven by stress of weather from their course, and 
 might have felt compensated in the loss of ships by finding a new 
 and fertile country. If we have proofs of Irish adventure and 
 civilization — bells, books, and crosiers in Iceland in the tenth 
 century, why should not the Carolinas and Georgia have been 
 vouchsafed the symbol of the cross, from the hands of wandering 
 papas, at the same period driven by a northeast storm across the 
 vacant waste of the Atlantic ? Professor Rafn is of opinion that 
 the Whiteman's Land, or Great Ireland of the Northmen, was the 
 country lying south of the Chesapeake, and extending to East 
 Florida. The Northmen actually had a chart of this asserted re- 
 gion at a very early period. On this chart Albania was pointed 
 out in due juxtaposition, with Vinland (New England), and, as is 
 supposed, with East Florida. If the proofs be strong with regard 
 to the identification of the former region, then does the existence 
 of the latter depend on the same testimony. If we believe that 
 the Northmen discovered New England, we are forced to give all 
 the faith which they require to the chronicles which declare the 
 rest. We have barely glimpsed at the sagas which refer to New 
 England under the Northmen, and have foreborne all proofs as- 
 
90 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 suming the general recognition of the truth of their chronicles in 
 this respect. We need scarcely say that numerous proofs are 
 found in support of the traditions of the Northmen, among which 
 the Dio-hton or Assonet " Writina; Rock" near Taunton, Massachu- 
 setts, is not the least remarkable. This writing has been deci- 
 phered, and is supposed to be a record made by one of the voy- 
 agers with Thorfinn Karlsefne. His name, and the number of 
 his associates, have been traced out distinctly among the charac- 
 ters, which are shown to be those of a Runic inscription. Let the 
 reader understand that we forbear numerous passages and in- 
 stances in proof of the assumptions in the text, satisfied with giv- 
 ing tlie conclusions of our author, with such of our own conjectures 
 as may possibly bear upon and illustrate them. 
 
 Professor Rafn is of opinion that " Whiteman's Land" was a 
 region of very great extent, at least, upon the sea. One remark 
 in passing. When the Northmen speak of the Skrcelings, or 
 Esquimaux, as being the inhabitants of the more northerly regions 
 of the United States, they probably simply conferred upon our 
 Indians the name of a race with which they were most familiar, 
 and which more nearly resembled our aborigines than any other. 
 The distinguishing traits were slight, and not easy to be perceived 
 where there was no frequent or friendly communion. The dark 
 bronze skin, the long black hair, the great eyes, and the high 
 cheek bones, would readily confound the two races in the sight 
 of a very simple and very hurried observer. It is also to be 
 noted that the Northmen speak of Great Ireland in the language 
 of intimacy, and describe it as " west from Ireland, near Vinland 
 the Good" — and again, "next and somewhat behind Vinland." 
 
 " From what cause," says Mr. Beamish, " could the name of 
 Great Ireland have arisen, but from the fact of the country having 
 been colonized by Irish '?" And the other term, " Whiteman's 
 Land," was inevitably the result of a striking contrast between 
 the inhabitants of this region and the very different race which 
 occupied the rest of the continent. There is nothing improbable 
 in the idea of an Irish ship having been driven by stress of weather, 
 as the ships of the Northmen were subsequently driven, across the 
 Atlantic ; glad to find land at last, and that safety which no doubt 
 their shattered vessels could no longer afford. It is as little im- 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 91 
 
 probable that the Irish, who in the eighth century visited Iceland 
 and the Faroe Islands, and colonized them, should have taken 
 voyages of still more extended consequence. A chance such as 
 we have supposed, driving them across the Atlantic, and discover- 
 ing these shores, would necessarily, if they ever succeeded in 
 effecting their return, induce them to revisit their discovery, 
 and complete the work of colonization so involuntarily begun. So 
 far from there being any mnprobability in this, nothing in fact 
 could be more plausible and natural. It should be no stumbling- 
 block in the way to this conclusion, that we find nothing in Irish 
 history relating to this specific discovery. To expect that Ireland 
 should assert her past triumphs and adventures, would seem like an 
 impertinence just now. Her voice is only lifted in the language 
 of complaint, and precious folly it would be in her to claim for her 
 pride, the discoveries of the past in foreign lands, when she is 
 scarcely conscious, and certainly not sure of the possession of her 
 own ! But of her colonization she does speak, though in terms 
 quite too general to serve our present argument. 
 
 Assuming the fact as established, of a white race, speaking a 
 language like that of the Irish, and occupying the American con- 
 tinent, or portions of it, so early as the year 1005, it does not 
 follow that they came from Ireland. We may owe them to the 
 same famous Phcenician stock from which the Irish themselves 
 are supposed to spring. Their settlement in the western hemi- 
 sphere maybe coeval with that of other branches among the Isles 
 of Britain. With this conjecture, we might pass with niore con- 
 fidence to the examination of Mexican antiquities. It will be 
 remembered that the latter people, on the first coming of the 
 Spaniards, described themselves as but recently the conquerors 
 of the country. The terrors of Montezuma when he hoard of 
 Cortes — by which this till then unquailing despot was made to 
 tremble in his towers — were chiefly inspired by the fact that the 
 invaders were a white and bearded people. The traditions of his 
 ancestors, and the prophecies of his priesthood, had assured him 
 that the ancient inhabitants of the country would return, and once 
 more require their possessions. The effect of this tradition upon 
 Montezuma was a subject of humiliation even among his people, 
 by whom the superstition was felt also, though in less degree. 
 
92 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 He lost all his courage from the moment the Spaniards began 
 their approach to his empire. His purposes were marked by- 
 indecision, and his final resolution to destroy the invaders came 
 too late for his extrication from the toils. Prior to this period he 
 had been the tyrant of the country. Brave to the last degree, he 
 was at once the guardian of his people, and the terror of their 
 foes. But with the presence of the white stranger, his right arm 
 becomes palsied, and he sinks into impotence, despairing and 
 without an effort ! 
 
 The reference to Montezuma and the Mexicans, necessarily 
 brings to mind the interesting volumes of Mr. Stephens, upon the 
 ruined cities of Central America. This writer argues from his 
 inquiries that the people by whom these remains are left, were 
 indigenous. He denies that they had an Egyptian origin, and 
 even ventures to pronounce them the work of the very people 
 who occupied the country at the invasion of Cortes. The reflec- 
 tions and reasons which lead him to this conclusion do not im- 
 press us with their force. Without pretending to say that the 
 people were not indigenous, we cannot subscribe to the opinion 
 that their monuments do not resemble the Egyptian. We find 
 the resemblance in many cases exceedingly striking. Let any 
 one for example, compare the statue at page 349, Vol. II, of Mr. 
 Stephens's work, with familiar specimens from Thebes and 
 Luxor, and he can scarcely fail to be struck with the unquestion- 
 ably Koptic character of this remarkable image. It has all the 
 Egyptian characters. The stern, but sweet repose — the massive 
 outline — the thick lips — the great union of weight and ease in 
 the attitude — the breadth of nostril — the even oval of the head — 
 the massive head-gear, and that strange and sad aspect of so- 
 lidity, which looks out from most Egyptian sculptures of the hu- 
 man countenance and form, — all seem to declare similar sources 
 for the inspiration of the diflering people. After surveying this, 
 turn to the Torso, at page 139, Vol. I, and you recal at a glance 
 the famous image of the Sphinx. Compare the former with this, 
 as perhaps the most characteristic specimen of the colossal ideal 
 of Egyptian art, and we can scarce persuade ourselves, that, 
 though it comes not from the Egyptian chisel, it claims not a like 
 original with the genius of the Egyptian. But it is not to a speci- 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 93 
 
 men, here and there, that we need refer to establish this singular 
 resemblance. Most of what is preserved to us of Mexican art, 
 betrays the same general types with that of the people of the 
 Nile. There seem to be the same prevailing tastes, and the 
 same class of models. In most of the specimens of the two peo- 
 ple, you remark the frequent union of the cumbrous and the fan- 
 tastic. The profusion of ornaments, the constant employment of 
 symbolic illustration, the grotesqueness into which an ambition 
 for the colossal is so likely to terminate — these are leading out- 
 lines of identity between the genius of the respective races. It 
 does not impair this identity to show that there is a difference in 
 mere details. Every change of country, of climate, natural ob- 
 jects and domestic necessities, must, as a matter of course, affect 
 what is exterior in the national mind — provide it v.'ith new sub- 
 jects of art and illustration — with new materials of thought and 
 recreation, — but scarcely impair the general tone, the character, 
 the manners, and the received impulse, accorded by the original 
 family. The genius loci has its requisitions, but these extend only 
 to the moral costume of the emigrant, and not to the religious in 
 his character which constitutes the native elements that bind him 
 to his stock. To show that the Pyramids of the Egyptians were 
 always simple, and contemplated no compound uses, either as bu- 
 rial places or as temples, while such compound uses were char- 
 acteristic of like works among the people of Central America, 
 will make nothing^ ao-ainst the singular and almost conclusive 
 fact that the pyramidal was the favourite form of structure at 
 Uxmal and Palenque. Nations naturally advance, if room for 
 progress be permitted them. To combine the place of sepulture 
 with that of worship — to enshrine the canonized bones of prince 
 or prophet, beneath the altar to which he drew down, by his 
 prayers, the blessings of heaven — might argue for the people who 
 conceived this improvement upon the great waste of burial place 
 among the Egyptians, an advance in civilization ; and the genius 
 of the same people, permitted a new life in another hemisphere, 
 might graft a new use upon an old one, and lose nothing of its 
 identity with the past. An old model might well be improved 
 by enlarged uses, yet forfeit nothing of its native character to the 
 advancing people. 
 
94 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Besides, a race that goes abroad must naturally adapt their cus- 
 toms to the differinsT conditions of their new abode : and it is in 
 its readiness to obey this necessity that a nation most certainly de- 
 clares its genius-. Even if we found nothing of the pyramid in 
 Central America, such a deficiency could not be construed, in the 
 teeth of such other evidence as we do find, into a proof that the 
 people of the latter country were wholly unaware of the works 
 of art in the great valley of the Nile. To reason in this way, 
 from a negation, is wholly illogical ; but here the negation itself 
 is not made out, for, though it be shown that no perfect pyramid 
 has yet been found in Palenque or Copan, yet there is no fact more 
 remarkable than the one that all their works are, to a certain point, 
 pyramidal. It is yet to be shown that these pyramids were at no 
 time perfect. They may have been surmounted with wooden 
 caps or spires. The lapse of years — the assaults of enemies and 
 time — may have wrought together to impair fabrics which, made 
 of the " soft grit-stone " of the country, are not likely to withstand 
 for ever the destructive consequences of neglect and storm. But 
 even these suggestions are not needed to the argument. The sep- 
 arate uses of the two structures m.ight occasion all the difference. 
 The structures of the Egyptian were burial places ; those of the 
 Mexican were temples. The divinities of the one may have been 
 reptiles from the Nile, while fire or the sun may have been, and 
 probably was, the object of worship with the other. The one 
 needed a pool for his deity, the other a mountain. Yet, thus dif- 
 ferent in their religious rites, the genius of art in the two people, 
 botli coming from the East, would leave similar monuments be- 
 hind them — designs borrowed from the same sources, and fancies 
 declarative of like general tastes and sympathies. 
 
 In contending for the strong general resemblance existing be- 
 tween the remams in Central America and those of Egypt, we 
 are not to be understood as assuming the former works to be those 
 of an Egyptian family. On the contrar}^, there are several rea- 
 sons for thinking they are not. One of our objections to the for- 
 mer assumption consists in the very great variety of the human 
 face, which the drawings present to us, taken from the same mon- 
 uments. The dissimilarity is very remarkable. Look at the 
 head, for example, at p. 136, Vol. I. This, supposed to be a por- 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 95 
 
 trait, is decidedly that of a wliite man. It will compare neither 
 with the Koptic nor with the Indian head, either of North or 
 South America. It resembles none of the tawny tribes of our 
 continent. The character of the separate features, with the tout 
 ensemble, is completely Caucasian. Note the diiTerence bet\yeen 
 the two lower heads, also in alto-relievo, on the column at p. 140. 
 Contrast these with the bas-reliefs at p. 142. Compare these 
 again with the colossal head at p. 143 ; a head which, however 
 exaggerated as an object of terror, is strikingly Anglo-Saxon. 
 Remark, also, the high-relief at p. 150 ; and note not only the 
 cumbrous ornament but the massive drapery, which was not a 
 characteristic of the costume of the red men, either before or 
 since the Spanish conquest. Compare, also, with the Indian heads 
 in general, the grand colossal fragment at p. 151. Look also at 
 the head, p. 152 ; and, though evidently distorted for the purpose 
 of exciting terror, you can scarcely doubt that it was designed to 
 represent that of a white, and an European. Such, also, is that at 
 p. 133, which, in addition to the identity drawn from general out- 
 lines, possessed another marked peculiarity, clearly anything but 
 Indian, in its moustaches and beard. The crowned head at p. 160 
 is a very fair specimen of the ordinary Caucasian head. Con- 
 trast the three heads on the column facing p. 158, and note the 
 radical difference of character between them. Note, also, plate 
 3, p. 158, the remarkable dissimilarity in the two profiles, the de- 
 cisive European superiority of the upper head, and the equally 
 decided African character of the larger one below. Note the 
 wonderful difference and the wonderful effects in the expression, 
 caused by this difference, between the prominence of forehead, 
 ri'/Se, and chin in the upper, and the mean depression of the same 
 features in the lower face. 
 
 In Vol. II., examine the frontispiece, and compare the faces of 
 the erect figures with those of the crouching persons upon whose 
 shoulders they stand. Contrast the smooth, mean, unintelligent 
 features of the former, with the bold protrusion of chin and fore- 
 head — the chin being bearded — in the latter. This picture tells 
 a story. It is the picture of a triumph. The brutal conqueror 
 bestrides the prostrate form of him whom he has overthrown. 
 The centre face is that of the god of war, to whom homage is 
 
96 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 olTered, and probably a sacrifice promised. It is a face that 
 symbols the sun. The tongue lolling out, betrays the supposed 
 thirst of the v/ar irod — tlie Moloch of the Mexican — for his 
 draught of blood. The worship of the people of Palenque was 
 evidently a bloody ritual, and their modes of sacrifice remind us 
 of the Phoenicians, whose gods were made hollow, that they might 
 receive their living victims. The presentation of children to this 
 idol, as shown in this plate, and a similar tender to a huge bird, 
 at p. 345, reminds us of other rites practised among the Phoe- 
 nicians. The Carthaginians employed an eagle, as an emblem 
 of the sun, in token of its annual renewal of its vigour. The 
 conjecture is not unreasonable, which finds a likeness between 
 the Egyptian Phcenix and that strange bird by which the altar here 
 is surmounted. But to return to the tablet which appears as the 
 frontispiece to this volume. Mr. Stephens thus describes it : 
 " The principal personages will be recognized at once as the same 
 who are represented in the tablets of the cross (p. 345). They 
 wear the same dress, but here seem to be making offerings. 
 Both personages stand on the backs of human beings, one of 
 whom supports himself by his hands and knees, and the other 
 seems crushed to the ground by the weight. Between them, at 
 the foot of the tables, are two figures sitting cross-legged ; one 
 bracing himself with his right hand on the ground, and v.ith the 
 left supporting a square table ; the action and attitude of the other 
 are the same, except that they are in reverse order. The table 
 also rests upon their bended necks, and their disturbed counte- 
 nances may perhaps be considered expressions of pain and suffer- 
 ing. They are both clothed in leopard skins. Upon this table 
 rests two batons crossed, their upper extremities richly ornamented, 
 and supporting what seems a hideous mask, the eyes widely ex. 
 panded, and the tongue hanging out." 
 
 This surely implies a story of war and conquest ; and we have 
 only to compare the features of those v/ho are erect, and of those 
 who crouch beneath them, to see that the war has been carried on 
 between two utterly distinct races of people. All the charac- 
 teristics of face and feature are essentially marked and in oppo- 
 sition. 
 
 Contrast, at page 353, the two plates, 1 and 2, representing, it 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 97 
 
 would seem — though now they appear equally erect — two of the 
 persons noted in the frontispiece, one of whom before was crouch- 
 ing, while the other stood upon his back. Note, again, their verv 
 dissimilar features, and the no less distinct character of their 
 several garments, their ornaments and implements. Tlie con- 
 clusion is scarcely to be avoided, that they represent very difTerent 
 and contending races. Let these samples of contrast and com- 
 parison suftice. Something, we think, is to be learned by study- 
 ing the conflict in these monuments. Enough has been said to 
 show, that there is an individuality in the heads, which we owe 
 to this unknown chisel of Palenque, which will enable us to sepa- 
 rate them into classes. This leads us to conclude, that they were 
 travellers as well as warriors — that they were familiar with the 
 people of different countries — were in all probability of Cartha- 
 ginian race — a people with whom the planting of distinct colonies 
 was a part of the commercial policy — who are known to have 
 sent forth immense colonies beyond the Pillars of Hercules — wlio 
 made large settlements in Spain, procured tin and amber from the 
 coasts of Great Britain, and are likely to have left their seed in 
 Ireland. 
 
 It is, we should say, almost conclusive against the conjecture of 
 Mr. Stephens — that the people who occupied the country at the 
 time of the Spanish conquest, were the sculptors and temple 
 builders at Copan and Palenque, — that the Spaniards found no 
 proofs of a genius equal to such arts existing among them at their 
 arrival. What is quoted from Herrera and Castillo does not 
 make out a case. To show that they could paint and whitewash 
 and make rude images of stucco, proves little or nothing ; and 
 the mere mention of stone buildings, of large courts, flights of 
 steps, and naked images, is too vague and inconclusive. It does 
 not suggest anything of the noble sculpture, the vast architecture, 
 and the singularly elaborate performances of art, such as is here 
 described, upon which, had they discovered them, the Spaniards — 
 who were familiar with the wonders of Moorish art, after the 
 conquest of Boabdil — would have never wearied to dilate. Be- 
 sides, Herrera himself expresses his surprise, in the very passage 
 which Mr. Stephens quotes, that such works should be achieved 
 by a people ^^ having no use of any metal,^^ — showing clearly that 
 
 PART II. 5 
 
1)8 VIEWS A\D REVIEWS. 
 
 he could not have seen them engaged in such works, or the modus 
 operandi^ without metal, would have ceased to be an occasion of 
 surprise and inquiry. From Castillo, we learn that their ^^ idols 
 were of clan," '^^'^^^^ ^'diabolical countenances, and that they had 
 Jigures of serpents and of idols painted on the walls." Now, 
 would these be the terms employed by the most ordinary writer 
 to describe such works of vastness, finish and splendo'ir as come 
 to us in those illustrated volumes of Mr. Stephens. We are in- 
 debted to Mr. Poinsett for a very liberal collection of such grim 
 idols of clay, with diabolical countenances, as were produced by 
 tlie art of the Mexican inhabitants. To show, as TJr. Stephens 
 does, from various Spanish authorities, that the natives had nu- 
 merous temples, with long flights of steps, and that they were 
 expert in }>lastering and v/hitewashing — that they had courts and 
 towers and piazzas — could paint and were otherwise advanced in 
 a certain degree of civilization, fails to sustain the view v/hich he 
 takes of this subject. While we very well know that the Mexi- 
 cans were not a savage people ; that they had attained a high de- 
 gree of social improvement, in comparison wlih the contiguous 
 nations, there is yet nothing to induce the conviction that these 
 tropliies of art v/ere within the powers of their national genius. 
 No such style of building, so far as we are advised, prevailed in 
 Mexico, Cholula, or any of the great cities of that tinie. Nay, 
 is it not very certain, that these places, occupied by the ruins of 
 Copan, Palenque, &c., were not then known as places, or places 
 of any importance. 
 
 The records of the Spaniards were usually equally copious 
 and minute. They sent to Spain numerous specimens of all the 
 wonders and curiosities which they could lay liands on. Besides, 
 they were always disposed to exaggerate rather than to lessen, 
 the marvels of their own conquest. Fancy, in what terms of 
 hyperbole, their accounts of these wonders, had they seen them, 
 would have been written. Be sure, it would not have been left 
 to the modern antiquarian, by picking out a meagre half sentence, 
 here and tiiere, from the writings of fierce and ignorant soldiers, 
 to assert this more than doubtful claim. Is it to be supposed, 
 also, that these wonderful cities, once discovered, would ever have 
 b(>cn allowed to sleep again ? Nay, is it not sufficiently obvious, 
 
AMERICAN SAGAS OF THE NORTHMEN. 99 
 
 that these buried cities were buried long before the time of Cor- 
 tes, and that they never would have been suffered to remain bu- 
 ried, had not the nations been subverted and utterly gone by 
 whom they had been raised '? Is it likely that Spain, once in pos- 
 session, and the country resigned to her sway, would have left 
 these chosen spots to become swallowed up in the accumulating 
 dust of centuries — covered with mountains of earth, and clothed 
 with the forest growth of ages, if they had ever been known to 
 any of the conquerors ? Would she have willingly permitted to 
 perish, the proofs of a genius in art, so very superior to her own ? 
 [t is not a reasonable supposition. Several things must be estab- 
 lished before it can be shown that the temple builders of Copan 
 and Palenque, and the people of Mexico, at the period of the 
 Spanish conquest, were the same. 
 
 It must be shown that the style of their buildings, public build- 
 ings being understood, was the same. It must be shown that 
 their characters, hieroglyphics and pictures were the same — the 
 costume and weapons the same ; and it must be shown that the 
 Mexican had in possession the very remarkable abilities for sculp- 
 ture which these remains denote. But if it be shown, as, we ap- 
 prehend, can easily be done, that the temples of Mexico, Cholula, 
 Tlascala, etc., were of very different character ; that their statu- 
 ary consisted of rude images formed of potter's clay, grotesque 
 and foul ; that the people wore a very different costume ; that 
 they had not the same style of face with the specimens given in 
 these volumes of Mr. Stephens, and that they themselves knew 
 nothing of these buried cities, or if they did, that they occupied 
 them simply as the inheritors of a race whom their ancestors had 
 expelled — then the question must be set at rest forever. Other 
 questions of comparison occur, but we need not offer them here. 
 Enough to express our belief, that if they held in possession any 
 of the arts by which these great national remains were wrought, 
 they held them as inheritors by conquest, and that, in their hands, 
 their possessions survived the genius by which they were wrought. 
 
 Having suggested the several clues of study to the reader cu- 
 rious in our antiquities, we leave him to prosecute the inquiry. 
 Whether he will reach any safe conclusion upon which the sober 
 historian will be content to rest, it will not trouble us to deter- 
 
100 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 mine. It is enougli for our present speculations that the glimpses 
 of fact which we array are of themselves a world to the resources 
 of the American romancer. He will find here an ample field 
 for hold adventure, and imaginative daring. In the adventures 
 of Bjorn Asbrandson, the hero of Breidavik, the national poet 
 may one day fmd the substance of a dwarf epic, quite as happy 
 as any of the border tales of Scott. The stern and savage no- 
 bleness of such a character, dashed with good-humoured gene- 
 rosity, will admit of many glowing details, such as make the nar- 
 ratives of the Scalds so gratefully picturesque, amidst all their 
 freezing severity. From the very volume before us — a bald 
 abridgment — fifty spirited ballads might be manufactured with 
 ease; and a judicious artist might make a most romantic tale of 
 the colony of Green Erin upon the shores of Carolina and Geor- 
 gia ; showing how, driven by stress of weather, and finding so 
 lovely a land, greener than their own beloved island, the wander- 
 ing Irishmen pitched their tents for good ; how they built cities ; 
 how they flourished amid songs and dances — with now and then a 
 faction-fight by way of reminiscence ; how, suddenly, the fierce 
 red men of the southwest came down upon them in howling thou- 
 sands, captured their women, slaughtered their men, and drove 
 them to their fortresses ; how they fought to the last, and perished 
 to a man ! And, in this history, you have the history of the tu- 
 muli — the works of defence and worship — the thousand proofs, 
 with which our land is covered, of a genius and an industry im- 
 measurably superior to anything that the Indian inhabitants of 
 this country were ever supposed to have attempted or possessed. 
 
ARTICLE III. 
 THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 
 
 The political and military intrigue between Benedict Arnold, 
 of the American, and John Andre, of the British army, which 
 formed so striking an event in the annals of the Revolution, and 
 which, in previous pages,* has been considered witli reference to 
 its employment for the purposes of tiction, has been more recently 
 forced again upon our consideration, by a paper in one of our 
 period icals.f This paper discusses, at the same time, the claims 
 of Andre upon our sympathy, and those of Miss Seward, as his 
 eulogist, upon our respect and admiration. To the former, the 
 writer, — chiming in with what has been very commonly the sen- 
 timent in our country — gives much more respect and honour than 
 we are prepared to accord ; — to the latter, much less than we are 
 disposed to think that she deserves. His language, indeed, in 
 relation to Miss Seward, appears to us equally and unnecessarily 
 harsh and unjust. He denies her merits equally as an author 
 and a woman. The motive for this severity will scarcely justify 
 it. It is found in the Monody, now but little known, but of great 
 success and currency in the day of its freshness — which issued 
 from the pen of this lady, on the execution of her friend and fa- 
 vourite. The portion of this performance which so particularly 
 offends, is that in which she speaks of the conduct and character 
 of Washington. Now, we humbly believe that no one holds in 
 higher esteem than ourselves, the name and fame of our national 
 hero ; and we shall always be prepared, with our feeble powers, 
 whenever the task shall be necessary, to assert and defend his 
 
 * See Part I. pp. 41—58 of these '= Views." 
 
 t The Southern Literary Messenger, in an interesting and well written arti- 
 cle, by Mr. J. C. Pickett, charge des affaires of the United States, at the capital 
 of Peru, — read originally before the members of the National Institute. 
 
