HENRIETTA TEMPLE. - This latest production of the younger D'ISRAELI We have not read; but we feel bound to bring in a verdict in its favor, from certain circumstantial testimony. Accidentally falling into the hands of a lady-acquaintance, our copy was suddenly abstracted; and from that time forward, the volumes have been on a female mission-delighting, as we learn, several of the gentler sex with its striking incidents and fine delineations of the master-passion. We hope to be enabled to do better justice to a second edition. Philadelphia: E. L. CAREY AND A. HART. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM. Public Archives. -- We have received a large and excellently printed pamphlet, of some seventy pages, entitled 'Remarks and Documents relating to the Preservation and Keeping of the Public Archives.' The author is RICHARD BARtlett, Esq., formerly Secretary of State in New-Hampshire, and Member of the New-Hampshire Historical Society. It is an important and useful work, evincing great research on the part of the writer, and a thorough knowledge of the matter in hand. KNOWLES' WORKS. Messrs. GEORGE DEARBORN AND COMPANY have published the first of two volumes, which are to contain the select works of JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES, Consisting of his most popular tales and dramatic works, with an original notice of his life and writings. The present volume contains 'Love and Authorship,' 'Old Adventures,' 'Therese,' The Magdalen,' 'The Lettre-de-Cachet,' 'The Portrait, ' ‘Virginius,' 'William Tell,' 'The Hunchback,' and 'The Wife, a Tale of Mantua.' TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY. Messrs P. PRICE AND COMPANY, Chatham-square, have published a neat little volume, of some two hundred and fifty pages, entitled 'An Argument for the Truth of Christianity,' in a Series of Discourses. By I. D. WILLIAMSON. It is polemical in its character, for which reason, in consonance with our plan, we forbear comment upon its merits, farther than to say that it it is well written. The 'YOUNG LADIES' FRIEND, by a Lady,' recently issued from the press of the American Stationers' Company, at Boston, should be in the hands of every American female, capable of reading and understanding the excellent domestic, moral, and religious lessons which it contains. The work, however, evinces a slight tendency to ultraism, which we are sorry to see. The tyranny of space prevents that enlarged notice which the volume deserves at our hands. CLASSICAL FAMILY LIBRARY. - The last three volumes of Harper's Classical Family Library, constituting the twenty-second, twenty-third, and twenty-fourth of the series, contain POPE's translation of HOMER. Both author and translator being generally known as writers of very respectable parts, it is not deemed necessary to enlarge upon their individual merits. The volumes are well executed. · TRAVELLER'S GUIDE. Mr. J. DISTURNELL, Courtlandt-street, has published a useful little work, in the smallest compass, and at a small price, entitled, A Guide between New-York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington; containing a Description of the Principal Places on the Route, and Tables of Distances.' The work is accompanied by a new and correct map. RHYMES FOR CHILDREN.'Rhymes for my Children' is the title of a small volume from the press of S. COLMAN, Boston. It is written by a mother, and is well calculated, by the simplicity of its style, and the moral sentiments conveyed, to be entertainingly useful, in the hands of children. It is illustrated by pretty cuts. 'EDITORS' DRAWER.'- Correspondents are desired to exercise patience. Several articles, whose length and character point to this department, are accepted, and others are under advisement. 'WHO has not felt, while standing on the favorite spots, or wandering among the wild haunts, of the red man, mingled emotions of shame and sympathy, as he has reflected on his hapless fate? Who that has strolled over the green hills of New-England, so often trod by the free and untutored Indian, but has felt a thrill of melancholy emotion, as the scenes of former days have flitted across his mind? Whose imagination does not bound at the recital of the romantic heroism and the wild chivalry of the fathers of the wilderness? Alas! the fire-arms and fire-water of the pale-faces have accomplished each their deadly work! The songs of the hunter and the harvest resound no more in the Indian wigwam-no more the calumet of peace proclaims the quietude of a numerous people !' Such were my reflections, as I stood, but the other day, by the grave of UNCAS, the chief of the Mohegans, the friend of the white man, and the conqueror of Miantinomah. It was impossible to resist this natural current of thought; and the reader shall judge whether the occasion was altogether unfruitful in historical and traditionary associations. Here the proud chieftain moved uncontrolled amid the forest and among his people. Those hills, undulating in the blue haze of the distance, and the far-spreading valley below, he beheld from the lofty promontory on which he delighted to sit, and mark the curling smokes rise from the fires of his tribe. On the right, the meandering Yantic, after tumbling headlong through a deep rocky fissure, and uniting its tumultuous elements in a sullen stream below, winds around the base of the mountain, and