oasis green, refreshing with personal interest; but then it might have been made, and with much less labor, uniformly interesting, and at the same time no less instructive, by all being made to bear on the personal narration of the author. We doubt not but that the modesty of our author concurred with his pleaded conscientiousness in withholding himself, as well as others, from his pages, and we are equally satisfied that in both he was in error. The work should in truth have been his actual journal, himself the hero of it, (so far as that term imports the concentration of the reader's interest,) and nothing should have been withheld from his pages that added the weight of good and great men's authority to a great and good cause. Nor need such journal have been destitute of sound and varied learning as bearing upon whatever attracted the traveller's notice; our only demand is that it shall come in as he does note that to which it relates, and that it shall not be forced upon the reader of travels with the formality of distinct chapters and unconnected essays. Among the awkward results of this our author's choice, is the expunging of the personal pronoun (I) from the chance portions of narrative that creep in, and substituting for it the vague plural (we), destroying alike the life and truth of the story. give an extract: "For ourselves (myself) we (I) do not recolTect to have exchanged an unkind word with a custom-house or police-officer in any country which we (I) have travelled in, nor have we (1) ever received an uncivil word from any one. We (I) have long since learned," etc.-p. 14. Or again: "On the last day of our (my) stay at Stockholm we were (I was) invited to deliver an address on this subject before the house of peasants. This we (1) did, and were heard with much apparent interest while we (I) gave," etc. — Vol. ii., p. 327. So, too, in the narrative of trifles, which become ludicrous when separated from the “ Ego" of the traveller. Thus, in the castle of Elsineur, the name of the unfortunate Caroline Matilda seen written on a pane of her prison is a touching memorial, but narrated as simply a fact it becomes laughable. "On a pane of glass in a window of this castle she wrote her name."-p. 23, vol. ii.

We

We

Now we do protest as readers (let alone as critics) against this mock-modesty, this man of straw that is ever kept before us. can take no interest in this plural agent and orator, and beg that it may henceforth be held the privilege of the Siamese twins, and of anonymous critics, thus to speak of themselves - double bodies or shadows, as we ourselves are nominis umbra."

66

But to close with a kinder word. These volumes are neatly got up, with maps and spirited colored engravings, fitting them to enter the list as Christmas presents to the young, together with the further assurance in their favor, flowing from the character of the author, that nothing will be found in them but what is favorable to pure morals and Christian benevolence.

1842.]

Catlin's Letters.

229

6. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. By GEORGE CATLIN. New York: 1841. Wiley and Putnam. 2 vols. royal 8vo. pp. 264.

INTENDING to bestow on this truly national work, in our next number, a review proportioned to its claims, we here content ourselves with a simple announcement of its appearance, and the general ability with which it has been executed. It comes forth in a style corresponding to its character, and its maps and engravings are both ably and faithfully executed, while the numerous official attestations annexed remove from the originals all shadow of doubt as to their general, and even individual accuracy. As to the illustrations, we prefer, in truth, the engravings to the original oil paintings, the coarseness of which latter was, to our eye, no small drawback to their power over the imagination. In the spirited outlines, on the contrary, here given, that blemish is removed, and the effect, in our judgment, correspondingly increased. In the four hundred illustrations, therefore, here arranged, of Indian faces, life and manners, we have a gallery that speaks to the eye what no words could convey to the ear, and which will henceforth give to the whole subject of the North American Indians a familiarity in our conceptions it has never before possessed. No writer certainly has ever before brought out so much of the picturesque and the visible from the life of the red man, nor has any traveller ever entered into its exposition and defence with more of heartfelt devotion to his subject. In this respect, indeed, Mr. Catlin's work rises before us with somewhat of a moral grandeur for which we were in truth not prepared. We had looked hitherto upon his gallery as but a fortunate accident in a painter's life, we now find it to have been a labor of love in the hands of an enthusiast, a life-long scheme early cherished, never abandoned, and pursued to its completion with a zeal and perseverance such as brave and strong minds alone bring to their task. Eight years of active life were thus specially devoted, with pencil in hand and knapsack on back. Fortyeight tribes by turn he visited, the greater part of them of different tongue. Three hundred and ten portraits, in oil, of their chiefs, their braves, and their beauties, some of them taken with perils of his life, were brought home by him in safety, together with two hundred other easel paintings, containing views of their villages, their wigwams, their games and religious ceremonies, their dances, their ball-plays, their buffalo hunts and other amusements, together also with such a collection of their dresses, arms, utensils, etc., as sets at defiance all competition of former collectors, whether at home or abroad. Catlin's NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN GALLERY is therefore to be esteemed unique, “instantia singularis," and that, whether looked at in the originals, on the walls, or in the spirited

