à la Pischek makes a whimsical disturb- cess: as her widowed husband phrased it, ance of our visions of prairies, portages," when the poor came, it was like a strainer and other features of wild life in the West) full of holes, letting all she had pass has his black handkerchief cap tied on, as through." She was extreme, moreover, in it were, by a streak of vermilion under the her tenderness of her conscience, "often chin, by which also his ear is dyed. While feared that her acts were displeasing to the we are on the subject of aboriginal "paint Great Spirit, when she would blacken her and patches," commend us to No-way-ke- face and retire to some lone place, and fast sug-ga, the Ottoe chief, whose portrait is to and pray." But we take it that so far as be found early in volume the third, and any grace which free-will gives can go, whose citron green chin, with a Vandyke" the female flying Pigeon" was rather an pattern of the same piquant nuance across exceptional than an average woman. It is his forehead," composes" with the superb true that, in her charming "Winter Studies cherry-colored plume of horse-hair or fea- and Summer Rambles," Mrs. Jameson, thers upon his head, so as to form an ar- whose honorable desire to improve the conrangement of color of which a Parisian dition of her sex, sometimes leads her into designer of fancies might be proud. There odd puzzles and paradoxes, does her best is somewhat of caprice, we are told, in for the Squaw; trying to prove her condithese decorations-a caprice, it seems, con- tion in some essential points far better than stant in the avoidance of "the stars and that of the conventionalized white woman, stripes," though not seldom awkwardly em- (as the jargon of the day runs). And we ulating the lines of "the Union Jack;" suppose that social philosophers on the -but we take it for granted, something of other side of the argument-the power symbolism also. And in these days, when theorists to wit,-would declare that Man's reds and blues are mere matters of faith ministering Angel was in her right place, and orthodoxy, when the cut of an aure- when hewing wood and drawing water, cole, or the frilling and flouncing of an ini- drudging in the fields, and dragging burtial letter, become subjects concerning dens, leaving "her master" undisturbed in which homilies are preached, and libraries the nobler occupations of fighting and written we must not be thought absurd in recommending to American savans, "the nature and significance of Indian paint,' as a mystery worth looking into, for the use of historians and artists yet unborn. Out of accidents little less freakish, we take it, did the whole school of what is by some called Christian Art, originally construct itself. At all events, there is now some possibility of obtaining information on these important matters-though at the risk of depriving controversialists in embryo of their life-breath; to wit, matter for controversy. To speak, meanwhile, of a matter of detail, in its order, important,we are surprised that in a work like this, so carefully and expensively produced, greater descriptive minuteness was not thought necessary. There are many accessories and objects introduced into these portraits, which we neither know how to describe or to name. This ought not to have been.

The portrait of a Rant-che-wai-me, "Female flying Pigeon," also called "the beautiful female Eagle who flies in the air," reminds us that we have been somewhat remiss in paying our dues to the gentle sex. But this is true forest fashion. The lady before us is mild and gracious looking. We were told she was free-handed to an ex

foraging. But we confess that we are a trifle hard to convince as to the supreme felicity of the Indian woman's lot. The utmost her race has done has been to produce, not a Boadicea, but a Pocahontas. Of this last, "the heroine of the tribes," we have somewhat too niggardly a notice. There is a portrait of her, however, in her civilized condition, which an appendical series of documents assure us is authentic: the features wearing an expression of grave and womanly sweetness, befitting one whose name was somewhat prophetically "a rivulet of peace between two nations."

