Pharmaceutical Society has initiated a change for the better, the reproach to a great extent still exists. We venture to say it will not be completely or in any degree effectually removed, until the Irish example shall be followed, and a real, scientific apothecary shall be called into existence, protected by the law, and rendered proportionately responsible to it. We must now draw to a conclusion. There are parts of the subject we might have dwelt upon more at length, perhaps with advantage. There are others untouched, which we should like to have an opportunity of considering; but we presume so far as to hope that we have done enough to satisfy timid persons that they need not fear to find rat's-bane in their porridge, if they will buy the materials from respectable tradesmen, and be content to pay for them a reasonable price. We shall, on our own part, be fully satisfied, if we shall see any ground for believing that moderate councils will prevail with the many estimable men who have, from the best motives, joined in forwarding the anti-adulteration movement, so far as to induce them to lend a calm consideration to our views. Much ado has been made, we will not say about nothing; but the play will end well, if Mr. Scholefield and his fellows of the Committee will take advantage of the excitement to establish the few simple and unobjectionable arrangements to which we have pointed. It will, at the least, be but fair to try them, before embarking in the expenses of a new Commission, at a time when the nation cannot afford to waste a single pound, or to lose the profitable services of a single man. LONGFELLOW's SONG OF HIAWATHA. THE development of Anglo-American energy has from the first manifested itself in two distinct directions. Look at the uniform growth of that race: you will find it increasing upwards, and outwards, at once. Upwards, in the centres of civilisation, where it has no room for expansion; outwards, on its confines, where it is free, with nothing but the wilderness beyond. In its capitals, America is struggling against the world. The competition of material and intellectual progress, like a lash with double thong, keeps its crowds up to their labour. It elevates itself, day by day-but it is by the desperation of rivalry. In its forests, the Anglo-American is another man. He has shaken off the trammels, with the costume, of social life. He has set his face, and his soul, Westward. His eyes go out into the desert; and he catches in his whole character somewhat of the reflected hue of the Indian who retires, scowling but majestic, before him. American letters partake of the analogy we have pointed at. Irving, Emerson, and Hawthorne - Dana, Holmes, and Willis, have worked shoulder to shoulder with the world. We may add Parsons, a poet as yet own. little known in this country, though deservedly esteemed in his They have toiled, and wrought, and carved out a name for themselves against the whole array of literary rivalry. They entered the lists with the Seven Champions of Christendom, clad in armour like themselves, and broke a lance nay, a score upon the shields of the doughtiest knights of conventional renown. Others have taken another course. With tools whetted at the workshops of refinement, they have separated themselves from their fellows, and walked into the woods. In bidding farewell to the haunts and homes of civilised life, they have made a sacrifice. and they know it. But if they have lost much, they have gained more; and those who follow in their steps will know how to honour the pioneers of literary exploration. Cooper was one of these literary backwoodsmen. He has cleared a literature from the forest. With an arm inured to manly toil, hath he smitten into the tangled luxuriance of a primæval race, and appropriated what he has reclaimed to everlasting culture. In proportion as the enterprise of the East narrows and obliterates the wildernesses of the West, will the stores of aboriginal romance contained in the Leatherstocking Tales become more precious and more productive. They will be preserved with the greater jealousy, the more the state of things they represent melts through tradition into legend. But they will, in their preservation, become, like other classics, the study and models of a future age, and perpetuate, in the thousand unforeseen varieties of a national school, scenes and manners that have passed away. Another explorer of the Western Unknown was Bryant. Contemplative in his wanderings, he has tracked the footsteps of Nature into the recesses of her forests and mountains, and given a voice to the poetry of solitude. "No poet," says a critic of his own country, "has described with more fidelity the beauties of the creation, nor sung in nobler song the greatness of the Creator. He is the translator of the silent language of the universe to the world." And he adds, "His works are not only American in their subjects and their imagery, but in their spirit. He is a national poet." But it seems to have been left for Longfellow to push the explorations of his countrymen both into nature and into legendary lore-into the wilderness of space and of tradition to a limit before unreached. By one or two of his earlier works he had given indications of what his more matured genius might arrive at. In Evangeline, and those lesser hymns of the hunting-grounds, he had fired the bush, as it were, before him, and he can now