Methinks that many years have wrought a change
Even on your calm beauty. The red deer,

Whose bounding hoofs flew down yon darkened glade
Swift as an arrow-flight, are nowhere seen
Under the mossy boughs,-and the meek fawn
And gentle roe are not beside the founts
In their green pastures; haply they have found
The hunter's rifle deadlier than the shafts
From the slight bow that pleased my infancy.

Alas! the green tree at my cabin door,
The huge growth of a century! it lies
On the smooth slope it overhung so long;
The flowers are gone from the broad garden-walks,
And the fair trees are dead! the sycamore
Clothed like a prince in scarlet, the pale birch-
A tall and silvery spire,-the hoary beech,
And the dark, solemn cypress, lie o'erthrown
In ruin, and rank weeds rejoice above.

The cottage door is broken! its thatched roof
Lies on the quenched and long-deserted hearth,
And the dark wall is settling to the ground.
The red-stemmed honeysuckle, that once clasped
Closely the latticed casement, and bloomed thick,
No more gives out the known delicious smell.
The drowsy brook, that whispered at the door
A low strain of unbroken music, plays

By some far lovelier bank; it long hath shrunk
And wandered from its weed-choked channel here.

call; the

song

My brethren come not at my
My mother sang at twilight is not heard
By the still threshold, and the passing wind
Sighs o'er my father's grave; this lonely place
Hath lost its charm-I leave it to its dead!

VIVIAN.

VOL. II.

39

CRITICAL NOTICES.

The Prairie, a Tale. By the Author of "The Pioneers" and "The Last of the Mohicans." In Two Volumes. Philadelphia. Carey, Lea, & Carey. 1827. 12mo. pp. 528.

THIS book either has been or will be so generally read, that no regular analysis of its plot is necessary to the remarks we have to make, and no quotations from its pages are needed to illustrate them.

The author has not allowed himself a very large abundance of materials out of which to construct his narrative. The action of the piece is religiously confined to the prairie, from which it is named, a vast open country, with an undulating surface, with here and there a few bushes in the hollows, a single heap of rocks, and a river. The events of the story happen to a beehunter and his sweetheart, and a Captain in the United States army and his wife. The troubles in which both these couples are involved are occasioned partly by a family of squatters, consisting of a termagant woman, her gigantic husband and knavish brother, and a troop of overgrown girls and boys; and partly by a tribe of cruel and thievish Indians, the Siouxes, Tetons, or Dahcotahs, for the author calls them indiscriminately by either of these names. On the other hand, these good people have for their friends and helpers in calamity, a stupid, pedantic naturalist, a sagacious old trapper, and a magnanimous and friendly tribe of Indians, the Pawnee Loups. The unlawful detention of the Captain's wife in the squatter family, and her final restoration to her husband, the opposition of this family to the marriage of the beehunter with his sweetheart, their relation; these incidents, diversified with a brief captivity among the Siouxes, and a battle between this tribe and the Pawnees, form the thread of the story. This is not very promising matter, but it is handled by a man of genius, and wrought up, we should think, into all the interest of which it is capable. The author's power of narration and description does not desert him ;-the faculty of setting before the mind of the reader, with a strong distinctness, a kind of visibility, the personages of the story and their actions,-a faculty of immense importance to the writer of fictitious narrative, and one on the possession of which a great deal of the popularity of Mr. Cooper is founded. The present work is not so much distinguished as some of his previous writings, for striking and extra

ordinary passages, which stand out eminently from the rest, and to which the mind naturally recurs as the fairest exemplification of the author's powers. The plot, however, although, like that of most works of the kind, liable to objections which a mind of tolerable ingenuity has no difficulty in finding out, will better bear an analysis, than any other of Mr. Cooper's novels since the Pilot. It would have been a bold experiment in any writer not possessed of Mr. Cooper's reputation, to dispense, so far as he has done in this work, with an attraction of so much power over the great mass of novel readers, as that of novelty. The prairie is, to be sure, a new scene, but it is the wilderness still, and the store of images and situations it offers is soon exhausted. The author had already shown us the Indian character under its good and evil aspects in "The Last of the Mohicans," and although in the present work this is attempted to be done with some modifications, we feel that it is the same thing after all. Mahtoree, the Sioux chief, is indeed not a more interesting, but a more probable character than that of Magua, with less of satanic sagacity and malignity, and more of human feeling. Hard-heart, the Pawnee chief, is a sort of Uncas, a little more distrustful perhaps, but marked with a strong family likeness. The trapper, Natty Bumpo or Leatherstocking, is an old acquaintance, and the naturalist is only the last edition of a character to be found in most of the author's former novels.

