games to which the Iroquois, like the red race at large, were extravagantly addicted. At twilight they partook of a repast in common, as was the custom at all councils. Over this evening banquet they never omitted to say grace, which, in their manner, was a prolonged exclamation on a high key, by a solitary voice, followed instantly by a swelling chorus from the multitude, upon a lower note; a deep-toned, and not unmusical, anthem of praise to Hawennéeyu, for his continued beneficence. After the people had allayed their appetites, preparations were immediately made for the dance, the universal evening amusement of the Iroquois, in the season of councils. The passion for this recreation was universal, and unbounded by sex or age; and here was gratified by a full indulgence. On such occasions, the hours of the night passed by unheeded; for with the Iroquois in their festivities, as with more polished society, although

Yet neither the admonition of the "setting stars," nor of the fallen dew, were there in the least regarded. Not, perhaps, until the faint light of approaching day illumined the east, did the spirit of enjoyment decline, and the last murmur of the dispersing council finally subside. This circle of employments and of pleasures was continued from day to day until several nations had given full indulgence to their social and convivial feelings, and also had rendered thanks and homage to the Great Spirit, for the blessings which He had bestowed, and for the acknowledgment of which they had assembled. The council-fire, therefore, was once more covered over by the sachems of the Hodénosaunee, and the Mohawk, and the Oneida, the Seneca and the Cayuga, separated at once upon different trails. In a few days, the multitude were again dispersed in hunting parties, far and wide, between the Hudson and the Genesee, the Mohawk and the Susquehannah.

The influence of the civil, mourning, and religious councils, upon the people, would of itself furnish an extensive subject of inquiry. These councils changed but little from age to age, like the pursuits of Indian life; and were alike in

their essential characteristics, in their mode of transacting business, in their festivities, and in the spirit by which they were animated. From the frequency of their occurrence, and the deep interest with which they were regarded, it is evident that they exercised a vast influence upon the race. The intercourse and society which they afforded, were well calculated to humanize, and soften down the asperities of character, which their isolated mode of life was designed to produce.

Old

If

There was however, a fatal deficiency in Indian Society, in the non-existence of a progressive spirit. The same rounds of amusement, of business, of warfare, of the chase, and of domestic intercourse, continued from generation to generation; there was neither progress nor invention, nor increase of political wisdom. forms were preserved, old customs adhered to. Whatever they gained upon one point, they lost upon another, leaving the second generation but little wiser than the first. The Iroquois, in some respects, were in advance, of their red neighbors. They had attempted the establishment of their institutions upon a broader basis, and already men of high capacity had sprung up among them, as their political system unfolded. their Indian empire had been suffered to work out its own results, it is still problematical whether the vast power they would have accumulated, and the intellect which would have been developed by their diversified aflairs, would, together, have been sufficiently potent to draw the people from the Hunter, into the Agricultural State. The Hunter State is the zero of human society, and while the red-man was bound by its spell, there was no hope of its elevation. In a speculative point of view, the institutions of the Iroquois assume an interesting aspect. Would they, at maturity, have emancipated the people from their strange infatuation for a hunter life: as those of the Toltecs and Aztecs had before effected the disenthralment of those races in the latitudes of Mexico? It cannot be denied, that there are some grounds for the belief that their institututions would eventually have ripened into civilization. The Iroquois, at all times, have manifested sufficient intellect to promise a high degree of improvement, if it had once become awakened and di

rected to right pursuits. Centuries might have been requisite to effect the change. How far these councils, by the spirit which they engendered, and the intercourse which they secured, were calculated to promote such an end, it would be difficult to determine.

With us, however, their institutions have a real, a present value, for what they were, irrespective of what they might have become. The Iroquois must ever figure upon the opening pages of our territorial history. They were our predecessors in the sovereignty. Our country they once called their country, our rivers and lakes were their rivers and lakes, our hills and intervales were

also theirs. Before us, they enjoyed the beautiful scenery spread out between the Hudson and Niagara, in its wonderful diversity from the pleasing to the sublime. Before us, were they invigorated by our climate, and nourished by the bounties of the earth, the forest and the stream. The tie, by which we are thus connected, carries with it the duty of doing justice to their memory, by preserving their name and deeds, their customs and their institutions, lest they fall into forgetfulness and perish from remembrance. cannot wish to tread ignorantly upon those extinguished council-fires, whose light, in the days of aboriginal dominion, were visible over half the continent.

