The

Since the appearance of our last number, | nasties, too little to the freedom of peoples. the great fact in this country in relation to But shall we cry out for this reason - Let the war has been the desertion of the nation- there be no war? So have some men played al cause by men from whom the nation had the game of Russia,— refusing to cripple the a right to expect better things. The smaller great foe of liberty at all, because every lesser Peelites we could spare without concern. Sir foe is not to be equally crippled at the same James Graham might add yet another change time. Our status quo dream, however, is now to the all sorts of changes which have pre- of the past. We have drifted far beyond ceded, and no man feel much either of sorrow that. Austria and Prussia might have made or surprise. But that Mr. Gladstone and the war too much a war of dynasties - thanks Lord John Russell should have gone over to to those powers, there is now the chance of the side of the enemy at such a moment is a its becoming something much better. grave matter. The statesmanship of the first hoisting of the Union Jack on the isthmus has proved to be the statesmanship of books of Perekop may rouse the sleepers at Vienna mawkish and treacherous when brought into and Berlin, but they will have slept too long. the actual world. The statesmanship of the Sebastopol has fallen. The Crimea evacsecond has been the great Whig drag, im- uated, Russia, we are told, will only be less peding nearly all liberal measures in the Low-disposed than ever to think of peace. er Ilouse for many years past. Lord John doubt of it. If, Alexander II. should submay now attempt to play the great Liberal mit, like Louis XIV., to humiliating terms, again for such has been his wont in every it will be because the strong hand of necesseason of displacement - but it will be too sity has imposed them. Russia must not be late. The experiment has been made too often. expected to think of peace while she has the Most sincerely do we hope, that no great slightest chance of regaining what she had interest of this country will ever be intrusted lost in war. It is an idiot dream to suppose again, either to our late Chancellor of the that she may be soothed into peaceful tendenExchequer, or to our late representative at cies. If her brigand temper be ever curbed, Vienna. We may say of Lord John as of it must be by the strong hand. Lord Brougham, it would have been well for his reputation if he had lived out little more than half his days.

Lord Palmerston is no prodigy either of political consistency or of political earnestness. The war, too, it may be, has had too much respect in its beginning to the safety of dy

No

But the power of Russia, say some, is great, her will indomitable. Yes-and see you not in that the horrors of the sway with which Europe is menaced? The truth lies in a small space. The Allies must beat, or be beaten- that is, must save the independence of Europe, or resign it to Czarism.

THE PRESENT.

Do not crouch to-day, and worship
The old Past, whose life is fled.
Hush your voice to tender reverence;
Crown'd he lies, but cold and dead:
For the Present reigns our monarch,
With an added weight of hours,
Honor her, for she is mighty!
Honor her, for she is ours!

See the shadows of his heroes

Girt around her cloudy throne;
And each day the ranks are strengthen'd
By great hearts to him unknown;
Noble things the great Past promised,

Holy dreams, both strange and new;
But the Present shall fulfil them,
What he promised, she shall do.

She inherits all his treasures,
She is heir to all his fame,
And the light that lightens round her
Is the lustre of his name;
She is wise with all his wisdom,

Living on his grave she stands,
On her brow she bears his laurels,
And his harvests in her hands.

Coward, can she reign and conquer
If we thus her glory dim?
Let us fight for her as nobly

As our fathers fought for him.
God, who crowns the dying ages,
Bids her rule, and us obey.
Bids us cast our lives before her,
With our loving hearts, to-day!
Household Words.

From the Examiner.

The Song of Hiawatha. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Bogue.

MR. LONGFELLOW has here done his best to accomplish for the Indian border-land of America what years ago Walter Scott did for our own Scottich border-land. He has given it a poetical interest, and sought to link with it enduring associations. Nor will such a service be a slight one. All future wanderers across those prairies, all who may penetrate the pine forests of the North-western States, track the course of the Upper Mississippi, or explore the shore of the Great Lake, will have reason to be grateful to the poet. Something to complete the charm was absent until now. No tradition linked the present with the past. No rich imagination, no warmth or wealth of fancy, had lighted up the scene. Travellers, and tourists in America hereafter will owe a debt of honest gratitude to the Song of Hiawatha.

"the rushing of great rivers
Through their palisades of pine trees,
And the thunder in the mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their eyries."

These "innumerable echoes" are one of the most marked features in the song. Like the Hebrew poets, whose verses reply to each other in measured cadence, the Indian songsinger never fails to repeat the more emphatic closing lines of every section, varying in words, the same in substance. The result is a peculiar and original, and certainly very effective, wildness.

