1825.} 
of wonder had. subsided, their new ha- 
bitation yielded them no compensa- 
tion for the wild-wood liberty of their 
endeared solitude; and their new faith, 
evidently, only the semblance and the 
mechanical verbiage of a consolation. 
“ Quick to believe, and slow to compre- 
hend, — 
Like children, unto all their teacher taught 
Submissively an easy ear they lend.” 
And it might be added, like parrots’ 
they repeated. But this would be rating 
such a system of devotion too highly. It 
isa faith of mere automatonism : voli- 
tion is out of the question. The puppets 
appear to speak; but it is the priest, 
the master of the show, who breathes 
through them and fashions the articu- 
lation. The hearts of the poor deluded 
Indians were still in their woods ;. and 
their God was in the voice of the winds 
that used to sing to them in freedom 
through the trees, and in the brawlings of 
the brook that wont to slack their thirst. 
The forms of association were but aggra- 
vated solitude. They were still to each 
other their only world; and from the 
wonted enjoyments of that world they 
were debarred. They were lost and di- 
vided in a wilderness of population, in 
which there was systematically nothing 
to which the heart could cling. This 
is not, indeed, the picture which Mr. 
Southey draws, or the colouring that he 
spreads; but it is the picture and the 
colouring which the mental eye discerns 
through the sketch and the water tints 
wherewith he covers what may be called 
the facts. Or to bring the metaphor 
nearer — we see the poet’s shadows 
on the surface of the crystal pane; but 
we see through them, also, the realties 
that are beyond. 
“ They felt the force 
Of habit, when till then in forests bred, 
A thick perpetual umbrage overhead, 
They came to dwell in open light and air.” 
“ All thoughts and occupations to commute, 
To change their air, their water, and their 
food, 
And those old habits.suddenly uproot 
Conform’d to which the vital powers 
pursued , 
Their functions, such mutation is too rude 
For man’s fine frame unshaken to sustain. 
And these poor children of the solitude 
Began ere long to pay the bitter pain 
That their new way of life brought with it 
in its train. 
On Monnema the apprehended ill 
Came first; the matron sunk beneath the 
weight 
Of a strong malady, whose force no skill 
In healing might avert, or mitigate.’’ ° 
News from Parnassus. 
213 
She had Christian burial, however ! 
“ They laid her in the garden of the dead— 
Suchas a Christian burial-place should be!” , 
Yeruti and Mooma attend the funeral ; 
and there 
“ They wept not at the 
wrought ; 
With feelings there as if their hearts 
break.”’ 
No, poor creatures! even the natura, 
relief of tears was forbidden to their 
bursting hearts !—tears would look too’ 
like the passions of this world. The 
redeemed were to act, even to self-de-, 
lusion, the semblance of resignation, 
and pen up the flood of nature till it 
burst the banks of life. 
** Some haply might have deem’d they suf- 
fered not ; : 
Yet they who look’d upon that maiden meek 
Might see what deep emotion blanched 
her cheek. 
An inward light there was which fill’d 
her eyes, 
And told, more forcibly than words could 
speak, 
That this disruption of her earliest ties 
Had shaken mind and frame in all their 
faculties.” : 
‘* Tt was not passion. only that disturb’d 
Her gentle nature thus; it was not grief; . 
Nor human feeling by the effort curb’d 
Of some misdeeming duty, when relief 
Were surely to be found, albeit brief, 
If sorrow at its springs might freely flow ; 
Nor yet repining, stronger than belief 
In its first force, that shook the maiden so, 
Though these alone might that frail fabric 
overthrow. 
“ The seeds of death were in her at that 
hour. ; 
Soon was their quickening and their growtli 
display’d ;\" Tog, 
Thenceforth she droop’d, and wither’d like 
a flower, 
Which, when it fiourish’d in its native shade, 
Some child to his own garden hath convey’d, 
And planted in.the sun to pine away. 
Thus was the gentle Mooma seen to fade, 
Not under sharp disease, but day by day 
» Losing the powers of life in visible decay.” 
All this is - beautifully pathetic ;- it 
speaks to the heart ; but it pleads not in’ 
favour of that system of automaton de- 
votion and passive obedience to priestly 
dogma and:direction, which, according. 
to Mr. Southey, constitutes * the only 
sunny spot” in the mournful. map; 
of history, on which “ the eye may. 
rest complacently.’”” Upon:such a spot 
our eye rests. with no. complacency.: 
its sun is to us the fiery dog-star—’ 
scorching and drinking up the: stream 
of social feeling: that should refvesh’the- 
heart ; 
grave, though over- 
would 
