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near him, and lonely when he is out hunting, and which her father had been deputed to carry to the cannot see her, that is all." Adirondacks.

"Red Arrow, do you hate that sly fox of a Yendot, who came to Tuyagon, and wanted to coax his daughter from him, with a present of wampum and beaver skins; tell me that?"

"Do I hate him!" exclaimed the Indian with an angry scowl, clenching his knife fiercely as he spoke, "yea, Red Arrow could have killed the deceitful dog, guest as he was, by the very hearthstone where he sat-the Yendots are dogs!"

"Then listen," and Ertel informed her lover of what had taken place between her and the disguised chief, whose voice had at once betrayed him, expressing at the same time her belief that he alone was the origin of her father's misfortune, and avowing her determination to seek for the lost wampum, in the place assigned, ere she ventured to accuse him openly, before the head men of the tribe.

"And so the Little Rose came to Red Arrow, that he might give her help, and protect her from the Leaping Carcajou," observed the hunter, softly, regarding his companion with a look which she could best understand.

"It is good," he added, as she cast down her eyes in sudden confusion; “let us depart at once, so that if this Yendot pursues he may have a long trail to run down. Make your heart strong."

In less than an hour, the twain were embarked, and paddling briskly by moonlight up the Ottawa. ▲ few days after they arrived at their destination, the scene of the night surprise at the portage of Les Chats.

The words of the Yendot chief alone told them where to direct their search, and they were suffieiently vague.

Poor Ertel looked sharply into the lake, by the landing-place and by the waterfall, striving to penetrate its depths, but to no purpose; and, with a sigh, she abandoned the attempt-thinking that, after all, they might not succeed in unmasking the perfidy of the Leaping Carcajou.

"Stop!" cried Red Arrow, laying down his paddle; "I see something shining on the bottom. Hold steady the canoe.” And in an instant he plunged into the lake.

But it was only a stone; and he dived and dived until he was out of breath, without obtaining a glimpse of the missing article. For three days they groped about in the vicinity, and Red Arrow explored the bed of the stream even to the verge of the fall, cheered by the presence of his associate, and recompensed by her smiles. At length he gave a shout and sank beneath the foam.

Ertel turned pale and ceased to breathe, for, after the usual lapse, her lover did not reäppear. She was about to throw herself into the abyss, when Red Arrow arose, dripping from the surge, and holding up in triumph-the lost belt!

It was an ancient memorial, made of cylindrical wampum, cut by native art from the mussel-shell, white, interwoven with fine purple bars; and the daughter of Tuyagon recognized it at once as that

The rest of the story is soon told. Red Arrow, at his return, denounced the Leaping Carcajou before the assembled tribe, displaying the recovered belt in corroboration of the statement he made of his duplicity towards Ertel, together with his suspicious knowledge of the transaction at the portage. And the accusation received additional credence from the fact, that the individual in question had departed, secretly, the day after Ertel, in consequence, it was supposed, of a sudden rumor that bands of Yendots were beginning to show themselves on the outskirts of the cantons, armed and equipped as for war; while the Medicine Man had been discovered bound in his retreat, and half-dead from confinement, vexation, and want of food.

In fine, the Yendots soon after threw off the garb of friendship, and appeared in their true character of enemies; and, in the course of the hostilities that ensued, the Leaping Carcajou was taken prisoner and condemned to the stake.

While undergoing torture, he boastingly confessed the part he had played in preventing the alliance with the Adirondacks; telling how he had slain the sentinel with his war-club, purloined the council-belt from the bosom of the sleeping envoy, and flung it into the lake.

The memory of Tuyagon was thus freed from the stigma attached to it, and a trophy was erected over his grave. His countrymen well knew that human vigilance, though it might suffice for an enemy, was but a feeble defence against the assault of a perfidious friend.

"And what became of Ertel and her cousin, Red Arrow?" I inquired, as my informant, the Iroquois, moved away towards the fire, at the conclusion of the legend.

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"I can't tell, brother," he replied; my father told me the story, you see, because it was about the old times and the wars. May be they got married and lived happy who knows? There was plenty game then, and the old people were not left to starve in their wigwams. All is gone now."

From the Spectator, 24th Nov. FAREWELL TO THE COLONIES.

WHAT is it that her majesty's ministers mean to do with her majesty's colonial possessions? A paper in the Times, this week, is calculated to raise that question in the most serious form. For some time past, the Leading Journal-distinguished, among many things, for the eagerness with which official parties court its alliance-has continued to publish a series of papers tending to prepare the public mind to bear some colonial disaster without too indignant a surprise; but of the whole series the most explicit is the one published on Thursday last. Its subject is the news from the Cape of Good Hope; and its apparent purpose is, on the one hand, to make light of the course of events in that colony, as likely to have

no further result, and on the other hand, in case the worst result should ensue-the actual rebellion and loss of the colony-to reconcile the public to such an event by keeping it in view as a possible and not altogether undesirable contingency. These repeated suggestions indicate some fixed idea in high quarters, and the public ought to know what is really meant.