spreads out in a wide and beautiful bay. This placid sheet is studded with islands, and crowned with trees in verdant clusters, whose variegated foliage relieves and delights the eye. Thence the wandering river sweeps along the deep vale, until, in the far distance, it unites with the Shatucket, and swells into a more rapid and wide-spread current. Altogether, the view from the royal seat of Uncas was inconceivably grand and beautiful. The tribes that sat under his view, on the right and on the left, extending on either side of the romantic stream as far as the eye could reach, here rejoiced in the bounties which nature had spread before them. The warrior-chief, proud of his possessions, and exulting in the happiness which pervaded the wigwams of his nation, looked from his high empurpled throne, with all the pride of conscious security and power. This imperial spot of nature's own framing, so far beyond the conceptions and imposing trickery of art, was the summit of a circular diluvial deposit, that gracefully bent around, and arose from, the delta we have described, and was at once the throne and the grave of the monarch. I have stood, as erewhile stood the Mohegan sachems, on this towering eminence, and glanced abroad over the pleasant landscape swelling upward from the deep rolling stream, and undulating, with a gradual acclivity, backward to the rocky parapets which crown the distant heights. I have lingered on the green-sward consecrated to the remains of successive regal chieftains, and wandered in the deep ravines which on either side once guarded the living as they should now guard the dead. I have seen the hand of cultivation long since upturn and mingle the mouldering remains of all that was left of a populous people, and I have seen the comminuted fragments of their bones whitening on the western plains. And all this I have beheld with a swelling heart. The A little removed from this asylum of the dead, are the mutilated walls of a Mohegan fort, which was once the scene of sanguinary strife. It was the strong hold of the tribe against the cunning efforts of the Narragansets. Here were the hot attack and the bold repulse the fierce note of defiance, and the exulting yell of triumph. Here it was that, on one occasion, being hotly pressed by the wily enemy, and every morsel of food exhausted, recourse was had by the artful but terrified Uncas to a desperate stratagem to effect the salvation of his people. Calling together his chiefs, he selected the fleetest runner and the bravest of their number, and despatched him to the then first and feeble settlement of the English, at Saybrook, with orders to obtain succour at any price. command was executed, although at imminent hazard, in passing through the most powerful of all the enemies of the Mohegans, the Pequots, living in the country opposite and above the present city of New-London. The runner was sent back, with assurances that the desired supply of beef and vegetables would be despatched in two days, and with a request that Uncas should place himself, with a torch light, at a given point on the rocks overlooking the Thames, and at a certain hour of the night. The plan succeeded. The English approached, and landed their provisions, and on the following day Uncas hoisted on the end of a long pole a quarter of the beef, that the enemy might see he had other materials than the stout hearts and sinewy arms they had manifested, for maintaining themselves against his reiterated assaults. The effect of this stratagem was complete. The Mohegans were immediately supplied with the necessary food, and relieved of the fearful presence of their implacable foe. The Narragansets retired to their country, on the borders of the Providence river, and the Mohegans quietly dispersed themselves around on their own pleasant hills. To this day, the rocky elevation, on the borders of the river, a few miles below Norwich, on which Uncas gave to the English the desired signal, is pointed out as 'Uncas' Seat.' In gratitude to his deliverers - quite equal, at least, to the examples of his white brethren Uncas gave to Mr. Lathrop and Mr. Leffingwell, the men who designed and executed the means of his relief, all that portion of country in and around Norwich, now constituting between four and five counties. The descendants of these gentlemen have ever since lived on the soil so justly acquired by brave effort, the offspring of humanity. A walking-stick was recently shown the writer, belonging to the last male descendant of Mr. Leffingwell, the friend of Uncas, and one of the first settlers of our country at the mouth of the Connecticut. It is a fine specimen of the antique, and was originally brought from Europe. Uncas distinguished himself in numerous battles, and ever showed his untiring friendship for the whites. At the bloody and decisive battle which the daring Captain Mason had with the Pequots, at Mystic, Uncas assisted; and, if never before, he here gave signs of fear at the sight of that terrible and warlike tribe. When the great chief of the Mohegans was in his glory, there came up from the land of the Narragansets the renowned Sachem, Miantinomah, with a thousand warriors, to give him battle. The ceaseless friendship of Uncas to the pale-faces had provoked the desperate hate of the Narraganset, and he had resolved on revenge. The event proves this hate to have been