The age of the Annuals is, we hope, nearly gone by: that is, of books made merely as toys; and we consider the public, especially the Ladies, highly indebted to the publishers of this splendid Book, who have proved that beauty and utility may be combined, and each render the other more attractive.

The literary part is copied from the English original, but all the engravings in this American edition have been executed by American artists, and the materials of the work are almost exclusively of American origin and manufacture. We might describe the elegant binding, and praise the five hundred pictured illustrations and typography; but an examination would only convince our readers of the skill and taste our artists have exhibited in their several departments. We hope every young American gentleman who feels the importance of cherishing the fine arts, will look at the " Young Lady's Book," and if he has ever received a smile from lady fair, he will be sure to purchase it for her sake.

In our next we intend to give a copious extract, accompanied by illustrations that will show the excellence of the artists' department.

POEMS and JUVENILE SKETCHES: by Anna Maria Wells. Boston: Carter, Hendee and Babock. pp. 104,

Mrs. Wells has given a volume of fine, beautiful poetry, and connected as are her literary exertion with the holiest motives of human nature, she deserves the esteem and patronage of all her sex. The book has no fault but its brevity.

GIRL'S OWN Book: by MRS. CHILD. Boston: Carter and Hendee. This pretty amusing book is already the favorite of the season, and therefore needs not be praised to make it popular. Mrs. Child has exerted her ingenuity and taste, and the engravers have executed their task well. It is an American production; and that, we consider, a desideratum for American children.

THE YOUNG READER: by JOHN PIERPONT. Boston: Richardsen, Lord and Holbrook. pp. 162.

We think this a good, a very good compilation; it could scarcely be otherwise, prepared by Mr. Pierpont-but we wish he had confined his selections to American writers, and supplied the deficiency of matter from his own pen. Little children do take an interest in the names of those who write what pleases them; and when those names are connected with a foreign country, the impression that nothing good can come out of their own is fixed and is not easily eradicated.

TALES OF TRAVELS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Boston: Gray and Bowen. pp. 162.

Now this is a book we can with pleasure recommend to American children, as containing useful knowledge of their own country, and amusing anecdotes and descriptions. The author has done exceedingly well if this is his first essay, and we hope he will continue his exertions.

Many a scene as strange, affecting, and seemingly as improbable as the wildest legend of romance occurs in real life; but still were not the authenticity of the circumstances I am about to relate established by incontestible evidence I should hesitate to record them. However, there is in truth something, that usually carries conviction to the heart, an intrinsic evidence, felt but undefined, that convinces. Such evidence I hope my readers will acknowledge, because I shall then be secure of their attention. Who likes to write without, at least, the expectation of exciting curiosity and interest? But can fictitious tales, multiplied as they now are, have much longer that effect? It is truth that is becoming novel, and so I will tell a true story.

Sophia Bentley was a native of Amboy, New-Jersey. She was left an orphan at the age of three months, and was supported and educated by a widowed aunt, who, childless herself, adopted the destitute infant. Mrs. Mosely, though what the world would call a good woman, was not at all calculated to form the mind or guide the spirit of a beautiful, gay and sensitive, but rather self-willed child. Mrs. Mosely was extremely precise in her manners, rigid in her notions, and always urged her

own ideas of propriety as an infallible rule for Sophia, instead of endeavoring to instil into her ductile heart those principles of self-government, which, based on modesty, gentleness and piety, have such an excellent and abiding effect on young females. She loved her little playful niece dearly; and yet, like mary other teasing people, she contrived to make the object of her fondest regard almost perpetually uneasy, if not unhappyand this, too, for trifles light as air. She would daily thwart the desires, disappoint the hopes, or forbid the most innocent gratifications of the young creature in whose existence her own life seemed nevertheless bound up. These circumstances had a very unhappy effect on the naturally ingenuous temper of Sophia. She loved her relative; but it was not with the love of confidence. She did not hasten to communicate her plans to her aunt, or expect from her any participation, in her pleasures; on the contrary, she strove, as much as possible, to conceal her wishes, or contrived how to gratify them, unknown to her relative. And what was worse still, Sophia argued her mind and conscience into the belief that the course of concealment she pursued was right and justifiable.

"My aunt must not know it," she would say to her young companions, when she was urged to join them in some ramble or amusement, "she is easily troubled, and I do not wish to give her uneasiness; but what your mothers allow you to do, cannot be wrong-and so, if I can steal away, I will join you."

It can scarely excite surprise that her companions should encourage her in thus seeking to participate in pleasures which they were permitted to enjoy as innocent; indeed, some mothers openly justified Sophia in endeavoring to evade the strictness of her aunt's discipline, saying, "that it was cruel to keep the sweet girl in such confinement."