We

4. TULIPOMANIA, the worship of flowers considered by a votary. : Written by Mistress Esthetica Bile, with poetry. A very aromatic treatise.

5. Sic et non, or the paradoxes; a hand-book of doubts for youth. By Slawkenberg.

6. Existence of a Devil rendered doubtful, from the universal beneficence of the Deity: Appendix, cases of deathbed and other repentances traced to atony of the great sympathetic nerve. By Miss Patience Scalpel.

7. The Liar; a century of Orphic songs. By Forcemeat Pellmell.

8. A treatise of barren strawberry flowers; showing their symbolic superiority over such as bear fruit; also a symbolic parallel on metaphysical

nuns.

9. Divine Errors; showing that production is a loss of honor to the producer; creation a sacrifice of self-respect on the part of Deity. This wonderful argu

ment is by Slawkenberg, assisted in the symbolism by an ex-clergyman.

10. The Nimbus; a book of private rays. By a planter of Pythagorean beans. 11. Symbolic Slides; an easy introduction to atheism. By the Rev. Smoother Downhill.

12. Which way shall we go? an aside for clergymen. By Dr. Handover.

13. Eulogium on the dung beetle; in which the author shows the sacredness of labor in the abstract; poem on that indefatigable worker; ode to his sphere, or symbol. By Miss Wealthy Wishwell.

14. The Idler; a series of essays sympathizing with the working classes. By a young ladies' poet.

15. Continuation of the Book of Job; by a mesmerized lady: with an appendix on the art of prophecy, showing by what passes it may be communicated.

16. Cento of barren conceits; by Messrs. Dull and Doolittle.

17. Book of Spiritual synonyms, for the use of sceptical clergymen; by Slawkenberg. By the help of this manual the language of one sect may be used to teach the doctrine of another. Example-GOD, in the language of St. Paul, signifies the Creator and triune Source of all being; in the language of a certain modern sect it is a term for Satanic or transcendent pride; by the use of which synonymy we may talk of God and mean the devil. A capital trick for deceiving the vulgar.

18. Choice of a husband scientifically considered; by a maiden of experience. In three chapters: chap. i. physiological preliminary chap. ii. mental qualities; chap. ii. spiritual qualities. As the choice of a wife or husband is the most important step in life, Slawkenberg thinks that the young of the human species should have their whole attention directed upon it from the first. He agrees with Monsieur Funk, the philanthrope, in thinking that nothing should be left to chance in this matter; but that marriages should be contracted only between parties who have given unequivocal proofs of fitness.

19. Deduction of men from monkeys, grounded on experience. (Author finds nothing in himself which might not exist in a monkey.) By Brainworm.

20. Social privacy a vice; the family a relict of barbarism; proposition for converting towns and cities into vast lodging-houses. The golden mediocrity

attained by leveling the great and encouraging the mean; vice and ignorance a result of the privacy and exclusiveness of families; necessity of providing for children the true cause of all immoralities. By the Man in the Moon.

21. Absence of care essential to the formation of a virtuous character. The author indignantly repels the opinon that if all lived luxuriously, the world would become a Sodom; urging on the contrary his own experience; that himself, when poor, was driven to all manner of vile shifts for a living, and acquired therefrom a disgust for, and hatred of, the iniquities of trade; but that now, having a competency, he passed for a very moral citizen. By Dullkoft.

22. Machiavelli's precept for the treatment of conquered cities considered and applied; by the modern Lycurgus. The author observing the rapid progress of the new opinions, looks forward to the time when society shall lie as it were at the mercy of victorious philanthropy, like a city rendered to a conqueror. Then, remembering Machiavelli's precept for the treatment of conquered cities, he goes on to agitate, whether it will best secure their victory to the philanthropes, if they utterly suppress and annihilate existing institutions, setting up others of their own; or if they leave things pretty much as they find them, and only seize upon all places of power and emolument.