mutual. It was first kindled on the separation of the Mohegans from their allegiance to that ancient and powerful tribe, and had burned with increasing violence ever since that period. Uncas was apprized of the enemy's approach, only when very near his wigwam. Hastily collecting his most efficient warriors, in numbers scarcely half those of the foe, he marched out to meet him, On the elevated plain west of the Thames, and three miles south of Norwich, the antagonists came in contact. The Mohegan chief signifying a wish to hold a talk' with the proud hero of the Narragansets, the combatants on either side came to a halt, in full view of each other. The vengeful chieftains came forth to the middle ground, when the powerful Uncas thus addressed his adversary: You have with you many stout warriors. So have I with me. It is a pity that brave men should kill each other for our quarrels. Come forward, then, like a brave man, as you profess to be, and let us fight it out. If Uncas falls before Miantinomah, then are his warriors thine; but, if Miantinomah is conquered by Uncas, then are his warriors mine.' To this the haughty Narraganset briefly replied: The men of Miantinomoh came out to fight, and they shall fight.' At a pre-concerted signal, Uncas suddenly fell to the ground, when his valiant men, with their arrows drawn to their heads, instantly sent home those well-directed and destructive missiles, and then furiously rushing, with a terrible yell, upon the foe, already in confusion from the fatal effects of the sudden shower of arrows, put them to general flight. Hotly pursuing the cowardly enemy, now intent only on their flight, they were hurried, unwittingly, to the brink of an awful chasm, between high precipitous rocks, and now well known as the romantic Falls of the Yantic, near the city of Norwich. Many of the foremost, seeing no means of escape, leaped headlong into the rocky abyss, and were dashed in pieces, while others, dexterously turning to the left, ran upward along the stream, and forded it just by the present old paper mill.' Among the latter, was Miantinomah, who, with his flying comrades, still strove with desperate effort to escape. The Mohegans still pressing on the flanks of the enemy, the pursued and pursuing were seen by a few white men, the first settlers in the old town' and the country, to pass the road, rush up the adjacent rocks, and disappear in the forest. On coming to the plain, at a distance, Uncas-himself the foremost of the purBuers caught a view of his arch-enemy, and, putting forth his utmost strength, he bounded forward, and seized him fiercely in his iron grasp. The exulting yell of the Mohegan quickly brought his warriors to his side, and the hero of the Narragansets found himself a prisoner, firmly secured in the hands of his most hated foe. The triumph of Uncas was all that his ambition could desire. It was an event which at once gave to himself immortality, and enduring prosperity to his people. Miantinomah, sullen and sad, replied by no word to his conqueror, but deep within his soul concealed the melancholy emotions which overwhelmed him. His proud spirit was broken by this sudden and fatal reverse of fortune, and he bowed in silence to the stroke of fate. But yesterday the renowned monarch of the most powerful people of the new world-to-day the abject prisoner of a former vassal! How fallen is Miantinomah, the great chief of the Narragansets!' But Uncas, with a few chosen warriors, led his royal captive to Hartford, then one of the only three settlements in New-England, and gave him up as an offering to the councils of the white man. Here, during a long imprisonment, he awaited the lordly will of the usurpers of the soil those whom he boldly defied to bring aught against him, and whose right to sit in judgment on his destinies he as fearlessly denied. But, with our forefathers, as with most other men, might was often right. The pious delegation wisely decided that Uncas had a right to kill their prisoner, and that by allowing him to destroy the great proprietor of the best soil in New-England, he, at least, could have no rights to claim-no injuries to resent. however pure and sacred the ultimate determination of this tribunal, the facts of the case, and the noble appeal of Miantinomah will remain for the judgment of unbiased posterity. Uncas was informed that the prisoner was to receive justice at his hands, and that a subdelegation should see it executed, Thus justice was made doubly sure, and the mode of its execution cautiously guaranteed-for so read the chronicles of the times. Uncas came down to the land of the white man, like a faithful subject, when desired, to execute the privilege which had been intrusted to him; and taking the regal prisoner to the distant plain, where he had been captured, accompa nied by the two trusty delegates before mentioned, called in the said chronicles, soldiers.' There, while passing near the spot, Uncas came suddenly up behind his captive and, with one blow, struck him lifeless at his feet; so that, as it is said, the ill-fated chief knew not how nor by whom he had been killed. Uncas cut with his knife from the shoulder of the dead Miantinomah a large piece of flesh, which, on eating, he pronounced, with Indian exultation, the sweetest meat he had ever tasted. Said he, 'It makes my heart strong!' Thus fell the Indian king, Miantinomah. |