exercised great care in bringing all these points prominently forward in his narrative. The first volume is thus one of the most interesting that can occur in the series; but the subsequent volumes will necessarily be composed of more exciting material; and, judging from the present, and from other circumstances, we infer that the completed work will form a biographical narrative of great utility and extreme interest. We experience great difficulty in persuading people that the world is not becoming worse; and we are confident that it is getting better. Mr. Chalmers, when first in London, would not have opposed the free and full delivery, of letters and Newspapers on "Sunday.' While traveling to Newcastle, as he took the post-office gig, the sculler and the boat, he would not have refused the railway. A great change has occurred in society on these matters. In London, he attended some political meetings, and was displeased with the cookery: "Saturday, May 23d- .. Repaired to the Albany, and dined with Mr. Sheridan and 150 of his admirers. The dinner was wretched-too little of it-and the worst conducted I ever saw. Great tumult and confusion among the company. I was disappointed in all the speeches, and much shocked with the extreme incorrectness of feeling discovered by several of the company." In addition to John Campbell, he met another Fife man, equally famous in his own department: "Thursday, May 21st.-Called on Wilkie; took Russell square in my road, and think it the finest in London. Mr. Wilkie is a man of genius and excellent sense, with all the simplicity which accompanies talent, and firmness to resist corruptions and flattery. After leaving him, I took a "Friday, May 15-The India House-DeptTheatre, where we heard the comic opera of The ford-the Docks-We proceeded to Drury Lane Duenna,' 'High Life Below Stairs,' and the pantomimic ballet Don Juan. I am not fond of operas, because I have no taste for that music the merit of which appears to me to lie entirely in the execution. The squalling exertion of the performers is painful to me, and not a word of the song can be Lane Theatre, that in many parts of the house the collected. Indeed, such is the extent of Drury most audible and distinct enunciation must be lost upon the hearers. The house was quite full, more decorous than the circus, and exceeds anything I have seen in the splendor of its boxes, and rich, expensive scenery. None of the performers appeared to me first-rate. The pantomime I did not enter into. We returned to Walworth in the morning." The And if the public had generally the honesty of this critic, we are not sure that the opera would meet the encouragement it receives; for nine-tenths of the audience know nothing of foreign languages when sung, and are not naturally fond of foreign music. central pages of this volume, and by far the greater part of it, are occupied with correspondence and extracts of a most instructive and useful character. Better reading scarcely could be conceived. Anything more striking than the gradual uprising and purification of this great mind has not recently been published, and we remember no other work that is so obviously the history of a mind in its passage from listlessness to anxiety, and from earnest seeking for, to the practical enjoyment of, cheerful and confident piety. JENNY LIND.-Since this lady left Eng-, land, she has enjoyed the repose she has so much needed, amid the beautiful scenery of Switzerland and the Tyrol, her health having been previously re-established by the baths at Ems. Her voice is more powerful and flexible than ever. Russia and England are both wooing her return to the exercise of her profession, and the King of Sweden has sent a special messenger to entreat her presence in her native city, when she was able to undertake the journey. It will be a matter of deep regret if she does not visit England next season; she is well known to cherish the warmest affection for this country, where she has a nation's admiration, and many devoted friends. The death of the lamented Bishop of Norwich was almost as great a trial to the fair songstress as the death of her friend Mendelssohn had been; in one of her latest letters, she entreated the friend to whom she wrote to place a chaplet of ivy, which she enclosed, upon the grave of Dr. Stanley," as her tears!" This simple offering is in accordance with one of the customs of her country. Miss Lind is now at Lubeck, but will soon proceed thence to Berlin. Art Journal. From the New Monthly Magazine. THE ARCTIC VOYAGES: WITHOUT doubt the most wondrous of all voyages made for geographical purposes since the discovery of the New World, have been the expeditions in search of a north-west passage. They are wondrous for the zeal, the endurance, and the perseverance with which they have been carried out. They are still more wondrous for the misplaced and perverted direction in which such qualities, and the material necessary to give them effect, have been brought to bear. It is like a boy who first climbs a hillock, and then a tree, and then a cliff. His ardent spirit is never satisfied but with new triumphs. The youth climbs the same tree for a nest, or a cliff for some cave, or other object in view. Maturer age is supposed to weigh still more astutely the quid pro quo, and the probable return for sacrifice of time, money, material, and life. It is easy to understand the spirit of adventure and love of enterprise that carries one or more individuals across pathless forests, or over arid deserts, into mountain fastnesses or savage lands; but it is difficult to imagine a government or a nation seized with the same impulse, or communicating it to the crews of so many doomed ships. It is impossible not to feel a service ennobled by first opening to navigation and commerce the great rivers and olden thoroughfares of the earth; penetrating into unknown lands by the fevered delta of unexplored