her that inspiration for the stage which never fails to drive thither those possessing it. The voice comes the readiest as the means of expressing passion and giving utterance to musical fancies. It was from this universal impulse, rather than any very special endowments, we suspect, that Mademoiselle Pauline Garcia found herself, when she was eighteen, consummately trained as a musician, commanding three octaves of notes, which she, even then, could use with a brilliancy and a hardihood surpassing the mature accomplishments of most of the sisterhood, and, in short, singing upon our opera stage, on a certain Thursday evening in May 1839, as Desdemona, by way of a first appearance! Whatever might be then thought of her natural qualifications, it was known and felt, that in all which concerns knowledge and feeling for her art, she began where most end Her action was redundant, not to say awkward. She was teazed, we well recollect, with her stage dress-and those who look upon the stage as merely a flower-garden of pretty faces, pronounced over her the oracular verdict of the "Edinburgh Review" over Wordsworth's poetry, "This will never do!" The writer was among those who were less final; not merely recollecting how Mrs. Siddons had been written down on her first appearance as "the handsome, awkward woman in pink,"not merely calling to mind the contemptuous sneer of the wardrobe woman, "Anything good enough for Pasta!"-but for a much more common-place and less prophetic reason:-because Mademoiselle Garcia succeeded; succeeded, too, on a stage where Grisi was in the full blaze and freshness of her beauty; and where the admirable art of Persiani had not lost its power to astonish by familiarity. The Willow song, in "Otello," is still in our ears, and the daring cadenza on the words "Io moriro," in Desdemona's grand aria in the second act; also, a wondrous ornament at the close of the slow movement to the bravura in "La Cenerentola." Those who have heard much are justified in relying on the depth of impression made by such displays, as a warrant for their excellence. A Frezzolini (the idol of Italy) can come to London, and no one turns his head, nor inclines his ear. A Löwe (the beloved of Berlin) can arrive, with every possible engine for popularity called into action in her favour: yet, in spite of her bright eyes, and stately stage-presence, and great available readiness and cleverness, she departs, and who recollects a note or a look of the Löwe? There has been this great singer, and the other great singer since-not forgetting the Lind, who has, with a vengeance, "swept the board," and enjoyed the lion's-no, the nightingale's- share of European popularity-but none of these appearances have been able to efface the impression of extraordinary gifts, made by that thin, pale, earnest girl, during her two seasons in London, or to stifle artistic interest in her subsequent career. Private curiosity was early satisfied or silenced, by the fact of her marriage with an accomplished French gentleman, honourably known in the world of art and letters. She became Madame Viardot in the month of April 1840.

From that time her life, like her sister's, has lain out of the tract of usual prima donnas. Able to take any part in any repertory, sufficiently of a severe musician to do honour to the classical grandeur of Gluck, vocalist enough to interpret Rossini,-next to the Lind, Meyerbeer's prima donna of predilection in his own most trying operas; either a Donna Anna or a Zerlina in "Don Giovanni ;" incomparable among her compeers as a Romeo; giving a dramatic interest to Rachel

in "La Juive" of Halevy, which is described as almost fearful-Madame Viardot has not been confined to the somewhat insipid routinework of any Italian theatre; where the peculiarities (let us be honest, and say the defects) of her voice might have been more of a hindrance in the way of success, than her wondrous dramatic versatility and musical science would be aids and helps. She has sung successively in Spain, Austria,-Russia, till warned thence by the climate-and most lately, ere returning here, at Berlin. There she had to master a new language, of all others, perhaps, the one most unapproachable by southern organs, and accomplished the feat with such success, that the journals (those fickle dispensers of crowns and glories, and nowhere more fickle than in Germany) have been, with a foolish enthusiasm, exalting her, at the expense of their lost Lind. To each her own; the world being wide enough for all. There is in Art no solitary and final sovereignty; over those at least who think and recollect. Rachel is great, though Dumenil and Clairon have been. The spirit of the Spanish songstress, "uttering words that burn," is admirable and fascinating, could the Swedish Nightingale hold her sweet sostenuto notes "one hour by Shrewsbury clock !"

The reappearance of Madame Viardot in London has been made under peculiar, not to say difficult, circumstances. May Fair and Belgravia have grown somewhat tired of the rivalry between the two Opera Houses, and, alas! the night !—are more ready to talk of Republicans abroad and Chartists at home than to listen to any charmer whatsoever. Then, such a galaxy of artists was never before assembled in any given town as now in London. And there is this clique and the other clique, the French, the German, the Italian, and our own angry "native talent-ers," whose whisperings in corners are busy enough to discompose a less sensitive person, and whose open efforts to set aside and disparage, form one of the most constant and saddening features in theatrical history.

