INTO THE JOY OF OUR LORD;' the men themselves singing with a loud voice, BLESSING AND HONOR AND GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO HIM THAT SITTETH UPON THE THRONE, AND UNTO THE LAMB, FOREVER AND EVER!

'Now just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold, the city shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold, and in them walked many men, with crowns upon their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. There were also of them that had wings; and they answered one another without intermission, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!' And after that they shut the gates; which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them.'

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That CITY! The genius of Martin fails to delineate its architectural splendors. Yet his is a magnificent engraving. Those mighty domes, piles far-stretching into dimness, city after city sinking at length into indistinguishable splendor, and lost in light!

-We stand and gaze

On those bright steps, that Heavenward raise
Their practicable way.

Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad,
And see to what fair countries ye are bound!

In thinking of the Pilgrim's Progress, and of Bunyan its author; of his labors and sufferings, his sins, repentance, and forgiveness; of the wave of happiness he has set in motion to roll on through time, and not be lost, but grow deeper and broader as it swells into the Ocean of Eternity; and of the overruling Providence so remarkably exhibited in his life, we wish our readers to apply the remark of one, whose writings are a treasure of philosophical and spiritual wisdom, Henry More.

'The whole plot of the world being contrived by Infinite wisdom and goodness, we cannot but surmise that the most sad representations are but a show, but the delight real to such as are not wicked and impious; and that what the ignorant call evil in this Universe, is but as a shadowy stroke in a fair picture, or the mournful notes in music, by which the beauty of the one is more lively and express, and the melody of the other more pleasing and melting.'

In the Pilgrim's Progress, there is a charming passage,

* Immortality of the Soul. Book 3. chap. 15. Sec. 9.

descriptive of the Pilgrim's entertainment in the Palace Beautiful, which was thus: The Pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose window opened towards the sun-rising; the name of the chamber was Peace; where he slept till break of day, and then he awoke and sang.'-A great and thoughtful Poet, who loves the flower as his own child, and sees a beauty in the ragged bur,' has written a poem, with this sentence as its motto, which he has entitled 'Daybreak,' and which closes with the following stanza.*

How suddenly that straight and glittering shaft
Shot 'thwart the Earth!-In crown of living fire
Up comes the Day !—As if they, conscious, quaffed
The sunny flood, hill, forest, city, spire,
Laugh in the wakening light.-Go, vain Desire !
The dusky lights have gone; go thou thy way!
And, pining Discontent, like them, expire !

Be called my chamber, PEACE, when ends the day;
And let me with the dawn, like PILGRIM, sing and pray!

ART. VIII.-Thatcher's Indian Biography.

Indian Biography. By B. B. THATCHER, Esq. New York. J. & J. Harper. 1832.

This is a very interesting chapter in the history of man; and no one will read this work, without acknowledging that the subject has fallen into the right hands. There is much to awaken interest and sympathy in the character of this unfortunate race, who, with manners and habits essentially savage, exhibited some traits of refined and elevated feeling, and who, when brought into direct contrast with cultivated men, were, in some respects, able to put civilization to shame. For such a people, once great and powerful, to pass away from the soil possessed by them and their fathers; for those, who once made others tremble, to dwindle away to weak and helpless remnants, scattered here and there upon the face of a country, changed in such a manner, as to make their destruction sure, and whose only trust is in the protection of persons, who feel most interested to oppress them, is a destiny well calculated to excite the compassion of those, whose benevolence is not limited to family or nation, but comprehends alike the Samar

* See the poem extracted entire, N. A. Review. Vol. XXXIII. p.305.

itan and the Jew. But to carry this feeling so far, as to express regret that civilization has extended; to maintain, that it would have been better that the country should still be a hunting ground, instead of being divided into cities and villages; to speak, as if the accidental vices of civilized life are so many and great, that barbarism would be better, is carrying this sympathy much farther than good sense and reason would be disposed to go. Wherever civilization comes in conflict with barbarism, we mean, with a race which has no active principle of improvement within it, it is the order of nature that barbarism shall give way; the savage either ceases to be a savage, or retreats before the rising flood; justice and humanity do not require the civilized to conform to his habits, nor to abandon the country; for in that case, no room on earth would ever have been found for cultivated man. But justice and humanity do require, that the rights of the weaker party shall be respected, that no advantage shall be taken of superior strength to injure nor oppress them; that avenues shall be opened, by which they may enter into the privileges of civilization if they will; and that civilization shall be recommended to them in every possible way, instead of being associated in their minds. with violence and wrongs. We do not hold our fathers responsible for the extinction of the Indian race, for we see not. how it could have been prevented; but we fear that there were instances, in which they violated the laws of justice and humanity in their dealings with their neighbors, and if so, the other party should not labor under perpetual reproach for the sake of vindicating their reputation. There is enough in their character of which their descendants may reasonably be proud, and if they deserve blame in this instance, let them bear it; but let the cases of oppression charged upon them be investigated, for sympathy in such cases is poorly qualified to act the judicial part; it takes too much for granted, and trusts as readily to feeling, as to evidence and examination. Mr. Thatcher has touched these cases with a delicate and discriminating hand; in a popular narrative, he could not enter into the subject very largely; we would suggest to his consideration, whether a work of permanent value as an authority is not required. The separate sketches of tribes and individuals, which he has given, might easily be woven into a philosophical history, and it would give us pleasure to see it done by one so industrious and impartial, who has the talent withal of giving it so much attraction. VOL. XXXVI.-NO. 79. 60

