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"You can hear nothing, alas, but what you already too well know. Pray, father, do not speak of Henry! - Nay, then let me inquire. Sir," she said, clasping his hand and looking up in my face with tearful eyes, "we have a relative- a dear relative, sir, in Natchez, who, we have heard has wandered from the path of honor."

"It is my son, sir," said Mr. Townley firmly. His daughter hung her head, and I could see the blush of shame mounting her forehead. "He is my only son. He was a clerk in New Orleans, and in an evil hour was tempted to gamble and lost all of his own money, and then embezzled that of his employer. To escape punishment he fled and joined the gamblers at Vicksburg. We have since learned that he has now become a principal leader among them, and that he remains mostly in Natchez. I am on my way to try to reclaim him. It is painful to a father to speak thus of a son! Did you ever see him, sir?"

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Townley," I repeated, "I never heard of the name in the South except associated with men of honor.".

"We have discerned that he goes by the assumed name of Frank Carter," said Mr. Townley.

I could not confess my ignorance; for I recognized the name of the most notorious gambler or "sportsman" in the South, who from his influence with the different bands that infested the West from Louisville to New Orleans, was called "Prince Frank." I gazed upon the father with pity, and upon the sister with feelings of the most painful sympathy. I felt that their hope of reclaiming him was destined to perish. They remarked my silence, and the daughter, now that there was no more to be told to call the tinge of shame into her cheek, lifted her head and looked into my face with anxious interest. Mr. Townley also waited earnestly to hear at least a reply from one who might have seen his son, and who could tell him something about him less evil than he had heard. I recollected him as a fine looking, richly dressed young man, who used to make a dashing appearance at the St. Catharine's race course, in a barouche drawn by a pair of spirited bays, with a beautiful girl, his mistress, seated by his side. He had become rich by his reckless profession, and it was said owned several dwellings in "Natchez under the Hill," the empire over which, as "Prince Frank," he ruled. But recently, since I had left the South in May, there had been a war of extermination against the gambles, beginning at Vicksburg and sweeping the whole

South-West. What had become of "Prince Frank" in this well remembered and bloody crusade of the roused citizens of Mississippi to redeem their towns and cities from the hordes of blacklegs who infested them, I was ignorant.

"Do you know him, sir? - Pray speak freely;" asked the daughter, after watching my countenance for some time.

I frankly informed her that her information had been correct, and while I expressed my hopes that their pious journey to effect his reformation and restoration to society, might be successful, I told her that I feared there was little prospect of it.

From this time I saw much of them, for Mr. Townley loved to sit and talk to me of his son. At length we approached the mouth of the Ohio where we were to separate, myself and my party to wait and take a boat up to St. Louis, they to continue their sad and hopeless voyage for the recovery of a lost son and brother.

As the boat was rounding too at the beautiful point of land now the site of the infant city of Cairo, Mr. Townley came to me and asked how long I and my friends would remain in St. Louis?

On learning it would be but for two days, and that we should then proceed directly down the Mississippi to Natchez, he asked if it would be agreeable to us for himself and daughter to attach themselves to our party. This accession was gladly received by all my friends to whom I had communicated the interesting object of their journey, and who were as deeply touched as myself with their peculiar affliction. Mr. Townley and his daughter, therefore, quit the boat with us; and the steamer landing our large party with our baggage upon the shore, resumed her swift course down the river, Captain Clark receiving our good wishes for his safe and speedy arrival at New Orleans.

It was late in the afternoon when we landed upon the point, and as we learned a boat was looked for momentarily from below, bound to St. Louis, we concluded not to remove our large quantity of baggage to the tavern, but remain with it, at least till night by the river side. Cairo city, as this place is now denominated, was then comprised in a two story tavern, called "Bird's Hotel," with a double gallery running around it, in a sort of grocery store, one or two log huts and a vast forest of gigantic trees that covered nearly the whole place except "the clearing" on the extreme point. It was a desolate looking spot, especially on the approach of night. The tavern, too, had a bad name, the point being, from its central position, a rendezvous for gamblers, and from its retired character, and the peculiar facilities it afforded for evading

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cessary.