102 VIEWS AND REVIEWS, 
 
 claims as one of the noblest spirits of modern civilization. Of 
 such a necessity the probabilities now are exceeding small, and it 
 really seems quite too late in tlie day to be angry, because Anna 
 Seward has been pleased to launch her truly feminine shaft at 
 that broad and heroic bosom. The ages and the nations have 
 equally determined upon her claims as a poet, and those of Wash- 
 ington as a christian and a chief. The case, not misjudged 
 greatly by contemporaries, has been settled finally by posterity 
 and time. We have no reason, on behalf of Washington, to re- 
 gret or to disturb this judgment. To reconsider it now, in con- 
 nection with the offence, real or seeming, of Miss Seward, is 
 rather with the charitable motive of suggesting an adequate ex- 
 cuse for her ; and this, we take it, may readily be found in the 
 peculiar circumstances which are coupled with the case. 
 
 Anna Seward, who lived to be an old woman, was, at the 
 period of our revolution, a tolerably young one. She was dis- 
 tinguished by her talent, and by no means wanting in personal 
 beauty. John Andre, was, at eighteen, a young tradesman, 
 livinu in the same neighbourhood with herself. Kindred in their 
 talents, with iilve tastes and sympathies, they were soon brought 
 together in the same circles of society. An intimacy grew up 
 between them, and they shared their secrets with one another. 
 They both wrote verses ; he, with perhaps little more skill than 
 marks ordinarily those of the well educated gentleman about 
 town, and she with a genuine talent, something above mediocrity, 
 which, at a period of greater critical severity, and with the ad- 
 vantage of better models than this lady ever had the fortune to 
 possess, would probably have greatly increased her claims to fu- 
 ture attention. The intimacy between Andre and herself, might 
 have ripened into a closer tie and interest, but that he already 
 loved another; and Anna, the friend of the lady who was the 
 object of his passion, became his confidante, and, we have reason 
 to suppose, was hers also. His love did not run smoothly. He 
 loved unwisely and too well ; and the rejection of his suit, by the 
 lady of his love, drove the rash young man to volunteer in the 
 British army intended for America. Tiiis step seems to have 
 been unwarranted equally by his training and his tastes. We 
 have no proofs of his having any predilection for a military life ; 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 103 
 
 no proofs that he was endowed with any of the peculiar and 
 the necessary requisites for acquiring distinction or a lead in 
 arms. On the contrary, he does not seem to have shown himself 
 possessed of any military accomplishments. We hear not that 
 he was skilful at his weapon, bold and gallant as a horseman, or 
 that, at any tinie, he distinguished himself in actual combat. By 
 this, however, we are not to be supposed .to imply that lie was at 
 all destitute of that courage which every gentleman is supposed 
 to possess, — a courage to go forward, when the path of duty is 
 clear before him, and the voices of one's comrades require that 
 one should forget and throw aside the natural reluctance at strife, 
 in the necessity of conquest. But that he had no decided mill' 
 idivy 'penchant, v,e take to be quite obvious from all the circum- 
 stances in his career. His chief claims upon our attention, seem 
 to have been due to the graces of a fine person, a good temper, 
 a gentle bearing, a quick and lively intellect, and a knack at 
 making verses and pencil sketches, which betrayed equal clever- 
 ness and taste. He had a talent for good-lmmoured satire, which 
 was more mischievous than malicious, and refreshed his brother 
 soldiers with frequent doggerel at the expense of the awkward 
 training and queer and tattered equipments of the American 
 militia. A good table companion, a clever scribe, there may 
 yet have been other influences bearing in his favour — po.ssibly 
 of friends and family at home — by whicli lie succeeded in en- 
 tering the military family of Sir Henry Clinton. He seems to 
 have been a sort of private secretary rather than the military 
 aide of Sir Henry, and we may be permitted to doubt, indeed, 
 whether there were any other aids of the British commander, to 
 v/hom he would have proposed the peculiar service upon which 
 he sent Andre, and by which the latter lost his life. On this 
 delicate question we are wanting in some certain lights. We 
 are not av>'are that military etiquette, or the laws of military 
 honour, require obedience to commands which, in addition to the 
 probable loss of life, involve, with this risk, the farther one of ig- 
 nominy and a felon's punishment. A commander may require 
 his subordinate, to lead the forlorn hope, and to jeopard life, and 
 every thing but honour. The business of the spy, odious in all 
 situations, is particularly ungracious in the eyes of military 
 
104 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 men. Is it not purely optional with them whether it be under- 
 taken or not, — and will it be undertaken by any soldier, governed 
 by nice sensibilities and a due regard to the opinions of society, 
 unless the service be necessary to some last and imperative 
 necessity. Such a necessity does not seem to have been apparent 
 in the case of Andre. The British army was unassailed, in no 
 danger, and no other end was proposed than the possible promo- 
 tion of that cause for which he had assumed his sword and 
 uniform. These are the proofs of his employment and his 
 honour. Shall he put them off at the mere will of his captain ? 
 Can any captain require that these badges of an honourable ser- 
 vice, should be thrown aside or hidden by disguise. We do not 
 know that history has ever condescended to ask this question, and 
 yet, upon its solution, much of the claims to sympathy, of John 
 Andre, will depend. We shall resume this part of our subject 
 hereafter. 
 
 Severe and totally unmerited as was the censure upon Washing- 
 ton, in the monody of Miss Seward upon her favourite, the sweet 
 and gentle intimacy which had endeared them to one another ren- 
 ders such the natural expression of her feelings at his stern and 
 startling fate. The terrible and unexpected doom which he un- 
 derwent, whether merited or not, would naturally overwhelm her 
 heart with horror — with the keenest sense of personal privation — 
 with the deepest resentment against those through whose agency 
 he perished. The aflair, at the time, as we gather from numerous 
 contemporaneous sources, v/as one of a fierce and singular excite- 
 ment — such as, even now, w^hen we are comparatively cool in both 
 countries, we feel it would not be difficult to comprehend. Some- 
 thing of the British feeling at large, and that of Miss Seward in 
 particular, may be conceived by that sentiment of indignation 
 which is still expressed by ourselves when the wanton execution 
 of Hayne of South Carolina, and Hale of Connecticut, is the sub- 
 ject of reflection or remark. The monody of Miss Seward on 
 Major Andre, written at the moment when tlie first keen, terrible 
 surprise and pang were felt, naturally declared an exaggerated 
 feeling of horror at the event, and hostility against.those by wiiom 
 it was occasioned. This sentiment was not that of Miss Seward 
 only ; it was that of the British nation. That portion of it which 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR A.NDRE. 105 
 
 relates to the unbending decision of Washington and his alle"-ed 
 cruellies, embodied the passionate language of the British iieart 
 in the first moment of its anger and surprise. The poet drew 
 her facts from the ordinary newspapers, impelled to the fullest 
 faith in their details by tlie deep and tender personaT interest which 
 she felt in the victim. She gave a voice to the popular feeling 
 when she expressed her oun. Society in England declared 
 the same sentiments, the same rage, regret, and indignation — 
 all visited, perhaps, on the same head, in very similar language. 
 The event was a startling one, ai a peculiar crisis in the war, 
 when the case was growing hopeless, and both nations were weary 
 of the struggle. Besides, the affair was not v.'ithout its technical 
 difficulties; and the course taken by the American authorities did 
 not wholly escape censure even among ourselves. How far An- 
 dre could be made liable for the treachery of Arnold, having the 
 regular pass of that general, was a question even with the domes- 
 tic casuists — a question scarcely to be suggested by good sense, 
 when it holds the technicality at variance with the substantial 
 interest which it was intended to promote. No one now^-a-days 
 has any doubt that the passport can never be made to shelter the 
 treachery which seeks to subvert and to destroy the very power 
 from which it issues. But this is not our subject of discussion. 
 
 The keen sympathy of Miss Seward in behalf of Andre seems 
 to have had its justification from various quarters. The popular 
 tradition that Washington himself wept at the necessity of signing 
 the death-warrant of his victim, has never, to this day, undergone 
 dispute ; though it would be difficult, we suspect, to point to any 
 certain authority by which the fact is shown ; and yet, even though 
 it were not strictly true — if that calm and superior soul did not 
 acknowledge any more pain at this than he v.ould have done in 
 any other case of d^ty or necessity — the tradition must at least be 
 held to indicate the popular notion of what was due to the victim, 
 of honourable and peculiar sympathy. The prestige of great tal- 
 ent — a reputation exaggerated very much beyond its real claims 
 — a graceful bearing, and gentlemanly tastes, won for Andre, and 
 still secures an extraordinary sympathy for his memory, even 
 in our country. In all probability much more lively and strong 
 in our country than his own. That he was a man of more than 
 
lOG VlKWy AND REVIEWS. 
 
 clever parts, it is not now easy to believe. We ask vainly for any 
 proof of great superiority. In that day, to write tolerable verses 
 was to achieve a reputation. It was the day of commonplace. 
 Such was the history in England ; and the Hayleys, the Dar- 
 wins, the Sewfl'ds, and the Merrys, who made the British Par- 
 nassus when " George the Third was king," suffice to show how 
 modest were the exactions of the critic in that era of metrical me- 
 diocrity and whip-syllabub. Sucli verses as Andi'e wrote are now 
 written by thousands who die and make no sign. Perhaps, but for 
 his untimely and conspicuous fate, they would not have been re- 
 garded then, unless by his sweetheart and his comrades of the 
 mess. But the doom which elevated him to superior ignominy, 
 elevated, in the eyes of the sympathizing, his peculiar virtues — 
 brought up, in an exaggerated total, the sum of his pretensions, 
 upon which, under such circumstances, his friends would be more 
 apt than ever to insist. Besides, he was the only victim. Had 
 Arnold perished at the same time, and by a like fate, the sym- 
 pathy for Andre would probably have lost much of its vitality 
 and depth. 
 
 Governed somewhat too much by our present estimate of Miss 
 Seward's claims as an author, the writer in the periodical referred 
 to, whose article has provoked us to this, expresses considerable 
 chagrin at an anecdote which is told by Southey, of the great 
 solicitude felt by Washington to impress that lady with a sense 
 of her injustice to himself. To attain this object, we are told that 
 he communicated to her all the official documents, or copies of 
 them, which related to this transaction, and by which his own 
 course was fully justified. " These papers,"' says Miss Seward, 
 "filled me with contrition for the rash injustice of my censure." 
 We have no means of arriving at the truth of her statement, but 
 see no reason to question its correctness, ^he may probably 
 have made much more of the matter than Washington did, or 
 intended, — moved by a very natural sentiment of vanity, at the 
 special concession to her genius, thus offered by one whom the 
 age had already begun to regard as the hero of its civilization. 
 Our critic, however, entertains his doubts of the whole proceed- 
 ing. He does not seem willing to think, that a great statesman 
 could thus let himself down, by such a degree of consideration, 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 107 
 
 shown to a simple poet. He regards the step (as alleged,) taken 
 by Wasliington in this connection, as an unfortunate condescen- 
 sion, and freely expresses his regret that he should stoop to any 
 effort at his own justification. We frankly confess ourselves 
 unable to share in these regrets. We regard this proceeding of 
 Washington, if true — and we think it highly probable — to have 
 been equally honourable to his heart and understanding — to a 
 right-minded sense of justice, and to a humility which equally hon- 
 ours his temper and sagacity. No man is so great as to be above 
 the respect of his age. No man, truly wise and worthy, will 
 hesitate at placing his actions in a proper light, before those who 
 have been mistaken in them, [f he does so, he provokes a natural 
 doubt of the veracity of his own claims to eminence, and risks the 
 forfeiture of that fair renown which only attends his footsteps who 
 never feels himself wholly free from the lowest as well as the 
 loftiest responsibility ; and who, while laying his secret bosom 
 open before God, is not too proud to suffer the humblest creature 
 to behold the revelation at the same moment. For our own part, 
 we are free to see in this proceeding of Washington — always 
 assuming it to have taken place — only an additional proof of the 
 strength and virtue of his character, his modesty and manliness, 
 and that amiable regard to the claims of others, which he never 
 lost sight of in the hour of his greatest prosperity. We see nothing 
 weak, as we see nothing wrong, in that anxiety, at once so human 
 and so characteristic of a becoming ambition, which seeks to be 
 justly appreciated by all classes of persons. It was with Washing- 
 ton a solicitude, such as Shakspeare counsels, and which the truly 
 good man, superior to station, in his proper sense of man and hu- 
 manity, will ever entertain — to " win golden opinions from all 
 sorts of people," — not by improper or undue sacrifices of self- 
 respect or dignity, but by a frank honesty, which asks no shield 
 from circumstance — no shelter from position — and is ready at any 
 moment to declare the truth, as much, perhaps, because it bears 
 this attribute, as because of any individual interest which he him- 
 self may have in its utterance. It is the small great man, the 
 common-place, every day hero of the market-place, who, perched 
 on his temporary eminence, declares himself totally oblivious or 
 indifferent to all that is said or thought of him by the common 
 
108 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 herds that pass below. Washington's heroism was of another 
 complexion. The descriptive lines of Anacreon Moore, meant to 
 be at once moderate and severe — moderate in deference to the 
 fast-growing and favourable opinions of continental Europe, and 
 severe in accordance with those of baffled Britain, whose official 
 representative the Irish patriot just then happened to be — contain, 
 perhaps, as high a tribute to the real worth of our hero as was to 
 be expected from an enemy, and may very well be employed in 
 this place to anticipate the verses of Miss Seward upon the same 
 subject. 
 
 " How shall we rank thee upon glory's page, 
 Thou more than soldier, and just less than sage; 
 Too formed for peace to act a conqueror's part, 
 Too trained in camps to learn a statesman's art ; 
 Nature designed thee for a hero's mould, 
 But ere she cast thee let the stuff grow cold ! 
 While warmer souls command, nay make their fate, 
 77/7/ fate made tliec and forced thee to he great ; — 
 Yet fortune who so oft. so blindly sheds, 
 Her brightest halo round the weakest heads, 
 Found thee undazzled, tranquil as before, 
 Proud to be useful, scorning to be more — 
 £0688 prompt at glory^s than at duty^s claim, 
 Renown the meed but self-applause the ami; 
 All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee, 
 Far less tlian all thou hast forborne to be." 
 
 A description of manifest contradictions, the result of a war- 
 fare between the promptings of real conviction and a wilfully 
 hostile mood — a condition of mind not to be reconciled, and only 
 to be repented of. Mr. Moore is, by this time, better prepared 
 than lie was then — a youth, and the employee of the British gov- 
 ernment — to do justice to a great and perfect character. He 
 could not then conceive of the greatness which was simply con- 
 tent to execute its mission. The italicised lines are truthful ; the 
 rest, which embody the sneers at our hero's lack of that temper 
 which has but too frequently marked the ordinary worldling hero, 
 may be taken to prove the inferior definitions of heroism with 
 which the writer's mind was troubled. The age is beginning to 
 comprehend the sort of greatness upon which our youthful poet 
 would insist, and to have done with all that vulgar sort of heroism 
 
THE CASE OF 31AJ0R ANDRE. lO'J 
 
 which mocks and despises humanity. How much the deportment 
 of Washington himself may have contributed to this enlighten- 
 ment, which seems to take date from his day, is a matter for the 
 philosopher. For him to have shown himself insensible to con- 
 temporaneous reputation — where it was not fame that he sought, 
 but honourable justification only — would be almost to show him- 
 self insensible to the provocations which lead to honourable 
 achievement. He was not thus insensible. He was by no means 
 superior to an anxious hope that his memory might stand, pure 
 and high, in the regards and estimation of all persons; and it is, 
 we confess, a something additionally gratifying to believe that the 
 solicitude of the Father of his Country, was duly increased in 
 this respect, when the person to be persuaded of the purity and 
 the propriety of his conduct, was a woman and a poet — both le- 
 gitimate dispensers of the golden crown of reputation. He writes 
 to no other of his maligners. He offers proofs to no one of the 
 male assailants and slanderers, of whom the British press and 
 British society might have then furnished its thousands. But, 
 great as he is, conscious and confident as he feels himself, he yet 
 acknowledges a claim on the part of the poet to have the truth set 
 clear before his eyes. The awards of time, at least, if not of 
 immortality, depend somewhat upon it; and Washington is not in- 
 different to the censure and the judgment of his race. It does 
 not matter whether Miss Seward is a great poet, or one of very 
 moderate abilities. This does not affect the relation between them. 
 He may have thought her a great poet, and her rank, at that time, 
 in Europe, somewhat justified that opinion; particularly when she 
 was beheld through the magnifying medium of distance, and by 
 the half-penny light of the provincial candle. The truth is, there 
 was a strength and an energy in her verses, where Washington 
 himself was the subject, which might well compel his considera- 
 tion, and excite his apprehensions. Accused thus loudly, with 
 so much earnestness, in such language, and by one pure and tal- 
 ented, and, by reason of her sex and circumstances, apart from 
 the selfish and prejudiced impulse of the crowd, he might well 
 start, and re-examine his cause, and entertain moments of mis- 
 eivins: whether he had not been led aside from the course of 
 right — however against his wish — by some of those erring influ- 
 
no VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 ences which are found, upon occasion, to work for evil upon the 
 noblest and the purest natures. The voice of a mourner, crying 
 in melodious language from the bereaved home in Litchfield, 
 might well occasion emotions in his breast, which the armies of 
 Europe, iier crowned heads and mighty statesmen, would vainly 
 labour to awaken. 
 
 But, to the claims of Miss Seward as a poet. She was a poet, 
 though brought up in a wretched school, and destined to suffer in 
 her real pretensions, because of her unhappy training. Though 
 greatly overrated in her own day, as well as her friend Darwin 
 — of whom, by the way, our critic entertains a far too favourable 
 judgment — she is yet entitled to our respect for frequent perform- 
 ances of real and considerable beauty. Our critic places her far 
 below Darwin. In our humble notion her natural endowments 
 would place her much above the poet of the Botanic Garden. 
 She was less of the artist, it is true, but she had much more of 
 the divine afflatus than that stiff and stately architect of chemical 
 delights. The tender and passionate portions of this very mon- 
 ody on Andre, are in proof of this. Let her but dismiss her af- 
 fectations, — which were those of her school and period, — and she 
 is equally true and interesting. And let none of those, — if any 
 there be, — who still take delight in the cold and mechanical con- 
 ceits of Darwin, and his monotonous and wearisome sing-song, 
 leap too suddenly to the conclusion that we are doing great wrong 
 to a once favourite and still much deserving writer. That the ge- 
 nius of Anna Seward was not inferior to his own — at least in his 
 opinion — one fact may sufEce to show. The first fifty verses in 
 the "Botanic Garden" are wholly from the pen of the latter, — 
 written by her in compliment to Darwin, and incorporated by him 
 into his poem, forming, in fact, its introduction, without any sort 
 of acknowledgment. This fact, according to Sir Walter Scott, 
 is beyond question or denial. " It is proved," he tells us, "by 
 the publication of the verses, with her name, in some periodical 
 publication, previous to the appearance of Dr. Darwin's poem. 
 And the disingenuous suppression of the aid of which he availed 
 himself, must remain a considerable slain upon the character of 
 the poet of Flora." Let the reader compare for himself the ap- 
 propriated verses, thus designated, with those which are certainly 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR AADRE. Ill 
 
 Darwin's, and he will see that the fair author who has furnished 
 his introduction, and possibly suggested his theme, had no reason 
 to be ashamed of her contributions to his muse. The style is 
 that of her " monody," though portions of the latter are infmitely 
 superior in all the substantial merits of poetry. Upon that pro- 
 duction,. indeed, her poetical reputation may be suffered to rest. 
 Written under very great excitement, under the impulse of feel- 
 ings, personal and national, of the intensest order, this production 
 possesses numerous lines of great force and beauty, and, with 
 some lackadaisacal interruptions, flows on in a strain of vehement 
 Vjerse, which, had it been much more frequent in the writings of 
 this lady, would not have made it necessary that we should now 
 be discussing her claims to our consideration, and would have 
 done more than we possibly can do, in justification of the solici- 
 tude which was felt by Washington. This vehemence sometimes 
 rises into a real poetic fury, which needed nothing but training, 
 habitual chasteness of style, proper models and a right direction, 
 to have given its author a place in near neighbourhood to the 
 synimetrical and courtly poet of Heloisa. A severer exercise 
 would have enabled Miss Seward to fling off heroic melodies 
 which would have done no dishonour to the admirable grace and 
 polish of Pope. We are not sure that her genius was very much 
 inferior. Of course, we are to remember her inferior advanta- 
 ges — the difficulties in the way of her sex — her provincial stan- 
 dards and associations, and the thousand deteriorating influences, 
 which, in the case of a woman, contribute to baflle the aims and 
 to impair the energies of the intellectual nature. But why not a 
 specimen of this " monody," which, we take it, is not over-well 
 known to the American reader ? There have been several Amer- 
 ican editions, but they have long since been out of print. The 
 work from which we take our extracts, is that " authentic narra- 
 tive" of no less a person than Joshua Hett Smith, king's attor- 
 ney of New York, whose supposed participation in the treachery 
 of Arnold, had nearly secured for him a fate like that of Andre. 
 His own book, meant to establish his innocence, almost persuades 
 us of his guilt. But, with his case, we have nothing now to do. 
 He seems to have been a feeble creature, if not a treacherous 
 one ; and his own printed defence of his conduct, lacking as it 
 
112 VIEWS A.ND REVIEWS. 
 
 does, equally in ingenuousness and ingenuity, leaves us to the 
 conviction tluit, if really innocent, his book does great naischief 
 to his character. 
 
 The " iMonody on Andre," is given at length among the ap- 
 pendices of Smith's volume. It is introduced by a dedication to 
 Sir Hcnrv Clinton, which is followed by some flat verses of 
 William Llaylcy, author of the "Triumphs of Temper," a didac- 
 tic, the leaden slumber of which it is not possible for any admi- 
 ration now to disturb. The monody contains about five hundred 
 lines, and gives the chief events in his life and fortunes. The 
 author, in a note, informs us, that, in but one passage only — that 
 Mhich relates to his being taken prisoner at the beginning of the 
 war, and in which she describes him as impetuously leading to 
 the assault — has she dealt in fiction. Of that affair she confesses 
 that she knov»s nothing. The poem is followed by certain pri- 
 vate letters of Andre to herself, v.hich she publishes in proof of 
 his wit and vivacity. These letters are simply pleasing — the 
 unconstrained ebullitions of a young man of some reading, good 
 taste and amiable disposition. They possess no peculiar merits, 
 indicate nothing marked in character, and declare no great re- 
 sources whether of thought or fancy. They are just such epis- 
 tles as might flow from the hands of any clever youth, who had 
 learned to express himself with good taste and confidence. 
 
 The poem of Miss Seward opens badly, in that rotund and 
 swelling style — so false and flatulent — so totally untrue to good 
 taste and just poetic simplicity, which prevailed in the stilt 
 periods of the Pyes and Darwins, the Cottles and Delia Cruscas 
 — a period in modern English literature quite as vicious and much 
 less worthy, than that of Lyly and his Eiq^hucs. The prog- 
 ress of the verse, though flowing and musical, is marked by con- 
 stant transitions of idea which confuse and weary the I'eader, and 
 which neither inform nor excite him. That coherent, consecu- 
 tive strain of song, which is alone durable, by which a just and 
 leading idea, a bold and original conception, is happily carried 
 out by complete and mutually depending links of thought, till the 
 whole chain of reasoning is made conclusively apparent, is not 
 to be looked for here ; — and the defect is not one of endowment, 
 but of training and education. But we propose not to criticise 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 113 
 
 this fabric. Our purpose is more simple — only to take from it 
 the passages which concern our country and our hero. Wo do 
 this without reluctance, as we have no fear that any British in- 
 vective can hurt the fame of Washington. The embassage of 
 Andre to Arnold, and the felon contract which they made to- 
 gether, are thus described by our poet : 
 
 " As fair Eutyalus, to meet his fate, 
 With Nvijus rushes from the Dardan gate — 
 Relentless Fate ! whose fury scorns to spare 
 The snowy hreast, red lip and shining hair — 
 So polish'd Andre launches on the waves, 
 Where Hudson's tide its dreary confines laves ; 
 With firm, intrepid foot the youth explores 
 Each dangerous pathway of the hostile shores; 
 But on no veteran-chief his step attends. 
 As silent round the gloomy wood he wends ; 
 Alone he meets the brave, repentant foe, 
 Sustains his late resolve, receives his vow, 
 With ardent skill directs the doubtful course, 
 Seals the firm bond and ratifies its force." 
 
