uncouth. Some writers are said to advance on stilts; our author may be said to proceed difficultly, strainingly, jerkingly through mire. The charge of a want of nationality is somewhat stale, but as copies of the works of Mr. Mathews have gone abroad, it is proper to say that nothing has ever been printed in this country that exhibits less the national character. It is not intended here to say that The Politicians and Puffer Hopkins are German, French, or English, but merely that they are not in any kind or degree American. The most servile of all our copyists have thus far been those who have talked most of originality, as if to divert attention from their felt deficiencies in this respect. Our "Young America" had not wit enough to coin for itself a name, but must parody one used in England; and in its pronunciamento in favour of a fresh and vigorous literature, it adopts a quaint phraseology, that so far from having been born here, or even naturalized, was never known among us, except to the readers of very old books and the Address of the Copyright Club. In all its reviews of literature and art, the standards are English, which would be well | enough, perhaps, if they were English standards, but they are the fifth rate men with whose writings only their own can be compared. Their very clamor about Americanism is borrowed from the most worthless foreign scribblers, and has reference chiefly to the comparatively unimportant matter of style. Of genuine nationality they seem to have no just apprehension. It has little to do with any peculiar collocation of words, but is the pervading feeling and opinion of a country, leavening all its written thought. And the prime argument in favour of an international recognition of copyright (aside from that of justice to the pillaged author) arises from the fact that under the present system the real education of the popular heart is yielded too exclusively to men taught by a different experience and under different institutions. The absurdest of all schemes is that of creating a national literature by inventing tricks of speech, or by any sort of forced originality. Of which, proof enough may be found in the writings of Mr. Mathews, who wrote very good English and very good sense until he was infected with the disease of building up a national literature. THE MISSION OF HOBBLESHANK. FROM PUFFER HOPKINS. THERE was one that toiled in Puffer's behalf more like a spirit than a man; a little shrunken figure, that was everywhere, for days before the canvas; a universal presence, breathing in every ear the name of Puffer. There was not a taproom that he did not haunt; no obscure alley into which he did not penetrate, and make its reeking atmosphere vocal with his praises. Wherever a group of talkers or citizens were gathered, the little old man glided in and dropped a word that might bear fruit at the ballot-box. At nightfall he would mix with crowds of shipwrights' prentices and labourers, and kindle their rugged hearts with the thought of the young candidate. He stopped not with grown men and voters, but seizing moments when he could, he whispered the name in children's ears, that, being borne to parents by gentle lips, it might be mixed with kindly recollections, and so be made triumphant. It was given out that the Blinkerites had established or discovered, in some under-ground tenements that never saw light of day, a great warren of voters. When the toilsome old man learned of this burrow that was to be sprung against his favourite, he looked about for an equal mine, whence voters might be dug in scores, at a moment's notice, should occasion demand. With this in view, one afternoon, he entered Water street, at Peck slip, like a skilful miner, as though a great shaft had been sunk just there. A strange climate it was that he was entering; one where the reek and soil are so thick and fertile, that they seem to breed endless flights of great white overcoats, and red-breasted shirts, and flying blue trowsers, that swarm in the air, and fix, like so many bats, against the house sides. Tropical too, for there's not a gaudy colour, green, or red, or orange-yellow, that the sun, shining through the smoky atmosphere, does not bring out upon the house fronts; and for inhabitants of the region, there are countless broad-backed gentlemen, who, plucking from some one of the neighbouring depositories a cloth roundabout, and a black tarpaulin, sit in the doorways launching their cigars upon the street, or gather within. Hobbleshank, a resident of the inland quarter of the city, certainly came upon these, with his frock and eye-glass, as a traveller and landsman from far in the interior; and when he first made his appearance in their thoroughfare, looking hard about with his single eye, it could not be cause of surprise that they wondered aloud as he passed, where the little old blubber had come from...... But when, as he got accustomed to the place, he accosted them with a gentle voice, said a complimentary word for their sign-board, with its fulllength sailor's lass-Hope upon her anchor, or sturdy Strength, standing square upon his pins- | they began at once to have a fancy for the old man. He passed from house to house, inaking friends in each. Sometimes he made his way into the bar-room, where, seated against the wall, on benches all around the sanded floor, with dusty bamboo rods, alligator skins, outlandish eggs, and sea-weeds plucked among the Caribees or the Pacific