We therefore placed our trunks in a hollow square, and seating ourselves upon them, waited patiently for the expected boat.When the sun at length set, and no signs of her rewarded our long and intense gazing, we began to wish we had waited at Cincinnati for a St. Louis boat, as the Broadway House we all acknowledged, was far more comfortable than the broad side of a river bank. The landlord, now, on our application to him, roughly replied that his rooms were full. We had observed as we went to the house, several suspicious men lurking about the tavern, one of whom I recognized as a well known Natchez gambler. We felt no disposition to remain in their company at the tavern, well knowing the vindictiveness which they entertained, since their expulsion, against all Mississippians, and the annoyance we might expect if we were recognized to be from the South. As the night promised to be clear, and the moon rose as the sun set, we decided on remaining on the bank all night. We

arranged couches for the ladies with cloaks and buffalo skins within the space enclosed by the trunks; and suspending on four stakes a large crimson Mexican blanket that belonged to the travelling equipment of the Louisianian, formed a serviceable canopy to protect them from the dew. We then opened our trunks and took out our knives and pistols, and the brother of the bride unlocked from his case a new, doublebarreled fowling piece he was taking home. There were of our party seven men, including two young merchants returning home to St. Louis from the East, who were bivouacked a few paces from us, but who on invitation joined us. We had arms,the double-barreled fowling piece just named, nine pistols and five bowie knives, and powder and ball: we therefore felt very sure of giving a good reception to any who molested us; for we knew that defenceless parties of bivouacking travellers had been attacked by armed banditti, and robbed of every article of baggage, and their jewelry stripped from their persons; we had heard also of travellers landing at the point who never embarked again. We therefore quietly loaded our arms, and having established a watch both for security and to look out

for a steamer, and awaken the rest on its approach, we settled ourselves about our bivouack for the night. The ladies soon went to sleep, confiding in our guardianship as women should ever do. Mr. Townley all at once showed himself to be a man of resolute character; for the probable danger of the party roused him from the contemplation of his own sorrows to sympathy with the feelings of those around him.

The moon shone very bright, and the two great rivers flowed majestically past, their broad surfaces looking like torrents of molten steel, meeting mile below the point, and blending into one dark flood which lost itself in the gloomy forests to the South. It was two in the morning. I was standing watch with Mr. Townley and the knight of the fowling piece, and one of the young merchants, when we observed a party of men suddenly issue from a path leading into the forest in the direction of two or three log huts. Hitherto the night had been still; the lights had been early extinguished in the tavern, and the groups of boatmen that were lingering about the shore had returned on board their flat boats. The party which we now saw was, when we discovered it, about three hundred yards off, moving at a quick tramp directly towards our bivouack. We instantly wakened our companions without disturbing the ladies, and having prepared our arms to give them a good reception should they prove hostile, we remained seated upon our trunks watching them. The moon now shone upon them so clearly that we could count their number - fourteen men, marching three and four abreast; it also gleamed upon weapons which some of them carried. We were now satisfied that we were the object of an open attack by some of the desperadoes who invested the point, who probably expected to find us unarmed and sleeping, and so pillage our baggage and persons, if not do murder, if resisted. We let them advance within fifty paces and then challenged. One who walked by the side of the first rank then spoke to them and they halted.

"If you approach any nearer, be your errand peaceful or hostile we shall fire upon you," we said firmly.

"Ha! they are prepared!" said one. "No. It is bravado. Let us on!" shouted another.

'On, then," was the general cry, and they rushed towards us in an irregular body. We let them come within close pistol shot, all fired a regular discharge - but over their heads.

They suddenly stopped, with a cry of surprise, fired a pistol or two, and then retreated a few paces and made a stand.One of them was evidently wounded, for we

saw him fall, and with difficulty and groaning drag himself after his companions.The challenge and firing aroused the females of our party, who at first shrieked, and were in great terror, but were prevailed upon to keep their recumbent positions sheltered from any fire of the assailants, by the trunks we had fortunately piled around their lodging place. We now reloaded our pistols, and prepared to receive them if they again attempted to molest us. Before we all got prepared for a second defence, they rushed upon us, firing pistols as they advanced, the balls of which whizzed over us, and, as we afterwards saw, pierced our trunks. Reluctant as we were to shed blood, we did not hesitate to return their fire, when they had got within five yards of us brandishing their knives and as desperate a looking set of black-legs as I should ever wish to encounter. A ball from Mr. Townley's pistol brought down their leader, and we were in the act of engaging with our knives, when a happy diversion was made in our favor by a shout close at hand, and a crew of gallant Kentucky boatmen, consisting of a

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father and five sons, roused by the skirmishing, came up from their boat to our rescue. They rushed upon the gamblers so unexpectedly, that, after making slight defence, they fled into the forests, leaving their chief dead not four yards from our bivouack. At the same moment, the deep boom" of an ascending steamer reached our ears. We were congratulating each other upon our escape, and thanking the brave boatmen, when a loud wild cry from Mr. Townley chilled the blood in our veins. We looked, and saw him leaning over the body of the slain robber. His daughter flew to him, gazed at the face of the dead, shrieked and cast herself upon the body.

