and to his energy, persverance, and bravery the final deliverance of the whole party is mainly due. The much-needed supply of food reached Fort Enterprise on the 7th of November, and on the 16th they had so far recovered as to be able to push on for Fort Providence, at which point they were kindly received by the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company, and where they had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Back. Here they remained for five months, awaiting the coming of the spring to return home, which they did in October, 1822, having travelled in America, by land and water, including the Arctic sea voyage, a distance of 5,550 miles. The explorers were everywhere received with feelings of pride and thankfulness, and Dr. Richardson spent some happy years in the enjoyment of home affections and public respect.

elled 1,350 miles. Here Dr. Richardson | they found neither food nor Indians before learned that his father had died, and in a them. A note from Back informed his comletter to his mother he gives expression to mander that he had gone to seek the Indians, his feelings in language full of affection, resignation, and piety. After wintering at Fort Enterprise the party set out on June 4, 1821, for the Coppermine river and the sea, accompanied by some Canadian voyageurs. On the 21st of July they commenced their voyage in two canoes on the Arctic sea, and continued it till the 16th of August, having sailed over 555 geographical miles. Reaching Point Turnagain, they felt that to proceed any farther would be to risk the loss of the whole Expedition. On the return they encountered cold, famine, and fatigue. Mr. Hood was unable to direct the way, Franklin was in the rear, and Richardson took the lead, Back being in advance with the hunters trying to obtain game. The men in charge of the canoe were unable or unwilling to carry it any farther, and when they struck on the banks of the Coppermine, they were without the means of recrossing it. Several days were spent in constructing a raft, and as they were without any appliances for impelling it to the opposite bank against the wind, Richardson volunteered to swim across the stream with a line and haul the raft over. Benumbed by cold he sank in the river and was drawn back in an insensible state, from which he recovered by being wrapped up in blankets and placed before a fire of willows. At length the party crossed the river one by one in a little canoe formed of willows and covered with tent canvas. Back was immediately sent forward to Fort Enterprise with the strongest of the Canadians, to search for the Indians, and to send back aid. Mr. Hood was too feeble to keep pace with the others, and Dr. Richardson, and Hepburn, an old Orkney sailor, resolved to remain with him. The terrible sufferings endured by this small party, the murder of Mr. Hood by the Iroquois Michel who had come back from the party under Franklin, and the shooting of him in return by Dr. Richardson, having been already recorded in Dr. Richardson's journal, published in the Narrative of the First Overland Journey,' it is unnecessary to repeat the story here, though it is the most interesting portion of the volume. In after life Dr. Richardson appears to have been unwilling to recur to the circumstances under which he felt it necessary to deprive a fellow-creature of life, although he has detailed them at great length in his journal.

Weary and starving, Franklin and his companions arrived at Fort Enterprise, but

The second expedition to the North, of which Franklin was also the chief and Dr. Richardson the surgeon, set sail from Liverpool on February 12, 1825, and returned to the same port in September, 1827, after an absence of two years, seven months and a half. Happily the party encountered 'none of those terrible trials that they experienced during the first Expedition. In 1831 Dr. Richardson lost his wife, and in 1832, when fears began to exist about the safety of the expedition under Captain Ross, we find him urging the Admiralty to fit out a searching party, but in vain. He now applied himself with energy to his duties of surgeon to Melville Hospital, and in 1833 he married his second wife, Miss Booth, a niece of Franklin. On her recovery from a long illness after the birth of her first child, he writes, "I am so well and happy I can scarcely help jumping for joy." She died, however, in 1845, and two years after Dr. now Sir John, Richardson married his third partner, a Miss Fletcher, of Edinburgh. In the early part of 1847, anxiety began to be felt for the safety of Sir John Franklin's Expedition in the Erebus and Terror. Whilst a guest with Lady Richardson at the house of Lady Franklin in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, he received a note from the Admiralty, dated February 21st, informing him that up to September 27, 1847, no intelligence of Franklin's Expedition had reached the Sandwich Islands, and that all hope of tidings of the missing ships by way of the Pacific had come to an end. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Fletcher, was also in London at this time, and her journal contains the following entry:

"We dined with Lady Franklin on February | debted for extending our knowledge of 24, to meet the Richardsons who were staying the physical geography, the Flora and with her. A larger party assembled in the Fauna, of British America. Up to the evening, among whom was Thomas Carlyle, very close of his life he was engaged on whom we were glad to meet again. He was sit- some useful work. His end was sudden ting close by me, and chatting pleasantly, when Dr. Boott came into the room and advanced to- of June, 1865, and is thus described by his and unexpected. It took place on the 5th wards me, with even more than usual brightness biographer:

22

in his fine countenance, saying, "Louis Philippe has fled, and France has declared herself a Republic. There was a dead silence. Carlyle threw himself back in his chair, clasped his hands, burst into a loud laugh, and left the room. We did not see him again. The rest of the party gathered round Dr. Boott to hear every particular which he had collected from the evening papers."

