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and in the city it is a rare thing to find a person under thirty years of age, who cannot read and write. The legislature of Hayti consists of a senate and house of representatives, the former composed of twentyone members, and the latter of sixtyfive. The President is elected for life, but can be deprived of his office by the senate for maladministration. Mr Graham was present at the opening of a congress, and the deliberations of this body were conducted with dignity, method, and order. The republic of Hayti maintains a standing army of about forty thousand men, but on an emergency can bring one hundred thousand men into the field.

ART. IX.-Escalala, an American Tale. By SAMUEL B. 12mo. pp. 109. Utica. W. Williams. 1824.

BEACH.

Ir an opinion may be formed by the experiments already tried, the character of the North American Indian affords but a barren theme for poetry. Atala is an Indian story, it is true, yet the fancy of the poet has made the grace and beauty of his picture consist more in adscititious ornaments, than in any strongly drawn lines peculiar to Indian life and manners. Campbell, in his Gertrude of Wyoming, has attempted the portraiture of an Indian, in the character of Outalissi the Oneyda warrior,

'Train'd from his tree rock'd cradle to his bier,
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook
Impassive-fearing but the shame of fear-

A stoic of the woods-a man without a tear.'

These characteristics are true to nature, but viewed in all his conduct, Outalissi is only half an Indian, partaking alike of the habitudes and feelings of the white and the red man. It cannot be denied, however, that the poet has succeeded better than the painter, who has thought to illustrate his conceptions by embodying them in a visible form. In one of Westall's designs for a beautiful edition of Campbell's poems, the Oneyda warrior is represented with curled hair, African features, and a white beard, three most extraordinary appendages to the head of a North American Indian.

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Our own countryment have begun recently to invoke the Muses in behalf of these ancient sons of the forest. A poem has appeared, the express object of which is to delineate Traits of the Aborigines of America. So unproductive was the theme, that the author has wandered in other climes and other ages to find materials for the work, and the Greeks and Romans, the warriors and sages of antiquity, figure nearly as much in the drama, as the Indians themselves. There is good poetry in this performance, but that is not the best which. draws traits of the Indians. The author of Ontwa has been more successful in describing Indian character and scenery, than any writer whom we have read. As a descriptive poem this has much merit, but it descends little into the deep feelings of the human heart, and the strong movements of the passions. It tells of the wars between the Iroquois and the Eries, by which the latter race was exterminated and the warlike propensities of the natives, their modes of going to battle, making peace, their treatment of captives, and other peculiarities relating to this subject, are well delineated. Many things the author describes from his own observation, and he applies to Ontwa the language, which Chateaubriand had before applied to Atala, that it was written in the desert, and under the huts of the savages.' This familiarity with the local condition of the Indians gave him advantages, which he has well employed in his descriptions of savage life; but after all, there is so little of the romantic and of the truly poetical in the native Indian character, that we doubt whether a poem of high order can ever be woven out of the materials it affords. The Indian has a lofty and commanding spirit, but its deeply marked traits are few, stern, and uniform, never running into those delicate and innumerable shades, which are spread over the surface of civilised society, giving the fullest scope to poetic invention, and opening a store of incidents inexhaustible, and obedient to the call of fancy. When you have told of generosity, contempt of danger, patience under suffering, revenge, and cruelty, you have gone through with the catalogue of the Indian's virtues and vices, and touched all the cords that move his feelings or affections. To analyse and combine these into a poem of high interest, without extensive aid from other sources than the real Indian character, is no easy task, and the

day is not to be expected, when the exploits of the Iroquois and Mohawks, or the rough features of their social habits, shall be faithfully committed to the numbers of ever enduring song. The minstrel's harp would recoil at its own notes in hazarding such a strain, and the Muses would deny inspiration to a votary bent on so desperate an enterprise.