engravings taken from them, or in the author's equally spirited narrative that interprets them. Thinking well, therefore, as we do, of these men of ONE IDEA, the enthusiasts of art or science, as compassing for the world's advantage what the world without them would not compass, (not perhaps so much from the difficulty of the enterprise as from the loving perseverance involved in it, and which so few will give,) we take our leave, for the present, of Mr. Catlin and his Indian gallery, with sincere wishes for his and its success in matters both of fame and profit. He has deserved well of America, nor that only, but of the world, too, in thus rescuing from fast-coming oblivion the few remaining traces of that desert race whose earlier independent history no man may tell, but whose coming fortunes under the white man's sway are written, alas, too plainly in the book of fate. In famine and in disease, in tears and in blood, and as with the wail of some condemned spirit, must the Indian sun sink below its western horizon · that sun which once shone out so mightily in peaceful radiance over the patriarchal homes of twelve millions of sons of the forest.

7. The Claims of Jesus. By ROBERT TURNBULL, Pastor of Boylston Church, Boston. Boston: 1841. Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln. 18mo. pp. 120.

THIS is a well-meant and well-timed little work, and will no doubt do good with many, for its doctrines are in the main sound, and its spirit uniformly what its name imports-Christian. Still, however, we cannot rank it high in either its philosophy or logic, and therefore, as an assault on transcendentalism, which is the purport of it, hold it a comparative failure. False philosophy can be rooted out of the mind only by a deeper and truer philosophy, and spurious transcendentalism can be exposed only by the exhibition of that which is true and solid. Now in this our author does not excel, as a reasoner we mean. The Christian is the only true transcendentalist in practice, and should be ever in reasoning, for he alone walks " by fanh, and not by sight." All that he holds, believes and hopes for, transcends his senses; for it is that which "neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." Not, therefore, by rejecting the principles of transcendentalism, as our author seeks to do, but by guiding it aright, are we to meet this new form of infidel error. We are to enter boldly into the enemy's camp, and turn his cannon upon his own ranks, and thus teach him truly his own lesson. In this way alone, we think, is modern transcendentalism to be met and conquered, regarding it as being an error not of the principle on which truth is sought, but

1842.]

Turnbull's Claims of Jesus.

231

merely of want of guidance into its paths. It is the blind search, "if haply they might feel after and find it," of the laboring reason of man " seeking rest and finding none" in the externals of Christianity and human teaching. It must therefore be met, not by denying the want, but by supplying it, and leading it, by the instrumentality of that very faith which reason awakens, to an external and authoritative teacher of Christ, as a necessary element of the truth, on the altar of which, transcendentalism may offer up its reasonable sacrifice. Without this polar point to rule its gyrations, mere reason in spiritual things hath ever run mad, but never hath it desolated fairer minds, we think, than some of those which are now flashing forth in wild and meteor light among the transcendental teachers of Boston. As over the ruins of finely tuned and deeply spiritual natures, is the Christian, of whatever name, there called on to mourn; but it is the Christian, we deem, of one only name, that can hold out to them the remedy—the Churchman· he, we mean, who by the power of reason can encircle them within their own self-woven net, and give to their laboring reason a safe and sure landing-place, even within the ocean-bounds of what they term a transcendental philosophy.

