in point of grammatical construction between the idioms of nations placed at such an immense distance from each other, cannot, I think, be exhibited, and with this and the references I have above made, I believe I may, for the present, rest satisfied. Indeed, from the view which he (Mr Heckewelder) offers of the Lenni Lenape idiom, it would rather appear to have been formed by philosophers in their closets, than by savages in the wilderness. If it should be asked how this can have happened, I can only answer, that I have been ordered to collect and ascertain facts, not to build theories. There remains a great deal yet to be ascertained, before we can venture to search into remote causes. The peculiarities of the Indian languages are considered, by those competent to decide upon the subject, as decisive against languages and antiquities should discover distinctly their origin and successive conditions, or that any record should be any where discovered, which would tell them and us whence they came, and through what changes they have passed. But if these nations have no records, they have traditions, and the authority of these traditions is confirmed by many unquestionable facts. It is known, by the character of their languages, that the inhabitants whom our fathers found in possession of the vast regions of this continent, may be arranged in three principal divisions, viz. the more civilized Indians in Middle and South ways of each of these two within a mile of each other flat mounds, in which the buried hundreds of the slait hereafter, with Colonel G these entrenchments, Mr A with me at the time when accurate description, whic delphia, in 1789 or 1790, the name of which I cann If these traditions a leave the earlier histo known. But the sam the origin of other n sufficient reason for American Indians are with the Asiatic abor IAmerica the ancestor were afterwards drive the hypothesis of their Hebrew origin. We America, as the Mexicans and Peruvians; overflow from the hea the Lenni Lenape with their kindred tribes; and the Huron or Iroquois nations. Besides these, there are the Esquimaux in the north, and many smaller and disconnected tribes in savages who escaped f tinent when it had agai the sake of the Scriptures, which were to the south. The mounds and barrows in for all its inhabitants be given them; a characteristic of these Scriptures is, that they teach the absolute existence of the Deity. Now this is a truth which no Indian language can express. An Indian cannot speak of being, without also describing the mode of being; he cannot say, "I am walking," but "I walk,”—“I am eating," but "I eat;" there is no word yet discovered in any Indian language, which answers to the verb to be. It is therefore a singular fact, that the phrase which may be called the definition of God's nature given by himself, "I am that I am," cannot be, as far as is yet known, precisely and adequately translated into any language not of European origin, which is spoken on this continent. Mr Duponceau speaks of this circumstance, in a note to a part of his Report on the Languages of the American Indians. Molina, in his Grammar of the Othomi language, gives the conjugation of a verb, which, he says, corresponds to the Latin sum, es, fui; but I am inclined to believe that he is mistaken, and that this verb answers to stare. sto, as in the other American languages. For, he says, afterwards, that it is never used in conjunction with an adjective, and that to express, for instance, I am rich, the adjective takes the form of a verb, and is itself conjugated, as in Latin, sapio, I am wise, frigeo, I am cold.' Nor is it ever used as an auxiliary in the conjugation of other verbs. Therefore I do not see how it can be applied in its mere substantive sense. In the Mexican language, Zenteno acknowledges that it is absolutely wanting, and that it is impossible to translate into that idiom the I am that I am,' of the sacred writings. (Arte Mexic. p. 30). I have in vain endeavoured to obtain a translation of that sentence into Delaware from Mr Heckewelder, and I believe it cannot be literally rendered into any American Janguage. Strong proof is requisite to make a rational mind believe, that the Hebrew language could be so changed by any circumstances, as that, while it became greatly improved in some important respects, it should have lost the power of conveying an idea, or rather a proposition, which, in its original form, it expressed with wonderful force and exactness, and upon which depends every thing which gives to that language a value or sanctity. The early history of these tribes is prob North America authorize the belief, that other nations once dwelt here before those who were found here. The Lenni Lenape have a distinct tradition to this effect,—that many hundred years since, they resided far to the westward of the Mississippi. That, having begun to migrate, after a long journey, they reached the Mississippi, and found the Mengwe or Iroquois, who had likewise emigrated from a distant region, and struck this river somewhat higher up. They had ascertained by their spies, that a powerful people, who had many large towns, dwelt on the eastern side of this river. This people were called the Talligewi or