 It was the role of Arnold to appear the penitent subject, as 
 stated in the last four lines of the preceding passage ; and the 
 poet, simple creature ! believed all, on this subject, that she read 
 in the newspapers. She proceeds : 
 
 "'Tis thus, America, thy generals fly. 
 And wave new banners in their native sky ! 
 Sick of the mischiefs artful Galha pours 
 ^ In friendly semblance on thy ravaged shores. 
 Unnatural compact I — shall a race of slaves. 
 Sustain the ponderous standard freedom waves 1 
 No ! while their feign'd protection spreads the toils. 
 The vultures hover o'er your destined spoils. 
 How fade provincial glories, while ye run. 
 To court far deeper bondage than ye shun, 
 ♦ ♦**** 
 
 Long did my soul the wretched strife survey, 
 And wept the horrors of the deathful day ; 
 Through rolling years saw indecisive war, 
 Drag bleeding wisdom at his iron car ; 
 Exhaust my country's treasure, pour her gore. 
 In fruitless conflict on the distant shore ; 
 Saw the firm Congress all her might oppose. 
 And, while I mourn'd her fate, rever'd her foes." 
 
JU VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 These are not bad lines. Less artful, less metaphorical, than 
 those of Darwin, they are in better taste, more true to nature and 
 to the subject. Besides, we see that the poet is not unprepared 
 to do justice to tlie strength and character of her country's ene- 
 mies. In another place she speaks of the error of the British. 
 
 " The generous flame, ^ 
 That boasted Liberty's immortal name, 
 Blaz'd for its rights infringed, its trophies torn, 
 And taught the wise the dire mistake to mourn. 
 When haughty Britain, in a luckless hour. 
 With rage inebriate, and the lust of power, 
 To fruitless conquest, and to countless graves, 
 Led her gay legions o'er the western waves, — 
 The fiend of discord, cow'ring at the prow. 
 Sat, darkly smiling at the impending wo ! 
 
 These lines are less monotonous in their structure than those 
 of Darwin. They are roughened with more skill for the pur- 
 poses of symmetry and strength. But, the apostrophe to Wash- 
 ington is in a finer and loftier strain. 
 
 o 
 
 " Oh, Washington ! I thought thee great and good, 
 Nor knew thy Nero-thirst for guiltless blood ; 
 Severe to use the pow'r that fortune gave, 
 Thou cool, determin'd murderer of the brave ! 
 Lost to each fairer virtue that inspires 
 The genuine fervor of the patriot's fires ! 
 And yoxL, the base abettors of the doom, 
 That sunk his blooming honours to the tomb, 
 Th' opprobrious tomb your hardened hearts decreed, 
 ^VhiIe all he ask'd was as the brave to bleed. 
 No other boon the glorious youth implor'd, 
 Save the cold mercy of the warrior's sword ! 
 Oh! dark and pitiless! Your impious hate 
 O'ervvhelm'd the hero in the ruffian's fate; 
 Stopp'd with the felon cord the rosy breath, 
 And venom'd with disgrace the darts of death! 
 ***** 
 
 Remorseless Washington ! the day shall come, 
 Of deep repentance for this barbarous doom, 
 When injur'd Andre's memory shall inspire 
 A kindlinc: fvrmy with resistless fire; 
 Each falchion sharpen that the Britons wield, 
 And lead their fierce?-t lion to the field! 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 115 
 
 Then when each hope of thine shall set in night, 
 
 When dubious dread and unavailing flight, 
 
 Impel your host, — your guilt-upbraiJed soul, 
 
 Shall wish untouch'd the sacred lite you stole. 
 
 And when thy heart appall'd, and vanquished pride, 
 
 Shall vainly ask the mercy they denied, 
 
 With horror shalt thou meet the fate they gave, 
 
 Nor pity gild the darkness of thy grave; 
 
 For Infamy, with livid hand, shall shed 
 
 Eternal mildew on thy ruthless head." 
 
 These are among the best because the most earnest passages — 
 containing fewest affectations, and appearing, as probably they 
 were, the outpourings of a soul full of grief and indignation. It 
 is not so certain that their spirit and character are quite sustained 
 by the passage which immediately follows, two of the lines of 
 which appear to have been particularly annoying to our Ameri- 
 can critic. 
 
 " Less cruel far than thou, on Illium's plain 
 Achilles, raging for Patroclus slain ! 
 When hapless Priam bends the aged knee 
 To deprecate the victors dire decree ; 
 The nobler Greek, in melting pity spares 
 The lifeless Hector to his father's prayers ; 
 Fierce as he was ; — 'tis cowards only know. 
 Persisting vengeance o'er the fallen foe.'' 
 
 Portions of this imprecation somewhat, though feebly, remind 
 us of the final and terrible passage in the " Sketch " of Lord 
 Byron, beginning — 
 
 " Oh ! wretch without a tear," etc., 
 
 and half persuade us to think tliat his lordship had these lines in 
 his memory Mhcn he penned his own. They are not feminine 
 verses. Disfigured, here and there, by defects of taste and man- 
 ner, they denote a large degree of natural vigour in the genius, 
 and prompt us to regret the worthless school by which its strength 
 was dissipated in unprofitable efforts, and in a false direction. 
 Scott, speaking of this poem, justly remarks, that it conveys a 
 high impression of the original powers of the author. 
 
 The writings of Miss Seward are voluminous. Of these, it is 
 our fortune to possess copies only of her " Monody" and of her 
 
116 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 *' Beauties," — a volume which now lies before us, published in 
 London, in 1813, and edited by W. C. Oulton. This volume is 
 made up of varieties, in prose and verse, to which our general 
 criticism, as already expressed, will commonly apply. We can- 
 not say much of her writings, which would be favourable, with- 
 out coupling it with many qualifications. She had thought and 
 fancy, was shrewd and speculative, was not deficient in courage, 
 and was not unfrequently quite masculine in the vigour of her 
 assault. But she lived in a bad set — mere tvvattlers and sonne- 
 teers — in a country town, in which she was rather a lioness, and 
 which would have made the genius of Johnson succumb had he 
 lin'j-ered there after manhood. Her associates and training ren- 
 dered her imitative and affected, and she strained after pretti- 
 nesses of speech in the fashion of Anna Matilda. In her day, 
 that of the Delia Cruscans had begun; a sort of rosy light which 
 the young owlet might conjecture was the dawn. She was not 
 superior to their absurdities, and she has shared their fate. She 
 was made of better stuff, had better stuff in her, but never suc- 
 ceeded fairly in bringing it forth. Her prose is loose and slip- 
 shod, more strong than graceful, seldom rising into elegance, and 
 frequently failing in propriety and ease. Her verse, monotonous, 
 after the fashion of her models, was sometimes harsh and prosaic, 
 laboured and redundant, feeble, at times, because of its very fury, 
 and but too frequently of that sort which is said to be equally in- 
 tolerable to gods, men, and magazines. It has served its purpose, 
 the gourd history of a single season, and is now consigned to a 
 region in which we hear nothing of its struggles. Her opinions 
 on literary persons and things are rashly, — we had almost 
 said, arrogantly — expressed, and are quite as frequently wrong 
 as right. Her portrait by Romney adorns this volume of 
 " Beauties." It gives the not unpleasing countenance of a dam- 
 sel — scarcely yet of the certain age which is so uncertain — vvrith 
 regular features, eyes and nose tolerably large, a well cut mouth, 
 good chin, and a forehead, which, though half hidden by an eter- 
 nal mass of hair, looms out considerably and meets all the phre- 
 nological requisitions. Speaking of lier personal appearance, 
 Scott, wlio saw her in 1807, when she was an old woman, ob- 
 berves — " Miss Seward, when young, must have been exquisitely 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 117 
 
 beautiful, for, in advanced age, tlie regularity of her features, 
 the fire and expression of her countenance, gave her the appear- 
 ance of beauty and almost of youth. Her eyes were auburn, of 
 the precise shade and hue of her hair, and possessed great power. 
 In reciting, or in speaking with animation, they appeared to be- 
 come darker, and, as it were, to flash fire. * * * jyiigg gg. 
 ward's tone of voice was melodious, guided by excellent taste, 
 and well suited to reading and recitation, in which she willingly 
 exercised it. She did not sing, nor was she a great proficient in 
 music, though very fond of it, having studied it later in life than 
 is now usual. Her stature was tall, and her form originally ele- 
 gant," etc. Her will is given by the editor of the " Beauties. '^ 
 By this will she bequeaths her literary writings to Sir Walter 
 Scott, declaring him her editor, a task for which, we take it, he 
 was no ways grateful. Her correspondence was, in like manner, 
 assigned to Constable, the publisher, to be served up to the public 
 at the rate of two volumes per annum. In this document she 
 speaks of the lady of whom Andre was enamoured, and to whom 
 he was engaged. Her name was Honora Sneyd. Her picture and 
 self are thus described : " The mezzotinto engraving from a pic- 
 ture of Romney, which is thus inscribed on a tablet at top, ' Such 
 was Honora Sneyd,' I bequeath to her brother, Edward Sneyd, 
 Esq., if he survive me ; if not, I bequeath it to his amiable daugh- 
 ter. Miss Emma Sneyd, entreating her to value and preserve it as 
 the perfect, though accidental, resemblance of her aunt, and my 
 ever dear friend, ichen she loas surrounded by all her virgin glories, 
 beauty and grace, sensibility and goodness, superior intelligence and 
 unswerving truth. To my before-mentioned friend, Mrs. Powys, 
 in consideration of the true and unextinguishable love which she 
 bore to the original, I bequeath the miniature picture of the said 
 Honora Sneyd, drawn at Buxton, in the year 1776, by her gallant, 
 faithful, and unfortunate lover, Major Andre, in his ISth year. 
 That 7vas his first attempt to delineate the human face ; consequent- 
 ly it is an unfavourable and most imperfect resemblance to a most 
 distinguished beauty.'^ 
 
 Andre, it is known, had considerable talent in sketching. His 
 portrait, drawn with pen and ink the night before his execution, 
 and while in prison, is still preserved in the Trumbull collection 
 
118 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 at New Haven. It is to his talent in this respect — in music — in 
 poetry — his delicate and graceful tastes and accomplishments — 
 that Andre is indebted for much of that halo which seems to have 
 settled about his name and memory. The verses from his pen, 
 " To Delia," which are to be found in some of our popular col- 
 lections, may be taken as a fair specimen of his talents in this de- 
 partment. These lines, as they may be new to many, and as his 
 name does not generally accompany them in the song-books, may 
 very well find a place in this desultory article. They were sent, 
 it is supposed, to his sweetheart, from America. 
 
 ANDRE'S FAREWELL VERSES. 
 
 Return enraptured hours 
 
 When Delia's heart was mine ; 
 When she with wreaths of flowers 
 
 My temples did entwine : 
 No jealousy nor care 
 
 Corroded then my breast; 
 But visions, light as air, 
 
 Presided o'er my rest. 
 
 Since I'm removed from state, 
 
 And bid adieu to time. 
 At my unhappy fate 
 
 Let Delia not repine: 
 But may the mighty Jove 
 
 Crown her with happiness — 
 This grant, ye Powers above, 
 
 And take my soul to bliss. 
 
 Now, nightly o'er my bed. 
 
 No airy phantoms play, 
 No flowrets deck my head. 
 
 Each vernal holiday — 
 For, far from the sad plain. 
 
 The cruel Delia flies ; 
 While, rack'd with jealous pain — 
 
 Her wretched Andre dies. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, with his usual good nature, accepted the trust 
 confided by Miss Seward to his hands, and compiled from her 
 writings three goodly volumes, while her letters, in six volumes, 
 were published by Constable & Co. These are all now safely 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 119 
 
 sealed, from farther critic doom at least, in that tomb, more inac- 
 cessible than that of the Capulets, which mortals, sadly sighing, 
 call Oblivion. We shall not seek now to penetrate the place of 
 their awful but not unnatural repose. Scott accompanied the 
 works of Miss Seward with a kind notice of herself, and an in- 
 dulgent criticism upon her genius. From this, if from no other 
 sources, we learn enough to see how rash and ill-advised are the 
 epithets which have been bestowed by our American reviewer on 
 the character of this lady. Scott describes her as ingenuous and 
 noble, amiable of temper, benevolent of heart, and rejoicing in a 
 large and lavish friendship, which included some of the most dis- 
 tinguished names in British literature. How far we may, with 
 such testimony before us, join with our critic in believing her to 
 have been " a scurrilous and mendacious libeller," is a matter for 
 the conscientious reader to determine for himself. 
 
 Of Major Andre we have some few more last words. Our es- 
 timate of his genius, as the reader has perceived, is not a high 
 one. We have said, and perhaps shown, that he was a clever 
 youth enough, with certain graces of manner and accomplish, 
 ment, and certain agreeable talents, which, vv ith an amiable tem- 
 per, made him a good and desirable companion. But we do not 
 see that he anywhere distinguished himself; we do not see that he 
 was anywhere employed in such a manner as to distinguish him- 
 self; and the unhappy event, to which all his notoriety is due, is 
 one in which he blundered inconceivably. That affair was one 
 which, but for his own feebleness of resolve and purpose, his alarm 
 and indecision, misht have been conducted to a conclusion as 
 lucky for his own, as it must have been disastrous to, the fortunes 
 of America. But he lacked equally in coolness and discretion. 
 On the encounter with the American militiamen, who seem to have 
 been very common men, and to have blundered also, he became 
 agitated, and boggled deeper and deeper at every sentence. A 
 little military firmness, a little more of manly coolness, would have 
 carried him safely through the danger. How he allowed himself 
 to be entrapped by an equivocal phrase, how precipitately he com- 
 mitted himself to his captors, and how totally wanting in resource 
 he proved himself throughout the affair, is all matter of history. 
 
 There is one portion of his history, however, of which little has 
 
120 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 been said, and of which but little seems to be known. There is a 
 mystery hanging about the career of Andre — a suspicion, which, 
 if justly founded, would tend very much to deprive him of the 
 sympathy whicli hitherto his melancholy fate has won for his mem- 
 orv. It is, that Andre was habitually a spy for the British gen- 
 erul-in-chief, Sir Henry Clinton, and that it was no new service, 
 that in which he perished. It is reported traditionally in Ameri- 
 ca that he had been more than once employed in this degrading 
 capacity during the American Revolution. In the " Sketches 
 of the Life of General Greene," by the Hon. William Johnson, 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States, the charge assumes a 
 distinct form. It is contained in a note to the affair of Arnold, at 
 page 208 of the first volume, which we give at length. 
 
 " The following facts," says the author of the ' Sketches,' 
 " may be relied upon. — It was an universal belief, as well in 
 the British army as in the city of Charleston after its fall, that 
 Andre had been in the city in the character of a spy during the 
 siege. There is now living (1822) in this place, a respectable 
 citizen who acted in the commissary department of the British 
 army, during and after the siege ; — and another of equal respec- 
 tability, and whose means of information were much greater, 
 who was in Charleston during the siege, and remained in it until 
 the evacuation, who will testifv to the truth of this assertion. 
 And this opinion is corroborated by the following fact. There 
 were two brothers of the names of S. S. and E. S.. both well 
 known as men of property and respectable standing in society. 
 The former was, to the last, faithfully devoted to the cause of the 
 country ; the other was disaffected. During the siege, S. S. be- 
 ing taken sick, was permitted to go to his brother's house to be 
 better attended. There, he was introduced to, and repeatedly 
 saw, a young man, in a homespun dress, who was introduced to 
 him by his brother as a Virginian, connected with the line of 
 that State then in the city. After the fall of Charleston, S. S. 
 was introduced to Major Andre, at his brother's house, and in 
 him recognized the person of the Virginian whom he had seen 
 during the siege. This he remarked to his brother, who ac- 
 knowledged that he was the same, asserting his own ignorance 
 of it at the time. S. S. related these facts to many persons in 
 
THE CASE OF MAJOR ANDRE. 121 
 
 his lifetime, and his veracity was unquestionable. Another citi- 
 zen, W. J., at the time of Andre's capture, a prisoner at St. 
 Augustine, also saw the supposed Virginian at the house of E. S. 
 while S. S. lay sick, and his recollection of the fact was revived 
 by S. S. soon after he had made the discovery of his real char- 
 acter. It is also known that the life of E. S. was afterwards as- 
 siduously sought after by Marion's men, on the charge of his 
 treachery." 
 
 We may add to this, that it was the familiar boast of the British 
 officers, after the fall of Charleston, that they were well served by 
 intelligence from within, and knew every thing as soon as it took 
 place, among the besieged. The enquiry, thus started, might be 
 pursued with profit, just now particularly, when the public mind 
 seems anxious to obtain and preserve whatever it can of the docu- 
 mentary testimony of the revolutionary period. Major Andre 
 appears in history somewhat as the martyr to a peculiar occasion, 
 — as one volunteering on an unusual service and under a parti- 
 cular exigency, at the earnest solicitation of his general. But 
 we have no proofs of this urgent solicitation ; and we have shown 
 that there was no emergency, unless the anxious desire of Sir 
 Henry Clinton, to effect the object upon which he came several 
 years before, may be considered such — the conquest, namely, of 
 the Americans. No such apology can be made on this occasion 
 for the victim. If, on the contrary, it can be shown that the 
 business in which he failed and perished was one habitual to his 
 hands — a customary routine of duty, whicli never disturbed his 
 sensibilities, nor disquieted his pride — it will materially tend to 
 dissipate that purple halo which has hitherto made him an object 
 of conspicuous honour in the British martyrology. He sinks 
 then down into the category of those, who, knowing the penalties 
 of their trade, deliberately embark in it, and in the end receive 
 the wages for which they laboured. — We commend, while in 
 this connection, to the critical examination of the reader, the 
 clear and conclusive reasoning of Mr. Justice Johnson, in the 
 work last referred to, in relation to the events of Andre's capture, 
 and the course of the latter on that occasion, as properly deter- 
 mining, in connection with what is here written, the claims and 
 position of the criminal in the estimation of the future. The 
 
 PART II. 6 
 
122 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 judge shows, very conclusively we think, that some of the in- 
 stances of Andre's conduct, which have been set down as in- 
 stances of magnanimity, were really proofs of his adroitness. 
 His letter to Arnold, for example, advising him of his captivity — 
 which the obtuse Col. Jamieson, in possession of all the proofs 
 of Arnold's treason, yet suffered him to send — has been liberally 
 construed into an anxious desire to save the latter and to prompt 
 his flight. It was, in reality, the only obvious method, by which 
 Andre could possibly hope to effect his own extrication. Had 
 not Arnold given too much credit to Jamieson for sagacity, and 
 been in too great a hurry to save himself — alarmed doubly by 
 the reported approach of Washington — he would have quietly or- 
 dered the release of the prisoner, and the same moment might 
 have found the two, safe from danger if not from shame, in the 
 cabin of the Vulture. 
 
 ffWf 
 
ARTICLE IV. 
 WEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 
 
 "A better Priest, I trowe, ther nowher non is, 
 He waited after ne pompe, ne reverence, 
 Ne maked him no spiced conscience. 
 But Christes lore and his apostles twelve, 
 He taught, but first he fol'wed it himselve." Chavcer. 
 
 Some of your big-wigged gentry — your grave men after the 
 fashion of Lord Burleigh — persons whom Nestor himself could, 
 under no circumstances, persuade to laugh, — will take it in high 
 dudgeon that we should dignify with the title of historian, the 
 lively " rector of Mount Vernon parish." History, with this 
 sort of persons, is matter of very solemn concern. You are to 
 approach it with bowed forehead, unbonnetted front, and most 
 philosophical exordium. It is not your light romances — your ir- 
 reverent poetry. It is a sort of holy revelation of the past. It 
 must be received as a religion by the present. It is to be treated 
 of with veneration. There must be no laughter, no fun, no free- 
 dom. Hence, ye profane. Ye troubadours, be still, with your 
 idle tenderness ! — ye jongleurs, avaunt, with your mirthful min- 
 strelsy ! There must be an awful solemnity of look and accent 
 when the dry bones of ancient facts are to be unburied. You 
 must delve, you must drudge, you must shake a mystical head, 
 till all rattles again, in order to be a historian after the modern 
 acceptation. You must discuss your problems, however insignifi- 
 cant, with a corresponding minuteness. You must show a be- 
 coming sense of what is due to their probable importance in the 
 affairs of nations — which took no pains to preserve them. Shall 
 Tweedledum succeed in the contest against Tweedledee, and 
 shall there be no corresponding emphasis of utterance — no 
 awful consciousness, on the part of the hurrying multitude, at 
 
124 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 the decision, for the fature, of this long-vexed question ? The 
 philosopher of history shudders at the humiliating conjecture. 
 To him, the discovery of a fractional fact in the affairs of buried 
 ages, though it concerns nothing of more weight than a cracked 
 household vessel in the palace of Calypso, is matter of graver 
 import than the adjustment of a principle which involves the 
 fate of a living people. The elucidation of an ancient cypher, 
 or a fragment scrawl of papyrus, though it leads you no step 
 farther, is matter of which to mould many volumes. To such as 
 these, solicitous in mere minutice, toiling after the fact, though the 
 fact be no ways important to the wholeness and the perpetuity of 
 the truth, — chronicling all things with Boeotian stolidity, and, by 
 sheer force of gravitation, making painful an otherwise pleasant 
 study — Mason L. Weems was but a mountebank ! He an his- 
 torian, indeed ! Why, he laughed over his work, — fiddled even 
 while he wrote — danced during his moments of reflection — never 
 plodded — never could plod, — scratched no bewildered head, — 
 never was at a loss — never hesitated in his progress, but went 
 forward with a promptness and singleness of vision, that never 
 allowed itself to linger at details. If a small fact suited not his 
 great fact, he shoved it aside as unfitted for his purpose. It was 
 enough for him that, satisfied of his hero and his results, he made 
 all things tributary to the glory of the one, and the proper finish 
 of the other. Besides — greater offence ! — he allowed himself to 
 sport with the awful manes of the past. He suffered himself to 
 fall into tears and laughter, as the case might be, — and sympa- 
 thized, like any other human being, in the trials and the triumphs 
 of his favourite. He yielded to the requisitions of humanity, 
 and felt with his subjects — argued the case for them, forgetting 
 that he himself was their judge ; and, scorning the accumulation 
 of mere glyphs, preferred a dramatic portraiture which would 
 embody the story at a glance. * How could such a man be a 
 historian !' — exclaims the historian, par excellence, of our times. 
 Such a man is a picture-fancier, a novelist, a rhapsodist, — 
 what you please — but you must not abuse the dignity of a grave 
 profession, by any misapplication of its title to him. This will 
 never do ! 
 
 Certainly, Weems was not a Niebuhr. There can be no mis- 
 
WEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 125 
 
 take about that. He had too much imagination, too much sensi- 
 bility, was too enthusiastic in his temperament, too fond, too eager, 
 to pursue the cold and cruel sort of analysis by which the learned 
 German acquired his renown. Nay, the chances are, that, 
 could the good old Virginian be summoned from Hades to an- 
 swer, he would stoutly deny the title of historian to Niebuhr, 
 himself. " Niebuhr a historian," quoth Weems. " Ridiculous ! 
 Verily, I say to you he is nothing but a grave-digger in history — 
 at best but an historical antiquarian — not even a resurrection- 
 ist !" 
 
 If we deny to Weems the merit of the historian, we cannot deny 
 that he was a man of genius. His books have had a vast circu- 
 lation, have exercised a wondrous influence over the young minds 
 of the country, have moulded many of our noblest characters. 
 His racy and excellent frankness — his orientalisms, his fluency, 
 the fervency of occasional passages, the spirit of his dialogues, — 
 the cleverness with which he would make his persons swear and 
 swagger, and rebuke them for it, — the pleasing diversity of his 
 pictures, — the great knowledge of life which they present, and the 
 proper morality which elevated all that he wrote — have united to 
 exercise a greater spell over young America, in past days, than 
 almost any collection of writings within our experience. His 
 style was a possession of his own. With all the life of Ossian, and 
 something of his vein, he yet never lost himself in mist. Good 
 sense, an admirable tact, and great shrewdness, lay at the bottom 
 of all he said, and qualified all the extravagances of his speech. 
 He combined, in some degree, the poet and the novelist — the one in 
 the singular smoothness of his rhythm (for his prose is not unfre- 
 quently passable blank verse) ; the other, in the happy discrimi- 
 nation of his characters, and the adroitness with which he contrives 
 to put them in opposition and contrast. His rapidity in moments 
 of action is quite Homeric, and the excellent, characteristic 
 speeches, which he puts into the mouths of his personages, would 
 not discredit Plutarch. With all his extravagance, his fondness 
 for colouring, his episodical anecdote, (most probably, in half the 
 number of cases, invented for the occasion,) his books are yet 
 faithful to all the vital truths of history. That his notions of the 
 privileges of the historian were rather loose, is not to be denied. 
 
