gay little sylphs, most of them from the Southern States, are most brilliant, and are represented with what, were it [not] connected with so much spirit in the attitude, I would call a laborious degree of execution.  This extreme correctness is of the utmost consequence to the naturalist, [but] as I think (having no knowledge of virtu), rather gives a stiffness to the drawings.  This sojourner in the desert had been in the woods for months together.  He preferred associating with the Indians to the company of the Back Settlers; very justly, I daresay, for a civilised man of the lower order—­that is, the dregs of civilisation—­when thrust back on the savage state becomes worse than a savage.  They are Wordsworth’s adventurer,

    “Deliberate and undeceived
    The wild men’s vices who received,
    And gave them back his own."[450]

The Indians, he says, are dying fast; they seem to pine and die whenever the white population approaches them.  The Shawanese, who amounted, Mr. Audubon says, to some thousands within his memory, are almost extinct, and so are various other tribes.  Mr. Audubon could never hear any tradition about the mammoth, though he made anxious inquiries.  He gives no countenance to the idea that the Red Indians were ever a more civilised people than at this day, or that a more civilised people had preceded them in North America.  He refers the bricks, etc., occasionally found, and appealed to in support of this opinion, to the earlier settlers,—­or, where kettles and other utensils may have been found, to the early trade between the Indians and the Spaniards.

John Russell[451] and Leonard Horner[452] came to consult me about the propriety and possibility of retaining the northern pronunciation of the Latin in the new Edinburgh Academy.[453] I will think of it until to-morrow, being no great judge.  We had our solitary dinner; indeed, it is only remarkable nowadays when we have a guest.

January 25.—­Thought during the watches of the night and a part of the morning about the question of Latin pronunciation, and came to the following conclusions.  That the mode of pronunciation approved by Buchanan and by Milton, and practised by all nations, excepting the English, assimilated in sound, too, to the Spanish, Italian, and other languages derived from the Latin, is certainly the best, and is likewise useful as facilitating the acquisition of sounds which the Englishman attempts in vain.  Accordingly I wish the cockneyfied pedant who first disturbed it by reading Emo for Amo, and quy for qui, had choked in the attempt.  But the question is, whether a youth who has been taught in a manner different from that used all over England will be heard, if he presumes to use his Latin at the bar or the senate; and if he is to be unintelligible or ludicrous, the question [arises] whether his education is not imperfect under one important view.  I am very unwilling to sacrifice our sumpsimus to their old mumpsimus—­still more to humble ourselves before the Saxons while we can keep an inch of the Scottish flag flying.  But this is a question which must be decided not on partialities or prejudices.