Alligewi, and the Alleghany river and mountains were named from them. When attacked by the Lenape and Mengwe, they were generally defeated; their fortifications were taken, and they were obliged to migrate to the south leaving the invading tribes in possession of the countries in which they had dwelt. We suppose that these Alligewi became the Mexicans and Peruvians. The Lenni Lenape often call themselves by the generic name of Wapanachki, or "Men of the East;" and, unless we greatly misrecollect, Humboldt mentions a common tradition among the Mexicans, that their fathers had come from the north. It would seem that the Lenape have pointed out some of the forts or mounds which have excited so much wonder, as the fortifications of the Alligewi. We extract the following from Heckewelder's Historical Account. live. Clinton, in his Discou This hypothesis w the New York Histori ingenuity. Since the and supported by no Historical Account ha tion of it many tradit rious kinds, which M anticipate. Of the literary cha an's work, much canno without much method a compilation from wel pages which his book c consisting wholly of e Report, both inserted Dr Jarvis' Discourse and of the remainder, and speeches, mostly plies a large portion. left. We do not thin common books, make can point out fifty pag and those which appe tainly not the most work. From the Pref a somewhat different I had abandoned all in before the public; but up in the summer of 1820, h the interest I had taken in North American Indians, i my observations and resea other tribes than those mo Mr Heckewelder, togethe parts of his useful and inte confirm and illustrate the the views I had taken o might be presented with calculated to facilitate the favour of the Indians. Many wonderful things are told of this famous people. They are said to have been remarkably tall and stout, and there is a tradition that there were giants among them, people of a much larger size than the tallest of the Lenape. It is related that they had built to themselves regular fortifications or entrenchments, from whence they would sally out, but were generally repulsed. I have seen many of the fortifications said to have been built by them, two of which, in particular, were remarkable. One of them was near the mouth of the river Huron, which empties itself into the Lake St Clair, on the north side of that lake, at the distance of about twenty miles northeast of Detroit. This spot of ground was, in the year 1786, owned and occupied by a Mr Tucker. The other works, properly entrenchments, being walls or banks of earth regularly | Conversations on Upon the whole, wh that Mr Buchanan m helping to spread the which have been long add to the information are compelled to say, had given, have been Να comprehension of Young Pupils. Illus- the answers to the questions, it will be WE avail ourselves of the opportunity af- which it treats. The book itself has been 295 isting state of society. Such excellencies The position of the plates in the present ical Terms is an useful addition. Theodore, the hero, is educated in obscurity by a woman of humble rank, who passes for his aunt. While attending a tournament, given in honour of the nuptials of a neighbouring noble, he is of some service to the bridegroom, and is invited by his father to accompany him to the Holy larly to king Richard, is taken prisoner by Land. He goes, endears himself particuSaladin, and resists every endeavour to shake his faith and convert him to Islamism. Upon the peace, which Richard concluded with Saladin, he recovered his freedom, the release of Richard from the German and after being instrumental in procuring prisons, he returns with him to England, and soon after discovers that he is of high rank, and heir to large estates, and recogknown at the court of Saladin. nises in his mother a captive whom he had Theodore, or the Crusaders. A Tale for Youth. By Mrs Hofland, author of "The Son of a Genius," "The Daughter of a Genius," and other Tales for Young People. Boston. 1824. 12mo. pp. 180. Ir is seldom that authors meet with more decided success than has attended Mrs Hofland's later productions. She has obeyed the spirit of the age, which calls upon gifted minds to use their strength in the service of the young. tion, knowledge, good taste, industry, and She has imaginaall other qualities, if any other there are, which may encourage an author to hope for fame, and to seek it; but she has sought and found something better. will not go down to posterity, as one who Her name entertained or deeply interested the reading world, and made large and lasting ad- sketch of the story, that it affords opporIt must be obvious, from this slight ditions to the literary treasures of the age,tunity for introducing many interesting but she will be remembered by parents scenes. That which represents Cœur de who love to give their children books which Lion, upon his trial for the murder of the will profit while they amuse them, and suc- Marquis of Montserrat, before the emperor cessive generations will recollect in their and princes of Germany, is particularly information. maturer years, with grateful acknowledge- well drawn. This tale will be the more the next resource of the instructer is to ment the pleasure