Before him heav'd the river-bound

Between great Rome and Gaul ;
If cross'd-whát trumpet-clangs would sound;

How many a foeman fall?
The vision d Future, wild with woes,
Before him, like a spectre rose.
He mused on battle, war, and blood,

On plunder'd cities' storm;
The ready daggers of the good

Against a tyrant's form;
On all the mountain-perils thrown
'Tween Rome and triumph,- for his own!
Of what the unborn Times would say,

At Rubicon's grand name,
Of him who track'd with blood his way,

And with it built his fame;
Would he not seem a demon then,
Who ravish'd all the rights of men ?
And thus the mighty Cæsar stood,

And battled with his mind;
Then gazed upon the fatal flood,

And dash'd his doubts behind !
Like a bent bow, his pride return'd,
And all the Roman in him burn'd.

"The die is cast!-the die is cast!”

With reckless fire he cried ;
Then swift the Rubicon he pass’d,

And reach'd the Roman side ;
Ere day had dawn'd he drew the sword,
And Ariminum hailed him lord.” pp. 145–148.

We were not aware that the penultimate in Ariminum was ever long.

THE DEATH OF CORINNE.

" All pale, and pillow'd on a chair, she lay,-
The beautiful, the passionate Corinne!
The beamy language of her eyes no more
Darted around such eloquence of soul,
As when, amid the crowd, her feelings flash'd
From out their burning balls; while she herself
Was living poetry! Deep pensiveness,
And intense looks, that tell the blighted heart,
Effus'd a dreamy langour round her form.

Ere yet her spirit breath'd itself to heaven,
She sat, to gaze upon the shrouded Moon,
Riding the mellow skies: Athwart her face
Floated that fatal cloud; the same she saw
When Melville woo'd her by the winding shore :
On him, enamour'd kneeling at her feet,
She look'd, and in one look condens'd
The buried anguish of a broken heart;
Her white lips feebly parted, then re-clos'd
For ever! Gazing then upon the sky,
She faintly beckon'd to the gleaming moon,
While down her neck her streamy ringlets fell,
Like dropping sunbeams on a pallid cloud !

And now a change came on; the blood sunk back
Beneath her radiant cheek, her eye-lids mov'd
Like melting snow-flakes from the noon-tide glow,
And all her beauty quite empyreal turn'd,
As if refining, ere it went to heaven;
Her hand fell downward with her farewell sigh-
Her spirit had departed !” pp. 153–154.

THE DREADFUL PRAYER.

"No priestly prayer, availd: gaunt Famine stalk'd
Through Cairo's streets by day and night, and suck'd
The life-blood from her hungry thousands there;
From wall to wall, from house to house, were heard
The gasping yells of famish'd men, and wails
Of mothers, with dead infants at their breasts,
Whose baked lips, and eyelids curling up
Like wither'd violet leaves, and fleshless hands,
Were blasted by the pest of Famine's touch.
Some gnaw'd their nails in agony; some groan'd,
And work'd their eye-balls with a horrid glare,
Rooted their tresses, and expired! And here,
Pale groups, with bony cheek and beamless stare,
Did stagger out, and choke themselves with cries
For death! while others, 'neath funeral palls,
Moved slowly on, like sable thunder-clouds,
Then sat, and howl'd upon the new-dug graves!
So deadlike look'd the bloodless shapes around,
That Cairo seemed a charnel-house revived,
Whose dregs were crawling into life again!

In vain the priests exhaled their souls to heaven
In agonizing prayers; no Mercy smiled
An answer to their vows. Still Famine swept
Her thousands into dust; still every wind
Wing'd to the skies the howlings of despair.

At length unspotted babes, whose milk-white robes
Gleam'd pure as dove-wings in the radiant air,
By Imans led, climb'd up the min'ret spires,
To sue a pestilence,—the famine's cure:
There, on the gilded peaks, their hands were raised,
In adoration clasp'd, as if instinct with prayer;
And while their cherub mouths in lisping tones
Besought the plague, the pale-eyed crowd below,
Stirr'd like a waking wind upon the deep,
Moved their lean lips, and mutter'd—“Let it be !"

Heaven heard the prayer: a Pestilence came down,
And made an atmosphere of death! Men dropp'd
Into corruption thick as wintry blights
Upon the blacken'd bushes. Hill and dale,
Hamlet and city, groan’d with ghastly piles
Of green-eyed dead: the houses turned to tombs,
And they who roam'd the desert's dewless wilds
Were plague-smit by the way, and moulder'd there,
Like scathed branches from a forest tree:
And thus was Cairo curs’d, till by the dead
The plague itself corrupted, died away." pp. 169–171.