But this is not the time or place for us to argue out the great question of the Lady and the Lord, to determine how far (as Cherub says) Nature never meant that a Griseldis should be put to the test by her Sir Perceval, or vice versa. Ample opportunities to hear New Wisdom against Old Prejudice are sure to present themselves! The mention of "authentication" and its accompanying assertion that all these portraits are warrantable, recalls to us yet another of the curious peculiarities of savage life: namely, great solicitude and touchiness in the delicate matter of resemblances painted. Queen Elizabeth herself, with her royal command of "garden lights," and

ter?

us

similar devices which excluded shadows, mortified that his mother, as he believed her to and other such unpleasing accidents-be, should be arranged in the work as the wife Lady Pentweazle, when big with the pur- whom his father had held and exercised of another, and especially of a chief over pose of "calling up a look," which should take mankind by storm,-were gentle and until, at last, some excitement, on the part of authority. The colloquy became interesting, easily-contented customers compared with Mahaskah, grew out of it. On hearing it rethe Braves and the Medicine men, whom peated by the agent that he must be mistaken, the founders of the school of American Art Mahaskah turned and looked him in the face, have been called upon to immortalize. Mr. saying, 'Did you ever know the child that Catlin, in his "Letters and Notes," gave loved its mother, and had seen her, that forgot some whimsical and touching details of the back on which he had been carried, or the knee the board on which he was strapped, and the "relations" which the court painter of the on which he had been nursed, or the breast Indians has to hold with his sitters. Who which had given him life? So firmly conhas forgotten the anecdote of the Chief who vinced was he that this was the picture of his came to the artist's tent, with an offer of mother, and so resolved that she should not six horses, and as much treasure besides as remain by the side of Shaumonekusse, that he the magician chose to exact, so he might said, I will not leave this room, until my bear away the portrait of his dead daugh- the name of Eagle of Delight.' The agent mother's name, Rantchewaime, is marked over The portraying of a Sioux chief, of the work complied with this demand, when Mah-to-cheeja, "the Little Bear "-in pro-his agitation, which had become great, subsifile, led to yet more serious results. Mr. ded, and he appeared contented. Looking Catlin had to pack up his brushes and run to save his scalp; since Shonka, "the Dog," found out that the "Little Bear," thus presented, was "only half a man!" The Red Men, as we have seen, do not love jests. The Dog's taunt bred an affray which cost the Little Bear his life. The "Soon after this interview, the party went to volumes before us afford us an addition to King's Gallery, where are copies of many of the above store of anecdotes; which, ere these likenesses, and among them are both the Eagle of Delight' and the Female flying we part from them, we shall extract :Pigeon. The moment Mahaskah's eye caught though conscious that it makes against us, the portrait of the Flying Pigeon,' he exand for those who consider the Squaw a claimed, That is my mother, that is her face, less suffering woman than the Mrs. Can-I know her now, I am ashamed again.' He dles, Mrs. Grundys, and Mrs. Partingtons immediately asked to have a copy of it, as also of our streets and squares, and village- of the 'Eagle of Delight,' wife of Shaumonekusse, saying of the last, The Ottoe chief will be so glad to see his squaw, that he will give me one hundred horses for it.'"

greens.

"It happened," says the memorialist_of Young Mahaskah, the son of the Female flying Pigeon, "when Mahaskah was at Washington, that the agent of this work was there also. As he turned over the leaves bearing the likenesses of many of those Indians of the Far West, who were known to the party, Mahaskah would pronounce their names with the same promptitude as if the originals were alive and before him. Among these was the

likeness of his father. He looked at it with a

composure bordering on indifference. On being asked if he did not know his father, he answered, pointing to the portrait, 'That is my father. He was asked if he was not glad to see him. He replied, 'It was enough for me to know that my father was a brave man, and had a big heart, and died an honorable death in doing the will of my Great Father.'

The portrait of the Eagle of Delight, wife of Shaumonekusse, the Ottoe chief, was then shown to him. That,' he said, 'is my mother.' The agent assured him he was mistaken. He became indignant, and seemed

6

once more at the painting, he turned from it, saying, "If it had not been for Waucondamony (the name he gave to the agent of the work, which means walking god, so called, because he attributed the taking of these likenesses to him,) I would have kissed her, but Waucondamony made me ashamed.'

There are others, more competent judges of art than simple Mahaskah, will occur to every reader with whom (no offence to their connoisseurships) "the fan" makes the likeness.

