The thousand hues of earth and air, "Amidst all these so strangely given, Where Ruin holds his regal state; tive white maiden, in whom we of course expect to find the object of our long wandering by forest and flood,but behold, the provoking poet is only tantalizing both his hero and his reader. It is, after all, another person,—in whom he discovers a Scottish maiden, broken-hearted for the death of a kins man of his own, who had fallen in battle in France. The coincidence is certainly a very extraordinary one, but we fear that all the pathos attached by the author to her case is lost upon the reader in his disappointment at her Wide grottoes, smoothly scooped, far down unwelcome intrusion into another's Beneath the lucid waters shone; And sounding nave, the choral hymn On the eighth day, while in the act of crossing a broad bay,they are overtaken by a terrific tempest, by which their frail bark is wrecked, though they are cast up by the billows in safety, high if not dry, on the shore. Making their way through the woods, they soon light upon the beautiful Indian maiden Omeena, in a situation of extreme peril, whom Moray rescues from the rage of a cataract with great gallantry. She takes him to see a cap more proper place. All we can learn "What speak'st thou of another maid? But she one night was stole away!" If this is not treating a confiding and sympathizing public in a very aggravating manner, we should like to know what would have been better entitled to the designation. But there is scant time afforded for complaint. The father of Omeena re-appears. Moray's gallantry in saving the life of the daughter now saves him from the immediate vengeance of the Ottawa. The latter gives him and his Huron friend a day's start in flight, together with a couple of bows and supply of arrows. The last thin thread that bound the Scottish maiden to life snaps with his departure. They celebrate her simple obsequies, Omeena singing her lament the vanished "foam of the waters"-the melted "snow-wreath of winter"-the departed "cloudlet of summer." over The Seventh Canto carries our friends still further off into the far savagery of the wild. They fall into the hands of another tribe of Indians-Chippe was; between whom and the pursuing Ottowas a fierce conflict takes place, resulting in the escape of a small number, including Moray and Owaola, in a canoe on the lake. His new captors strike across the lake, and his journeyings end only on the shores of the Lake of Storms, where his life is spared only on the condition of his adoption into the tribe, as the son of a worthy old Sachem named Nidi-Wyan. During the ensuing summer and winter, he hunts with his tribe over the whole range of wilderness from the Lake of the Woods to the head waters of the Missouri. At last Tecumseh re-appears, to bind again the ligaments of his great league; and a vow of exterminating war against the whites being circulated among all the warriors of the tribe, Moray's refusal to unite in it would have cost him his life, but that his adopted father effects his discharge from the tribe and safe departure homeward. They again see Omeena on their way; and learn from her that Mary had been heard of as dwelling on the eastern shore of Superior, among the Mississagues, during the absence of De Vere, by whom she had been stolen off by night, the latter being on a mission as a bearer of British presents through distant tribes. She furnishes him a guide to her, and, as a passport of protection, she gives him a shell which she had received as a pledge of memory from Tecumseh. He is quickly conducted to her, and as quickly carries her off, and "all is merry as a marriage bell," of which we half fancy that we hear the distant sound; when, behold, pursuit appears in their rear-a chace down the river St. Mary's, the fugitives in one canoe, and De Vere and a hostile band in another-a plunge into the Rapids-a backward shot by Moray which misses its chief aim, and only tumbles one of De Vere's companions into the watera shock of the canoe against a hidden rock-a triumphant whoop of his pursuers-a last glimpse of Mary "borne down amid the foam and whirl"--and there certainly seems a final end to our unlucky friend at last! But he is saved from drowning, to find himself in the hands of De Vere and the British troops, to whom the former denounces him as a hostile agent long engaged in tampering with the British tribes beyond Superior. Being informed, however, that his mistress was drowned, of course he cares now very little what may become of himself. But in this belief he was very much mistaken, as we learn