In looking back at the scenes and studies of such a season, there was little to regret, and much to excite in the mind pleasing vistas of hope and anticipation.  The spring came with less observation than had been devoted to the winter previous; and the usual harbingers of advancing warmth—­the small singing birds and northern flowers—­were present ere we were well aware of their welcome appearance.

     Hope is a flower that fills the sentient mind
     With sweets of rapturous and of heavenly kind;
     And those, who in her gardens love to tread,
     Alone can tell how soft the odors spread.

HETHERWOLD.

April 20th.  “There are, it may be,” says Paul, “many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.”  It could easily be proved that many of these voices are very rude; but it would take more philological acumen than was possessed by Horne Tooke to prove that any of them are without “signification.”  By the way, Tooke’s “Diversions of Purley” does not seem to me so odd a title as it once appeared.

C. writes to me, under this date, “I pray you to push your philological inquiries as far as possible; and to them, add such views as you may be able to collect of the various topics embraced in my plan.”

There is, undoubtedly, some danger that, in making the Indian history and languages a topic of investigation, the great practicable objects of their reclamation may be overlooked.  We should be careful, while cultivating the mere literary element, not to palliate our delinquencies in philanthropic efforts in their behalf, under the notion that nothing can be effectively done, that the Indian is not accessible to moral truths, and that former efforts having failed of general results, such as those of Eliot and Brainerd, they are beyond the reach of ordinary means.  I am inclined to believe that the error lies just here—­that is, in the belief that some extraordinary effort is thought to be necessary, that their sons must be cooped up in boarding-schools and colleges, where they are taught many things wholly unsuited to their condition and wants, while the mass of the tribes is left at home, in the forests, in their ignorance and vices, untaught and neglected.

In the exemplification of St. Paul’s idea, that all languages are given to men, with an exact significance of words and forms, and therefore not vaguely, there is the highest warrant for their study; and the time thus devoted cannot be deemed as wasted or thrown away.  How shall a man say “raca,” or “that fox,” if there be no equivalents for the words in barbarous languages?  The truth is that this people find no-difficulty in expressing the exact meanings, although the form of the words is peculiar.  The derogative sense of sly and cunning, which is, in the original, implied by the demonstrative pronoun “that,” a Chippewa would express by a mere inflection of the word fox, conveying a bad or reproachful idea; and the pronoun cannot be charged with an ironical meaning.