It was his son-her brother! He had fallen by his father's hand. Poor Mr. Townley! he never came to his reason, to realize the full extent of his misery. He grew imbecile, and perished a few months afterwards, a broken-hearted wreck. Charlotte Townley still lives, but consumption is eating the bloom from her cheek, and her fading form will soon lie in the grave beside her father's.

LITERARY NOTICES.

VIRGIL; With English Notes. By Francis Bowen, A. M. Boston: David H. Williams. THOSE of our young friends who have not finished their classical education in the school-room, and still more, those who, without the assistance of an instructer, are endeavoring to initiate themselves into the pleasures attendant on the mysteries of the Latin tongue, will feel greatly indebted to Mr. Bowen for this elegant and accurate edition to Virgil. It contains all of Virgil's writings but one or two of the doubtful minor poems, illustrated by a body of valuable notes. The editor remarks in his preface, and in his practice shows that he knows what the notes of a school book should be; not such pedantic annotations as only serve to show the author's stores of classical lore, while they frighten and confuse the ignorant; not authoritative dicta on subjects which are matters of discussion among critics; not elaborate dissertations branching forth, ad libitum, from the text; not long translations which lift the student over ground over which he might have walked himself with ease; and, more than all, not windy, pretended explanations which, under the guise of a free or liberal

translation of the text confound such confusion as there is in the learner's mind, and leave the teacher a conviction of the ignorance of the annotator. Mr. Bowen's notes are short, accurate and to the point. At the same time, no one will complain that he does not give assistance enough. In his desire to make the volume useful to all classes of learners, he has hardly limited the number of his notes; they are more numerous than has been usual in our classical school books. It will therefore, as we have implied, recommend itself particularly to those who study without the attention of a master, though we do not doubt that the masters and scholars of our classical schools will readily avail themselves of it. A careful examination of the volume assures us that its accuracy is such as we expected from the well known ability of the editor.

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well known to the German reader, was Frederick von Hardenberg. The materials are drawn from a Life written by Tieck, to accompany a German edition of his writings. He appears to have been a person of a most delicate constitution of body, and a highly poetical frame of mind. His life was short, but long enough to give promise of great things. He died before he had finished his twentyninth year; his biographer remarks, "With a spirit much in advance of his times, his country might have promised itself great things of him had not an untimely death cut him off. Yet his unfinished writings have already had their influence; many of his great thoughts will yet inspire futurity; and noble minds and deep thinkers will be enlightened and set on fire by the sparks of his spirit."

He himself calls this romance an "Apotheosis of poetry. Henry of Ofterdingen becomes in the first part ripe for a poet, and in the second part is declared poet." The youthful hero, who has within him the germs of poetry, sets off from his quiet home on a journey with his mother to visit her relations. It was in days when journeys were not made as now upon rail roads where every thing goes on so smoothly that the adventures of a thousand miles may be written in a dozen lines, and they met and joined company with travelling merchants warriors and miners, who told stories, and talked wisdom and poetry and philosophy for mutual entertainment till they reached their journey's end. Here Henry meets a real poet, who opens to him the unknown land of fable and song. This poet too has a lovely daughter, Matilda. But it is vain to attempt an analysis of the book or of such story as it contains. It is the natural product of an author who regarded "what was most usual and nearest to him as full of marvels, and the strange and supernatural as usual and commonplace." It abounds in beautiful pictures and exquisite thoughts, which are connected by a singular frame work of narrative which cannot and ought not be separated from them.

It is divided as we have said, into two parts, The Expectation, and The Fulfilment. The author left it unfinished, dying before he had brought it to an end. Tieck, his biographer, at the close, gives a sketch of the plan of the second part and the manner in which the author had intended to finish it, so far as he was able to do so from his recollections of conversations with his friend. Our readers will remember that under the title of "The Miner," we published some passages translated from this work in the March number of the Miscellany.

This translation as far as we have had opportunity to examine it, is faithful and elegant, and the author of it, who has withheld his name, deserves the thanks of the public for putting within the reach of every one so agreeable a book, and one so highly popular in the original.

FATHERS AND SONS. A Novel. By Theodore E. Hook, Esq. 2 volumes,

This novel has been published abroad, and reprinted in this country since the death of its witty and distinguished author. He was engaged on its revision at the time of his death last year. We are told that he left another novel, Precepts and Practice, which will also soon be published. We regret that whoever had the charge of Mr. Hook's manuscripts should have thought proper to throw before the public a book, which, as is admitted, had not received the full attention given by him to the works which were published under his own eye. It must be regarded as an incomplete production; incomplete, because the author had not expended the time and labor upon it which he wished to do, and, if we may judge from the work itself, because his ready wit and intelligence were dimmed and weakened as his health failed, and he had not that power left, by the aid of which he gave to the world the more successful productions of earlier and happier days.

