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. * * * * *