secutive evenings, and on the occasion of their third engagement, Mondamin tells him how he will be victorious the following evening, how he will kill Mondamin, and how he is to bury him in such a manner as to prevent the ravens and the worms from interfering with his slumber in the grave. Iliawatha obeys his instructions, and when he has killed his opponent, he buries him as he was directed, and now that his seven days of fasting had expired, he returns home. On his return, in a few days to, see that the grave of Mondamin was undisturbed, he is surprised to observe, a small green feather, which, "From the Earth shot slowly upward :" it turns out to be the maize crop, by means of which the Nation is to receive the blessings of plenty.

Day by day did Hiawatha
Go to wait and watch beside it;
Kept the dark mould soft above it,
Kept it clean from weeds and insects,
Prove away with scoffs and shoutings,
Kabgahgee, the king of ravens.

Till at length a small green feather
From the earth shot slowly upward.

Then another and another,
And before the Summer ended
Stood the maize in all its beauty,
With its shining robes about it,
And its long, soft, yellow tresses;
And in rapture Hiawatha

Cried aloud, "It is Mondamin!'
Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin!"

Hiawatha has two friends, "Chibiabos, the musician," and "the very strong man, Kwasind," assisted by whom we infer, he was in the first instance to refine the people by music, and in the second, to hew down the mighty forests which impeded cultivation. Anon, Hiawatha takes to carpentry, and having made himself a canoe, goes forth upon the waters with a view to fishing. He casts his line forth, but unfortunately catches a Tartar in the person of Nahma, "the King of Fishes," who swallows Hiawatha, canoe and all. This is, all, well worthy of Baron Munchausen, or. might have happened to Gulliver in the Kingdom of Brobdignag; and we would not be surprised to hear that it has awakened no little amount of jealousy in the breasts of such men as Mansfield Parkyns, and Charles Waterton.

Iliawatha's first care is to discover the heart of "the King of Fishes," which, when he finds, he belabours lustily with his fists, until finally having worn out the monster, who reels and staggers in the water, he chuckles to hear its gigantic body grate upon the strand. A flock of sea gulls descending to feast upon the dead sturgeon, are entreated by Hiawatha to make cavities in the sides of the animal with their claws: they answer his behest, very much encouraged, (as also the squirrel

which happened to have been in the canoe at the time of the accident), by Hiawatha's assurance, that they shall be known for the future, under the different appellations of Kayoshk, anglice, "the noble scratchers," and Adjidaumo, "tail-in-airup," which we suppose are equivalent to the decoration of the cross of the Legion of Honour, and the Order of the Knights Commanders of the Bath.

The tale would of course be nothing, without some of the "old, old story," and the Poet, (in a lucid interval), beautifully and truthfully tells us.

"As unto the bow the cord is,

So unto the man is woman,

Though she bends him, she obeys him,

Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"

Hiawatha wooes and wins Minnehaha, the Laughing Water, and the daughter of the "ancient arrow-maker.' We incline to the opinion that this is the best part of the book, and, "the Journey Home," is, it must be confessed, rather beautifully described. A wedding feast follows, as a matter of course, where the capacity of lagoo, as a spinner of yarns, is tested, and found to be magnificent. After this, affairs begin to wind up very much in the same manner, as they do in the fifth act of Hamlet. There is to be sure a good deal of jargon about blessing the corn fields, picture writing, &c. &c., through which the Metre acts the part of the horrid bells, beating time to the heavy rumbling of an abominable French Diligence; but as far as the characters are concerned, θανατος μελαινος is now the order of the day. Owing to some fatality, possibly akin to that of Samson's losing his hair, the "very strong man Kwasind," finds all his strength ineffectual, and is literally clubbed to death. Pau-puk-keewis, an exquisite of the first water, a sort of primitive Beau Brummell, and a decided. bore into the bargain, is obliged to make his exit, and the celebrated musician Chibiabos is also removed from the scene. Shortly after the disappearance of these worthies, we are introduced into the interesting company of ghosts, who, unlike the

majority of ghosts, have an inordinate passion for eating and drinking whatever they can lay hold of. The next chapter conveys the sad intelligence of a famine, to which dire visitation, poor Laughing Water," falls an early victim. Here, in like manner, it pleases Longfellow to be again himself; the following passage reads all the better for the sea of trash which surrounds it.

O the long and dreary Winter!
O the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,

But lo! the scene shifts!
of the Author's dream, and
civilization, descends upon the

From his wanderings far to eastward,
From the regions of the morning
From the shining land of Wabun,
Homeward now returned Iagoo,

The great traveller, the great boaster,
Full of new and strange adventures,
Marvels many and many wonders.

And the people of the village
Listened to him as he told them
Of his marvellous adventures,
Laughing answered him in this wise:
"Ugh! it is indeed Iagoo!

No one else beholds such wonders!"
He had seen, he said, a water
Bigger than the Big-Sea-Water,
Broader than the Gitche Gumee,
Bitter so that none could drink it!
At each other looked the warriors,
Looked the women at each other,
Smiled, and said, "It cannot be so!
Kaw" they said, "it cannot be so!"
O'er it, said he, o'er this water
Came a great canoe with pinions,

In the snow beheld no footprints,

In the ghastly, gleaming forest

Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
Perished there from cold and hunger.

O the famine and the fever!
O the wasting of the famine !
O the blasting of the fever!
O the wailing of the children!
O the anguish of the women!

All the earth was sick and famished;
Hungry was the air around them,
Hungry was the sky above them,
And the hungry stars in heaven
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!

