INDEX TO THE ECLECTIC MAGAZINE.-VOL. IX. Dog, History of the,-Eclectic Review, Dickens', Charles, Travelling Letters, 109, 190 Foster, John, Life and Correspondence of, H Ham House, in the days of the Cabal-Fra- Heavens, System of the, as revealed by 361 391 Montaigne in the Cradle, Nursery and Col- 452 531 218 257 MISCELLANY Scraps for the Curious, 40; Colo- 293-Louis Buonaparte, 286; Scraps from Punch, 290; Baths and Washhouses for the Poor,-Self Con- fidence a Duty,- Passive Resistance,-Supply of Water to Rome and London, 291; Expedition to South America,-Death of Charles Buck, Esq., Vital Statistics of the Metropolis,-The Dau- 'phin of France,-Der Freishutz Again,-A Kiss 124 136 POETRY: Spinning of the Shroud-Let the Eye, 334; Fate and Providence, 390; Paragraphs | Portrait, The, From the Foreign Quarterly Review. West, Washington Alston, Leslie, Sully, in MCKENNEY AND HALL'S SKETCHES OF proof that they can take rank among the THE INDIAN TRIBES. History of the Indian Tribes of North IN turning over the leaves of the magnificent picture-book before us, we rejoice at the opportunity it affords us for departing from the tone of censure in which we have too often felt compelled to speak of the works and deeds of our kinsmen across the Atlantic. For once, at least, they cannot accuse us of scornful disrespect, or of insular prejudice, when, according to our best ability, we recommend nationality in Art, as the one thing beautiful, desirable, and needful for its permanent existence. Towards this point we would have our American friends strain every nerve. They have already proved themselves steady and enthusiastic pilgrims along the world's highways. We may mention the names of VOL. IX. No. I. 1 most admirable Europeans, when they deign to paint in the European fashion; nor can the Londoners or the Florentines forget, that in his "Greek Slave," W. Hiram Powers has put in a very strong claim for the championship of modern sculpture, one to which the Rauchs, and the Gibsons, and the Schwanthalers, and the Bailys would find it hard to offer a rejoinder. In all revivals and adaptations, however, in all workings after this antique, or the other tradition, there is an unsoundness, and a want of satisfaction, the end of which can be but mediocrity. It needs but to walk the rounds of the churches, galleries, and studios of Munich, to ascertain the limits of modern, when imitating ancient Art. There has been no want of earnest study, no want of unselfish devotion to a purpose, no want of sympathy and patronage; and here and there industry, ingenuity, and sincerity have "tossed and turned" themselves, have accumulated and wrought, till the result is all but a creation,-all but a work of genius. Yet the impression, on ourselves at least, of these vaunted works is saddening. It is painful to see that sympathy will not keep pace with effort; pain ful to be compelled to admit, (as one is than in all the porings and pryings of the compelled to do, a score of times every Pugin school of artists, who sanction every hour, by some flash of recollection of the anachronism and inconsistency of past, glories of the ancients,) that we are only half-instructed ages, on the score of a myslooking at an elaborate mistake; painful to tical sanctity, and demand the sacrifice of anticipate a not very distant period, when Criticism at the altar of Faith. Let all Glyptothek and Basilica, Fest-bau, and Al- memorials of the past be reverently preservler Heiligen Kapelle will be reviewed by ed, but preserved as memorials, not models. the connoisseurs, as so many monuments It should be our task, as it is our privilege, of respectable pedantry and school exer- to go forward. cise; more praiseworthy for intent, but lit- Viewed under their twofold aspect, estle more so in fact of artistic merit, than pecially, seeing that any thing entirely the follies of Louis Quinze, or than the Li- new stands, for the present, at so heavy a brary built after the fashion of a chest of disadvantage, whatsoever the enchantment drawers with which the great Frederick of of distance may do for Posterity-all colPrussia chose to diversify the main street of lections with regard to the aboriginal inhis show capital! habitants of America have a value, which every year will only increase. never has savage life worn a form so inviting and poetical, as in the annals of the Indian tribes. Though hardly disposed, with the prospectus of Messrs. McKenney and Hall's work, to admit the Red-jackets and Mohongos as "Ciceros and Cæsars, Hectors and Helens;" though human conservatism, or human simplicity, could never, in their most stiff or sickly vagaries, dream of a revival of wigwams, of an extension of the picturesque birch bark and quill manufactures; of encouraging, after the fashion Perhaps We have dwelt upon Munich because the name of this city is in every one's mouth; but it is only an illustration of the spirit of the times; not a solitary instance. The worthy personages, who imagine they are advancing the cause of devotion and authority, by attempting to bring back church music to the barbarianism of the Gregorian chant, offer another. Why are these things? Does that old superstitious fear yet linger on the earth, which mistrusted creation and discovery as irreverent? Is Orthodoxy maintained by not a few, because it saves the trouble and cost of original thought of "Young England," the dances and the These questions sound almost monstrous; ball plays, with all their distinctive forms yet, much of the artistic criticism, and the of full-dress and un-dress, (the latter, as a motives held out for artistic effort in the lady tourist has told us on some festive ocpresent day, when stripped of the verbiage casions, a mere simple osprey's wing,)in which canters of all classes love to in- though it would exceed the boldness of any volve them, have no wiser principles for Benedict to speak even leniently of squawkernel. Yet, digressing for a moment, let dom as an honorable condition," in days us thankfully remark how-in spite of all like these, when The Schoolmistress is this laziness and pedantry, this appeal to a abroad arousing and inspiriting the "wospurious devotional spirit, which overlooks menkind,"-there is still, under every point the glorification of God in the Present, no of view, for the studious or for the sympaless than in the Past-Genius is vindicating thetic, for the antiquarian or for the artist, itself; how the necessities, the materials, for the wild sportsman or the closet philosand the social arrangements of the world opher, a dignity, a charm, and a poetry are unconsciously calling forth and shaping about the Red Man, to which, not the productions, which Posterity may admire as whole library of trumpery of which he has models. Those whose connoisseurship and been made the subject can render us inenthusiasm, being merely an affair of pre- different. The Americans, then, are justicedents and synods, can see nothing of the fied in calling attention to this, as a great poetry which belongs to every effort of hu- national work. Few rate more highly than man ambition, of the beauty which bears ourselves the magnificence of Audubon's company with every step of civilization, will collections; the artistic power, which he deride us as utilitarian, or denounce us as has thrown into his drawings, giving his at once visionary and materialist, if, by ornithological subjects the attractiveness of way of illustration, we venture to assert, some professed picture by Snyders or Landthat in the magnificent structures which seer, (distancing, let us add, Hondeköeter, steam conveyance has originated, we have the court painter of Poultry, by many a more chance of a new order of architecture, rifle's length),-few have enjoyed more |