On the 26th March, 1848, Sir J. Richardson started from Liverpool in search of Franklin. He associated with him in this expedition Dr. Rae, who afterwards succeeded in discovering those relics of the Franklin Expedition, which left no doubt of its unfortunate and tragic fate. The winter of 1848 was spent at Fort Confidence, in the neighbourhood of the Hare Indians, the Dog Ribs, and the Copper Indians. The following extract from a letter written in this remote region of frost and snow strangely connects Fort Confidence with Kennington Common and the EXAMI

NER:

"My latest English news left you in London, on the eve of the threatened meeting on Kennington Common. I trust that it was not held, and that no riots ensued. By the return of the messenger who takes this to Fort Simpson (only twenty-five days' march off, and we look for him, therefore, in six weeks after he leaves us), I hope to hear that you travelled safely and comfortably to Lancrigg, and that Mary, with her charge, speedily followed; that you enjoy yourExaminer' as you inhale the balmy air flowing through the open window into the pleasantest of drawing-rooms, and discuss the revolutions of Europe, as is your wont, with all the freshness of youthful hope."

After an absence of nineteen months Sir J. Richardson returned to England, and received a letter from the Admiralty expressing approbation of his conduct. He could obtain no traces of the Erebus and Terror, but he had the satisfaction of having done his duty, and of leaving the search in the hands of the man who succeeded in establishing the fact of Sir John Franklin's death.

Monday, June 5, was a lovely soft June day, and Sir John spent the forenoon in quietly superintending some work in the garden. After luncheon, he and Lady Richardson drove to Ambleside and Rydal, making their first call at Dr. Davy's and last at Fox How, where they remained for some time, as Mrs. Arnold was about to go from home. Looking out on the lovely scenery, in its fresh June beauty, Sir John remarked that he wondered they could

leave it.

In the evening, he worked an hour or two at Wickliffe, and at ten o'clock read, at family worship, the seventh chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. He then stood for a short time at the window, and said, "We shall have the moon full, in our drive to Ambleside on Wednesday," kissed his daughter and wished her good night, took from the table King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of the History of the World by Orosius," lighted his candle and walked off with a firm step, which sounded along the passage as that About of a man in the full vigour of life. eleven o'clock, Lady Richardson went up-stairs. He was still awake, and spoke of his plans for the next day. A long suspiration followed, and he passed through death to life.

Thus calmly ended a life of almost unexampled activity and usefulness, uprightness, and humble faith. Of him, it may be said, "Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended."

From The Spectator.

ALEXANDER SMITH.*

IN the very fresh and genial memoir prefixed to this collection of posthumous pieces, Mr. Alexander draws with much skill the picture of a man whose sense of the fitness of things seemed latterly to operate as a fatal hindrance to the production of poetry worthy to live, whose exquisite social qualities, passive though they were, made everybody who knew him forget entirely his pretensions to the laurel, and who really might have done greater things if he had been a sourer-tempered fellow. It will astonish

The latter portion of Sir J. Richardson's life was devoted to excursions in his native Scotland, to a visit to Italy, and to a pretty constant attendance at the meetings of the exander Smith, author of A Life Drama. Edited, with a Memoir, by P. P. Alexander, M. A., Author British Association. To him we are in-of Mill and Carlyle, &c. Edinburgh: Nimmo.