I forewarned you in my eighth chap ter, that by an irresistible bias of nature, I should be led into all manner of vagaries and humors, through the course of this history; though you, doubtless, paid very little heed to the remark, and went skipping along with a hop, step, and jump through my first chapters, as if you had been galloping through a suburb, toward the very heart of the matter, like an impatient romance reader, as you are; but, I promise you, things will not be slighted off in such fashion. Think of the pains I have been at, for your sake, in my selection of topics, and quotations from the folios of that renowned author; of the magnanimous sacrifice of myself, in the belittling comparison of my own

with his, and the interruption of this intrinsical history. To say nothing of my eleventh chapter, which, as you doubtless remember, contained a subtle argumentation against the mechanical deism, done to the trivial palate of such light readers as yourself, in a pickleherring sauce, which cost me infinite self-denial in the employment; for it is necessary to observe that I am naturally of a didactical turn, and abhor everything ridiculous or common. I say, instead of slighting off my sentences in that style, you should have read them slowly, and weighed them wisely; and I will wager all I am worth, that had you done so, your stock of wisdom would have suffered no loss. Observe, for example, what a weight of

meaning lies in the introductory sentence of my twelfth chapter: for though I perceive by the hang of your nether lip, you fancy it a very well established fact, that a tailor's yard is thirty-six inches in length; yet, I maintain upon my reputation, there's not a yard-stick in the universe, that shall not be found to differ by some mensurable quantity of more or less, from your notional thirty-six inches. There is no real exact out-and-out yardstick-a reflection which will doubtless strike you into a profound melancholy; and you will pass on to consider of the tailor himself, and of his sad excesses and defects; that there is no real com

plete tailor in the universe; as all men are well aware then of his occupation, and its significance; then of humanity, and how the body itself is but the form and clothing of the spirit; that this clothing, however ragged, foul or threadbare, will always, in some manner, indicate the quality of the soul that it invests with the like truisms and profundities into which, if the mood is on you, you are likely to fall. See, then, my hasty sir, what a world of philosophical reflection hung upon that slender slip of a yard-stick. I pray you skip me not over so lightly.

Mr. Yorick's discovery of his treatment of my mother and intentions for myself, inspired me with a secret hatred and disgust, which worked upon my spirits in such a manner, I resolved at length to avoid him and escape his presence. I cherished this resolution, and strengthened it for the space of a year, be. fore the opportunity offered of putting it in execution; during all which time my boyish wits were employed in gathering means toward the enterprise. My father's crony, the barber, with whose name you are already acquainted, (though perhaps, as you might easily forget it, there being nothing specially memorable in the name of Flusky, I may be permitted to jog your recollection,) who interested himself deeply in my affairs, and was by no means an ill-natured man, began very soon to have a suspicion of me and my plans, and, at different times, by various arguments, strove to divert me from them. I think, Master Yorick," said he to me, on one of these occasions, when we chanced to be together in the back-room of his little shop; "it is your mind to quit us. Now, for my part, you know I love you, though I've beat you often-that was not our affair, you know. Now, look'y, young gentleman, let me give you a bit of my experience; for, d'ye see, I'm an old fellow that has seen both sides o' the world; I ha' been a French priest the first half o' my life, and a Lunnon barber the tother half-though I say it; and, as Mr. Yor

in

ick always remarks, my first trade was metabolic, and my second was metabolic -being, in a manner, the first o' the church, and the second o' the world--the first priestly, the second courtly and fashionable—a man must rise a little in his business: let be, that's not the point. As I was saying, you have it in mind to quit us. Now, just let me say it, you can't desave me, young gentleman; a priest is not to be desaved by a boy, nor a barber, who knows the world, is not to be desaved by a boy; its out of possibility, as Mr. Yorick would say. Havn't I seen you take many a sixpence out of the till, in the shop here, and pocket it; and have I so much as whispered a word of the matter to him? an' don't I know you're no baby nor thief, but only a young gentleman cornered and grovelled, as Mr. Yorick would say, with your principles immature, and longing to be out. And here," added the monitor, handing me a dirty bit of paper, "is a copy of verses to Liberty;' and can't I swear by the hand-writing? And what does liberty mean if not license, as Mr. Yorick would say, and license is running away-that's all. Now, my young master you may keep the sixpences, and take as many more as it likes you, for I know he scrimps you, but for God's sake don't leave us. The world's a wilderness, full of wild beasts and devils. He that quits home and friends, quits all that's good in the world, take my word for it. Mr. Yorick's a hard man, he's a