126 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 He claimed for him the rights of an artist, — such rights as were 
 exercised by Livy and by Froissart. With more veneration for 
 the antique, for the pomps of aristocracy, and the mere pageantry 
 of war, — and uitli less of the genuine democrat than distinguished 
 his character — VVeems would probably have been an historian 
 after the fashion of Froissart. We should, in this event, have 
 been greatly the gainer in details. He would have been more 
 careful to accumulate. He would have travelled in all quarters 
 in pursuit of facts and local histories, and his peculiar genius 
 would have delighted in just such a collection of chronicles as 
 those of the great compiler of the middle ages. He would have 
 written more ambitiously, it is true, but the young would not have 
 complained of his exuberance, and the old would have tolerated 
 it in regard to the valuable material with which it was associated. 
 He would have had more variety than Froissart — would not so 
 completely have confined his sympathies to the great, but would 
 have shared them, without regard to wealth or position, with the 
 plebeian of character or virtue. Weems was a person of very 
 catholic sympathies. He never appears to have resisted his 
 humour, the direction of which seems always to have been inno- 
 cent. He yielded himself at once to the situation and the subject, 
 with a degree o^ abandon such as marks the conduct of the merry 
 witches in the revels of Tam O'Shanter. With what jollity would 
 he have delineated the scenes of low humour in common life — 
 how faithfully would he have preserved the patois of the country, 
 and the slang of the city. With what relish would he have de- 
 tailed what was ludicrous in those great ceremonial feasts, in 
 which Froissart refuses to see anything that is not dignified and 
 decorous. The fun would be made to mitigate the fierceness, — the 
 burlesque would qualify the stately — the jest blunt the sarcasm ; 
 the salt would finally be upset, and we should see the joyous 
 buffoon in the centre of the group, where good old Froissart suffers 
 us to see nothing but the prince. It would be a jewel's worth to 
 us, could we have sent our worthy " frere," of Mount Vernon 
 parish, along with Sir John Froissart, to hunt after historical 
 romance together. 
 
 I know not whether I can assert a personal knowledge of the 
 venerable biographer. I am not sure that the vague impressions 
 
WEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 127 
 
 which I have of his air, gesture and physique, do not originate in 
 the revelations of others. I will not be positive, but I certainly 
 have some faint notion that mine eyes have been gratified, at a 
 very early period in my life, with glimpses of his person. Un- 
 certain memories flash upon me, — a passing vision of the good old 
 man glides in before my fancy, and, with a beckoning sort of 
 smile, queerly benevolent, and a good-humoured shake of the 
 venerable white head, seems to assure me that I am not mistaken. 
 But I own my doubts trouble me. My consciousness is a some- 
 thing betwixt light and shadow. I will not say that I ever saw 
 the old gentleman, but I should be sorry to be sure that I have 
 not seen him. His majestic form and noble features seem present 
 to me, whenever I turn to his volumes, as if they were those of 
 an old friend, well known to boyhood. And he was an old friend 
 to boyhood. His books were among my earliest treasures, and I 
 verily believe, from my own convictions, that they are among the 
 very best books ever put into the hands of boyhood. They teach 
 good morals in spite of their frequent fictions. They warm the 
 heart with generous impulses, arouse patriotic sentiments, and so 
 enliven the fact, that it wings its way into the confiding bosom of 
 the urchin, so as to constitute an absolute portion of his memory. 
 
 When Weems first visited Carolina, somewhere in 1807 or '8, 
 we had a great many men, grave dignitaries in the land. These 
 were of the class of whom Shakspeare tells us, to whom even the 
 smiles and sanction of Nestor, could furnish no license for similar 
 excesses. To some of these he brought letters. They called 
 upon him, according to the fashion of the day, with considerable 
 ceremonial. Their best wigs were flowing, — their brightest and 
 bigge.st buckles sparkled at knee and instep. They were to do 
 the honours to a biographer. They were to hail the advent of a 
 learned Christian priest of unquestionable morals, — the friend of 
 Washington, — the Rector of Mount Vernon parish. You may 
 reckon for yourself the amount of starch and solemnity, in coun- 
 tenance and costume, of these ancient dignitaries. 
 
 Weems had sent his letters of introduction, and waited the re- 
 sult with calmness and indifference. Something, en passant, on 
 the subject of such letters. People seem to fancy that all that is 
 necessary in giving letters of introduction is to be sure of the 
 
138 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 morals of the bearer. A matter quite as important, is to be sure 
 that you address them to the right persons. There should be 
 something kindred in the nature and tastes of the two parties. 
 To send an ascetic to a reveller — a merry wit to one of those 
 leathern-headed worthies, who look the philosopher and are noth- 
 ing but the dunce — is surely very much to misuse the friend to 
 whom you design a courtesy. Some such blunder seems to have 
 been committed by the friends of our parson when they prepared 
 his despatches for the South. They were addressed to persons — 
 very wortliy persons, indeed — but who were utterly unlike the 
 bearer. They prepared to wait upon him with the solenmities 
 becoming his double claim as parson and biographer. We have 
 shown their preparations; and, big with expectation, they awaited 
 him in the saloon of one of the good old stately abodes of Ashley 
 River. Merry music refreshed them as they sat. The violin 
 was speaking briskly, touched evidently by a master hand, from 
 within. The touch was equally nice and vigourous. It was no 
 halting practitioner — no timid beginner — 
 
 " Scared at the sounds himself has made," 
 
 but a veteran, who made the strings speak to every ear in the 
 extensive household. Little did they guess who was the player ! 
 But the strains were approaching. Suddenly the door was thrown 
 open, and in danced the fiddler. A white-headed, venerable 
 man, in night gown and slippers, with a cheerful, bright mercurial 
 eye, and of a laughing, sunshiny countenance, the expression of 
 which was merry like that of boyhood. This was Weems. The 
 shock was terrible. Tiie big wigs never recovered from the sur- 
 prise. You might have brained them with a feather. The musi- 
 cian bore in his hands the identical cremona, whose gleesome 
 notes had assailed each impatient ear for the last twenty minutes. 
 You may be sure he fell — fell immeasurably in their esteem. 
 He was preacher and historian no longer. What had either of 
 these to do with music — the violin, of all sorts of nmsical instru- 
 ments. The hurdy-gurdy had been more tolerable. The banjo 
 might have been excused on philosophical principles. But the 
 violin ! The interview was a short one and by no means satis- 
 factory. Be sure that none of his visitors, after that dav, could 
 
VVEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 129 
 
 be brought to confess a faith in Weems as a teacher. He perhaps 
 never dreamed how much he had lost by the interview. 
 
 That violin was one of our rector's passions. It shared his af- 
 fections, with Washington, Marion, and Franklin. It was a mo- 
 ral violin. Its strains were patriotic and cheerful. It embodied 
 his smiles — it rounded his periods. He sermonized with its mu- 
 sic in his memory ; and if he scourged the offender, he did it with 
 a sort of rhythmical and harmonious accent which carried the rem- 
 edial balm with the sting. You may hear many curious anec- 
 dotes of Weems's violin. You know, of course, how deeply he 
 offended the people of Edgefield district, in South Carolina. Ed- 
 ucation was slow to penetrate that region. A portion of it was 
 called " The Dark Corner." Our biographer made it the subject 
 of his tracts and sermons ; and " The Ridge " grew fierce as 
 many furies whenever Weems put forth a new essay on the old 
 text, " Another murder in Old Edgefield." Some of the more 
 angry boys threatened vengeance on the parson, and he travelled 
 the district under frequent admonitions to " watch both ends of the 
 road." The good old man was not without his prudence ; but it 
 could not avail him always. He had occasion once to traverse the 
 tabooed region, which he did with considerable haste. The roads 
 were wretched, and his wagon was heavily laden. He carried in it 
 an ample collection of his pamphlets and histories. There were 
 bundles of his own, and Marshall's Life of Washington.; Lives of 
 Marion and Penn and Franklin ; besides, numerous tracts, under 
 the imposing title, borrowed from Old Reynolds, of his " God's 
 Revenge against Murder, Adultery,"and allthe deadly sins of the 
 calendar; against each of which, in time, our parson had shot ofT 
 much holy ordnance. Thus laden, his wagon sunk into a quag- 
 mire, from which his own unassisted strength utterly failed to ex- 
 tricate it. He was many miles from human habitation, the road 
 was an obscure one, and the day was failing. Even a philoso- 
 pher might have felt dubious of the situation. But Weems was 
 a philosopher of a peculiar order. He had his remedy. Un- 
 hitching his horse, he suffered him to feed at leisure in the wood, 
 while he himself, taking his violin from the case, took his seat on 
 a log by the road side, and coolly proceeded to extort from wood 
 and cat-gut such strains as, in that day and region, would have 
 
 6* 
 
130 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 mocked the best fantasias of Ole Bull. They were not less 
 powerful in their etiect. They drew to him an audience. Two 
 wandering backwoodsmen suddenly emerged from the covert, thor- 
 oughly charmed to the spot by the old man's music. They lifted 
 his wheels out of the mire, and he rewarded them in music. They 
 asked him many questions, all of which he answered with his bow. 
 They were satisfied witli his responses, and he was thus enabled 
 to escape in safety from the dangerous precincts. " I took pre- 
 cious care," said he, " to say nothing of my name. When they 
 pressed the question, my fiddle drowned their words and my own 
 too." Another story of this fiddle : 
 
 Our parson was one winter at Columbia. There came a moun- 
 tebank to the town, exhibiting feats of legerdemain. He had with 
 him a musician, who constituted no inconsiderable part of his at- 
 traction. But the fiddler fell dangerously sick on the very day 
 of the night set for the performance. He lodged at the same tav- 
 ern with Weems. The good old parson heard of his predica- 
 ment, and went to him. He showed him his violin, gave him a 
 few proofs of his mastery, and benevolently offered to play for him 
 at the exhibition that night, only premising that a screen should 
 be set to conceal his person. The stipulation was agreed to, and 
 the night came. There was a large assemblage of people. The 
 music proved to be of a superior order. The applause was tre- 
 mendous ; and the vanity of our biographer getting the better of 
 his prudence, he raised his head above the screen — thus making 
 sure that the plaudits should not be wasted on the wrong person. 
 The strange spectacle of the successful fiddler, who, the day be- 
 fore, had won the highest admiration in the pulpit, is said to have 
 greatly increased the uproar. 
 
 Weems's first quarrel with j^dgefield arose from the tracts en- 
 titled " God's Revenge against Adultery, or the Life of Rebecca 
 Cotton," and an " account of the murder of Polly Findley, by 
 her husband Edward Findley." It was the last of these works 
 that contained the offensive inscription — " Another Murder in Old 
 Edgefield." It was a long time before the Edgefieldians forgave 
 him this indignity. Subsequent to his visit to South Carolina, 
 he was the agent for " Marshall's Life of Washington," and 
 travelled the whole southern circuit, preaching at every Court 
 
WEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 131 
 
 House the session sermon, and bestowing the fee then allowed 
 for that service, j£3, in some becoming and charitable manner. 
 At Newberry he devoted it to the education of a poor girl. This 
 was somewhere about 1807 or 1808. 
 
 He was ai^ain a visiter to South Carolina in 1822 or '23. He 
 was then a travelling agent for the publishers of Vesey junior. He 
 had now become an aged man carrying indubitable proofs of the 
 progress of lime in his own countenance and thin white locks. 
 He preached in the capitol, on " God is love," an excellent and 
 touching sermon. Though professedly an Episcopalian, his doc- 
 trines are said to have approached universal salvation. To a 
 man of his benevolent heart, such a tendency would seem natu- 
 ral enough. His sermons were not always solemn or touching 
 things. His temper was too mercurial, at all times, to keep him 
 thoughtful of these proprieties. Some of his discourses in Church 
 and Court House, concluded with an exhortation to the people to 
 buy his books; and the example of Washington, — who always 
 did so, — was quoted with great unction. His looseness as an his- 
 torian, is happily illustrated by an anecdote which he tells in the 
 Life of Marion, of the son of Isaac Hayne, who was executed 
 by Lord Rawdon for treason. He describes him as having 
 studied the small-sword exercise in order to fight Rawdon, and 
 whose intense excitement on this subject brought on a raving 
 madness of which he died. The son in question lived to a good 
 old age, and died in 1844. 
 
 Among his maxims was one about diet. " Eat a hearty break- 
 fast if you can, a hearty dinner if you will, but no supper if you 
 please." He frequently repeated with great complacency, — in 
 allusion to his own son. — Genesis xlix. 3. " Reuben thou art my 
 jirst born — my might and the beginning of my strength." 
 
 But our richest anecdote, at once of the naivete and the char- 
 acteristics of Weems as a man and writer, relates to his publica- 
 tion of the Life of Marion. We draw this from an original cor- 
 respondence in the collection of a private gentleman. The ma- 
 terials for the Life of Marion, were furnished by General Peter 
 Horry, his friend and Lieutenant. The work was put forth as 
 the joint production of Horry and Weems. But such an annunci- 
 ation could deceive nobody. The book was Weems, all over 
 
132 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 and only. None but himself could be his parallel. The corres- 
 pondence which follows is characteristic of both parties. The 
 first is from Wecms, dated Dumfries, (Va.) June 3, 1808. 
 
 "I hasten, my Joar and honoured sir, to thank you for the very friendly 
 epistle that I got from you, dated from High Hills of Santee. I beg you to in- 
 dultrc no fears that Marion will ever die, uhile I can say or write any thing to 
 immortalize him. Indeed, such services and such servants to the American 
 people ought never to be forgotten ; I mean yourself and your illustrious Ma- 
 rion. WouKl to God you hud a bard of fire to record your great and glorious 
 deeds in such <do\ving colours, that your children's children might read and 
 weep over what you did and sufl'ered for them, when they were not able to fight 
 for themselves. / hope in three weeks to have it all chiseVd out in the rough cast. 
 It will theri take me about three weeks to polish and colour it in a style that will, I 
 hope, somclimcs excite a smile, and sometimes call forth the tear. The embargo, 
 'tis true, as you observe, has made cash rather scarce, but I trust, I shall be able 
 to get it printed, and very handsomely too. In all your letters to your amiable 
 lady and Miss B — , please mention my name very affectionately. Pray God, 
 you may find the waters medicinal indeed. Give me a very long letter. 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 
 M. L. WEEMS." 
 
 The italics are our own. It will be seen that our biographer 
 wrought with no little ease and rapidity. The copy of Weems' 
 life of Marion, (Philad. ed.) which is now before us, is a duo- 
 decimo of 252 pages. It is true that the material was furnished 
 to his hands, and much of the volume is the direct issue of 
 his own brain; but, allowing something for his other occu- 
 pations, — and Weems usually had his hands full, — and the 
 production is a proof of facility in ' book making,' which 
 would not discredit the present day. The complacency with 
 which the amiable old man speaks of preserving the reputa- 
 tion of his hero, is truly delightful. The vanity, however, is 
 sufficiently harmless. It is curious to observe that he answers 
 the doubts of Horry, as to the mode of getting means to print the 
 book, with the modest hope that in spite of the embargo, and the 
 scarcity of cash, he should still be able to get enough for the pur- 
 pose ; — and this, with reference to a book, which, for its size, has 
 probably yielded more money to the publishers than any other 
 volume of American manufacture. But they usually have the 
 lion's share. 
 
 The next letter is after a lapse of eight months. * Marion' is 
 not yet published. 
 
WEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 133 
 
 " Dumfries, Feb. 5, 1809. 
 
 " De.\r Sir: — It was not until this moment that I perused your friendly epis- 
 tle, dated 16th Oct., at Dumfries. I need not assure you what secret pleasure 
 it affords me to find from your pen that you were received and treated by my 
 family with that hospitality which is due to all, but more especially to one to 
 whom I am under such obligations. And the circumstance of your indisposi- 
 tion renders me doubly happy that Mrs. Weems and Fanny have enjoyed the 
 welcome opportunity of adding a few days of comfort to your life. For the 
 handsome things that you are pleased to say of the latter, as well as for the very 
 friendly offers made her, I pray you to receive my best thanks. I owe much to 
 kind heaven on an endless variety of accounts, and not the least of all, for giv- 
 ing me this charming child, whose personal and intellectual endowments, I am 
 happy to say, are the least of her excellencies. But I fear she will never have 
 the pleasure to see you in South Carolina. In common with the rest of my 
 fiimily, it is her wish to see you every summer in Dumfries and its vicinity. / 
 mn happy to tell you, that in a few weeks, I shall put Marion to press. It is not 
 for me to express any other than a hope that it will prove acceptable to the pub- 
 lic and not greatly disappoint your expectations. Many persons, and some of 
 them, perhaps, pretty good judges, have been pleased to commend various patres 
 which were read to them. It is my hope, at least, that it will become a school 
 book in South Carolina, &c. Instructed as I am to appreciate the blessings of 
 the equal and happy government we live under, I cannot otherwise than most 
 highly esteem and value such men as Marion and Horry, whose patriotism and 
 valour contributed so large a part to its establishment. Be assured then, that it 
 is with pleasure I write this history, and, as I said before, I hope I shall write 
 it to your satisfaction and to that of the friends of the illustrious Marion. My 
 family joins me in best wishes for your speedy and entire recovery, with my 
 great, good, loving compliments to your lady, and Miss B — , and Mrs. and Mr. 
 I — , and all friends, I beg you to be assured of my most affectionate sentiments. 
 
 M. L. WEEMS." 
 
 P. S. — I hope to bring Marion with me in June." 
 
 But Marion, finished eight months before, was not forthcoming 
 in June. The probability is, that the author could not so easily 
 find a publisher, or possibly one on his own terms ; or the em- 
 bargo opposed a greater obstacle to the acquisition of the necessary 
 cash, than, in his sanguine moments, he had anticipated. In 
 December, we have the following from the same, to the same. 
 He is now in Carolina. 
 
 " Columbia, Dec. 13th, 1809. 
 
 " Dear Sir : — It gives me great pleasure to be able to inform you, by our 
 
 mutual friend Dr. Blythe, that your ever-honored and beloved Marion lives in 
 
 history. In other words, the history of the great Marion, from the documents 
 
 you were so good as to give me, is finished. How it will take, God only knows, 
 
134 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 but if I may be permitted to hope, by tlie success which has crowned the Life of 
 "Washington, I would hope very much in its favor. You have no doubt con- 
 stantly kept in mcinory, that I tuld you, I must write it in my own icay, and 
 knowing tlie passion of the times for novels, I have endeavoured to throw your 
 ideas and facts about Gen. Marlon into the garb and dress of a military romance. 
 I trust that the Jigure which you make on the great stage of war, and by the side 
 of your illustrious friend, iciU not at all displease your delicacy, nor lessen your 
 tcell founded claims to the gratitude and af cations of the country which you so im- 
 mensely served. The Life of Marion will, I hope, be at Charleston in three 
 weeks. But, I don't believe that you will have the opportunity to see it earlier 
 than the Races. With a thousand good wishes to your excellent lady, your 
 amiable niece, and all your honored and beloved family, I remain with every 
 sentiment of friendship and afTeclion, 
 
 " Yours, M. L. WEEMS." 
 
 The reader has no doubt smiled at certain portions of this let- 
 ter. But Peter Horry did not smile, unless grimly, like an old 
 Saracen in the tapestry, with savage ideas. To convert his 
 chronicle and the life of Marion — his sober facts, — his military 
 speculations, — his own deeds, — those of his commander — into 
 materials lor a military romance, to suit the novel-reading taste 
 of the times, — this was the malice and the mischief! It was the 
 fashion of the thing that caused the trouble ! We are reminded of 
 a favourite scene in the Taming of the Shrew. Grumio confesses 
 the cape, he is even willing to confess to two sleeves — but when 
 the sleeves are " curiously cut," — " there's the villainy !" And 
 for the loose-bodied gown — " master, if ever I said a loose-bodied 
 gown, sow me up in the skirts of it, and beat me to death with a 
 bottom of brown thread. I said a gown." Horry said a 
 memoir, a life, a biography, a history — but, a military romance 
 — this was not in the stipulations ! The next letter of Weems 
 shows what came of '• cutting the sleeves curiously." It is 
 headed by Horry, [no date — supposed to have been written from 
 Columbia, S. C, Dec. 1810.] 
 
 " Dear Sir : — I have lately heard, and with infinite astonishment, that you 
 are displeased with the Life of Marion. Though I have so heard, yet J can 
 hardly believe it. What! is it possible that you can be displeased with a book 
 uhich places both yourself and your beloved Marion hi so conspicuous and exalted 
 a light ? — a book that contains every fact that you yourself gave me — abook that 
 everywhere meets with unbounded applause — of which, I have orders for 90 copies, 
 tn one single county in Georgia — which has, in fact, changed the county of Wil- 
 Iciiison iido that of Marion. A book, which, in short, sells belter even than the 
 
WEE3ia, THE BIOGRAPHER AISD HISTORIAN. 135 
 
 ■^i/e of Washington. Now, that you should be displeased with such a book, is to 
 me, very astonishing ! I want very much to see you to procure some additional 
 auiecdotes for our ^d edition ; and when I see you, if you can point out any 
 errors, or any places where improvement can be made, I shall cheerfully attend 
 to your instructions. My daughter, Fanny, icho has lately turned out poetess, 
 desired me to give her love to you. She says — she fears that you are fickle. 
 God bless you. Yours, 
 
 4 " M. L. WEEMS." 
 
 The last insinuation of Miss Fanny, must have wonderfully 
 tended to soothe the grim humours of the aged warrior. It was 
 necessary. 
 
 It is very evident that our biographer had equally free notions 
 of his privileges as were entertained by the historian Varillas, 
 who, on being reproached that he had altered certain facts in 
 history, eagerly replied : *' What of that ! — Have I not made 
 them better ?" The reader will also remember the anecdote of 
 Vertot, who, on being furnished with certain additional particu- 
 lars for the siege of Malta, answered coldly : — " My siege is 
 already finished !" The astonishment of Weems, in regard to 
 Horry's dissatisfaction at his book, could not have been simulated. 
 That the very party should have been displeased who had been 
 so much honoured, was, certainly, astonishing, — and this too, 
 at the very time when a new edition was in press, when the 
 popular demand far exceeded that for the Life of Washington, 
 when ninety copies were called for in one county in Georgia, and 
 when the glory of taking the county from Wilkinson, to give to 
 Marion, was already on record. Certainly, it was very astonish- 
 ing ! — but such was the case. Horry, at length, writes thus, 
 simply, we may suppose, to relieve the surprise of our biogra- 
 pher. 
 
 " Georgetown, (S. C.) Feb. 4, 1811. 
 " Dear Sir : — Having been very poorly for a long time, and in expectation 
 of seeing you, I deferred writing you. Disappointed in the latter, and feeling 
 myself better, I am enabled to resume my pen and shall freely and candidly 
 give you my sentiments relative to Marion's history. A former letter of yours 
 to me says, — " You have, no doubt, constantly kept in memory, that I told you 
 I must write the history in my own way." This, I do not recollect, but I well 
 recollect that I repeatedly mentioned to you " not to alter the sense or meaning of 
 my uork, lest when it came out I might not know it ; and, perverted, it might con- 
 vey a very diff'erent meaning from the truth. That officers were alive that well 
 knew Marion's history, and would say, as (perhaps they have said,) I wrote 
 
136 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 what was not true. I requested you wouUl, (if necessary,) so far alter the work 
 as to make it read gnuninatically, and I gave you leave to embellish the work, — 
 but entertained nut the least idea of tchat lias happened — though several of my 
 friends were under such apprehensiorcs, which caused my being urgent on you not 
 to alter as above mentioned. Do you not recollect my siiting on the ground with 
 you near the Georgetown Printing Office, and urging you again on the subject 
 of no alterations to tlie work — That you TC])\\ed. [seemingly out (f humour,') 
 That, " \N hen the work came out, you engaged I would be satisfied." I re- 
 plied " That irf enough ;" — and, I recollect nothing farther passed between U3 
 afterwards on the subject. IIow great was my surprise on reading these words 
 in your letter: " Knowing the pa.ssion of the times for novels, I have endeav- 
 oured to throw your ideas and facts about General Marion into the garb and 
 dress of a iijilitary romance." A history of realities turned into a romance! 
 The idea alone, militates against the work. The one as a history of real per- 
 formance, would be always read with pleasure. The other as a fictitious inven- 
 tion of the brain, once read would suffice. Therefore, I think you injured 
 yourself, notwithstanding the quick sales of your book. A'or have the public re- 
 ceived the real history of General Marion. You have carved and mutilated it 
 with so many erroneous statements, [that] your embellishments, observations and 
 remarks, must necessarily be erroneous as proceeding from false grounds. Most 
 certainly 'tis not my history, hut your romance. You say the book sells better 
 than Washington! The price of the one is much less than the other — [that] is 
 the reason. Besides, persons unacquainted with the real history, buy and read 
 your book as authentic. When known to be otherwise, [it] will lie mouldering 
 on the shelves, and no more purchasers [will] be obtained. You have my 
 work ; compare [it] with yours, and the difference will appear. Yours is 
 greatly abridged, and the letters contained in mine (which I thought much of,) 
 are excluded from yours. You say, "you are surprised to hear that I am dis- 
 pleased with your book, particularly as it places Marion and myself in so con- 
 spicuous and exalted a light." Can you suppose [that] I can be pleased with 
 reading particulars [though ever so elevated, by you) of Marion and myself, when 
 I knoic [that] such never existed. Your book is out. ]\Iy dissatisfaction of it is 
 no ways material. You say you want to see me to procure some additional 
 anecdotes for your 2d edition — and that, if I can point out any errors or places 
 where improvement may be made, that you will cheerfully attend to any in- 
 structions. Could such iinprovemenl be really made, I fear for its fate — to be 
 disregarded as my first performances were. A second edition would add to 
 your emoluments. I cannot think I can amend my former work in your hands. 
 Much time and deliberation were used to form, correct, and perfect the same. 
 To attempt further, I fear, at this distant day, would detriment, rather than 
 benefit. After having compared my work. — which I call history, and which you 
 call ' documents.' — witn your book, I wish you would send it me, in order that I 
 may also compare it. I before wrote you for this, but received no answer. I 
 thank your daughter Fanny for [her] remembrance of me. She fears that I am 
 fickle. 'Tis not so. Tell her my numerous friends and acquaintances liere 
 know the many encomiums I constantly lavish in her praise. I know not her 
 
WKEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 137 
 
 equal. Sometimes, I think I make Miss B — jealous. I shall ever retain a 
 grateful sense of the favours conferred on me by your most excellent and 
 worthy family. Please to make my love and veneration to them. I am your 
 well-wisher. (Signed,) P. HORRY." 
 