streams, surveying and mapping coasts torn and rift into islands like those of Southern America, so dangerous to seamen ; or circumnavigating the globe; discovering new lands; bringing civilization into contact with remote populations; and bearing "glad tidings" on wings of canvas-for all these things there is a feeling and sympathy; but who has ever entertained a serious hope of working a passage through the ices of the Arctic region, or of opening even a summer way to China by the Polar Seas? The efforts made, not to grapple with the difficulties of the case, but to beat Nature in her sternest aspect,-to sweep away the icefloe, and to shoulder out the berg from their own realms,-will, indeed, ever be narrated as a miracle of misdirected energy and enterprise. It seems as if the most adventurous nation in the world had grown tired of all commonplace explorations, or had deemed that nothing remained to be done on this small planet of ours-that large populations did not remain to be detected on the Nilethat an interior highland country, with the resources of a territory so favored, did not actually lie within the grasp almost of an outstretched hand upon the tropical coasts of Africa-that the interior of the great continent of Australasia was not still a blank-that the Isthmus of Panama did not still remain to be cut through-and that, in disgust at nothing more remaining to be done, it betook itself to the hopeless task of battling with the perpetual frost of the Arctic regions, and opening a passage through its ice-locked seas. From the time of Queen Elizabeth, when the idea of a north-west passage first found favor in this country, to the present day, there have been upward of thirty attempts made by British ships to effect this difficult object. This alone ought to satisfy all reasonable minds-such as have faith in the skill and courage of English navigators-of the inutility of renewed struggles. One of the very first attempts made was of most ominous import. The gallant Sir Hugh Willoughby took his departure from Radcliffe, on his fatal voyage to discover a northeast passage, on the 20th of May, 1553. He sailed with great pomp by Greenwich, where the court then resided. Mutual honors were paid on both sides. The council and courtiers appeared at the windows, and the people covered the shores. The young king, Edward VI., alone lost the noble and novel sight; for he then lay on his deathbed so that the principal object of the parade was disappointed. Sir Hugh led the expedition, in the Bona Esperanza, of 120 tons. There was also a second ship, called the Edward Bonaventura; and a third smaller vessel, called the Bona Confidentia, of ninety tons, commanded by Captain Durfoorth. ed by Captain Durfoorth. The Bonaventura parted company, during a storm, on their way out; the two other vessels with their many ignorant and malicious people had a unfortunate crews were found frozen to death very mean opinion of what he had done, bein the harbor of Arzina Reca, in Lapland. cause his voyages had not answered the exAs no one survived to tell the history of their pense; but he persuaded himself that so sufferings, it is impossible to say whether wise and honorable a statesman would think they wanted fuel or whether scurvy was the in a manner different from the vulgar, and cause of their melancholy end. It is, how-esteem his services capable of producing ever, a remarkable circumstance that they great advantages to the nation, even supposhad an abundance of provisions. The tradi- ing that no such passage as he expected tion of their fate informs us that they were should be found, in support of which he laid frozen to death, and that in this state they were down five points, the first of which was to found the following year by some Russians. the following effect:It is impossible to conceive a more melancholy doom. They were well provided with everything which the science of the time could suggest to guard them against the accidents of the sea; and their ships were entire, and in harbor. Under all these circumstances, the deplorable end of Sir Hugh Willoughby has been handed down to posterity among the most lamentable and melancholy which the nautical annals of the world record. "That it would redound very much to the honor of the queen and her subjects if the people in these northern regions were converted to the Christian faith, in which pious work many of those busy and fiery spirits might be profitably employed, that by their factious stirrings at home served only to create confusion in church and state." "It is impossible not to admit that this is a very wise suggestion; nothing could be more appropriate for " fiery spirits" than regions of icy coldness, or for those employed in " factious stirrings" than a "land of desolation." Notwithstanding the failure of all who had attempted to reach 77 deg. 45 min. north latitude, or to push through the icy barrier which obstructed a further progress, the Dutch, who in the sixteenth century were the most enterprising maritime people in Europe, sent out several expeditions in the vain hope of trading by the north-east with China. They, however, like their predecessors, found the ice too pertinacious even for Dutch persever Although these expeditions took a direction opposite to the one generally attempted by the English, that of 1596, which was piloted by Wm. Barentz, derives great interest at the present moment, from the trials and sufferings of the crew when frozen Gaspard Cortesius, or Cortereal, and his brother Michael, had before perished in the same research. So the Venetian, Sebastian Cabot, employed by Henry VII., had been cast back, by an impenetrable barrier of ice, in 1506. John Varascenus sailed in 1524, under the auspices of Francis I., King of France, and he and his crew are reported to have been devoured by the savages. Sebastian Gomesius, a Spaniard, took the same route in 1525, and all the honor he