the floor of this state without waiting the slow co-operation of any voluntary system. The last verse of this poem, which enforces the beauty as well as the necessity of doing right is very happily expressed, and the tradesman may find a very encouraging moral, as well as motto, in the concluding quartrain. We are not satisfied with the excess in the third line of the first verse, but in poetry which embodies thought, occasional departures from the standard by which the verses has been constructed may be tolerated if not approved. It is enough that we suggest our objections.

Our limits do not allow us to make further extracts from this volume, nor indeed, is this necessary. The specimens given, with our comments upon them, will amply suffice to enable our readers to form a very correct judgment upon the merits of Mr. Mathews as a poet. In our examination of his verses, we have stated our objections freely, for the simple reason that his merits are of a kind to enable him to bear with censure-nay, to make it necessary that we should declare it in very plain language. These objections, as the reader will have seen, refer almost wholly to the roughnesses of our author's verse-roughnesses which we believe to arise, not so much from his insensibility or indifference to the necessary music of rhythm, but simply to some notion, which has persuaded him that verses meant for the people, should carry with them a disregard to those minor advantages of dress, which are yet so much insisted upon by the more aristocratic kinds of poets. We think this is a great error, since we conceive, at the outset, that the properties of verse, are not popular-that poetry is not to be made a thing of common-place, and to address it to the ordinary purposes of life, is to invade the more useful business of prose. Poetry, which is one of the more elevated of the Fine Arts, requires, for popular appreciation, a long apprenticeship to prop:ietyrequires the exercise of the nicest sensibilities, the keenest feelings, the most generous delicacies. To adopt it to those whose sensibilities are untrained, whose feelings are coarse and violent, who are rude and presuming and indelicate, is to deprive it entirely of the characteristics which constitute poetry-involving a contradiction in propriety as in terms. Mr. Mathews has not done this, we grant. His poetry is of a kind to task the thinking and the regards of the highest, the best educated in the land. It will not be read by the Masses. Of this he may be very sure. That it will be

it

read-as all poetry is read--by the elect, the sacred few,alone is a circumstance, however, not calculated to endanger its popularity. They will give it their sanction. They will utter their approval in language, which, though it may be like our own, somewhat qualified by censure, will yet be as decided. In truth, regarding Mr. Mathews as one of the most promising of the rising generation of American authors, we are very far from being satisfied with this work, whatever its claims, as an adequate exponent of his resources. These we are pleased to think, from a partial perusal of his writings now issuing in monthly numbers from the press,— will place him very high on the list of names by which the future literary reputation of the country is to be maintained. The completion of the serial publication of his writings, will enable us, more at large, to enter upon an analysis of his peculiar characteristics as an author.

ART. III.-Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Pub. Doc. No. 2, pp. 370-528. Dec. 7th, 1842. Washington: Printed by Gales & Seaton.

THE papers accompanying the Message of the President, at the opening of the twenty-seventh Congress, and which are contained in No. 2, of the Public Documents of last session, are full of interest and instruction. The Message itself, the Treaty of Washington, and the able correspondence relating thereto, the Reports from the several Departments of the Executive, the meditated changes in the Post Office, with the communications of Gen. Duff Green, are all worthy of minute attention. But the time for examining many of these points has passed by, though it is by no means too late to consider so much of these Documents as has reference to Indian Affairs, and the condition of the Indian tribes. To this, then, we purpose confining ourselves for the present. This one subject will, however, furnish ample materials for reflection, and these materials will be found to be of the most interesting kind. For there are very few subjects, at this moment, prominently before the world, of more lasting importance, or more deep and melancholy interest, than the relation between the past fortunes, the present condition, and

the probable destinies of that portion of the North American Indians, resident within the limits or under the jurisdiction of the United States. The day is indeed over, when we could be led to impute to the Red Man of the Western Forest all those high and ennobling qualities with which he was invested by the vague but brilliant colors of the romancer, or the still more deceptive exaggerations of the traveller's pen. The Indian is no model of perfection,-no earthly embodiment of an ideal archetype; but neither is he a fit subject for indiscriminate and unmitigated contempt. We recognize in him those virtues and those vices which are incident to his wild and savage life. The necessities of his condition produce all that we admire in his character, but to the same necessities must also be attributed the origin of much that we condemn. Under either phase he is purely the child of circumstance. It is invariably the case that savage tribes are involved in frequent wars with each other; hence courage becomes a requisite of their condition, and the sole guarantee of their continued existence. The creed of the Indian, accordingly, inculcates the contempt of death, and renders that contempt natural by making death, at the hand of his enemies, a certain passport to the eternal fruition, in a brighter clime, of all that he deemed most pleasing upon earth. Every people that lives by the sword, is compelled to lay aside all regard for life,-the Spartans, the Turks, the Tartars, the Assassins, the Saxons, the Northmen, have all done it and it has been done, in all cases, through the instrumentality of the same principle. What the Elysian Fields were to the heroes of elder Greece, what the Houris of the Mahometan Paradise were to the voluptuous Mussulman, what the Halls of Odin were to the blood-thirsty Scandinavian, the same, to the dying Indian, are the hunting grounds beyond the grave, where the shades of his father's rejoice in the mimicry of their former lives. The same peculiarities of situation produced the same results, which they had already produced among the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Scythian hordes. And, in a like manner, may we account for the other properties of the Indian. His fortitude, is the fruit of continual obedience to a national code of honor, growing out of continual fights, in which no quarter is given on either side. He spares not his own victim, he expects not to be spared himself,-he tortures his captive, he feels disgrace if the utmost tortures are not inflicted upon himself, when

