nute philosopher is to Plato or Bacon. He is great in little things, and conversely little in great things. His genius is bent on investigating trifles. He is an ingenuous perverter of sense, from blindness at not seeing the printer's blunders, or a rapid writer's slips in orthography. He is strongest in punctuation and prosody. If an editor, he is in mortal dread of lively contributors, mistaking a satire on vice for a condemnation of virtue; and a homily on hypocrisy, for a scandal on religion. Of poetry he is the verbal critic, and from his literalness, spoils the beauty of a fine passage because he cannot see the beauty of a choice epithet. Correctness is the height of his ambition. He remarks how many lines in a poem end with a monosyllable, or with a similar termination. He pretends to be skilful in metres, and the art of poetry. By this he intends the rules of Aristotle, and Bossu, and Blair, and not the divine instincts of the glorious Afflatus. But he does by no means invariably enunciate his judgments in points, he oftener talks than writes criticism. In a private circle he affects the dictatorship of letters. If he has a relation, a man of talent, he patronizes him as a respectable writer. A third rate politician, who amuses him by cunning flatteries, he estimates much higher. Trash is his favorite term for all he cannot understand, and especially for all keen satire that he suspects may have a bearing upon himself. He makes the most egregious blunders, saying, this will not last, of an immortal work; or, he will soon break down, of a man whose noble enthusiasm appears to his contracted soul little better than midsummer madness.

The small critic is delighted with petty beauties and the minutest details. He loves still more to carp on petty faults in a great man, and thinks he makes a fine discovery when he meets a trivial flaw. He looks, as it were, through an inverted telescope, and to his eye great objects diminish. He makes great things appear small, and the little less. His ideas are on the descending scale; his eyes contract to a mere point of littleness; he is the critic of Lilliput. Originality puts him out; boldness he styles extravagance, and acknowledges none but imitative excellence. All inventors, he looks upon as arrogant interlopers. He is distrustful of novelty, and apprehends failure in every new

scheme. He cannot distinguish be tween freshness of feeling and affectation. He has a horror of individuality, and will not allow the weight of personal impressions. Strong passion he accounts a weak prejudice, and the sincere convictions of a pure spirit "idols of the cave." Indignation at meanness and a scorn of rascality, he terms " whim whams and prejudice."

As he is a trite critic and a stale theorist, so is he also a false logician. He is, indeed, a mere special pleader. He cavils at literal mistakes, and disputes terms rather than abstract truths. He is a newspaper Thomas Aquinas, or the Duns Scotus of a monthly. Magazines he is apt to hold in supreme contempt, though for his life he cannot write a decent article for one. Voluminous works awe him into silence. Erudition is to him the greatest of bug-bears. Lest he should be discovered as an ignoramus, he never pretends to discredit the pretences of pedantry. He swells the train of such by his pomp and boasting. Since he has no genuine acquirements, he cannot distinguish the false wares, and consequently equally applauds the jewel and the mock paste.

Small critics may be found among two classes of people, in greater abundance than anywhere else; among so called sensible people, who have no real pretensions to letters, though they affect to speak critically on all points, and mere bibliographers, makers of catalogues, collectors, book-sellers and auctioneers. People of sense in ordinary matters, and men intelligent in their own walk of life, but who have never received any tincture of literature, make the most opinionated of all critics. A carpenter expects to graduate the powers of the human mind, and a stone mason to overthrow one of Ariosto's castles. Thinking to bring everything to a common standard, the illiterate imagine themselves to be as good judges of right and wrong in morals, as of the beautiful and odious in æsthetics. They are keen at a bargain, and confide without doubt in their own decisions on works of genius. The same people who talk pertly of Milton and Wordsworth, would think it absurd for a blacksmith to attempt to take a watch to pieces. Yet the difference of difficulty, between the two operations, is by no means great. And, after all, the immediate popularity of most writers rests

THE design of these expeditions was a military examination of the country between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, on the line of the Great Platte, the South Pass, and the Columbia, with a view to the maintenance of the national rights over a remote and interesting region. The military examination was the first object, but science came in for a share of the commander's attention: and sextants, refracting circles, chronometers, barometers, thermometers and telescopes, as well as rifles and the howitzer, formed a part of the young officer's equipment. The result of the combined objects is an immense collection of geographical, botanical, geological, and meteorological information, mixed up with the details which would enable a general to march an army, or an emigrant to move his family to Oregon; and from which a statesman might judge the value of the country, and a farmer choose a residence in it.

Two expeditions have been made, the first in 1842, terminating at the South Pass in the Rocky Mountains the other in 1844-5, extending to the tide-water of the Columbia, and thence south by a vast circuit through the unknown region of the Alla Califor nia;-forced forward, when once involved in them, by mountains and by deserts which carried the expedition far out of its intended course, and exposed it to perils and sufferings only to be compensated by discoveries full of strange and romantic interest, among people and countries never before described.

The journals of the two expeditions, printed by order of each House of Congress, as a public document, have just issued from the "Globe" and" National Intelligencer" offices; and it is these journals which we propose to review. A third expedition, to complete the objects of the first two, has just commenced; and in the course of one year more (should the adventurous young explorer

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be as successful as heretofore) the public may expect to be gratified with a full view, under all its various aspects, of the vast region from the Mississippito the Pacific Ocean, and especially of that large slope of our continent which faces the setting sun, and towards which the tide of emigration is now rolling, the eyes of Europe and America turning, and for the dominion of which diplomacy is now weaving its webs, and war sounding its alarms.

