aspirations; yet proud and impulsive withal, and, unfortunately, cursed also with even more than his father's share of a fiery spirit, all the more remarkable in the father and son, since the mother and daughter were the gentlest beings imaginable.

Some five years before the father and daughter are thus introduced to the reader, the boy, Charles, was growing up to manhood, the pride of the stern though fond father, who saw in him the one upon whom devolved the respon sibility of keeping his name and his memory honored upon the earth; the daughter at the same time, too, just emerging from girlhood, and the image of the gentle mother; timid and shrink ing as a dove, yet with a heart which adored her parents, and caused her to cling to the proud brother with a devotion but little short of idolatry.

At a late hour, the door opened, and the son drenched with the effects of the storm, his brow yet flushed with excitement, and his eye flashing defi. ance, still, walked into the room.

"How dared you disobey my com. mands, sir?" was the stern interrogatory which greeted the rebellious youth, followed by a blow, and after a brief pause, with the words

"Quit my presence, sir," and dare not re-enter it until you have learned a lesson of obedience!"

With his brow, upon which the rain-drops were still standing, now pale, and with his lip curling with fierce pride, Charles stood in silence for one moment, then stepped to the door through which he had entered, and a moment after, his step sounded heavily on the porch, as he vanished in the deep darkness. A louder and more boisterous intonation of the storm just then seemed to herald his exit, and the father and the mother and daughter were left once more alone.

The evening, an autumn evening, had been unpleasant and threatening, the mists hanging along the brows of the hills, and the murky clouds flying past overhead, when the son asked of his The fire in the broad chimney blazed father permission to visit a neighbor's up ruddily as the autumn blast howled house, about a mile distant. Fretted mournfully without, and with more in spirit at something that had gone frequent plashes upon the window pane wrong that day upon the plantation, the seemed to come the rain-drops, as the father gave the son a sharp refusal, father walked to the window, some and the latter, thereupon, mortified and compunctious visitings busy at his provoked, verging too as he was upon heart, as he thought of the possible manhood, rebelled against the fancied results of his fierce and hasty anger oppression; and with the blood mant- upon the proud spirit of his boy, whilst ling his brow and cheeks, and his proud the audible, although partially sup spirit chafed, the foolish boy strode pressed sobbings of the mother and forth from his father's presence out daughter, fell upon his ear. upon the lawn and adown the gravelled "I wish I had not been so hasty," walk, on his way to the forbidden lo- at length he murmured, "he should cality, in mad defiance of the stern have gone to his room-the foolish order which rang after him, to return. boy will catch his death of cold,”—and Darkness settled down upon the with a feeling of painful suspense, landscape, but a deeper darkness placed his ear at the window, and then brooded over the father's spirit, at this opened it, to listen for the returning first act of open rebellion in his child; footstep which had strode away in and as the storm raged against the win- such hot haste out into the wild dows without, trifling did it appear gloom. compared to that which raged in the father's heart. The supper with all its bright array of luxury was sent away untouched, untasted, the mother and daughter timidly and in tears of agony eyeing the incensed father as he fiercely and in silence strode to and fro.

he

The hours wore heavily on, as from time to time he peered out into the dim night, or continued at shorter and ap parently painful intervals to take an attitude of listening, and wilder and more uncontrollable became the grief of those, who thought of the one they

loved exposed to the thousand perils of that stormy night.

Midnight passed, but he came not; and when the gray morning dawned, watchers it found them, still; their cheeks wan with sorrowing vigils, their hearts almost broken at the bare thought, knowing his proud spirit, that he might never come again.

