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beheld by Combahee, standing upon the prow of the vessel, guiding it to the place set apart by the fates for the final consummation of that destiny which they had allotted to the perfidious Spaniards. We will not contend for the tradition; but the coincidence between the place of crime and that of retribution was surely singular enough to impress, not merely upon the savage, but also upon the civilized mind, the idea of an overruling and watchful justice. The breakers seized upon the doomed ship, as the bloodhounds seize upon and rend the expiring carcass of the stricken deer. The voice of Combahee was heard above the cries of the drowning men. She bade her people hasten with their arrows, their clubs, their weapons of whatever kind, and follow her to the beach. She herself bore a bow in her hand, with a well filled quiver at her back; and as the vessel stranded, as the winds and waves rent its planks and timbers asunder, and billows bore the struggling and drowning wretches to the shore, the arrows of Combahee were despatched in rapid execution. Victim after victim sunk, stricken, among the waters, with a death of which he had had no fear. The warriors strode, waistdeep, into the sea, and dealt with their stone hatchets upon the victims. These, when despatched, were drawn ashore, and the less daring were employed to heap them up, in a vast and bloody mound, for the sacrifice of fire.

"The keen eyes of Combahee distinguished the face of the perfidious De Ayllon among the struggling Spaniards. His richer dress had already drawn upon him the eyes of an hundred warriors, who only waited with their arrows until the inevitable billows should bear him within their reach.

"Spare him!' cried the widow of Chiquola. They understood her meaning at a glance, and a simultaneous shout attested their approbation of her resolve.

"The arrows of fire!' was the cry. The arrows of reed and flint were expended upon the humble wretches from the wreck. The miserable De Ayllon little fancied the secret of this forbearance. He grasped a spar which assisted his progress, and encouraged in the hope of life, as he found himself spared by the shafts which were slaying all around him, he was whirled onward by the breakers to the shore. The knife touched him not, the arrow forbore his bosom, but all beside perished. Two hundred spirits were dismissed to eternal judgment, in that bloody hour of storm and retribution, by the hand of violence. Senseless amidst the dash of the breakers, unconscious of present or future danger, Lucas de Ayllon came within the grasp of the fierce warriors, who rushed impatient for their prisoner neck-deep into the sea. They bore him to the land. They

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used all the most obvious means for his restoration, and had the satisfaction to perceive that he at length opened his eyes. When sufficiently recovered to become aware of what had been done for him, and rushing to the natural conclusion that it had all been done in kindness, he smiled upon his captors, and addressing them in his own language, endeavoured still further, by signs and sounds, to conciliate their favor.

"Enough!' said the inflexible Combahee, turning away from the criminal with an expression of strong disgust :

"Enough! wherefore should we linger? Are not the limbs of Chiquola still cold and wet? The bones of his enemies are here, let the young men build the sacrifice. The hand of Combahee will light the fire arrow!'

"A dozen warriors now seized upon the form of De Ayllon. Even had he not been enfeebled by exhaustion, his struggles would have been unavailing. Equally unavailing were hist prayers and promises. The Indians turned with loathing from his base supplications, and requited his entreaties and tears with taunts, and buffetings, and scorn! They bore him, under the instructions of Combahee, to that palmetto, looking out upon the sea, beneath which, for so many weary months, she had maintained her lonely watch. The storm had torn her lodge to atoms, but the tree was unhurt. They bound him to the shaft with withes of grapevines, of which the neighbouring woods had their abundance. Parcels of light-wood were heaped about him, while, interspersed with other bundles of the resinous pine, were piled the bodies of his slain companions. The only living man, he was the centre of a pile composed of two hundred, whose fate he was now prepared to envy. A dreadful mound, it rose conspicuous, like a beacon, upon the head-land of St. Helena; he, the centre, with his head alone free, and his eyes compelled to survey all the terrible preparations which were making for his doom. Layers of human carcasses, followed by layers of the most inflammable wood and brush, environed him with a wall, from which, even had he not been bound to the tree, he could never have effected his own extrication. He saw them pile the successive layers, sparing the while no moment which he could give to expostulation, entreaty, tears, prayers, and promises. But the workmen with steady industry pursued their task. The pile rose, the human pyramid was at last complete!

"Combahee drew nigh with a blazing torch in her hand. She looked the image of some avenging angel. She gave but a sin gle glance upon the face of the criminal. That face was one of an agony which no art could hope to picture. Hers was inflex

ible as stone, though it bore the aspect of hate, and loathing, and revenge! She applied the torch amid the increased cries of the victim, and as the flame shot up with a dense black smoke to heaven, she turned away to the sea, and prostrated herself beside its billows. The shouts of the warriors who surrounded the blazing pile attested their delight; but, though an hundred throats sent up their united clamors, the one piercing shriek of the burning man was superior, and rose above all other sounds. At length it ceased! all ceased! The sacrifice was ended. The perfidy of the Spaniard was avenged."- pp. 234-236.

