ionship; and they would people dungeons, now that they cannot people palaces.

The humble aspirant has more to contend with than he who sits in royal halls. He is obliged to bear the reproach of mean extraction, and the stinging jests to which, even in republican America, it makes him obnoxious; whereas the child of fortune looks back with boastful pride upon his ancestry, and counts with insulting coolness upon the conquests which his thousands bring. Does he outstrip his former peers in age and rank? They send after him a glance of envy; and instead of imitating his virtues, dedicate themselves to the exposure and exaggeration of his vices.

But the assaults of those who may be his equals in rank, if they have the malignity, certainly have not the scorn, which characterizes the conduct of individuals who, from their position in society, affect to look down upon him. "The proud man's contumely" is enumerated by the great poet of nature among the bitter things "that patient merit of the unworthy takes." Such is the prejudice of aristocracy, that those persons are eternally thinking of what he was, and not observing what he is. A change so sudden and so great is incredible. "Is not this the carpenter's son?"

Other classes of inferior adversaries there are; who, knowing his strength, and fearing to confront him, loiter behind, to drive their daggers into his

back. By those whose eyes are sharpened with malignity, every action is misconstrued. Freedom is mistaken for rudeness, reserve for haughtiness, and gayety for frivolity.

*

*

*

IV. THE INDIAN.

(1843.)

"I feel the awful presence of my fate."

THE last chapters in the history of the Indians are soon to be recorded. They have passed the zenith ot their days, and are now sinking rapidly beyond the horizon. The council fires have gone out upon our mountains, and the wigwams have fallen upon our plains.

The Indian has disappeared before the march of civilization, like withered leaves before the tempest. He has seen the decline of his power, and the eclipse of his glory. He has suffered the usurpation of his rights, and the appropriation of his domain, by those whom he welcomed as friends and benefactors. He beholds in himself an outcast from the land of his fathers, a fugitive from the hands of conquest.

And the memory of these is to him a living presence. Like some strong mountain plant, which the rocks have nurtured in their clefts, in defiance of storm and hurricane, the remembrance of the past

survives in the freshness of spring. history but tradition to remind him

True, he has no

"How flourished once his haughty race
And how it proudly fell;"

yet, cold as its damp brow may be, it burns its lessons in with types of fire. The warrior summons around him the young and the brave over our vast range of empire; he points; his eye, all eyes, linger mournfully upon the scene. The lakes in liquid links bind the harmonious parts; and the rivers, proud and majestic, roll on to mingle their floods with the waves of old ocean. The heart saddens at the picture; and can we wonder that, in the rupture of generous cords, they groan-" Revenge!"

66

That they "are destined to slow but sure extinction," is the prediction of sagacious minds. Such, indeed, is the blinding presentiment expressed by one of their number. Said a noble chief, you will cease to persecute us, for we shall cease to exist." This is the language of prophecy; and he was admonished to utter it by the shades of his ancestors, and the remnants which were left of powerful tribes.

There are various causes, which, in their bearings, tend to facilitate the declension and the extermination of the race. They are remarkably tenacious in their adherence to the traditions and superstitions of their ancestors. Indeed, their attachment amounts to reverence; and when, therefore, these relics are infringed upon, a whole nation is aroused

to arms. They fight, and are conquered. The flowers of the tribe are sacrificed; and the trunk, leafless and scathed, stands, it may be, a few years, the monument of their rashness and devotion.

Their indolent and inactive habits prove another road to their final extirpation. Ennui begets vice, vice excess, and excess ruin. Intemperance, the chalice which the white man pressed to the lips of the savage, whose demoralizing and debasing influence is felt throughout Christendom, keeps open the fountains of destruction. The "fire water"

not only consumes its devotee, but incites brother against brother, and becomes the destroying agent of whole empires.

Nor is this all. Another and a greater draft is being made upon the feeble stamina of that once controlling race. They are folding to their bosoms the vampire that sucks the very life-blood from their veins. It is not the sweeping pestilence, the desolation of intestine war, nor the burning hand of the midnight marauder. It is the malady of the spirit, the poison which a Christian brother infused into their soul to waste their existence.

The Indian has passed the Rubicon to his own destiny. He needs not, like the Macedonian monarch, the admonitory voice of a slave to remind him of his mortality. It is written upon the iron brow of the veteran cacique; it is treasured up in the heart-chambers of his people. Nursing his doom with the devotion of a mother, he looks not

around nor behind him. The grave is before him; and with his eye fixed upon the welcoming heavens, he presses forward, "gathering comfort from the Eternal Law."

ར.

"THERE IS A PLEASURE IN THE PATH

LESS WOODS."

(1843.)

"THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods," which the proudest efforts of human skill fail to awaken. We discover in the one little of that vastness and sublimity which are characteristic of the other. There is a grandeur in the scale of the developments of creation, which has no parallel in the studied boldness of achieving art. The latter is bounded; the other without limit. In nature, the never ending variety of objects, arrayed in harmonious succession, precludes the possibility of monotony, and spreads out an entertainment upon which the mind banquets with unsatiated delight.

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods," that can never be realized in the crowded saloon, or in the sociality and confidence of friends; an emotion which partakes of the sublime, which carries the soul upward toward its God, subduing and harmonizing the discordant elements of a rebellious

nature.

>