failed more in this part of his work, cess. and stretching peacefully along towards the end, like a stream running through a level meadow, with no ripple to break the evenness of its flow. The author, however, has left us the proof that he is competent for the work. Half of the Spenserian verses are good. The one which we have selected is well woven and beautiful. There are many hearts in our land that can feel the beauty and force of the following passage. "The noble, dauntless pioneers Journeying afar new homes to raise Theirs be the highest meed of praise! Hath faced the spear, the cannon's breath, For mingling with it comes the dream For whom their lives of pain are given; The sol. There are many songs scattered effect in their connexion. along the book, that are beautiful in dier's song in the fourth canto, themselves, and have a pleasing commencing, "Oh, in the bowl we'll drown dull care, And think not of the morrow," The senti flows very sweetly. Moray's lament over the body of Owaola, his faithful friend and guide, is simple and touching. "Last of thy race! I will not weep Though sweet the love and passing deep, No! sleep, since all thy kindred sleep, And I will lay thee here, where ceaselessly They were to thee in life most dear, Alas! they have become thy bier, May naught thy solitary sleep molest, The song that steals to the ear of Moray, when confined in fort Mackinaw, we commend to the reader for its tenderness and pathos. The war-song of Tecumseh, in the last canto, breathes the true Indian spirit. In fact, the songs are all more or less marked in this respect. We shall close this part of our subject, "Within a wood extending wide, We give only the opening of the passage, but we cannot commend the whole of it too highly. It ranks among the very highest order of descriptive poetry. In this situation, Tecumseh meets her, and they have their last sad interview. It was a fine fancy of the author, to leave his reader by the lonely tomb of Tecumseh. After journeying so long through the wilderness-following the hero through so many scenes of danger and adventure, it acts like a talisman upon the mind, to stand thus by his solitary grave, embosomed with trees. Whatever defects may be found in this poem, by a critical eye, we have no doubt that its general beauty and fine effect, will be every where acknowledged. It touches the heart. It lingers in the memory. Its sweet and tender spirit grows upon the reader. Its nationality, its truth-like descriptions, its story of deep and abiding love, will win for it favor and heartfelt thanks. To the West it must have a dear and home-like interest. To the Englishman it must present charms, in this picture of a life so far removed from his daily experience. [Jan. DICKENS' NOTES ON AMERICA.* WHEN it was announced that "Charles Dickens, Esq." intended to visit the United States, our cu riosity was somewhat excited to see the man, who had so suddenly written himself into notoriety and fortune. We had laughed at the adventures of Mr. Pickwick, we had wept over the story of poor Oliver, we had followed with interest "the uprisings and downfallings of the Nickleby family," we had sympathized with little Nell in her childish trials, we had been pleasantly relieved in moments of ennui by some light sketch, half-comical, half-serious, from the pen of Boz, and were thus prepared to receive him with good-natured cordiality. But when we reflected on his moral and religious principles as developed in his writings, and on the unfortunate tendency of those writings in many particulars, we were as fully prepared to treat him with indifference; or at least, to show him no more than the ordinary courtesy due to strangers, should he chance to fall in our way. In fact, after dwelling on these latter considerations, (the force of which may perhaps be exhibited in the sequel of these remarks,) our curiosity so far subsided, that when we were informed that "Charles Dickens, Esq." had actually arrived in our city, and would receive his friends at the hotel near by, we did not even do ourselves the honor to look him in the face. We were not in the least agitated by the intelligence; we simply responded to it with the unfailing "yes, sir," and pursued our evening vocations with as much nonchalance, as if " Charles Dickens, Esq." had been three thousand miles away. * American Notes for General Circulation. By CHARLES DICKENS. erary merit, which rendered us so Nor was it an indifference to litapathetic on this occasion. Had we been favored with such an opportunity of being introduced to the illus trious author of Waverley, we should have embraced it with eagerness, and have considered ourselves honored in the interview. been informed that our own honHad we ored Irving was stopping for the night so near us, we should have hastened to tender him our respects, and have felt a pride in exchanging salutations with one who is the ornament of American literature. We had always conceded to Mr. Dickens much merit, as a writer of a certain sort; we had even been ranked among his admirers, for rendering to him the admiration due to genius, but we felt that his literary reputation was insufficient to overbalance that moral obliquity, which made it inconsistent with our self-respect, to be particularly respectful towards him. We were, nevertheless, interested in observing from our countrymen; and on the the reception which he met with whole, it accorded well with our expectations. learning and honorable distinction, There were men of who, willing for a season to overlook his faults, and eager perhaps to give him a favorable impression of American manners and hospitality, made him their guest, and entertained him with marked kindness and attention. Others, of a per, stood aloof from the movement more thoughtful and cautious temthat would make Boz, like Lafayette, the nation's guest, feeling that the ordinary attention paid to strangers might suffice for a man with no other distinction than what he had attained as a writer of droll sketches and stories of low life. It soon became apparent, however, that the men of fashion and pleasure, the patrons of theaters, balls, and other like scenes of moral culture and innocent amusement, the lovers of wine, cards and billiards -gentlemen par excellence-mani fested a peculiar interest in Mr. Dickens, and were disposed to claim him as their own. Accordingly, the Gothamites would allow the lordly distinction of seeing the British lion to none, who could not pay ten dollars for the privilege. They converted the theater, which had long rendered "a beggarly account of empty boxes," into one vast saloon, brilliantly illuminated, decorated