magnificently done. There is a pathetic under-song in this production, which leaves its echo in the heart. The author has represented Red Jacket very much to the life; though the transatlantic allusions might have been well dispensed with. That noble old chief had a spice of the philosopher about him, which would have done honour to the wiliest potentate that ever bent the million to his beck, or swayed a party with his nod. There was a natural grandeur about him, forest-born; the air that circulates over interminable wildernesses, and sweeps in freedom across inland seas, was the vital aliment for which his free nostrils thirsted; the perfume that goes up to the sky from vast reservations, as it went from the flowery tops of Carmel in the olden time, was his chosen element of respiration; the anthem for his ear was the voice of Niagara. We can readily believe that he admired his own untrammeled way of life; revered Manitou; and, perhaps, loved the fire-water which drowned the memory of his wrongs. In a part of his tenets, he had wisdom on his side. The man who chooses to run wild in woods, a noble savage, can find many enlightened wights in the purlieus of Christendom to bear him out in his partialities. The dress of Red Jacket, in his primitive condition, was of the simplest kind. He was not in the straitened, tailor-owing condition of many at the present day. "I have thatched myself over," says a modern European writer, perhaps in the predicament just hinted at, " with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the entrails of furred beasts, and walk abroad a moving rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters, raked from the charnel-house of nature." In his best days, Red Jacket had no fancy for integuments like these: and his bard should not have stooped to compare his dress at any time with that of "George the Fourth, at Brighton;" for Halleck is a man who cannot easily conceal from himself the fact that there are noblemen of nature,-and that a drawing-room, whether of the British monarch, or of le Roi Citoyen, "is simply a section of infinite space, where so many God-created souls do for the time meet together." But we keep the reader from our quotation.

"Is strength a monarch's merit, like a whaler's?
Thou art as tall, as sinewy, and as strong
As earth's first kings-the Argo's gallant sailors,
Heroes in history, and gods in song.

"Is beauty ?-Thine has with thy youth departed;
But the love-legends of thy manhood's years,
And she who perished, young and broken-hearted,
Are-but I rhyme for smiles and not for tears.

"Is eloquence ?-Her spell is thine that reaches

The heart, and makes the wisest head its sport;
And there's one rare, strange virtue in thy speeches,
The secret of their mastery-they are short.
"The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding,
The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon,

Of winning, fettering, moulding, wielding, banding,
The hearts of millions till they move as one;
"Thou hast it. At thy bidding men have crowded
The road to death as to a festival;

And minstrels, at their sepulchres, have shrouded
With banner-folds of glory the dark pall.
"Who will believe? Not I-for in deceiving

Lies the dear charm of life's delightful dream;
I cannot spare the luxury of believing

That all things beautiful are what they seem.
"Who will believe that, with a smile whose blessing
Would, like the patriarch's, sooth a dying hour,
With voice as low, as gentle, and caressing,
As e'er won maiden's lip in moonlit bower;

"With look, like patient Job's, eschewing evil;
With motions graceful, as a bird's in air;
Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil
That e'er clenched fingers in a captive's hair!
"That in thy breast there springs a poison fountain,
Deadlier than that where bathes the Upas tree;
And in thy wrath, a nursing cat-o'-mountain

Is calm as her babe's sleep, compared with thee!
"And underneath that face, like summer ocean's,
Its lip as moveless, and its cheek as clear,
Slumbers a whirlwind of the heart's emotions,
Love, hatred, pride, hope, sorrow-all save fear.
"Love-for thy land, as if she were thy daughter,
Her pipe in peace, her tomahawk in wars;
Hatred of missionaries and cold water;

Pride-in thy rifle-trophies and thy scars;

"Hope that thy wrongs may be by the Great Spirit
Remembered and revenged, when thou art gone;
Sorrow-that none are left thee to inherit

Thy name, thy fame, thy passions, and thy throne !"

We now take our leave of Mr. Halleck, with the expression of a hope that he will not keep his light, which sends its beams so far, under the bushel hereafter. We counsel no neglect of his day-book; but we entreat him not to let his inspiration expire over the entries therein. He must have a good share of leisure after all. Let him not waste it in society; let him bear in mind that, with respect to his commodity at least, poetry will sell as well as peltry; that he has a mine of inalienable bullion in his brain, which no pressure can drive away,

no commercial revulsion diminish. The paper in his escritoire, if he choose to stain it with poetic notes of hand, will always command a premium. He can serve both Apollo and the Syrian god; and to him each will be true. He has written enough to secure that fame hereafter, of which he has already had a not disgracious foretaste. He has no right to stifle the stirrings of the power within his soul. We speak this more in reference to his duty to the public than to himself; since in the selfish sense, so far as fame is concerned, he might contemplate his dissolution with composure; assured by the past, that when his death-hour comes, be it soon or late, he will leave behind a name which his countrymen, and the lovers of genius every where, would not willingly let die; and that even now he might enrobe himself in the cere-cloth, and contentedly "take his farewell of the sun."

ART. VII.-The Life and Services of Commodore William Bainbridge, United States Navy. By THOMAS HARRIS, M. D., Surgeon, United States Navy. 8vo. Philadelphia: 1837.