brought to the stake. His patience, his indefatigable perseverance, his ingenuity, are to be attributed to the constant exercise of those qualities in the chase; for the sustenance and the honor of himself and his family depend upon their successful exertion. Hence, also, his endurance of fatigue, of hunger and of thirst; to these, the uncertainties of the forest life accustom him; and hence, too, the remarkable and unerring instinct which guide his footsteps through the wilderness, with the precision of the compass. But, from these same causes, spring his vices. The contempt of death, which he entertains himself, renders him wholly regardless of the lives of others; the fortitude, which he manifests as a sufferer, begets ferocity, cruelty, and a fiendish delight in the agonies of his victims; his sagacity leads him to deception, to cunning, and to treachery; and his activity abroad, is more than balanced by his sluggish indolence at home. Throughout, we perceive how circumstances have been the cause of the mingled good and evil of his disposition. And yet, notwithstanding this strange admixture of indomitable perseverance and of hopeless indolence,- of manly fortitude and continual deceit,-of noble generosity and implacable revenge, the brilliancy of our earlier conceptions still throws a golden mist over his character. And when we recall to mind, that little more than three centuries ago, his empire was absolute and undisputed over all this vast continent, that he has been compelled to yield, foot by foot, and acre by acre of the wide heritage of his ancestors, to the encroaching tide of civilization, we feel inclined, by the common sympathies of our nature, to take a peculiar interest in his fate. And if, from some few, even the remembrance of the old spell have departed, we trust that they cannot be so far influenced by feelings of past or present hostility, of fear or of revenge, as to deny to the poor Indian that degree of commiseration to which his disasters so well entitle him. If the war in Florida was terminated but yesterday,-if the devastations and massacres, committed by the Seminoles, be still fresh in our memories,-if the tomahawk and the scalping knife of the savage be still flashing before our eyes,-if the terrible warwhoop of the assailants, and the piercing shrieks of their victims, be still echoing in our ears, let us remember, that what we now call barbarity might seem even heroism, were we ourselves placed in circumstances similar to those of the Indian. We do not defend the acts of the Seminoles;

they were the deeds of wild and undisciplined savages; we do not blame the conduct of the General Government towards them; after discontent had once been excited, the only alternative was extirpation or removal. But, if we approve the latter, we ought to feel pity for the former. And, indeed, all that the Indians did, and all that we, as civilized beings, consider ourselves bound to condemn, was in strict accordance with their own untutored habits, and seemed to them, not only justifiable, but commendable, in defence of a country endeared to them by long possession, by legends of past glory, by habit, by old associations, by the recollections of their youth, by the pleasures and the pride of their manhood, and by the graves of their fathers. The remembrance of these things should ensure for the Indian a partial hearing, and a kind consideration, at all times.

But it is with no intention of fighting his battles o'er again, or dwelling upon the poetic phases of the Red Man's life and character, that we have now taken up the subject of Indian Affairs. We are not insensible to the pleasure to be derived from these, but any gratification to be anticipated from such inquiries must be to our minds a subordinate one, at a time when the question of his fate and permanence is so uncertain as at present. When the very being of the Indian tribes is at stake, there are higher feelings and more urgent considerations than those of amusement. And yet it has not escaped our notice that the present is, perhaps, the most favorable time for making those researches into their history, their manners, and their languages, which at a future day will prove of the highest interest to the nation or nations which may then be established within our borders. What the Enotrians, the Volseians, and the Etruscans were to the Roman nation, will be in a greater or less degree the Hurons, the Algonquins, and the hundred other Indian Tribes to the possessors of this country at a later day. But the points which now demand our attention are the existence and destiny of the Indian; and these have become questions of most serious interest. For whatever may have been his fortunes and his past career, whatever his follies, his excesses, or his crimes, he has now been forced by a conjuncture of circumstances to throw himself and his fate into the hands of the Federal Government. At such a time, the

We are speaking of the general conduct of the Government, not of all its acts,-for its treatment of Osceola admits of no palliation. VOL. V.-NO. 9.

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