As Sophia increased in years and loveliness, the anxiety of Mrs. Mosely seemed to increase. She was particularly careful to preserve her niece from the danger of falling in love, and, to guard her mind from any influence that would dispose it to the tender passion, she prohibited all novels as incendiaries of voluptuousness, condemned dancing as sinful, and even visiting as loss of time; and lectured Sophia from morning till night on the rules of propriety, which, as the good lady interpreted them, could only be fully practised by those young women who lived in seclusion, silence and solitude, without attending trifling parties, or reading a wicked novel.

Mrs. Mosely could not have taken a more direct method to incite the curiosity of a lively, warm-hearted and naturally roinantic girl. Sophia heard novels and those who read them condemned, till, from a feeling of compassion she wished to be acquainted with the manner of the fascination that she might warn her young friends how to avoid it; and she wished likewise to examine if there were not some extenuating circumstances, some good effects which might be deduced as likely to follow the perusal of romances, and which her aunt overlooked.

"Perhaps," thought she, "my aunt condemns these books without examination-I will not be thus unjust." So she procured by stealth, "The Mysteries of Udolpho,"-(this was twenty years since) that fascinating novel of Mrs. Radcliffe's, and it is not strange she was perfectly enchanted. "What delicacy of sentiment-what tenderness and refinement of feeling!" she would exclaim to herself-" and what generosity and goodness it teaches!—O, I am sure my aunt never read it! I do not believe she ever read a romance in her life."

Sophia was probably correct in her conjecture neither is Mrs. Mosely the first person who has condemned books without knowing their contents, and practices without understanding their tendency. Sophia then concluded, as was natural for one trained so injudiciously as she had been, that her aunt's opinion of works of fiction was the result of ignorance and prejudice, and her sweeping denunciations against every thing of the kind, poetry as well as prose, inclined her niece to make, likewise, no discrimination in her approval. This manner of reasoning, on both sides, had a very bad effect on Sophia. Mrs. Mosely lost the confidence and companionship of her niece, and the influence which she might have exerted so advantageously in the direction of her studies; and Sophia's taste was rendered morbid, her imagination excited and her mind weakened by an indiscriminate perusal of every novel she could possibly

procure.

It is curious if not wonderful that, notwithstanding all Mrs. Mosely's precautions to prevent her niece from falling in love, the girl was nevertheless, "wooed and married and all," without any suspicion of the matter on the part of the old lady. But Sophia had been too long habituated to the concealment of her wishes from her aunt, to feel much horror at the proposal of a clandestine marriage, which Edward Baring urged with all the eloquence that love and ingenuity could suggest. He prevailed,

and the lovely girl, whose charms, her aunt calculated, would at a proper age win some rich and distinguished man, wedded before she was seventeen a with young adventurer, without property or rich connexions.

The vessel, in which Edward sailed as mate, was a merchant ship, that traded to Canton, and in one short week after he called Sophia his own, he was compelled to leave her and depart on a three years' voyage. The parting of these imprudent, but devotedly attached lovers, took place in a little sequestered nook, on the margin of a rivulet shaded by willow trees, whose pendant branches drooped nearly to the earth, forming what Miss Landon would call "a nest,-just for love and contentment made." It was here Edward and Sophia had always met: here their vows of affection had been exchanged, their dreams of felicity indulged; and now the spot would witness their tears of separation. Some may suppose the parting would be rendered doubly painful to Sophia from reflection of the imprudence of which she had been guilty; and the recollection that her griefs must all be confined to her own bosom, as she had forfeited all title to claim the confidence of her friends; and that she must even wear the appearance of cheerfulness while her heart would be swelling with anxiety and sorrow. But, in truth, these forebodings of her own future misery never entered the mind of the poor girl. She thought of nothing, wept for nothing but that Edward must leave her; that she could not see him, perhaps should not hear from him, for a long time and then the dangers to which he would be exposed -storms, winds, waves, rocks-and, while the whole host of misfortunes which might overtake him came thronging on her fancy, she wept on his bosom with such uncontrollable emotion that he feared she would die in his arms.

a

Sophia, my own dear Sophia-my wife," said Edward, his voice trembling almost to sobs-" do not, I entreat you, be thus distressed for me. I shall do well. There is no dangerpositively none, in comparision with what lands-men imagine in a voyage; when you have a good ship, and our's is a staunch one, and in excellent trim, and a good Captain, and a sturdy crew-and our Commander is one of the best men that ever trod a deck, and our sailors are boys of resolution that nothing but impossibilities can overcome; when one has such a ship. commander and crew, I repeat it, there is no danger. Death may find us, to be sure; for there is no skulking from him on water