20. Homer Lampson Dr. to a Det against Enos Mix.'

Not very explicable that; unless we conclude that Mr. S., like the steward in the parable, making to himself a friend of the mammon of unrighteousness, and distrusting Mr. Mix's solvency, resolved to charge his (Mix's) liability over to Lampson, in case Mix should fail to meet his engagements.

Having thus set forth (in a similitude) lobster, oil, vinegar, mustard-in short, all the ingrediences'-I will end by saying, that I have not written except for those who can from those materials concoct for themselves a lordly dish. Let each such fall to. He will find, who knows how to seek.

H. F.

THE INDIAN MAID.

BY E PLURIBUS UNUM, ESQ.

BENEATH the green boughs, in the wide-spreading shade
Of the tall forest trees, stood the Indian maid:
Oh! dark was her hair as the night-raven's wing,
And her eye like the depths of some clear forest spring.

Unlike our pale maidens, so wan and so weak,
The roses of health bloomed on her round cheek;
Or at least would have done so, beyond any doubt,
Had it not been so dirty they could n't blow out.

A sun-beam down through the thick foliage strayed;
On her breast and the bronze of her fe tures it played,
And her crescents and full moons of silver* therein
Flashed brightly as newly-scoured milk-pans of tin.

Her pack lay beside her, all rigged for 'a start,'

But some deep-seated grief seemed to prey on her heart;
And her dark musing eye sadly gazed on the ground,
As if she were wrapped in some reverie profound.

Perchance she was thinking of leaving the land

Where her forefathers brave fought with bow and with brand;

Or of some young brave on the enemy's track,

Or what deuced hard work 't was to carry her pack.

But what was her grief, or the cause of her woe,

Is something I probably never shall know;

For as I stood gazing, she turned her about,

And shouldered her pack, gave a sigh, and put out.'

Koppecon, August, 1851.

SQUAWS frequently wear a number of large silver ornaments cut in the shape of moons and crescents on the breast and hanging in the ears. It is supposed that the round tires, like the moon,' mentioned by ISAIAH as worn by the daughters of Zion, were of a similar description. 29

VOL. XXXVIII.

LITERARY NOTICES.

PROSE WRITINGS OF RICHARD HENRY DANA. 'Old Times: The Past and Present:' Law Suited to Man.' Boston: TICKNOR, REED AND FIELDS.

WE propose commenting upon the essays of RICHARD HENRY DANA, printed in the second volume of his Poems and Prose Writings,' and entitled 'Old Times,' "The Past and Present,' and 'Law Suited to Man.' These comments will be confined to some of the views and positions advanced and maintained, and not extend to the mode and style of stating them. For, as a writer, Mr. DANA is beyond our praise, and above our criticism. In style, he is in prose what WORDSWORTH is in verse, and in verse what MACAULAY is in prose; to this extent: that his prose is marked by the careful finish, the studied elegance, the purity of tone, and the harmonious flow, of the poetry of the one; and his verse is characterized by the energy and strength, though not with the realizing life and the scenic art, of the prose of the other. As a thinker, however, so far as he is developed in these essays, he does not, in our judgment, occupy a correspondingly high position. His mind is too thoroughly metaphysical to be eminently practical. He must possess a genial heart, though, for he absolutely revels among beautiful objects; and dwells too fondly and lovingly upon the attractive features of his subject, to always discover and avow the truths embodied in it, and connected with it. He seems content with gazing at the superfices of things; and though, artist-like, he pictures a stately and beautiful edifice, of Gothic massiveness or Corinthian grace, he does not lead you within its outer door, to see what winding passages, what gloomy apartments, what dungeon vaults, dark and noxious, may lie concealed within its sculptured walls.

And indeed, if it were excusable that any subject should woo the grateful, reverential spirit to a concealment of its faults, and an exaggeration of its virtnes, it is the Past-the Old Times-resting amid a boundless forest of venerable oaks, mossgrown and ivy-twined, whose roots stretch far out into the soil of our Present, and under whose myriad spreading branches we of this day are often fain to seek repose and shelter. To our author, this Past is a sacred and a holy theme. He bends lowly before it, in reverent regard, as he would in the presence of an aged parent. I treads lightly its noiseless balls, its silent galleries, and pauses in humble adoration before each sarcophagus, enshrining the ancient orders, the hoary customs, the antique religions, which there lie buried in eternal sleep. And, as a generous friend would have his memory revert and dwell only among the graces of a loved, departed one, and fondly believe even his faults to be of virtue born: so he, to whom the Past is more than friend, spreads over its errors the mantle of forgetfulness, or surveys them with a benignant charity. Its virtues rise before him tinged with the golden sun

light of an enthusiastic love. This is, perhaps, but natural. It forms the burden of every desire we feel, and prayer we utter, over the grave of an erring one, that the evil there was in him may lie entombed with his bones;' that the good only may live after him. And the aspiration which we breathe over the clay of one departed, may it not also be said over the commingled dust of the innumerable throng who have composed the living generations of the ages gone?