There is, however, another peculiarity in the poem, which is also as certainly original, but not effective at all. This is the too abundant use of Indian words. So far is this carried, that if Mr. Longfellow had wished, in his professional capacity, to give us a course of Ojibway, he could hardly have done more. Nor might we gracefully have declined such a close to the duties of a chair And here at home we have reason to be he has discharged so long with so much grateful. In giving a new life to the far honor. But as English readers and not AmerWest, Mr. Longfellow has also brought the spirit of it to our firesides. We get all that was worth preserving of the Red Man, and may gladly and gratefully consign the rest of him to extirpation and silence.

The Song of Hiawatha is a tale of Indian mythology. Its hero is one who lived, prayed, toiled, and fasted for his people's good; who was prophet and king, at once a ruler and a seer, the first of all the " mystery men"; who taught the maize to grow, and the weeds to yield their healing virtues; who invented the canoe for the waters, and hunted down the enemies of his race; and who at last, his mission ended, and his work performed, underwent human loss and sorrow, and faded away in the light of dawning Christianity. With this main story are interwoven tradition and legend, descriptions

ican students, we must protest against an introduction of such quantities of miserable, harsh, unpleasing, useless words into an English poem. Proper names are admissible. Minnehaha (so called after the most sparkling of waterfalls), Nokomis, Hiawatha himself, and others- to these we cannot reasonably object. But to be bored with the Ojibway for "blue heron," or crawfish," or seagulls," is quite unnecessary. They add no real local truth to the picture. They weary and annoy the reader. What possible object can lines like these serve unless it be to remind us how Adam named the animals :

66

66

"Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee,
Saw the blueberry, Meenahga,
And the strawberry, Odahmin,
And the gooseberry, Shahbomin,
And the grape vine, the Bemahgut.”

of scenery and sketches of life, pathetic, Or these :
humorous, fanciful, playful, all very fresh
and new, and all tinted with the rich color-
ing of an Indian summer.

The metre of the poem has been boldly chosen - but we are not disposed to think unwisely. Its unrhymed trochees appear at first monotonous and strange; but as we read on we see their meaning and intention better, and still as we advance they speak to us more and more clearly of

"Kago, kago! do not touch it,

Ah kaween!' said Mudjekeewis.” Mr. Longfellow must really be persuaded to banish from his fifth, or his fiftieth edition, such specimens of "unknown tongues."

Small blemishes are they, however, in a volume of so much beauty and tender grace. Every page shows us something we would gladly transfer to our columns, particularly

that section of it which seems to us fullest squirrel watches them as they travel through

of fancy and choice expression - the Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis. But we have space only for two short quotations, by no means remarkable; we could easily choose a hundred such.

Hiawatha has a friend, Chibiabos, "the sweet singer," who has died, and Hiawatha sits in his wigwam lamenting.

"He is dead, the sweet musician!
He the sweetest of all singers!
He has gone from us forever,
He has moved a little nearer
To the master of all music,
To the master of all singing!
O my brother, Chibiabos!

"And the melancholy fir trees
Waved their dark green fans above him,
Waved their purple cones above him,
Sighing with him to console him,
Mingling with his lamentation

Their complaining, their lamenting."

his woods.

"From the sky the sun benignant

Looked upon them through the branches,
Saying to them, 'O my children,
Love is sunshine, hate is shadow,
Life is checkered shade and sunshine:
Rule by love, O Hiawatha !'

"From the sky the moon looked at them,
Filled the lodge with mystic splendors,
Whispered to them, O my children,
Day is restless, night is quiet,
Man imperious, woman feeble,
Half is mine, although I follow :

Rule by patience, Laughing Water!'"'

Mr. Longfellow's reputation will, we think, be raised by the Song of Hiawatha; it is by far, in our judgment, the most original of all his productions; though we do not expect it to be immediately popular. Its peculiarities of subject, of treatment, particularly of metre, may forbid this. But when these get familAs brief must be our closing extract.iarized to the taste and the ear, its beauties Hiawatha has wooed and won fair Minnehaha (or Laughing Water), a daughter of the Dacotahs. He is bringing her home, and all nature is rejoicing in his joy. The bluebird and the robin sing out congratulation, and the

will open out and display themselves more freely, and it will appear generally what it really is, a charming poem, and an undoubtedly high work of art.

NEW SECT IN WHITE. To whom did Henry IV. refer in his opening speech to the Parliament, when he made the following announcement?

"And whereas the King hath certainly understood that a new sect hath risen up, clothed in white vesture, and assuming to themselves great sanctity, and whereas the people of this realm may lightly consent and be perverted by its novelty, their alms be diverted, and the kingdom itself be subverted, should the new professors enter the realm: therefore, by the advice of the Lords spiritual and temporal, the King hath ordained by proclamation that every county and seaport shall be shut against them; and any one harboring or maintaining them shall forfeit all that he is able to forfeit." Rolls.