But "Genius gets over the ploughshares." Madame Viardot's Amina, her first part, puzzled the gossips, and those used implicitly to believe in Lind; her second, the Donna Anna, delighted such as have any musical knowledge; her third, the Romeo, in Bellini's “I Capuleti," has stamped her for what she is, the greatest operatic actress on the stage. It has proved her to be as intense, but not so extravagant, as her sister; more intent on her art, less on her public display. Though a musician of vast and varied acquirements, she is never seduced, as Malibran was, into unmusical feats, by way of "astonishing the gods." Out of a few skeleton situations and insipid airs, she works up a complete and completer character-gives us the impassioned, tender, ill-fated, southern Romeo, with a passion and a sorrow distorted by no pain, disfigured by no rant. Her tomb scene is the finest piece of acting to music that we have enjoyed since Pasta retired. What more can be said to honour a genius which has achieved successes which can be thus honestly characterized, and this when ninety-nine out of the hundred are more liberally endowed with charms of voice and person? The skill of Madame Viardot Garcia as a pianist has been already commemorated. Like her sister, too, she holds a high place among female musical composers. Her other accomplishments belong to the Lady's private hours, not the Artist's public triumphs; and on the former it was agreed in limine that we were not to intrude.

POCAHONTAS,

THE INDIAN HEROINE.

BY ODARD.

THE history of the North American Indians constitutes one of the most curious and interesting chapters in the volume of mankind. The peculiar qualities of this ill-fated race strikingly distinguished them from other savage tribes. Though in constant collision, they never blended with the materials of organized society: their existence continued to the last precarious and wandering, and served to bring the modern civilization of their land into strong contrast with the impenetrable obscurity that hung over past ages.

Through the vast extent of the North American continent, this people have left no ruins to speak of human thought and action. We are met only by the silence of nature. The mighty forest joins the present and the past. Awful and mute, it represents the gloom that stretches over the moral antiquity of a vanished race.

I speak of them in the past tense, for the aboriginal children of the lake and wood are gone for ever from the shores of the Atlantic. A few miserable remnants wander in the remotest forests, whither they have been gradually chased by the superior knowledge and power of the merciless usurper; and even these, daily deteriorating in character, and thinning in numbers and physical strength by the insidious supply of ardent spirits, will, in the course of a few generations, utterly disappear from the face of the earth.

Till the early part of the present century, we had a very imperfect, and by no means favourable acquaintance, with the peculiarities of Indian customs and character. Our knowledge of them had unfortunately been in general derived from the accounts of wellmeaning, but simple and illiterate missionaries; from the reports of persons wholly uneducated, who had lived among them awhile in captivity, or from choice; or of traders, usually the most ignorant, depraved, and dishonest part of the transatlantic white population. The campaigns of 1812 and 1813, however, brought our troops into intimate and constant association with the Indians on the western frontier of the Canadas, who, collecting in great numbers, descended from the immense forests and prairies about the shores of the Lakes Superior, Huron, and Michigan, and bordering on the heads of the Mississippi and its tributary streams, to join their British father against the hated Longknives, as they termed the Americans. Opportunities were thus afforded for gaining a more accurate insight into the character and modes of life of our "red brethren." The map of Indian existence was opened to the friendly English gaze. Their encampments of wigwams or tents of deerskin differed in no respect from their villages or ordinary habitations: their warriors hunted through the forest, as usual, in the intervals of hostility: and the desultory expeditions which they shared with the English troops resembled exactly their usual warfare.

The encampment of this large body of warriors, with their squaws and children, presented a wild and imposing spectacle, and produced impressions upon those who witnessed it not easily forgotten. The effect at night was particularly striking. Swarthy

figures grouped indolently, or danced with shout and war-song about the blazing watchfire, while at intervals the plaintive cadence of the Indian flute, or the hollow tone of the Indian drum, gained upon the ear. The forest drew its dusk and heavy aspect round the scene the dark foliage slumbering in the calm brilliance of a Canadian night.

Equally lasting, and of a far more interesting character, were the impressions left by the qualities these untutored children of the wild exhibited. The proud and heroic spirit of the warrior, his insuperable constancy, his superhuman endurance and contempt of pain; the affectionate nature of the Indian woman-her persuasive gentleness of mien-her winning delicacy-her beauty of face-her symmetry of form-her bewitching and almost universal sweetness of voice; the simple manners of both sexes-the purity of their religious belief-their justice, generosity, hospitality, and general habits of kindness and courtesy ;-these were characteristics that could not fail to awaken a high interest and command a sincere regard.

