Sketch Of The Life Of Alexander Wilson Author Of The American Ornithology PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1828 edition. Excerpt: ... of the vulgar and ignorant; a state, compared with which the lot of the hewer of wood, and drawer of water, is truly enviable. The account of daddy Squares, the settler, and that of Pat Dougherty, the shopkeeper and publican, contain some humour. The latter is a disgusting exhibition of one of those barbarians, whom the traveller often meets with in the interior of our country; and whose ignorance, bestiality and vice, have the tendency to disabuse one on the subject of the virtue and happiness usually attributed to the inhabitants remote from our large cities, which, instead of being the only nurseries of corruption, as is believed and affirmed, are the great schools wherein science, literature, piety and manners, are most effectively taught, and most beneficially practised. The sketch of the Indian hunter is entitled to praise, as being vigorous and picturesque; and the description of the Bald or Gray Eagles, sailing amid the mist of the Cataract of Niagara, is a picture drawn with fidelity--it is poetical and sublime. After this superficial review of the poems of Wilson, the question will naturally arise, ought we to consider him as one endued with those requisites, which entitle his productions to rank with the works of the poets, properly so called? To write smooth and agreeable verses is an art of no very difficult purchase; we see it daily exemplified by persons of education, whose leisure permits them to beguile a lonely hour with an employment at once delightful and instructive. But when one considers the temporary nature of the great mass of these fugitive essays, that they are read and remembered just so long as is the ephemeral sheet, or magazine, the columns of which they adorn; one can form no high expectations of the long...