advance by the light kindled by himself. This is not too much praise, perhaps, to bestow on a poet whom we were quite as ready to censure when, mistaking his course, he followed the dim, medieval swampfire, and for a time lost himself in the Golden Legend. now - original, unless he abandons, once for all, the moulds of conventionalism, and abjures as thoroughly as he has just done, everything that is not native to him. Such is our general estimate as regards the career of a national poet. Some one or two may be lifted, by transcendent genius, above the necessity of preserving the couleur locale; but, as a general rule, it must be adhered to. This it is which points to the distinctive national scenery, character, and traditions of our own country, as the field in which a genuine Irish poet when such shall again appear. will have to seek his inspiration. The "Song of Hiawatha" is founded, as the author tells us, "on a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishinggrounds, and to teach them the arts of peace." Into the Indian song — or Edda thus derived, have been woven other Indian legends, for which the author acknowledges himself principally indebted to the researches of Mr. Schoolcraft, who has done so much towards preserving these national relics. But, in constructing what bears the outward semblance of a mere fable, it appears to have formed part of the author's design to convey, in the guise of allegory, a further meaning. Hiawatha, the hero, is a type of the progress which was alone possible to the savage. The virtues, the powers, the faults, and the absurdities of the red man are depicted in colours as bold as those with which his person is bedaubed. The gentle, artless thing, presiding over the female department of the native wigwam has her representative in Hiawatha's wife - Minnehaha "Laughing Water." And the allegory is kept up to the end; for the story concludes with the retreat of the aboriginal hero into the recesses of the westward forests, soon as the stranger has set foot on the soil he is destined to appropriate to himself with such cool and cruel effrontery. as With sound good sense, Longfellow, instead of aiming at such novelties of versification as Tennyson has been lately experimenting upon, has chosen as his medium of expression a monotonous, rhymeless chant-said to be Finnish uncouth to the ear at first, but after a time, from its very monotony, lending a wierd character to the wild tales it accompanies; so that when we get to the end the rythm continues to drone on, like the bourdon of a bagpipe, calling for any additional amount of legendary articulation. The vehicle is, no doubt, as a vehicle, a good one. That detached passages could be familiarly quoted for their poetic beauty, in such a dress, is scarcely possible. The "song" must be sung out. Hence, it is ridiculous to attempt to do it justice by any selection we can make by way of extract; nor does the constant occurrence and recurrence of jaw-breaking Indian names make the difficulty less. So crude a vocabulary of native sounds needs to be brought up, again and again, and ruminated upon, to be digested at all. All that could be done, the author has done, in translating, as a rule, every word that occurs-thus lessening the awkwardness of the expedient by the constancy of its repetitition; so that at last, like lazy schoolboys, we begin to look for the translation wherever we meet the original. But, as we have said, habit alone can reconcile the ear-if it be reconciled to anything of the kind. The command of language and imagery displayed by Longfellow in this attempt of his, we are bound to say, is far greater than a superficial reader might imagine. To relieve a long poem, hampered by a monotony of cadence, from a monotony of diction and metaphor, needs all the force and compass of a practised hand. In proportion as the framework is uniform, must the details be varied. To vary these details, without destroying the simplicity the scene and characters demand, is a task requiring no ordinary skill. We gladly admit that here the poet has displayed very high powers. He has, it is evident, copious resources at command; but they are resources which point beyond the work here accomplished, and give hope and earnest of future achievements of far higher pretension. Originality and vigour are two prognostics of eminence. They represent youth and ambition ;-the one indicating the power, the other the will, to rise. But they do not in themselves constitute eminence. The originator in art, who quits his studio for the fields, falls to work upon all he sees-skies, foliage, and foregrounds. He puts in these with care the two former with their appropriate delicacy, the last with due force and freedom. He bears home on successive cartons the materials he has collected; but the magnum opus-the immortal performance-is wrought out of these, and out of more than these. We shall recur to this subject before we have done. Let us take it for granted that "Excelsior," may still prove the exponent, as it has ever been the motto, of the career of the most deservedly popular of American poets. In the meantime, it is really hopeless to attempt a serious analysis of Hiawatha's song. To be quite grave, will be to appear quite ridiculous. Anything is better than that reviewer and reader should go forward under the influence of different emotions. Abandon we the sublime, then, as we