The Views and Reviews in American History, Literature, and Fiction are a collection of articles, contributed "to the periodical literature of the country in the last fifteen years. They are taken from the pages of the Southern and American Quarterly Reviews; from the American Monthly and the Knickerbocker Magazines; from the Magnolia, Orion, Southern and Western Review, and other publications of like character." It is a bad omen for a book to be sent out into the world with a foolish or affected title. Mr. Willis has often done injustice to his fine genius by titular, if not other, conceits. These things show the same sort of bad taste as the foppish manners and mincing phrase of the exquisite of the saloons. "Views and Reviews" seems to have been adopted for no other reason than the unmeaning jingle of the words. These papers contain but little valuable criticism; they unfold no principle of beauty, and illustrate no point in the philosophy of literature and art. They breathe an extravagant nationality, equally at war with good taste and generous progress in liberal culture. That the writer is wrong in all this, we have no doubt; that he fails to see the bearings of the great theme of a national literature is most certain. A national literature is an august subject of contemplation, for it embodies the intellectual efforts of a nation, through all the ages of its existence. It will be rich and varied and precious in proportion as the nation's intellectual culture is thorough and profound, and as its morality is pure and lofty. The streams of knowledge flowing from all realms and all times bear to the national mind the treasures of thought, out of which the fair forms of its poetry and art must be moulded. The more universal its intellectual acquirements, the grander and more imperishable will be the monuments of its intellectual existence. A petty

nationality of spirit is incompatible with true cultivation. An intense national self-consciousness, though the shallow may misname it patriotism, is the worst foe to the true and generous unfolding of national genius.

There has been a good deal of rather unmeaning talk about American literature. There has been in this matter, also, an operation of the principle of the division of labor. Those who have talked most about it have done the least. The men to whom American literature is really indebted have quietly planned and executed works on which their own fame and their country's literary honor rest. But certain coteries of would-be men of letters, noisy authorlings, and noisy in proportion to their diminutive size, waste their time and vex the patient spirits of long-suffering readers, by prating about our want of an independent national American literature. Of course, all this prating is without the faintest shadow of sense, and resembles the patriotic froth which the country was favored with from high senatorial quarters while the Oregon business was under discussion in the national legislature. From the vehement style in which these literary patriots discourse, it would seem that they lamented the heritage of the English language and its glorious treasures, which are our birthright, as a national calamity. Like the codifying commissioners of a neighbouring State, they almost appear to recommend the adoption of the American language as the language of literature, without specifying what particular one out of the thousand dialects spoken on this continent they intend to honor with their choice. They say, in effect, "Go to; let us make a national literature"; and forthwith, a five-act comedy of most lamentable mirth, a two or three volumed novel of tawdry commonplaces, a witless caricature, with illustrations, like Puffer Hopkins, a coarse accumulation of unimaginative vulgarities, pretending to delineate American life, spring into being, and are clamorously pushed into public notice, as specimens of the genuine-native-original American litera

ture.

These gentlemen forget that national literature cannot be forced like a hothouse plant. Talking about it has no tendency to produce it. They seem to think that American authors ought to limit themselves to American subjects, and hear none but American criticism; as if, forsooth, the genNo. 133.

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ius of America must never wander beyond the mountains, forests, and waterfalls of the western continent; as if the refinements of European culture should have no charms for the American taste. How many of Shakspeare's noblest plays are laid in scenes beyond the narrow precincts of English life! How many of the greatest works of her historians trace the fortunes of countries and people having no other connection with England than the tie of a common humanity! In what portion of the British isles did John Milton place the beings that move and act in his immortal work? We trust no nation will monopolize the country where part of the wondrous scene is enacted; we fear that all nations will have an ample share in the region where another portion passes.

The complaint of a want of nationality in American literature is borrowed from the ill-founded judgments of English criticism. Even in this, our professed abettors of aboriginality are not original. English critics seem to expect a dash of savageness, a sound of the war-whoop, a stroke of the tomahawk or the bowie-knife, they expect to hear the roar of Niagara, and the crash of the trees in the primeval forests, — in the literature of America. Very prettily sounding phrases these; but neither the English originals nor the American copyists can force much meaning into them.

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American literature will do very well, in spite of these birds of boding cry. With extending literary and scientific culture, and increased familiarity with the genius of the past, with constantly enlarging intercourse among the most civilized nations, and the rapid intercommunication of thoughts, creations, and inventions, the intellect of America cannot fail to go forward in the career so auspiciously begun. The work so well done already by our great orators, historians, poets, and artists will not rest under the stimulating influences pouring in from every quarter upon the agitated intellect of the country. Fervet opus; and all the exaggerated complaints of coteries of small authors cannot make its glowing progress slower.

Among the topics most frequently and prominently brought forward in these papers is the use of history for the purposes of the artist; that is, for the writer of fiction, whether in prose Mr. Simms has a great dislike to historical investigators, like Niebuhr; men who employ the resources of inexhaustible learning and the instruments of discriminating

or verse.

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