with a rifle upon his shoulder, moving through the depths of the old forest, and trying to stifle the whisperings of remorse, in hearkening to tales of wild adventure; yielding also, to the leader of the party, a ready obedience, which conceded to his own father but the day before, would have saved him from the bitter self exile, which was now, desLet us follow the hot tempered youth, pite his best efforts, tearing his heart as in bitterness of soul, the victim of as with the vulture talons of remorse. fancied wrong, he fled the home of his Remorse! Go back, thoughtless childhood upon that wild night. one, to thy past life; search through Drenched to the skin, yet with his its neglected tablets for the many infeverish temples throbbing with strong stances in which thou hast heedlessly excitement, he hurried along the road, wounded the feelings and forgotten the careless of every thing but of the sting-forbearance and kindness due by a ing rebuke which still rang in his ears. thousand considerations those who "Turned out of my father's house!" watched over thy childhood, to lavish he muttered "God knows I will never upon hearts which cared nought for enter it more, and for so slight a thee, that kindly courtesy which sweetfault, too? I will show him ens the cup of existence; and resolve spirit equal to his own!" hereafter, by a different course, to save thyself from the reproachful looks which too often come up from the chambers of the dead, to haunt in the silence of midnight, the couches of the living.

pride of

Alas, alas, that for so trifling a cause, he should so soon have forgotten the home that sheltered him in his helpless infancy, the mother who had guided his tottering steps, the loving and gentle sister whose very life seemed bound up in his own; and even the father, who, not always stern, had a thousand and a thousand times borne with his way. wardness, with his foolish temper and freaks of passion.

Morning found him far away from his home, but although the excitement which had borne him onward had measurably subsided, shame came in to share its place in his heart, and to urge him forward, still. His clothes nearly ruined, and himself exhausted with fatigue and exposure, he approached the camp-fire of half a dozen men, half hunters, half scouts, whose duty it was in those early times to guard the frontiers, or warn the settlements against the projected inroads of the red man; and responding to their rude, though kindly invitation to join them at their repast, the youth found himself seated by the camp-fire, and listening to the rehearsel of their exploits.

With the breaking up of the camp, that morning, Charles found himself

Crossing the river after many days. travel, a pleasant evening in the sweet autumn time found the scouting party encamped on the banks of the little rivulet, and again around the campfire, discussing their varied and startling adventures by flood and field.

Midnight came, and sick and wearied, smitten, too, by the strong hand of remorse, Charles scanned the pure heavens and the bright stars which seemed to look down so reproachfully upon him as he walked his rounds, the solitary sentinel of the little encampment, and he then resolved, forth with to seek his father's house, his mother's and his sister's presence, and this, even with the return of dawn. Fate had decided it otherwise.

Whilst he thus mused, a rifle shot rang from the dense thicket near by, followed by the shrill war-whoop, as a small party of savages broke from their covert upon the sleeping encampment; but the whites were tried soldiers, and a few moments saw the Indians, two of their number left behind, retreating

back to their own fastnesses, their yells of disappointed rage dying away in the distance.

The poor boy had fallen in the edge of the stream; and when sought by the returning scouts, life was fast ebbing away. "Tell my father," he gasped, "that I prayed for his forgiveness before I died; and carry to my mother and sister in the bright home I shall never see again, my love and my regret, the only_tokens of my repentance for the woe I have caused them!"

They buried him there, near the spot where he fell; the tears of his rough companions bedewing the green turf which covered him; and sadly, after a lengthened scout, they returned to the settlements with the story of his fate. But what of the home, so sorrowfully made desolate?

THE DANUBE. ONE of the most interesting rivers in the world for the style of the scenery upon its banks is the Danube, a river considered by many, as hardly second to the Rhine in this respect. Out of the ordinary route, however, for most travellers, nothing like as easily accessible as the Rhine, much of its mag. nificent scenery has been overlooked, even by those who dwell with delight upon the castellated ruins around which linger so much of the romance of another age, and it therefore affords us peculiar pleasure to present our readers with a view of one of the most picturesque of these old fortresses, the Castle of Spitz, some ten miles from Krems above Vienna.

