ed state of society,
is the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius." But, for the same
reasons, the savage, who should display any remarkably poetical feeling
or tone of thought, would be quite as great a prodigy. Poetry flourishes
most luxuriantly midway between the two extremes. Its essence is the
contemplation of great passions and actions--of love, revenge, ambition.
Imagination is then vivified by the means of expression or articulation;
and, in the half-civilized state, neither a refined public sentiment,
nor the other extreme of barbarous isolation, restrains the exhibition
of great (and poetical) emotions.

The best of Hazlitt's numerous definitions of poetry, determines it to
be "the excess of imagination, beyond the actual or ordinary impression
of any object or feeling."[8] But the Indian was destitute of all
imagination; apparently, the composition of his nature included no such
element; and, certainly, the rude exigencies of his life did not admit
its action. Even the purity of his mythology, compared to that of the
Greeks and Romans,[9] has been (by Lord Lindsay) attributed to this
want--though, if such were its only effects, it might very well be
supplied.

The Indian has no humor, no romance--how could he possess poetical
feeling? The gratification of sensual wants is the end of his life--too
often, _literally_ the end! "He considers everything beneath his notice,
which is not necessary to his advantage or enjoyment."[10] To him a jest
is as unmeaning as the babbling of a brook; his wife is a beast of
burden; and even his courting is carried on by gifts of good things _to
eat_, sent to the parents.[11] Heaven is merely a hunting-ground; his
language has no words to express abstract qualities, virtues, vices, or
sentiments.[12] His idea of the Great Spirit, and the word which
expresses it, may be applied with equal propriety to a formidable
(though not beneficent) _animal_; indeed, the Indian words which we
translate "spirit," mean only superior power, without the qualification
of good or evil. He has not even the ordinary inhabitive instinct of the
human race; his attachment to any region of country depends upon its
capacity to furnish game, and the fading of the former keeps pace with
the disappearance of the latter. "Attachment to the graves of his
fathers," is an agreeable fiction--unfortunately, only a fiction.[13]
He has always been nomadic, without the pastoral habits which the word
supposes