fixed base of supply for their volume. The reader must for himself judge how far they are capable of unsealing the ices of the Arctic and Antarctic Seas, and clearing a path through the crystal solid to the goal of the geographer. But what if the base of these potential masses which move into the Polar Basin be advanced toward the Pole through an arc of twenty degrees of latitude? Suppose the equatorial currents should shift their position toward the north as much as twelve hundred or fourteen hundred miles, how would this affect the thermometric gateways? Evidently they would have far less space and time to spread out their volume and radiate their heat, before washing up into the Arctic Sea itself. Judging by the velocity of the Gulf Stream and Kuro Siwo, they would, in such a case as we have supposed, be shortened, in their course to the Pole, at least thirty days. The difficulty of preserving their tropical heat of course diminishes as the time of flow diminishes. Now this advancement of the base of supply for these hot currents is just what annually takes place. In a word, the mathematical equator and the thermal equator are only twice in the year the same line. The latter is thrown to the north at least twelve hundred miles. As it is thrown northward, the trade-wind zone is moved with it. The trade-winds, however, set in motion the equatorial currents of the Pacific and Atlantic. These mighty masses, flowing to the west, have their northern banks transported over twelve hundred miles nearer the Pole! And it follows that the Kuro Siwo and the Gulf Current of the Atlantic are thus and then, once every year, pushed and pressed the same distance nearer the Polar Basin.

Such are some of the chief facts and principles of physical geography which underlie the final solution of the polar problem, a problem that has cost the world more than any or all beside.

There is reason to hope much from the American Arctic Expedition. It

will not sail too late in the season, if we are guided by the judgment of old polar navigators.

The detachment of ice masses and their dangerous presence in the frozen ocean doubtless will continue till late in July. During the early summer the diffusion of fresh water from the melting snow over the surface of the Polar Sea would seriously obscure the presence of the warm current, and render its movement less discernible by the thermometer.

"The months of August and September," says Lambert, “are, I believe, the best for explorations along the coasts of the Arctic Ocean. Whalers have pushed to the east of Point Barrow, and taken whales until the 15th of September, without seeing ice from the north, and I have seen whales taken as late as October 12th under the 71° of latitude." Captain Bent also, in a late note to the writer, observes: "Were it not for the absence of daylight, I should recommend midwinter for the experiment, not only on account of the lessened chance of meeting floating ice at that season, but also from the fact that less dissolution of ice is taking place then; and the thermal difference between the waters of the warm stream and those of the counter-currents being greater in winter than in summer, the former (or warm currents) could be more easily traced then than they probably can at other seasons."

That the method of testing this theory is not an experiment we have a guaranty in the fact of its coming from a skilful and trusty seaman.

How far the thermometer avails as a practical guide at sea is beautifully suggested by Humboldt. Sand-banks and shoals, he says, may be recognized by the coolness of the waters over them. By his observations, Franklin converted the thermometer into a sounding-line. Mists are frequently over these depths, owing to the condensation of the vapor of the cooled waters. I have seen such mists in the south of Jamaica, and also in the Pacific, defin

ing with a sharpness and clearness the form of the shoals below them, appearing to the eye as the aerial reflection of the bottom of the sea. In the open sea, far from land, and when the air is calm, clouds are often observed to rest over spots where shoals are situated,

and their bearings may be taken in the same manner as that of a high mountain or isolated peak.

The new expedition will be conducted in the interests of geographical science. We shall look for rich results. T. B. Maury.

The New Timothy. By Wм. M. BAKER. New York: Harper and Brothers.

MR. BAKER has already made himself favorably known by his story of the secession days in the South, which he called, not very attractively, "Inside," and he has an almost unique combination of qualities for the achievement of popularity, in his very evident power as a literary artist, and his very strong and explicit religious orthodoxy. Of course it may be doubted whether novelists should be a source of pride to any sect; yet we suspect that none are loath to see their religious opinions arrayed in the pretty and effective garb of romance. The Devil, who once had all the good tunes, has been obliged to give some of them up, as everybody knows who listens to the lively yet sacred marches and quicksteps played nowadays in the churches; and the enemy of souls is quite likely to be made to relax his monopoly of the best stories, though here, we must say, he shows the strongest fight.

