Εζετ' ἀναβάδην τυράννη γ'· ἄρτον ἡδε καὶ μέλι pp. 176, 177. There is a beautiful Latin version of the Antistrophic choral ode in Alcestis, beginning 'Eyà, xaì dià Móvous, by Mr. Drury the editor, and an excellent one of the "Burial of Sir John Moore," by James Hildyard, A. M., Fellow of Christ College, which we should be glad to transfer to these pages, but have not room for them. The last part of the volume is in a more serious strain, consisting mainly of religious poems and prayers, all translated with great beauty. But we must take leave of this agreeable collection of the gayeties and gravities of our learned brethren across the water. When will such a volume appear from an American University? ART. II. 1. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. By GEORGE CATLIN. Written during Eight Years' Travel amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America. in 1832, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, and '39. 2 vols., 8vo., with 400 Illustrations, carefully engraved from his Original Paintings. pp. 264, 266. New York: Wiley & Putnam. In 2. American Antiquities and Researches into the Origin and History of the Red Race. By ALEXANDER W. BRADFORD. New York: Dayton & Saxton. Boston: Saxton & Pierce. 8vo. pp. 435. MR. CATLIN, whose work lies before us, went to the western country, some eight or ten years ago, as a portrait and landscape painter, with an ardent enthusiasm for the Indian character, and a keen eye for the beautiful and the picturesque. A native of the sylvan valley of the Wyoming, his early impressions appear to have been tinctured with tales of the thrilling and tragic scenes of which that portion of Pennsylvania became so celebrated a theatre, during the American Revolution. But these, instead of creating preju dices in his mind against the race, who were the principal actors in these deeds of cruelty, would appear to have imparted an additional interest to their subsequent fate and for tunes. An early bias for his art was smothered by parental preference for the legal profession, in the study and practice of which some five or six years were thrown away, when he resumed his pencil in the city which gave West to the art; and he soon found his preference fixed on the attractive and novel branch of it, which is furnished by the portraiture and scenery of Indian life. To pursue this with effect, he soon discovered that it would be necessary to leave the cities of the Atlantic coast, and proceed into the great area of the Mississippi valley, immense portions of which are still in the occupancy of the Indian tribes. To enter this area, was, at once, to disclose the immensity, the perpetual expansion to which the circle of civilization is subject, and the great number of fierce, warlike, and barbaric tribes, who still flourish and reign over the vast prairies of the upper Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Arkansas. On reaching St. Louis, near the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri, he found himself only on the threshold of his field, and in his search for "the West" felt much like the poet, in making a similar inquiry ; "Ask where 's the North? at York 't is on the Tweed, In Scotland at the Orcades; and there, At Greenland, Zembla, and the Lord knows where." Mr. Catlin proceeded up the Missouri in a steamboat to the mouth of the Yellowstone, a computed distance of two thousand miles. He then returned to St. Louis, and, the next season, got under convoy of the exploratory detachment of United States Dragoons, who were sent to open an intercourse with, and demand reparation for some depredations committed by, remote tribes. This detachment (whose march is memorable for the death, by fever, of General H. Leavenworth, of the United States Army) set out from Fort Gibson, and laying its course in a southwest direction across the Arkansas, penetrated to the Camanche, Kiowa, and Pawnee Pict villages, near to the base of the Rocky Mountains, a point only reached before by adventurous hunters and trappers," or the trading caravans to Santa Fe. He afterwards ascended the Mississippi from St. Louis to St. Anthony's Falls in a steamboat, descended it in a birchbark canoe to his starting-point, visited the seacoast of Florida, and, with the return of another season, revisited St. Peter's, by the way of the Lakes, and from this point penetrated to the Coteau des Praries, a vast elevation, without forest, whose rocky foundations give limits and direction to the sweeping current of the Missouri. There he found and examined the Red Pipe-Stone quarry, so celebrated in the Indian lore of the West; and, in the glazed or vitreous surface of the precipitous quartzy rock overlying it, he verifies, without being aware of it, Captain Carver's story of the "Shining Mountains," which, like too many of this hardy old explorer's descriptions, have been long set down as fabulous. Mr. Catlin also visited the chief points accessible to steamboats on the upper Lakes, passed across the territory of Wisconsin from Green Bay, and saw some other portions of the country, whose minuter features it is no part of our design to specify. The better part of eight years, with intervals of repose, was covered by these long, hazardous, and fatiguing journeys. Wherever he went he carried his easel, his portfolio, and his paint pots, and, for the time being, he erected his studio in the most wild and remote of the Indian hamlets. But above all, he carried his warm feelings of admiration for the nobler traits of the red race, his accurate observation of their personal features, their costume, and wild sports, and his pictorial