The Times represents, that the thing which gave offence to the Cape arose in the most harmless manner; but the recital is a curious and instructive sample of official encroachment. It amounts to this.

out.

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to the Cape "were not tainted with crimes for which ordinary convicts were made to undergo the penalty of transportation," but that "the plan" or system" contemplated by government, "ticket-of-leave" men, who merely comprised had "undergone a part of their punishment." Sir George Grey said this on the 28th of March; the letter of his colleague, Mr. Herman Merivale, If it be anis written on the 28th of March! swered, that Sir George Grey, with his cousin and colleagues of the Colonial Office, thought the transportation of military criminals too slight a In September, 1847, a despatch was matter to take into account, then such a notion sent to the Cape, stating that military convicts only betrays their ignorance of the fact, so forciwould be transported thither from Mauritius-an bly represented by Governor Sir Henry Smith, African island; and "no remonstrance of any that the Cape colony is peculiarly unfitted to reAnd what is more, it kind was received in reply." Surprising fact! ceive military convicts. "Silenti non fit injuria" is the official version of does not appear that this military convictism has the maxim-you may go on till the people cry been abandoned yet! Sir George and his colA twelvemonth later, it was announced that leagues treat it as a distinct affair; and the only military convicts would also be sent from Hong-disclaimer yet published has related to further Will the kong; and in March last, that they were to be transportation of "ordinary" convicts. sent also from India and Ceylon: all of which Cape colonists then have to make a separate was completed [in London] "before any angry "émeute," as the Times calls it, to resist the infeeling arose." Then came the affair of the Ber-vasion of military convicts? muda convicts: "the sentiments of the colony on the subject were known in this country, and Sir George Grey promised that no more [convicts] should be sent in future." That, says the Times, is all-the dispute has never gone beyond that first stage the immensely protracted voyage of the Neptune-which left Bermuda on the 22d of April and reached the Cape on the 19th of September-has prolonged the suspense of the colonists; but all that has really happened, argues the Times, is, that "the home government has presumed rather too much on the acquiescence of But the Times looks beyond; and here lies the the colony in a measure of doubtful tendency-darksome hint to which we have already alluded: the colony, taken by surprise, has protested somewhat too fiercely."

It

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The journalist has a threat; if the colonies are not to be regarded as integral portions of the empire, sharers in its weal and woe"-[its cash and convicts]-if they will not take off our hands some of those numerous criminal classes that embarrass us so much-if "it is to be all 'give' and no 'take' as far as we are concerned,”—“ it is as well that it should be known and remembered, especially when the Estimates come under review." The Cape is to be fined for the fastidiousness of its "prudes."

Such incidents as the unsuccessful émeute at the Cape, against an imperial order, cannot fail to increase the now popular misgivings as to the value of our colonies, and the wisdom of maintaining them at so enormous an expense.

The poco

Simultaneously with this apologetic and soothing composition appeared a paper in the Morning Chronicle, which threw a curious light on one point-the destination of military convicts. shows a remarkable suppression of documents. A Yes, this is the proposition-if the colonies return was made to the House of Commons, which are costly and not accommodating, opinion will professed to include "copies or extracts of any grow in favor of giving them up; and this is the correspondence on the subject of transportation to opinion which the successive papers in the Times, the Cape of Good Hope, of later date than the whatever their motive may be, have a manifest address of the House for such correspondence on tendency to foster; this is the opinion which is the 19th of March, 1849:" but the Chronicle thrown out to fortify the apology for the official now publishes a letter by Mr. Herman Merivale, conduct, which is recorded in anticipation of fuunder-secretary for the colonies, asking the India ture apologies for the further results. Board to move the Commissioners for the Affairs curante representations of the Times would be of India to direct that all soldiers of her majes- useful under two kinds of contingency: first, in ty's army sentenced in manner above mentioned case the government were defeated by a contu[to transportation] by courts-martial in the East macious colony--which stage is already accomIndies, shall be sent to the Cape of Good Hope plished: secondly, in case the course of adminisby the first convenient opportunity, until further tration were to result in the separation of the orders." This is followed by the reply of the colonies-and already the Times is beating up resecretary to the India Board in assent, and the cruits for that anticipative apology, not without an corresponding despatch from the Court of Directors. eye to the Manchester gentlemen who are so hostile None of the documents appeared in the return. On to colonies. It seems therefore, that, in official the 28th of March, Sir George Grey assured the circles, separation is not an impossible contingency, Now is that so? Are House of Commons, that the convicts to be sent scarcely a distant one.