*Last Leaves. Sketches and Criticisms. By Al

66

many people to hear this description of one otherwise known to them as the leading scholar of what is now universally known as the "spasmodic" school of poetry. Smith Perhaps the clue to the puzzle is physiwas the very converse of the hero of the ological. It is carefully noted that Smith's Life Drama. He took no eagle flights sun- forehead indicated an extraordinary mass ward, croaking hoarsely of gods and fame. of brain, and the frequent flashes of real He disputed with no man on subjects con- genius betokened how much that brain could nected with the universe generally. He have effected, had the proper natural stimupreferred Nature's domestic aspect to her lus been supplied by a more irritable set of volcanic one; he exhibited no fine frenzy nerves. It is one thing to say that a man is over wrong, social or political. His real lymphatic, as Smith was, another thing to "life drama," indeed, was a prosy after- say that he is happy-minded. The lymphatpiece, with here and there a sweet glimpse ic man, undemonstrative, acquiescent, torof nature; but chiefly got up, without new pid in feature, hides not seldom in his heart and startling scenery, by the aid of the old the restless flame of dissatisfaction and disstock interiors," or flats," representing ease, the more terribly fatal because it is so the conventional woodland. Amiable al-passive. In the story of Smith's life there most to a fault, Smith found it impossible to is a clear margin for bitterness. There was persevere in a literary manufacture which the sense of power, as well as the sense of he, perhaps, began under a mistaken notion inertia, the feeling that that large capacity, of his own sympathies; since throughout equal to so much, had become terribly at the his life he preferred Chaucer and the story-mercy of a temperament exhausted by so tellers to Shelley and the speculative inno- little. Everywhere in the later poems, but vators, Lamb and the essayists to Coleridge particularly in the little essays, we feel and the metaphysicians. At the age of through the mood of pleasant acquiescence thirty, when the poetic temperament should the breath of weariness, and even of pain. flash most deeply and brightly, he was noting his few grey hairs in the looking-glass, and sighing over lost illusions in the true spirit of paterfamilias. He ended as a writer of essays, very pleasant, very sleepy, full of the "cui bono?" and really admirable as expressing the mood of mind which takes Providence for granted, and is susceptible to no influence in particular.

All this is quite clear on Mr. Alexander's showing, and it is truly very touching, for although the excellent biographer pictures to us a thoroughly happy nature, a spirit quite without gall, a mind far too much at ease to care for speculation, we cannot think that this completes the portrait. Indeed, we have a hint of the truth in the following passage:

But the picture must not end even here. Had Smith been a little more above the urgent necessities of life, had he been freer to stimulate his faculties by physical means, not only might he have been with us now, but his voice might actually have reached the great poetic compass. We cordially agree with Mr. Alexander that he was shabbily and cruelly treated, particularly by those very people who were the first to run riot in sounding his praises, and the first to forsake him when the fit of applause was over; and, moreover, we quite endorse the remark that the change was totally unwarrantable on literary grounds, seeing that Smith's second book was an unmistakable advance upon his first- better in purpose, more coherent in execution, fuller of the right kind of promise. "Glasgow" is a true lyric, and there are descriptions in the

66

Boy's Poem" equal to anything of the sort in literature. Indeed, on dispassionately reperusing Smith's books, we find great oc

"When I knew him in his early days, an occasional mood of gloom and abstraction might be noted in him, and half suspecting him at times of doing the Author of the Life Drama' upon us, I took the liberty to quiz him accord-casion for regret that the writer's poetic ingly when we had become sufficiently intimate. career was virtually terminated so soon. (I need not say how completely, on farther ac- There is, without original conception, a quaintance, I acquitted him of any such affecta- marked manner, which would have grown tion.) In his later time, these moods slight and more and more fascinating as the life-mood transient as they were, had quite disappeared, and his was eminently and at all times a cheery deepened, and really did grow to some presence; though, by nature au fond, I should extent, if we are to judge by the little suppose him to have been always a somewhat brooding, meditative, and sad man. This only revealed itself, however, in the pleasant reaction and protest of humour, which was one of the ruling qualities of his mind, and, had he lived,

66

Spring Chanson," now first printed, which is clear, sweet, and beautiful, quite the finest thing Smith ever wrote.

As for that question of plagiarism, revived with some excusable bitterness by

would probably more and more have announced itself dominant."