 Horry was a simple and single minded man. He had no 
 guile. He was a brave and excellent officer, and an admirable 
 lieutenant, in certain parts of the service, in the partisan warfare 
 carried on by Marion. This letter is a manly one. Flattery 
 did not blind him to the impropriety of any perversion of his 
 facts. But, in truth, there was no serious perversion of them. 
 We have before us a considerable number of Horry's manu- 
 scripts, his documents and a portion of a narrative of his own life, 
 which included, with his own, a considerable part of the military 
 career of Marion, The liberties which Weems took with Horry's 
 documents, did not, in all probability, except in one or two 
 instances, affect the substantial history. He simply exercised the 
 privilege of the old Historians. He put speeches into the mouths 
 of his heroes. He gave us long dialogues, in which he furnished, 
 pro and con, the eloquence, the patriotism, and the sentiment of 
 his interlocutors. And this deceived nobody. The deception 
 was a very innocent one ; for, it so happened, that his parties, 
 thus furnished with speech, invariably talked like Weems him- 
 self. The ear mark was always visible, no matter who was the 
 party. 
 
 It is amusing enough to note the simplicity with which Horry 
 tells the venerable biographer, that " v/hen he gave hmi permis- 
 sion to embellish his work, he entertained not the least idea of 
 what would happen." And yet, it is scarcely possible to con- 
 ceive that, knowing Weems, any one should remain in ignorance 
 what to expect. Horry was, probably, the only person who 
 could not tell exactly what was to happen. Weems's sole enjoy- 
 ment was as an artist. He must shape his material, as he himself 
 says in his letter, after his own fashion. He was ingenious in 
 literary hashes; admirable in dove-tailing, in cutting, clipping, 
 fitting, contriving and furbishing, wherever there were literary 
 matters to be managed. He would have made a first rate daily 
 editor. He could alternate between pen, paste, and scissors, 
 with rare felicity. His arguments would be pieced out with the 
 
138 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 most confident declamation, and his declamation furnish provoca- 
 tion for newer artrument. 
 
 One source of Horry's annoyance is to be found in the fact that 
 the veteran iiad some ambition of authorship himself. His pride 
 was hurt, as well as his sense of truth, by this life of Marion. 
 His name appeared in the title page as its chief author ; he had 
 been known by all his acquaintance to have been for years pre- 
 paring it ; yet, when published, it was apparent to all, that the 
 glory of the thing was wholly Weems's. Horry could lay no 
 claims to that eloquence, which, by the way, was of a peculiar 
 and unmistakeable sort. Not a paragraph, not a sentence of his 
 own handiwork, could he recognize. He had only desired the 
 correction of his grammar, but he had been entirely corrected, — 
 so completely, that nothing of his identity remained but his facts, 
 and the perversion of these, while it left him without any claim 
 to the work, gave him, fortunately, legitimate reason for complaint. 
 The pride of authorship hung by him to the last. To the latest 
 hour of his life, he was writing out his biography — bringing up 
 his life to the closing hour of its sunlight. His memorials begin 
 with his very boyhood, and relate the events of his career with 
 sometimes painful minuteness. He tells some curious anecdotes 
 of his audacity in love, — for he appears to have been much the 
 slave to the tender passion — how he scaled walls to commune 
 with his sweetheart, and how he narrowly escaped the snares of 
 a Yankee damsel, who had marked him as her victim. And all 
 this without the least tact or skill in composition, and with the 
 simple garrulity of age. It was perhaps, fortunate, that Weems 
 prepared his volume for the press, and made free with it as he 
 did — the perversions of the truth alone excepted. By this means, 
 attention has been drawn to a glorious reputation, which the 
 American world will not willingly let die. Horry himself, 
 fully deserving all that has been said of his worth, fidelity and 
 bravery, owes something to the desire of the biographer, to con- 
 vert his history into a military romance. 
 
 Of Mason L. Weems, apart from his life of Marion, and that 
 correspondence which has been the occasion of this article, some- 
 thing farther may be said. We have' every reason to think that 
 he was an amiable and excellent man. The eccentricities and 
 
WEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 139 
 
 audacities of his genius always led to errors on the right side. 
 If he coloured his facts, it was not to the injury of his subject. 
 If he suppressed the truth, it was only where it might tell against 
 a human being. A remarkable instance occurs in relation to one 
 of the subordinates in the Life of Marion ; but, as the truth does 
 not require to be told in this instance, we forbear the correction 
 of his mis-statement of it, for the same reason that first prompted 
 him to err. He did not fulfil all the conditions of Chaucer's 
 priest, but much of the description will suit him narrowly. 
 
 " A Frere ther was, a wanton and a merry, 
 A Limitour, a ful solempne man, — 
 In all the ordres foure is non that can 
 So moche of daliance and faire langage. 
 He hadde ymade ful many a mariage, 
 Of yonge wimmen at his owen cost, 
 Until his ordre, he was a noble post, 
 Ful wel beloved, and familiar was he 
 With frankeleins over all in his contree, 
 And eke with worthy wimmen of the town 
 
 ***** 
 Ful swetely herde he confessioun, 
 And plesant was his absolution. 
 He was an easy man to give penance." 
 
 He was all this, — a merry man, fond of fun, society, and con- 
 versation, — none better pleased to marry off young women at his 
 own cost. — To this purpose he frequently appropriated his occa- 
 sional fees as a wandering preacher ; — and certainly, none was 
 better known to the ' Frankelein's' through the country ; — for 
 his absolution — a more indulgent and liberal priest — one more 
 easy to give penance, — never existed. We add, from the same 
 passage in Chaucer's prologue, omitting here and there a dis- 
 qualifying characteristic : — 
 
 '• Certainly, he hadde a mery note, 
 Wel coude he sing and plaicn on a rote, 
 And knew wel the tavernes in every town, 
 And every hosteler and gay tapstcre ; 
 Curteis he was, and lowly of scrvise — 
 Ther was no man nowhere so virtuous. 
 Somewhat he lisped for his wantonncsse, 
 
140 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 To make his English swete upon his tongue ; 
 And in his harping, when that he had songe — 
 His eyen twinkcled in his had aright, 
 As don the stcrrcs in a frosty night." 
 
 Weems, though a Priest, and worthy of his cloth, was yet very 
 far superior to narrow fears and unworthy prejudices, by which 
 too many of his order are prevented from complying with the 
 larger requisitions of duty — bound to staid forms and a slavish 
 discipline, the only merit of which is in externals. He had the 
 courage to do what was fitting, and to seem what he was, in de- 
 fiance of convention. He could make merry at a wedding with 
 the rest — the music never drove him off, — and thus, by giving 
 countenance to what is innocent and natural in pleasure, he pre- 
 vented youthful hilarity from rushing to excess. He could visit 
 *' tavernes," and very well knew the " tapsteres " thereof, by 
 name ; but it was just in such wise as he knew all men, made 
 in the image of God, and worthy, for that reason if no other, of 
 human consideration and respect ; — as he knew the outcast, the 
 profligate, the lowly and the little hoping ; — as a Priest, properly 
 solicitous of his trusts, should know and seek those whom his 
 brethren are but too apt to abandon or avoid. He had no fears 
 of the vulgar. Satisfied of his own integrity, and satisfied that 
 the eye of God was always more certainly upon him than that 
 of man, he never seemed to give himself any concern whether 
 he was seen by the latter at all. Nay, we are not sure, but that 
 there was a something in the social aspects of a tavern, which, 
 apart from its supposed excesses, might have found favour in his 
 sight. There, he met with all the varieties of character, just 
 such motley groups as old Chaucer rode with to Canterbury — 
 men of all fashions and tastes — from all quarters of the globe, — 
 who could teach as well as learn, and, like himself, season the 
 sermon with a story, and the story with a song. If he yielded a 
 hearty laugh, in sympathy with that which he might hear at such 
 places, it was tlie expression of a frank and generous impulse, 
 the utterance of his social nature, his pliant mood — and not any 
 concession to, or sympathy with, licentiousness. His nature was 
 Catholic, entirely human, loving man in spile of his fall, never 
 insisting on himself, and, in the consciousness of his own recti- 
 
WEEMS, THE BIOGRAPHER AND HISTORIAN. 141 
 
 tude, in the security aflbrded by his own strength, yielding some- 
 thing of exterior, by way of encouragement, to the profligate, or 
 the doubtful, whom it might be easy at any moment, in the event 
 of trespass, to repel. 
 
 If you say that he sometimes had an unwonted manner of 
 showing his religion, we answer, — this was only because of the 
 unwonted independence of his character. Never was man more 
 amiably impulsive. His religion was not the less pure because 
 of his costume, — it was in fact rather the better for his laxity in 
 this respect, — since it was a religion so wholly regardless of mere 
 externals. And here let us remark that we owe some ac- 
 knowledgments to those brave men, in every land, who risk 
 themselves against social forms and prejudices, whenever these 
 become so blind or so wilful, as to confound matter with manner, 
 the substantial with the semblance, and, of an interest so vital as 
 that of the moral and spiritual nature, make, in the language of 
 Carlyleism, a mere miserable simulacrum. This is a common 
 mistake with the world, which is continually losing to classes that 
 which it is becoming it should treasure up wholly within its own 
 keeping. It is also, we may remark at closing, one of the true 
 reasons why virtue loses so much with the lapse of years, even 
 against the probable progress of civilization. Forms and sym- 
 bols are made to stand for truth, until, in process of time, the 
 image becomes the thing and absorbs all the love and homage 
 which the substance only should command. 
 
ARTICLE V. 
 
 THE HUMOUROUS IN AMERICAN AND BRITISH 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 Some considerations upon Britisli humour, and what remains 
 of it, to us in America, as joint inheritors with our European 
 brethren, of the original stock, are forced upon us by the perusal 
 of the work before us.* We have more than once, accorded to 
 the writings of Mr. Mathews, the critical attentions of this jour- 
 nal. f His papers on the Copyright Question, and his political and 
 social poems " On Man," have been the subjects of our elaborate 
 consideration. In the examination of these performances, a cer- 
 tain sturdy independence of phrase and suggestion, and certain 
 inherent qualities of originality, which we thought him to pos- 
 sess, determined us to devote a leisure day to the whole body of 
 his writings, which were then understood to be in course of 
 preparation for the press. These have since been given to the 
 public, and we proceed to lay before our readers, the fruits of our 
 examination into their pretensions. Pretensions there are enough. 
 Mr. Mathews is not the man to doubt his own claims, or to suffer 
 assault upon his position. A considerable self-esteem, which is 
 inseparable from the earnest temperament, gives him confidence 
 and courage. He utters himself without misgivings, and strips 
 to his subject without fear. The vastness of his task does not 
 appal him. The difficulties in the way of his progress scarcely 
 move him to hesitate, and, with a rare mixture of the rashness 
 of youth with the strength of manhood, he attempts many labours 
 of the class which Milton speaks of as present to his aims in 
 
 * The various writings of Cornelius Mathews, embracing The Motley Book, 
 Behemoth, The Politicians, Poems on Man in the Republic, Wakondah, Puffer 
 Hopkins, Miscellanies, Selections from Arcturus and International Copyright. 
 Complete in one volume. New York : Harper & Brothers. 1843. 
 
 t The Southern Quarterly Review. Charlestown, S. C. 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS BIATHEVVS. 143 
 
 mature life — " things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." Mr. 
 Mathews is a very ambitious as he is a very industrious person. 
 It is his good fortune that his industry is disposed to keep pace 
 with his ambition. In that is his hope. His writings fill a goodly 
 octavo, large page and small print, of nearly four hundred pages. 
 He is still a very young man ; yet here we have his labours — 
 occupying a space of only five years — in no less than half a 
 dozen very dissimilar departments of production. He appears 
 before us as poet and dramatist, novelist and politician, essay- 
 ist and critic. This is a dangerous versatility, which, as foreign 
 to the usual allotment of endowment among men, the great body 
 of readers are always disposed to resent and to deny. Ordi- 
 narily, we are thus sceptical ourselves. We very much doubt 
 the marvels of your universal genius. We hold your " Jack of 
 all Trades" to be something of a charlatan, or, if not exactly 
 this, to be still less fortunate in the possession of certain slender 
 superficialities which are more likely to delude himself than his 
 neighbours. He takes up all tasks, and botches all, or leaves 
 them all unfinished. Our counsel to all honest workers, in what- 
 ever craft, is the cool selection and close pursuit of some one 
 single object. In this lies the wholesome secret of success. You 
 can no more bow at two altars, than you can serve two mistresses 
 with safety ; and in literature and art, especially, the muse is 
 exceedingly jealous of the wanderings of her worshippers. She 
 accepts no divided allegiance, and furnishes even temporary de- 
 sertion with grievous disabilities. Proficiency of any kind, is 
 attainable only through devotion. That devotion, as well to art 
 as to heaven, must be as exclusive as it is patient and unremit- 
 tirg. The sacred fires must never be suffered to go out, though 
 for a moment only, before that shrine to which our service has 
 been pledged ; and life and faith must suffer no diversion to other 
 or inferior objects, from that duty to which our first fresh inclina- 
 tions, and our ascertained endowments, will naturally lead and 
 incline us. The division of labour, according to peculiar fitness 
 and endowment, seems as proper to the author as to any, the 
 humblest worker, in the most ordinary branches of mechanics. 
 
 But this necessity has relation only to him who has properly 
 survived his beginnings, and is fairly started on the great moral 
 
144 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 business of his life. The beginner, particularly in literature, 
 must and will try himself in every department of composition. 
 It is Leigh Hunt who tells us, somewhere, in one of his very 
 pleasant essays or prefaces, that when he first commenced scrib- 
 bling in verse, he imitated all the masters, — tried all departments 
 of song, — the epic, the dramatic, the lyric, — left no measure un- 
 employed, and scarcely any theme unsung. Nothing was more 
 natural. This was not a peculiarity of the Cockney poet. — 
 Imitation is the process by which incipient genius exercises it- 
 self, — by which it acquires confidence in its own powers, — learns 
 the use of its tools, and prepares itself, by emulation of the tried 
 and known, to arrive at such a conviction and mastery of its own 
 strength, as will enable it freely to exercise a native and inde- 
 pendent wing. It is not found, after the first few years of an 
 author's life, that he indulges much in various composition. He 
 generally settles down upon that department in which he believes 
 himself most fitted to excel. Thus, the great poets, or drama- 
 tists, the Homers, the Shakspeares, the Dantes, the Miltons, etc., 
 have usually adhered to single fields of exercise. A natural law 
 inevitably leads to such a resolution. By addressing the constant 
 mind to one branch of composition, the utterance becomes more 
 ready, and the performance no less easy than perfect. With 
 facility of expression, the thoughts acquire freedom ; and the 
 genius of the poet, unrestrained by bonds of speech, glows and 
 exults in the untamed exultation of a confident and familiar 
 strain. Until this facility is acquired, the genius is necessarily 
 fettered and enfeebled. The toil of a difficult articulation, nat- 
 urally impairs the freedom and the strength of thought ; and, in 
 due proportion as the author finds it difficult to make his ideas 
 malleable by speech, will be his readiness to abandon them, how- 
 ever excellent they may appear even to himself. Hence, his prac- 
 tice in all fields of song, — his proneness to imitate that of his pre- 
 decessor, — and the readiness with which he yields himself, in the 
 flexibility of his own gristle, to the influence of existing models. 
 It is but proper that he should be as various in his efforts, as he 
 is constant in their exercise, if he would acquire that freedom 
 of speech which is his first essential object. 
 
 But this belongs only to a very early period in his career. It 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 10 
 
 is only while he is immatlPl'e, that he is thus imitative. With 
 the acquisition of utterance, he should attain his freedom. He 
 should then think out his own laws, and toil in obedience to the 
 nature which works within him. To continue striving at nume- 
 rous kinds of composition, only proves continued immaturity, or 
 a prurient vanity, w^hich baflles concentration, and, though it may 
 provoke the passing wonder of contemporaries, will scarcely ever 
 be able to command the lasting honours of posterity. The mind 
 must fix upon its scheme of progress, and go forward sternly, in 
 its one development. An aside for contemplation or amusement, 
 — a playful, momentary indulgence with a foreign muse, — is not 
 considered as an objection here, any more than we should con- 
 sider as an impropriety, a glance bestowed upon a strange beauty, 
 by one who has a young wife of his own at home. But there 
 must be no liaison. We must entertain no vain notion that, be- 
 cause of success with one muse, we can easily command the fa- 
 vours of all the rest. The error is one quite as offensive to art, 
 as, in other respects, it would be to morality. 
 
 The necessities of the American author, however, make him 
 somewhat an exception to this rule, and confer upon him certain 
 privileges. In the narrow field which he occupies, with so little 
 demand for his labours in any one department, he is compelled 
 to exercise a certain degree of universality. The conventional 
 state of the country does not allow^ of that concentration of his 
 thoughts upon the one object which is essential to its complete at- 
 tainment. That division of labour, in the hands of classes, 
 which marks the progress of civilization in the old countries, is at 
 present denied to ours, — at least, in most of the departments, 
 which call especially for intellect. Thus, with us, the pleader is 
 at once counsellor and attorney, — the priest is magistrate and 
 schoolmaster, — the physician is chemist and apothecary ; and the 
 author combines in himself as many of the offices of literature 
 as he can possibly bring to bear, in supplying the wants of the 
 several departments from which he hopes to obtain his recom- 
 pense. His two volumes per annum brought forth by the regu- 
 lar publisher, do not interfere with his duties as editor of, or con- 
 tributor to, the quarterly or monthly magazines. He throws off 
 his monthly lyric for the popular singer, his essay for the Lady's 
 
 PART II "T 
 
146 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Book or Annual, — and, by a towMkle force, which is not often 
 witnessed in any other country, contrives, at odd intervals of lei- 
 sure, to concoct something, whether tragedy or farce, for the hon- 
 ours of the stage at Park or Bowery. This history is comprised 
 in tlie career of Mr. Mathews, as it is numerously instanced in 
 that of otlicr American authors. The collection before us has 
 been the fruit of just such a diverse appropriation of his time ; 
 and, in considering the claims of his workmanship, we are to 
 make the necessary allowances for such deficiencies — in the 
 classical propriety and symmetry of his labours — as must be in- 
 evitable from the mode in which they were prepared and given 
 to the world. Until literature shall arrive at the dignity of a 
 profession among us, our writers must continue to work under 
 disadvantages, which will impair their confidence in themselves, 
 lessen the strength of their conceptions, and materially diminish 
 the force and beauty of their productions. How long this state 
 of things is to continue, is beyond present speculation ; since the 
 genius of tlie country, unlike that of any other known land, la- 
 bours under the paralysis occasioned by its indebtedness to other 
 regions, for the largest portion of its thought and literature. Un- 
 til we can untrammel the nation in this respect, gain our intel- 
 lectual freedom, and set up wholly for ourselves, the struggles of 
 the native mind must be equally painful and unpromising. 
 
 Our previous notices of Mr. Mathews, will somewhat lessen 
 our present labours. We shall say nothing here of his preten- 
 sions as a poet, having fully discussed them in a former article. 
 Nor will it be necessary that we should say any thing further 
 of the several excellent papers which he has put forth on the 
 subject of International Copyright. It is due to him to say, that 
 he has been one of the most earnest and active in this cause 
 among our literary men. Would we might believe that his la- 
 hours had been attended by any corresponding measure of suc- 
 cess. But this is not so certain. The measure still drags on, 
 like a wounded snake, in our national councils ; its prospects im- 
 paired by two circumstances, — the active hostility of manufac- 
 turers, whose interests, it is supposed, such a concession might 
 injuriously affect ; and the indilTerence of our statesmen them- 
 selves to any measure to which the public are indifferent. Be- 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 147 
 
 tween these two forces, the claims of the national mind have but 
 slender chance of present consideration. We must probably 
 wait the advent of statesmen who will not content themselves 
 with looking solely to the existing condition of the popular under- 
 standing, or its undigested will in matters of legislation ; but 
 where the subject involves a great principle, is obscure by reason 
 of its own nature, or little valued because of the occult or indi- 
 rect character of the influence which it exercises upon social af- 
 fairs — who will devote themselves, heart and soul, to its develop- 
 ment, till men shall come generally to acknowledge the necessity 
 for its recognition. 
 
 We have said that Mr. Mathews is an ambitious writer. This 
 is shown by the selection of his topics, no less than their variety. 
 These topics are chiefly of a kind to require the exercise, in a 
 large degree, of the imaginative faculty. They leave to the au- 
 thor a large discretion, and are difficult of treatment in due de- 
 gree as they are indefinite and indistinct. Thus, among these 
 writings, and one of the best among them, we find " Behemoth, 
 or the Mound Builders," a bold and fanciful legend, well written, 
 vigorously wrought out, and sometimes beautifully descriptive. 
 It is an attempt to supply a vast break in our history, to afford us 
 a glimpse, and provide at least one chronicle of that shadowy and 
 mysterious race, by which the wondrous mounds and monuments 
 were left, over which we grope and stumble so frequently while 
 penetrating our deep and pathless forests. Another of these sub- 
 jects, the very choice of which indicates the audacity of one as- 
 sured of his resources, is entitled " Wakondah." " Wakondah," 
 in the dialect of one of our forest tribes, signifies the " Master of 
 life." It was thus, by a periphrasis, that they named the deity, 
 avoiding, as is the case frequently with a superstitious people, the 
 direct utterance of the sacred name. The subject here is an In- 
 dian tradition. It appears as a fragment of verse — the single 
 canto of a narrative, which we trust our author will find leisure 
 and the mood to finish. What is here, affords us, as we think, one 
 of the best specimens of his strength in poetry. As a proof of his 
 faculty as a builder — the highest evidence, perhaps, of poetical 
 endowment — we can say nothing, as the work is incomplete. 
 What is given us appears rather as the vestibule, the porch, or 
 
148 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 entrance to a structure of proportions and material equally pure, 
 noble, and majestic. We could, it is true, point to numerous de- 
 fects and deficiencies ; but these are of a sort not to impair, to any 
 considerable degree, the merits of the performance, which is clas- 
 sical in form, and of a character at once simple and antique. It 
 is not, however, so much in the details as in the design and gen- 
 eral conception of these two productions that we find our author's 
 excellence. That he should single out these unshapen masses for 
 the exercise of his chisel, betrays a rare confidence in his own 
 powers, and a manly determination to follow in no beaten track. 
 And this is courage; and this courage comes from resources from 
 which other fruits may yet be found to ripen. No man attempts 
 the vague, the mystic, the shadowy and imperfect in literature, 
 unless stimulated by a very active and subtle imagination. Sub- 
 jects of this class are not to be handled, are never to be approach- 
 ed; unless by those who are confident in the possession of native 
 and original resources. Their materials are not to be found along 
 the highways, but are to be evolved by patient and deeply penetra- 
 ting thought, winged for exploration by genius, acting through 
 fancy and imagination. History is mute if you question her upon 
 the matter; tradition but mumbles unintelligibly, as in a dream, 
 denying nothing, yet withholding everything; and it is for the im- 
 agination boldly to seize upon his muse, as Alexander of Mace- 
 don the priestess of the oracle, and in her silence to prove himself 
 irresistible. In labours of this class, the author can rely only on 
 himself: books give no succour; there are no mile-posts, no in- 
 dicia, along the route. There is no route ; he must make it. 
 What is done must be done, ab ovo, from one's own brains, as the 
 spider weaves her web — fine, symmetrical, hanging in air, and 
 glistening in the sunbeams — out of her own bowels. The selec- 
 tion of such topics may betray presumption, but they are just as 
 likely to denote courage. The choice of the theme is prima fa- 
 cie, to a certain degree, the proof of a capacity for its proper use. 
 Such themes are seldom chosen by ordinary men. They content 
 themselves usually with the thoroughfare — the true man never. 
 He always aims with courage, even Avhen he aims beyond the 
 possible ; and his courage, even when he fails, seems to lend 
 something like a sanction to his audacity. 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 149 
 
