EDITOR'S PREFACE. DR. BIRD's name is well known in the literature of the United States. "Calavar," "The Infidel," and "Spartacus," have secured him a high reputation among his countrymen. The following tale is the last, and, in some respects, the most striking of his efforts. It is filled with adventure of a kind which could only have arisen in the vast and primeval forests of North America, at a period when the savage Indian was perpetually engaged in sanguinary feuds with the scarcely less savage Back-woodsman, the latter of whom, nevertheless, boasts his connexion with the civilized world. The sympathy of European nations is enlisted on the side of the Red Man, who is remorselessly hunted from his lands and possessions by his Anglo-Ame rican invaders. But, with a view to turn the current of this feeling, Dr. BIRD exhibits to us the Aborigines of North America, not as men possessing the heroic virtues ascribed to them by Heckewelder and others, but as wretches stained by every vice, and having no one redeeming quality. According to our author, they are crafty, perfidious, cruel, and dastardly; and are guilty, moreover, of making war upon women and children. If Dr. BIRD'S views on this subject are coloured by national antipathy, and by a desire to justify the encroachments of his countrymen upon the persecuted natives, rather than by a reasonable estimate of the subject, it cannot be denied that the scenes and incidents by which he has illustrated his opinion are, in the highest degree, original and interesting. His descriptions of the forest scenery of North America are every where marked by great power :-The gloom, the solitude, the gigantic height of the trees, the tangled intricacies of the wilderness, the forlorn log-house, the rushing torrent, the perilous ford, and the almost interminable extent of the vast and "immemorial woods," are delineated by Dr. BIRD with a master-hand. To the reader of romance, nothing is dearer than fearful adventure, hair-breadth escapes, and pro found mystery. In these qualities, Dr. BIRD's work is conspicuous; and, though the scene of action is dreary and sombre, gleams are ever and anon thrown over it, by the freaks and humours of his comic characters, like bursts of sunshine on a desolate landscape. Among these the most prominent is "Roaring Ralph Stackpole," the "horsethief." The sketch of this Trans-atlantic Autolycus, whose feats rival those of the celebrated Cahir. na-Cappul, the Irish Rapparee, and whose vivacity is only equalled by his agility, appears to me perfect in its way. My partiality, however, for another scarcely-less notorious "horse-thief" of our own country, to whose class honest Ralph belongs, may have made me attach more exclusive importance to this amusing personage than he merits, since in general drollery, and in the particular comicality of the Yankee perversion of our tongue, "Pardon Dodge," the pedlar, is almost equal to Ralph himself. These two characters, though they have much in common, are skilfully and dramatically discriminated. Dodge, by nature a dastard, is frightened into valour. Ralph, though brave as a lion, is nevertheless guilty, in the most ludicrous |