to his whole career. While yet a youth, at Dr. Wheelock's school, his true spiritual life began, and he evinced the earnestness of his zeal by resolving at once to spend his days in missionary service among the Indians. He consorts with the dusky Seneca boys, that he may learn their manners and their strange tongue. From college halls his eyes look abroad with longing upon the Western wilderness, and he cannot wait for his bachelor's diploma before he starts upon his first adventurous journey among the Iroquois. Nor does he sink under rough toil, or quail before persecution and threatened death. He does not, like David Brainerd, spend his time and exhaust his strength in torturing self-scrutiny and self-upbraiding and melancholy forebodings. No: he wisely learns that the best proof of love to God is to be found in hearty, joyous service for him. He suffers himself to be adopted into the family of an Indian, sleeps and eats in their smoky, squalid wigwams, becomes all things to them, if by any means he may save some. He imbues their children with the rudiments of education and religion, and to their sages he opens the higher wisdom of the Bible. He teaches agriculture and mechanics. He mediates between men at variance. He goes on long journeys to negotiate their affairs with the whites, and to keep them at peace with those who would embroil them in war. And does he not serve his country, too? Indeed, as we review the history of his life during the Revolutionary war,holding in friendly relations two savage tribes, and keeping close watch upon the movements of others, now acting as chaplain in the army, and at the conclusion of the war managing several difficult embassies between the natives and the whites for their mutual benefit, he seems to us deserving of no less honor from his countrymen than many a military hero crowned with blood-bought laurels. His plan for the education of the Indians is creditable alike to his head and his heart. He doubtless foresaw that missionary labors among them would be of little permanent value without education. The half-regenerated savage would relapse into barbarism as soon as the living preacher should be withdrawn. Desirous that his work should outlast his own life, he resolved to lay a solid basis in education. He wanted, moreover, to promote the social culture of the natives by bringing their children into daily association with those of white men. In this way he hoped to overcome the prejudices existing between the two races, and to bind them together in bonds of perpetual brotherhood. The conception of this plan must have been the fruit of those frequent and touching interviews with Indian chiefs concerning the prospects of their race. These men saw that their decline was inevitable, unless something were done to prevent it; and they came with sad hearts to their friend and teacher, imploring his help to save them from utter extinction. It seems as if his scheme were formed in fulfilment of some secret, holy vow to make one grand and mighty effort to stay their fall, and, if possible, to restore them to prosperity. Was it not a worthy endeavor? Had he done nothing more than this, he would be entitled to a high place among Christian philanthropists. It matters little that his plan did not accomplish all that he had hoped. A few natives only became members of his Academy, and some of these pursued their studies but a short time. The careless freedom of life in the woods and the excitements of the hunting-ground were more attractive than the confinement and dull routine of the school-room. Yet of these few, and of the larger number trained in his primary schools, a goodly proportion became intelligent and virtuous men. To this day, their descendants, living in a Western State, revere and bless no name so much as that of Kirkland. But his scheme, so far as it related to the whites, was abundantly successful. The Academy flourished, and, as he had contemplated from the first, was soon raised to the rank of a College. He saw our day afar off, and was glad. The old landmark known as "the boundary line of property" between the whites and Indians has been almost swept away with the removal of the natives; but the College founded by his wisdom and benevolence still stands, diffusing its light far beyond the territory occupied by the Six Nations. It has trained its thousand youths for professional and commercial life, and will doubtless continue to send forth streams of healthful influence for many generations to come. ART. VI.-1. The Autobiography of LEIGH HUNT. A new Edition by the Author; with further Revision, and an Introduction by his Eldest Son. Co. 1860. pp. xvi. and 412. London: Smith, Elder, & 2. The Correspondence of LEIGH HUNT. With a Portrait. Edited by his Eldest Son. As the descendant of American parentage, as an author who for more than half a century occupied a conspicuous, if not a foremost, rank among the literati of England, as one who through a long life maintained a consistent adhesion to principles which, in his own country, are considered radical, but in ours liberal, as the friend of Shelley, Keats, and Lamb, and as a cheerful and genial companion in gloomy hours, Leigh Hunt seems to have no slight claim to our interest and attention. So quiet and even was the tenor of his life, and so disconnected, toward its termination, with either literary or political discussion, that comparatively little is known of him on this side of the Atlantic; and we deem it no unworthy task to bring him before our readers, now that he has so recently passed away. Of the volumes before