 It is because of the courage which Mr. Mathews has displayed 
 in these and other writings that our attention has been drawn to 
 his endeavours. Their perusal has satisfied us of his possession 
 of powers which, with good training and in process of time, will 
 lead to performances which his countrymen will cheerfully appre- 
 ciate. To say that he is what he should be — that he is even in the 
 right way to do what his capacities will justify him in attempting — 
 is assuredly not our purpose. He has some very grave faults of 
 thought and manner ; and his very intensity of mood is something 
 against him in the particular departments of art to which his per- 
 formances generally incline. This intensity of mood, simplicity, 
 and sternness of manner, which would be fitly exercised in such 
 works as Behemoth and Wakondah, are entirely misplaced in the 
 popular legend or the domestic novel. But they are characteris- 
 tics of our author's mind ; and the question with him must have 
 reference to the subjects suitable to characteristics which are 
 equally paramount and inflexible. Of the two works which we 
 have detached from this collection, and subjected to particular re- 
 mark, we do not desire to convey the idea that they are very per- 
 fect, or even very successful productions. It would be quite un- 
 reasonable to expect such from the hands of a writer who is yet 
 new to our public, and who does not fulfil all the conditions of his 
 subject, and has not yet learned to put in requisition all his facul- 
 ties for the task before him. These writings were also, we may 
 remark, the fruits of his first experiments. It may be that, were 
 he now to attempt these topics for the first time, he would adopt 
 other agents for his action, and, in some degree, modify his de- 
 signs. But, taken as they are, with all the crudenesses of youth, 
 and a hurried first conception, upon them, they denote imagination 
 and passion, considerable powers of description and adaptation, 
 a fine sense of the picturesque, a just notion of what is harmoni- 
 ous and delicate, of invention in structure, and of good taste and 
 facility in the use of means and accessories. There is a statu- 
 esque simplicity in the proportions of " Behemoth '' which is very 
 imposing, and would have been perfect but for the unseemly in- 
 troduction of certain ludicrous agents which impair its harmony. 
 Such is the episode of Kluckhatch. The dignity of outline 
 which marks the story is blurred by this excrescence. There is 
 
150 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 SO little of the dramatic in this performance — the action is so sim- 
 ple, and the agents necessarily so few — that anything calculated 
 to conflict with the simplicity of the scheme, and the repose of its 
 outline, is felt as a rude deformity. Works of this nature will 
 not suffer the slightest introduction of incongruous elements. The 
 story is one of tragic uniformity ; to engraft upon it any Gothic 
 additions must be injurious. In a tale of trial, of a terrible and 
 strange solemnity, the ludicrous shows as revoltingly in the con- 
 nection as would the humours of Policinello in the midst of the 
 divine agonies of Prometheus. No such objection can be urged 
 to the portion which we have of " Wakondah." That, so far as 
 written, is simply beautiful — a lovely piece of description — cold 
 somewhat, and frigid like frost-work ; but it has a tinge of the morn, 
 ing sun upon it, and the purple flush which it wears is sufficient to 
 soften, though it may not warm, the expression. In " Behemoth" 
 we have numerous passages of great strength and fervour. The 
 terrors of the country, under the ravages of the mighty and mas- 
 sive monster of the wild and sea, are well described and illustra- 
 ted ; and the stern, unbending nature of Bokulla, his patriotic de- 
 votion and unyielding resolution, present a fine idea of the heroic 
 character. The great defect of the story — a defect inseparable, 
 perhaps, from the subject — is in the final mode of action — the 
 means by which the monster is overcome, and the country saved 
 from desolation. We are not prepared to recognize the means for 
 his destruction as adequate to the purpose, when we remember 
 the wondrous powers assigned him in the first instance by the au- 
 thor — powers which so completely mocked at all the strength, in 
 numbers and in battle, of the people whose plains he traversed 
 with the foot of devastation. But the subject was one of great 
 difficulty, and might well have embarrassed the skill and baffled 
 the powers of a far more experienced writer than Mr. Mathews. 
 It was one, too, which, we fancy, might have been much more 
 easily discussed in verse than prose — might have been more avail- 
 able in the hands of the poet than the novelist. The very em- 
 ployment of verse tends to reconcile the reader to certain extrav- 
 agancies which he would resent in prose narrative, and he rather 
 expects a freedom of fancy in the one class of writings which 
 would revolt him in the other. The fine ballad of" The Dragon 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 151 
 
 of Rhodes " is, by the way, very kindred in its topic, though its 
 relations are not so numerous, and its aim, as a story, not so high 
 as " Behemoth.'' We venture to say, that, if the latter subject 
 had been presented to the mind of Schiller, he would not have hes- 
 itated a single instant as to the necessity of treating it in a purely 
 poetical manner. He would have felt the dangers and difficulties 
 in the way of a prose narrative, which, whatever may be the 
 character of the style employed, or the proem of the author, ne- 
 cessarily promises a greater soberness of fancy, and a sterner 
 grasp upon the reins of imagination, than is necessary where the 
 story is told in verse. 
 
 But we gather from both these compositions, as well as from 
 other writings of Mr. Mathews, that his mind is essentially un- 
 dramatic. He is better at narrative and description, and evi- 
 dently prefers expressing himself in the first person. He seems 
 fettered and frigid when his business is to develope his story 
 through the medium of other agents. He does not succeed in 
 grouping, and seems to lack the required flexibility — the capacity 
 to enter into the characters of his persons, and to speak only in 
 obedience to their necessities. His mind is of the order that 
 never goes out of itself — that refuses to subject its own to the re- 
 quisitions of others, and persists in informing his dramatis per- 
 sonse with his own individuality. He has too much intensity of 
 purpose to escape fiom this, — becomes himself too much inter- 
 ested in what is going forward ; and, taking part, and sympathiz- 
 ing with his favorite ideal, yields to him entirely that regard 
 which should be divided with critical justice equally among his 
 group. Lord Byron's mind was of this order, and it belongs in 
 great measure to the egoisme of the age. It is the character of 
 Wordsworth's muse, of Shelley's, of Keats', of Moore's, of nearly 
 all of the great modern English writers, with the almost single 
 exception of Walter Scott, who, in this power of yielding him- 
 self to the character he wishes to portray, comes nighest to Shak- 
 speare of all the authors of our period. Mr. Mathews, with the 
 proneness of youth to try all things, and the ambition of real tal- 
 ent to conquer them, has attempted the drama, but, as we are in- 
 clined to think, regarded as matter for the stage, with very indif- 
 ferent success. " The Politicians — a comedy," is one of the 
 
152 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 works of this collection. This is a sufficiently lively and spirited 
 performance, — more satirical than comic, — more smart than hu- 
 mourous, — a pleasant satire enough, — sharp, but not malignant, 
 full of innocuous censure, but not biting, and perhaps rather too 
 much exaggerated in its limning for success. We are not told 
 that it was brought upon the stage, or, if so, that it was success- 
 ful. We should be inclined to say that it would better suit for 
 perusal than performance. Bating wliat has been already said 
 of the absence of any peculiar dramatic ability of our author, 
 we are pre})ared to discover a special unfitness for the stage in 
 the comedy before us. It wants action, — the dialogue is too 
 much elaborated, — and the persons of the drama have character- 
 istics too nearly on the same level, too decidedly of one order, 
 to admit of much variety in the several parts they play. We 
 can better illustrate this objection by a reference to the names of 
 the characters. Thus, we have " Brisk," a " Candidate for Al- 
 derman," " Gudgeon, the rival candidate," and these are followed 
 by such persons as Messieurs " Crowder," " Botch," " Glib," 
 " Old Crumb," " Bill Baffin," " Tom Lug," " Joe Surge," " Mrs. 
 Gudgeon," " Kate Brisk," and so forth. The scene is laid in the 
 city of New York. The story is purely local, and the author 
 gravely assures us that his purpose is a national drama. Now, 
 the first question that occurs to us, is, whether society in New 
 York is made up wholly of " Brisks" and " Gudgeons," and 
 "Crowders," and " Botches," and " Baffins," and " Lugs," and 
 " Surges ?" What can you expect from such people, thus desig- 
 nated ? Nothing but what is low, — no objects but what are infe- 
 rior, — no characteristics but what are common-place and deficient 
 in dignity. Tlie very names of the persons are conclusive of the 
 design of the author, to give us an unqualified, unredeemed pic- 
 ture of vulgarity, — of slang and cunning and stupidity, — of 
 thoughts and opinions without sentiment or strength, and purposes 
 without moral or elevation. There is nothing attractive in the 
 bill of fare. There is nothino; natural in the combination. Good 
 comedy is suggestive of society, — society as it is, and not as it 
 appears through the jaundiced medium of a disappointed expect- 
 ant, or a surly and impatient cynic. Look at all the better por- 
 tions of the old English comedy, — of comedy in its best day 
 
WRITINGS) OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. l53 
 
 every wliere. You will find that, although there are many com- 
 mon, and some vulgar, people among the characters, there is al- 
 ways a fair sprinkling of the dignified and the noble, and these 
 almost always indicated by their names. We need but refer to 
 the best works of Congreve, Cumberland, and Geo. Colman. 
 Nay, Shakspeare shall content us with a fitting illustration. We 
 turn to the " Merry Wives of Windsor," a story from humble 
 life avowedly, yet with just such an admixture of the high with 
 the humble, the several constituencies of society in such com- 
 bination, — as we find ordinarily in society, and by which that cu- 
 rious moral amalgam is kept from becoming utterly monotonous 
 and wretched. There is the professed humourist. Sir John Fal- 
 staff; Fenton, Shallow, Slender, Ford, Page, Sir Hugh Evans, 
 Dr. Caius, Bardolph, Pistol, Nym, Robin, Simple, Rugby, " sweet 
 Anne Page," and dear, bustling Mrs. Quickly. Here we have 
 names, some of them unusual, none of them gross or unseemly, — 
 all apparently gathered from the ordinary walks of the city. 
 Probability is not outraged at the very threshold of the perform- 
 ance. We are not warned to be on the lookout for monstrosities. 
 On the contrary, life as it is, is presented to our survey, — a just 
 picture of the world in which the scene is laid, and without which 
 the boast of the drama, that of holding the mirror up to nature, 
 would be excessively idle. If one or two of the names, " Slen- 
 der" and "Shallow" and " Pistol," for example, are unusual, they 
 are not low, and are plainly suggestive, not broadly so, of what 
 we are to expect from the characters. The rest are ordinary 
 names, with a few somewhat aristocratic in their sound, and 
 which naturally contribute to the naturalness of the design. 
 These better names are employed to idealize the rest, and to 
 show society as it is, — the good and the bad, the high and the 
 low, the noble and the mean, — in juxtaposition, it may be, but 
 working together, as we ever find the parties, willingly or other- 
 wise, in the common toils of social progress. The quick instincts 
 of the dramatic veterans of the days of Elizabeth, led them at 
 once to perceive that any unmixed representation of inferiority — 
 not to say vulgarity — must really defeat the purposes of satire, 
 no less than comedy. We do not see society any where in this 
 totally crude condition. No where are its members utterly un- 
 
154 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 redeemed by some sort of classification, by which the mass of 
 ordinary herdlings are kept from the dominion of brute nature, 
 by the presence and interposition of others, a sacred few, whose 
 countenance still gives them claim to a higher position in the re- 
 gards of man, the absolute right to wiiich must yet depend on 
 their own resolute progress and upward looking will. 
 
 But our author aims to satirize the potty politicians of the 
 country. His aim is satire, rather than society. But this is an 
 evasion of the objection, since satire, to be successful, must con- 
 sider society first, last, and entirely. The objects are inseparable. 
 It is only by a proper application of the moral and social standards 
 of the country to the condition of things you wish to scourge and 
 overthrow, that you can hope to be successful in your satire. To 
 detach the selfish politician, or the stupid victim of his arts, from 
 the community whose fate depends on the honesty of the one and 
 the intelligence of the other, would be a wholly absurd, even if it 
 could be a possible proceeding. But the thing is impossible, 
 and the author who attempts it nmst incur the very judgment 
 which we hold to be inevitable from the fate of our author's 
 comedy. His case equally fails in a political and artistical point 
 of view. If society rejects his argument, the politicians of the coun- 
 try are quite as obtuse, and regard it equally a failure as it applies 
 to them, or to their opponents. This must be the fate of every 
 such gross exaggeration. Suppose we sufier him to make his 
 case for himself — to sift society as he pleases, and; detaching the 
 politicians of the community wholly from those who are no poli- 
 ticians, but with whom the politicians are connected by daily 
 sympathies and duties, to establish a community of his own, 
 solely composed of the latter class. This, in fact, is what our 
 author has already done. This is the staple of his comedy, and 
 mixed more freely with other ingredients, we should hold it very 
 good staple for satire and censure. Let the scene be laid in 
 New York or Philadelphia, Boston or Charleston, it matters not — 
 and where do you see the masses ruling the country, or the party 
 through their most inferior persons ? Where do you see the 
 "Gudgeons," and the "Botches," the "Crumbs," and the 
 " Crowders," leaping audaciously to the high places, calling the 
 meeting to order, and prescribing what they shall do, and whom 
 
WRITINGS OP CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 156 
 
 they shall elect ? To assert this is simply to take the cue from 
 the British traveller, with whom this sort of absurdity is conven- 
 tional language, to which nobody attaches the least importance, 
 unless, indeed, it be some newly fledged British reviewer. Be- 
 yond these two parties, nobody sees anything of this history, and 
 if we look to the fact, as we may, with calmness, and without 
 regard to our political bias, we shall see that, in spite of the mutual 
 misrepresentations of the party press, there are no parties in the 
 world more admirably served and officered than those of whig and 
 democrat, or Republican and Federalist, in the United States. 
 The truth is, the American people everywhere, with that wonder- 
 ful shrewdness which is their paramount quality, have a peculiar 
 knack, in spite of their levities, of finding out, in every commu- 
 nity, not only who are their cleverest, but who are their very best 
 men. There is always talent, and frequently eloquence, in those 
 who are summoned to do their business. These are qualities 
 which the great masses inevitably require. Let any underling 
 attempt to lead them — any one whom they discern wanting in any 
 of the necessary qualities of talent, industry, decision, and integ- 
 rity, and how soon do they revolt. How soon do they shake 
 themselves free of the mere pretender, whose specious arts may 
 have deceived them for a while, turning to belter counsellors, and 
 less questionable authorities. Mere talent does not suffice. It 
 may attract, but will not content, or not long — may please, but 
 does not satisfy — docs not obtain that perfect confidence which 
 the true leader, or the active agent of a party is required to 
 possess. The politician who is discovered to be characterless, is 
 soon distrusted, whatever be his talent, — and no talent can long 
 cover his deficiencies among a people so jealous of their agents, 
 and so vigilant in their watch upon them. He is whistled down 
 the wind with a rare facility, and told by Demus, but without any 
 of the regret which mingles in Othello's dismissal of his favourite 
 lieutenant, "Never more be officer of mine!" It is not denied 
 that the mere tactician, the simply smart and cunning demagogue, 
 obtains in his township or parish a temporary sway and ascen- 
 dency, but it does not last. He may be listened to with admira- 
 tion as a speaker, but not trusted as a leader. The mass among 
 us have an exquisite faculty, as we once heard said by an un- 
 
156 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 coated democrat in Tammany Hall, of extracting the juice from 
 the orange, before they fling away the skin. Now, to make this 
 satire successful, it should have been as nearly as possible an exhi- 
 bition of the living manners, the daily passing acts, of the society 
 from which it professes to be drawn, with just such an exaggeration 
 of outline, in all phases, as to idealize the common forms and 
 phraseology of life. This is the happy art of the dramatist, 
 whether he walk in the regal steps of tragedy, or in the livelier 
 paces of the comic muse. The minor objections to " The Poli- 
 ticians," as a performance for the stage, are several. It will be 
 necessary, perhaps, to distinguish one. Our author has not yet 
 learned the art of condensing a character into a sentence, and 
 conveying a history, by a brief word — a glance — an exclama- 
 tion — to both actor and audience. His characters speak little 
 essays. The one suggests a text to the other, which moves him 
 to descant ; and, instead of so speaking and acting as to hurry 
 forward the action, they dilate on casual matters, deal in 
 analyses of their neighbours and of the opposite party, and 
 waste time in dialogue which should be spent in action. These 
 essays read very well, — the play reads very well, — if you 
 can only dispossess your mind of the natural objection, that it 
 does not give a fair picture of society. Exaggeration, indeed, is 
 scarcely necessary, where you aim to ridicule and show off the 
 scandal-things of party. These are sufficiently shocking, set 
 forth as they are. Where they are the subject, the satirist to be 
 truthful must be terrible. Their filth, their falsehood, their sel- 
 fishness, their slang, their beastly beer-barrels, and almost as 
 beastly songs, — these furnish sufficient material, ready to the 
 hands, that not only do not need, but would be absolutely 
 impaired, for the purposes of satire, by any exaggeration. With 
 every disposition to think well of " The Politicians," as a drama, 
 we are constrained to consider it only as a lively story, broken 
 up into dialogue ; and its very merits are of a class which per- 
 suade us that its author would always succeed better in narra- 
 tive, — in the discursive and descriptive, — than in the dramatic. 
 For this department of art, his mental nature does not seem 
 sufficiently flexible, nor his mode of utterance sufficiently direct. 
 His style is diflfuse and elaborate, when it should be concentra- 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 167 
 
 tive, and he leaves nothing to the doubts and apprehensions of 
 the spectator. It is the great characteristic of poetry in general, 
 and the drama in especial, that language should be suggestive 
 rather than full. Something must be left to the imagination of 
 the audience. The clue must be put into their own hands, and 
 they left to follow it ; and it is because of the actual part whicli 
 they thus are made to take in the progress of events, that the 
 drama forms an intellectual exercise much more exciting than 
 any other which mortal genius has yet been able to conceive. 
 The spectators are, themselves, to a certain extent, participators 
 in the scene. Their fears and hopes are awakened. They know 
 not what is next to come. They feel the danger that they but 
 behold, and tremble with personal expectation, which crowns 
 with reality, and makes perfect and true, the illusion which is 
 in progress before them. Where a writer leaves nothing to his 
 audience to conjecture. — nay, where, by completing the tableau 
 of his thoughts, he leaves nothing for the actor, — he will scarcely 
 succeed in dramatic writing. Mr. Mathews writes his play more 
 like a critic than a dramatist. His characters do not speak to 
 events, but to one another. They relate long stories. They 
 canvass ordinary matter of speculation. They are, in short, all 
 of them, more or less political satirists and essayists. 
 
 The next work in this collection, to which our attention is 
 drawn, is that, we suspect, upon which our author has expended 
 most time and labour. It does not follow from this, however, 
 that it is his work of grreatest excellences. This is " The Career 
 of Puffer Hopkins," — a story of satirical character. The pro- 
 duction is entirely too long, as a first objection. This defect is 
 somewhat due to the too great diffusenessof our author's writings, 
 and, perhaps, still more to the manner in which it was originally 
 printed, by piecemeal, in the pages of a periodical. " Arcturus" 
 was a New York magazine, of which our author was one of the 
 editors. It is due to this journal, to say that it deserved to have 
 been successful. We have been at some pains to procure the 
 volumes which were published, and we find them distinguished 
 by some of the very best characteristics of review or magazine. 
 The tone of it was earnest and thoughtful, — the temper was good, 
 the views indicated equal sincerity and originality, — qualities 
 
158 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 which, though of the very last importance to a whole some periodi- 
 cal literature, — particularly to its criticism, — are yet most usually 
 the very last to be found in our periodicals. It is in the pages 
 of this journal that we find the most imposing proofs of the 
 general ability of our author. Here appeared his " Wakondah" 
 — not to speak of sundry articles equally marked by good writing 
 and thinking, originality of suggestion, pith and nerve of expres- 
 sion, and not a little of the picturesque and poetic. The papers 
 on " Political Life," " Citizenship," " Every Fourth Year," " The 
 School Fund," etc., are all thoughtful and statesmanlike essays. 
 We are inclined to regard them, with the exception of one or 
 two pieces, as the very best from the author's pen. The lighter 
 and livelier articles in the same collection, are piquant and fan- 
 ciful. The views on Copyright and Literature, partake of the 
 better characteristics of the former. They denote an elevated 
 ideal in the author, which a corresponding power of reasoning 
 enables him to sustain with ease and dignity. But these have 
 already had our notice. 
 
 In the papers of the '' Motley Book," and several of those 
 which occur towards the close of the volume, there is much 
 pleasant and some judicious trifling. We might instance as a 
 clever specimen of this class, " The New Ethics of Eating," 
 which appeared in the New- York Review. The " True Aims 
 of Life," delivered before the Alumni of the New York Univer- 
 sity, is a thoughtful and sensible discourse, — not profound, but 
 healthful, — and of that clear, transparent nature, mingling the 
 practical with the elevated, by which the actual is lifted by in- 
 sensible progress to a pleasant communion with the ideal. We 
 do not incline to the sort of essay, of which " Jeduthan Hobbs," 
 and " the late Ben Smith, loafer," are sufficient samples. They 
 arc no doubt well enough in the pages of the light and flashy 
 periodicals ; but they neither represent the true endowments of 
 our author, nor do credit to his fame. As very early productions, 
 they are proofs, certainly, of considerable cleverness. There is 
 one essay, from the writings in " Arcturus," entitled the " Unrest 
 of the Age," which struck us as true in conception and senti- 
 ment, some portions of which, as giving a very fair idea of the 
 better style and manner of our author, we had marked for quota- 
 
WRITINGS OP CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 159 
 
 tion, but which our present limits warn us to exclude. We are 
 compelled to pass without notice numerous passages, among the 
 miscellanies of our autlior, distinguished by a contemplative 
 mind, a gentle tone and graceful fancy, and must hurry on to 
 larger, even if less attractive game. We frankly avow that we 
 look upon •' The Career of Puffer Hopkins," as a sad instance 
 of perverted talent. We cannot but doubt that it has done or 
 will do any thing for the reputation of the writer. That it has 
 been successful, as we learn, has been owing, we are disposed to 
 think, to the passion for whatever is outre, or ridiculous, or merely 
 extravagant, — among the unthinking classes, — people who read 
 against time and sleep, — and as if to prove, by this sort of indus- 
 try, that they are not absolutely of 
 
 " that fat weed, 
 That hugs itself at ease, by Lethe's wharf." 
 
 We are to ask not in what degree, or with whom, this book 
 finds favour, but what are its claims to be successful. Let us 
 first notice the manner in which this production has been written. 
 These weekly or monthly issues, is a mode of publication very 
 apt to lessen the excellence of a conception, and to diminish or 
 impair its proportions. There is something decidedly unfriendly 
 to art, in the present popular mode of writing for serial publica- 
 tion. The reader reads but for the momentary satisfaction, and 
 the writer contemplates nothing more than to afford this inferior 
 pleasure. The motives to composition are not sufficiently noble. 
 The impulse to art not sufficiently critical and coercive. The 
 author soon becomes indifferent to all general proportions in his 
 work, — to all symmetry of outline, — all compactness of plan and 
 execution. He uses irrelevant matter, — forgets or neglects his 
 main purpose, — yields to frequent changes of plan, — to frequent 
 w^eariness, — and, satisfied in the preparation of a few spirited 
 sketches, such as may keep attention wakeful, — becomes heartily 
 indifferent to consistency of tone, harmony of parts and colour, 
 uniformity of execution, or appropriate finish and denouement. 
 The winding up of plots, framed in this manner, is usually fee- 
 ble and defective. From this objection, the works of even the 
 most successful of the periodical tale writers are not exempt. It 
 is the fault of the whole tribe, — Dickens, Ainsworth, and the 
 
160 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 rest. We do not see that Mr. Mathews has been any more fortu- 
 nate. His story is desultory and purposeless, — much of it seem- 
 ingly without a plan, — as if, contemplating but the immediate 
 sketch or scene before him, the author had gone on writing at every 
 sitting, — satisfied with what was in progress, without regarding 
 with nmch concern its bearing upon, or general connection with, 
 the rest. Tliat there is a connection we admit ; but it is not of 
 vital threads or interests. It cannot be denied that several of 
 these scenes, considered by themselves, are decidedly happy, — 
 are conceived in the true spirit of humanity, and carried out to 
 fortunate conclusions of art. We could show some of them 
 drawn with no little tragic force, — marked by pathetic or hu- 
 morous interest, — touched with delicacy, and, whether grave or 
 gay, proving the capacity of the author to be worthy, in good 
 training, to execute many of the boldest of his conceptions. 
 We had marked some of these episodes — for they are such — 
 for extract, but we are already in a fair way to trespass too 
 greatly upon the attention of the reader. '• The vision of the 
 coffin-maker's apprentice,'' though somewhat rude, is yet a bold 
 freak of imaginative performance, — calculated to compel re- 
 flection, and to open the eyes of the moralist to all sorts of 
 anomalies in society. Of this sort are many others of the grave 
 grotesques of Mr. Mathews, — and, in such odd, but striking de- 
 lineations, he is frequently found to excel. Detached from the 
 rest of the story, such episodes speak imposingly to the thoughts. 
 We complain that they are not happily grafted on the growth 
 that bears them, — a defect which is due to that mode of break- 
 ing a consecutive narrative into periodical parts, — a practice 
 which cannot but impair the design and consistency of a work 
 of art, leaving it incongruous, halting and indefinite. 
 
 There are two radical objections to the "Career of Pufler Hop- 
 kins." The first is one already somewhat indicated in our re- 
 marks upon the comedy of " The Politicians." Puffer Hopkins 
 is, in fact, another comedy of " Politicians. '^ The material in 
 both works is, in some degree, drawn from the same sources, and 
 the characters are both on the same uniform level. They are as 
 little idealized in " Puffer Hopkins" as in " the Politicians." They 
 work very much on a common platform of unmitigated coarse- 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 161 
 
 ness. The humble in position are not pure in purpose or deli- 
 cate in sentiment, and the wealthy or imposing are neither high- 
 souled nor generous. The very names in the one work, as in the 
 other, are suggestive of the unifoi'm inferiority, if not vulgarity, 
 of the characters. Thus, the hero is " PufTer Hopkins," and the 
 chief auxiliaries are " Hobbleshanks," " Fishblatts," " Crumps," 
 " Blinkers," " Punchwinds," " Fobs," '' Smalls," " Foils," " Fin- 
 ches," " Cutbills," " Bluffs," " Gallipots," " Shirks," and '' Bloat- 
 ers." 
 