ERRATA.

66

Page 51, line 4, dele "and"-line 5, read and we beheld, &c.

“ 25, for construction read institution. " 101, note, instead of lib. ii. Tit. 59, read 56. • 102, line 35, for Jona read Ionia.

4 from bottom, dele comma after ungenerous. " 27, for immediate read immoderate.

6, for comparably read incomparably.
In the first part of the article “Malaria,” Dr. MacCulloch's name is mis-spelt.
Note.-For the second sentence in page 49, beginning “The former is found,"

&c. read, They are found in no other language than in the Span-
ish, says Bouterwek, while Sismondi tells us, they were proper to
all the popular songs in the languages of the South, though none
but the Spaniards ever subjected

them to rules.

16 103, 4 111, in 194,

SOUTHERN REVIEW. .

NO. IV.

NOVEMBER, 1828.

ART. I.-Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses. Tomes vi. vii. viü.

et ix. A Paris. Chez J.G. Merigot, le jeune. M. DCC. LXXXI.

IT must be an object of interest, at least to every American, to become acquainted with the customs and manners of the people who once possessed the soil which he now inhabits. The first European settlers do not, however, appear to have had sufficient leisure, opportunity or inclination for the research to enable them to obtain that knowledge, or to leave upon record what they did learn. Engaged in the search after precious metals, the providing for pressing wants, guarding against menacing danger, or repairing the consequences of disaster; they knew little of the language of tribes which they despised for their barbarism, and dreaded for their cruelty, cunning and deceit: they appear to have had little of that philosophical curiosity which leads to investigation for mere speculative purposes, and they felt more interested in learning how to improve their fortune, than in discovering whom the savages worshipped, and by what ceremonial. The history of the colonies, as well as that of the states, exhibits to us the continued retreat of the red man from the encroachments of the white, and the latter still occupied, with his own projects, regardless of the domestic or peculiar concerns of the former. This will, probably, satisfy the inquirer who would ask why we possess so few documents, and so little information upon the subject of Indian customs.

However, the work which we now examine is well calculated, to a certain extent, to supply much of what appears wanting upon

this head. This collection of letters is a selection from several which had been received in Europe, during a considerable portion of the VOL. II.-NO, 4.

39

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, stationed in various regions of both hemispheres. The edition now before us consists of twenty-five volumes, four of which, viz. the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth, contain the documents regarding the American continent and the West Indies. The editor commences his preface to this portion, with a passage which we translate:

“The Memoirs of America present to the reader's curiosity, objects very different from those of the missions of the Levant. The islands of the Archipelago, Constantinople, Syria, the adjacent provinces, the kingdom of Persia and that of Egypt preserve, as yet, traces of their ancient splendour, and in these countries which we may call degraded, still every thing reminds us of the industry, the riches and the magnificence of their former inhabitants. America, on the contrary, scarcely presents to us any thing besides lakes, forests, unreclaimed lands, rivers

and savages.

Cupidity and a sort of restlessness produced the discovery of this fourth portion of the world. We treat here neither of the voyages nor of the conquests of the first navigators. A sufficient number of other writers have described the hardihood of the enterprises and the too direful success of the modern argonauts. Immense regions discovered, depopulated, devastated; millions of men, free and tranquil in their possessions immolated as victims to the avarice, even to the caprices of their new guests, might indeed excite our interest, but would create in us a more afflicting sympathy."

The writer then vindicates France from such charges, and proceeds to shew how she entered upon her lands by purchase, and cultivated peace with the Indians; that the king of France informed of the superstition, ignorance and barbarism of his new allies, sent missionaries of the Society of Jesuits to the Iroquois, the Hurons, the Illinois, &c. He proceeds

" Those icy regions have been watered by their sweat and soaked with their blood. Several died in torments, the bare recollection of which causes our nature to shudder, and all suffered incredible pain and fatigue.

“Obliged, in some degree, to become savages with those barbarians, thus to bring them to be men, that they might subsequently become Christians, they learned their languages, lived according to their manners, traversed the woods in their society, and became like to them in every thing which was not evil, that they might induce them to hear, to love, to esteem, and to practice that which was good."

The opportunities for observation which these men possessed, were therefore of the very best description; of the ability to turn these opportunities to account few will be disposed to raise a question, and for the fidelity of their relation perhaps as little