us, the collection of letters has been issued from the press within a year; the Autobiography, improved and revised by the author from earlier editions, and enlarged by an account of his last days and death, by his eldest son, was put forth in 1860, within a year of the close of his life. We are somewhat disappointed in the letters, as they fail, we conceive, when read without a previous perusal of his other works, to give a true impression of the author's manner of composition, or the frame of his mind. The Autobiography, on the other hand, displays the actual man, admirably illustrating every strong and every weak point in his character, presenting a perfect key to his feelings and prejudices, and setting forth just such a person as a study of his works would lead one to conjure up, namely, a sprightly, affectionate, restless, and yet timid and self-conceited man. The attention of the author was evidently concentrated, in the composition of this work, on himself. His minuteness in the description of the most trivial incidents of his childhood and youth is almost always interesting, but occasionally becomes undignified and irksome. It must be confessed that in this respect he puts himself in danger of falling under that description of weakness which Sir William Hamilton, in his Metaphysics, predicates of a vulgar mind, which, he says, "forgets and spares nothing, and is ignorant that all which does not concur to the effect destroys or weakens it." A good instance of this tendency in our author occurs, where, speaking of his timidity when a child, and his unwillingness to be alone in the dark, he mentions a book in which he had seen a picture of some horrible monster that had frightened him, and thereupon enters into a long and learned disquisition as to what the monster was, quotes Pliny, Aristotle, and Ctesias as to its origin and etymology of its name, dives into classical antiquities to ascertain its localities and habitudes, and spares no pains to enlighten us in regard to this uncouth beast which he found in a juvenile story-book. The same minuteness marks his details as to his family, which are dull enough when confined to his immediate progenitors, and, extended to his brothers and cousins, become utterly intolerable. On the whole, however, it is an entertaining little volume, full of interesting information about the literary and political celebrities of the times, accurate in the delineation of the manners and state of society among his contemporaries, delightful for its free and almost careless tone, and charming for its descriptions of Italian cities and scenery. Hunt lived in a time which we like to read about. His rank among literary men was such, that he had abundant opportunities for observing the tendencies of literature, and the personal excellences and prejudices of those who took the lead in the different coteries into which authors were at that time divided. We do not propose to enter into the elaborate criticism of his various works; but rather to dwell upon his personal history, and to glance cursorily at others who form the background of the picture in which he has taken good care to make Leigh Hunt the central figure. The regency and the reign of George IV., disgraced as they were by the profligacy of the sovereign and the easy morality of his court, were nevertheless brilliant in military achievements, and in the creations of literary and æsthetic genius. The preceding age had produced no such generals as Wellington and Uxbridge, no such poets as Byron, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, no such novelist as Scott, no such critics as Lord. Francis Jeffrey and Sir James Mackintosh. The arts of literature, which had become heavy and methodical by the too sensitive ear of Pope, the graceful monotony of Addison, and the ponderous genius of Johnson, were in this period restored to a vigorous independence, such as gave full vent to those illustrious writers who adorned the otherwise splendid reign of Elizabeth. A few years ago some of the foremost of those who figured as reformers in George's reign were yet living,Rogers, De Quincey, Moore, Wordsworth, Talfourd. Now but two remain to represent that brilliant era. Lord Brougham still lives to adorn Westminster Hall by his yet vivid eloquence, to elevate science by his patient and penetrating research, and to enrich letters by a critical ability and a memory rich in historic lore, such as few men possess in the prime of life. Walter Savage Landor, at the great age of eightyseven, retains that vivacious temperament and matchless humor which a half-century ago attracted to his companionship the first scholars and savans of Europe. Leigh Hunt survived most of his contemporaries, and died in a good old age in the latter part of the year 1859. A consideration of the literature of the period referred to discovers great variety, both in the current of thought and in the different styles which gave it expression. This is more especially the case with the poets; and from this diversity a natural consequence was that literary men separated into cliques, each representing peculiar characteristics of sentiment or diction, and each bitterly antagonistic to all the others. Thus arose different schools of poetry, all agreeing perhaps in rejecting the poets of the eighteenth century as too far enslaved by the empire of rhythm and metre over ideas, all eschewing the rules enounced by the schools of which Pope and Goldsmith were representatives, but seeking, each after its own peculiar system, to reform and to elevate by widely VOL. XCVII. - NO. 200. 14 |