WE shall none of us forget soon the impression produced on the public mind by the article in Putnam's Monthly, of February, '53, on the claims of the Rev. Eleazar Williams to be regarded as the Dauphin of France, followed, as the article was, by others with further proof. It was an interest which did not have to reach its height through gradual periods of growth. It sprang forth Minerva-like, and secured itself at once a prominent place in the newspapers, and among the current topics of conversation. In all parts of the country the question, "Have we a Bourbon among us?" divided the community; and there were few intelligent persons who did not range themselves on one side or the other. The interest was probably due to several causes. France was just then drawing the world's attention to herself by re-establishing the empire under Napoleon III., while the Count of Chambord was protesting in behalf of his legitimate Bourbon claims. Then, the matter had just enough raciness in it to make us keenly interested in what was to us only a curious historical problem. Probably we should have weighed our decision more carefully, and tested more anxiously the grounds on which it was formed, had it involved a change of rulers for ourselves. Then, part of the interest was due to Mr. Hanson's clever and evidently honest advocacy; and part to the contrast between the manner of Mr. Williams' previous life, and the position to which, if the claims were true, he was entitled, and out of which he had long been defrauded.

WINTER'S TALE, Act V, Scene 2.

But great as the interest was, it subsided, after a little while, as quickly as it arose. For a time the newspaper paragraphists thought it worth their while to chronicle the movements of Mr. Williams; ladies sought an introduction to his royal presence; curiosityhunters begged his autograph. But, for some time before Mr. Williams' death, ten yeas ago, and ever since, there has been a profound indifference as to the whole subject. Nor was this surprising, because nothing arose to feed or prolong the interest; and in this country every thing must go to the wall that does not press itself before the public eye. And yet we can hardly believe so utterly careless are we now as to the merits or issue of the question, so vague have become our impressions of the points which Mr. Hanson so tellingly made-that, besides creating so deep and general an interest in this country and even in Europe, besides securing the adhesion of men of calm judgment and profound historical acumen, such, for instance, as the late Hon. John C. Spencer, Rev. Dr. Hawks, and Dr. Francis; besides all this, the matter was made the subject of diplomatic communications between foreign minis ters here and their governments abroad.

And, of course, whatever truth there was in the claim, the subsequent silence has made nothing against it. If the considerations put forth by Mr. Williams were valid, they are as true now as when he was a nameless Indian missionary in the West. But kings, like the gods, play with loaded dice; the possessors of power can smile compassion

ately on those who fulminate feebly their protests and claims. And if in Mr. Williams the last of the elder line of the ancient Bourbon race expired, it adds but one more to the already long list of lost princes who have died in obscurity and poverty.

After the lapse of so many years since his death, circumstances recently threw into our hands his papers, which had lain in the meantime in the house in Hogansburgh where he died. And while they may not do much to confirm his royal claims, they cast many side lights upon a history which is strange and interesting. The papers filled six or eight cases, and had been kept with admirable care; and besides including a journal of a larger part of his life, and copies of all his letters apparently, furnished such copious memoranda as would enable one to gain a clear view of his interior life and opinions.

The disputed period of his life is that previous to his fifteenth year, when, in the year 1800, he, with his reputed brother, was brought from Canada to Massachusetts to be educated. The usual version of his history is that he was the son of Thomas Williams, who was the grandson of Eunice Williams, the "Fair Captive," who, with her father, the Rev. John Williams, was carried prisoner to Canada at the capture of Deerfield in 1704, and who married an Indian, and spent the rest of her life in Canada. Mr. Hanson, in his work, "The Lost Prince," has elaborated to a larger extent than it would be interesting to follow him the probabilities of Mr. Williams' identity with the Dauphin, Louis Charles, the son of Louis XVI., who had been supposed to have died in the Temple in 1795.