After saying thus much we do not feel privileged to speak, in detail, of the faults of Fathers and Sons. It has some peculiarities, attempts at variation from the ordinary course of novel writing which give it an air of singularity, and might perhaps, if they had been carried out under happier auspices, have added to its attractions. The author tells the different parts of his story precisely as he would tell to a friend from day to day, the history of any passing occurrence as its details transpired. He professes to wonder, with the reader, what can be the result of the various incidents and movements of which he speaks, to be as much in doubt as the reader is with respect to the denouement. Again, he exerts himself to give his reader a vivid perception of all the movements which the different parties make, precisely at the times when they occur; to let him keep the chronology of the novel perfect even in unimportant details: if Mr. A. happened to take his claret at his club at the moment Mr. B. left a railroad train for an omnibus, B's narrative is interrupted that A's transaction may take its proper place in time. We allude to this singularity, because we have thought it must arise from the nervousness of ill health; we feel constantly, while reading, that the author grew tired of any circle of his characters, after writing a few lines about them, and took relief in turning to another.

We are constantly reminded of the turn of Hook's mind; that it regarded every thing, in the first instance, in its relation to the arts of punning and conversing. This is not a mental organization which gives the novelist any great advantage, indeed no author's peculiarities of thought please us when continually presented us. No one will read the book however, who will not be reminded by it of

the fund of entertainment which has been afforded by the happier efforts of the author's pen: the plot is involved and disagreeable, but the kind tone of feeling exhibited through the book, and numerous brilliant and vigorous passages make us regret once more the loss of one of the wittiest men of his day.

THE BURNEY PAPERS. Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay. Edited by her niece. Part II.

We took occasion in the last number of the Miscellany to notice the First Part of this book. This Second Part is not less sprightly and interesting. The tone and subjects of the Diary change somewhat. The scene is no longer confined to the small circle at Mrs. Thrales's, and the more intimate friends of the author. As she became more and more known as a writer, she is carried forward into a larger circle, and she describes persons and relates conversations with still more spirit as she grows more accustomed to the task. The matter however becomes somewhat more grave;-poor Dr. Johnson's infirmities increase upon him; he can no longer join in the social circle, and and at last his devoted friend and admirer is forced to record his death; while the death of Mr. Thrale, and subsequent imprudent marriage of his widow, produces an almost entire change in the associations of Miss Burney.

Her descriptions of London society however, are highly entertaining; and the conversations are detailed with so much spirit that one almost feels as if he were reading the best chapters of her novels, only that he is constantly met with real names of persons whom he is glad to know about. In the course of this volume she comes to be the friend of the once celebrated Mrs. Delany, and

through her is appointed to an office about the person of the late Queen Charlotte. She enters upon the duties of this place towards the close of this volume, with great misgivings, which, from the notices we see of the third part of the Diary in the English papers, (this part has not yet been republished here) were not unfounded. The work as far as it has appeared, is certainly one of the most entertaining of the day.

HISTORY OF THE EXPEDITION UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPTAINS LEWIS AND CLARK TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN. Performed during the years 1804, 1805, 1806, by order of the Government of the United States. New York: Harper & Brothers.

THIS work forms the volumes 154 and 155 of the Harper's Family Library. It is revised, and abridged from the official narrative by the omission of unimportant details, and furnished with an introduction and notes by Archibald M'Vickar. As the original work was nearly out of print, "the publishers thought it a suitable time to put forth an edition of the Journal of Lewis & Clark, pruned of unimportant details, with a sketch of the progress of maritime discovery on the Pacific coast, a summary account of earlier attempts to penetrate the vast western wilderness, and such extracts and illustrations from the narratives of later travellers, led by objects of trade, the love of science, or religious zeal, as the limits of the undertaking would allow."

Lewis & Clark's journey was one of the most interesting of the expeditions of modern science. Mr. M'Vickar has succeeded well in his attempt to condense the official narrative, without impairing its spirit or lessening the interest which attaches to it.

PARIS FASHIONS.

Bridal dress of white Tartalanne, trimmed with flounces of broad lace-the sleeves with lace to match, put on spirally beneath an inserting. The hair dressed very low in simple braids at the sides -a wreath of maiden blush roses in front, and a blond veil on the back of the head.

A walking dress of Gros de Naples, corsage plain, tight sleeves and a moderately sized capuchin, or round cape. A simple cottage bonnet of watered silk, with full bows and long ends. Blond bonnet cap, with bow of the same beneath the chin, and ample ends.

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