It is true, he often lays on us burdens of passion that would not be borne in any other writer. But whether he wrings the heart with pity, or freezes the blood with terror, or fires the soul with indignation, the genial reader still rises from his pages refreshed. The reason of which is, instruction keeps pace with excitement: he strengthens the mind in proportion as he loads it. He has been called the great master of passion: doubtless he is so; yet he makes us think as intensely as he requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, he at the same time unfolds the highest energies of the head. Nay, with such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended with an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so blends the softening and alleviating influences of poetry, that they relish of nothing but sweetness and health.... He is not wont to exhibit either utterly worthless or utterly faultless monsters; persons too good, or too bad, to exist; too high to be loved, or too low to be pitied; even his worst characters (unless we should except Goneril and Regan, and even their blood is red like ours) have some slight fragrance of humanity about them, some indefinable touches, which redeem them from utter hatred and execration, and keep them within the pale of human sympathy, or at least of human pity. * * * * * =_Mary Henderson Eastman,[53]_= about =_1815-._= From "The American Aboriginal Port Folio." =_225._= Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi. There it lay--the beautiful lake--swaying its folds of crystal water between the hills that guarded it from its birth. There it lay, placid as a sleeping child, the tall pines on the surrounding summits standing like so many motionless and watchful sentinels for its protection. There was the sequestered birthplace of that mighty mass of waters, that, leaving the wilderness of beauty where they lived undisturbed and unknown, wound their way through many a desolate prairie, and fiercely lashed the time-worn bluffs, whose sides were as walls to the great city, where lived and died the toiling multitude. The lake was as some fair and pure, maiden, in early youth, so beautiful, so full of repose and truth, that it was impossible to look and not to love.... There was but one landing to the lake, our travellers found. It was on a small island, that they called Schoolcraft's Island. On a tall spruce tree they raised the American flag. There was enough in the novelty of the scenery, and of the event, to interest the white men of the party. There was a solemnity mingled with their pleased emotions; for who had made this grand picture, stretching out in its beauty and majesty before them? What were they, in comparison with the great and good Being upon whose works they were gazing?