The brilliant and perhaps unexpected success which attended our naval conflicts with Great Britain during the war of 1812, rendered the names of the principal commanders familiar as household words throughout the land. Their well-fought battles were at the time hastily chronicled, and soon followed by the various demonstrations of a well-spread and thoroughly popular fame. The mixed emotion of national exultation and gratitude to the victors, sought to express itself in illuminations, public receptions, presentation services of plate, and the various manifestations of that joyousness which sprang up in the bosom of every citizen, from a sense of the honour of his country, and of the exploits of his countrymen. Neither did this feeling appear in mere demonstrations of the more formal and speechaccompanied description-it mingled itself with domestic doings and with household feelings: parents and sponsors borrowed, from the honoured navy-list, names for the little Christians who were brought in those days to the baptismal font. If the rage for multiplying collegiate institutions throughout the country

had been of somewhat earlier date, we doubt not that, with that curious felicity which distinguishes so much of our nomenclature, not a few colleges would have received their titles from names that were renowned upon the quarter-deck. The history of the navy furnished the sign-painter with his theme, and many a faithful Red Lion, and Black Bear, and Rising Sun, were content to yield their places to naval exploits, or naval commanders. The likenesses, or what purported to be such, of the latter, pendent upon the sign-posts of village or road-side taverns, bore the brunt of as many storms as did their originals. We recollect to have seen at a little halting place on the brow of one of the Allegheny ridges, a sign decorated with a likeness of Commodore Bainbridge, as the artist had been so considerate as to interpret it by appending the name: it was unquestionably a rude tribute; but for all that, perched up as it was so far from the element on which the name had been made known, it was fame.

The reputation which the American naval commanders have enjoyed, has, however, been of an indefinite kind. They stand in need, therefore, so far as the accuracy and permanency of their fame are concerned, of careful biography. We are ready to acknowledge that, previously to the perusal of the work before us, our general familiarity with Commodore Bainbridge's name and services had not enabled us to do full justice to the sterling qualities of his character, or accurately to appreciate the extent and value of his services. The care of his memory has fallen into good hands, for his biographer, Dr. Harris, beside full general qualifications for the purpose, brought to the work the additional qualification of personal familiarity with the history of our navy, acquired by long and active service, and a participation in one of its brilliant achievements. For other reasons we were pleased to find Dr. Harris's name associated with such a work as the present; we hail any instance of a professional man of eminence finding, amidst his professional duties, hours enough to be devoted to a literary undertaking. The memoir of Commodore Bainbridge will be found to possess its appropriate biographical interest, and at the same time an incidental value considered in connection with American history.

We were glad to perceive that Dr. Harris has not been disposed to overlook a fundamental principle of biographical composition, which is too often neglected by writers who allow themselves to be tempted from the portraiture of individual character by aspirations for the higher dignity of history.

"Commodore Bainbridge's career in the navy has been nearly contemporaneous with its origin. It has been therefore suggested to the author to annex to his memoir a sketch of the history of the naval policy of the United States, of the events which distinguished the partial hos

tilities with the French republic, and a more extended account of the various actions with the Barbary powers in the Mediterranean under the command of Commodore Preble and others. The incidents of these brief but eminently successful wars, were considered appropriate subjects for the biography of an individual actively engaged in the one, and personally most interested in the results of the other. It will be seen that the author has ventured to give a cursory view of many of these events; but to have extended his narrative, would have destroyed the individuality of a personal,memoir."

Yes, as soon as the individuality of the personal memoir is merged in the record of events, no matter how important they may be, the work may be history, or it may belong to that intermediate species, better known in French than English literature "Memoires pour servir," &c. ; but assuredly it ceases to be biography. It is a grievous error in literature that works purporting to be biographical, should be distinguished for that subordination of individual motives, and passions, and actions, which is the appropriate characteristic of history. The dividing line between them may be so distinctly marked that none need cross it unawares but from wilful or stupid blindness. Writers of history are too often (to use a western world term of greater significancy than beauty) squatters on the territory of biography, to the injury of the rightful proprietors, and to the disparagement of their own functions. It is the right of a reader of a work of pure biography to look for a knowledge of personal humanity, and not to have foisted upon him in its stead aggregates and abstractions, by which many a luckless individual has been lost in his own biography. When we look at the past through the medium of biographical composition, we are entitled to be informed what some one being-man or woman-has done or thought or felt-to be informed in what manner the individual, his personal power swaying perhaps the destiny of thousands, has acted upon the age in which he lived, or, if withdrawn more into the seclusion of his own being, how the age has acted upon him. To present it in its most general form, the philosophy of biography is to teach by showing to us how the individual, who may be the subject of it, either has been deepening the shades which hang upon the world, or by the blessed influences of a wise and happy spirit has been adding-no matter in what quantity, or whether in lofty or lowly life-it may be the ray of a planet, or of a beacon, or of

still something to the light of good thoughts and good deeds, which is a sustaining element of human nature.

The memoir of Commodore Bainbridge has carried our VOL. XXI.-No. 42.

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