from the Eighth Canto, Mary being confined in another apartment of the same fort, but equally supposing her lover to have perished beneath the wave of St. Mary's Rapids. Moray contrives to convey his shell to Tecumseh, who thereupon rescues him from his confinement, and conducts him to Perry's fleet lying on the Detroit river, opposite to Malden,-for the relief of which place he had overheard that the British fleet was about to proceed. But our author has no idea yet of letting him off so easily. A boat is lying off apparently for his reception; but as they approach the shore, behold from behind a prostrate tree starts up a band of hostile Indians,-under his old persecutor the Ottowa chief, of course. Tecumseh and Ken-hàt-ta-wa engage in a fierce grapple, during which Moray and Owaola dash through the interception before them, and plunging into the water, reach the boat in safety, though through a rain of bullets from the baffled ambuscade. The struggle between the two Indian chieftains is thus vigorously painted: "But fearful now became the strife Those chieftains urged for death and life. With fiercer might and vaster frame More lasting strength than wrath can have. Wreathing their corded arms compressed Around each painted slippery breast, Till from their mouths and nostrils wide, Gushed the dark blood in mingled tide, And each strained sinew seemed from flesh to part, And each wild eye-ball from its socket start. "Yet neither might the advantage gain, And fainter grew their desperate strain, When, where their slippery blood was shed, Beneath the giant Ottowa borne; But that, with motion as of thought, Perchance, of that great cause, which then That blow would wound-perchance, again, Of her, a father's mourning daughter. And breasted high their swelling flood, Next follows an account of the battle of Lake Erie, with so much nautical detail, that we even hear Perry's orders on boarding the Niagara : "Back with your topsails! Up helm, ho! Yon trysail closely brail! And when he had got the ship into position, in the midst of the broken English line: "Now,' cried Perry, 'fire!'" From on board one of the English ships, the Charlotte, we presume, a maiden's voice is heard through all the din of the fight, calling to her countrymen to "do or die," an incident which Mr. Cooper has overlooked in his Naval History,-and Moray catches a glimpse of his Mary's form through the smoke. But it is of no use. He sees her fall; and at the opening of the Ninth Canto we learn that a light canoe had been seen to leave the yielding ship, "A maiden's form into it thrown, While two beside her spring, and ply Swift oars, as who from peril fly: And when at last, the conflict o'er, A boat far out, with hasty sweep, After the battle he and his trusty fidus Achates follow in its directionfind the abandoned boat and the trail of the fugitives, "Which then they traced as sure and fleet As bloodhounds track the murderer's feet." An Indian encampment-a council respecting war or peace with the United States, in which the eloquence of Tecumseh for war sweeps the pas sions of the wild assemblage with him -the entrance of a white captive found near, Moray of course-a fierce demand for his death and torture by De Vere and Ken-hat-ta-wa, overpowering Te cumseh's influence in his favor-and our persecuted friend is bound to the stake, and the blue wreaths of the smoke begin to ascend round him! Suddenly "Lo! like the moon through midnight cloud, There struggled through that dusky crowd She sprang before those daggers bare, Tecumseh bounds in like a tempest -scatters the brands-releases the victims-and, before the tormentors around can recover from their astonishment, has borne them off, in some unexplained way, to safety. The scene changes then to the banks of the Thames. Omeena appears, and a parting interview takes place between her and Tecumseh before the battle about to be fought. In this engagement all the characters of the story, except our two lovers, are disposed of. The battle being lost, Ken-hàt-ta-wa aims a blow at Tecumseh, which, missing him, despatches old NidiWyan. Tecumseh thereupon plunges his knife up to the hilt in the bosom of the Ottowa, and then himself falls by the pistol of Colonel Johnson, and thus is settled, not only the hero, but a long disputed point of history. What is left of life in him is despatched by the last effort of the blade of Ken-hàt-ta-wa. De Vere, somehow or other, seizes Mary, and, flinging her on horseback with him, is about to bear her off again, when she is rescued by Moray; and the fate of that worthy individual is, that, after receiving