which they owed to her in useful from the author's faithful adherence point out to the pupil, viva voce, the lead-earlier days. It is impossible that her tales to historical truth in all the principal charing facts to which particular attention should not interest all who are capable of acters and events. must be paid, and in which he will be chief- understanding and enjoying them, or that ly examined. After all his labour and use- they should fail of doing good to those less exhaustion of lungs, the only point whom they interest, if they are capable gained may be, that the pupil has selected of improvement. They are professedly and as worthy of peculiar attention, another actually written for children; the moral part equally unimportant with that from of each one of them is distinct, obvious, which he has been driven, and equally re- and never forgotten; the incidents and quiring new explanations, new urgings, characters all refer to it; and not only the and new recitations; till the instructer, general result of the story, but every part wearied by these repeated and fruitless at- of it, is made to enforce the useful truth, tempts, has recourse to his pencil, and which the whole is intended to inculcate. marks between brackets those definitions Still, the didactic character of her works and explanations of which particular ac- interferes so little with their power of amuscount must be given. If he does this, the ing and their general literary merit, that probability is, that those only which are mature and cultivated minds may and do thus marked will be the parts committed. read them with pleasure. To Mr Blake then are instructers as well as pupils much indebted. By questions arranged at the bottom of the pages in which the collateral facts are arranged, he directs the attention of the learner to the principal topics; and a slight inspection will make it apparent, that in order to get at In the work now before us she has departed somewhat from her usual course. In her former tales some individual whose character and condition belong to her country and to this age, is made to pass through a variety of circumstances which are not at variance with the actually ex The Badge. A Moral Tale. By the author of the Factory Girl, James Talbot, &c. Boston. 1824. 18mo. pp. 33. THE writer of this tale is favorably known to the public as the author of several little stories. We had occasion to notice one of them, "The Factory Girl," in a former number. The story now before us has the same good objects in view with that, but is designed for a rather younger class of readers. The Badge seems to us, to perform all the promise of its title page;-it is truly a moral tale; and its morality is not only pure and elevated, but is adapted to the comprehension of children, and presented to them in a story is interesting; and it is written in a manner which must be attractive. The very free, animated, and graceful style, and with a simplicity and good faith which many authors of more ambitious fictions might envy. It is evidently the production of one 296 MY DEAR BROTHER, M*****, Oct. 22, 1824. the mind proposes to beset with difficulties, come into contact wi the body. Some of the best Thes familiar with the character and habits of to tempt men into enterprises of great haz-real harmony in its con children, and their peculiar modes of think-ard, which have been repeatedly made ing and speaking, and of one who feels a without success, and which have not unWe are frequently terminated in the death of a deep interest in their welfare. frequently reminded of Miss Edgeworth by greater or lesser number of the party imthe unaffected graces of expression; by the mediately concerned. The experience in felicity with which the most suitable occa- Africa is most commonly adduced in an- voyagers and travell sions are seized upon for inaking a moral im- swer to this inquiry, and surely there is find others. The arm pression upon the youthful mind; and, above enough in that experience to make the world may be looke all, by the fascination of truth and nature, heart sink, though it may not settle the without doubt, admi so hard to be analyzed, but which ever question. What are the motives, it is ask- found in both. claims the attention to the passing page. ed, to these undertakings; and do the ends instances precisely of Is it a contingent or view. They are not Children, however, are of course the best justify the means? judges of what interests them; and the voices a certain good you have in view, and is life motives of all are of all whom we have questioned upon the ever to be jeopardized by a mere contin- objects are far differe subject, are unanimous in favor of the Badge.gency? Shall we minister to enthusiasm, cipally in this; that w The following letter is so charming and when death is in its progress; or patronize a specific object in faithful a representation of the feelings of genius, when the road it makes for itself with tried means, the boyhood, that we cannot deny ourselves the has in and about it a reality of horror and to find, and feels his danger, which could hardly be equalled by contingent. This l pleasure of giving it to our readers. its wildest imaginings? Shall we tempt with conjecture