While there have ever been doubts hanging about the question as to whether the child that died in the Temple was indeed the Dauphin, or whether the Dauphin was conveyed away, and a moribund child put in his place; the records of the Temple have such an apparent completeness and force as to establish as firmly as any ordinary matter of history is established,

the likelihood that the Dauphin died in 1795. Still there are facts, as, for instance, the issue of police orders for the watching of the frontiers immediately after the reported death of the Dauphin, for the stopping of suspected persons, and the actual arrest of one person thought to be the Prince; the absence of the Dauphin's name in the funeral solemnities of the Royal Family at the Restoration; and the evident unwillingness of the government to accord an investigation, although desired, into the claims of the pretender Naundorff; all of which cast an uncertainty over the matter, and seem to invite the inquiry whether the Dauphin really did die in 1795, and then, whether Mr. Williams might not have been the Dauphin. There is enough doubt to give zest to the investigation. An article in the Philadelphia Aurora, of October 29, 1811, states that a curious rumor was afloat in England, that the Dauphin was alive, and that a person had lately arrived in that country who knew where he resided, and had communicated the same to the government. The former servant of the Duchess d'Angoulême in 1853, in New Orleans, testified also that her mistress at about the same time believed her brother to be alive.

Now, supposing that the Dauphin was rescued from the Temple in 1795, is there any evidence that Mr. Williams and the Dauphin were the same person? If the claim was false, Mr. Williams was a half-breed Indian; and the deception, which was so clever as to enlist the earnest support of many good scholars, and proficients in the knowledge of human nature, was doubly remarkable, in view of the antecedents of its originator.

The fact of the European type of countenance which Mr. Williams had, does not conclude the matter; because, if he was the son of Thomas Williams, he would have had a large proportion of white blood in his veins. His great grandmother Eunice married an Indian; but her daughter married an Englishman; and it was that daughter's son who was the father of Eleazar. It was

entirely possible, therefore, on any theory, that he should have had Caucasian features. And yet he undoubtedly did resemble in many of his features the Bourbon family. Not to mention the strong testimony of Dr. Francis and the artist Fagnani, there is a letter among his papers from Mr. Thos. H. White, of Philadelphia, from which the following is an extract:

There is residing in Burlington, New Jersey, a member of the society of Friends, Stephen Grelet; he was formerly an officer in the French service; has seen Louis XVI. On being shown your likeness, without being told who it was taken for, and asked merely if it resembled any one whom he knew, he replied, "I see no likeness in it to any one but Louis XVI."

And the coincidence of the fact, and the position of the cicatrized and scrofulous scars on the body of the Dauphin and of Mr. Williams, is a remarkable

circumstance.

Two tests of the genuineness of his claims occurred to every one, when he put forth his pretensions: the testimony of his mother, and the evidence of his own memory. His mother, of course, would know whether Eleazar was her son or not. But she was an Indian, and did not understand English, and so could only be approached through an interpreter. Mr. Williams said that, as she was a Roman Catholic and he a Protestant, the priests had induced her, from consideration for the Church's

interests, to be silent on the subject, that she would give no answer whatever to questions concerning Eleazar. Somewhat later, however, in the midst of the discussions concerning his claims, an affidavit appeared signed by his mother declaring positively that Eleazar was her son, and that the scars on his knees came from sores which he brought home with him from school. Still later another affidavit of Mrs. Williams appeared, contradicting much of the former affidavit, and in which Eleazar is mentioned indirectly as her adopted son. In giving this affidavit Mr. Hanson makes no mention of Mr. Williams' connection with it, but says that it was uttered freely by Mrs. Wil

liams in Mohawk, and afterward translated into English. What surprised us, therefore, in looking over the papers was to find several memoranda in Mr. Williams' handwriting in English, which showed that the affidavit had really been composed by him. There were rough copies containing erasures and interlineations, showing how the affidavit had been made up, and all indicating an apparent purpose to steal the desired avowal of his adoption from his mother, without making too broad an issue. In order, therefore, to get at the truth of the matter, we wrote to the Justice before whom both of the affidavits were sworn, and desired him to relate the circumstances, as he remembered them. His answer was as follows:

The first affadavit was made under the fol

lowing circumstances. Rev. Mr. Marcoux of St. Regis came to my office at the time the affadavit is dated, and said that he had been requested by the editor of some French paper, published in New York, to ascertain from the mother of Mr. Williams whether there was any reason to suppose that Eleazar was not her son. Mrs. Williams accompanied Mr. Marcoux, and I think one or two other persons. Mr. Marcoux acted as interpreter. Mrs. Williams did not speak or understand English. The affadavit was drafted by me, and so far as I could judge by the little knowledge I have of the Indian language, she was truly and correctly interpreted, and spoke in that affadavit as she wished to be understood. The second affadavit was taken at the hotel, Mr. Williams and interpreter, being present. I had no particuanother gentleman with Antoine Barrow, the

lar knowledge of the matter until called in to take the affadayit, when I found the parties above named, with Mrs. Williams, in the room, and a discussion going on between Mr. Williams and Barrow about the meaning of an Indian word which was to make the mother say that he was adopted. I took the affadavit made by Mrs. Williams, but I never thought that she intended to say that Eleazar was an adopted son, but she seemed very much surprised that he should claim to be any other than her own son. This was always her answer, except in this single instance. I have never believed she understood the word, or intended to say what she was made to say in the last affadavit. I think that you will find it rather artfully drawn, and that it does not present such an appearance of truth and frankness as the first. Certainly, if I am mistaken in this view, it was very forcibly impressed on

my mind by the circumstances under which the two affadavits were taken.

It seems, therefore, clear that Mrs. Williams desired to say that Eleazar was her son. She might or might not be uttering the truth; but such was her declaration. It therefore fares badly with Mr. Williams' credibility to find him writing to the Rev. Mr. Hale that "his mother was justly indignant at the statement” (that Eleazar was not the son of Louis XVI., but was her son), "and calls the utterer of it a dishonest villain and a liar, to invent such a false tale as coming from her."

It is, however, true that Eleazar's name does not appear among those of the other children of Thomas Williams on the baptismal register at Caughnawaga. This is certainly surprising, considering the carefulness of the Roman Catholics in the matter of the baptism of their children. The names of all the other children are there except Eleazar's. The, perhaps insufficient, reason for the omission, given by the mother and the priest, was that the child was weakly, and was baptized privately, and, in consequence, no record was kept. But the statement made by Mr. Williams to Mr. Hanson, that "the births of the children follow so closely upon each other in regular intervals of two years each, that it does not seem naturally possible I could have been her child," is hardly borne out by the record. Mrs. Williams says that Eleazar was her fourth child; and the births follow, according to the baptismal register, at these intervals; 1780, 1781, 1786, 1791, 1793, 1795, 1796, 1799, &c.; so that, at the time named by Mrs. Williams, there is an unusual interval, in which, in order to preserve the regularity, it is possible, perhaps, likely, that a child was born. The baptismal register, on the evidence in which Mr. Williams so greatly depended, is not, therefore, conclusive in his favor.

When appealed to as regards his memory of his early life, Mr. Williams said that his life, up to within a short time before he went to Massachusetts in 1800, was to him a blank, that a few

floating images in his mind was all that he retained. The immediate cause of the return to him of reason was, he said, a fall into the waters of Lake George from a high rock up to which he had clambered. So that, presuming that Mr. Williams was honest, all hope of gaining any clue to the truth from his memory was at an end.

A circumstance is told by Mr. Hanson, on anonymous authority, about Mr. Williams' education, which was one of those many slight, concurring incidents that rendered his plea for Mr. Williams so apparently conclusive; but which an examination of original documents proves to be false. He says that, while Eleazar and his reputed brother were together in Massachusetts being educated, and while the expenses for his brother's education were altogether a charge upon the benevolent, part of the means for Eleazar's support was furnished from an unknown source. Now we have before us the package of original bills and appropriations, and no such distinction is anywhere apparent. It is absolutely certain that Eleazar, like his brother, was educated wholly at the charge of certain benevolent societies in Massachusetts, with a view to future ministry among the Indians. There is not the slightest appearance of mystery. Mr. Hanson quotes the authority of an Albany newspaper for the statement that Mr. Bleecker of that city was the agent for Mr. Jourdan, and supplied Thomas Williams with money for the education of the foreign boy. But I have before me the copy of a communication, in Mr. Williams' handwriting, sent under a fictitious name to the Albany Knickerbocker, which is the origin of all the assertions which Mr. Hanson says came from an undoubted source. For all we can gather to the contrary they came from Mr. Williams' imagination, as no authority whatever is referred to.

After completing his education in Massachusetts, and after his participation as ranger in the second war, in which he was wounded, Mr. Williams, in 1816, commenced his work among the Indians at Oneida; and, five years