A change comes o'er the spirit
the White Man, the herald of
stage.

Hiawatha, however, who has

A canoe with wings came flying,
Bigger than a grove of pine-trees,
Taller than the tallest tree-tops!
And the old men and the women
Looked and tittered at each other;
"Kaw!" they said, "we don't believe it!"
From its mouth, he said, to greet him,
Came Waywassimo, the lightning,
Came the thunder, Annemeeke!

And the warriors and the women
Laughed aloud at poor Iagoo;
"Kaw!" they said, "what tales you tell us!"
In it, said he, came a people,

In the great canoe with pinions
Came, he said, a hundred warriors;
Painted white were all their faces,
And with hair their chins were covered!
And the warriors and the women
Laughed and shouted in derision,
Like the ravens on the tree-tops,
Like the crows upon the hemlock.
"Kaw!" they said, "what lies you tell us !
Do not think that we believe them!"

seen in a vision the approach of the White Man, assures his people of the truth of Iagoo's story, and proposes to give the strangers a hearty reception. In good time the traveller and his retinue arrive.

O'er the water floating flying,
Something in the hazy distance,
Something in the mists of morning,
Loomed and lifted from the water,
Now seemed floating, now seemed flying,

Coming nearer, nearer, nearer.
Was it Shingebis the diver?
Was it the pelican, the Shada?
Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah?
Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa?

With the water dripping, flashing
From its glossy neck and feathers?
It was neither goose nor diver,
Neither pelican nor heron
O'er the water floating, flying,
Through the shining mist of morning,
But a birch-canoe with paddles,
Rising, sinking on the water,

Dripping, flashing in the sunshine,
And within it came a people

From the distant land of Wabun,
From the farthest realms of morning
Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,
He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face,
With his guides and his companions.

Like Moses, who died when he land, Hiawatha, his mission over, leaving the White Man to perfect

On the shore stood Hiawatha,
Turned and waved his hand at parting;
On the clear and luminous water
Launched his birch-canoe for sailing,

had reached the promised
prepares for his departure,
what he has begun.

From the pebbles of the margin
Shoved it forth into the water;
Whispered to it," Westward! westward !"
And with speed it darted forward.

Thus Hiawatha vanishes; as Longfellow tells us

Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved,

In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,

Of the Northwest wind Keewaydin,

To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the kingdom of Ponemah.
To the land of the Hereafter!

This sketch we have drawn, will suffice to give the reader a pretty good idea of the plot of Hiawatha, and of the general character of the poem. He will not have failed to observe the great similarity between it, and the outline of the Kalewala, or Kalevala of the Finns. Wainamoinen's parents, "The Storm Wind," and the "Daughter of the Air," are marvellously like those of Hiawatha, namely, "The West Wind," and the "Daughter of the Moon." Again, the former commencing his career as a benefactor of man, reminds us forcibly of the promise of Gitche Manito at the commencement of Hiawatha, that he would send a prophet amongst the people, who would guide, and teach, toil, and suffer, for them: the exploits and adventures of the two heroes follow, and finally, both depart from the earth in a boat, and ascend to heaven. The extracts we have given are, to our mind, very fair instances of the poetry of the book, and we shall now leave the readers to draw their own conclusions, merely expressing our sincere wish, as ardent admirers of the genius of Longfellow, that if it be his intention to employ his valuable time, in carrying out the laudable and patriotic design of perpetuating the traditions of his country, he will, in the first place, take his materials, such as he finds them, at home, and secondly, that more character, vigor, and subjectivity, may be evidenced in the next offspring of his muse, than are visible in his so called, Indian Edda, Hiawatha.

In his new poem, the Author of Festus appears to us to have earned very little credit, beyond that which he deserves for the excellence of its name. The hero is indeed a mystic. in the true sense of the word, and the whole book is the very essence of the most unintelligible species of mystery.

Festus, notwithstanding the magnificence of its language, was extravagant enough, Heaven knows! but The Mystic fairly distances its anticessor, in obscure ideality, and incomprehensible symbolism. If the former was pantheistic, its Author was at least honest, and did not conceal the fact, but " The Mystic" is such a slippery gentleman, that his theological ideas elude your grasp with the activity of a spectre. No sooner have you congratulated yourself, upon at last discovering the colours. which he has hoisted on the top gallant of his suspicious looking craft, than he either takes them down with the rapidity of lightning, and runs up others in their place, or like the Phantam Ship, in "Der Fleigender Hollander," disappears altogether from your ken. Our opinion of Hiawatha was very favorable one, but what can we say for The Mystic? Or rather how can we express in language sufficiently strong, how heartily we condemn its unparalleled absurdities? It is, (always excepting Sordello,) the most purposeless production we have ever beheld, and in like manner the most preposterous. The Mystic, good reader, is intended, we suppose, to represent the career of a divinely instructed soul, which "lived a threefold life through all the ages, and had seven different births, appearing under

not a

distinct attributes each time."

"Seven times his soul

Commingling, leavened with its light the world."

He passes a thousand years as an oak, a million of suns in "the sea's arms," the same period of time among "the insect race," a myriad among the birds, and thrice that term among "all four footed tribes of nature," thus fully verifying the doctrine of Pythagoras. His first life is spent among the animals of the creation, every one of whom, from "the Ox Thunder begotten," to "the goat, sacred to sin in all rites," he cross examined with the dexterity of a Nisi Prius lawyer. After the case for the prosecution, or the defendant's, as the case might he, had closed, he departs for the mansions of the Gods, where he is conducted, by good demons, who protect him against the onslaughts of bad demons. Arrived at "the