all his scenes with a curious and exquisite eye, instilling some delicate beauty into the most common thing that springs up in them, imparting to it a gay and fairy spirit, and throwing over the whole a pure, floating, glow. He is always searching into what is excellent and fair in creation, and even in his satires, plays with the follies of mankind, with an undisturbed gentleness of heart, and turns away from their vices, and shuts out their loathsomeness from his mind. He seems to look upon the world in the spirit in which it was made-the spirit of love; and, though marred, to see the beauty in which it was ordained, and feel its purity through all its defilements. We cannot read any part of this book, without feeling ashamed of the angry and bitter passions which are so often rising up within us, nor without wishing that our own minds were as void of pride, suspicion, and hate, as is all we there find, and that as clear and happy an innocence were shed over our own hearts as shines out there.

FRANCIS CALLEY GRAY, President of The Boston Athenæum, related in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for September, 1817, some Indian legends of Martha's Vineyard:

On the edge of the cliff is the Devil's Den, a vast and deep basin, one side of which appears to have been washed away by the sea. Its form has induced some persons to consider it as the crater of an extinct volcano, but we saw no volcanick appearances near it. It was once the dwelling of Maushop. According to the tradition of the Indians, when their ancestors first came from the west to this island, they found it occupied by Maushop, a benevolent but capricious being, of gigantick frame and supernatural power. His daily food was broiled whales, and he threw many of them on the coast for the support of his Indian neighbours. At last, weary of the world, he sent his sons and daughter to play at ball, and while they were engaged in their sport, drew his toe across the beach, on which they were, and separated it from the island. The returning tide rising over it, the brothers crowded round their sister, careless of their own danger; and while sinking themselves, were only anxious to keep her head above the waves. Maushop commended their fraternal affection, bade them always love and protect their sister, and preserved their lives by converting them into whale killers, a sort of grampus, whose descendants still delight to sport about the ancient dwelling of their great progenitor. The giant then hurled his wife Saconet into the air, and plunging himself beneath the waves, disappeared forever. Saconet fell on the promontory of Rhode Island, which now bears her name, and long lived there, exacting tribute from all passengers. At length she was converted into stone, still however retaining her former shape, till the white men, mistaking her probably for an idol, lopped off both her arms; but her mutilated form remains to this day on the spot where she fell, and affords lasting and unimpeachable evidence of the truth of the tradition.

In discussing various theories concerning the antiquity of America, in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for November, 1816, WILLIAM TUDOR, Jr., philosophically considered the place of tobacco-chewing in the scheme of evolution:

...

That America was the oldest continent, and its inhabitants the most ancient people on the globe, is now fairly proved. . . . To those indeed, whose frivolity and credulity make them receive implicity, the common cant of this being, "an infant nation, a youthful nation," &c. and who rely upon the most fallible and confused of all sciences, chronology, for their belief, it will be in vain to display a philosophical argument; but to more sound and robust intellects, the conclusions will appear inevitable. The most embarrassing difficulty is, that there are some reasons for carrying back this antiquity to a period so remote, as to involve a considerable degree of contradiction with other known data. One only of these will be particularly alluded to, and that is, the practice of chewing the narcotick plant, nicotiana, or tobacco. The learned, Caledonian patrician, Lord Monboddo, first shewed satisfactorily that the human race is derived from a particular species of monkey, which once inhabited the shores of the Mediterranean; and who having by chance acquired the use of the muscle which moves the thumb, the paw of the animal was at once converted into the human hand, and the prodigious advantages arising from this source, enabled them gradually to improve their moral and physical faculties, obliterate their tails, and become men. It is certain, that in the course of this transformation, they passed through the state of ruminating animals; but it is almost impossible, that this should not have taken place previous to acquiring the use of speech. Now our ruminating animals have the faculty of speech, and yet it seems cruel, and discordant, when the general benevolence of nature is considered, that possessing the highest faculties of men, they should still be subjected to this, in them, hideous filthy, disgusting process of chewing the cud. This point may perhaps be elucidated hereafter by further researches.

JOHN G. PALFREY, historian and critic, considered at length SCOTT's Tales of My Landlord in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for July, 1817. In the last sentence of the present quotation the printer and proof reader or was it the Office Cat?-with scandalous perversity made the writer refer to "the tenure of his immorality"; a phrase which we have here corrected:

His unequalled power of giving interest, by his manner of narrating it, to a story for the most part not skilfully contrived, is not more admirable than his fertility in illustration, the vivacity of his descriptions of scenery and manners, and his philosophical insight into the mysteries of character and motives as they are mutually modified. The state of society he describes is one of which

we not only know absolutely nothing, but so widely remote from our own, or any we have read of elsewhere, that it is no easy thing to form a conception of it as really existing, when ever so happily described. Yet we cannot but observe that it supposes no ingredients other than what actually belong to the human composition; and no room is left us to doubt of its reality.

If Mr. Scott be the author of these works, and we scarcely doubt it,—he possesses a genius as prolifick and versatile as any on record. It is only about ten years since he first introduced himself to the publick. In this time he has published, besides smaller works, valuable editions of two standard authors, eight substantial volumes of poetry, of unequal but all of indisputable merit, and five of the best fictitious narrations of the age. And all this, while occupied in the duties of an active life, and in the midst of studies which have placed him,-in one department of learning, especially,-among the best scholars of his time. If we do not err widely, he holds the tenure of his immortality most firmly by his novels.

A letter to the Editor of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW in July, 1816, from a friend in Germany, gave this account of the famous Baron MUNCHAUSEN:

The Baron Munchhausen (pronounced nearly Minkhhowzen), so famous for his remarkable adventures, lived in the neighbourhood of Göttingen, and was of an ancient, noble family.-He was a great lover of the chase, and was famous for telling the stories which are at present under his name, whereby he acquired the very flattering appellation of Lying Munchhausen, by which he is now universally called. He has not long been dead. Though the work so extensively known as his Life and Adventures is written in the first person, it is not from the worthy Baron himself, but was given to the world under the following circumstances. A person of the name of Raspe, about fifty years since, was keeper of antiquities in the electoral collection at Cassel, the capital city of the late kingdom of Westphalia, and is about thirty miles from the residence of our Baron. Raspe was a person of very good education, and extremely well qualified for the place he held. He was however expensive in his mode of life, and fond of extravagance. Having incurred debts, which his salary did not enable him to pay, he applied his collection to the same purposes, which his worthy successors the French commissaries at a later period have much more extensively done, and plundered it of several gems. The fraud was discovered, but he succeeded in escaping to England. Here he sustained himself sometime, as a waiter in a Coffee-house in London, learning by degrees the English language, but not losing the remembrances of home. For the credit of his native land, and to raise himself from the servant's hall of a coffee house, he committed to writing the marvellous adventures of his distinguished countryman the Baron, and the life of Munchhausen appeared from the English Press.