the force of such a moral obligation certainly tends very little to increase our confidence in his general veracity. According to our poor notions of morality, the man who can do this must have very weak perceptions of right and wrong. The pretended commuuication is of such a character that its suppression could not possibly prejudice any one. We have already shown that Mr. Williams, even if he be the veritable Dauphin, has no claims or rights to the crown of France; the claims of any member of his family are less than nothing. The pretended communication was only made on a pledge of secresy if the proposition was not accepted; De Joinville at least must so have understood it. What moral right, then, has Mr. Williams to reveal, or Mr. Hanson to extract from him, by dint of "questionings and crossquestionings," and publish to the world, this conversation?

But we refrain from pursuing this branch of the subject farther. Notwithstanding the obvious incoherency and absurdity of the fabrication, the Rev. Mr. Hanson, from the start, avows his belief in it. He can scarcely believe, he says, that the Prince de Joinville will deny it, but adds, in advance, that he should not, “under the circumstances, deem such a denial as a refutation of the story of my reverend friend." His faith certainly is more than a grain of mustard seed. Well, here comes the denial of De Joinville, and Mr. Hanson, true to his word, persists in believing "his reverend friend." The word of a Prince is entitled to no more credit than the word of any other man; but De Joinville has always been regarded as a gentleman and man of honor; he has never, like Mr. Williams, publicly avowed that he has disregarded a sacred pledge of honor; besides, his statement bears upon it inherent marks of truth, while that of Williams, as we have shown, bears upon it the badges of falsehood. We copy it entire, as translated in Putnam:

"Claremont, Surrey, February 9, 1853.

"SIR.-The Prince de Joinville has received the number of the Monthly Magazine, of NewYork, which you have kindly thought fit to transmit to him, and has read the article to which you have called his attention. His first thought was, to treat with the indifference which it deserves the absurd invention on which the article is founded-but on reflecting that a little truth is there mixed with much falsehood, the Prince has deemed it right that I should, in his name, give a few lines in reply, to show the exact portion of truth there is in this mass of fables.

"You can make, sir, of this reply, the use which you think proper.

"It is very true, that, in a voyage which he made to the United States, towards the end of the year 1841, the Prince, finding himself at Mackinac, met on board the steamboat a passenger whose face he thinks he recognizes, in the portrait given in the Monthly Magazine, but whose name had entirely escaped his memory.

"This passenger seemed well informed concerning the history of North America during the last century. He related many anecdotes and interesting particulars concerning the French who took part and distinguished themselves in these events. His mother, he said, was an Indian woman, of the great tribe of the Iroquois, faithful allies of France. He added, that, on his father's side, his origin was French, and went so far as to cite a name which the Prince abstains from repeating. It was by this means that he had come in possession of so many details curious to hear. One of the most interesting of these recitals was that which he gave of the last moments of the Marquis of Montcalm, who died in the arms of an Iroquois, who was his relative, and to whom the great captain had left his sword. These details could not fail vividly to interest the Prince, whose voyage to Mackinac, Green Bay, and the Upper Mississippi, had for its object to retrace the glorious path of the French, who had first opened to civilization these fine countries. The Prince asked Mr. Williams, since such was the name of his interlocutor, to send to him, in the form of notes, all the information which he could procure, and which could throw light upon the history of the French establishments in North America. On his side, Mr. Williams, who

did not appear less curious to understand thoroughly this same history, asked the Prince to transmit to him all the documents which related to it, and which could be found in the archives of the French government.

"On his arrival at Green Bay, the Prince was detained during half a day, by the difficulty of procuring the number of horses necessary for the journey, which he was about to undertake. Mr. Williams pressed him earnestly to accompany him to a settlement of Iroquois Indians, established near Green Bay, among whom, he said, were still many who remembered their Eastern fathers, and who would receive with delight the son of the Great Chief of France. The Prince declined this offer, and pursued his journey.

"Since then, some letters have been exchanged between Mr. Williams and the persons attached to the Prince, on the subject of the documents in question. Thus the letter of M. Touchard, cited in the article of the Monthly Magazine, must be authentic. Mr. Williams could also equally have produced one which I remember to have written to him upon the same subject.

"But there ends all which the article contains of truth, concerning the relations of the Prince with Mr. Williams. All the rest, all which treats of the revelation which the Prince made to Mr. Williams, of the mystery of his birth, all which concerns the pretended personage of Louis XVII., is, from one end to the other, a work of the imagination, a fable woven wholesale, a speculation upon the public credulity. If, by chance, any of the readers of the Monthly Magazine should be disposed to avow belief in it, they should procure from Paris a book which has been very recently published by M. Beauchesne. They will there find, concerning the life and death of the unfortunate Dauphin, the most circumstantial and positive details. It remains for me to repeat to you, sir, that you can make of this letter such use as you may judge proper, and to offer to you, at the same time, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.

