"Woman has all the requisites of political freedom in their perfection." As to their exercise, he adds: "It is a question I do not care to discuss, as I would rather admit the invalidity of the exception than impair the force of the general rule."- p. 85. "The first act of every other but republican government over the citizen, is an act of usurpation. Man issued from the hand of his Maker without any trammels. The moment any restraint is put upon his will, the condition of nature is violated."- p. 89. Alas, under this rule, for the discipline of the school and the nursery! "Whatever there is of monarchy in foreign governments, is totally and radically wrong; whatever there is of democracy is right, and must therefore be good; the dividing line is distinctly marked, and adequately traced." — p. 125. "Prescription is no better than a right by conquest, the actual foundation of it." "Ten thousand years of usurpation would not establish," etc. p. 115. "If the artificial strength of a government be far superior to what a revolt in favor of liberal principles can excite against it, there," etc. — p. 86. - Now, under all these false and revolutionary principles in theory, our author's deductions in practice are generally conservative— at any rate, (we say it to the credit of his good sense rather than his logic,) he is no agrarian —“equality, not of property, but of rights," is his motto-he is no infidel, but on the contrary, speaks and reasons like a sincere, though we cannot say well-instructed, Christian. On the right of bequeathing property in land, he goes even beyond monarchists, making it to be a right "vested in man by nature;" and finally, on the question of instructing representatives, in congress or elsewhere, he is a step beyond Burke in claiming hightoned independence for the legislator. Such are the incongruities of Mr. Camp's democracy good sense and right feeling battling it with narrow prejudice and false theory. On the whole, it is a work more creditable, we think, to the author's talents than to his judgment, and open certainly to many grave and even fundamental objections, when put forth as a work of political science. In it there are laid down principles, setting aside the question of civil government, that strike at the root of all parental rule. From nature and from birth, we are taught, comes "the right of self-government," a right to be claimed so soon as there is power to enforce it that is, in families, so soon as the child can flog the parent- and some doubtless there are who will so interpret it. We know Mr. Camp means not so; but still Mr. Camp's meaning will be no bar to the perversion of his unsound principle. The Christian principle is — all government is of God - this is its true foundation, whatever be its form the man is born under government, even as the child is, and although improvement is ever a duty, revolt is ever a crime, and in all cases a sound expediency is the law of its interpretation, looking 1842.] Baird's Visit to Northern Europe. 227 to the practical perfection of the whole, and not to the abstract rights of the individual for democratic rule, which last may be a blessing or a curse, just according as a people is fitted or not fitted, wisely to exercise them. With these views we take leave of Mr. Camp, trusting again to meet him where our admiration of his natural acuteness and powers may not be diminished by our higher sense of duty-the charge we hold as moral censors over the inlets to public confidence. 5. Visit to Northern Europe; or, Sketches, Descriptive, Historical, Political, and Moral, of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and the Free Citics of Hamburg and Lubeck. By ROBERT BAIRD. With Maps and numerous Engravings. New York: 1841. John J. Taylor and Co. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 347-350. THESE unpretending volumes are the result of two successive visits of the author, as agent for some of our benevolent associations, to the northern parts of Europe; the first in 1835, the latter in 1840, on the partial narration of which last the whole of the work is founded. They exhibit observation and care in the accumulation of materials, rather perhaps than skill in the use of them; yet in the scantiness of our actual knowledge of those little-frequented regions, every addition to it we receive thankfully. With such general praise, however, we must also mingle a little criticism. There is in them, then, we think, too much that is not new to awaken much interest in their perusal; too much of past history, early laws, institutions, etc., for the taste of the living generation to which they are addressed. It is true that our author, as he states, chose intentionally this didactic form in preference to that of personal narrative, and that he has studiously rejected from his work the names of all the great and well-known personages with whom his apostleship of Christian benevolence brought him into familiar contact. We acknowledge all this; but the knowledge that he had it in his power thus to have made his work so much more interesting, only increases our regret and condemnation that he should not have done it. In displaying to the world the Christian character of sovereigns and public men, as unfolded in their official intercourse, there is surely no breach of private confidence, and we hold our author over-scrupulous in thinking it, and assure him that the great cause he has in hand would have been further advanced by the simple narrative which we know he could have given of his intercourse with the king of Prussia, or of Denmark, than by a whole chapter of generalities. As it is, the work is a multifarious compilation, an instructive one, no doubt, with here and there an 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. We give an extract: "For ourselves (myself) we (I) do not recol lect to have exchanged an unkind word with a custom-house or police-officer in any country which we (1) 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 (1) 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. Now we do protest as readers (let alone as critics) against this mock-modesty, this man of straw that is ever kept before us. We 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." 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 peril 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 faith, 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 |