acquired was to bring away some Esquimaux. In 1576, the bold navigator, Sir Martin Fro-ance. bisher, discovered, as has been only lately shown, Hudson's Strait; and between Warwick Island and that great land, which, strange to say, has not yet received a name, a strait which still bears his name. In 1585, John Davis made the equally important dis-in at Nova Zembla, and the possible similar covery of the opening into Baffin's Bay, which likewise bears his name. Davis sailed again in 1586, and again reached what he graphically calls "The Land of Desolation," but was driven back by stress of weather. Notwithstanding that the west country and London merchants grew tired of the expense of these frequent expeditions, Davis was so sanguine of success that he got up a third, in which, as in the preceding, he discovered more coasts and islands, but failed in the main object. The veteran navigator appears to have been somewhat of a controversialist in political theology, as well as a bold explorer, for in a letter addressed to Mr. Secretary Walsingham, on his return from his third voyage, he tells him that he found that position of our brave countrymen. The supply of bears and foxes appeared to be sufficient to support a crew that had even little else to depend upon. The bears, it is true, disappeared when the sun went below the horizon, but the foxes fortunately remained in plenty. A single bear furnished a hundred weight of grease for their lamp. It is needless, however, to say that their sufferings were great. On the sixth of December they found the cold so intense, they had no expectation of surviving it. They could scarcely keep up the circulation by any resources at their command. It pleased the Almighty, however, to relieve them from this forlorn state, and the greater number returned in safety to their country. A first expedition, fitted out in 1606, by passage being accomplished. To determine what was then called the " Muscovy Com- this fact, Captain, afterward Sir, Thomas Butpany," was brought to an abrupt termina- ton, was dispatched the ensuing year (1612); tion by the murder of Captain Knight, his and this officer, who seems to have been acbrother, and one of the crew, by the natives tive as well as resolute, soon made his way of Labrador. A second expedition was fitted through the straits, and, pushing directly out by the same company the ensuing year, across the sea that opened to the westward, and the command was given to the distin- came in view of the southern point of Southguished navigator Hudson, who subsequently ampton Island, and nothing else breaking the discovered that immense bay which will carry apparent continuity of the ocean, he was his name and unfortunate end to the latest cherishing the most sanguine hopes of suctimes. Hudson succeeded in his first expe- cess when land was announced, and there dition in pushing north as far as latitude appeared before him an immense range of 81 deg., and he returned home, after coast- coast stretching north and south, and baring Spitzbergen, with the conviction, which ring all further progress. After wintering in modern experience has not impugned, that a Hudson's Bay, Sir Thomas steered the next further navigation was completely barred out summer through the broad bay which sepaby the ice in that direction. In 1608 the rates Southampton Island from the continent, same bold navigator sailed in search of a since called Roe's Welcome, but finding that north-east passage, at that time as favorite the channel became narrower and narrower, a chimera with the maritime countries of he gave up the attempt. Thus it was, that Europe as the north-west passage has since gradually after the discovery of Davis's been. Hudson pushed on in the parallels of Straits, Baffin's Bay, and Hudson's Bay, the 74 deg. and 75 deg., till he made the coast coast of America was found to keep trending of Nova Zembla, which he did in a more to the northward; and to the main contisoutherly latitude (72 deg 25 min.); but nent was found to succeed a vast archipelago finding a farther course impracticable, he re- of ice-clad islands. Whenever a new bay turned with the conviction that there was no was discovered, it turned out to be an inlet, hope of a north-east passage-a decision or a land and ice-locked gulf; when a new which has not as yet been proved to be in-channel was explored, it led only to new correct. Yet that which appertains to a north-east obtains equally with regard to a north-west passage. There is no passage to the westward, that is, south of North Cape, except the straits of the Fury and Hecla, and that only leads into an inlet trending further to the north. The perpetuation of ice is not, however, it may be observed here, a mere question of latitude. Nova Zembla, for example, which lies between the parallels of 68° and 77° N., is far more desert and inclement than Spitzbergen, which is so much farther to the N. It is a land of frost and ice, a howling waste, a region of utter desolation, where intense cold holds the sceptre over a lifeless domain. In 1610, Hudson set sail in the Discovery on his last voyage. He perished in the very heart of his noblest discovery, nei-lation of ice than an open sea, still more so ther by storm nor by iceberg, but the victim of treachery; and the mystery of his fate causes his name to be pronounced, even now, with pity, while his skill and courage make the man an object of our admiration, even in these times, when a northern navigation and wintering are not considered such extraordinary perils by the navigator. Notwithstanding the calamitous issue of this voyage, the discovery thereby made of a great sea in the west excited new hopes of a lands interminable in their succession, and whose intricacy is a thousand-fold increased by the difficulty in determining where land ended and ice and snow succeeded. Thus it has been that, by undaunted courage and wondrous perseverance, a great