The foregoing observations upon the character and mode of life presented by the Indians, though referring especially to those tribes with whom the English became allied on the Canadian frontiers, are applicable equally to all the aborigines of the North American continent; and therefore I request the reader to come a little southward with me to the immediate scene of my story. Though he will diminish his latitude and alter the surrounding objects:-prairies sunned by fiercer rays-forests swayed by more fervid gales-mellower days, and deeper nights,-yet still he will find a people identical in features with those I have described, presenting the same attractive characteristics.

But they are gone for ever-those children of the wild. Disturbed in their pleasant places by the ruthless step of the usurper, tribe after tribe has disappeared before the impatient advance of republican civilization. The repudiating Yankee now treads the hunting-grounds where the honest, faithful Indian roamed of yore, and the breeze that fanned his free bosom is heavy and polluted with the breath of slavery.

It will easily be conceived that the pictures of these races, drawn by such visitors as those I have above alluded to, possessed no great degree of attraction. Such persons were entirely incapable of appreciating the simple worth of the people they undertook to report upon, or of detecting and exhibiting the poetry that lurked in their natures, and often marked their lives. Nevertheless, their accounts present here and there outlines of characters which, though exhibiting the exaggerations and coarseness of the ignorance or prejudice by which they were drawn, yet, when reduced to just proportions by candour and the aid of a more intimate knowledge, offer studies of the highest biographical interest. Their attraction is enhanced, too, by accessories belonging to the climate and country, and a romantic contrast to the modes of civilized society, whence the existence of wild excitement and adventure, whose fascination often proved so irresistible as to lure the cultivated European to exchange the amenities and advantages of a social life, for the wandering lonely freedom of an Indian

career.

The following story is a brief sketch of one of the aborigines of Virginia, an Indian girl, named Pocahontas. She was the daughter

of Powhatan, the king or chief of one of the three great confederacies who, at the date of the first permanent settlement effected within the limits of Virginia, occupied the country from the seacoast to the Alleghany, and from the most southern waters of James river to the river Patuxent. These communities were called the Mannahoacs, the Monacans, and the Powhatans. The two former were the highland Indians. They resided upon the banks of the various small streams that water the hilly country between the falls of the Atlantic rivers and the Alleghany ridge, the Mannahoacs occupying what are now the Stafford and Spotsylvania countries, while the Monacans were distributed upon James river, above the falls.

The Powhatans inhabited the lowland tract, extending laterally from the falls of the rivers to the coast, and from Carolina on the south to the Patuxent on the north, a district comprehending above eight thousand square miles. They were the most numerous and warlike confederacy on the continent; and though the hilly and difficult country occupied by the two other tribes proved a considerable safeguard from the power of the lowland Indians, yet the only adequate security of the former was to be found in a strict union of all their tribes.

The Powhatan life was the beau ideal of savage happiness. Theirs was a beautiful country. Every charm of forest, hill, and river were blended under a genial sky. The streams abounded with the most delicious fish; the woods furnished inexhaustible supplies of game, deer, turkeys, and all kinds of wild fowl, together with quantities of fruit, Virginian pease, pumpions, and the exquisite putchamin. Vast quantities of the finest corn, too, was thrown out each year by the vigour of the all but virgin soil, to repay the simple agriculture of the Indians. The Powhatans lived free and happy, hunted, feasted, fought now and then, feasted again, and thanked the Great Spirit for all their advantages. Their chief, I have said, was called, par excellence, Powhatan, or rather the confederacy was called from him. Powhatan himself took his designation from the town so called, the chief seat of his hereditary dominions. The English termed it Nonsuch.

In the winter of the year 1607-8, an adventurous and ambitious gentleman named Smith, one of the settlers at Jamestown, set out on an expedition into the Powhatan country. He took with him a crew sufficient to manage a barge and a smaller boat proper for the navigation of the upper streams, and proceeded up the Chickahominy river as far as it was navigable by the barge. Leaving the barge in a broad bay or cove out of the reach of the savages on the banks, Smith, with two whites and a friendly Indian advanced up the river in the smaller boat. They were marked and followed by two or three hundred Indians in their course. After proceeding for about twenty miles, their further progress was stopped by the marshes at the source of the river. They hauled up their boat, kindled a fire, and Smith, leaving the two English asleep beside it, took his gun and accompanied by the Indian, wandered into the adjoining wood to forage for some game for supper. The ambushed savages sprang out upon the Englishmen who slumbered by the fire, and having cruelly dispatched them, set out in search of Smith. Before long they came up with him, but a bullet from the Englishman's rifle