islands, or some far-off shore, he would linger by the hour, listening with all the wondering patience of a child, to their ocean-talk. And when they were through, he would draw a homely similitude between their story-the perils their ship had crossed with the good ship of state; and then tell them of a young friend of his, who was on trial before the ship's crew for a master's place. Before he left, in nine cases of ten, they gave their hands for Puffer, sometimes even rising and confirming it with a cheer that shook the house, and brought their messmates thronging in from the neighbourhood, when the story would be recited to them by a dozen voices, and new recruits to Puffer's side enrolled. Then, again, he would be told of an old sick sailor in an upper chamber-tied there by racking pains in his joints, answering, they would say, each wrench to the trials his old ship's timbers were passing through on the voyage she was now out upon-and mounting up, he would find him busy in his painful leisure, building a seventy-six, razeed to the size of a cock-boat, for the landlord's mantle. Gaining upon him by degrees, Hobbleshank would sit at his side; and by-and-by, when he saw it would be kindly taken, gathering up a thread of twine or two, and helping to form a length of cable or rigging. By the time a dozen ropes were fashioned, he would have a promise from the old sea-dog that he would show his teeth at the polls when roll-call came. could be found; nursing and maturing it for the polling day, as a gardener would a tender plant; watching and tending many out-of-the-way places, and by a skilful discourse, a chance word, an apt story, ripening it against the time when it was to be gathered. Late at night, when others, who might have been expected to be stirring and making interest for themselves, slumbered, Hobbleshank taking his rounds through the city with the watchmen, with more than the pains of an industrious clear-starcher, smoothed the placards on the fences; jumping up where they were beyond his height, as was often the case, and brushing them down, both ways, with out-spread hands, so that they should read plain and free to the simplest passer-by. Was there ever one that toiled so, with the faith and heart of an angel, in the dusty road that time-servers use to travel! THE MOUND BUILDERS. UPON the summit of a mountain which beetled in the remote west over the dwellings and defences of a race long since vanished, stood, at the close of a midsummer's day, a gigantic shape whose vastness darkened the whole vale beneath. The sunset purpled the mountain-top, and crimsoned with its deep, gorgeous tints the broad occident; and as the huge figure leaned against it, it seemed like a mighty image cut from the solid peak itself, and framed against the sky. Below, in a thousand groups were gathered, in their usual evening worship, a strange people, who have left upon hills and prairies so many monuments of their power, and who yet, by some mighty accident, have taken the trumpet out of the hand of Fame, and closed for ever, as regards their historical and domestic cha There were some, too, engaged in boisterous mirth and jollity in back parlors, just behind the bar; where a plump little fellow, in his blue round-racter, the busy lips of tradition. Still we can gaabout, duck trowsers supported by the hips, and tarpaulin hat, with a flying riband that touched the floor and shortened him in appearance by a foot, broke down in a hornpipe to the sound of an ancient fiddle, that broke down quite as fast as he did. In the enthusiasm that held him, Hobbleshank even joined in, and with some comic motions and strange contortions of the visage, carried the day so well that he won the back parlor's heart at once; and they promised him whatever he asked. The little old man-true to the interest he had first shown-bent himself with such hearty good will to his task, that when, after many days' labour, he left Water street, at its other extremity, there was not a ripe old salt that was not gathered, nor a tall young sailor that was not harvested, for the cause. And so he pursued the task he had set to himself without faitering, without a moment's pause. For days before the contest came on, he was out at sunrise, moving about wherever a vote ther vaguely, that the mound builders accomplished a career in the west, corresponding, though less severe and imposing, with that which the Greeks and Romans accomplished, in what is styled by courtesy the old world. The hour has been when our own west was thronged with empires. Over that archipelago of nations the Dead Sea of time has swept obliviously, and subsiding, has left their graves only the greener for a new people in this after age to build their homes thereon. But at the present time, living thousands and ten thousands of the ancient people were paying homage to their deity; and as they turned their eyes together to bid their customary solemn adieu to the departing sun, they beheld the huge shape blotting it from sight. The first feeling which sprang in their bosoms as they looked upon the vision was, that this was some monstrous prodigy, exhibited by the powers of the air or the powers of darkness to astonish and awe them. T. B. THORPE. [Born 1815.] was twenty-one years of age, his health being somewhat impaired, he sought a more congenial climate in Louisiana, in which state he has ever since resided. The characteristics of her scenery and population, and the