The river at this point flows between Days passed into weeks, and-as mountains, sometimes brawling around we have seen the wanderer came not, rocky points, at other times rushing still and when at length the mother with rapid current over an uneven with smitten spirit sought the stillness channel, whirling and eddying along, of the grave as a relief for anguish in- apparently to justify its derivative, conceivable, when the father stricken donner, or thunder, the Turks calling with the effects of his deep remorse it Duna, the Germans Donau. On walked the earth the shadow of himself, its banks, however, is found every vaand the daughter, forgetful of her own riety of scenery which is ever brought agonies, moved a ministering angel at in to constitute the picturesque, drainher father's side, there came one sad ing as it does a surface estimated at morn, a missive sealed with black, to three hundred thousand miles, and tell the fate of the loved and mourned. there is nothing, from embattled height The father sought the fatal spot as to sedgy morass, which at some point if it might be some consolation to in its career is not seen, offering to look upon the last place made sacred even the most difficult to please, a va by the footsteps of his boy, and to look riety excelled by scarcely any other upon his grave; but the bare sight of river known. The portion of it given that lonely mound, partially bereft him of his reason, and he returned to his home, in Kentucky, to linger out the few brief years in which he survived, vainly listening for the sound of that returning step he had driven so harshly from his presence.

And the daughter!

"Softly she perished, be the flower deplored !"

in the view presented, embraces a section much like that through the Highlands of the Hudson, much, too, like that of the Rhine just above Cologne. Unlike American scenery, however, the mountain summits are not fringed with magnificent forest trees, that feature in the views of our own land which nev. er fails to give a graceful curve to all landscapes, softening down the sharp

And the story!-hath it no moral? ridges, and making that beautiful,

which has nought in it of the grand or sublime. Viewed in the glittering sunlight, such scenery has a steril, naked appearance, yet there is something about it, at such a time, which seems in consonance with the bleaching ruins

of these old feudal tenements; remains, rank and that of Agnes, whose father which Leigh Hunt somewhere compares had some humble employment, wooed to “the teeth and bones of some wild and in secret married her. beast;" destructive as they were in their day, to the more peaceful habitations over which they towered.

The consequences were truly deplorable. The Prince's father and family strove to compel him to sign a divorce, and Fortunately for human progress, and when that attempt failed, the unfortufor human rights, the day of triumph nate Agnes found her ruin only the more for these old feudatories has forever surely accomplished by insidious atpassed away; or if they tyrannise, still, tacks on her fair fame and character. it is under another and less repulsive The authorities of Straubing near which form. The iron gloved, mailed baron place the Prince and his wife resided, of the olden times, he who with his seizing the opportunity afforded by Algauntleted hand seized upon and car- bert's absence for a short time from his ried off whatever spoil presented itself palace, arrested Agnes on some frivoin the possession of his weaker neigh-lous pretext, and when, with an honest bor, this marauder has become in the indignation, she asserted her inno. person of his descendant, a kid gloved cence, they declared her guilty of treaDuke, a modern exquisite, one who son and condemned her to death. On having no longer the power to seize the 12th of October, 1436, she was acthe whole stores of one man, compro- cordingly thrown from the bridge of mises the matter by an attempt to Straubing into the water; and although equalize the levy in the shape of taxes she succeeded in freeing one foot from upon all who recognize him as their her bonds, and strove, while shrieking lord. Whilst he thus, and in security, for help and mercy, to gain the oppograsps a larger revenue, and one certain site bank, one of her pitiless execuin its amount, he may well compromise tioners caught her long fair hair with in this matter for the precarious spoil a hooked pole, and dragged her back which in the olden time his ancestor into the stream till all resistance ceaswas compelled like some bird of prey ed. The horror stricken Prince at first to fly with to his eyrie before he could set no bounds to his fury. He obtain devour it. The Danube abounds with ed an army from his father's bitterest these old fortresses, and even the towns enemy, with which he returned to punare not less fruitful in interest when ish the murderers of his beloved wife. we regard the scenes which have trans- The Emperor Sigismund now interferpired at them. Perhaps the most in-ed, who at last pacified the Prince, and teresting of all these stories which one reconciled him with his father; who to meets with on the Danube is that in attest his contrition, instituted a perrelation to Straubing, the authorities of petual mass for the soul of the murderwhich put to death Agnes Bernauer. ed Agnes."