It will be easily gathered from the above hasty notes and illustrations, that to comment upon the entire contents of these volumes would lead the critic beyond all reasonable limits. Having given a fair sample, we must here pause. A parting word is, perhaps, required to assure certain excellent persons, that because we have treated this work crotchet-wise, rather than in the cut and dry "Encyclopedia" fashion; no disrespect to it has been meant. On the contrary, there are certain subjects more vividly brought home to us by familiar treatment and comparison, than by dissertations ex cathedrâ: and this is among them. The

book is a most interesting collection of raw | editor is probably thinking of Taylor the materials, out of which a school of imagi- Platonist, who was far more distinguished native art might be constructed; but to for absurdity, and is now equally illustrious lecture upon them, appealing the while to "the principle of the pyramid," would be to impugn our own common sense, and not to assist either teachers or people. We regard it as a valuable addition to the American's library-and as full of suggestion to all persons who love to look around and forward as well as to linger with fond reverence among the traditions of the Past.

From Tait's Magazine.

for obscurity. But that either of these Taylors, or both, or even nine of them, acting with the unanimity of one man, ever could have founded "a sect," is so entirely preposterous, that the accomplished editor must pardon my stopping for half a minute to laugh. The writer, whom Sir James indicated, was probably " Walking Stewart ;" a most interesting man whom personally I knew; eloquent in conversation; contemplative, if that is possible, in excess; crazy beyond all reach of hellebore; three Anticyræ would not have cured him; yet sublime and divinely benignant in his visionariness; the man who, as a pedestrian trav

GLANCE AT THE WORKS OF SIR JAMES eller, had seen more of the earth's surface,

MACKINTOSH.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

The Miscellaneous Works of the Right

Hon. Sir James Mackintosh. Edited

by Robert James Mackintosh, Esq. In Three Volumes, 8vo. London: Longman & Co.

and communicated more extensively with the children of the earth, than any man before or since; the writer also who published starts) than any Englishman, except permore books (all intelligible by fits and haps Richard Baxter, who is said to have published three hundred and sixty-five, plus one, the extra one being probably meant for leap-year. Walking Stewart answers enTHIS collection comprehends, with one tirely to the description of Sir James's exception, (viz., the History of England, unknown philosopher; his character was which is published separately), all that is of most "singular" his style tending alpermanent value in the writings of Sir James ways to the "unintelligible;" his privacy, Mackintosh. The editor is the writer's in the midst of eternal publication, most son; and he, confident in powers for higher absolute; his disposition to martyrdom, had things, has not very carefully executed the any body attempted it, ready and cheerful; minor duties of his undertaking. He has and as the "founder of a sect," considering contributed valuable notes; but he has his intense cloudiness, I am not at all sure overlooked some important errors of the but he might have answered as well as the press, and he has made separate errors of Grecian Heracleitus, as Spinosa the Jew, his own. At page 387, vol. ii., Charles or even as Schelling the Teutonic ProfesVII. is described as King of Sweden, mean- sor. His plantations were quite as thriving ing clearly King of Denmark. At page as theirs; but the three foreigners fell upon 557, of the same volume, Sir James, having happier times, or at least (as regards the referred to " a writer now alive in England," last of them) upon a soil more kindly, and as one who had "published doctrines not a climate more hopeful for metaphysical dissimilar to those which Madame de Staël growths. Not only has the editor done that ascribes to Schelling," the editor suggests which he ought not to have done, but too that probably the person in his eye was Mr. often he has left undone that which he ought William Taylor of Norwich. This is the to have done. The political tracts of the most unaccountable of blunders. Mr. Tay- third volume require abundant explanations lor of Norwich was among the earliest Eng- to the readers of this generation; and yet lish students of German, and so far his the notes are rare as well as slight. name connects itself naturally with a notice of the De l'Allemagne. But, on the other hand, he never trespassed into the fields of metaphysics. He did not present any "allurements" in a "singular character," nor in "an unintelligible style;" neither was he the author of any "paradoxes." The

