stances, the teachings of nature, often produce men of noble character, whom some great crisis summons out from their seclusion to surprise and delight the world; and because they have not gone through the usual routine of school and college, they are objects of wonder, and are said to have no education. As this good, accidental education is rare, so these men are rare. But education they have had.'

Our author remarks that it has always struck him (and the same thought has often occurred to us,) as a gross inconsistency to suppose that those persons are best qualified to direct and plan schemes of education who know nothing of it practically; and who, it is taken for granted, must know best what is for the good of the young and the good of the teacher, because they excel in some branch of art, or are elevated to some particular station. We may as well undertake to learn agriculture from sailors, and navigation from farmers, as to hope for much light upon this subject from those who consider children as so many little figures, to be moved about at will by the arbitrary machinery they contrive, like the parts in MAELZEL's celebrated exhibition of the burning of Moscow.' We want facts upon the subject of education. The practical teacher, the man or woman who has been in the toil and sweat of the day, the sailor himself who has coasted about this comparatively unknown region of the young mind; who has found shallows where he looked for deep water and deep water where he looked for rocks; who has found no hold for his anchors when the tempest caught him on a lee-shore; and again has been saved from shipwreck often when ready to despair, by the springing up of favorable winds, or the gleaming of a light just seen on the verge of the horizon; he alone can furnish these facts, and from him alone must come the foundation of all schemes of education.' We think no one can rise from the perusal of this earnest, well-reasoned and well-written treatise, without comprehending the importance of having humane, educated, practised instructors for our children and youth; without, in short, agreeing fully with the writer, that if uneducated men must teach, let them take the advanced, the sturdy, the already well-disciplined; but suffer not such to tamper with the ardent curiosity of a young mind; which, like the tender shoot of the vine, yields to the breathing of the lightest zephyr; but which, like the same vine, after it has become the stock of new shoots, is able to withstand the tempest and the storm.'

THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

Conducted by JARED SPARKS. Second Series. Volumes Three and Four. pp. 884. Boston: CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN.

WE have on more than one occasion commended this well-edited and well-executed series to the attention of our readers; but each succeeding issue renews a fervent wish that the volumes which they embrace might find their way to the fire-sides of every Ame. rican who loves and would cherish the names which his country should not willingly let die.' The first of the two volumes named at the head of this notice contains the lives of Gen. JOHN SULLIVAN, (who took an active part in the affairs of our country, and who has hitherto scarcely had justice done him,) by Rev. W. B. O. PEABODY; of JACOB LEISLER, admirably written by C. F. HOFFMAN, Esq., and in the spirit, we are glad to perceive, of a genuine KNICKERBOCKER; of NATHANIEL BACON, the founder' of 'BACON's Rebellion' in Virginia, by our correspondent, the author of The Palmyra Letters,' Rev. WILLIAM WARE; and of JOHN MASON, of Connecticut, (a man made famous in the exterminating war waged against the Pequot Indians,) by Rev. GEO. È. ELLIS; a very spirited sketch. The second-named volume contains the Lives of ROGER WILLIAMS, the founder of 'Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,' a biography abounding in interest, and extremely well written by Mr. WILLIAM GAMMELL; of TIMOTHY DWIGHT, President of Yale College, by WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D. D.; and of Count PULASKI, by the Editor, JARED SPARKS, Esq. The volumes of the American Biography' are admirably printed, upon fine white paper, and the engravings with which they are occasionally illustrated are in the first style of the art. We cannot doubt that the series receives a wide diffusion.

VOL. XXV.

46

INDA: A LEGEND OF THE LAKES: WITH OTHER POEMS. By LEWIS F. THOMAS. In one volume. pp. 132. Saint Louis: V. ELLIS.

THIS we learn is the first volume of poetry that ever emanated from the press west of the Mississippi. The principal poem, and the one which gives the title to the work, was delivered some years since before a literary society at Cincinnati, Ohio, and subsequently before a kindred body at Saint Louis. The minor poems, it is candidly avowed, 'were put in to eke out a book.' The author, with the same frankness, adds: Most writers put forth their first efforts at the earnest solicitations of numerous friends;' I publish mine against the advice of friends, merely to gratify my own whim. Whether my little work succeeds or not, is a matter of but slight consideration, except to myself; and I am free to confess that its publication is prompted as much by my own vanity as by any other feeling.' He was quite right in inferring that a volume of poems from the west of the Mississippi, with the theme of its principal poem entirely western, would at least prove a novelty; he may well assume too that it is something to be the pioneer of poesy' on the other side of the Great Valley. In this spirit, he casts his wild prairie floweret to the Father of Waters, trusting only that it may be deemed worthy to blossom in the bright bouquet which the Genius of the Great West is gathering, to bloom on her bosom.' We do not greatly affect Indian poems, having in our boyhood dwelt near, almost among, one of the tribes of the Six Nations, whose chief men we always found any thing but poetical. We cannot refuse our verdict, however, in favor of such graphic limning as is contained in the annexed sketch of a native chief:

