We have thought proper, in conducting a magazine of higher reputation and aim than the usual run of the light periodicals of the day, to devote a part of the pictorial department to pictures of American Scenery and Indian Portraiture, as better fitted to give the work a permanent value in libraries and on centre-tables, than the ordinary catch-penny pictures which disgrace a number of the magazines. Our illustrations of Southern and Western Scenery have commanded the respect and support of a very large class of readers; and the constantly growing celebrity and profit of Graham’s Magazine, indicate that we have judged wisely and well.
We have engaged the services of Mr. Bird, the author of “Nick of the Woods,” “Calavar,” etc., to furnish us a series of articles upon the Indians of America; a writer whose intimate acquaintance with the subject promises articles of great interest to our readers. We present our subscribers this month with an admirably drawn and engraved plate of Saukie and Fox Indians “on the look out.” Also, a beautiful view of a Waterfall in Georgia.
Ch. Bodmer pinx. ad. nat. Engd by Rawdon, Wright & Hatch
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
Poems. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
We cannot do justice either to the faults or merits of this singular volume, in a brief notice. The author has one of the most peculiar and original minds of which we have any record in literature, and a thorough analysis of his powers, even if successful, would occupy a large space. No reader of Mr. Emerson’s works need be informed that the poems are full of imagination, fancy, and feeling, and display a great command of expression. For our own part we prefer those poems in the volume which are least connected with the author’s system of ethics and metaphysics, such as “Each and All,” “The Forerunners,” “The Humble Bee,” and “The Problem.” In many of the others there is an evident attempt at versifying opinions; and the opinions are generally of that kind which readers will either pronounce unintelligible, or false and pernicious. “The Sphinx,” “Woodnotes,” “Merlin,” “Initial, Demoniac, and Celestial Love,” “Blight,” “Threnody,” and many other pieces, though containing many deep and delicate imaginations, are chiefly remarkable as embodying a theory of life, and system of religion, whose peculiarity consists in inverting the common beliefs and feelings of mankind. Here and there we perceive traces of the leading idea contained in that aggregation of fancy, sensibility, blasphemy, licentiousness, plagiarism, and noble sentiments, going under the name of “Vestus,”—we mean the idea that there is no essential difference between evil and good. Thus, in the “pure realm” to which celestial love mounts, in Mr. Emerson’s theory of love,