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we mistaken, or is such really the intent of her | shop of the world." At very cheap rates, too, majesty's ministers?

must the workshop stand open. But the workshop does not need for its head an imperial sovereign; nor would the shrunken state need those vast official establishments which now provide so comfortably for certain families. The course of colonial separation may be justified by sufficient reasons,

It is very necessary that this point should be thoroughly understood; because if the colony is to be given up, it would be by much the best course to spare all further expense of blood and treasure, and jump at once to the final arrangement. If it is the deliberate intention of her majesty's but these are incidents that will have to be conministers to give up the African colony, let us understand the truth, because then the public can help to bring about the separation in the best possible manner.

It is the more important to have a thorough understanding, since the same arguments which apply to the Cape, mutatis mutandis, apply also to Australia, whose unsettled spirit is now notorious. If our African and Australian colonies cast off their moorings, Canada would scarcely hesitate to fulfil her project of annexation, with the concurrence of her majesty's ministers; for the main arguments apply also to Canada. And then, how long the West Indies would cling to a capricious parent state, we cannot guess.

Our colonies relinquished, à fortiori we should be bound to give up those false colonies our military stations in the Mediterranean, the protected Ionian states, and the like.

Then what of India? Similar arguments also apply to India, its constantly increasing expenditure, and its constantly increasing deficit. True, ostensibly the Indian government pays for its soldiers; but it does not relieve us of all the consequent cost-the permanent liabilities for so many more additional regiments to be kept in readiness, the promotions, the honorary pensions, &c. Of course, persons high in office would desire to retain India, because it is so great a preserve of patronage but the colonies free, how could independence be refused to India, supported as that would be by the economical section of the liberals at home?

India and the colonies gone, what of Ireland? Especially if she wholly ceased to pay, as she has in part, that large tribute of rent to residents in England which engages so many persons of high connection to maintain the Union.

Carry out the process hinted by the Times, and you reduce her majesty's dominions to the bare Island of Great Britain. Something might be said for that sweeping deprivation, no doubt; a little island may be a great state; only the British state would unquestionably be a very different one from what it is at present. Instead of including wide lands of varied clime to receive its outpouring emigrants, it must let them go to be aliens. Instead of being so wide that the sun never sets

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upon it, the sun would set upon it every day-at this season within eight or nine hours after rising. It would no longer be an empire," but only a kingdom, and not of the largest. Not at all selfsupporting in point of food, it must be absolutely thrown upon the alternative of thinning its numbers by starvation, or becoming really the "work

sidered.

THE TALES OF OLD!

THE tales of old, that nerved the bold
To deeds of love and duty;

That woke the sigh, or dimmed the eye,
Of innocence and beauty!
Who heed them now? The chilling brow
And colder heart reprove them;
Forgot the lays of ancient days,

As those who once could love them!
Around the hearth, with honest mirth,
Our fathers gathered daily,

"T was good to see how merrily

The moments passed, and gayly!
The jester there, inspired by cheer,
Would tell his quaintest story;
While minstrels came, and sung the fame
Of those enshrined in glory.

Those tales of old were often told

By pilgrim, monk or friar, Who sung of war, in regions far,

Where valor might aspire!

Of gallant deed, where, once achieved,
A host could not repel them;

For themes like these our sires would please,
And they alone could tell them!
Bentley's Miscellany.

IN THE HOUR OF DEATH.

DEATH in that face! What thrilling dream,
From restless sleep my soul awaking,
Tells me that o'er that brow the beam
Bend thee thy still warm cheek to mine, ere yet it be
Of immortality is breaking?
Cold as the marble stone that soon must pillow thee.
Death in those eyes! those eyes that oft,

Their shading lashes gently raising,
With looks so earnest, yet so soft,

Look once upon me with those eyes, ere yet the gem
Responded to my anxious gazing.
Of heaven's light is set eternally on them.
Death in that voice! The wind sighs past,
Hark! on the silence round the last,
And time upon its wings seems flying;

Last accents of that voice are dying:
Oh, that its echoes on the air would ever stay!
They cease, and music from the earth has passed

away.