Of this truth, too, our author seems to have some glimpses, though as a Congregationalist necessarily withheld from making it the basis of his argument. "Now what is all this," are his words after giving this picture of high-wrought Christianity," but the effect without the cause, the end without the beginning, the result without the means? What is it but the flower without the bud, the autumn without the spring, the melody of heaven without the harps of the redeemed?" And again, more plainly: "This is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you; that is to say, the faith of the primitive saints, the doctrines, the precepts and ordinances of the virgin Church. These, we say, are perfect and unchangeable like Jesus himself the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.'" pp. 89-91. The italics in this extract are our own, and intended to emphasize our argument, that the doctrine of a church visible and apostolic is the only bulwark against this flood, since we find its authority thus brought in by one even who professedly rejects all its authoritative teaching. Dissent, therefore, we maintain, has no foothold in its argument against transcendentalism, even where that becomes infidel. Whatever its errors, they are but the rightful fruits of the same rationalistic scheme on which itself stands. the unlimited right of private judgment— and no antagonist, we assert, can ever rise up against it out of that motley army without self-condemnation. His first blow is suicidal, it undermines his own footing, "the self-choosing mind." He alone who stands on the teaching of the Christian Church can with reason proceed to call in question any, even the wildest vagaries of human reason, in its interpretation of scripture truth.

8. My Progress in Error and Recovery to Truth; or, a Tour through Universalism, Unitarianism, and Scepticism. Boston: 1842. Gould and Co. 12mo. pp. 240.

To whom the personal pronoun in this title belongs we have no light given in the work to guide us in conjecturing, save that he acknowledges himself a layman and a lecturer, nor in truth is much curiosity about it awakened. The author is but one of a large class who are daily in our country reaping the fruits of ill seed sown, tares instead of wheat. Such grain as they find cannot be "gathered into the garner" when age or sickness, sorrow or remorse, comes upon them, and who therefore run to shelter, as the spiritual storm approaches, wheresoever they may chance to find themselves, or hear a true word spoken that comes home with comfort to their hearts. Of this class, we say, is the unknown author of these confessions, a work which may afford to the thoughtful reader a deeper lesson than even its author seems to contemplate; and that is, to see the fault of character, or of early education, that led him into error, and moreover, that still withholds him (according to his own confession) from its thorough cure.

That the work may do some good we doubt not, for many a freethinker will find his own picture in it, and be startled into reflection; but we cannot exalt the volume into being the safe guide of such out of it; it is no "ductor dubitantium;" our author tells them, indeed, that they are among rocks and quicksands, but then he places at the helm no competent pilot to steer them into port; it is, at best, like St. Paul's reaching "Melita" - life saved, but in shipwrecked plight, wet, cold, and hungry, and comfortless. a true pilot, with a true chart would, we must think, have brought such wanderer more safely into port than the author of these confessions seems to have reached it. But to break from metaphor. This work is rather a well-meaning than a competent guide to those who from its title may seek it as such. The downward path of error is indeed fairly marked out in it, and its results occasionally depicted with a good deal of truth and power, but how-" revocare gradum" - how to withdraw the forward foot, still more how superasque evadere ad auras" breathe the upper air of a true catholic Christianity- this to teach, we say, is a strain above our author's powers. The conclusion of his "Tour" demonstrates this, for it consists in the vague adoption of what he terms evangelical" sentiments" — in joining a, not the Church and lastly, in admitting himself to be a sectarian with this saving clause to his faith, with which he closes the volume, and which may appear, to some of our readers, to savor of the results of his recorded travels.

to

"Nor do I admit. . . that the views I now entertain the general doctrines, I mean, of evangelical people — are in all respects so far accordant with truth as