The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866

Of the finer kind of intaglii, there is little danger of buying counterfeits, since the art of gem-cutting is too low now to permit of such counterfeits as might be mistaken for first-rate antiques. Of the common kind, again, there are those which, cut with a certain conventionalism in design and a facility in execution which incessant repetition only can produce, cannot be imitated except at a cost utterly beyond their market value. Like the designs on the Etruscan vases, their main excellence is, that, being so good, they should be done so facilely. An imitator loses the rapidity and spirit of execution. The mass of imitations are of things only tolerably good, and of things whose characteristics are in the execution merely, as in the Roman and conventional Etruscan work.

I will close with one bit of advice to my readers. If your fancy finds any satisfaction in Scarabæi ed altri, let your acquisition stop with the first example,—take a sample brick from antiquity. If you once commence collecting them in ever so small a way, or with any excuse to your own pocket, you will find yourself subject to a fascination more irresistible than the love of money,—more absorbing than the search for the philosopher's stone. While you are in Rome, you will find yourself unable to keep your feet from ways that lead to the antiquaries, or your money out of the hands of a class (with two or three exceptions) of cheats. You will find the extravagances of one day coming to be the niggardness of the next; and feverish anxieties lest you should not succeed in getting this gem, and irritating regrets that you too soon bought that, will divide your tortured soul. And when you finally leave Rome, as you must some day, you will always harbor a small canker-worm of immitigable grief, that you did not purchase one stone you saw and thought too high-priced; and will pass thenceforward no curiosity-shop without looking in the windows a moment, in the hope of finding some gem strayed away into parts where no man knows its value. If you feel in you the capacity of loving them, let them alone.

MIANTOWONA

Long ere the Pale Face
Crossed the Great Water,
Miantowona
Passed, with her beauty,
Into a legend
Pure as a wild-flower
Found in a broken
Ledge by the sea-side.

Let us revere them,—
These wildwood legends,
Born of the camp-fire!
Let them be handed
Down to our children,—
Richest of heirlooms!
No land may claim them:
They are ours only,
Like our grand rivers,
Like our vast prairies,
Like our dead heroes!

In the pine-forest,
Guarded by shadows,
Lieth the haunted
Pond of the Red Men.
Ringed by the emerald
Mountains, it lies there
Like an untarnished
Buckler of silver,
Dropped in that valley
By the Great Spirit!
Weird are the figures
Traced on its margins,—
Vine-work and leaf-work,
Knots of sword-grasses,
Moonlight and starlight,
Clouds scudding northward!
Sometimes an eagle
Flutters across it;
Sometimes a single
Star on its bosom
Nestles till morning.

Far in the ages,
Miantowona,
Rose of the Hurons,
Came to these waters.
Where the dank greensward
Slopes to the pebbles,
Miantowona
Sat in her anguish.
Ice to her maidens,
Ice to the chieftains,
Fire to her lover!
Here he had won her,
Here they had parted,
Here could her tears flow.

With unwet eyelash,
Miantowona
Nursed her old father,
Oldest of Hurons,
Soothed his complainings,
Smiled when he chid her
Vaguely for nothing,—
He was so weak now,
Like a shrunk cedar
White with the hoar-frost
Sometimes she gently
Linked arms with maidens,
Joined in their dances:
Not with her people,
Not in the wigwam,
Wept for her lover.

Ah! who was like him?
Fleet as an arrow,
Strong as a bison,
Lithe as a panther,
Soft as the south-wind,
Who was like Wawah?
There is one other
Stronger and fleeter,
Bearing no wampum,
Wearing no war-paint,
Ruler of councils,
Chief of the war-path,—
Who can gainsay him,
Who can defy him?
His is the lightning,
His is the whirlwind.
Let us be humble,
We are but ashes,—