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When William Humboldt was in his twentyfirst year, (1788,) and a student at the celebrated University of Göttingen, he indulged in a brief holyday at the baths of Pyrmont. There he met a clergyman and his daughter: the daughter, it appears, was then betrothed; but that did not prevent a sentimental flirtation. They walked together, they talked together, they sat next each other at the table d'hote, and made a reciprocal impression. The Reverend Dr. Stebbing, in his introduction to the selection he edits, says "It was not passion, it was not what is commonly called love, which had been awakened in their hearts. If such a thing be possible between two such people, it was friendship of the highest and most intellectual character, just modified by incipient affection." We should incline to ascribe it to that kindly, impressionable, but rather lax nature, which in England we curtly call German sentimentalism. Unless the baron indulged in a little gallantry, when, on the shady side of forty, he wrote in answer to Charlotte's first address to him, some quarter of a century after their meeting, it would seem that Charlotte's betrothed and future husband had a narrow escape from being jilted.

from yourself, that I made a deeper impression on
you at that time than I had imagined. Those lines
of my own, [written in the lady's album, and en-
closed in the letter sent to him,] which I see again
after such a lapse of time, are like a voice from
another world. *** You are very wrong when you
say that certain impressions are deeper and more last-
I could prove the con-
ing in the mind of woman.
to allow, for it can be no reproach, (twenty years
trary to you from your own letter. Are you willing
have passed since the period of our acquaintance
and we shall probably never see each other again,)
that I nearly disappeared from your memory when
I left you? At least you did not remind me of my
promise to visit you again; the neglect of which
has often greatly mortified me-I could still indeed
point out the seat in the alley where it was made :
but a feeling of youthful pedantry, which made
me think it impossible I could delay for a week
longer my return to Göttingen, prevented me.
This is to me a certain proof that it was not
intended we should meet again; and what grieves
me most is, that I was not destined to impart any
lasting joy to your life. Sad or painful feelings
(of this be convinced) could have no connexion
with any intercourse held with me. I am open to
no reproach of the kind. To what extent your fate
has interested me, after such a disclosure, you may
easily suppose. I have thought over it to-day in
many ways: and I entreat of you to resign
yourself for a time into my hands to follow
blindly my counsel.

At the time Wilhelm Von Humboldt was writing thus, he was a married man with a number of children; it is said, devotedly attached to his wife, who lived some fifteen years after this effusion, and whose death, it is also said, hastened his own. His fancy as to the lady's " children," was inaccurate, but she had been married in the year following the eventful meeting at Pyrmont, and in five years afterwards was left a widow, with a sufficient fortune. This fortune, I this morning received your letter of 18th October, and cannot express to you how much your however, was lost by a nolens-volens loyal loan to remembrance has touched and gladdened me. the Duke of Brunswick, during the disastrous have always regarded our meeting at Pyrmont as a days that followed the battle of Jena and the wonderful ordination of Fate, and you are much French domination in Germany. Without inmistaken if you think you passed over me like a come, in the middle age, and with broken health, mere fugitive youthful apparition. I thought of the lady bethought her of her youthful companion you very often, and enquired after you frequently, at the baths of Pyrmont. He had now become but always fruitlessly. I believed you were

Vienna, November 3, 1814.

me,

married, and fancied you surrounded by children, famous, and more so in politics than in literature. and moving in a circle where you had long since He had risen to diplomatic eminence; he had forgotten me, and that I alone had preserved the even signed the capitulation of Paris, as one of recollection of these youthful days. I now the representatives of Prussia; and he was present learn that life has been to you a very chequered at Vienna in the same capacity. Charlotte therescene. Had you written to me at the time your fore wrote to him, in a style in which sentiment sufferings were at the height, perhaps my answers and business were happily blended; the sentiment might have been of service to you. Believe dear Charlotte-(do not be offended at this familiar being skilfully addressed to a man who had Humboldt could epithet, since these letters will be read by none but reached the turning of forty-five. ourselves)-human beings cannot confide too much do nothing as regarded the money, but he answered in each other. I learn now for the first time, and in the gallant manner we have seen, and what *Letters of William Von Humboldt to a Female was more to the purpose, in a friendly spirit: he Friend. A complete edition. Translated from the insisted on furnishing the lady with a year's inSecond German Edition, by Catherine M. A. Couper, come till she could rally; and the correspondence Author of "Visits to Beechwood Farm:""Lucy's Half he began in 1814 continued till William HumCrown," &c. With a Biographical Notice of the Writer. In two volumes. Published by John Chapman. boldt's death, in 1835; two interviews only, and those casual, having taken place between the parties. These letters were cherished by her to whom they

Letters to a Lady. By the Baron Wilhelm. Von Humboldt. From the German. With an Introduction by Dr. Stebbing. Published by Hall and Virtue.

were addressed, as the charm of her existence; and | fate which is to prepare him for his higher desti

she determined that after her death they should not
be lost to the public-at least about half of them;
the others were withheld, 66
as touching on matters
of too confidential a nature to admit of their being
given to the world without a species of desecra-
tion." None of the lady's part in the corre-
spondence appears, or her autobiography, (of which
a large portion of the writing on her part seems
to have consisted,) except when occasionally
necessary as illustrations of Humboldt's text.