There is no need, at this time of day, to take the altitude, intellectually, of Sir Jas. Mackintosh. His position in public life was that of Burke; he stood as a mediator between the world of philosophy and the world of moving politics. The interest in the two men was the same in kind, but dif

King Christian, the Seventh of Denmark, came over to London early in the reign of George the Third:

"It was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.'

ferently balanced. As a statesman, Burke | pleading, cannot have too much of it; let had prodigiously the advantage; not only them perish, as regards history and reputathrough the unrivalled elasticity of his in- tion, by the arts which they practised. tellect, which in that respect was an intellect absolutely sui generis, but because his philosophy was of a nature to express and incarnate itself in political speculation. On the other hand, Sir James was far better qualified, by nature as well as by training, for the culture of pure abstract metaphysics. It is sometimes made a matter of regret that Burke should have missed the Professor's chair which he sought. This is injudicious; as an academic lecturer on philosophy, or a speculator in ontological novelties, Burke would have failed. Not so Mackintosh. As to him, the regret would be reasonable; by detaching him from the cares of public business, a chair of philosophy would have widened the sphere of those higher speculations which, under his management, could not have been less than permanently profitable to the world.

To review so extensive a collection is clearly impossible within any short compass. I content myself with a flying glance at those papers which are likely to prove the most interesting.

MACKINTOSH ON STRUENSEE.

The case of Count Struensee is to this hour wrapped in some degree of darkness; but, even under those circumstances of

darkness, it is full of instruction. The doubts respect Struensee himself, and the unhappy young queen, Matilda; were they criminal in the way alleged by their profligate enemies? So far there is a cloud of mystery resting on the case; but, as to those enemies, as to the baseness of their motives, and the lawlessness of their acts, there is no doubt at all, and no shadow of mystery. This being so, it being absolutely certain that the accusers were the vilest of intriguers, and unworthy of belief, for a moment, when at any point they passed the boundary line of judicial proof, certified to Christendom by public oaths of neutral parties, it follows, that the accused are every where entitled to the benefit of any doubt, any jealousy, any umbrage, suspicion, or possibility, against the charge which has arisen, shall arise, or ought to arise, in the brain of the most hair-splitting special pleader. They, that ruined better people than themselves by the wickedest of special

He came by contract, to fall in love with our Princess Matilda. But he had the misfortune to be "imbecile," which is a word of vague meaning; in fact, he was partially an idiot, and, at times, a refractory madman. It has been remarked, in connexion with Mr. Galt's excellent novels, that at one time, (of course not the present time,) too large a proportion of the Scottish lairds were secretly, and in ways best known to their households, daft; and in such a degree, that, if not born gentlemen, they would certainly, by course of law, have been cognosced. Perhaps the same tendency, and developed in part by the same defects of training, at that time affected the royal houses of Europe. Christian VII., if, instead of being a king, he had been a Scottish laborer, would certainly have been "cognosced." Amongst other eccentricities, that recoiled eventually upon others, he insisted on his friend's thumping him, kicking him, knocking him down, and scratching him severely; and, if his friend declined to do so, then he accused him of high treason. Really you had difficult cards to play with this daft laird of Copenhagen. If you positively refused to thump him, then you

were a rebel; an absolute monarch had insisted on your doing a thing, and you had mutinously disobeyed. If you thumped him, and soundly, (which was the course taken by his friend Brandt,) then you were a traitor; you had assaulted the Lord's anointed, and were liable to question from the lex majestatis. To London did this maddown by the grave-digger in Hamlet-that man come; perhaps on the principle laid in England all men are mad; so that madness is not much remarked. The king saw London; and London saw him. But a black day it was for some people, when he

* "Cognosced."-A term well known to Scottish law, and therefore to Roman law. It means judicially reviewed and reported, no matter in reference to what. But, in common conversation, it has come elliptically to mean-duly returned as an idiot. Cognosco, it must be remembered, is the appropriate word, in classical Latin, for judicial review and investigation.