at t men from the safety and comfort of home, the poor meed of hum to the desolate and waste places of the human nature, as he h earth, and be made happy and famous our-er been; nothing rem selves, by the only half-voluntary misery of consciousness of his o others? These, and many similar questions sustaining persuasion, have been asked, by the readers of travels ed the works of man, As abstract questions, they works of God. The and voyages. might be answered negatively. It is wrong classes of men are to furnish means for enterprises which are warrior is moved by always dangerous, and frequently fatal, and himself. He has n the accomplishment of which may be un- with the occasion or important however successful. But this is He has a prescribed not the kind of reasoning which is at all though it may be wid applicable to the present case. Voyages has limits, which oth and travels are not necessarily more dan- meets his fellow, thou gerous than many other, and far more com-kill; and is social tho And when we consider the of whom we speak ar mon pursuits. character, the whole intellectual state of pulse of their own mi those who undertake them, and follow them ing to circumstances in the path of danger, and mark their un- fect men. Opportuni subdued endurance of evil in all its forms They can learn but and in almost all its degrees, we trust them from others; for the p fearlessly and hopefully wherever they may cation consists in th go. Nor is the want of success to be urg- calls them where ot ed against these pursuits. They are never been. If they learn entirely unsuccessful. If nothing new is foretell the misery discovered about the earth, something new them. is learned of the mind. It is showed to us, in these instances, in new aspects and under new circumstances. It seems in them an irresistible power, and we come at length to be more, far more surprised at failure than success. As I can't write joining hand yet, Mrs Mason said if I would tell her the words I wanted to send to you, she would write them down. First then, I thank you for your letter, and dear mamma for the books she sent. Oh, Charles, it is very pleasant here; I have got a beautiful play-ground, it is all even, and the grass is very green; and I can begin at the front door with my horse or wheelbarrow and run all round the house without any fence to stop me; and then at the side of this great vard there is a hill-if it was winter I could coast down it. I thought till yesterday I did not want any thing but to have you come. But oh, Charles, yesterday something happened—I hate to come to that--but I must tell you about my poor paroquet. When I came home from school Mrs Mason gave me a seed cake, and I ran to the cage to give Pinky some, but he would not come forward to take it; he stood on his perch, and looked dull, and would not speak a word; presently his head shook a little, and then he fell right down on the bottom of the cage. I believe I cried very loud, for Mrs Mason came, and she took Pinky out of the cage, and she said he had a fit; he came to a little, but he fell down again and then he died. Oh Charles, I cried a great deal ; and I feel dull now, and I almost wish mamma would come for nie. But I will try to stay as long as she wants me to. My dutiful love to dear Father and Mother; and give my love to your paroquet; and send me word whether he talks as much as ever; it makes me laugh now when I think how smart he looks when he hollows out, "Charley is a good boy." Why cannot you teach him to say, "Eddy is a good boy." Poor Pinky had almost learned it when he died. Your affectionate Brother, EDWARD EDGERLY. This story in some few passages betrays marks of haste and carelessness in the com position. It seems to us also that the author has not succeeded in giving a very distinct idea of patriotism. But these defects detract but slightly from the merits of a work, which cannot but prove highly agreeable and instructive to those for whom it is designed. MISCELLANY. TRAVELLERS AND VOYAGERS. "Cœlum et animum." IT has been seriously questioned whether governments or individuals have, in strict The exercise of human power is most striking when the body, as in these cases, is made immediately the agent of the mind. When the body must suffer to the farthest point of human endurance, and live. We are accustomed to look upon the pure, unmixed labours of the mind, as upon the greatest results of the exercise of human power. The poet and the moralist are the exception and the example, when we would contrast ages, or illustrate them. But in these instances the mind has been alone in its labours, the body has been at rest, and it may be, has fared sumptuously every day. They have hardly sustained their human relations to each other, and we have talked of the men as divine, nay, called them so. Human nature is in its perfect proportions, We know of no bei tense an interest as the ellers. Their historie better and more truly interest with us akin fiction. There is a hi conceptions. They for the imagination in fearless choice; and, a blance, between the mind, and the realities we find coincidences tonish and always del We have in our commonest pursuits, and | equally in our rarest, been supported by human sympathy. In