"Instead of watching the bird as it flies above our heads, we chase the shadow along the ground, and finding we cannot grasp it, we conclude it to be nothing. "I hate to see trees pollarded--or nations. "What way of circumventing a man can be so easy and suitable as a _period_? The name should be enough to put us on our guard; the experience of every age is not." The oracular wisdom which these and the like sentences contain, we must confess ourselves unable to expound. We would not undertake to act as interpreter of such aphorisms; and we feel persuaded that if three of the most friendly commentators were to sit down before them, they would each give a different explanation. In quitting our somewhat ungracious task, we would not leave the impression behind that there is absolutely nothing in this volume to reward perusal. There are some sparkling sayings, and some sound reflections, which, if the book had now appeared for the first time, we should think it our duty to hunt out and bring together. But the work has been long before the public, and our present object was merely to point out some of the weaknesses of a very dogmatical class of writers. The following _guess_, for instance, is very significant, and extremely apposite, moreover, to our own times. That we may leave our readers something to meditate upon, we will conclude by quoting it:-- "_When the pit seats itself in the boxes, the gallery will soon drive out both, and occupy the whole of the house._"--A. LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST." PART I.--CHAP. I. Away to the head waters of the Platte, where several small streams run into the south fork of that river, and head in the broken ridges of the "Divide" which separates the valleys of the Platte and Arkansa, were camped a band of trappers on a creek called Bijou. It was the month of October, when the early frosts of the coming winter had crisped and dyed with sober brown the leaves of the cherry and quaking asp, which belted the little brook; and the ridges and peaks of the Rocky Mountains were already covered with a glittering mantle of snow, which sparkled in the still powerful rays of the autumn sun.