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The letters are not always very solid or remarkable in their matter, speaking absolutely. The interest lies in the circumstances under which they were written, and the character of their sentiments and style. Here is a gentleman deeply engaged in literature and philosophy, with a wife and family to claim his leisure, beginning a correspondence with his "dearest Charlotte,' calling for her autobiography, and infusing into every topic--whether descriptive, na ative, practical, literary, scriptural or miscellanec us-a sentiment, tender, romantic, and philosophical. It is a singular example, not of the power of memory, hope, and imagination: something like Humboldt's feelings may exist in many minds from the remembrance of times

when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face:
And oh the loveliness at times we see
In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree
In many a nameless being we retrace;
Whose course and home we know not, nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad, seen no more below.

The wonder is, the firmness of Humboldt's impression when the reality had superseded romance, and the fertility and industry which enabled him to find topics and times for correspondence whose origin could only have had a sentimental basis, and its continuance no object beyond the gratification of a sentiment. Perhaps it was "distance lent enchantment to the view;" had he constantly met Charlotte, his feeling might have cooled or changed.

Besides the curious attraction we have spoken of, there is an autobiographical interest in the letters, not as regards the lady but William Humboldt. In writing to her he seems to have thought on paper, and to have made any topic that came before him a subject for the expression of his own inward feelings on it, and sometimes facts connected with his own life. The delicate subject of Charlotte's marriage is a text on which he talks thus at fifty-soven :

You had told me before that when I became acquainted with you at Pyrmont you were engaged to be married, but that the engagement was not publicly declared. I was much surprised at this; I had not the slightest idea of it when we met. The mar ner in which this connexion was formed has cert: inly something very peculiar and remarkable. But whatever may be said and thought on such occasions, it certainly appears, as you very justly remark, that an eternal destiny governs the connexion of events, so that no one can avoid the

nation, upon which it properly speaking depends. 1 am quite of your opinion, that it is not to be supposed that Providence should vouchsafe to care ing as this may appear at first sight, it is at the for what we call happiness and misery. Depresssame time elevating to think that we are esteemed worthy of a higher improvement. There is an extraordinary chain of events in such destinies as yours began so early to be. Even when we are not urged on by others, and cannot clearly say what impulse urges us on, we may yet approach an object, or draw feeling that it would have been better to have a destiny upon ourselves, whilst we have almost a repelled to it. It really appears that you have done less to involve yourself in the fate which was prepared for you, than that you have borne it for the love of your friend, and have not struggled against it. The case is very common in which, without any inclination, or even in opposition to inclination, from a variety of reasons, such connexions are entered into with feelings which in themselves are certainly not blameworthy, but which should not be the leading ones in such a step. This is hardly conceivable to me. According to my mode of thinking, it would be quite impossible to entertain an idea of such a connexion, whom I was to be united was the only one with unless I had the assured conviction that the one to whom I could enter into such an engagement. The thought of marriage contracted in a very good and amiable manner, with mutual regard and friendship, but without that deep feeling pervading the whole being which is generally called love, was always objectionable to me, and it would be in opposition to my whole nature to act in such a manner. It is certainly true, that only in marriages entered into in the way I describe, do the feelings remain the which are necessarily induced by age and circumsame till death, with those modifications only stances: at the same time it is as well that this view of things is not common, as then there would be few marriages. So many marriages also are prosperous which in the beginning do not promise well, that much cannot be said against your case, it was evidently consideration doubt a noble feeling arising from the best and your friend that guided you; and this was no purest emotions of the human heart. But it frequently happens that the best, the noblest, and most self-sacrificing feelings, are those which lead to unfortunate destinies.

them. In

for

Something supernatural would seem to have attended Charlotte's marriage; which we must conclude was not of the happiest. The passage is singular as giving Humboldt's idea of the spiritual world.

The history of the ghost-like warning is very wonderful it would be so to you at the moment when you first signified your consent to a union which involved you in infinite suffering; still more wonderful too was it as an announcement of the death of your mother.

It cannot be denied that you did really hear yourself called. It is equally certain that no mortal man called you, in the entirely secluded solitude in which you heard the warning voice. In yourself you heard the voice which appeared to you to strike your external ear, and in you the voice resounded. There are no doubt many who would explain this as self-delusion; who think that a

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