skill in transferring those features to the canvass. His pencil seems to have had the effect of Goldsmith's flute upon, those on whose hospitality he threw himself. It made him everywhere an agreeable visitor, and conciliated friendship. He possessed still another trait, which is also a characteristic feature of his work, namely, an eye for the often magnificent and novel scenery, which came before him. He evinced a high degree of perseverance in the collection and preservation of the native costumes, implements, and manufactures, regardless of cost; and he added to all, a racy, straight-forward, off-hand mode of describing them. His portraits of chiefs, and other persons, are deemed to be faithful representations of their originals, and have merited the approbation of numerous and respectable individuals in the West, VOL. LIV. - No. 115. 37 acquainted with both. Numbers of the plates, illustrating his work, consist of full-length likenesses and groups, which accurately display the costumes and attitudes of the tribes he visited. Others depict their dwellings, ceremonial lodges, implements and arms, or striking features of the scenery, bringing vividly to the eye what books of travels in those regions have never before done so well. In each of these recited branches of the economical and ceremonial history and present condition of the aboriginal race, Mr. Catlin is conceived to have supplied a desideratum. This constitutes, alone, the leading characteristic, and the chief merit, of the work. Others have described the physiognomy and dress of the Indians; Mr. Catlin has painted them. Books and letters and verbal reports, in one way or another, have heretofore apprized the public of novel and striking scenes in the cliffs and prairies, and wild and fantastic valleys, of the "far West"; but Mr. Catlin has portrayed them on his canvass, and he thus imparts a freshness and novelty to his pages, which cannot but impress the reader. Some of these plates convey an idea of the geological structure of the country. The author, after his return, and during the intervals of his travels, attempted to turn to account his time, and money, and skill, by exhibiting his collection of paintings, costumes, &c., in this country, in which he excited a general interest; but without realizing, in some respects, the highest wishes of his friends, and the friends of the Indian race. His "Indian Gallery," the best of the kind ever exhibited, was visited and admired and praised. Although illustrating rather the ornamental, than the useful products of aboriginal skill, and thus differing from Mr. Dunn's "Chinese Museum," it was exceedingly attractive to all, and one of the best means, perhaps, of awakening sympathy for the race. He had also, in the course of his peregrinations, sketched the outlines of his observations, from time to time, for the newspapers of the day, through which they were warmly received, and extensively perused by the public. He took his collection to the seat of government at Washington, under the hope of depositing it there, for the future gratification and study of his countrymen; but it is still the condition of our affairs, to be too essentially engrossed with objects of a practical kind, to permit the application of large sums for the promotion of the fine arts, or the patronage of science, letters, or antiquities. Under these circumstances, about two or three years ago, Mr. Catlin went to Europe, taking the result of his skill and enterprise with him, and we notice that he has established his Gallery" in London. Such is a brief outline of the history and origin of this performance. 66 We have stated the prominent merits of the work, and shall subjoin a few extracts. We do not feel disposed to hold the author to a systematic plan, nor to represent him as having completely avoided descriptive, geographical, or theoretical errors, or literary blemishes. His method is discursive and rambling by design. He did not sit down to write a formal treatise or disquisition; far less to aim at a philosophical work. It was his design to send out sketches of Indian customs and manners, which, so far as they went, should exhibit the native in a new and true light. He wished to impart fresh interest to a subject that had been underrated, and had palled on the public appetite. He aimed to do with the pen, what he had so successfully done with the pencil. What impressed him as worthy of record, he recorded. He picked up traits, he gleaned information, — not of the dead, but of the living, wherever he went. And to this end, pen and pencil were both employed. He often paddled his own canoe; he hunted buffaloes; he attended feasts and dances; his eye and his hand were in perpetual requisition. He had not leisure, or other means, to investigate traditions, or collate evidence. He put in his notebook, as he went along, whatever struck his thoughts, or pleased his fancy. Such are the impressions we derive from an attentive perusal of his book; and he appears to have feared, that the recasting of the matter thus thrown out, or its formal revision, or re-concoction, would detract from its interest, its freshness, or its originality. "I am travelling in this country," he says,* "not to advance or to prove theories, but to see all that I am able to see, and to tell it, in the simplest and most intelligible manner I can, to the world for their own conclusions; or for theories I may feel disposed to advance after I get out of this singular country, where all the powers of one's faculties are required, and much better employed, I consider, in helping him along, and * Vol. I. p. 206. |