66

"Former Preceptor and Secretary for the commands of the Prince de Joinville."

What says the Rev. Mr. Hanson to this? Does he hesitate? Does he waver? Does he doubt? Not at all. His confidence in his "reverend friend" seems only to increase. He accuses the Prince of deliberate falsehood, and undertakes to prove it by the letter itself. The argument on this point is not even ingenious; it is unfair, and a misrepresentation. The Prince, he says, "ascribes his meeting with Williams to chance." He does no such thing. He "met on board the steamboat, a passenger," &c., whether by accident or not, is not stated. But, says Mr. Hanson, here is a suppressio veri, for the Prince did inquire, on his journey, respecting this Mr. Williams, and express his desire to have an interview with him; this is proved by the statement of two "witnesses," while a third, Captain Shook, says that De Joinville manifested apparent surprise" at meeting and being introduced to him. All this may be true; we cannot, and have no desire to dispute it; there is nothing at all singular in it, and though the Prince, after the lapse of twelve years, should recollect it, (which is not very probable, he having forgotten even the name of Williams,) it was not necessary, and not even pertinent to the communication he had to make, in reply, to Mr. Hanson, to state it. No fair man would, from its omission, confidently assert a fraudulent suppression of the truth. Much less does the testimony of Mr. Hanson's witnesses, relative to any such inquiries made by De Joinville, prove what he says it does prove, namely, that the Prince "sought an interview," &c., in the sense in which he intends it to be understood. The object of Mr. Hanson is to show that De Joinville went to Green Bay expressly to see Williams. We say it is not proved, as he contends it is, by establishing such facts as that De Joinville inquired respecting him, and learning he was a fellow-passenger on the lake, expressed a de

sire to have an interview with him. The unusual politeness of De Joinville to an educated Indian, like Williams, is not astonishing. He was equally polite to Captain Shook, which he manifested by presenting him with a gold

snuff-box.

De Joinville, says Mr. Hanson, has the highest earthly interest in denying this story. We disagree with him. His interest, if any, is entirely the other way. The Orleans family took the throne by the right of revolution, or, as Lafayette called it, "the sacred right of insurrection." They were not "usurpers," as Mr. Hanson seems to think. The son of Louis XVI. would have been turned out as unceremoniously as was Louis XVI.'s brother. There was no "defrauding" in the matter at all; and Louis Philippe would not have been bound in honor to abdicate for the son of the Dauphin. If the Orleans family have still any pretensions to the throne, those pretensions find a more formidable competitor in the Count de Chambord than they ever could find in the person of Mr. Williams, though Mr. Hanson should succeed in clearly establishing his claims to the satisfaction of all the readers of Putnam's Monthly. Indeed, it might be a matter of direct interest to the Orleans branch to raise up this rival American Pretender, in case the hereditary claim of the elder Bourbons should ever be found an obstacle in their way to the throne. What interest, then, has De Joinville in suppressing any knowledge he might be supposed to have upon the subject?

Here we take leave of this topic, which, in itself, has scarcely merit enough to justify so extended a notice. Mr. Williams, we understand, has been among us, under the care of his reverend patrons, and what is more, he has been a "lion" among us. He has preached in our churches, and has administered the holy communion; he has been fêted and caressed among select circles, and by our best society, who, of course, show a judicious and discriminating preference for the Bourbon blood, over that humble and unpretending stream which flows in the veins of the family of Williams. The "Prince" has been to New-York what Dr. Franklin was to the Court of Versailles. Highborn and noble ladies, we are told, did not disdain, publicly, to kiss "bon papa Franklin," in his gray coat and stockings; and we are not quite sure but Fifth Avenue and Astor Place have imitated the example. Alas! we are forced to confess it, upper-tendom takes naturally, and as it were by instinct, to humbug. A clever novelist, an itinerant lecturer, an Irish patriot, or a Bourbon prince, it is all the same. So the thing passes current, its credentials to respectability are never too closely scrutinized; for, Allah be praised! upper-tendom is easily satisfied. Like the Rev. Mr. Hanson, it comprehends, by instinct, your man of genuine blood and true nobility, and he is affection

