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Towards this point we would have our sult is all but a creation,-all but a work American friends strain every nerve. They of genius. Yet the impression, on ourhave already proved themselves steady and selves at least, of these vaunted works is enthusiastic pilgrims along the world's high-saddening. It is painful to see that symways. We may mention the names of pathy will not keep pace with effort; painVOL. IX. No. I.

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From the Foreign Quarterly Review.

MCKENNEY AND HALL'S SKETCHES OF proof that they can take rank among the

THE INDIAN TRIBES.

History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs. Embellished with One Hundred and Twenty carefully colored Portraits, etc. etc. By T. L. MCKENNEY, Esq, and JAMES HALL, Esq. Philadelphia: Rice and Clarke. London: C. Gilpin.

In turning over the leaves of the magnificent picture-book before us, we rejoice at the opportunity it affords us for departing from the tone of censure in which we have too often felt compelled to speak of the works and deeds of our kinsmen across the Atlantic. For once, at least, they cannot accuse us of scornful disrespect, or of insular prejudice, when, according to our best ability, we recommend nationality in Art, as the one thing beautiful, desirable, and needful for its permanent existence. Towards this point we would have our American friends strain every nerve. They have already proved themselves steady and enthusiastic pilgrims along the world's highways. We may mention the names of VOL. IX. No. I.

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West, Washington Alston, Leslie, Sully, in most admirable Europeans, when they deign to paint in the European fashion; nor can the Londoners or the Florentines forget, that in his "Greek Slave," W. Hiram Powers has put in a very strong claim for the championship of modern sculpture, one to which the Rauchs, and the Gibsons, and the Schwanthalers, and the Bailys would find it hard to offer a rejoinder. In all revivals and adaptations, however, in all workings after this antique, or the other tradition, there is an unsoundness, and a want of satisfaction, the end of which can be but mediocrity. It needs but to walk the rounds of the churches, galleries, and studios of Munich, to ascertain the limits of modern, when imitating ancient Art. There has been no want of earnest study, no want of unselfish devotion to a purpose, no want of sympathy and patronage; and here and there industry, ingenuity, and sincerity have "tossed and turned" themselves, have accumulated and wrought, till the result is all but a creation,-all but a work of genius. Yet the impression, on ourselves at least, of these vaunted works is saddening. It is painful to see that sympathy will not keep pace with effort; pain

ful to be compelled to admit, (as one is than in all the porings and pryings of the compelled to do, a score of times every Pugin school of artists, who sanction every hour, by some flash of recollection of the anachronism and inconsistency of past, glories of the ancients,) that we are only half-instructed ages, on the score of a myslooking at an elaborate mistake; painful to tical sanctity, and demand the sacrifice of anticipate a not very distant period, when Criticism at the altar of Faith. Let all Glyptothek and Basilica, Fest-bau, and Al- memorials of the past be reverently preservler Heiligen Kapelle will be reviewed by ed, but preserved as memorials, not models. the connoisseurs, as so many monuments It should be our task, as it is our privilege, of respectable pedantry and school exer- to go forward. cise; more praiseworthy for intent, but lit- Viewed under their twofold aspect, estle more so in fact of artistic merit, than pecially, seeing that any thing entirely the follies of Louis Quinze, or than the Li- new stands, for the present, at so heavy a brary built after the fashion of a chest of disadvantage, whatsoever the enchantment drawers with which the great Frederick of of distance may do for Posterity-all colPrussia chose to diversify the main street of his show capital!

lections with regard to the aboriginal inhabitants of America have a value, which We have dwelt upon Munich because the every year will only increase. Perhaps name of this city is in every one's mouth; never has savage life worn a form, so inbut it is only an illustration of the spirit of viting and poetical, as in the annals of the the times; not a solitary instance. The Indian tribes. Though hardly disposed, worthy personages, who imagine they are with the prospectus of Messrs. McKenney advancing the cause of devotion and au- and Hall's work, to admit the Red-jackets thority, by attempting to bring back church and Mohongos as "Ciceros and Cæsars, music to the barbarianism of the Gregorian Hectors and Helens ;" though human conchant, offer another. Why are these things? servatism, or human simplicity, could never, Does that old superstitious fear yet linger in their most stiff or sickly vagaries, dream on the earth, which mistrusted creation and of a revival of wigwams, of an extension of discovery as irreverent? Is Orthodoxy the picturesque birch bark and quill manumaintained by not a few, because it saves factures; of encouraging, after the fashion the trouble and cost of original thought? of "Young England," the dances and the These questions sound almost monstrous; ball plays, with all their distinctive forms yet, much of the artistic criticism, and the of full-dress and un-dress, (the latter, as a motives held out for artistic effort in the lady tourist has told us on some festive ocpresent day, when stripped of the verbiage casions, a mere simple osprey's wing,)in which canters of all classes love to in- though it would exceed the boldness of any volve them, have no wiser principles for Benedict to speak even leniently of squawkernel. Yet, digressing for a moment, let dom as an "honorable condition," in days us thankfully remark how-in spite of all like these, when The Schoolmistress is this laziness and pedantry, this appeal to a abroad arousing and inspiriting the "wospurious devotional spirit, which overlooks menkind,"-there is still, under every point the glorification of God in the Present, no of view, for the studious or for the sympaless than in the Past-Genius is vindicating thetic, for the antiquarian or for the artist, itself; how the necessities, the materials, for the wild sportsman or the closet philosand the social arrangements of the world opher, a dignity, a charm, and a poetry are unconsciously calling forth and shaping about the Red Man, to which, not the productions, which Posterity may admire as whole library of trumpery of which he has models. Those whose connoisseurship and been made the subject can render us inenthusiasm, being merely an affair of pre- different. The Americans, then, are justicedents and synods, can see nothing of the fied in calling attention to this, as a great poetry which belongs to every effort of hu- national work. Few rate more highly than man ambition, of the beauty which bears ourselves the magnificence of Audubon's company with every step of civilization, will collections; the artistic power, which he deride us as utilitarian, or denounce us as has thrown into his drawings, giving his at once visionary and materialist, if, by ornithological subjects the attractiveness of way of illustration, we venture to assert, some professed picture by Snyders or Landthat in the magnificent structures which seer, (distancing, let us add, Hondeköeter, steam conveyance has originated, we have the court painter of Poultry, by many a more chance of a new order of architecture, rifle's length),-few have enjoyed more