with illustrations from the writings of Boz, and crowded with the beauty and fashion, the foppery and coquetry of the city, where, amid the voluptuous swell of music, the giddy dance, and the splendid banquet, Mr. Dickens was introduced to American society. Whether he was satisfied with this specimen of native manners, or whether he was less flattered by such a reception, than he would have been by the quiet attentions of literary men, we are not informed; but immediately afterwards, he made the necessary brevity of his visit, a pretext for declining other invitations to similar entertainments. Whatever may have been his opinion of the mode adopted by the New Yorkers to tender him their respects, there were not a few, who inferred from the personal appearance of "Charles Dickens, Esq.," and his apparent anxiety to be esteemed a man of fashion and to mingle in the scenes of fashionable life, that no other mode could have been selected more in harmony with his character and feelings. And here we cannot resist the temptation to turn aside for a moment, to give our readers a brief account of the origin and education of this same "Charles Dickens, Esq. ;" and this we do, for the more particular edification of his Vol. I. 9 "numerous friends" in this country, who were eager to pay their respects to him, under the impres sion, that he was an English gentleman, who had good humoredly spent his leisure moments, in rambling along the lower walks of life in quest of amusement for the higher classes. We have not been able to trace his pedigree back far enough, to ascertain whether any of his ancestors. fought by the side of William the Conqueror, at Hastings, or followed the lion-hearted Richard to Palestine. We have not learned, whether some Dickens of the olden time, was with the chivalry of England, at Cressy, or at Agincourt. Nor have we been able to determine the connection between the house of Dickens, and the Percys, the Howards, or the Russells. All that we can say is, that, according to the best accounts, the father of our hero was, or is, connected with the London press, getting a decent living by gathering or inventing accidents and anecdotes for the newspapers; and that, accordingly, "Charles Dickens, Esq." was educated to the profession of a police reporter. It was in this humble, though honest calling, that he be came so familiar with courts and prisons, Bow Street and St. Giles'. Here too was developed that peculiar talent for caricaturing, in which Mr. Dickens excels. Finding that this talent might be exercised to advantage, he wrote and published various humorous sketches, till at length he came before the world as the author of Pickwick. The "Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" had a rapid sale, and Mr. Dickens soon found himself, with an increasing popularity, in the enjoyment of an ample income. All this we, as Americans, regard as more respectable than any mere pedigree, running back even to the Conquest. But Mr. Dickens, unable to bear this sudden turn of fortune with the equanimity that ought ever to characterize the nobility of genius, puts on airs as if he be longed by birth and breeding, to those higher classes which constitute the "Corinthian capital" of English society. Mistaken effort! It is not by wearing white kid gloves on a railroad and steamboat journey in a New England February-it is not by being unable to understand the possibility of a gentleman's dining earlier than the latest possible hour-it is not by the most punctilious observance of the arbitrary conventionalities of fashionable life-least of all, is it by a fault-finding, querulous disposition in respect to accommodations at an inn, or on board ship-that true good breeding is infallibly known. Yet the reading of this book, as well as some Boziana' which have come to our knowledge from other sources, incline us to the opinion, that Mr. Dickens has mistaken such things as these for the surest indications of a fine gentleman, or perhaps for the very quality of gentility itself. Sometimes we have even queried, whether his studied cool contempt for religion in every form-the scorn which he so obtrusively expresses for the low practice of total abstinence from intoxicating drinks -and the sympathy which he seems to have with those who have no interest in the miseries and vices of the poor, except as matters of gov. ernmental regulation, or picturesque objects of contemplation, do not also enter into his idea of a high bred gentleman. It often fares with pretenders to high breeding, as with pretenders to godliness; they know something traditionally about "the form," but "the power" is beyond the sphere of their knowledge; and thus, while they make an ostentatious and perhaps troublesome display of the former, they cannot but expose themselves by their manifest deficiencies in respect to the latter. And here, as we find ourselves tending to a somewhat philosophic mood, we may take occasion to observe that the reception which any foreigner of note meets with among us, is to some extent, a mirror of his own character. The class of socie ty with which he becomes acquainted, the character of his admirers, and the marks of distinction with which they favor him, are so many indications of the manner in which he has impressed himself upon the public mind. How different, proba. bly, have been the impressions made on the mind of Lord Morpeth, by his visit to America, from those received by Mr. Dickens; and that mainly for the reason that the truly gentlemanly demeanor and the unsullied reputation of the former, introduced him into circles in which the latter was not at all at home. If the illustrious Brougham or the revered and venerable Chalmers, should cross the Atlantic, how dif ferent would be their opinions of American society and institutions, from those of the Marryatts and the Trollopes. Those travelers who have attempted to describe American manners, have often succeeded in describing the manners only of that particular class of society to which they have been able to gain admission; or of that particular class which their habits and their intellectual and moral sympathies enabled them to understand. And the best mode of reforming American manners, which some of these writers could adopt, would be to reform their own manners, and then return and view themselves in a mirror into which they were before unable to look. Whether Mr. Dickens was acquainted with the principle just stated, and felt that it would hardly be complimentary to himself to speak of those who in some instances were forward to welcome him, we cannot say; but for some reason he has deemed it expedient to make no al. |