icy archipelago has been eliminated from out of what was supposed to be the Polar Seas; and the narrowness of the channels by which this archipelago, which is closed in by Greenland and its ices on the one hand, and the continent of America on the other, can alone be reached, constitutes the truly great and formidable obstacle that presents itself to the permanent opening of a north-west passage. A narrow sea, however strong the current, must be always more exposed to an accumu when that channel is one of a few outlets to perpetually frozen coasts and seas; and hence it is that passages, circumstanced as Barrow's Straits and those of the Fury and Hecla are, can never be available for anything beyond a brief summer's navigation. The fate that awaited the next expedition sent out to discover a north-west passage, without being in any way disastrous, was fully as instructive as any that preceded or followed it. A Captain Gibbons, said to be an officer of reputation, set forth boldly with two vessels, in 1614, to effect that which so many had already failed in accomplishing. No sooner, however, was he off the coast of Labrador than he allowed himself to get entangled in the ice and frozen into a bay, where he remained all summer, and from which he was no sooner extricated than he very wisely took his way back as fast as he could. The spot where this Polar exhibition met with so ignoble a termination was designated at the time as "Gibbons his Hole." The history of the first case-one of the most extraordinary instances of preservation on record-is highly instructive, and especially interesting in its bearing upon the possible fate of the crews of the Erebus and Terror. In the year 1631 another expedition was fitted out under Captains Fox and James. Captain Fox explored the seas that bathe Southampton Island to the east and west, and he called the eastern channel after himself, whereas it ought more properly be called Bylot's, having, as before seen, been first navigated by that officer. As to James, entangled in the southern extremity of Hudson's Bay, he spent a winter under the most extreme suffering from cold, and returned next summer to England. The Hudson's Bay Company having obtained chartered possessions in the territories adjacent to that bay in 1668, they were bound by that charter to make strenuous exertions for the discovery of a north-western passage; but it was not till 1719 that they fitted out an expedition under Knight and Barlow. These officers not returning, a vessel was sent out next season under Captain Scroggs, but without being able to learn any tidings of them; and it was not till FIFTY YEARS afterward that the wrecks of their armament were found on Marble Island. The Merchant Adventurers, undismayed by this signal failure, sent out another expedition the ensuing summer. Entering Hudson's Bay at a higher latitude, this expedition sailed up the broad expanse, afterward called Fox's Channel; but foiled by the coast of Southampton Island, which seemed to preclude any prospect of an opening to the westward, the commander, Bylot, returned home, to be sent out again the following year in the company of Baffin, with orders to push northward by Davis's Straits. This new direction given to the exploration was so far successful, in a geographical point of view, as to have led to the discovery of Baffin's Bay, and the exploration of a considerable portion of the coast of Western Greenland, as well as of the opposite shores. In 1619, Jans Munk, sent out on a voyage of discovery by Christian IV. of Denmark, reached Hudson's Bay, and was frozen with his crew in Chesterfield Inlet, and which might, with more propriety, be denominated Munk's. Although the expedition fell in at this point with abundance of game, bears, foxes, hares, partridges, ducks, and other wild fowl, famine and disease carried off numbers before the winter was over. By the next spring, indeed, only Munk and two of his crew remained alive among the dead bodies of forty-nine comrades, who lay unburied around! The three survivors succeeded in reaching home after dreadful hardships and sufferings; but the fate of that expedition, and the horrible scene enacted in that fatal inlet, has never been equaled in even The land journeys of Hearne and Mackenthe fearful catalogue of calamity which the zie to the northern extremity of America asannals of the early northern navigation pre-sisted in keeping alive curiosity. The former sent to the pitying reader. In 1630, eight British seamen wrecked on the coast of Spitzbergen, and left without any resources but those which were supplied by their own ingenuity, survived to be restored to their friends and country the ensuing summer; while in 1633, seven Dutch sailors left in Mayen's Island, provided with a hut and most things they required, perished of cold. VOL. XIX. NO. III. In 1741, an expedition under Captain Middleton explored the coast westward of Roe's Welcome, and after being disappointed at Repulse Bay of a passage westward, he was finally repelled at Frozen Straits. Captains Moor and Smith followed in 1746 upon the same tract, without adding to the discoveries of their predecessor. In 1776 the armed brig Lion was sent under Lieutenant Pickersgill, with the view of co-operating with Captain Cook, who, it was hoped, might make his way from Behring's Straits into the Atlantic, but it only reached a latitude of 68 deg. The same vessel was sent out again the next year under Lieutenant Young, but with little better success, having reached a latitude of 72 deg. succeeded in reaching the mouth of the Coppermine River and the shores of the Northern Sea, and the latter also reached the same sea in nearly the same latitude, and about 20 deg. to the westward of the mouth of Hearne's River. It appeared almost certain from these discoveries, as has since been determined by Franklin, Richardson, Simpson, and others, that an ocean extended from 27 |