'His forehead open, wide and high,

His clear arched brow, and piercing eye,
And features even, broad and bold,
Right well his noble nature told;
While his full lips, in thought compressed,
An ever active mind confessed:
His glossy hair, of raven black,
In flowing locks fell down his back;
And loosely from his shoulders hung
His quiver and his bow unstrung:
His robe from rabid panther ta'en,
Which he with his own arm had slain,
Was tightly girdled round his waist,
By belt with wampum interlaced,

In which was sheathed, at hand for strife,
The ever ready scalping-knife:

His leggings were of beaver-skins,

6

The deer supplied him moccasins,
And ever, on the lake, or shore,

Or listening to the council-talk,
One hand the peaceful calmut bore,
The other grasped a tomahawk:
An eagle's plume waved o'er his crest,
(Like some tall oak above the rest,)
Marking the chieftain of a race
Unequalled in the war or chase:
Upon his breast, that else was bare,
An eagle bald was painted there,
With head erect, and outspread wings,
As in his airy wanderings,
While, glorying in his destiny,

It is his joy to soar on high,
With an unwinking, dauntless eye,
Full at the Day-god's majesty!'

The picture of WAYNIM, and the trophies which adorned his wigwam, is sufficiently vivid, but like BYRON'S 'bit of the terrible' in his Siege of Corinth,' is equally disgusting. Far better, and in better taste, is the admirable picture of the heroine. The lines we have

italicised would do credit to MOORE himself:

'SCARCE had the fifteenth summer's sun Been counted, since her life had run.

Her locks of jet at random strayed,

And o'er her budding bosom played;
That bosom-the pure home of truth,
And feelings known alone to youth,

Within whose shrine her warm heart's swell
Better than words those feelings tell-
Was only veiled by the dark hair,
That fell in glossy ringlets there.
In graceful folds, from waist to knee,
Her robe hung carelessly and free;
Its web was woven from the wings
Of every forest bird that sings,

And those of plumage rich and gay
As oriole, or painted jay,

Or brilliant humming-bird, whose name
And that of INDA is the same.

The sandals on her feet she wore,
In colors rich were 'broidered o'er :
Her step fell light as evening dew;
So softly did she tread the plain,
The flowers that in her pathway grew,
Soon as she passed, rose up again,
As if their heads had only bent
To pay her homage as she went:
So airy did her figure seem,
It scarce were fanciful to deem
That she was not of worldly birth,
But rather of the Air than Earth;
Some Houri from her sphere astray,
Wandering from her heavenly way,
Waiting a messenger of light

To guide her in her homeward flight,
Across the azure, star-gemmed sky,
To realms of immortality.'

The description of a stag-hunt, which follows the foregoing passages, is evidently faithful, and is certainly most striking. In the speech of ULLWA before the council, we find this vivid reminiscence of his line of life' after he had passed his papoosehood:

'It was my lot, in that sad hour,
To fall in yonder Panther's power;
He took me to his wigwam, where
He reared me- his adopted heir.
He taught me how to bend the bow,
To wield the hatchet and the spear,

To lay the horned bison low,

And course the antlered elk, and deer,
The beaver-trap with skill to make,
To launch my bark upon the lake,
To tell the stars, to track the foe,
And all a warrior's arts to know.'

Here is a sketch of darkness and cloud

The fight between ULLWA and WAYNIM is well depicted; and the tranquil sketch from nature which ensues is contrasted with it with much artistical skill. quite a different character; a very forcible picture of the advent of and storm' in the western wilds:

'NIGHT frowns now in his deep mid-noon,
As loth to leave his bride, the Moon;
And, like a funeral train on high,
Black ghostly clouds are moving by;
And oft they shed huge drops of rain,

As though they wept the graveless slain :
And ever as the fitful gales

Blow the dark vapors to and fro,

The stars, like eyes through sable veils,
Gleam sadly on the world below.

