SOURCE: A review of The Song of Hiawatha in North American Review, Vol. 82, No. 170, pp. 272-75.

In the following review, the anonymous critic offers a laudatory assessment of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha.

What a mixed blessing is civilization! If, among these Dacotah or Ojibway tribes in which Hiawatha makes us all feel so much at home, a poet of the people muses for a year or two, goes a hunting and brings back no new song, goes a fighting and has no monody for the graves of the slain, until, at some high feast of victory, love, or old mystery, he breaks his long silence, and sings such a song as he has never sung to them before,—if he sings it too in such a strain that he compels them to listen, brings back old legends which are favorites, and starts new ones for those who...