heartily the admirable pages which detail | ropeans:-wherefore should we vex our his wanderings, and describe his specimens: readers with splitting theories, and spinning entertaining (to quote Johnson's anticipa disquisitions? Again, to touch the modern tion of Goldsmith's Natural History) as history of the Indians,-were it ever so a Persian tale," and poetical as one of ketchily,-would lead us into a review of Christopher North's most eloquent rhapso- Mr. Schoolcraft's interesting collections, dies when "Ebony" was young; yet, in and Mr Stone's spirited and elaborate hisright of subject, we must give the hand-tories and biographies-into glancing over some volumes on our table a yet more dis- such memoirs of the war-time as the Mrs. tinguished place. Nor can we attempt to Grants and Mrs. Bleeckers contributed glance at their contents, without a word or (since Woman's testimony has always its two on a less important point, in which the special value, as embracing points which Americans may legitimately take pride. her lordly master disdains to observe). We Their manner of production and publication should have to crystallize into the smallest is most praiseworthy. Mr. Whittingham solid space the amount of facts and features of Chiswick, it is true, might suggest that to be got out of the writings of Fenimore the type was too heavy for the paper; and Cooper, the Irvings, and Bird. A more it would strike Mr. Hullmandel's experi- romantic library still remains to be ranenced eye, we doubt not, that in some half sacked, that of missionary enterprise, somedozen specimens, among the lithographs, what sentimentally opened, some fourteen the grain of the chalk is too coarse and years since, by Mr. Carne; but containing, woolly to pass muster in these perfected we apprehend, abundance of matter, for the days of the art. But the above objections thinker, or the painter, or the philanthroare trifling-hinted, peradventure, merely pist. Enough, on the present occasion, to keep up our character as just critics, then to say, that the variety of materials whose habit it has been, from time imme- seems in some degree to have puzzled the morial, to indulge their spleen by declaring writers of the Prefatory Essay, as well as "that the picture would have been better ourselves. The days of laborious concenpainted, if the painter would have taken more trouble."

tration are gone, and perhaps it were too extreme to expect that they should be revived for this occasion only, when the task to be done was merely to make up a handsome introduction to a picture-book. If, as we believe Sir Harris Nicolas would tell us, our Lodges have sometimes "forced their facts," in writing the biographies of our Illustrious Personages,-if Corneys poke their heads out of remote corners to prove that our D'Israelis are somewhat given to the Japanese fashion of mermaid-making, when busy over their "Curiosities of Liter

It seems an Irish beginning to open the third volume first; but the reason is ready in the "History of the Indian Tribes" contained therein, and our visit is merely a passing one. For if the physiologists, philologists, and other "cunning men" of Science, have failed to ascertain, past contest, whether the American Indians were or were not of the Tartar stock,-if the signification of the great coincidence between the word "ha, ha," as a definition of an English park ditch, and the same appella-ature," far be it from us, on peaceful tion given by the Sioux to the falls of St. thoughts intent, to do more than hint, that Antony, is still far from being duly appre- here or there is a flimsiness or an inaccuciated-if antiquarians are not precisely racy, or a want of that grasp of the whole agreed how far the hieroglyphical paintings subject, for which the memory of a ripe of the Mexicans, and the uncouth symbols scholar, and the hand of a finished artist, and effigies which emboss the Yucatan tem- are alike demanded. Better than picking ples, "coincide" with the patterns rather of notes, than complaining of facts carelessthan drawings on the buffalo-skins of the ly collected, or of style left in the unweeded Western Indians,-if, to quote the author state of nature, will it be to offer the reader of the Introductory Essay before us, " noth- a sample of the introductory matter to the ing can be more uncertain, and more un- volume. The following, however, is not so worthy, we will not say of credit, but of much a part of the history, as one among consideration, than their earlier traditions, the pieces justificatives upon which it has and probably there is not a single fact, in been founded. We have rarely met with a all their history, supported by satisfactory more touching and complete illustration evidence, which occurred half a century of the strength and weakness of savage previously to the establishment of the Eu-life

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