not presented with one of a higher order and on a greater scale? Was it too much to demand of the inventor of that prince of whalers, the inimitable Tom Coffin, that he should extend his observations to another sphere, and not overlook the opportunity that lay so invitingly before him, of producing, at full length, a rugged yankee hero of the Stark or Putnam school?

We shall not descend to the invidious office of enumerating the oversights in mere style and the use of language, which are to be found so frequently in the pages of this work. The author, in his preface, has so contumaciously disclaimed all critical jurisdiction, that we fear it would be of little benefit to him, as it certainly would be of little interest to others, to point out his instances of baldness or mannerism in using some favorite word on subjects entirely inconsistent with each other of mistake, in applying common words otherwise than in their common and only intelligible acceptation-of affectation and inelegance, in using his verbs in the interrogative form, invariably without auxiliaries—and of carelessness, if not clumsiness, in leaving his meaning so entangled in the web of his construction, that our struggles to free it to our own comprehension, have been sometimes entirely unsuccessful. We regret this the more, because the author's popularity is likely to carry his example into precedent; and we are unwilling that our subsequent writers should be allowed to avail themselves of the sanction of his authority for vices in style, which in spite of his candid confession of having long since forgotten the little that colleges and (some may think he might have added) that schools have taught him, must, for the most part, have been committed rather from indolence than ignorance. We do not wish, however, to dwell upon this ungrateful topic; and, resting our hopes of his farther amendment in this respect, upon the improvement which he has regularly exhibited from "Precaution" to the present work, rather than upon any expectation of furnishing him with "a single hint which his humble powers can improve," we shall proceed to those features of the latter which we have been able to contemplate with unalloyed admiration.

The writer of the religious or of the historical novel, has difficulties to contend with, peculiar to the walk of composition which he has selected; and unless the purposes of his work be blended in those nice proportions which it is the lot of few exactly to attain, the lighter reader will skim over the fiction, and throw aside the remainder with disgust, while the graver one will prefer to deduce his morality from real sermons, and to seek his knowledge in the authorized and established repositories of

facts. The composition of the historical novel is encumbered with still another and a greater embarrassment. The author is obliged to regard, in the invention of his characters and incidents, all the proprieties of reality, and of that very reality in which he has placed his scene, with far more strictness here, than in fictions where no measure is immediately at hand to detect and to estimate his extravagance. The circumstances and characters which are known, have the effect of familiar objects in a landscape, which not only enable you to judge of the general perspective, but to ascertain the magnitude of others, which the artist, in the absence of these convenient tests of nature, might with impunity exaggerate or distort. The writer of such a work, then, has stretched his imaginations upon a Procrustean bed of his own making, and must force them all to correspond to it, at whatever risk of dislocating the limbs, or mutilating the stature of these children of his brain. In surmounting all these difficulties, the author of this book has been eminently successful. He has thrown himself fearlessly into the midst of scenes, fresh in the personal experience of many who are now alive, and destined to be eternally fresh in the traditional recollections of millions who have not yet begun to live. He has transfused into his narrative the sturdy spirit of those times, when every citizen was a soldier, and every soldier a patriot. Even in the humble personages whom he has chosen to illustrate this spirit, he has exhibited with admirable consistency, the sagacity with which the colonists discovered, and the shrewdness with which they explained their rights, as well as the jealousy with which they guarded, and the stoutness with which they defended them. The pettiness and homeliness of the details of these struggles, as compared with the larger operations of European warfare, which have made them to be usually considered unfit themes for the imaginative writer, have not induced him to shrink from the battle grounds on which our freedom was born, or to pass them by as unsusceptible of the decorations, or unworthy of the gifts of genius. In the skirmish at Lexington, the retreat from Concord, and the battle of Breed's or Bunker's Hill, he has fairly transplanted us to the periods and the spots which he describes; and with that rare felicity, both of selection and coloring, which is at once the triumph and the test of talent, he has made us see, and hear, and feel all the stir of the glorious strife which has led to consequences ineffably more glorious. But it would be tame and even unfair, to estimate the value of this part of the story by the interest which it may create in the present generation of readers. It deserves to be considered with 7

more extended views. It deserves to be appreciated by the effects which it must produce, as a portion of our national literature, upon the young and ardent lover of his country, in those days when distance of time shall have somewhat blended and softened the ruder features of reality, which now we can hardly help associating with events so near us both in time and place. How much more delightful to an author, must be the consciousness that he is destined, perhaps, to contribute to the formation of the future character of a part of his countrymen, by mingling his own productions with their earliest and most sacred national associations, than the barren and temporary triumph of having succeeded at last in wringing from the foreign arbiters of literary fate, by a studied and constant conformity to their prejudices, the wretched privilege of literary naturalization. To this consciousness we think Mr. Cooper has an undeniable right; and however our duty may have compelled us to notice the minor blemishes of his book, he has no readers who regard with more complacency than ourselves, what he has already done, or who await with more earnest expectation, what we hope he feels himself bound to continue to do.

ART. VI.-The Journal of Madam Knight, and Rev. Mr. Buckingham, from the Original Manuscripts, written in 1704 and 1710. New-York. Wilder and Campbell. 1825.

