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Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette.

By M. Jules Cloquet, M. D. Embellished with forty-five
engravings. 2 vols. 12mo. New York, 1836.

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**By some accident, a passage in Art. VIII, commencing at the
last line but three of page 191, has been transposed at the press. It
should have been printed as follows:-"The improvement of Bean
Creek has carried many a scrupulous senator into the outermost region
of metaphysics, and over all the mazes of the social compact. The
theory of state rights-in omne volubilis ævum-never begins this side
the deluge, or stops short of doomsday."

And at page 211, line 10, for "aere" read "ære."

AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. XXXIX.

SEPTEMBER, 1836.

ART. I.—1. Report made in the Senate of the United States, on the subject of an Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas. By Mr. SOUTHARD, Chairman of the Coinmittee; March 21, 1836.

2. View of the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation, demonstrating their ancient discovery and progressive settlement of the Continent of America. By JOHN DUNMORE LANG, D.D., Principal of the Australian College, Sydney, &c.; London, 1834.

3. Miscellaneous Works of WILLIAM MARSDEN, F. R. S., &c. &c.; On the Polynesian or East-Insular Languages; On a Conventional Roman Alphabet, applicable to Oriental Languages; London, 1834.

4. Ke Kumu Hawaii, or The Hawaiian Teacher; for December, 1834. Published in the language of the Sandwich Islands, at Honolulu, in Oahu (Woahoo.)

5. Ka Lama Hawaii, or The Hawaiian Luminary; for the months of February, March, April, September and December, 1834. Published in the language of the Sandwich Islands, at Lahainaluna, in the island of Maui (Mowee).

6. De Lingua Othomitorum Dissertatio; auctore EMMANUELE NAXERA, Mexicano, Academia Litteraria Zacatecarum Socio. Communicated to the American Philosophical Society, March 6, 1835.

7. A Narrative of the Shipwreck and Captivity of Horace Holden and Benjamin F. Nute; on the Pelew Islands, and on Lord North's Island, with a Vocabulary of the Language of the latter Island. Boston, 1836.

The origin of the population of America is a problem which has exercised the ingenuity of the learned from the period of VOL. XX.-No. 39.

1

Columbus's discovery to the present day. It is a problem, too, which is not yet satisfactorily solved, though much light has been thrown upon it by modern discoveries; and the question is certainly, at the present time, embarrassed with fewer difficulties than it has been at any former period.

It is not our intention, however, on the present occasion, to pursue as our principal subject the simple and precise question of the original population of America. As connected with that question, we propose to invite the attention of our readers to a quarter of the globe which has hitherto received little notice among literary and scientific enquirers; but which is, nevertheless, highly deserving of investigation, and, independently of its importance to the United States in a commercial view, is full of interest as a subject of philosophical speculation; and, when taken in connection with the continent of America, becomes an indispensable element in the solution of the great problem above mentioned.

The region of the globe to which we allude, is that vast collection of islands which fill a large portion of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, particularly between the tropics, and which seem to form the connecting links, though much broken, between the shores of Asia--the cradle of the human race--and the western coast of America; islands, that in the fabulous ages might have been imagined to be the stepping stones, by which the giant race of those days passed from their domain on the old continent to the shores of the new; from

"The barren plains

Of Sericana, where Chineses drive

With sails and wind their cany wagons light"—

to that new world, where

"Columbus found the American, begirt

With feather'd cincture, naked else and wild,
Among the trees on isles and woody shores."

To the general considerations above mentioned, we might add, if any further motive were necessary to excite our attention to this subject, that, as Americans, we have a particular interest in it, arising from circumstances to which it may not be amiss to advert. One of these is the fact, that an important group of the intertropical islands is properly an American discovery; we mean the group originally named, after their discoverer, Ingraham's Islands, and since that time, the Washington Islands; which are now well known, to every reader of voyages,

1 Milton's Par. Lost, iii., 438; ix., 1115.

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