romance of her history, he has exhibited with singular felicity in some of his writings. We have promise of a rich and peculiar literature in the south-west and south. The excellent story of Mike Fink, the last of the Boatmen, by the late Mr. Morgan Neville, of Cincinnati, has been followed by many others of a similar character, from the Valley of the Mississippi, which have given a raciness, all their own, to two or three of our periodicals. The first collection of these appeared in Philadelphia in 1835, under the title of The Big Bear of Arkansas by T. B. Thorpe, and other Tales by Various Authors, edited by Mr. William T. Porter, the well-known conductor of the New York Spirit of the Times. It was followed, in 1846, by The Mysteries of the Backwoods, entirely by Mr. Thorpe, and Cap-isiana, where, in November, 1846, he esta tain Simon Suggs, late of the Talapoosa Volunteers, together with Taking the Census, and other Alabama Sketches, by Mr. Johnson J. Hooper; and A Quarter Race in Kentucky, with other Tales, chiefly from contributions to the Spirit of the Times,—all of which contain passages of bold, original and indigenous, though sometimes not very delicate humour.* Mr. Thorpe (the son of a clergyman who died with a brilliant reputation at the early age of twenty-six) was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1815. While he was an infant his parents removed to New York, where he resided until he left the north to settle in Louisiana. He early exhibited a taste for the fine arts, and chose historical painting as a profession. When but seventeen years of age his picture of the Bold Dragoont was exhibited at the New York Academy of Fine Arts, and was very highly praised by the late Colonel Trumbull, for its original design and happily told story. Circumstances led to the abandonment of his pencil, and he entered the Wesleyan University at Middletown, in Connecticut, where he spent three years; and when he *These volumes are illustrated by Mr. F. O. C. Darley, of Philadelphia, a young artist who in his line, I believe, has now no superior. His drawings are remarkably spirited and life-like, and are perfect reproductions of the characters and scenes of his authors. ↑ Now in possession of Mr. Washington Irving. The last book of Mr. Thorpe, Our Army on the Rio Grande, was published in the summer of 1846, and contained a record of the observations of the author while accompanying the forces under General Taylor into the territory of Mexico, illustrated with engravings from drawings made by himself. He now resides at Baton Rouge, in Lou blished a newspaper under the title of The Conservator. Mr. Thorpe may serve as a type of the class of writers that has been referred to.* He has a genuine relish for the sports and pastimes of southern frontier life, and describes them with remarkable freshness and skill of light and shade. No one enters more heartily into all the whims and grotesque humours of the backwoodsman, or brings him more actually and clearly before us. He has fixed upon his pages one of the evanescent phases of American life, with a distinctness and fidelity that will make his books equally interesting as works of art or history. Mr. Thorpe's style is simple, animated and picturesque, but has marks of carelessness, which, perhaps, result from mistakes of the printers, as he has never been able to superintend the passage of any of his writings through the press. * The limits of this volume are so nearly filled that I shall be unable to give the space I had intended to Judge Longstreet, author of the amusing volume entitled Georgia Scenes; to Mr. Briggs, who has evinced both wit and humour of a high order in his Harry Franco, and other novels and sketches; to the late William P. Hawes, whose Sporting Scenes, edited by a congenial spirit, Henry W. Herbert, have been praised by all who have read them; and to several others who have appeared as witnesses of the fact that there is humour of the richest description in the country. TOM OWEN, THE BEE-HUNTER. FROM MYSTERIES OF THE BACKWOODS. As a country becomes cleared up and settled, bee-hunters disappear; consequently they are seldom if ever noticed in literature. Among this backwoods fraternity have flourished men of genius, in their way, who have died unwept and unsung, while the heroes of the turf and of the chase have been lauded to the skies for every trivial superiority they have displayed in their respective pursuits. To chronicle the exploits of sportsmen is commendable: the custom began as early as the days of the antediluvians, for we read that "Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord." Familiar, however, as Nimrod's name may be, or even Davy Crockett's, what does it amount to, when we reflect that Toм OWEN, the bee-hunter, is comparatively unknown? Yes, the "mighty" Tom Owen has hunted from the time he could stand alone, until the present, and not a pen has inked paper to record his exploits. Solitary and alone" has he traced his game through the mazy labyrinth of ether, marked, I hunted, I found, I conquered, upon the carcasses of his victims, and then marched homeward with his spoils, quietly and satisfiedly sweetening his path through life, and by its very obscurity adding the principal element of the sublime. It was on a beautiful southern October morning, at the hospitable mansion of a friend, where I was staying to drown dull care, that I first had the pleasure of seeing Tom Owen. He was