The design of these expeditions-the general plan of their execution—and a glimpse of their results are briefly sketched by Capt. Frémont himself in his modest" Notice to the Reader," prefixed to the publication; and this preliminary view is too important to the understanding of the expeditions to be omitted, and too brief and comprehensive to bear abridgment. We, therefore, present it entire :

"The Senate of the United States, and each ordered ten thousand copies of the the House of Representatives, having reports of the two exploring expeditions conducted by me, to be printed together, I have deemed it regular and natural to place the report of 1842 first in the order of publication, although heretofore printed; it being first in the order of time, and first in the progress of actual exploration. The two reports naturally go together, the second being a continuation of the first, and the two constituting parts of a whole, which will require à third expedition, now commencing, to complete. The first terminated at the Rocky mountains, and at the two points of greatest interest in that ridge-namely, the South Pass, and Frémont's Peak; the former being the lowest depression of the mountains, through which the road to Oregon now passes, and the latter the highest elevation, from the base of and flow in opposite directions, toward which four great rivers take their rise, the rising and the setting sun. second, after approaching the mountains by a different route, connects with the first expedition at the South Pass, and

The

thence finds the great theatre of its labors west of the Rocky mountains, and between the Oregon river and North California. The third expedition, now commencing, will be directed to that section of the Rocky mountains which gives rise to the Arkansas, the Rio Grande del Norte, and the Rio Colorado of California; and will extend west and southwest of that section, so as to examine the country towards the Pacific ocean, ascertain the lines of communication between the mountains and the ocean in that latitude, and complete the examination of the Great Salt lake and of the interesting region which embosoms it.

"The map which illustrated the report of 1842 is now extended to illustrate the entire expedition of 1843-44, so that a view of both expeditions will be presented together. This map may have a meager and skeleton appearance to the general eye, but is expected to be more valuable to science on that account, being wholly founded upon positive data and actual operations in the field. About ten thousand miles of actual travelling and traversing in the wilderness which lies between the frontiers of Missouri and the shores of the Pacific, almost every camping station being the scene of astronomical or barometrical observations, furnish the materials out of which this map has been constructed. Nothing supposítitious has been admitted upon it; so that, connecting with Captain Wilkes's survey of the mouth of the Columbia, and with the authentic surveys of the State of Missouri, it fills up the vast geographical chasm between these two remote points, and presents a connected and accurate view of our continent from the Mississippi river to the Pacific

ocean.

"To this geographical map, delineating the face of the country over which we travelled, there is added another in profile, showing the elevations, or the rise and fall of the country from the Mississippi to the Pacific. East of the Rocky mountains, two of these profile views are given,-one from St. Louis to the South Pass, the other from the mouth of the Great Platte to the same point. The latter is the shortest; and following, as it does, the regular descent of the river, and being seven hundred miles west of the Mississippi, it may be that the eastern terminus of this line may fnrnish the point at which the steamboat and the steam-car may hereafter meet and exchange cargoes in their magic flight across this continent. These profile views, following the travelling routes, of course follow the lowest and levellest lines, and pass the mountain at the point of its greatest depression; but to com

plete the view, and to show the highest points as well as the lowest levels, many lofty peaks are sketched at their proper elevations, towering many thousands of feet above the travelling line. It may here be excusable to suggest that these profile maps here exhibited are, perhaps, the most extended work of the kind ever constructed, being from St. Louis (according to the route we travelled) near sixteen hundred miles to the South Pass; from the mouth of the Great Platte to the same Pass, about one thousand more; and then another sixteen hundred from that Pass to the tide-water of the Oregon; in all, about four thousand miles of profile mapping, founded upon nearly four hundred barometrical positions, with views sketched and facts noted in the field as we went.

"In the departments of geological and botanical science, I have not ventured to advance any opinions on my own imperfect knowledge of those branches, but have submitted all my specimens to the enlightened judgment of Dr. Torrey, of New Jersey, and Dr. Hall, of New York, who have kindly classified and arranged all that I was able to submit to them. The botanical observations of Dr. Torrey will be furnished in full hereafter, there not being time to complete them now. The remarks of Dr. Hall, on the geological specimens furnished to him, will be found in an appendix to the report; and to his palæontological skill I am indebted for the discovery of an oolitic formation in the region west of the Rocky mountains, which further examination may prove to assimilate the geology of the New to that of the Old World in a rare particular, which had not before been discovered in either of the two Americas. Unhappily, much of what we had collected was lost by accidents of serious import to ourselves, as well as to our animals and collections. In the gorges and ridges of the Sierra Nevada, of the Alta California, we lost fourteen horses and mules, falling from rocks or precipices into chasms or rivers, bottomless to us and to them, and one of them loaded with bales of plants collected on a line of two thousand miles of travel; and, when almost home, our camp on the banks of the Kansas was deluged by the great flood which, lower down, spread terror and desolation on the borders of the Missouri and Mississippi, and by which great damage was done to our remaining perishable specimens, all wet and saturated with water, and which we had no time to dry. Still, what is saved will be some respectable contribution to botanical science, thanks to the skill and care of Dr. Torrey; and both in geology and botany the maps will be of great value,