"Albert, the only son of Duke Ernest of Bavaria, one of the most valiant and accomplished Princes of his age, was affianced to the Countess Elizabeth of Wurtemburg, and the marriage was about to take place, when, at a grand tournament given in honor of the occasion at Augsburg, he beheld Agnes Bernauer, "the angel" as she was called among the citizens, and with whom he became passionately in love. At the same time news was brought to him that the Countess had eloped with a more favored lover. The Prince, regardless of the difference between his

Such is one of the tales which add interest to a sojourn on the banks of the Danube, and if there were none other but this, so full of bright romance in its beginning, so deeply tragic in its conclusion, its waters could not but be looked upon with interest as the grave of one so beautiful, as the scene of a transaction, a darker than which never stained the page of history, and the incident proves how great was that slavish obsequiousness on the part of high functionaries, which stopped not at crime the most revolting to pay court to a reigning sovereign.

LECTURES ON THE HISTORY people might yet appear in some sort :

OF FRANCE,

BY SIR JAMES STEPHEN, K. C. B., L. L. D., PRO-
FESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSI-

TY OF OXFORD. NEW YORK, HARPER & BROTHERS.

excusable for conduct, which at the present moment, places them in an attitude far from enviable in the eyes of enlightened nations more fortunate than themselves in their internal policy.

THE above designated work on the History of France is one which has To a task so difficult of execution, long been wanted, filling a place in the Sir James Stephen, has brought an library of the student, at least, which amount of learning, and a spirit of as we remember, can be supplied by no analysis, productive of the happiest reother work of the kind. And although sults; and although, as we conceive it exceedingly modest in its pretensions, too frequently marred by great haste not aspiring to the dignity of a history, in the performance, prompting him in itself, yet as giving the spirit of occasionally to jump rather widely to the changes which have been going conclusions, yet his evident familiarity forward for so many ages in that bewildered and misgoverned country, this volume will merit the attention of other than those for whom it was at first designed.

formed.

with the subject, and the clear glowing style in which it is written, carry the reader along with the author, until imbibing the earnest feeling of the latter, the reader forgets these trifling Of the events attending all these blemishes in sentiments of gratitude changes, we have enough. Volume for the labor as a whole, so well perupon volume has been filled reciting the incidents of the numberless revolu- Beginning with the "Decline and tions which have taken place in that fall of the Romano-Gallic Province" country, and these incidents have been our author divides the history of France at times of a nature so startling, so into three "principal eras." "The terrible, as to call the attention of the FIRST, embraces the long and tardy world around to them, and with that passage from the Roman despotism to kind of feeling, too, with which men the establishment of the absolute monwatch the phenomena of earthquakes, archy under Charles VIII. and his imor volcanic eruptions, where the results mediate successors. The SECOND COMare likely to involve the dearest inter- mencing with the accession of that ests and the lives of multitudes of their sovereign, and terminating with the fellow beings. age of Louis XVI., includes the period of the greatness and glories of that monarchy. The THIRD, comprising the decline and fall of it, may be said to commence with the accession of Louis XV,, and to be consummated at the French Revolution of 1789." In the volume under notice, only the first two

To give our readers a proper idea,

We have, we repeat, from numberless writers, full accounts of the throes attending these convulsions, of the towns sacked, the blood spilt, the fierce battles between opposing factions; but few have taken upon themselves the task, or have approached its execution with out strong prejudices, to account phi-eras are discussed. losophically for the causes which have impelled the French people to such in brief, of the principal topics which terrible extremes. The want of some such work has been deeply felt, a work which going into an investigation of the political economy of France, of the spirit of its legislation and its laws, would carry back the student to the sources of the changes noted, until in these changes, even if not reconcilable by the laws of right reason, of morals, and of strict justice, the French

engaged the author's attention, we subjoin the heads under which he wrote. He says:

1. "I design then, first briefly to en quire, what were the internal causes which detached the Romano-Gallic province from the empire of Rome, and transferred it to the dominion of the Franks?

2. I shall next attempt to explain