We mentioned some time ago that Mr. William W. Story, a son of the late Justice Story, was preparing for the press a life of his father, and we now understand that the work will soon be ready, in two large octavo volumes, to be published by Little & Brown. It will come too late. Such a memoir would have been very well received any time within a year after Judge Story's death: now the public mind is settled in an unalterable conviction that Judge Story was an over-rated man, and a consideration of the processes by which his fame was acquired is likely for a long time to sink it below its just level. We but echo the opinion of more than one eminent person connected with the very school in which he was a teacher, as well as the common judgment of the leading men of the profession in all the states, when we say that Judge Story was not a great lawyer; two or three of his books were good, but the rest were made for cash profits, and sold by means of ingenious advertising. Now they will answer for the country courts, and the inferior courts of the cities, where no opposing lawyer has enough wit and knowledge to oppose Story against Story, but they are no longer weighty authorities, and every term they are found to be of declining influence. As a man of letters, Judge Story's rank will be still lower. He has left nothing to carry his name into another age. Yet he was a man of much professional learning, of taste, sagacity, an extraordinary command of his resources, and a most amiable and pleasing character, and his memoirs and correspondence, if fitly presented, will constitute an attractive and valuable contribution to the history of American society.
For several years it has been known to many students of our early history, that Mr. Lyman C. Draper was devoting his time and estate, and faculties admirably trained for such pursuits, to the collection of whatever materials still exist for the illustration of the lives of the Western Pioneers. He has carefully explored all the valley of the Mississippi, under the most favorable auspices—by his intelligence and enthusiasm and large acquaintance with the most conspicuous people, commended to every family which was the repository of special traditions or of written documents—and he has succeeded in amassing a collection of MS. letters, narratives, and other papers, and of printed books, pamphlets, magazines, and journals, more extensive than is possessed by many of the state historical societies, while in character it is altogether and necessarily unique. He proposes soon to publish his first work, The Life and Times of General George Rogers Clarke, (whose papers have been long in his possession, and whose surviving Indian fighters and other associates he has personally visited), in two octavo volumes, to be followed by shorter historical memoirs of Colonel Daniel Boone, General Simon Kenton, General John Sevier of East Tennessee, General James Robertson, Captain Samuel Brady, Colonel William Crawford, the Wetzells, &c., &c. The field of his researches, it will be seen, embraces the entire sweep of the Mississippi, every streamlet flowing into which has been crimsoned with the blood of sanguinary conflicts, every sentinel mountain looking down to whose waves has been a witness of more terrible and strange vicissitudes and adventures than have been invented by all the romancers.
The Dublin University Magazine is not very kind in the matter of the American poem of Frontenac, but suggests that as the author's name is Street, he cannot object to being "walked into."
Mrs. Southworth's story of Retribution is being republished in Reynolds's Miscellany, edited by G. W. M. Reynolds, the novelist. Those who are acquainted with the productions of Reynolds will perhaps recognize the fitness of the association.
Mrs. Mowatt, who has just returned from a professional residence in England, we understand will soon give the public a collection of her miscellaneous writings, prefaced by Mary Howitt. The authoress of The Fortune Hunter, under various signatures, has been a very voluminous as well as a very clever writer. She will in a few weeks appear at the Broadway Theatre.