would our travelling-carriage, when we come to a pheasantry or cover-side, and hie we into the thicket in the rough-andtough, dread-nought, devil-may-care undress of a regular old sportsman. Notwithstanding all our swagger, we confess it is not without some little trepidation that we cast about for a leading extract-like a first leap-that shall not frighten away our readers once for all. Here is one, from the introduction, a little smoother than the average: "Ye who love the baunts of Nature, Ye who love a nation's legends, Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, 1 Groping blindly in the darkness, Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles Of the Here and the Hereafter:- Gitche Manito, "the mighty," "the Master of Life," descended on the mountains of the Prairie, "On the Great Red Pipestone quarry," and assembled the primitive tribes and nations of the West together. In their presence he formed "a pipe for his capacious mouth," not like that of Polypheme for harmonious, but for fumigatory purposes. In short, having constructed his pipe, he filled the bowl though it was with bark of willow, instead of those "flowers of soul" so disparagingly called the "weed of Virginia." He struck a light, and incontinently smoked the calumet of peace "As a signal to the Nations;" then, having impressed upon the assembled savages the necessity of laying aside their weapons and their wargear, and turning themselves to the pursuits shadowed forth by the "Pukwana of the Peace-pipe," he vanished in his own smoke, and sent them away, a pacific population, ignorant of everything in the world except that they needed instruction. Thus we learn that in time of peace alone are the arts of peace sought for and prized. Gitche Manito sends the people a chief, Hiawatha, to teach them. His birth is on this wise:- Nokomis, the beautiful daughter of the Moon, produces a fair daughter, Wenonah, who is loved and deserted by the West Wind, Mudjekeewis, and who becomes, in her sorrow, mother to Hiawatha, dying immediately after his birth. The hero's childhood is a rough, savage one enough. His grandmother has not been improved by time; she inhabits a wigwam "by the shining Big-SeaWater." "There the wrinkled, old Nokomis Who is this that lights the wigwam? "When he heard the owls at midnight, • What is that?' he cried in terror; Then the little Hiawatha - Old Nokomis had a friend called Iagoo, "the great boaster," "the marvellous story-teller." This fellow undertook for the sporting education of the young chief. He made a bow for him, and arrows, and strung the bow, and sent him into the forest to slay a roebuck. As the archer passed, the birds the Opechee, the robin; the Owaissa, the blue-bird; and the beasts-the Adjidaume, the squirrel, and the rabbit (whose name, we presume, is suppressed for good reasons), besought him, one and all, not to shoot them, "But he heeded not, nor heard them, Hidden in the alder-bushes, Then, upon one knee uprising, By the ford across the river; Throbbed and shouted and exulted. This sort of education was not quite in accordance either with the "Church" or the "National" system; nevertheless, it served the turn-it was the bear's lick, which answered best for the cub-the wolf's pap, eminently suited for the wet-nursing of the transatlantic Romulus. Thus Hiawatha grew; the Nimrod of these wild hunting-grounds-skilled in wood-and-water-craft-learned in old men's lore-a splendid wrestler, runner, swimmer, diver, and climbera dead shot, and a magnificent bruiser. His mittens, Minjekahwun, and his moccasons, completed, indeed composed, we are led to believe, his costume. When the weather was cold, he added a cloak, made by Nokomis out of the hide of the red deer he had slain-and eaten. run "at Forth fared this noble, and somewhat formidable savage, prepared to "wild in woods,' without any very fixed idea as to the direction he should take. As luck would have it, though (was it because?) warned by his grandmother not to intrude upon the kingdom of the West-Wind, his moccasons bore him railway-pace, each stride a mile," into the very region he had been cautioned againstthe realm of Mudjekeewis, who, we may recollect, was the lover and betrayer of his deceased mother, Wenonah. Here he found the gay old deceiver, shivering upon the gusty summits" of the Rocky Mountains, and expecting nothing less than a visit from his son. "Filled with awe was Hiawatha At the aspect of his father. But Hiawatha had a grudge against his parent; and as he had not the benefit of either of the valuable educational institutions we have alluded to, he thought he might indulge in the very natural wish of knocking his father's brains out. Accordingly, having taxed him with his perfidy, he started up, "And with threatening look and gesture As it happened, Mudjekeewis was a match for him. He puffed aside the missile, and in his turn attacked his son. The encounter is Homeric, and, we are bound to say, finely described. The father retreats, stumbling, westward down the mountains for three whole days, during which Hiawatha's moccasons, as well as mittens, Minjekahwun, are kept in constant requisition. He is pursued "To the door-ways of the West-Wind, It ends in the father blessing his son, giving him the prize of valourand his advice. That is, to go home, and be a good boy. "Homeward now went Hiawatha; Only once his pace he slackened, There the ancient Arrow-maker |