 Why such names ? Are they suggestive either of wit or of so- 
 ciety ? Are they suggestive of character ? It is the error of Mr. 
 Mathews to make them commonly so. Mr. Dickens falls into the 
 folly of employing a like nomenclature ; but he steers clear of 
 the farther error of making it significant of the morals and man- 
 nersof his dramatis personce. He is prudent enough to confound 
 the senseless exaggeration by idealizing the character that bears 
 the name. The error is due to a like exaggeration with that 
 which, in a sentimental age, provided the persons with names par- 
 ticularly rose-hued and lackadaisical. The " Nicklebys," and 
 " Rudges," and " Twists," are natural antagonists to the Lovells, 
 Savilles, and Mandevilles of a previous generation, and are just 
 as legitimate. Mr. Dickens, though he confers unusual names 
 upon his personages, does not employ such as convey absolutely 
 vulgar suggestions of the character. He makes them outre, but 
 not necessarily monstrous. We think him wrong, even as it is ; 
 for the nomenclature should represent the society in which the 
 scene is laid, and should be as little suggestive of the peculiarities 
 of the individual as names so found are possible to be. This is a 
 rule in art known to the old writers. In modern times we have 
 Walter Scott for authority, a nice tactician in such matters. He 
 goes so far as to object that the general title of a work should con- 
 vey any idea of the purpose or plot of the writer. But in this 
 suggestion he was governed by the policy of the raconteur, sim- 
 ply, who knows hov/ much of success is due to surprise, and who 
 guards in this way against the discovery of his plan until he is 
 ready with the denouement. But, so far as the naming of per- 
 sons is concerned, the rule is a reasonable one. Look at the old 
 English masters of comic fiction for something on this head. Take 
 
162 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith for authorities, as they are. 
 Tom Jones, Squire Western, Blifil, Roderick Random, Thornhill, 
 etc., are names of society, well chosen, simple, and expressive, 
 conveying no more to the mind of the reader than the simple fact 
 that he is among creatures of kith and kin. Be sure there is no 
 small value in this suggestion. A novel writer, indeed, cannot do 
 better than go to the " directory " for his dramatis personse. 
 
 Our next objection to " Puffer Hopkins " is a more serious one. 
 The work, though marked by sober and even pathetic parts, is yet, 
 in its general tone, intended as a humorous one. Now, we are 
 not prepared to regard the endowments of Mr. Mathews as par- 
 ticularly humorous. His various attempts in this way do not con- 
 vince us that he is in possession of this quality, or, at least, that 
 he holds it to any great extent. It certainly is not his forte. Com- 
 ic fiction is evidently not his vein. He does not seem the man 
 for picking up and portraying such materials as present them- 
 selves, lying confusedly upon the surface of social life. What- 
 ever be the character of the less direct, the less grave portions of 
 this story, it is assuredly not humour. It lacks ease, smoothness 
 of transition, unaffectednessjfor this. It is too stern, too sombre, 
 too stiff and stately. The dignity and directness of the author's 
 mood, seems to stand in the way of his persons. He makes them 
 speak his language, as he usually thinks, rather than such as be- 
 longs to their own thoughts and situations. He makes them speak 
 scorn and satire, when such persons are susceptible only to the 
 ridiculous. They are simply the mouthpieces of the author ; 
 and there is a constant struggle between the position of the drama- 
 tis personse and what is before them to do, and the higher and so- 
 berer thoughts which the former is compelling them to articulate. 
 We do not deny that the material furnishes excellent staple for 
 the humorous and the satiric, but it is one thing to bring it forth 
 by means of the natural agents, and another to unfold it in the at- 
 tributes of the stern censor in the chair of criticism. The ludic- 
 rousness is not allowed to show itself by means of its proper rep- 
 resentatives. It is held up by the author himself — a man of keen, 
 earnest, cynical mind — with a bitter chuckle, which is scorn rath- 
 er than humour, to the hatred rather than the laughter of the spe- 
 cies. We see the critic, but not the humorist. We see that 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 16^ 
 
 there are things and persons deserving of ridicule and laughter, 
 but we do not laugh. The author holds the offender up to severer 
 penalties. He says, " Laugh," it is true ; but he says it in such 
 a manner that we are more disposed to '' lynch " the victim than 
 to laugh at his situation. 
 
 We confess ourselves surprised that Mr. Mathews should in- 
 cline to this species of writing. We cannot well conceive of a 
 department of art, for which his peculiar endowments seem more 
 entirely unfitted, and, but for his real excellence in other per- 
 formances, such as we have already indicated, we should dismiss 
 the present work from our sight without more consideration. 
 That he is entirely ignorant of his role we hold to be beyond all 
 question ; and this, by the way, is a more important difficulty in 
 the progress of a young beginner, than often enters into the 
 imagination of the critic. To begin rightly is one of the great 
 secrets of success. To know how, and to what objects, to apply 
 one's strength, is essential to its due development. Thousands 
 of authors, highly endowed, gifted with adequate vitality, are 
 yet lost in the hurrying waters of oblivion, simply as they have 
 wasted genius and resource in fruitless struggles after objects, 
 which their peculiar talents have not fitted them to attain. They 
 follow an impulse of society — they take for themselves an exam- 
 ple from the crowd — receive a bias of will from the superior suc- 
 cesses of another, and, without asking whether they individually 
 resemble him in the qualities of temperament, taste, apprehen- 
 sion, and special impulse, they rush into the paths which he has 
 wrought out for himself, and by himself only, and are lost in the 
 vast shadow which his greatness casts behind him. That Mr. 
 Mathews, young, eager, and inexperienced, has somewhat fallen 
 into this error, seems to us very certain. Something of his mis- 
 direction may result, indeed, from the seeming necessities, and 
 the unhappy and slavish relation in which our native literature 
 stands to the foreign. Such are our critics, and such our pub- 
 lishers, and such our people, to this moment, that, to be suc- 
 cessful in the popular meaning of that word, domestic literature 
 must necessarily be a work of imitation. To be original, would 
 be to offend critic, publisher and public, who are not easily 
 persuaded of tracks yet to be hewn out by the hands of the pio- 
 
164 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 neer, in letters as in forests. The American, whatever be his 
 genius, must subdue, must hush its utterance, until, by showing 
 that he can tread the same paths, successfully with the foreigner, 
 he may venture unchallenged into some glorious outlawry of his 
 own. The example and the good fortunes of the modern En- 
 glish writers of humour, have, we suspect, done more towards 
 persuading our author into their provinces, than any natural ten- 
 dency of his own mind. We do not say this in disparagement. 
 We do not say that he is an imitatoi', — a mere follower in the 
 path of a superior. Very far from this. But for the belief that 
 Mr. Mathews is a man of really original endowment, destined 
 yet to do honour to our literature, we should not expend a word 
 upon him. But the temptation to enter fields in which success 
 has recently been found, is but natural to the young and striving 
 intellect. He may enter the same field, but may plough, and 
 plant it after a fashion of his own. This is the fact in the pre- 
 sent case. Mr. Mathews has too much real ability to be an imi- 
 tator. We see this in spite of the painful difficulties which his 
 subject seems to have imposed upon his talent. His book seems 
 to betray, in every page, the proofs of a native and audacious mind 
 struggling against self-rivetted fetters. Could he have been an imi- 
 tator, this work would have been more successful. The material 
 for a dozen volumes, like those of Dickens', is abundant in the 
 characteristics of New York life. But success, except in the mat- 
 ter of money and for the moment, would have been but an infe- 
 rior concern with an original mind. To succeed, after the fashion 
 of Mr. Dickens, or any model, would be but a small achievement, 
 the value of which may be understood by reference to the suc- 
 cesses which, by merely imitative industry, Mr. James has secured 
 in his pressing progress through the paths opened by Walter Scott. 
 We have already said that Mr. Mathews lacks one great es- 
 sential of the successful imitator — mental flexibility. His inde- 
 pendence stands in his own path. He will look aside from his 
 model to his mind. His eyes turn inwardly, not without. In- 
 stead of following, he aims perpetually to lead. His thoughts 
 and expressions come out of a mouth of their own, in spite of all 
 his efforts to force them into that of other people. Hence, indeed, 
 the phlegm and stiffness which distinguish his utterance — a 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 165 
 
 characteristic which is every where present in liis humorous at- 
 tempts, — and which we conceive to be singularly false as charac- 
 teristic of his intellect. As an imitator of Dickens, we should 
 say that he would be particularly unfortunate, and his failure 
 would be the strict result of the strong and decided independence 
 which marks his mind. This independence, would he obey it, 
 would lead him to very different fields, and probably to not dissim- 
 ilar degrees of success ; — allowing all the while for the monstrous 
 inferiority of opportunity in the cis-atlantic writer, — an inferiority 
 which, we are compelled to fear, will survive the present gene- 
 ration. He lacks sundry of the attributes which are amono- the 
 most prominent in the genius of Dickens, — that pliancy of mood 
 for example, which we call mental flexibility, and which enables 
 him to go out of himself, to forget himself, to forget his favourite 
 thoughts and fancies, and to throw all the strength of his intellect 
 into the dramatis personcB that grow under his hands. Shakspeare 
 was, of all writers that have ever lived, the most perfect master 
 of this faculty. Homer had it in large degree. Walter Scott 
 stands next to Shakspeare in its possession. Milton wanted it, — 
 so did Bvron, — so does Bulwer. We might name others were it 
 needful. The one class implicitly obey the laws inevitably ac- 
 cruing from the condition of the scheme before them, — follow out 
 that scheme, — have no prejudices, no partialities, — take no sides 
 in the controversy of which they simply report, and seem to sub- 
 due their own passions entirely, while giving breadth, strength 
 and development to those of their characters. Milton, on the 
 other hand, was a kingman, — of great executive will, — who im- 
 pressed all persons with his own nature, and made all speak after 
 the fashion of his own soul. He asked not after the fashion of 
 the world, but he made the world after his own models. This is 
 what the Germans call " one-sidedness," in opposition to " many- 
 sidedness," — a clumsy mode of expressing things which are yet 
 left without a perfect definition. Our author labours under 
 this " one-sidedness," — which renders him unfit for dramatic 
 writing. He has too much of the puritan temperament, which is 
 unimpressible, rigid and dictatorial, — and all this is totally ad- 
 verse to success in fields like those of Dickens. He lacks, also, 
 as the natural consequence of an earnest, inflexible will, the same 
 
166 VIEWS AND REVIEWS, 
 
 capacity for patient observation, — the same keen zest for the 
 queer, the quaint and the ridiculous, — which are leading traits in 
 the constitution of the English writer. A fondness for exagge- 
 ration — which is equally significant of the imaginative faculty — 
 is, as far as we are able to see, almost the only marked quality 
 which these writers partake in common ; yet, even in the devel- 
 opement of this quality, they are very unlike. Mathews is gen- 
 erally very serious and sarcastic in his exaggerations ; Dickens 
 is rather jocose and good-humoured. The one dilates in the 
 sterner portions of his story, — the other rather hurries over 
 these, and, in the sad and the pathetic, aims to be as simple and 
 natural as possible. He has the advantage, in this respect, of 
 the American, simply because of that inferior earnestness of mood, 
 which permits of a proper division of his regard among all of his 
 plans and personages. 
 
 In the intense directness of his own, Mr. Mathews is not an 
 unfit representative of the American mind, which is serious, 
 straightforward and impressive ; — not content with being sugges- 
 tive only, — never satisfied until it enforces, with sober argument 
 and solid illustration, the subject which it proposes to teaclf. 
 His tastes do not incline him, with the writer of whom we as- 
 sume his designed imitation, — to " catch the living manners as 
 they rise," — to seize and bring together, in connection and odd 
 contrast, as they severally occur, the thousand traits presented 
 by the condition of low-life and pauperism. His genius is quite 
 too despotic, for this. He is, we regret to think, from his 
 writings, too little of the democrat — socially and politically. He 
 generalizes with more ease than he details ; groups rather than 
 delineates. The nicer shades of humble character escape him, 
 — those exquisitely slight hues, and fainter lines, which denote 
 the transition from one mood or feeling to another, among a class 
 of persons, who, — except when entirely freed from the restraining 
 presence of their superiors, — speak and appear with the subdued 
 voice and countenance of men for whom there is no social law, 
 and whose social privileges are those of license rather than lib- 
 erty. It is from a singular sympathy with this ordinary and in- 
 ferior nature, that Mr. Dickens derives his material and his 
 successes. He not only sees into its external condition, — how 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 167 
 
 it is fed, clothed, and comforted, — but he strives to pry into its 
 inner world, — studiously and doubly hidden as it is, from the 
 eye of the superior, by that stubborn pride which is the chief 
 protection of the sensibilities of a denied or degraded caste. He 
 looks closely to see how it thinks — how it feels — what are its 
 hopes and fears — how it estimates the present — how it anticipates 
 the future — what are its intellectual daily gains — if any ; and 
 what are its poor, despised moral trophies, — the little, creeping, 
 insinuating aims and reachings, — the small, fond fancies, — the 
 only half-hoping, and always hidden faith, — which, with the in- 
 ferior condition, ^ somewhat tend to elevate the lowly, soothe and 
 soften the rough, and inform, though, perhaps, with only a transient 
 beauty, the coarse and unintellectual. Dickens wins his way to 
 their history through their sympathies. They unfold their con- 
 dition because he seems to seek it, nor because of his curiosity, 
 but because of a real and friendly interest in their fortunes. He 
 looks at them through their rags, and tells us of the warm heart, 
 the pure spirit, the truly loving and sympathizing and yearning 
 nature, which struggle and sigh for utterance below. Mr. 
 Mathews employs a different process. He goes among the same 
 people as a judge and critic, rather than a friend. It is not as 
 the Howard, but as the chef de police, that he takes them in 
 hand. He shows us the creature in his rags, — shows us his 
 moral hatefulness, — points to his leprous spots, — makes us un- 
 derstand how much he is criminal, and does not always remember 
 to show how much he has been suffering. Dickens, by that ob- 
 vious sympathy with his subject, which is, after all, the best 
 proof of a capacity for its treatment, lifts into our survey quali- 
 ties of worth in the object, in which we have hitherto seen only 
 qualities of crime and filth. Our human nature, under his coun- 
 sel, gradually assimilates itself to its new acquaintance, and we 
 rejoice to find that one whom we held before to be only deserving 
 of our scorn, has really some of the strongest claims, as a being 
 no less suffering than erring, upon our indulgence and affection. 
 The toil of Mr. Mathews is less catholic. His labours, in 
 " Puffer Hopkins," — winnowed to their just results, — would tend 
 to show that this was all wrong, — and that many to whom we had 
 yielded our sympathies, were in reality only deserving our 
 
1G8 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 scorn. This " one-sidedness" is noi truthful. Man is a much 
 better animal, in his worst rags, than we are inclined to think 
 him; and the success of Dickens is due, in fact, to the dramatic 
 manner in which he inculcates this truth. But this acknowl- 
 edgment is made only to the least objectionable portion of this 
 author's writings. The miserable moral and physical deformi- 
 ties which he sometimes offers us for men and women, are equally 
 false to nature and revolting to art. It is in some of these less 
 truthful compositions that Mr. Mathews makes his closest approxi- 
 mation to the foreign author. He does not seem to possess the 
 finer tact of discriminating and selecting from his materials ; nor 
 is he able — whether from youth and inexperience, or because of 
 a natural deficiency in this part of his intellectual organization, 
 — to catch those softening and redeeming traits which are found 
 in the worst of natures, — by which the roughest outlines are 
 subdued, and brought within the lively naturalness of truth. 
 The more prominent traits — the open expression — the master 
 feeling, when it can no longer be suppressed — whether of rogue 
 or ruffian — parvemc or pauper, — in his hands become prominent 
 enough. These he can manage and delineate with force and 
 spirit, — but we miss the under-strokes, — the softening shadows. 
 The lines stand out sharply and angularly upon the canvass — in 
 colours, dark, rude, wanting individuality. We see what is in- 
 tended, — we recognize certain features and a partial truth ; — 
 but it is not the whole truth, and, for the faith we put in it, might 
 as well be false. It is in drawings such as these, as in morals, — 
 the partial fact being the most disparaging form of falsehood and 
 misrepresentation. 
 
 We are told by the author, in his preface to " Puffer Hop- 
 kins," that his desire was to produce a work which should be 
 national and characteristic in its features. It is difficult to say 
 what he conceives to be national and characteristic. We really 
 regard him as less so in " PufTer Hopkins," and " The Poli- 
 ticians," than in any other of his writings. Nationality is not 
 shown in the slang words and proper names of party. The 
 American people never look less certainly national, than in the 
 times and business of an election. Undoubtedly, this is one of 
 their features. It is one of their periods of excess. The moral 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 1(59 
 
 moods of the nation distinguish it. We see in it the national 
 tendency to excess and liyperbole, — to recklessness and extrava- 
 gance, — and the brutal rages of demeanour whicli we owe to our 
 Anglo-Norman parentage. Our excitability, our eagerness, and 
 earnestness, are siiown in some of these phases, — but these give 
 us but a partial glimpse of the national licart and countenance. 
 Equally remarkable, certainly, — nay, much more remarkable, — 
 is the calm into which we subside after the contest, — the good- 
 humoured philosophy which consoles us for our defeats, and the 
 elasticity with which we rise to renew the struggle, as hopeful 
 and resolute as ever, whenever the tocsin of party sounds to the 
 field. Then, there is our freedom from vindictiveness. Never 
 was people less given to harbour malignant or unfriendly moods; 
 and we might, had we space and leisure, designate a hundred 
 characteristics which might very well be regarded, under the 
 circumstances, as peculiarly national. It is, we think, the error 
 of Mr. Mathews, to have written as one brought up in a particu- 
 lar school or party. He has imbibed the bias of a sect, — and 
 that not a successful one, — and their prejudices constitute the 
 staple *of his satire. Satire it is — not description. His materials 
 are due to partisan politics, rather than to his walks among the 
 people. We fail to perceive in them a just and adequate de- 
 velopment of the popular nature and necessities. His flings are 
 at demagogues and parvenues, — at lying patriots and selfish pre- 
 tenders — creatures of whom the number will always be great in 
 due degree with the popular character of our institutions. He 
 shows us the miserable arts, the low cunning, the wretched 
 chicanery, the equal conceit and servility, with which these rep- 
 tiles work themselves into power, — and. bating a too great and 
 frequent exaggeration in the process, he certainly succeeds in 
 giving us a striking and humiliating picture. His error some- 
 times is, — and by which the force of his satire is impaired, — in 
 making the objects of party too excessively small and ridiculous, 
 and the plans and projects too glaringly absurd, to leave success 
 within the scope of probability ; and the satire falls to the ground 
 at times from overleaping itself. There is a nice line of demar- 
 cation, difficult to define, by which we know where the artifice 
 ceases, and the absurdity begins. The ridiculous is an Al Sirat 
 
 PART II. 8 
 
1*70 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 — as narrow as that boundary which is supposed to separate the 
 genius from the madman ; and to make his way along this at- 
 tenuated passage, is at once the greatest danger and the greatest 
 triumph of the writer, whether his aim be the humorous or the 
 sublime. 
 
 Of our resources of humour as a nation, — of our popular 
 capacity for humour, — something may be said in this connec- 
 tion ; for, to be truly successful as a humorous writer, one of 
 the first pre-requisites is a close adherence to the absolute truths 
 of society. Humorous writing is one of the most delicate diffi- 
 culties of art, — requiring a keen and quick perception, a happy 
 susceptibility of mood, a nice regard to details, and a felicitous 
 distribution of light and shade, with a happy mixture of pleasing 
 but contending opposites. The English cannot be considered an 
 humorous people. They do not readily surrender themselves 
 to fun. Care is at their elbows ever — they seldom forget his pro- 
 pinquity. Their capacity for humour is doubtful, if not cer- 
 tainly inferior. They are far too earnest a people for it. Their 
 playfulness is like that of Behemoth. Their embrace leaves 
 about the ribs of the subject, very much the sort of sensation 
 which might be looked to follow that of the grisly bear of the 
 Rocky Mountains. They sport like Leviathan, and their laughter 
 — of course, we speak not of the aristocracy now — is something 
 of a yell. He "who plays at bowls'' with them, "may expect 
 rubbers." Their wit is seldom innocuous. It breaks bones. 
 They are serious in their fun, — indeed, it is sometliing serious 
 usually which makes them funny. The shov;s in which they 
 most delight are brutal and bloodthirsty. Their jokes are 
 horse-play, and of the kind called " practical." Even the hu- 
 mane Mr. Dickens derives many of his funny things from the 
 mishaps and misfortunes of his neighbours, — and the amiable Mr. 
 Pickwick is represented as supremely happy when he contributes 
 to the prostration of his companion, at the cost of a broken head, 
 in the sports of the ice-plain. We have but to study the 
 organization of the Anglo-Saxon race, to find tlie source of these 
 characteristics. The Saxon was a sullen slave — the Norman a 
 fierce and sanguinary robber. The ordinary practices, the con- 
 stant exercises, the familiar amusements of both races, were of a 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 1-^1 
 
 savage and cruel character. The penalties of crime, of what- 
 ever degree, were written in blood. The progress of Chris- 
 tianity did not materially mitigate the natural temper of the 
 people, and the introduction of the reformed religion was de- 
 cidedly unfriendly to the meliorating influences to which the 
 Roman Catholics gave countenance. Natural and becominir 
 sports were forbidden, at the peril of life and limb. Oppressive 
 restraints and barbarities controlled many of the popular prac- 
 tices, which were in themselves innocent and conducive to the 
 softening of vulgar moods. Their laws were terribly vindictive. 
 As a matter of course, their strifes were incessant with their 
 oppressors. They encouraged, by their arms, one tyrant against 
 another. A people of unbending will, the failure to escape their 
 oppressors simply increased their ferocity. They cherished the 
 hope of freedom with their hate of the despotism to which they 
 sullenly succumbed. They yielded nothing without reluctance, 
 and seized upon all possessions without scruple. Intensity, in all 
 their moods, was the natural fruit of such a history. They 
 were people of toils and trials, not of sports. Original endow- 
 ment, constant invasions, civil wars without end, and a most un- 
 happy familiarity with bloodshed, impressed the moral nature of 
 the nation with a stern, fervid impregnableness of mood, which 
 becomes conspicuous at a moment, and gives a dark and savage 
 character even to their amusements. Hence the bloody and 
 terrible character of their dramatic writings, — the awful passions 
 which they developed, — the dreadful nature of the deeds to 
 which they gave immortality. It is in their tragedy, indeed, 
 rather than their comedy, that the genius of the nation exults 
 and lives. It is to the writings of Milton and Shakspeare, 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Marlowe, rather than 
 those of Farquhar and Congreve, and Vanbrugh and Cibber, that 
 the English trace their intellectual supremacy. And the suc- 
 cessful writers and writings so preferred, are all earnest, intense, 
 and tragic in their kind. This earnestness and severity is at the 
 source of their national greatness, — of their liberties. They 
 were a people, prepared by long training for high thoughts and 
 achievements. But it cannot be denied that the effect has been 
 evil upon the morals and manners of the mere multitude, who 
 
173 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 have no means of partaking of the subduing and refining influ- 
 ences which modify these traits in the superior. The influence 
 of the drama was great, in doing for the inferior classes what 
 social advantages had done for the wealthy. But these influ- 
 ences, though softening and subduing, did not so radically affect 
 the national mind as to endow it with qualities not originally 
 possessed by the national genius. Of course, no well-balanced 
 national mind can be entirely without humour as a natural con- 
 stituent of character. 
 