our retirements from the world, which have been but short and few, and a relaxation instead of a pursuit, we have seen that which our fellows have seen. We have never been alone. Our privations have been all voluntary; and when a little more severe or annoying than common, the most they have demanded or received has been a fretful exclamation; and if there have been others with us, our efforts have done little more than to divide the feelings of impatience or disgust. tion, than we have done, of its origin. For The wet drift wood is collected on the banks of the river, or the evergreen cut down, and the fire blazes cheerfully. The In reading this narrative of Franklin, teakettle boils in the shower of rain or and the same is true of all similar works, snow,-the snow-drift is removed and a we cannot fail to be struck with the vast place for sleep prepared, the prayers for effects which are produced under the most the dead are read, in addition to the evenunfavourable circumstances, by a very few ing service, over the grave of the murdered individuals. This is contrary to common friend. At Fort Enterprise, in Franklin, observation and experience. We constant- where the extreme of illness was added to ly see men acting together, and upon each all other physical suffering, the courtesies, other. The strong and ardent intellect, nay the decencies of common life, are obwhich gives the plan, or merely states the served in a manner as affecting as incrediprinciple, has in ordinary cases accomplish- ble. What makes this instance more strikNow in the men, about whom we write, ed its main purpose; and every degree and ing is, that hope had preceded the travelthere is nothing of all this to be found. kind of human power, and circumstance, lers to this melancholy post, and it was There is a patience so bold and indomita- which may be necessary, comes naturally there all blasted. ble, that we at last become more astonish- into requisition, to carry out and make efed and surprised at its failure, than at its fective, what the individual has newly continuance. Franklin's Narrative* fur- started. We every where see men acting nishes an instance of this, and explains our together, and in large masses, dividing lameaning. After having followed this trav-bour upon a pin as definitely as upon an eller through an unbroken series of per- empire. Men depend upon, and wait for sonal sufferings, and wondered and admired each other; and he who seems the freest, at the unexampled self-possession he has has always settled with himself how the every where shown,-having seen the tur-responsibility shall be divided, if a division bulent, and the vicious yielding to a per- should become necessary. This is all well, sonal authority, powerful and irresistible and just as it should be. The effect corby its very mildness alone, we at length responds with the means, and a great hear an expression of impatience from one amount of comfort is produced by this conof the party, and then a tone of irritation cert of the crowd. These would seem the mingled with ill-temper; and for a moment only terms upon which men could at all we wonder that men, who have borne every live quietly together. If, like our "travthing, as nothing, could have found, in any ellers," the individual were so much by and kind of circumstance, an evil which could for himself, it would be but a poor world for a moment have conquered them. Our indeed. wonder, however, ceases with its expression. In travellers, we see human beings unWe learn in a moment the whole history. der new aspects. They are few in numThe mind at last is yielding to the body. ber, and removed from common influences. Hunger and cold have the mastery. The Each individual in so small a community night is no longer comfortable, nor the feels his personal importance. Each mind sleep refreshing with the thermometer at is constantly kept in action for one's self, 50° or more below zero,-the acrid mosses for there is little room for its wider operaand burnt bones have at length ceased to tion. The mind does not expand here at be palatable. The body will no longer least, with the remote and the uncertain, bear all this, and the mind is growing con- the solitary and the unbounded. Danger scious that existence on such terms is not is abroad every where; and if this were worth preserving. The mind grows weak less distinct, there is a pressure of the with this consciousness, and men who were present, which keeps the mind and the absolutely living upon the sustaining influ- heart at home. Suffering, in its extreme, ences of each other's minds, are peevish which is alike personal to all, which pecuand unkind to each other. This is the liarity of constitution and temperament most melancholy, the saddest moment in alike yield to, is here. There is no hope, this whole history. We cannot feel, in any for there is no time nor room for it. Presshape, the circumstances, we can under-ent want must be supplied, present danger stand perfectly its effects. How dreadful was the situation of these men, when they could be unkind to each other. Theirs was not the resource, if any such there be, which we are taught to find in the world when friends grow cruel. There was nothing for them but the miserable