Loud thunder-tones, that shake the sky,

Red lightning, flashing vividly;
The blast, that comes in hollow moanings,
Like some perturbéd spirit's groanings;
The trees, whose limbs lock one another,
As though they wrestled with each other;
Dead leaves, that leaping from the ground,
Like sprites dance in the whirlwind's round;
The fretful waves, that lash the shore,
And mock the heavens' pealing roar;
The wolf's loud howl, the night-hawk's cry,
Bespeak a wrathful tempest nigh.'

Of the Miscellaneous Poems,' the longest is 'The Black Knight and the Fair Ladye,' after the manner of an ancient romaunt. It shows imagination, and has many good and some very bad lines. There is a pretty conceit, prettily expressed, in the ensuing stanza;

The poem concludes with a stanza which commences with: 'My tale it is done, pray think it upon;' an inversion of which the writer ought to be ashamed; at all events, that is what we think it upon.' In the Epistle to a Lady,' a lover gazing at the stars, under the impression that he is looking into his mistress' eyes, indulges in this felicitous comparison:

"THE window of the soul's thine eye,

Through which the light of mind is beaming;
Stars are the windows of the sky,

Thro' which the soul of heaven is streaming;

And thus in my philosophy,
When at the rays of either gazing,
The all of heaven that shines for me
Is only in thy bright eyes blazing.'

There is a very pleasant conception of the feelings of those happy wights 'whom Time gallops withal,' in the piece entitled 'Time and Love, a Fragment.' The old gentleman of the hour-glass and scythe is quite lost in the picture of the boy' whose place he sometimes usurps. The lines To INA' are in blank-verse; indeed about as blank verse, if we regard only its construction, as one would be likely to meet of a long summer's day-say the twenty-first of June. If the meaning and inculcations had been equally blank, it would have been quite as creditable to the author. Had we not reason to believe that Mr. THOMAS now regrets the publication of such poems as this, and one still more pernicious in its tendency, entitled Beauty, Love and Prudence,' we should be tempted to animadvert upon them with the severity which they demand. We must not omit to mention that the volume is illustrated with several plates,' among them a portrait of the author; and that the engraving, printing, and binding, as well as the contents of the work, are the product of that truly great city of the Great West, Saint Louis, in the State of Missouri. Some of the pictures, it is true, are not what they should be; but in the main the book is as creditable in its execution as in its conception.

EDITOR'S, TABLE.

EARLY AMERICAN TRAVELLERS IN THE HOLY LAND.-'Steam power,' says the last London 'Quarterly Review,' has burst its way through the old forgotten paths, and brought the East to our threshold. Suez is already assuming the aspect of an English colony, and Aden is becoming an Eastern Gibraltar. Until recently, Egypt seemed to present an impassable barrier; it now affords a stepping stone to English commerce. Peaceful enterprise has quietly opened those 'gates of the East' at which war stormed so long in vain. The lonely and silent desert now swarms with English caravans, and its indolent Arab starts to hear that constraining Norman voice, whose cry is ever onward,' and whose burden is ever 'haste." It was far otherwise, when the letters were penned from which we take the following interesting extracts. They were the last lines written by our young countryman, Mr. CORNELIUS BRADFORD, who perished far from his friends, among the monks at Jerusalem, whither he had gone, in the enthusiasm of his travels, having passed over ground which has since been visited and illustrated by the talent and learning of STEPHENS, Professor ROBINSON, and other distinguished American travellers. 'He died, and was buried' in the convent garden. It is a hard lot to be cut suddenly down among scenes where one expected only the excitement and flush of pleasure; the associations of strange lands, whose wealth of wonders is utterly valueless to the dying man, compared with a single glance of affection. But he died upon holy ground; his last aspirations in health were holy; and as his prayers ascended so fervently from the earthly Jerusalem, it is the Christian's hope and consolation to believe, that he ascended to a better city, 'even an heavenly.' The first extract is from a letter dated Suez, on the borders of the Red Sea, June 1, 1830: I cannot resist the opportunity to date you a few lines from hence, which I trust you will look on as a remembrance not only of the interesting spot from which they are penned, but of the affectionate friendship of the writer. Our journey from Cairo to this place was entirely across the parched and sandy desert. We came on dromedaries, which are the same as camels, with the difference that they are early trained for more speedy travel. Our small caravan consisted of Doctor Y—, myself, MAHOMET, our servant, and an Arab guide, all well armed, and five dromedaries. It would be difficult for me to convey to you with accuracy the dreariness of the route over which we travelled. Nothing but sand and sand-bills burning to the touch, and occasionally the bleached bones of some weary camel of a caravan, who had breathed its last during the tedious journey across the barren wastes. The town of Suez is a most desolate place; on the one side the desert, on the other the waters of the Red Sea. It contains five hundred inhabitants, who are dependent entirely for every article of provision on Cairo, and some of the small towns on the southern borders of the sea. No shrubbery of any kind exists here. The land does not admit of the slightest cultivation; not even a solitary blade of grass is to be met with. Though I am very glad to have seen so celebrated a place as the Red Sea, I shall be heartily glad to get into civilized countries again. But few travellers have reached this spot. I am the third American who has ever

