Every nation has its distinctive spirit, or, to speak more plainly, its peculiar mode of thought. To this the orator must accommodate himself. The same style of eloquence which affects an Englishman, falls cold on the ear of an Italian. Even the Philippics of Demosthenes, or the orations of Cicero, were unrivalled, only so far forth as they were adapted to the peculiarities of an Athenian or Roman audience; and, had the situation of either of these orators been changed, there is great chance that, unless they altered their style, they would have been hooted from the forum, or at least listened to in silence. So with the oriental orators, whose most celebrated passages seem turgid to us. We take it, then, that one of the great secrets of this apparent tameness in Red Jacket’s orations, arises, as much from our different appreciation of his style, as from the inadequacy of the translations. We admit that there exists no perfect transcript of a harangue by him, but could one of his speeches be handed down to us, word for word, we predict that it would seem to us little better than turgid bombast or inflated allegory. Yet that Red Jacket was a great _Seneca_ orator, we have the concurrent testimony of more than fifty years—to say nothing of the evidence, in the book before us, of his vigorous intellect and grace of manner, the two most important requisites for oral eloquence. The character of this celebrated chieftain was an odd mixture of “dirt and divinity.” He was great as a whole, but mean in the detail. He ruled over warriors, and was an arrant coward. He professed to be frank, and lived on intrigue. His constant struggle was to retain the lands of his people, and yet more than once he would have sold them for his personal emolument. He was a hypocrite, a drunkard, and devoured by vanity; but he was also an orator, a statesman, and devoted to his country. He sometimes was capable of the loftiest generosity, and at other times he would stoop to cheat the government out of a coat. But in one thing his character is above reproach—he never ceased asserting the rights of his country; and from the treaty at Canandaigua, down to the latest hour of his life, he opposed manfully every alienation of the Seneca soil. He was often unsuccessful, and always misrepresented; but he did not relax his efforts. On the size of their domain, he said, depended the importance of his people; and that people it was his ambition to preserve an entire nation. For this he would have built up a wall of separation betwixt them and the whites—for this he excluded missionaries—for this he opposed schools—for this he denounced intermarriages—for this he lived and died a pagan. Yet he survived to see all his efforts in vain. He survived to behold the Senecas dwindled to half their numbers, to see their forests cut down, and to witness their lands slip piecemeal from their hands. How melancholy to contemplate the poor old chief, when, returning to hunt in the beautiful