Mr. Alexander, it is of total insignificance, | clad in perpetual verdure, and the walrus dis-
except as exhibiting the danger of consult-ported in the flowery meads, and tropical mon-
ing the general public on a question of ar- keys gambolled in the snows, or Mr. Sumner
tistic workmanship. A rival bard thought grew eloquent over the Sitkan codfish, and the
fit to make out a list of petty larcenies lettuce and chicory of Aliaska, no more beauti-
against Smith, and to take the public ver- than the lovely piece which Admiral Porter has
ful pastoral poem has been given to the world
dict on the matter, quite certain, of course, just written about St. Thomas. While so many
that the public in its ignorance could be of his gallant shipmates are forced to leave their
hoodwinked on this subject as easily as a sweet pastures and domestic joys, and are tossed
mixed jury on any difficult point of equity. about by raging seas, caught up by whirlwinds,
The mean charge was dismissed by the com- hurled through the angry air, wrecked and
petent, but swallowed holus-bolus by a mass drowned in Mr. Seward's chosen harbour of
of readers; and the injury to Smith's repu- refuge itself, the gallant Admiral, recumbent
tation was enormous.
It is too late for re- 'neath the shade of the United States Naval
gret now, but the "gentleman" who did Academy, like a seafaring Tityrus, pipes his
this business has possibly had much to do rustic lay. His song begins in the stately strain
in shortening the poet's days. The sudden of a gazetteer, but the fire of inspiration soon
and cruel change of opinion must have cut kindles in his veins; the movement quickens;
deep, though no wound was shown, and the impetuous numbers flow headlong forth,
disgust supervening, possibly confirmed the knocking each other into all sorts of corners, and
lymphatic habit into fatal reticence. While filling the brain with bewildering visions of
freely admitting that Smith's first book was docks, steamboats, bananas, rum punch, forti-
waving palms, yellow-haired mermaids, dry-
assimilative to a degree almost unwarranta- fications, trade winds, parrots, Parrott guns,
ble, we find no ground even there for the plantations, and coal-yards. Regarded simply
accusation of deliberate manufacture, and as a terrestrial paradise, the island of St. Thom-
every ground for the belief that the writer as is considerably ahead of the Garden of Eden,
would develop (as he really did within limi- while as a naval station it is immeasurably
tations) into a minor poet. In fact, all this superior to any seaport since Tyre and Sidon.
story of Smith's poetic career reads very Beside the charms of its tropical scenery, it has
badly indeed, and gives us new occasion to the additional advantage of being inhabited by a
look with pity and fear on the sunniest pub- colony of prosperous marine-store dealers. It
lic favourite.
has three or more harbours, each one of which

is better than any of the others. It is "an en-
chanting place to cruise in," especially during a
hurricane. There are shops where you can buy
things. It is a good naval station. Up on the
hill there are nice little cottages, and everybody
who is rich enough buys one of them. They do
this because it is too hot to live anywhere else.
The island is surrounded by reefs and breakers.
All the shopkeepers' clerks are negroes. St.
Thomas is a good naval station. Strangers al-
ways have capital fun when they go there. The
Government is strictly republican in form, and
closely resembles our own, all the officers, except
two or three, being appointed by the King of
Denmark. The most beautiful sight in the
world is the town and harbour of St. Thomas,
seen from the hill above it. Also the most beau-
of St. Thomas viewed from the sea.
tiful sight in the world is the town and harbour
You can
take in coal there very rapidly. Another ad-
vantage is that if a hostile army should land on
the island they would immediately starve to
death, there being no food and very little water.
The inhabitants exercise a princely hospitality,
and make up for the want of water by a liberal
use of other beverages. If we bought the prop-
erty we should have a rare opportunity of build-
ing forts, docks, coal-sheds, and navy-yards,
there being no improvements whatever upon the
estate. Thus St. Thomas would become the
paradise of contractors, as it is already of ship-
chandlers and dealers in second-hand clothing

/

As for the Last Leaves, they are well worth reading; but the best thing in the book is the memoirs. Mr. Alexander has acquitted himself to admiration of the most difficult and delicate of tasks,-that of writing simply and kindly the biography of a personal friend, and his work will be appreciated best by those who have made similar attempts, or contemplated most critically the innumerable inflated "memoirs" and priggish" biographies" which swarm in literature. In a style easy and colloquial, indeed almost loose, he discusses his theme, and in no instance exceeds or falls short of his duty in his peculiar position as friend and biographer. He has already done well in his own person, as the facetious critic of Mill and imitator of Carlyle, and we are now shown that he can be generous as well as ingenious, tender as well as witty.

PORTER'S PASTORAL.