straggling, on this occasion, up the rising ground that led to the hospitable mansion of mine host, and the difference between him and ordinary men was visible at a glance. Perhaps it showed itself as much in the perfect contempt of fashion he displayed in the adornment of his outward man, as it did in the more elevated qualities of his mind that were visible in his face. His head was adorned with an outlandish pattern of a hat; and his nether limbs were ensconced in a pair of inexpressibles, beautifully fringed by the brier-bushes through which they were often drawn. Coats and vests he considered as superfluities. Hanging upon his back were a couple of pails; and he had an axe in his right hand. Such were the varieties that characterized the corpus of Tom Owen. As is usual with great men, he had his partisans, and with a courtier-like humility they depended upon the expression of his face for all their hopes of success. The common salutations of meeting were sufficient to draw me within the circle of his influence, and I at once became one of his most ready followers. «See yonder!" said Tom, stretching his long arm into the air; "See yonder-there's a bee." We all looked in the direction he indicated, but that was the extent of our observation. "It was a fine bee," continued Tom, "black body, yellow legs, and into that tree,"-pointing to a towering oak, blue in the distance. "In a clear day I can see a bee over a mile, easy!" When did Coleridge "talk" like that? And yet Tom Owen uttered such a saying with perfect ease. After a variety of meanderings through the thick woods, and clambering over fences, we came to our place of destination as pointed out by Tom...... The felling of a great tree is a sight that calls up a variety of emotions; and Tom's game was lodged in one of the finest in the forest. But "the axe was laid at the root of the tree," which, in his mind, was made expressly for bees to build their nests in, that he might cut it down, and obtain possession of the honey. The sharp sounds of the axe as it played in the hands of Tom, was replied to by a stout negro from the opposite side; and by the rapidity of their strokes they fast gained upon the heart of the lordly sacrifice. There was a little poetry in the thought, that long before this mighty empire of states was formed, Tom Owen's "bee-hive" had stretched its brawny arms to the winter's blast, and grown green in the summer's sun. Yet such was the case; and how long I might have moralized I know not, had not the enraged buzzing about my ears convinced me that the occupants of the tree were not going to give up their home and treasure without showing considerable practical fight. No sooner had the little insects satisfied themselves that they were about to be attacked, than they began one after another to descend from their airy abode, and fiercely pitch into our faces; anon a small company, headed by an old veteran, would charge with its entire force upon all parts of our body at once. It need not be said that the better part of valour was displayed by a precipitate retreat from such attacks. In the midst of this warfare, the tree began to tremble with the fast-repeated strokes of the axe, and then might have been seen a hive of stingers precipitating themselves from above on the unfortunate hunter beneath. Now it was that Tom shone in his glory. His partisans, like many hangers-on about great men, began to desert him on the first symptoms of danger; and when the trouble thickened, they one and all took to their heels, and left only our hero and Sambo to fight their adversaries. Sambo however soon dropped his axe, and fell into all kinds of contortions; first he would seize the back of his neck with his hands, then his shins, and yell with pain. "Don't holler, nigger, till you get out of the woods," said the sublime Tom, consolingly; but writhe he did, until he broke, and left Tom "alone in his glory." Cut-thwack! sounded through the confused hum at the foot of the tree, marvellously reminding me of the interruptions that occasionally broke in upon the otherwise monotonous hours of my school days. A sharp cracking finally told me the chopping was done; and looking aloft, I saw the mighty tree balancing in the air. Slowly and majestically it bowed for the first time towards its mother earth, gaining velocity as it descended, shivering the trees that interrupted its course, and falling with thundering sound, splintering its gigantic limbs, and burying them deeply in the ground. The sun, for the first time in at least two centuries, broke uninterruptedly through the chasm made in the forest, and shone with splendour upon the magnificent Tom standing, a conqueror, among his spoils. As might have been expected, the bees were very much astonished and confused, and by their united voices they would have proclaimed death, had it been in their power, to all their foes, not, of course, excepting Tom Owen himself. But the wary hunter was up to the tricks of his trade, and, like a politician, he knew how easily an enraged mob could be quelled with smoke; and smoke he tried until his enemies were completely destroyed. We, Tom's hangers-on, now approached his treasure. It was a rare one, and, as he observed, "contained a rich chance of plunder." Nine feet, by measurement, of the hollow of the tree was full, and this afforded many pails of pure honey. Tom was liberal, and supplied us all with more than we wanted, and "toted," by the assistance of