One of the two witnesses whom Mr. Hanson cites to prove that De Joinville's meeting with Williams was not accidental, but that he came to Green Bay to seek an interview with him, is a Mr. Bragman, who says that De Joinville made "inquiries concerning Mr. Williams, and spoke of his intention of visiting him at Green Bay." To show the general looseness of Mr. Hanson's statements, and the violence of his inferences, it is only necessary to give the following subsequent explanation of Mr. Bragman, which we cut from the columns of a daily paper: "In regard to the matters that came under our own cognizance in the fall of 1841, we derive no further impression from the conversation of the Prince de Joinville, which was public, than that the person for whom he inquired had been recommended to him as one who, from his familiarity with the West, was qualified to aid him in researches which he was prosecuting. Since the question of the Dauphinage has been raised, however, it is very natural and easy to connect the inquiries with it, although such a connection may never have entered into the mind of the Prince."

ately and fraternally drawn at once into its bosom, while your parvenu and plebeian is discreetly kept hanging upon its outskirts. Instinct, says honest Falstaff, is a great thing; but beware of instinct! For ourselves, we are not disposed to trust it further than may be necessary. Mr. Williams, for what we know, may have all the marks of a Bourbon about him, the Bourbon nose, the Austrian lip, with its expression "of exceeding sweetness," the nameless something which Mr. Hanson never saw, except "in persons accustomed to command;" but until it can be shown, by some better evidence than this, that he is the son of Louis XVI., we fear he will have to remain in the hands of Mr. Hanson and the New-York fashionables, and that Napoleon III. will continue to wear the imperial crown without danger of molestation from this side the Atlantic.

FROM my earliest recollections I have felt a great disposition to travel, which I inherit from my mother, who had a special vocation for out-door business, and who never missed a camp-meeting, an execution, or a quilting-frolic. So strong was this impulse, which I may almost call instinctive, that I remember on one occasion, instead of going to school, which was close by, I wandered away to a horse-race, several miles distant; and at another, being sent on an errand to a neighboring grocery store, I strolled to a pond a long way off, where I amused myself with skating on a pair of ox bones. In short, my mother was at last obliged to dress me in petticoats to prevent my straying. This passion for wandering increased as I grew up to manhood, and became at length unconquerable, in consequence of the late facilities afforded to travellers, by the introduction of steamboats and locomotives. For my part, I don't see how it is possible for any rational, intelligent person to stand still in this age of progress. Even my grandmother who is now fourscore, and so afflicted with Neuralgia, as the doctors call it, that she lies in bed half the time when at home-goes every year to Wisconsin, to visit a second cousin; and my good mother often travels thirty miles to drink tea and discuss women's rights.

On arriving at the age of twenty-one, and becoming my own master, with a competent fortune, I determined to indulge this natural propensity. But an unexpected obstacle presented itself at the outset. The great difficulty was to find 33

VOL. I.-NO. VI.

a country that had not been as often overrun by travellers as Syria and Egypt by locusts. At one time I had prepared everything for California; but being unluckily detained a fortnight by indisposition, I found, on my recovery, that, in the interim, three tours, five reconnoissances, and seven explorations had been published. I then made up my mind to take a trip to the land of Egypt, and visit the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, Mount Sinai, and the cataracts of the Nile. But on talking over the subject with a knowing bookseller, to whom I applied to publish my anticipated travels, he pointed to a whole shelf of books of travels in Egypt, the Holy Land, Arabia Felix, and Arabia Deserta, which he assured me contained nothing but repetitions of each other. I don't wonder at this, since such is the bad credit of travellers, that nobody will believe them without an endorser. Thus, wherever I turned my face, I found some one had been before me, until I was fairly driven to Australia, New Zealand, Van Dieman's Land and the Mulgrave Islands, for a new field of action. But here too I was forestalled, by the discovery of gold in Australia, which I may justly call the root of all evil,—and was just on the point of sitting down in despair and turning philanthropist, or "canvassing" for subscriptions to periodicals, both which give great opportunities for seeing the world, when, lolling on my piazza one evening, my attention was providentially directed to that blessed planet, the Moon, which was then shining full in my face. It at once occurred to me, that, though I had often seen what pretended to be descriptions of the Moon by lying travellers and planet-struck star-gazers, no authentic account of the country or its inhabitants had ever been given to the world; for as to the legends of my Lord Ross, and the rest of those impostors that pretend to know so much about these matters, I shall show in the sequel that they know no more about them than the man in the Moon himself. Nay, not one tenth part as much; for I happen to know that he is not such an ignoramus as most people believe.

I therefore determined at once to make the tour of the Moon. But how to get there was the difficulty. Various plans occurred to me, but were all discarded as impracticable. At length I determined to consult the Spirits of Knocking, who all come from the Moon. Accordingly I visited a firstrate "medium," who, by dint of a considerable quantity of knocks, called up the spirit of Pythagoras, which, after making me swear to seven years' silence, communicated a process by which any man could ascend to, and descend from, the