We do not by any means admit, that the Indians met with such treatment from our fathers as they have met with in later times, in a case already too well known to the world, and justified only by those who are blinded by local interest and party passion. Our fathers meant to do them substantial justice, and if they failed, it was owing to jealousy and suspicion; it was not because they coveted their lands and were willing to descend to base means to possess them. When such cases are represented as in all respects the same, and attempts are made to involve the pilgrims in such a condemnation, it is time to repel the charge and to show their injustice if they were guilty of any thing mean, avaricious and grasping; to show also, that if their jealousy of the Indians made them unjust to them, they stood in a relation to them in which no people can ever stand again. Much may be forgiven to their feeling of weakness; they did not presume upon their power.

In the first place, they held the Indians in fear,- —a passion, which always leads to the borders at least of inhumanity. Cruelty arises more directly from this feeling than from any other. Those who live in security may not be able to conceive it, but it is the fact nevertheless, that the feeling of revenge is always strong in proportion to the fears; and when the same alarm, which unsexes the tender and delicate woman, and petrifies the colder heart of man, grows into a panic, and spreads throughout a community, the effect is like that of a demoniacal possession. This was powerfully illustrated in the case of witchcraft; the universal fear, heightened by the mysteriousness of the danger, could not be quenched without blood; and even within the last year, we have seen the fear of a pestilential disease lead to acts of gross and enormous inhumanity, which, but the day before, would have been pronounced impossible in the present age of the world. There can be no doubt, that the first settlers of the country regarded the Indians with great and constant dread; not that they feared acts of personal violence from individuals; these, they felt themselves able to resist and put down; but when they looked upon the tribes about them, whose numbers and bounds they could not possibly know when they saw their energy, cunning, fierceness, and jealous impatience of wrongs; when they saw the stern reserve of many of the chiefs, and felt how easy it would be to unite all in the common cause of expelling the stranger, they evidently dreaded their rising in the greatness of their strength; they felt like men, embarked in slight vessels on the ocean, who

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fear nothing in the sunshine, but tremble at the most distant breathings of the storm. This distinction is not made, as it should be, between immediate and foreboding fears; and because the Indians were regarded with indifference, like every thing familiar, even familiar dangers, it is often supposed that our fathers felt perfectly secure against them; but if they did not regard the danger as pressing, they feared that it might at any time come, and when they thought it actually on the way, they had only the resource of desperation, which was to anticipate the blow. It was necessary for them to be on their guard, and they were perhaps needlessly jealous. It was natural that their suspicion should be over-active, rather than suffered to sleep. As they knew themselves unable to resist a combined assault of all the tribes, or even the determined hostility of one, they could only ward off the stroke, by attempting to disable the uplifted arm. If they sometimes suspected without cause, and acted with excessive rigor, it was evidently no more than was natural in the position in which they stood. But we do not believe that, in any part of our country at present, the Indians are held in similar dread; they know perfectly well, that an act of violence on their part is suicide to themselves; when therefore the fear of the Indians is pleaded as an excuse for violence at the present day, we see manifest and sufficient reason, for not allowing it to shelter itself under the example of our fathers.

Another circumstance, which goes far to justify their conduct where it needs justification, is their religious feeling. They could do no more than follow the injunctions of the Scripture, which they regarded as binding on themselves; and we cannot censure them severely for mistaking its commands, if all the rest of the world was in similar delusion. For the same reason, we cannot charge them with intolerance, if it appears that toleration was hardly known or practised in the world at the time; because there is no reason why we should expect to find them exempt from such prejudices, as enslaved the minds of others. It may be asked, if others being bad made them better; certainly it did; for excellence is a comparative thing, and it makes an essential difference, whether we compare them with the standard of their own time, or with that of an age when the Scripture is better interpreted, and moral obligations better understood. They believed, that they saw in the Scriptures a history very nearly resembling their own; they believed that the Hebrews were commanded to exterminate the