We find in an English paper the following lively piece :

SINCE Mr. Seward, when the Russian treaty was under discussion, described the Rosy Polar Arcadia, where the slopes of the icebergs were

and dirk-knives. Moreover, it is a good naval | America vindicates her claim not only to possess station. It would make a delightful watering- the best Government, but to produce the best place. New York merchants might send their Government poetry out of the worst material of families there in the summer, and run down any nation on the earth. Mr. Seward found every Saturday afternoon for their Sunday holi- beauty in the polar bear; Mr. Sumner drew inday. The healthiness of the place, the poet con- spiration from train oil, pine trees, and cannifesses, is "doubtful; " but it is a singular fact bals; and now, amid the rumble of earthquakes, that, however deadly the climate may be to other the bellowing of volcanoes, the shriek of the people, it invariably spares citizens (native or whirlwind, the crash of timbers, and the roar naturalized) of the United States; and any man of the angry waters, our sentimental sailor pipes who has been registered as a voter in any part his pastoral notes on a boatswain's whistle, and of the Union may go to St. Thomas not only makes us a most elegant Hittle song out of the without fear of getting sick, but with a certain uproar of the warring elements. We have never prospect of being cured of any ailments he may seen the equal of this achievement, except, perhave had beforehand. The epidemics to which haps, now and then at the theatres, where, when the natives are subject are attributed to the the thunder has rolled, and the red and blue evaporation of English coal. But if we went lightning flashed, and devils come up out of the there we should have American coal, which is deep, and gone down again with their victims not in the habit of evaporating. There is a hill into yawning abysses, and everything for a while from which one gets a very pretty view of ships been one demnition crash and bang, and hullapassing through the Anegada passage. The baloo, the canvas has rolled away and a flood of land scenery would be fine, only, unfortunately, rosy light been poured upon the grand trans all the trees have been cut down; but there are formation scene, where all the fairies appear cactuses and prickly pears, and many other crowned with glory, and fountains trickle, and funny plants, which are very amusing to look the rouge, and the tinsel, and the sawdust at. Finally, it is a good naval station. calves, and the pink tights are wrapped in heavenly halo, and the virtuous young shepherd goes up into the flies with a smile of bliss, for all the world like Admiral Porter.

So the gallant commander sings away, and the little midshipmen, we suppose, sit in order round, and listen to his flowery verse. And so

THE" EDINBURGH REVIEW " ON THE BIBLE. The Edinburgh Review, referring to the space which the Bible occupies in the history of literature, says: "We see nothing like it, and it may well perplex the infidel to account for it; nor need his sagacity disdain to enter a little more deeply into its possible causes than he is usually inclined to do. It has not been given to any other book of religion thus to triumph over national prejudices, and lodge itself securely in the heart of great communities, varying by every conceivable diversity of language, race, manners, customs, and indeed agreeing in nothing but a veneration for itself. It adapts itself with facility to the revolutions of thought and feeling which shake to pieces all things else, and flexibly accommodates itself to the progress of society and the changes of civilization. Even conquests-the disorganization of old nations, the formation of new- do not affect the continuity of its empire. It lays hold of the new as of the old, and transmigrates with the spirit of humanity, attracting to itself by its own moral power in all the communities it enters a ceaseless intensity of effort for its propagation, illustration, and defence. Other systems of religion are usually delicate exotics, and will not bear transplanting; but if the Bible be false, the facility with which it overleaps the otherwise impassable boundaries of race and clime, and domiciliates itself among so many different nations, is assuredly a far more striking and wonderful proof of human ignorance, perverseness, and stupidity than is afforded in the limited preva

lence of even the most abject superstitions; or if it really has merits which, though a fable, have enabled it to impose so comprehensively and variously on mankind, wonderful indeed must have been the skill in its composition, so wonderful that even the infidel himself ought never to regard it but with the profoundest reverence, as far too successful and sublime a fabrication to admit a thought of scoff and ridicule."

UTILIZATION OF COKE OVEN GASES.-Probably the first attempt to utilize the gases given off in the process of coking has been made at the works of Messrs. Carver & Co., of St. Etienne. The gases are collected, says the Mining Journal, and drawn off through pipes and cooled, when the tar ammoniacal liquids, &c., are condensed. From these condensed liquids benzine, napthalire, sulphate of ammonia, artificial manures, and a number of dye-stuffs, are made. The gas remaining after condensation of the liquids, which is, of course, ordinary illuminating gas, can be used in the usual manner. It is estimated that in France alone no less than 4,000,000 tons of coal are annually coked, and it has been proved that Messrs. Carver's process is capable of giving a profit of nearly 2s. upon every ton of coal treated. A more conclusive evidence of the advantage resulting from that sound, technical education so readily obtainable on the Continent could scarcely be desired.