J. W.

[Mosheim has given some account of this sect in his Eccles. Hist., book III. pt. II. ch. 5: "In Italy a new sect, that of the White-clad Brethren, or the Whites (fratres albati, seu Candida), produced no little excitement among the people. Near the beginning of the fifteenth century a certain unknown priest descended from the Alps, clad in a white garment, with an immense number of people of both sexes in his train, all clothed like their leader, in white linen, whence their name of the White Brethren. This multitude

marched through various provinces, following a cross borue by the leader of the sect, and by a great show of piety, so captivated the people that numberless persons of every kind joined its ranks. Boniface X., fearing soine plot, ordered the leader of this host to be apprehended and committed to the flames. After his death the multitude gradually dispersed."] — Notes and Queries.

QUOTATIONS WANTED. - Who are the authors of the following? —

"Qui jacet in terra, ron habet unde cadat." "Vox audita perit, litera scripta manet."

From the Critic. ing he ever made, and which had long hung The Crayon: a Journal devoted to the Graph-framed under that roof." Another drawing, ic Arts and the Literature related to them." a slight sketch," was purchased by the inVol. I. New York: Stillman and Du- defatigable worshipper from a clerk in the rand. London: Trübner and Co.

if they will do me the justice to examine,
with some attention, the drawing which I
shall take care to have in the next New York
Exhibition, if it may then be accepted... ·
You sent me two rather formidable queries
in your last private note to me.
On one

employ of Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co., Ruskin's publishers; and this last, with THIS first volume of an American weekly autograph appended, was sent to the New publication, the scope of which is sufficiently York Academy Exhibition, where it excited indicated by its title, deserves notice on ac- much criticism and considerable ridicule. Mr. count of its novelty of plan, as well as the Ruskin, on hearing of this transaction, is enthusiasm that evidently actuates its con- naturally very much annoyed, and writes a ductors. It offers no bait of pretty engrav-letter to The Crayon, of which the following ings, like the so-called "Art" periodicals passages have more than merely local interof our own country, but relies upon an earn- est:- "Until I was 18 or 19, I was totally est exposition of, and commentary upon, the ignorant of the first principles of drawing profound principles of the graphic arts to and as I never had any invention, it would interest and edify its readers. Its motto is be difficult to produce anything more confrom "Modern Painters"-"Whence, in temptible in every way than the sort of fine, looking to the whole kingdom of organ- sketch I used to make in my boyhood. Nor ic nature, we find that our full receiving of do I at present rest my hope of being of serits beauty depends, first on the sensibility, vice as a critic on any power of painting. and then on the accuracy and touchstone When I praise Turner, I do not think I can faithfulness of the heart in its moral judg- rival him, any more than in praising Shakments; " and Ruskin's writings are its chief speare I suppose myself capable of writing oracles. The editor has disinterred and re- another Lear.' But I can now draw steadpublished a long series of papers entitled ily, thoroughly, and rightly, up to a certain "The Poetry of Architecture; or the Archi- point; and as the American public have seen tecture of the Nations of Europe, considered my child-work, I shall be grateful to them in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character, by Kata Phusin," which appeared in Loudon's Architectural Magazine about eighteen years ago, and are from the hand of Ruskin. These are interesting as compositions, belonging to the vernal season of a style which has since reached so What are the limits of detail?' I have elaborate and full-colored a development, something like sixty pages of talk in the third and also as showing the careful study and volume of Modern Painters,' which, if I thought bestowed by the young man upon live, will be out about Christmas; but I may his subject, along with that nicety of obser- answer hurriedly, as you will at once undervation, at once poetic and microscope, which stand what I mean, that as far as you can is so rare and exquisite a gift. But these see detail you should always paint it-if papers also exhibit very distinctly, in their you intend your picture to be a finished one, cruder modes of expression, his tendency to and to be placed where its finished painting fantastic and incoherent deductions from ill- can be seen. . . . In every picture intended established premises, assuming the guise of for finished work, and intended to be seen logical accuracy and the boldness of indispu- near, the limit of detail is-visibility-and table truth. We also, from an attempt or no other." The Crayon is also an advocate two which are utter failures, catch a hint of of the Pre-Raphaelite school of painting, the deficiency of humor in Ruskin, in com- which appears to have many warm admirers mon perhaps with most very dogmatic mon. on the other side of the Atlantic. For the The Oxford graduate is much more pas- rest, it contains some poetry, not particusionately honored and admired in America larly noticeable either as bad or excellent, than in his own country; and from this feel- and a great deal of aesthetic criticism, which ing, a somewhat amusing incident took its is, we much fear, like most such ware, rather rise in connection with the Academy of De- enthusiastic than strong, rather flatulent sign in New York last spring. An American than nutritious. Enthusiasm, however, is enthusiast, it appears, visiting Mr. Ruskin's at all events a living condition, and we wish house at Denmark Hill, in his absence, our youthful contemporary all manner of obtained from the house-keeper, “in addisuccess and development, internal and extion to other precious little reminiscences ternal. of genius, probably the first preserved draw