one or two blows from Moray, he is dashed to pieces by the maddened flight of the horse, his foot clinging to the stirrup, and his head trailed very uncomfortably along the ground. Owaola falls in the battle. Omeena, after singing a lament over her father and lover, follows them to the Spirit Land, by plunging into her own heart the knife which had wreaked the vengeance of the former on the latter, and the poem thus closes, at the tomb of the great Indian hero: "By Thames's darkly wandering wave There is a rude and humble grave. parent on the surface, to supersede any necessity of our attempting to point them out. It contains many passages which abundantly prove its youthful author capable of something much beyond itself. The descriptions of scenery are always good, sometimes exquisite; and the delineations of sentiment and passion afford not a few passages of a high degree of beauty and vigor; while in general the narration flows smoothly and gracefully. Our praise will find a sufficient proof and illustration in the liberal extracts which we have made for the purpose. On the other hand, the merits of the poem as a whole are sadly weakened by expansion,-the Castalian drops too much diluted with commoner admixture. The "fatal facility" of his measure, combined with the exuberance of a young fancy, and a rich copiousness of language, unchecked by that calm, reflective severity of self-judgment and taste, which is a faculty yet to be cultivated by our author, has led him into a flight of greater length, and perhaps bolder soaring, than the unpractised strength of his pinion could adequately sustain. His volume is evidently the production of a few months' rapid and easy writing; and, forgetful of the Horatian pre Are loose gray stones, in moss reclin- cept, he has been in too great a hurry ing, And, ages laid along its side One chieftain oak in all its pride. And there the wild rose sweetly And willows in eternal gloom, Nor such be theme for scorn, With plumage stained and torn, cloudy years." We have thus rendered Mr. Colton's poem the most satisfactory justice in our power, by presenting a detailed analysis of its narrative, illustrated by copious and favorable specimens of the verse in which it is clothed. Its merits as well as its faults lie sufficiently ap to print it, too impatient to awake one morning, like Byron, and find himself famous. When Scott was asked by a sagacious friend, why he had not written his Life of Napoleon in three volumes, instead of nine, his answer conveyed a literary moral which, with an affectionate kindness, we commend to our young poet's pondering—“ I had not time." Tecumseh would have been a more valuable and a more valued contribution to that national literature which Mr. Colton exhibits so patriotic an ardor to adorn, if he had bestowed thrice the time it has cost him, upon the process of reducing it to onethird of its present length. The old sibyl who asked of Tarquin the same price for three of her books as she had demanded for the original nine, understood the philosophy of this thing; and only committed one mistake, in not asking more than at first. We desire to speak encouragingly with a view to the future efforts of our author, though perhaps the sensitiveness natural to the poetic temperament may feel an unwelcome severity in the general whole of our criticism upon the to which no sympathy will respond. And it may yet perhaps be legitimate in the literature of college compositions to inflate and embellish up to the dig nity of the heroic the barren and brutal barbarism of savage character and life, but Mr. Colton has made a mistake which we hope he will not repeat, in regarding it as a suitable theme for poetry to move the heart or satisfy the mind of the grown world of civilisa tion. Let Mr. Colton choose a better theme for his main basis of interest, and write in a spirit more akin to the young progressive and aspiring spirit of his time,-and above all let him write with a deeper concentration of thought and labor within less limits of space and larger limits of time,—and we are greatly mistaken in his present tokens of promise, if he is not destined yet to take a high place in the Pantheon of the literature of his country. A THOUGHT BY THE SEA-SHORE. BY MISS ANNE C. LYNCH. BURY me by the sea, When on my heart the hand of death is pressed! Then 'mid the forest shades I would not lie, Nor 'mid the homes of men, The haunts of busy life, would I be laid; To bear my name be reared upon my breast, The changeless stars look lovingly on me, This ever-beating heart Of the great universe. Here would the soul |