little of a Tiber'us, a bit of a tyrant, I know, and yet he's rich, and 'll leave you everything. Forty thousand pounds, young master, is not a matter to be run away from on slight consideration," &c. Imagine to yourself a young gentleman, of a meditative, not to say a proud spirit, and fired with a love of honor, or, at least, of human approbation, detected by a barber in stealing sixpences out of a shop till!-in a word, imagine the extremity of shame. The man who had inflicted my seventh-day chastisement of the rod, whom I had learned from my patron to despise as a tool, and from my own sufferings to hate as a minister of tyranny, becomes, on a sudden, the keeper, the actual master of my honor! Oh, my good friend, I have written it, and it shall not be erased-I was a detected thief, and liable to transportation for the fact. I, who in my dreams had always figured as a man of honor, a poet, nay a hero of great occasions; who had reckoned Tasso and Dante for my friends, and constantly conversed with them in secret; who, in my day-visions, often saw the circle of the glorious ancients beckoning to me, and smiling upon me as a soul worthy of their companionship. Ia thief, detected by a barber! Misery! misery ineffable!

On farther consideration I took comfort. For observe, your thief is a rogue in the grain, and not a rogue by circumstance. I was a rogue by circumstance, which is great palliation, and somewhat cools the ardor of my cheek.

Flusky had been regularly paid a shilling for beating me, on Saturday night; which he did in my patron's presence, with a sufficient hazel switch, to the number of ten, twenty, or thirty strokes, according to my behavior through the week. This had been done pretty regularly for five years, which put him, as I reckoned, in my debt, for the wages of iniquity, no less a sum than ten pounds making all proper deductions. Now, as the recovery of this sum, by any other than secret means was out of the question, I took the secret way, and had abstracted about half the amount, when the thing happened of which you are aware. These palliations of my guilt had not force enough on the instant for my self-justification, and the feeling of shame struck me dumb. Without replying, I walked into the street, and after wandering about the city between asleep and awake, (for the effect of shame upon

me has always been to induce a torpid condition of my senses,) I sat down at night-fall on the edge of the wharf by the river, where a small brig lay within a cable's length of the shore. The place was a solitary nook of the city adjoining upon flats deserted by the tide, and, as it seemed, might have been a haunt of thieves, or smugglers; for I saw none but some suspicious-looking persons who stood watching me as I sat, from the doors of a ruinous old store-house, that jutted over the river upon piles. Paying no heed to these or other circumstances about me, I sat for a long time, revolving in my mind the many miseries I had suffered in the house of Mr. Yorick. My regular weekly bastinado; the arguments to which I was witness between the barber and my patron touching my education and discipline, which to this day I shudder to think on; my hard pallet-bed in the fourth story; my miserable diet; the compassion of the neighbors, which they took every opportunity of showing me by gifts and kind words; then, with a feeling of inexpressible rage, I recollected many slighting observations of my patron and the old housekeeper on my mother's quality and condition; with certain lectures of the former on the inheritance of immorality, and the vices that run in families. I believe I had never thought connectedly in my life before; and the effect was a sudden production in me of a new feeling, the desire and resolve to enjoy my liberty from that day forth, let it cost me what sacrifices it might. Among the books of Mr. Yorick's library, to which I had always a free access, (for it was a good point in his system never to discourage or meddle with my reading,) 1 had taken especial delight in certain chivalrous romances, and in the poems of Tasso which I read in my native language. By these I was soon inspired with ideas of freedom, and a life of enterprise; but the possibility of realizing them had never occurred to me until that moment.

While engaged with these reflections, 1 saw a boat let down from the stern of the brig, and presently taking advantage of a channel in the flat it approached the wharf where I was sitting, and a stout man who proved to be the skipper (i. e. captain) of the brig, got out of the boat upon the stones of the wharf and climbing up, came behind and laid his hand upon my shoulder.