But, while there are memories which are generous merely, there are other memories which are just. A just memory is that which remains after the judgment has calmly and carefully analyzed its object; separated the dross from the gold; and affixed to the one its worthlessness and to the other its value. It does not betoken a less degree of sensibility because it is devoid of uniform praise; nor is it wedded to ingratitude or uncharitableness. It is the process of a true, clear-judging reason; unbiased by sentimentality on the one hand, and uninfluenced by heartlessness on the other. The generous memory, though it may seem more genial to the conceit of a romantic mind, is in fact far less complimentary to the object it enshrines. Glossing over the errors which clearly stamp it in the eye of reason, it lingers weakly, though lovingly, amid the graces which adorn it; and not unfrequently transmutes the one into the other, that the whole may appear more symmetrical to the sight. Its praise, by this means, degenerates into fulsomeness; so that, instead of being a process of the judgment, it becomes a child of adulation. It is liable also to the additional and more grievous error of lavishing its encomiums at the expense of other and meritorious objects. Based upon grounds at least in part factitious, and satisfied only with the bestowal of unmeasured praise, it sometimes falls into the dishonesty of detraction, and seeks to advantage its own by unfairly contrasting it with the shorn and mangled proportions of another.

It is in the light proceeding from this generous memory, that our author surveys the landscape of the Past; and he has fallen into all the errors incident thereto. He gazes with a reverent delight upon the titled and privileged orders that rise in marked and regular gradation, from the enslaved peasant to the enthroned king. Each degree bears upon it, in his eye, the seal of a heavenly ordination. Nobility of rank is but a synonyme for nobility of worth; the crown that rests upon the kingly brow, shelters also an embodiment of the highest human virtue. The star that glitters upon the noble's breast-it waxes pale before the intenser light that radiates from the noble's heart. Rank is adorned with learning, with generosity, with charity. Inborn and acknowledged, its possessor can afford to be dutiful to his superiors, chivalrous with his equals, and condescending to his inferiors. The peasant, born to his humble state, and educated thereto, or rather, educated not at all, finds the pomp and circumstance of rank and power hedging him round with impassable barriers, beyond which his longings do not traverse, and above which his aspirations do not soar. The accident of birth forbidding all hope of change, the lowly soul learns contentment with his lot. The social state being thus distinctively marked, oppressions on the one hand and assumptions on the other are both done away. Rank is honored with reverence; power begets humility; condescension is repaid with fidelity. The dignities of government being inherited, or conferred upon nobility, the laws are, of consequence, justly and impartially administered. The sovereign is made not the one only just man; but the maxim, 'The king can do no wrong,' is amplified to include all who wear the insignia of rank and power. To the justice of the law, and the terrors of its threatenings, is added the farther incentive to obedience in the mystical majesty of those who administer it. The personal dignity of the lawmakers and law-officers is, in the mind of the humble and unlearned, transfused into

the law itself; and by this cumulative process is generated a mysterious awe, a sacred reverence, throughout the subject masses, and therewith insured a ready submission. Religion, as well as law, is invested with a secret, invisible power. Its teachings are conveyed through the medium of mystic rites, and deep-meaning symbols, which gather an irrepressible force from their very incomprehensibility. The pageantries of its stately ceremonials awe even the haughty soul into a compliance with its requirements, in cases where the simple utterance of its truths would be impressiveless and vain. And so, all are brought under its holy influences.

'Verily, this is Utopia!' is gleefully shouted from the joyous hearts of all hopeful, unthinking humanity. What need had our Lord Chancellor MORE to voyage us to an imaginary island in the midst of the shoreless sea, to people it with impersonations of good, and to frame for it his pure code of morals and of laws, that the world might feed upon the fruitage of a perfect state? What need, when around him, and behind him in the favored past, lay this paradise of social life, of civil order, and of religious purity?

'Alas!' replies the discerning, but not less generous soul, Alas! indeed, that it is only Utopia! and alas! too, that all Utopia is but unreality!'

The most superficial historian cannot but have anticipated us in the judgment, that Mr. DANA's picture of the Past is glaringly exaggerated. It presents to view He seated himself in the the romance, and not the reality, of the antique eras.

centre of an oasis, and suffered his eye to regale his sense of beauty from the flowery meads, watered by bubbling fountains, and the umbrageous woods, tempting with delicious fruits, and vestured with luxuriant foliage. He saw not around him the parched and sandy desert, limitless as the boundless ocean, over which the simoom of war, revenge and hate, cruelty, bigotry and superstition, had blown its blasts of ruin and of death!