The publication of an old American manuscript is too great a rarity not to be especially entitled to our notice. And here is one so old, so very old, that the great grandchildren of the authoress (if she ever had any) must have died before its publication. We candidly acknowledge, that we felt, at first, unwilling to give credit to so improbable a story, but a sight of the original, with which we have been favored, vanquished all our doubts. It is a genuine antique, a manuscript of unquestionable yellowness, of most manifest fragility, and withal, of a "very ancient and fish-like smell." The antiquarians of Europe may turn up their noses, as they please, at archives but a hundred and twenty years old; we can tell them, that we felt as much delight at the sight of this relic of our fabulous ages, as Champollion must have felt when his eyes first glanced upon the hieroglyphic records of the Pharaohs of Egypt.

The manuscript was written, it appears, in the latter part of the year 1704, seventy-two before the revolutionary war, and is a faithful copy from the diary of a journey from Boston to New-York, undertaken, and (after many wonderful escapes)

She

successfully accomplished, by a very worthy, well-informed, and enterprising woman, of the name of Madam Knight. was so called, we are informed, out of respect to her character, according to a custom, which, it seems, was once common in New-England. The Bostonians have no reason to be ashamed of Madam Knight. She must have been no common woman, who could intrepidly encounter the hardships and the hazards of a long and tedious journey, two hundred and fifty miles of which were over a tract as little travelled as the country of the Pottowattomies. Who can help admiring the fearlessness, with which, even in that dark age, she speaks against the bigoted inhabitants of Connecticut, who were so "very Riggid in their Administrations towards such as their Lawes made Offenders, even to a harmless Kiss, or Innocent Merriment among Young people." With how much political sagacity does she declare, that the annual election of governor is "a blessing the good people of Connecticut can never be thankful enough for." How much to her credit is the gratitude with which she speaks of "the wonderful Civility of the Honble Govern Winthrop, Esq. A Gentleman of an Ancient and Honourable Family," who commanded her to stay and "take a supper with him." And who has described, with more spirit and fidelity, the manners and the language of the primitive yankees, than the writer of this journal has done, in her lively sketches of the unmannerly Debb Billinges, the petulant Jemima, and the gawky country Bumpkin, with his Joane Tawdry sweetheart?

Madam Knight set out upon her formidable tour on the second day of October, 1704. She appears to have experienced much difficulty in finding a man who would undertake to conduct her through these unfrequented regions. At last she finds the wife of a tavern-keeper, who offers, for a large sum, to let her son John go as guide upon this perilous expedition. Madam Knight demurs to the consideration-money.

"Then John shan't go, sais shee. No, indeed, shan't hee; And held forth at that rate a long time, that I began to fear I was got among the Quaking tribe, beleeving not a Limbertong'd sister among them could

out do Madm. Hostes.

"Upon this, to my no small surprise, son John arrose, and gravely demanded what I would give him to go with me? Give you, sais I, are you John? Yes, sais he, for want of a Better; And behold! this John look't as old as my Host, and perhaps had bin a man in the last Century. Well, Mr. John, sais I, make your demands. Why, half a pss. of eight and a dram, sais John. I agreed, and gave him a Dram (now) in hand to bind the bargain."-pp. 10, 11.

After a long and tiresome night-ride, through swamps almost

impassable, they finally arrived at Billinges, twelve miles from Dedham. On entering the tavern, Madam Knight is welcomed with the following salutation from the eldest daughter of the family. It is a fine specimen of choice yankee, and proves the great antiquity of that interesting dialect.

"Law for me--what in the world brings You here at this time a night? -I never see a woman on the Rode so Dreadfull late, in all the days of my varsall life. Who are You? Where are You going? I'me scar'd out of my witts-with much of the same Kind. I stood agast, Prepareing to reply, when in comes my Guide-to him Madam turn'd Rorering out: Lawful heart, John, is it You ?-how de do! Where in the world are you going with this woman? Who is she? John made no Ansr. but sat down in the corner, fumbled out his black Juuk, and saluted that instead of Debb."-pp. 12, 13.

Madam Knight is at last admitted, and is shown to a "little back lento," filled with the bedstead, where she goes to sleep with "her head upon a sad-coloured pillow." The next day, about two in the afternoon, she arrives at another inn.

"Here, having called for something to eat, ye woman bro't in a Twisted thing like a cable, but something whiter; and laying it on the bord, tugg'd for life to bring it into a capacity to spread; wch having wh great pains accomplished, she served in a dish of Pork and Cabage."—pp. 14, 15.

The "sauce" (meaning the cabbage) serves Madam Knight "the whole day after for a Cudd." The next day, our indefatigable traveller arrives at a river, which she crosses "in a Cannoo so very small and shallow," that, for fear of upsetting, she did not venture "so much as to lodg her tongue a hair's breadth more on one side of her mouth than tother." We defy the ingenuity of modern wits to give a better illustration of delicate equilibrium. After passing through sundry dismal forests, and descending divers break-neck precipices, she arrives at last at a 66 very firce and hazzardos river." Across this she valiantly swims her horse, and soon gets safe to the other side, which is the beginning of the Narragansett country. Here she traverses many "dolesome woods," until she gets up to the top of a hill, from which she sees the rising moon, or, as she more poetically expresseth it," the Kind Conductress of the night just Advancing above the Horisontall Line." At the sight of this "fair Pla nett," she falls into a rapture, and is inspired with " many very diverting tho'ts," which she has carefully preserved in metre, for the benefit of posterity. She gets no sleep that night, "because of the clamour of some of the Town tope-ers in the next room, who were in strong debate concerning the Signifycation of

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