With Leatherstocking, although now introduced for the third time, we profess ourselves highly pleased. This personage is one of Mr. Cooper's happiest creatures, and one upon which he must mainly depend for his future fame. The character of this philosopher of the woods, who had engrafted upon a Christian stock many of the wild virtues of savage life, is represented as touched, but not changed by the decline of life. He has retired, it is true, from the forest to the prairie, before the settlements that gain so fast upon the wilderness, and has been obliged by his change of residence and the infirmity of his stage of life, to change his vocation of hunter for that of trapper; but we find in him the same sagacity, the same adoption of Indian prejudices, and the same continual reference to the maxims of wisdom, supplied by the experience of uneivilized life, the same kindness of heart, and something of the same warmth of imagination. All these qualities are, however, beautifully tempered by an additional infusion of that caution and forbearance with which old age naturally seeks to protect its increasing infirmity. Captain Middleton is a respectable officer in our army, which is as much as

can be said for him. The bee-hunter has rather more of a distinct and individual character, but we believe will not be thought to be very happily conceived. The naturalist is just such a man as David Gamut would have been if he had taken to the study of plants and animals, instead of the practice of music. We wish Mr. Cooper would leave off the manufacture of a class of characters unworthy of his talents. The introduction of a mere pedant whether he be a surgeon, a martinet, a musician, or a naturalist, whose head can possibly entertain no other ideas than those belonging to his profession, and who is continually recurring to them on occasions of the greatest emergency, is a common expedient for drollery, well enough for a farce, but not well enough for one of Mr. Cooper's novels. Of Isabella, the wife of Middleton, and Ellen Wade, the object of the bee-hunter's affections, not much is made or attempted to be made. The former is beautiful with black eyes, the latter handsome with blue ones. One female character there is, slightly enough sketched, but with great sweetness and delicacy, that of the timid and gentle Tachechana, the Indian wife of Mahtoree, whom we are not displeased to see in the sequel after the death of Mahtoree, comfortably settled in the cabin of the Pawnee chief. Ishmael, the squatter, and his family, are very well done in their way. There could be no prairie without squatters, and it should seem very difficult to make much of such a race of people in a romance. This difficulty, however, Mr. Cooper has overcome, and we do not well see how they could have been better drawn.

Academies of Arts. A Discourse, delivered on Thursday, May 3, 1827, in the Chapel of Columbia College, before the National Academy of Design, on its First Anniversary. By SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, President of the Academy. New York. G. & C. Carvill. 1827. 8vo. pp. 60.

THIS discourse is sensible, well written, and evidently the production of one intimately versed in the history and the theory of the fine arts, as well as practically acquainted with the subject on which he writes. It is a production creditable to the author, both as a scholar and as an artist. There are, both in the text and in the notes, a kind of close dealing with particulars, a fullness and readiness of illustration, and a freedom and at the same time a justness of remark, such as could not be expected from one who had read superficially, speculated loosely, or observed carelessly. It is well worth the perusal, not of artists only, but

of all who are admirers of the fine arts, and more particularly of those who desire to encourage a correct taste for them among our countrymen. There prevails in it, it is true, a certain tone of dissatisfaction with the degree and nature of the patronage bestowed upon the arts of design in this country. But we hold this to be quite excusable in one who having devoted himself with enthusiasm to the higher branches of his profession, in a country where excellence in those branches meets with its proper recompense, returns to his native land and finds that excellence imperfectly comprehended and inadequately rewarded. What is said in the following passage will not long, we hope, be truly said of our country.

"In this connexion I cannot forbear to remark on the question of the expediency of an Artist's studying his profession in Europe. However desirable this course may appear on many accounts, especially in its influence on his own real improvement, it is attended with many and peculiar trials to him who returns to practise his profession at home. Unless he possesses great firmness of nerve, great self-denial, and a share of public spirit that belongs to few individuals in any class of society, he will scarcely be saved from misanthropic seclusion and despair. If the artist improves by his increased advantages abroad, is it not natural that he should outstrip in knowledge the public he leaves behind? When he returns he finds a community unprepared, however they may be disposed, to appreciate him. He has unfolded his powers in a society where the artists, and those that encourage them, have proceeded onward together to a far advanced point in the march of taste; but he comes back to a society which has scarcely begun to move in the great procession; and he sees before him a long, long track over which he has once successively passed, all to be travelled again, and the whole mass by which he is surrounded must also move with him, ere he reaches again the spot he has left, ere the enchanting prospects which began to open upon him can again be enjoyed. The country may indeed be the gainer by his acquirements, but it will too often be at the expense of the happiness, perhaps of the life of the artist. The soil must be prepared at home. Our own sun must warm into life the seeds of native talent; they must not be planted in a more genial climate until they spread out their blossoms, and promise their fruit, and then be plucked up and replanted in the cold and sterile desert; they will perish by neglect, or be deprived of the nourishment and warmth which is their right, by some pretending weed that springs up and overshadows them. No! the artist may go abroad, but he must not return. He will there show the fruit of American genius fair among the fairest productions of foreign culture, and he will