Seemingly aware of these difficulties, the author of Escalala has employed the agency of civilised men, in filling up some of the most important parts of his poem. The story is simple and soon told. In the ninth century the Norwegian chief, Naddohr, found his way over the seas to Greenland, and colonised that country. Tradition says, that this Naddohr was shipwrecked and lost, during a voyage in which he was transporting colonists to his newly acquired territory. Mr Beach supposes that this courageous chieftain did not suffer so hard a fate, but that he landed on the coast of America, and penetrated with his followers to the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio, where they formed a settlement. Three centuries afterwards a great nation had arisen and extended over that region, retaining the manners, superstitions, and ceremonies of its Scandinavian ancestors. We have now arrived at the place and time in which the events of the poem occur. The Scanians, for so the descendants of Naddohr's colony are called, prepare to celebrate the annual religious rites of Odin. Gondibert, king of the Scanians, his nobles, and his son Ruric, engage in a grand hunting excursion as preparatory to the festival. In the midst of the chase, Ruric wanders from the party, comes upon Escalala by surprise, while fishing with her maidens in a secluded spot, is smitten with her beauty, seizes and carries her off. Escalala is the daughter of Warredondo, a most powerful Indian chief, who immediately rallies his warriors to avenge this insult on his daughter and his tribe. Battles and carnage follow; capricious victory for some time leaves the contest doubtful; but at length the united force of the neighboring tribes comes down on the Scanians, and utterly exterminates the race. Escalala, the heroine, acts an important part through the whole conflict, and is a principal instrument in conducting the successful warfare of her father's friends. The poet occasionally breaks in upon the thread of his story with the songs of the bards, who dwelt in the halls of Gondibert, as of yore in those of the Scandinavian kings.

One or two extracts will exhibit favorable specimens of the author's manner, and of the prevailing spirit of his poetry. The first is a description of natural scenery.

It was a lovely night in June;
And from the sky the peerless moon
Looked forth at times, full-orbed and bright,
In all her glow of liquid light;

At times-half shaded by the shroud
Of some translucent, fleecy cloud—
Her chastened ray shone dimly through
Its watery veil; with softened hue,
That showed the landscape to the eye
Less plainly, but of lovelier dye;
As youthful pleasures-when the screen
Of years hath cast its shades between
Our hearts and them-in memory's beam
But half revealed; more lovely seem,
Than when their full fruition twined
Its tendrils round the yielding mind.
Far up the arctic cope of heaven,
Now dimly seen, now wildly gleaming,
In huge, fantastic masses driven,
The northern lights were streaming;
And fancy, in their changeful hue
Of ever varying shades, might view

Strange shapes of mountain, wood, and glen,
And fiery steeds, and mail clad men,

And blood stained banners-floating free
In bright but awful pageantry.

pp. 70, 71.

The following lines describe the effect, which the news of Escalala's seizure by Ruric had on the young chief Teondetha, to whom she was betrothed, and whose nuptials were to be celebrated the next day.

Such was the pitiless grief, whose smart
Fevered the brain and wrung the heart
Of the young Chief, when Reta came,
And told her tale of wrong and shame.
He groaned not, wept not, spoke no word
Of pain or pity, when he heard

Those withering sounds; his very breath
Seemed frozen-as the bolt of death
Had struck him suddenly, and left him there,
A monument of hopeless, cold despair.

But when the first keen agony
Of grief was past, and nature strove,
Assisted by all powerful love,

To rouse him from his lethargy;

He seemed, as one new-waked would seem
Out of long trance, or frightful dream ;
With all the shuddering consciousness
That some appalling grief was nigh,
Some deep but undefined distress,
Which came-he knew not how, nor why.
The cool soft dews of evening shed
Their moisture on his burning head,
As if to quench the raging pain

That glowed and maddened in his brain;
The night wind, as it swept the lea,
Lingered, as if from sympathy,
To lend his bosom, ere it passed,
The balm of its refreshing blast;
In vain; he neither felt the dew,

Nor heeded that the night wind blew.

p. 52.

The author makes free use of the poetical license. His Scandinavians, who have shot up into a wide spreading nation of six hundred thousand persons from the slender stock of Naddohr's colony, retain for three centuries not only all the customs of their ancestors, but they build cities and palaces, fabricate arms, put on coats of mail, go to battle by the sound of the bugle, ride horses richly caparisoned, and do many other things, which we should hardly expect to be done by a race of people separated three centuries from the land of its ancestors, and surrounded by savages on the banks of the Mississippi. A novel kind of warfare is also introduced. Escalala comes suddenly into battle,

On a mammoth's giant might,

Rushing through the failing fight.

This mammoth makes prodigious havoc, and we can show no good reason why the poet has not a right to enlist him into the service of his heroine, although we can bring no precedent for such an adventure. For all that tradition or history says to the contrary, the mammoth may once have been as potent in the armies of the west, as the elephant in those of the east.