f the Americans since, have never been exactly of the kind
that give on both sides a subject such as may be found in all mediaeval
and most Renaissance matters; in the Fronde; in the English Civil War;
in the great struggles of France and England from 1688 to 1815; in the
Jacobite risings; in La Vendee; and in other historical periods and
provinces too many to mention. On the other hand, the abstract "noble
savage" is a faded object of exhausted _engouement_, than which there
are few things less exhilarating. The Indian _ingenu_ (a very different
one from Voltaire's) Outougamiz and his _ingenue_ Mila are rather nice;
but Celuta (the ill-fated girl who loves Rene and whom he marries,
because in a sort of way he cannot help it) is an eminent example of
that helpless kind of quiet misfortune the unprofitableness of which Mr.
Arnold has confessed and registered in a famous passage. Chactas
maintains a respectable amount of interest, and his visit to the court
of Louis XIV. takes very fair rank among a well-known group of things of
which it is not Philistine to speak as old-fashioned, because they never
possessed much attraction, except as being new- or regular-fashioned.
But the villain Ondoure has almost as little of the fire of Hell as of
that of Heaven, and his paramour and accomplice Akansie carries very
little "conviction" with her. In short, the merit of the book, besides
the faint one of having been the original framework of _Atala_ and
_Rene_, is almost limited to its atmosphere, and the alterative
qualities thereof--things now in a way ancient history--requiring even a
considerable dose of the not-universally-possessed historic sense to
discern and appreciate them.

Outside the "Histoire de Chactas" (which might, like _Atala_ and _Rene_
themselves, have been isolated with great advantage), and excepting
likewise the passages concerning Outougamiz and Mila--which possess, in
considerable measure and gracious fashion, what some call the "idyllic"
quality--I have found it, on more than one attempt, difficult to take
much interest in _Les Natchez_, not merely for the reasons already
given, but chiefly owing to them. Rene's appearances (and he is
generally in background or foreground) serve better than anything in any
other book, perhaps, to explain and justify the old notion that
_accidia_[29] of his kind is not only a fault in the individual, but a
positive ill omen and nuisance[30] to others. Neither in the Indian
ch