government, and if there be any cupidity on this score, it must rest with the concentrated wise and great at Washington, and not with the scattered pioneers upon the verge of the wilderness.

But we seriously doubt, whether much blame can now attach in any quarter, as respects the treatment of the Indians. Our statute books literally speak volumes in favor of the paternal policy of the government towards them. We do not say, that what has been done has always been either the best directed or the most beneficial. But legislation has here operated upon one of its most remote, and undefined, and undefinable objects. We have assumed an anomalous kind of jurisdiction over the Indians, always with a view to their good, which leaves the relation they bear to us extremely unsettled. In order to guard their rights, we have restricted the trade with them, until they appear to have no rights all. Much of this careful legislation began under the idea that the Indians could not superintend their own interests. The utmost precaution with respect to their lands was, and is still undoubtedly of primary importance. But in regard to their capability of making a good bargain, whatever may have been their former obtuseness, we are inclined to think that they are acute enough now, to be safely left to themselves. We have no doubt, that, in the barter which is carried on at the hunting-grounds, the traders find the balance of cunning is against them. It may, perhaps, be too much to say, that all, or nearly all the restrictions upon our trade with them, should be taken off; but we believe that nothing else can introduce that fair competition in the forest, which prevails elsewhere. We would, if it be practicable, exclude whiskey; but the experience of many years, forces an unwilling conviction upon the mind, that it is not practicable. The prohibitory laws, which have been made, may have lessened the quantity introduced. But the whole extended line of our frontier is open to ingress and egress; the red-man can come in, and the white-man may go out; drunkenness has prevailed, and we fear will prevail, in spite of laws; and perhaps the only difference which would result from their repeal, would be, that what is now done with dishonesty, violence, and illegality, would then be done without either.

We are inclined to agree with the reviewer, that this evil, though great, is not the greatest which is operating to destroy the Indians. It is not the desolating curse which it is generally supposed to be. The traders, who penetrate the remote forests in search of furs, have not the means of transporting it in sufficient quantity to inebriate one Indian in two hundred, of the surrounding

tribes. Indeed, we doubt whether all the whiskey which is got at by the Indians, would intoxicate one of them in a hundred, one day in a hundred. Besides, although almost all Indians will drink to intoxication, yet there are few who, like the habitual white drunkard, pursue it as a business of their life. His fits of intoxication are fêtes to him, which, like all other fêtes, are not expected to be of frequent occurrence. The squaw, who has probably never tasted liquor before, will, under any great bereavement, drink to excess, in order to produce that utter self-abandonment, which constitutes, in her opinion, the luxury and fulness of woe. And the love of liquor in Indians, or rather, such an indulgence in it as is within the power of most of them, does not effect much change in their habits or character, or even their standing with their tribe; for there are, we believe, but few, even among the chiefs, who have not this common infirmity. The white man, in losing his habits of industry, and sinking into sottishness, becomes degraded and ruined. But the Indian can scarcely fall into any new habits by being addicted to drunkenness. He still hunts occasionally, and his squaw does the rest; so that he probably finds few or none of his comforts diminished, and consequently lives about as long as if he were perfectly temperate. Hence we apprehend that intoxication is but a breath in the blast which has been desolating the sons of the forest. La Salle, when he descended the Illinois, found there numerous and powerful tribes, of which later travellers have seen only the remnants, or perhaps not a vestige; and in whose annihilation the white-man's arm, and the whiteman's strong-water had no part. Carver, who went down the Ouis-consin in 1763, speaks of large villages then upon that river; which now no longer exist, and in whose extinction the white man could have had little or no agency. We speak only to exculpate the whites, so far as they are innocent. That they have been deeply instrumental in the great work of destruction, we cannot doubt; but we can as little doubt, from the evidence of history, that mightier causes have been, and perhaps are still in operation, which threaten the extinction of the Indian race.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

SPRING IN TOWN.