The limits of this review will not permit us to give even an epitome of the social, religious and political condition of the Past. Suffice it, that the most charitable survey over its decades of centuries, as a whole, will reveal comparatively little to gladden the heart of the statesman, the moralist, and the philanthropist. At no time has its social state been free from the mark of oppression on the part of superiors, and of servility on the part of inferiors. At no period has its religion been free from the taint of bigotry on the part of its teachers, and of superstition on the part of its followers. At no age has justice been the rule of the governor, and liberty the boon of the governed. Its religions have too often sanctified all the passions which morality rebukes. Under its garb, war, lust, avarice, cruelty, murder, not unfrequently raged in all the fury of their licentiousness. The heretic and the infidel were the chosen and permitted victims, upon whom the faithful might sate their devilish passions in the practice of any enormity. Liberty is no where named in its historic annals; or only so in connection with oppressions which fix upon the pretence of its existence the stamp of hypocrisy. It is uttered in earnestness of heart only by an occasional sorrowing spirit, who, from the very temple of tyranny, bewails the wrongs and the crimes of the Jerusalem around, wallowing in the splendors and luxuries of its sins; or by some other heroic soul, who had strength enough to break the bonds of oppression, and daring enough to cheer the despondent hearts of the enslaved with songs of this birth-right, given them of GOD, and despoiled by man.

The Past, so characterized by wrongs in its social, religious and political organizations, could not have furnished, as our author claims for it, a soil for the genial growth and highest development of the virtues of reverence and humility. On the

other hand, it were impossible that there should be any healthy, stately growth of either. There could be no reverence, for ignorance was as pervading as the air; and knowledge is the very life of reverence. It is impossible to entertain reverence for the incomprehensible; but quite possible to harbor fear, and to cherish awe. The hidden power, the terrible majesty, the innate virtue of beings differing from them only in the blazonry of the jewels that glared their sight to blindness; the mysterious symbols and the imposing ceremonials that accompanied the teachings of religion and the administration of law; these might engender a craven fear, or an impalpable awe; but they could never, from the ignorant mind, call forth a true and heart-felt reverence. There could be no humility; for gratitude is its essence. Humility could not find genial growth among the lower orders, for gratitude cannot exist in the hearts of the multitude enslaved. Gratitude could not go out from the higher orders, either to God above, or to the herd beneath; for they held their very place and station by grossest wrongs to both. Humility could not flourish on such desert soil.

This picture of our author, then, as we have before remarked, presents to view not the reality but the romance of the Past. In looking upon it, we cannot forbear an acknowledgment of the artistic grace displayed in its rich and gorgeous coloring, and in its representations, so glowing, and instinct with life. Nor can we help regretting that he did not place upon his canvas a sketch of the days of chivalry; that era revealing the romance and poetry of the Heroic Past, and upon which his mind evidently dwelt while embodying some of his most delightful fancies. At the touch of his graphic pencil, with what distinctness would we see the army of knights and retainers of a half-dozen centuries gone, wending their toilsome way toward the holy city, to wrest from the galling clutch of the infidel the sacred shrine of their immaculate Head, who, living, was the embodiment of the exalted virtues of the Christian faith. Seen with his poetic vision, how would their revengeful hate heighten into an heroic chivalry; their coarse and grating songs rise into a high-sounding melody; their worn and soiled suits of mail become burnished, and gleam through the lengthened vista; each warrior, 'clad in complete steel,' become vestured in true nobility; and the clanging of his armor grow musical in the mellowing distance, as it floats down through the centuries between!

The Past is gone, with its institutions and its usages; and with it has died, in the mind of our author, all faith in the permanent existence of the highest requisites for good government and social happiness. Monarchy has given place to republicanism, and the change is linked with destruction. The virtues of reverence and humility, on which he doats so earnestly and fondly, lie buried in the grave. Like the crustacea, the movement of his mind and affections is backward, ever backward; never onward and upward, with a living faith in the promises of GoD and the virtues of humanity.

It cannot be necessary for us to enter into any vindication of the Present. It is here, before us all. Here, with its enterprises of good, and its enterprises of evil. Here, with its tireless energies, whitening the sea and covering the land. Here, with its inventive power, compelling alike the emblem of wrath and the emblem of innocence-the lightning and the dove-to do the same bidding at its will. It is here, with its conquests of war and its conquests of peace; with its institutions of learning and its institutions of crime; with its temples erected for the worship of God, and its penitentiaries raised for the glory of the devil. But we cannot pass the occasion, without noticing the imputation that the Present is devoid of a reverential spirit. We hold that reverence does exist among us, freely and naturally. It does not manifest itself, as did the fear and awe of the ancients, in rendering homage to the