consciousness of a common suffering. The misery could only be added to, by its being felt, and complained of, as individual. And this did at last happen. It is unnecessary to tell the reader that this state of things did not last long, or to offer any farther explana Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22. By John Franklin, Captain R. N., F. R. S. and Cominander of the Expedition. averted, and with present means too, where But in the midst and pressure of all this, It was said that the individual was engrossed by his own wants. That the misery is too great to the individual, too personal to himself, to allow him to go farther. Were this to be taken as set down, we should be ashamed to have written it. Here would be common selfishness, vulgar enough in all its expressions, but far more vulgar in this than in all others. We would not wrong these men for the world. We would do honour to our own nature, in the testimony we bear to its dignity and supremacy in the individuals about whom we write. The case of the individual in these instances was emphatically the care of the whole. He who saved his own life, contributed largely and truly to the preservation of his comrades. It might almost be allowed us to say, that in these extreme cases, there is but one mind, but one individual. The desolation is alike around all. The cold and the hunger would as surely reach him who might, by unworthy means, seek to protect himself, or supply his own pressing wants, as him who boldly yielded his personal share to the common stock of suffering, and who, under its heavy pressure, found his irresistible motive to help others as well as himself. Where there is no escape, there must be a common feeling. Distinctions are lost in such a mass, and all are felt for in one's own feeling. Here we find the explanation of what is otherwise unaccountable to us who yield so readily, and are so little pleased with the best that is done for us. We understand how life may be preserved, and the mind be preserved, where there are apparently no present means for doing either. It may be that the mind gets new strength, by this continued contact with physical suffering, as the magnet is said to do by undisturbed contact with iron. New circumstances make it what we find it, and we admit, and understand too, its novel and vast effects. The aspect is new in which we see men in these instances, in another regard. In leaving society, they have left its rules behind them; and we find in their place a new code in true, but terrible harmony with all the circumstances. Necessity has But here it bebeen said to have no law. comes a law itself. In Franklin, we despised the men who broke to pieces the canoes, which our own foresight showed us POETRY. HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR. Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires; and go. would soon become indispensably necessa- | evil is made even less by a greater, though of destruction was removed. It deserves These were religious men. to be noticed that men of this character have commanded some of the most important expeditions of a similar kind which have been recently fitted out by the government of England, and which have excited so strong an interest every where. Is it claiming too much for our religion to say, that it was this, which gave to these men's minds a tone and spirit which nothing could wholly depress or destroy? We know of nothing which could have sustained these men, under these circumstances, but their strong and abiding piety. Day, too, hath many a star It will be perceived, from what has been said in this article, that our interest in these works is not so much found in their histories of new regions and new manners, as in the conduct of the men who give them. It is the operation of the new and the terrible upon beings like ourselves, and the whole manner in which this operation displays itself, the high moral bearing, the intellectual resource the severe patience, the fine disinterestedness,-it is all this which attracts us so irresistibly in these works, and makes the fate of their authors so deeply interesting. There is much that is salutary in them, if we will be taught by them, as well as entertained. The lesser And thou dost see them rise, There, at morn's rosy birth, And eve, that round the earth Alike, beneath thine eye, Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud- cloud. Then shouted long the plebeian crowd- Joy was upon that dark man's face, He has a martial heart,' thou sayest, A hero, when he fights for life, And home, and country,-babes, and wife. And thus I for the strife prepare; And he has bared his shining blade, His long and loud death-howl is made, And when the multitude were calm, "Kneel down, Rome's emperor beside:" And from our presence forth thou go'st Then flushed his cheek, but not with pride, I have a young and blooming bride, No Roman wealth nor rank can give My wife sits at the cabin door, He is gone-no golden bribes divide THE VENETIAN GONDOLIER. Here rest the weary oar!- soft airs Breathe out in the o'erarching sky; And Night!-sweet Night-serenely wears A smile of peace ;-her noon is nigh. Where the tall fir in quiet stands, And waves, embracing the chaste shores, |