 Down to the days of Cromwell, the period when America first 
 became conspicuous as inviting British colonization — and we in- 
 vite attention to this fact in the present connection — the English 
 genius never made any very remarkable exhibitions of humour, 
 at least in its prose fictions. What it has since displayed, has, 
 indeed, been of a very superior order, as the names of Swift, 
 Fielding, Smollett and Sterne, and Hogarth may be allowed to 
 show. But these names are more conspicuous from their infre- 
 quency, and these names it is worthy of remark, with those of 
 Congreve, Gibber, Farquhar, Defoe and many more, are names 
 which followed the restoration of the Stuarts and the total over- 
 throw of the Puritan influences, and we may add, with these, of 
 many of the ancient English characteristics. Charles II. born 
 in 1630, was restored in 1660. Defoe was born in 1661 ; — 
 Swift, in 1667 ; Congreve, in 1670 ; Cibber, 1671 ; Addison, 
 1672 ; Farquhar, 1678 ; Hogarth, 1698 ; Fielding, 1707 ; Sterne, 
 1713 ; Smollett, in 1721, and Goldsmith in 1731.* We have but 
 to continue the enumeration to our own day, and through various 
 other classes of writers, to note, not only the natural merging of 
 dramatic in prose fiction, but the gradual melioration of the na- 
 tional mood and temper, arising, we are permitted to assume, from 
 the influence of other nations, the French and Dutch in particu- 
 lar, upon the social organization, which naturally followed upon 
 the restoration of the Stuarts. We are also to note tliat this 
 change could not be supposed to influence the temper and char- 
 acter of that puritanism which gave way before it, and which 
 formed a large ingredient in the colonization of America. But 
 if the temporary introduction of foreign influences, gave a new 
 lone and direction to British genius, — and furnished it with a new 
 
 * See note A. p. 184. 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 173 
 
 characteristic, the traces of which still remain to our times, it 
 does not appear that any thorough or radical alteration was af- 
 fected in this respect in the national character of the people. A 
 solitary writer, here and there, starting up with an exquisite fa- 
 culty of humour, is not to be assumed as representing the tastes 
 and frivolities of the nation. For these, the greater number of 
 their writers still declare themselves in the language of serious- 
 ness and intensity. They still write better tragedy than comedy 
 — are still more susceptible of the stately and the terrible, than 
 of the merely fanciful and playful. They do not so much laugh 
 as grin. It is the grotesque and the strange that moves them, 
 rather than the humorous, and hence the extravagances and ex- 
 aggerations of Mr. Dickens, when his labour is to be fanciful and 
 funny. The English, as a people, have cheerfulness and 
 strength — a hearty, healthy nature, in which a congenial moral 
 and physique work wholesomely together, and produce a regular 
 flow of spirits, and an equable and resolute mood, which enjoys 
 the ludicrous without seeming to share in it, and can indulge in a 
 frank expression of merriment, provided it is perfectly sure of 
 those by whom it is surrounded. But we are very doubtful of its 
 decided possession of, and susceptibility to, that peculiar quality 
 of the mind, which, while it is quite too subtle for easy and satis- 
 factory definition, everybody seems to understand by the term 
 humour. Look at the generation of British poets now passing 
 or just passed — great and wondrous in their several excellencies 
 — surpassed, as a class by no preceding period — and see how 
 certainly are they all true to what has ever been the great char- 
 acteristics of the English nation — inflexibility, intensity, — the 
 stately and the passionate — the thoughtful, the contemplative and 
 spiritual. Byron and Shelley ; Coleridge and Wordsworth ; 
 Southey and Campbell. These were the masters; the high 
 priests of British literature, by which the nation swore, and not 
 a humorist among them. Moore, a wit, but not a humorist; 
 and Scott, a humorist in prose, but in his verse, true to the in- 
 tense and eager nature of a thousand generations. With this 
 single exception also, the prose fiction of the same period can 
 assert few- or no claims to the possession of the quality. With 
 Scott it was tributary to characteristics more decidedly in 
 
174 VIEWS Ai\D REVIEWS; 
 
 unison with the English temper. If he gives us Baillie Nicol 
 Jarvie, he throws the preponderating weight of his tragic force, 
 into the opposite scale in the characters of the Macgregor and 
 his AN ife, — the high-spirited almost fierce Die Vernon, the savage 
 Rashleigh, and the sentimental Francis Osbaldistone. If at one 
 moment, he permits us to laugh over the oddly matched parties, 
 when the blazing poker of the Baillie proves fatal, to the cloak 
 at least of the terrified Highlander, he is prompt in making us 
 forget the ridiculous, in the tragical execution of the ganger 
 Morris by the hands of the terrible wife of the outlaw. The 
 humour of Scott is always subservient to the tragedy — a foil 
 rather than a constituent, as it is mostly in Shakspeare, and with 
 but very few exceptions, with most of the English novelists. 
 We have already drawn attention to the fact, that most of these 
 novelists, thus distinguished, were the product of a particular era, 
 and have good reason to infer that their tendencies were in very 
 considerable degree derived from the influences of the continent. 
 Their names are really exceptions in the extended literary history 
 of the English, until we come down to our own times, when we find 
 Charles Lamb, and a few others to whom we accord a certain de- 
 gree of humour, yet whom we should scarcely presume to de- 
 scribe as humorous writers. The quaint and playful, in gentle 
 combination, affords us in Lamb, a something of the quality, 
 which a liberal definition may place within the category ; yet the 
 humorsome in him is sometimes heavily laden with the pathetic. 
 He is more apt to make you sad than merry. He tries to be plea- 
 sant for your sake, but you sigh rather than smile. The effect 
 of liis quaintnesses, dealing as he does, commonly, with touching 
 memories, regrets, isolation and sad experiences, is necessarily 
 saddening though you hear him laugh, with misgivings that you 
 hear a sob now and then rising above his chuckle. His quality 
 is a grateful one, though we must class it differently from his 
 blind admirers. His happy faculty seems to consist in softening 
 what is gloomy in itself, giving it the simpler tone of sadness, 
 and by a gush of quaint effusion, barely preventing you from 
 falling into melancholy musing. His most successful essays are 
 more pathetic than humorous. We doubt, indeed, if any body 
 rises from the perusal of this writer, and others, usually consid- 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 175 
 
 ered humorous, that might be named, without experiencing senti- 
 ments of the saddest and soberest complexion. Chaucer is ac- 
 counted a humorous writer, but his humour is a very different 
 thing from that whicii in our day receives this title. Chaucer is 
 rather a robust and healthy exponent of the English nature in its 
 least excited moments. He was a writer of society rather than 
 of passions, — and preferred taking ordinary views of society to 
 profound ones. In our day he would have written prose narra- 
 tives, like those of Mr, Dickens, with better plots, less extrava- 
 gance, and something less of the pathetic. But he would have 
 been more true, as the representative of society in general. He 
 was another of those catholic writers who would have forgotten 
 himself in his character. The humour of his day was preserved 
 to that of Smollett and Fielding, and became somewhat richer in 
 them from the grafting of foreign attributes. In them, it grew 
 naturally out of the situation, — was unstrained, — the result of 
 the regular progress of events, and not of cunning contrivances, 
 merely set in operation to provoke the cachinnation of the reader. 
 If the fun came, well and good, they set it down as it accrued to 
 them. They never called for it. It was the spontaneous effu- 
 sion of a faculty in themselves, and in the character and the 
 event upon which they were engaged, — and the action of circum- 
 stances upon character, gave form and effect to the situation. 
 Nothing was derived from mere quaintness of expression, pecu- 
 liarity of phrase, or oddly-sorted phraseology. The thing, as we 
 encounter it now-a-days, is of different fashion, and if deserving 
 of the name of humour, is certainly of a far inferior quality. 
 We are made to laugh now by what is simply queer or ridicu- 
 lous, — by the grotesque and impossible, — by a nomenclature that 
 seems to task the writer's ingenuity much more than his plot, and 
 by the worst of manners, shown up in the strangest of situations. 
 Mere fun is now the object ; yet we take it for granted that no 
 reader, perusing the great masters of the humorous, would sus- 
 pect them for a single moment of a labour at any such effect. 
 Life as it was, — a speaking, being, doing and suffering, not an 
 automaton life, — seems to have been their purpose. Now-a-days 
 your book of humour seems manufactured only for the fun, as 
 the monkey is dressed in red, with cap and cockade, and attended 
 
176 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 by kettle-drum or banjo, is set to perform at the corners of the 
 highway for the amusement of the thoughtless boy, or the incon- 
 siderate, half-starved ignorant. The purposes for which the se- 
 parate authors wrote, seem to be entirely different, and the differ- 
 ence of humour between them is quite as evident. 
 
 But to return. Sprung from the same stock, the American 
 cannot materially differ from his ancestor. He is like unto the 
 Englishman ; but it is the Englishman of the days of the Pro- 
 tectorate. He partook none of those foreign qualities which 
 came with the restoration. This exception made, and ho shares 
 in all Substantial respects, in the character of the Briton. He has 
 his inflexibility of purpose, his jealousy of others, his keen, sus- 
 picious sense of liberty, his earnestness, and his profound faith in 
 himself. He has tlie same warm and violent passions, — the same 
 intensity of mood, — the same tendency to the sanguinary and the 
 violent. The events which have modified the Entrlish character 
 in America, have not always tended to its improvement — have 
 not, certainly, rendered it more susceptible to the influences of 
 humour. In the colder clime of New-England, labouring under 
 the adverse influences of inclement skies, and sterile soil, the in- 
 tensity of the Puritan nature became rather increased than 
 diminished, even while seeming, for a season at least, more hum- 
 ble and subdued. Prjsperity has not. to this day, subdued the 
 earnest and irascible in its character. Subjected to novel neces- 
 sities, severe trials and conflicts, and strange encounters in the 
 new world, English character was somewhat drawn out, and be- 
 came more flexible, more susceptible of adaptation to various 
 uses, than in Europe. With more levity than his ancestor, the 
 American has really no more humour. Our vanity produces 
 more flippancy, — we talk with more freedom, and attempt all 
 sorts of smart things in v»^hat we say ; but our attempts at the 
 humorous are usually wretched enough. We are scarcely 
 sensible to the humorous. Broad farce and lamentable carica- 
 ture suffice us. Look at our newspapers for example — filled as 
 they are with a mtlange, over which tlie presiding spirit shows 
 itself as reckless ordinarily of decency as it is of taste, — and 
 what is the sort of humour which is there offered us ? What is 
 it but dashing effrontery, insolent blackguardism, bold imperti- 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 177 
 
 nence, or a fun that is equally silly and deplorable ? Our wit 
 consists in odd analogies, strained metaphors, hyperbole beyond 
 grasp, and absurdities that seem to delight, on the part of their 
 makers, like Mawworm in the play, in being utterly contempti- 
 ble. Sift it, sort it, compare it, — and to this one measure it will 
 come at last. 'Die wretched workmen who engage in these day 
 labours, draw their waters in a sieve. All is stale, flat, and un- 
 profitable. And, for the elaborate efforts at humour in our prose 
 fiction ; — here, for example, is the work now under our hands. It 
 is advertised as a humorous production ; and so described by 
 half the newspaper critics in the country. A more lamentable 
 mistake on the part of author and critic was never made — a mis- 
 take more decidedly injurious to the author than to any other 
 person. But, we are told of Paulding and Irving, of Sands and 
 Kennedy ; but these are writers of pleasantry, rather than hu- 
 mour. Sands was something of a droll, quizzically inclined, 
 with a spice of satire in his composition, but nothing farther. 
 Paulding's humour, when he makes a very serious effort, compels 
 no man's merriment. He is more successful in his least ambi- 
 tious efforts, and, with Irving, may be placed in the same list with 
 Addison — who was a writer of gentlemanly pleasantries — who 
 told his story, a graceful, pleasant narrative, with the air of a 
 gentleman presiding at the dinner table, solicitous while doing 
 the honours and making every thing agreeable, not to suffer him- 
 self to fall into any merriment which could derange the quiet 
 order of his company. We are not familiar with the writings 
 of Mr. Neal, of Philadelphia, who is spoken of as a fellow of 
 infinite jest, and there are other writers of professed and pub- 
 lished humour among us of wliom we regret while hearing much 
 to know so little. The fault is not theirs, and tlie misfortune ours. 
 Decidedly, the best specimens of American humour which are 
 known to us, are contained in the Georgia Scenes of Judge 
 Longstreet — specimens, we make bold to say, quite equal, of 
 their kind, to any thing from the hands of the modern English. 
 You hear much said of Jack Downing, and even the British press 
 found something to please them in this c\e\eT jeu d^ esprit. But 
 Jack Downing was satirical rather than humorous. His carica- 
 tures, except at a time of intense political excitement, would 
 
178 VIEWS A.ND REVIEWS. 
 
 y 
 
 scarcely have provoked a smile ; and now that the struggle 
 which provoked it is at rest, the letters of Jack Downing are as 
 effectually buried from sight as if they were sealed up in the 
 catacombs of Egypt. Their success — aside from the demands 
 of party — lay in their excessive grotesques, and the brunt of 
 face with which the writer could insist upon the impossible. 
 
 In humorous poetry, we have nothing better than Halleck's 
 " Fanny," — which is merely a lively local picture, the humour 
 of which is exceeding faint and characterless. It has never 
 found much favour out of the corporate limits of New- York. 
 As for our taste and skill in caricature, it is scarcely possible to 
 imagine any thing more uniformly and thoroughly wretched and 
 ridiculous, — more stupid, less expressive, and less likely to arouse 
 the cachinnator}' muscles of any, even among the most blank- 
 witted and thick-headed of the vulgar, — than the draughts of 
 political allegory, which exult in lithographic costume, at the 
 corners of the highway, just on the eve of each popular election. 
 Even that insect tribe, which rejoices in the euphonious names 
 of " Phiz" and " Biz" and " Quiz" — and with the feeble ex- 
 travagances of which, our brother Bull seems so perfectly satis- 
 fied — have as yet failed to find any worthy successors among us. 
 We cannot call to mind a single painter, who has yet, in our 
 country, addressed his attention to subjects at all humorous. 
 Our Hogarths have yet made no sign. And thus stands the case 
 in all departments. Our published humour is a blank. Yet 
 there is humour in the country — rare, racy, articulate, native 
 humour. We have spoken of the Georgia Scenes of Judge 
 Longstreet. Unquestionably, far beyond any comparison, they 
 are the best specimens in this field that the American genius has 
 produced ; and that they spring from this region — a region 
 which, as yet, has put in no claim to the regards of the nation, 
 in a literary point of view, leads to reflections of some signifi- 
 cance. Our publishing press is established in places having 
 intimate intercourse with Europe. New-York, Boston, and 
 Philadelphia, from which cities all our literature emanates, are 
 more or less under the immediate control and direction of Eu- 
 ropean mind. In the same degree are they denuded of origi- 
 nality ; and we must look elsewhere, to regions free, if possible, 
 
WRITINGS OF CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 179 
 
 from this paralyzing influence, for whatever nationality our 
 literature is destined to possess. If we look in the right direc- 
 tion, we shall not always look in vain : and, as perfect originality 
 is, by reason of the very nature of humour, one of its most ab- 
 solutely necessary constituents, our eyes must necessarily turn 
 in that quarter in which the latter property is already most con- 
 spicuous. It is not now found in those regions, where every fa- 
 cility is already afforded for its utterance, if it there existed. 
 You will find it stretching downwards, however, from the great 
 back-bone, the central ridge of the country, following the course 
 of its waters along the slopes of the western and south-western 
 valleys. There grows a hardy and a generous nature, untaught, 
 unsophisticated, warm, ardent, and impetuous, which is yet des- 
 tined to unfold great histories in art and literature for the country 
 which it endows. It is an original and vigorous nature, rough 
 but rich, illiterate but fresh, — full of virgin glow and enthusi- 
 asm, — yearning after great things, and impetuous in their attain- 
 ment. As yet it does not conceive its own endowments. Busy 
 in the most laborious toils, striving against merely physical ne- 
 cessities, — it has yet an infinite deal to learn and to overcome, 
 before it can possibly enter upon the nobler work of creating and 
 refining in the empire of art. But it betrays signs of intellec- 
 tual prowess in numerous departments, which the prescient phi- 
 losopher cannot easily mistake. Eloquence born of noble and 
 daring impulses, — enthusiasm which already declares a proud 
 faith in its own destiny, — and thought and speculation which 
 do not shrink from any difficulties, already speak for its pos- 
 sessions, and are so many shows of the power still in reserve. 
 And in the buoyant life and animation of its speech, — in its 
 copious fund of expression, — in the audacity of its illustration, — 
 its very hyperbole, — the singular force of its analogies, — the 
 pregnant, though ludicrous vitality of its pictures, — its queer 
 allusions, sudden repartee, and lively adaptation of the foreign 
 and unexpected to the familiar, — we recognise the presence of a 
 genius as likely to embody the humorous as the eloquent, — the 
 mirthful and the picturesque, as the sublime and the imposing. 
 The nature of the people of this region lacks the rigidity, the 
 solemnity, the staid forms and exactions of the people on the slopes 
 
180 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 of the Atlantic. Their destiny has been more fertile, more fruit- 
 ful, cast in more pleasant times, less influenced by English char- 
 acteristics, and the gloomy dispensations of colonial necessity. 
 They are, in truth, a native people, children of the soil and sun, 
 — marked by their common characteristics : great vivacity, a 
 clear spirit, a quick, impulsive temperament, — capricious, it may 
 be, but oh ! how buoyant, — how elastic, — how free from those 
 morbid depressions which, for so many seasons of the day and 
 year, impair the energies of the Englishman, and fetter his best 
 faculties. It is needless to add, that, though our expectations of 
 this sort are not large, we do not despair of seeing American 
 writers of humour worthy to take rank with tlie European. 
 All that we shall say just now is, that we have not found 
 them yet. 
 
 But humour is not necessarily the constituent of a national 
 performance. No ! — by no means. It is a very good element 
 to give relief to the mass, but may. in certain classes of writings, 
 be dispensed with. We may not say what should constitute a 
 national writer, but this we do say, that he who shall succeed in 
 illustrating the nation, must make his leading idea a full acknow- 
 ledgment of the impetuous and intense earnestness of the people, 
 — an intenseness that seems to madden upon each successive 
 topic, and runs headlong in the prosecution of every novel pur- 
 pose. With this idea in mind, — the condition of the country, — 
 the employments of the people, — their expectations and denials, 
 — the events in their history, — all furnish abundant materials for 
 illustration. But the fiction must partake of all the usual ele- 
 ments of fiction ; must delineate society at large, — take in all its 
 aspects, — not suffering any but that one to preponderate which 
 gives tone and colour to the whole, — in which the whole people 
 share alike, and in which they must all sympathize, — the eager, 
 earnest, excitable nature, all impulse and enthusiasm, which de- 
 clares itself in every movement of the national will and intellect. 
 Such a people has little humour. They are too serious for it. 
 They have no time for it. They are in action — neither given to 
 dallying or trifling with the subject, — never loitering, never play- 
 ing by the way. The goal is ever before their eyes, and their 
 march is ever onward. Forming their ideas from our literature 
 
WRITINGS OP CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 181 
 
 rather than our progress, European writers speak lightly of our 
 imagination. Our imaginaiion is perhaps one of the most mar- 
 vellous of our national developments, but it displays itself in ac- 
 tion rather than in contemplation. The necessities of the nation 
 impel it in a direction remote from literature. It is exhausted 
 in physical and mechanical discoveries, — in a constant conflict 
 with external nature, — in the fierce struggles of the politician, — 
 in extravagant metaphor, and still more extravagant conception. 
 How daring are all our schemes of wealth, conquest, aggrandize- 
 ment. How remarkable our discoveries in science. How im- 
 petuous are we in the prosecution of them — how impatient of de- 
 lay — how little desponding — how little given to hesitancy and 
 doubt. But for the v.ondrous resources of imagination which we 
 possess, we had been nothing. A plodding, dull and cautious 
 race, without great hope and audacity, would have never traver- 
 sed our forests with steam, and ascended with fire-driven barges 
 the rapids of our mighty rivers. We may not have written a 
 great poem, but our history itself is one of the most magnificent 
 of epics ; and our progress to independence and strength, a 
 mighty marvel, worthy to be chronicled in the same page which 
 records the glorious conception of Christopher Columbus. 
 
 Of such a people you may make a thousand stories, but you 
 cannot make them ridiculous. Undoubtedly, the American 
 mind, forever strained and forever straining at conquest or effect, 
 hangs ever on the verge equally of the absurd and the sublime. 
 Our vanity, which hurries us onward to frequent impropriety, is 
 the natural foible of every young and ambitious people. It is 
 the modification, which necessity and our own colonial condition 
 effected in that character, which, in the Englishman, receives 
 and deserves the name of arrogance. This quality in the Amer- 
 ican, which is so annoying to the amour propre of John Ox, is at 
 the bottom of all those practices which are really ridiculous in 
 our national deportment, — which prompts us to shows beyond 
 our resources, and a pretension which, in truth, mocks our actual 
 condition. It is the natural impulse of a people setting up for 
 themselves, and now rising for the first time into the higher forms 
 of social organization. This "high life below stairs," is un- 
 doubtedly good matter for farce and satire wherever it occurs, 
 
182 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 — but it is also no less a proof that civilization is making advan- 
 ces. However ludicrous in its simple aspect, it is yet a sign of 
 social progress, — not to be disregarded or held in contempt, — 
 though properly deserving of rebuke, — by those who see in it the 
 manifestations of a love of approbation, — the secret (par paren- 
 thesc) of all our amiability, — a desire for improvement and for fame, 
 which, working together, will be always likely to realize their 
 object. The topics of scornful satire which our daily progress 
 suggests to the spectator, are numerous enough. There are vices 
 to be scourged, — we have made fearful progress in the last ten 
 years ; — follies to be censured, — phrenzies to be chastened and 
 prevented; — but really, after all, there is little material for the 
 humorist. The American people, vain and seeking praise, are 
 particularly sensitive to ridicule, — constantly on the watch to 
 escape it, and, however rash in politics or in enterprise, singu- 
 larly cautious of their bearing in all that concerns society. 
 Where they err in this respect, they do so from ignorance. But 
 they soon learn ; and one solecism in good manners, of which 
 they are almost as soon conscious as their neiglibours, saves them 
 from a second. If their absurdities be in politics, it is still not 
 so easy to laugh at those who rule successfully even while they 
 blunder. The very idea of a whole nation mingling with the 
 subject matter, however ridiculous, seems to invest it with a sort 
 of dignity, which is apt to blunt the severities of satire, and to 
 disarm wit and humour of half their powers. The very vanity of 
 the nation, which, with all your power, you have utterly failed 
 to subdue, and in which your unconcealed fears acknowledge the 
 rival and competitor, has in it something which is wondrously 
 inposing. With all blunders, and follies, and extravagances, 
 you must respect that genius which baffles your own. You may 
 hate and mock, as the English did, when the sans culottes of 
 France, in the first desperate ebullition of their liberties, threw 
 down the gauntlet to the whole world of European despotism ; 
 but whether you would or no, you must still respect and fear. 
 From its masses, so circumstanced in power, so striving, with 
 such rare energy, and struggling with success against such rare 
 difficulties, you may more easily gather stuff for the tragic than 
 the comic, as Dickens found in his cruise among us for materials. 
 
WRITINGS OP CORNELIUS MATHEWS. 183 
 
 Never did poor author strive harder, and with so little profit, to 
 make a humorous volume from his slender stock. You may 
 show such a people up to detestation, but not to ridicule ; it is 
 easier to misunderstand than to portray them. Even the ex- 
 cesses and the extravagances of party, afibrd little for the iiu- 
 morous. Cutting sarcasm may confound the demagogue, but 
 you cannot with propriety laugh at him or his victims. The 
 picture, best or worst, in all its phases, is too serious, if not too 
 terrible, for laughter. A great, blinded, struggling people, seeking 
 the right, — toiling day and night in its attainment, and misled by 
 those in whom they confide, — is a picture to wound, to awe, to 
 confound, — to make one sad, to make one weep, but hardly, with 
 any propriety, to make one laugh. And, whatever there is of the 
 ludicrous in the picture of a simple, ignorant man, in his cellar, 
 striving to be a politician after the fashion of his ward, — cobbling 
 shoes and discussing principles together, — still, the craving of 
 his soul commands such respect, that the thoughtful mind must 
 needs humour his appetite. Besides, there is truth in the philo- 
 sophy which teaches, that where the soul of man honestly seeks 
 the truth, — the truth, such as will suit his condition and endow- 
 ment, must infallibly come to compensate his searcii. 
 
 Let us not be misunderstood. Though we protest against that 
 artist who proposes a national picture out of wliat is simply ridic- 
 ulous or loathsome in our society, we are ye't fully of the opinion 
 that rare works may be fashioned out of our domestic materials 
 — the even current of every-day life — its small hopes, its petty 
 distresses, its low wants, its humiliating denials. The skilful 
 genius, who shall be patient enough in the search, will be at no 
 loss for such materials, particularly in a city of such resources 
 and such necessities as New York. Nor need the inquiry be 
 one of much difficulty or delay. We regard the American peo- 
 ple as being more easily delineated by the moral artist, than any 
 of the European nations. They have fewer reserves. Their 
 characteristics lie more upon the surface. They think aloud. 
 They act in communities, and their usual recklessness of impulse 
 as effectually betrays the inner nature, as frequent potations of 
 new wine might do. In this particular, they are as prompt and 
 impetuous as the Irishman ; and the circumstances of their condi- 
 
184 VIEWS AND REVIEWS. 
 
 tion being one of singular progress and prosperity, render them — 
 in spite of their English origin — as little heedful of the future and 
 of consequences, as ever was any, the wrctchedest sans-potato 
 in green Erin. Vain, audacious, good-natured, bold, — not so 
 frank as forward, — not so wise as ready, — the American is a com- 
 pound of qualities easy to be traced to their sources, easy to be 
 analyzed in their properties, and of a quality and strength amply 
 to reward the ingenuity which would enter upon the honest deli- 
 neation of his moral nature. But, hopefully to undertake such a 
 task, the analyst must overlook the narrow prejudices and small 
 barriers opposed by his own local connection with castes and 
 parties. He must not suffer his personal moods to interfere with 
 those which belong to him as an artist. The satirist may scourge 
 a popular vice, but he is never the person to draw a national pic- 
 ture ; and the author who shall ask who is whig and who demo- 
 crat, among the persons who sit to him for portraits, will most 
 probably place a deformity upon his canvass, which truth, nature, 
 and all parties, must equally repudiate. 
 
 Note A. — The very enumeration of the names of BTitish writers of humour, 
 is conclusive as to English deficiencies. Swift, Smollett, Scott, Fiekling, 
 Sterne, Goldsmith, Farquhar, Congreve, &c., — all cither Irish or Scotch, sug- 
 gests other considerations by which the leading views of this paper are sus- 
 tainable. We leave the reader to pursue the inquiry at his leisure. 
 
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