THE Country ever has a lagging Spring,
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses. Showers and sunshine bring
Slowly the deepening verdure o'er the earth,
To put their foliage out the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing birds come back.

Within the city's bounds the time of flowers

Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day, Such as full often, for a few bright hours,

Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May,
Shine on our roofs, and chase the wintry gloom-
And, lo, our borders glow with sudden bloom.

For the wide sidewalks of Broadway are then
Gorgeous as are a rivulet's banks in June,
That, overhung with blossoms, through its glen
Slides soft away beneath the sunny noon;
And they that search the untrodden wood for flowers
Meet in its depths no lovelier ones than ours.

For here are eyes that shame the violet,
Or the dark drop that on the pansy lies;
And foreheads white as when, in clusters set,
The anemonies by forest fountains rise;
And the spring-beauty boasts no tenderer streak
Than the soft red on many a youthful cheek.

And thick about those lovely temples lie

Locks that the lucky Vignardonne has curledThrice happy man! whose trade it is to buy

And bake and braid those love-nets of the world!

Who curls of every glossy color keepest,

-And sellest, it is said, the blackest cheapest!

And well thou mayst; for Italy's brown maids

Send the dark locks with which their brows are drest; And Tuscan lasses from their jetty braids

Crop half, to buy a ribbon for the rest;

But the fresh Norman girls their ringlets spare,
And the Dutch damsel keeps her flaxen hair.

Then henceforth let no maid or matron grieve
To see her locks of an unlovely hue,
Frowzy or thin; for Vignardonne shall give
Such piles of curls as nature never knew:
Eve, with her veil of tresses, at the sight
Had blushed outdone, and owned herself a fright.

Soft voices and light laughter wake the street

Like notes of wood-birds, and where'er the eye Threads the long way, plumes wave, and twinkling feet Fall light, as hastes that crowd of beauty by; The ostrich, hurrying o'er the desert space, Scarce bore those tossing plumes with fleeter pace.

No swimming Juno gait, of languor born,

Is theirs, but a light step of freest grace, Light as Camilla's o'er the unbent corn,—

A step that speaks the spirit of the place, Since Quiet, meek old dame, was driven away To Singsing and the shores of Tappan bay.

Ye that dash by in chariots, who will care

For steeds and footmen now? Ye cannot show
Fair face and dazzling dress and graceful air
And last edition of the shape! Ah no,
These sights are for the earth and open sky,
And
your loud wheels unheeded rattle by.

B.

NIGHT SCENES.

A SOLEMN hour is this,-a solemn voice

Speaks at the dead of night; and we may read,
Imprinted on the scroll of nature round,
Mournful and cheering lessons: on the sky,
The ceiling of God's temple, lighted up
With ever-burning lamps, that shed sheir rays
Upon our earthly altars; on the sea,

Spread like a boundless mirror, where is seen
The heavens' reflected glory. To the mind,
Whose thoughts are not confined to Folly's course,
There is no place not holy ground, nor aught
In the wide circle of our mortal ken,

That moves not prayer and wakes not songs of praise.

Blest hour of Contemplation! thou, methinks,
Hast sent thy warnings hoine to many hearts,
Hardened in vice and heedless of reproof;
"T was only when thy shadows gathered round,
When the world's phantoms cheated not their eyes,
And guilt, in all its horrors, stood alone,

That the fierce courage, which had prompted deeds
Of fiend-like daring, shrunk in awe of thee,
And withered at thy calm and silent mien.
There is a dread in silence, and the heart
Of guilt is wakened by the midnight pause;
If but a leaf would rustle 'midst the gloom,
And break the horror of the perfect calm,
The guilty soul might throw aside the dread,
And banish Conscience from its company.
But all seems hushed in nature's wide domain,
As if to wait the sentence of the soul

On its own guilty self. O how he longs
For morning's bustle to disturb the charm.

But no, he cannot drive the fearful thought
From his soul's view; he bows and owns its sway,
And Penitence relieves him, like the dew

Softening the rigor of the barren ground.