'JERUSALEM,

gazed on the Red Sea which overwhelmed PHAROAH and his hosts.. JULY 10: I feel totally inadequate to the task of doing justice to a description of this once proud Jerusalem, the magnificent residence of DAVID and of SOLOMON. I have been on Mount Zion, on Mount Moriah, where ISAAC was on the point of being sacrificed to his father ABRAHAM, and on the Mount of Olives. I have crossed the brook Cedron to the valley of JEHOSAPHAT; have stood by the tombs of ABSALOM, of JEHOSAPHAT, and of ZACHARIAH; have visited the house of PILATE, and of CAIPHAS the High Priest, where PETER denied his MASTER; have stood on Mount Calvary, where the SAVIOUR of the world was crucified; and kneeled at the foot of his humble and holy sepulchre! These are associations which fill the soul with a power inexperienced among the most sublime ruins of the world. I have been to Bethlehem, and seen the place of the stable where JESUS was born. On the way there, which is a two hours' journey from Jerusalem, I saw the tomb of RACHEL and the ancient city of EPHRAIM. The population of Jerusalem is about thirty thousand souls; and there are houses in sufficient number to contain one hundred and fifty thousand. On every side ruined churches, empty bazaars, and deserted houses are met with. The rapacity and oppression of the Turks is one of the principal reasons of the decreasing population. It has however been so often the object of the just and divine vengeance of Heaven, that it is not wonderful to see misery reign to so great an extent as it does here. JUDAH mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem has gone up! I have kept a complete journal of all the observations I have made since my arrival in the East, which I will one day show you; I regret that my time will not now permit me to make copious extracts from it for you. In the midst of these hallowed scenes, you, my dear - and my dear home, are not forgotten. Kneeling at the foot of the humble tomb of the REDEEMER, my prayers for you and yours, I trust favorably received, have ascended to Heaven.'

SCENE IN A PARISIAN COURT OF JUSTICE. If you happen, reader, to be a mere worldling, proud of the coldness which sometimes comes with years, and is commonly called ' experience;' if you chance to consider sympathy weakness, and feeling out of place in a world that demands only shrewdness and labor and prudence; just pass by the following little sketch; for it will possess small interest for such as you. It is only a 'limning' of a case recently brought before the Judge of a Parisian court of justice, wherein the objects in dispute were two white roses, whose withered leaves are now blown to the four winds of heaven. But let us give the scene:

'M'ME GALLIEN, dress-maker: 'I claim thirty francs damages from M'lle FLORA MINVILLE; for she was the cause of my losing an order for work worth one hundred and fifty francs.'

"THE JUDGE: 'Please explain why you make this claim.'

'M'ME GALLIEN: 'These are the facts, Monsieur. About two months since M❜lle LEONTINE DE CRILLON was married to M. le Prince de CLERMONT-TONNERRE. The corbeille' and the 'trousseau' were magnificent. I obtained the order for the bride's weddingdress: it was to be a splendid affair; trimmed with lace, pearls, gimps-in short, all the wonders of our art were to be united upon it; but there was still something wanted; something very rare at that season of the year; a natural white rose a white rose in February!'

6

THE JUDGE: And did. Mille FLORA promise to procure the rose?'

'M'ME GALLIEN: Yes, Sir; she cultivates flowers, and often sells the earliest and rarest to the great modistes' of the capital. I called upon her, and she promised to furnish me with one or two roses she then had, for twenty-five francs, payable on delivery. I relied upon her promise, but she did not keep it. She did not bring the rose; and the dress was refused.'