Sambo, his share to his own home, soon to be devoured, and replaced by the destruction of another tree and another nation of bees. Thus Tom exhibited within himself an unconquerable genius which would have immortalized him, had he directed it in following the sports of Long Island or New-Market. "A wild turkey weighing forty pounds!" exclaimed twenty voices in the cabin at once. “Yes, strangers, and wasn't it a whopper? You see, the thing was so fat that it couldn't fly far; and when he fell out of the tree, after I shot him, on striking the ground he bust open behind, and the way the pound gobs of tallow rolled out of the opening was perfectly beautiful." "Where did all that happen?" asked a cynicallooking Hoosier. "Happen! happened in Arkansaw: where else could it have happened, but in the creation state, the finishing-up country—a state where the sile runs down to the centre of the 'arth, and government gives you a title to every inch of it? Then its airs-just breathe them, and they will make you snort like a horse. It's a state without a fault, it is."... "What season of the year do your hunts take place?" inquired a gentlemanly foreigner, who, from some peculiarities of his baggage, I suspected to be an Englishman, on some hunting expedition, probably at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. "The season for bar hunting, stranger," said the man of Arkansaw, "is generally all the year round, and the hunts take place about as regular. I read in history that varmints have their fat season, and their lean season. That is not the case in Arkansaw, feeding as they do upon the spontenacious We have seen Colonel Bingaman, the Napoleon of the southern turf, glorying amid the victories of his favourite sport; we have heard the great Crockett detail the soul-stirring adventures of a bear-hunt; we have listened, with almost suffocat-productions of the sile, they have one continued ing interest, to the tale of a Nantucket seaman, while he portrayed the death of the whale; and we have also seen Tom Owen, triumphantly engaged in a bee-hunt. We beheld and wondered at the sports of the turf, the field, and the sea, because the objects acted on by man were terrible indeed when their instincts were aroused; but in the bee-hunt of Tom Owen and its consummation, the grandeur visible was imparted by the mighty mind of Tom Owen himself. FAT GAME. FROM THE BIG BEAR OF ARKANSAS. [The narrator is supposed to be in a cabin of one of the splendid steamers on the Mississippi. After the boat has left the wharf, the "Big Bear of Arkansas" enters, takes a chair, puts his feet on the stove, and looking back over his shoulder passes the general and familiar salute of Strangers, how are you?" avowing himself as much at home as if he had been at "the Forks of Cypress," and "prehaps a little more so." Some of the company at this familiarity look a little angry, and some astonished; but in a moment every face is wreathed in a smile. There is something about the intruder that wins the heart on sight. He appears to be a man enjoying perfect health and contentment; his eyes are as sparkling as diamonds, and good-natured to simplicity. Then his perfect confidence in himself is irresistibly droll. He relates that he has been to New Orleans for the first time, and has been inquired of by some of the "perlite chaps" respecting the game in his part of the country.] "GAME, indeed! that's what city folks call it; maybe such trash live in my diggins, but I arn't noticed them yet: a bird any way is too trifling. I never did shoot at but one, and I'd never forgiven myself for that, had it weighed less than forty pounds. I wouldn't draw a rifle on any thing less than that; and when I meet with another wild turkey of the same weight, I will drap him." fat season the year round: though in winter things in this way is rather more greasy than in summer, I must admit. For that reason bar with us run in warm weather, but in winter they only waddle. Fat, fat! it's an enemy to speed; it tames every thing that has plenty of it. I have seen wild turkeys, from its influence, as gentle as chickens. Run a bar in this fat condition, and the way it improves the critter for eating is amazing; it sort of mixes the ile up with the meat, until you can't tell t'other from which. I've done this often. I recollect one perty morning in particular, of putting an old he fellow on the stretch, and considering the weight he carried, he run well. But the dogs soon tired him down; and when I came up with him wasn't he in a beautiful sweat-I might say fever; and then to see his tongue sticking out of his mouth a feet, and his sides sinking and opening like a bellows, and his cheeks so fat he couldn't look cross. In this fix I blazed at him, and pitch me naked into a briar patch if the steam didn't come out of the bullet-hole ten foot in a straight line. The fellow, I reckon, was made on the high-pressure system, and the lead sort of bust his biler." "That column of steam was rather curious, or else the bear must have been warm," observed the foreigner, with a laugh. "Stranger, as you observe, that bar was WARM, and the blowing off of the steam showed it, and also how hard the varmint had been run. I have no doubt if he had kept on two miles farther, his insides would have been stewed; and I expect to meet with a varmint yet of extra bottom, who will run himself into a skin-full of bar's grease: it is possible; much onlikelier things have happened." |