first set his face towards St. James's. The gems and frauds in the conspirators. The poor young princess Matilda, sister to case seems to tell its own story. It was George III., and then only seventeen years thought necessary to include Matilda in the old, became his unhappy wife; and Struen- ruin of Struensee, because else there was see, a young physician, whom he had pick-no certainty of his ruin; and upon that deed up at Altona, about the same time re- pended not only the prosperity of the inceived the fatal distinction of becoming his trigue, but the safety of the intriguers. The favorite, and his minister. The frail per- destruction recoiled upon themselves, if the sonal tenure of such a situation, dependent young queen regained the king's ear. But on the caprices of a man, imbecile, equally this could be prevented certainly by nothas regarded intellect and as regarded ener- ing short of her removal for ever from the gy of will, suggested to a cabal of court court. And that could be accomplished rivals the obvious means for overthrowing only by a successful charge of adultery. and supplanting the favorite. To possess Else, besides other consequences, the cabal themselves suddenly of the king's person, feared the summary interposition of Engwas to possess themselves of the state au- land. But of adultery, as they had no thority. Five minutes sufficed to use this proof, or vestige of a proof, it became neauthority for the arrest of Struensee,- cessary to invent one, by obtaining a conafter which, as a matter of course, followed fession from the queen herself. And this his close confinement, with circumstances was obtained by practising on her credulity, of cruelty, now banished every where, even and her womanly feelings of compassion for from the treatment of felons; to that suc- the unfortunate. She was told by the ceeded his pretended trial, his pretended knaves about her, that an acknowledgment penitence, his pretended confession, and, of guilt would save the life of the perishing finally, his execution. minister.

Sir James Mackintosh notices the exter- There is something in this atrocious nal grounds of suspicion applying to the falsehood as to Struensee, a part of the story publications against Struensee, and partic- which is not denied by any party, remindularly the doubtful position in respect to the ing one of the famous anecdote about Colconspirators of Dr. Munter, the spiritual onel Kirke, in connexion with Monmouth's assistant of the prisoner. This man was rebellion; a fable no doubt in his case, but employed by the government; was he not realized by the Danish conspirators. They used as a decoy, and a calumniating traitor? won their poor victim to what she abhorred, That point is still dark. He certainly pub- by a promise that could have offered no lished what he had no right to publish. Sir temptation except to a generous nature; James is disposed, on the other hand, to and, having thus gained their villainous obfind internal marks of sincerity in the doc-ject, they did not even counterfeit an effort tor's account of his conversations with to fulfil the promise. A confession obtained Struensee. But were not these in their under circumstances like these, would very nature confidential? And Sir James weigh little with the just and the considerhimself remarks, that nobody knows what ate." But where is the proof that the queen became latterly of Munter himself; so that did make such a confession? No body of the vouchers for his veracity, which might state-commissioners ever received any thing have been found in subsequent respectabil- of the kind from her own hands; nothing ity of life, are entirely wanting. General remains to attest it but the two first letters Falkenskiold's Memoirs make us acquainted of her name, having written which, she is with the artifices used to obtain from the unhappy young queen a confession of adulterous intercourse with Struensee. And, if these artifices had been even unknown to us, it must strike every body, that such a confession being so gratuitously mischievous to the queen, is not likely to have been made by her, in any case, where she was free from coercion, or free from gross delusion. Equally on the hypothesis of her guilt or her innocence, the poor lady could have had no rational motive for inculpating herself, except such as would imply strata-hand.

* Sir J. M, though manifestly inclined to adopt weakens the case by saying "If General Falkthis account of the pretended confession, a little enskiold was rightly informed," as though the invalidation of the confession were conditional upon the accuracy of the General. But in fact, if his account were withdrawn, the conspirators are in a still worse position; for the unfinished signature, confessedly completed surreptitiously by some alien hand, points strongly towards a physical compulsion exercised upon the queen,such as had given way, and naturally would give letters had been extorted by forcibly guiding her way, under a violent struggle, after one or two