However this may be, it is quite certain that Mr. Baker, who is an earnest and active clergyman of the evangelical persuasion, is also a clever and amusing writer, with an eye for character which would be notable in one of the wicked. In "The New Timothy," as in his former novel, he has laid the scene in the Southwest, where, in creed at least, there is far more Puritanism than could have been found in New England any time during the last fifty years. Those rude backwoodsmen and patriarchal planters, and those slaveholding village bankers and lawyers, when they got religion, got religion of the old kind, and had no doubts about it after they had got it. But they got it in no cold-blooded way, out of books; it was

preached into them by very ferven' apostles, - men of their own experiences, sympathies, and prejudices. Their religion did not make them Abolitionists, but it did make them vastly better men than they would otherwise have been; and at the worst, it was one of the most interesting and pictu resque phases of their life.

Mr. Baker's story is that of a young clergyman, who comes from a seminary to the charge of a Southwestern cure of souls, himself a Southwesterner, but refined and enfeebled by his college life. He is no great figure, either before or after his selfemancipation from seminary traditions, and his encounter of the local sinners upon their own plane of sentiment; and neither are any of the young gentlemen and ladies of the story remarkable, least of all that young lady with the intolerable name of John. But all the rude and bad people are new and charming. So good society as the Meggar family we have not seen, in a novel, for a long time; and the hunter, Brown Bob Long, is a convert of a sort not to make us sorry that he is saved.

Mr. Wall, the minister, goes, by Long's advice, upon a bear-hunt with the Meggar family, and by rashness and good luck kills the bear. This feat so far raises him in their opinion, that it is possible to let them know who he is; and the bear-hunt is finally blest to the conversion of all the Meggar boys, the mother being already a “professor." We cannot give a clearer idea of the Meggar family, or a better proof of Mr. Baker's almost singular power of faithfully reproducing such character, than by some passages descriptive of Mr. Wall's arrival on a Sunday at their cabin: —

"The road before the cabins has evidently been for years the gathering-place of cat

voice to the men at the fence), 'hev you an' Jake left enny o' that whiskey? Not a single drop?' (In a lowered growl) — ' Of course not. You'll hev to wait a little, sir. Boy's gone to cross-roads for more, and I'll lamm him when he gets here! A-prayin'! Ez if Almighty ever comes in rifleshot o' the place!' and the oaths and tobacco-juice and hospitable attentions to his guest flowed on, mingled with unspeakable contempt at the conduct of his wife, praying behind the butter-beans.

666

'And what might your name be, stranger?' he asks at last.

"Charles Wall,' replies the visitor, suddenly and stoutly, but with a terror down his very spine. He need not have feared. Old Man Meggar knows nothing of him or of any other of his class!

"And your name is Meggar,' he continued, in the same breath. 'Meggar, Meggar; I don't remember ever meeting with any of that name before.'

"A few of the men have torn themselves from the horse, and are lounging about the speaker. His remark brings out from all an instant, unanimous, uproarious shout of laughter.

I

“Well, you see,' said his host, wiping with his yellow sleeve his watery eyes, and leering upon his guest like a decrepit satyr, - 'you see, I'm the child of misfortin. did n't happen to hev any father, 'cept my mother. Her name was Meg, - Meg something or other; I don't rightly mind what; don't matter. I s'pose people that knew my mother, seein' me a little shaver toddlin' about, 'd say, "Hello, little Meggar!" and it come that way. Can't say who begun it. Anyhow, Meggar's my name. No, you never heern tell of the name before, I suppose !'

"And he led off again in a peal of that particularly filthy kind of laughter which indicates the nature of the joke starting it."

Next to these Meggars and Bob Long, we suppose the best pieces of characterpainting are General Likens, and Mrs. General Likens, the former silent as the latter is talkative. Her talk is all excellent, and as natural as the General's silence. They are simply religious planter-folk, Virginians by birth, and with apparently only the thoughts

and opinions of their class; but it is in skilful characterization of them both that Mrs. Likens is made to say after the General's death:

"But there's one thing I must tell you, child,' she adds, after quite a silence. 'I've wanted to do it for months, have started to do it a dozen times, but it was too awful. We are alone now,' adds the old lady, lowering her voice and rising to see that the door of their chamber is shut, for it is as they are about lying down at night. 'I shudder to tell even you. It never happened to the General, in full at least, till after that awful night Uncle Simeon raved -you remember it — about blood and burnin'. It would n't then, only the General's understanding had grown weak-like in that matter before. I know you won't breathe it to a soul. It would kill me dead if I thought people dreamed of a syllable of it. It would blacken the General's name forever, because people could n't understand he was out o' his head when he thought it, as I could. It was part of the disease that killed him, he was so perfectly sensible 'cept in that. An' it act'ly reconciled me to his death some, I'd all the time such a deathly terror he might let it out; you see it was growin' on him. He thought slavery the ownin' our own black ones wrong thing, almost a sin!' added Mrs. General Likens, her lips to John's ear, and in accents of horror. 'It's weighed on my mind dreadful! He was crazy, an' could n't help it, you know.'

- was a

"As they endeavored to compose themselves to sleep, exhausted by this fearful revelation, Mrs. General Likens added: 'I'm afraid you won't be able to sleep a wink tonight thinkin' of it, but I had to tell you. He was deranged, you know, not responsible like; an' it nigh drove me crazy, too, to think of it. But try an' go to sleep if you I feel very tired to-night.''

can.

How very effectively this indicates a whole condition of things now passed away forever! There is little else about slavery in the book, that is to say, it appears only for artistic purposes, and seldom even for these.

No one has made better pictures of Southern country and village life than these, and only. Major De Forrest has equalled them. As a story, "The New Timothy" is not much, but as a study of life little known to literature, it is most successful and commendable.

An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Colonel James Smith, during his Captivity with the Indians, in the Years 1755, '56, '57, '58, and '59. With an Appendix of Illustrative Notes. By Wм. M. DARLINGTON, of Pittsburg. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

Pioneer Life in Kentucky. A Series of Reminiscential Letters from Daniel Drake, M. D., of Cincinnati, to his Children. Edited with Notes and a Biographical Sketch by his Son, CHARLES D. DRAKE. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

NONE of the Ohio Valley Series, as we think, are more attractive than these volumes, the latest published of that admirable collection. The first is a reprint of one of those rare old books, like Bouquet's Expedition, with which the publishers are enriching the series; and the last is among the most interesting of the original works relative to early Western history. Dr. Drake was a man who while he lived was a large part of all literary and scientific progress in the West, and who left behind him a repute for public usefulness and private worth which his own section may well cherish with pride, and which we may all gladly recognize. He was a very remarkable man in every way, for what he was, and for what he did; and the story of his boyhood in the backwoods of Kentucky, as told here, is one of the best witnesses to the fact that, whatever refinement may be, fineness is as directly the gift of Heaven as any positive ability. Civilization, you must own as you read, was born in this man; by nature he hated whatever was rude and cruel and impure, and loved justice and beauty. He was not a man of genius, it would seem, but of sensibility and conscience and modesty; not smart, in the pitiable, bad way of many of our growths "from the people," but talented, tasteful, industrious, honest.

He came of stock partly Quaker; and when he was a child, his father removed with his family from his native State of New Jersey to the wilds of Kentucky, and after the fashion of that day hewed out a farm from the heart of the unbroken forest. The family life in the log-cabin there is what Dr. Drake has portrayed in these letters to his children, with winning simplicity and familiarity of style, and in a clear, objective light, such as only the vast and striking changes of American history would enable

one to throw upon his own past. The spirit of his letters is not the least delightful thing about them. He confesses to far more of an old man's garrulity than he ever indulges, and he owns and pleasantly laughs down a predilection for magniloquence, which he traces to an early revolt from the vulgarity and coarseness of the ordinary backwoods speech. Yet this man, so admirably conscious, not only as to himself, but as to the real character and effect of the pioneer life which he fondly depicts, had little or no schooling, save such as he could give himself, up to the age when he quitted the drudgery of the farm for the severe study of his profession. He shows himself quick to the grand and beautiful aspects of the wilderness, yet he does not fail to acknowledge, even while regretting these, its terrible hardships, its heart-breaking loneliness, its almost inevitable barbarity. The passages in which he touches upon the character of his mother, her life of ceaseless care and labor, and her capacity for better things, are very affecting; and we learn also to honor her and her husband, with their excellent morality, their religiousness, their sense of justice, and their abhorrence of slavery, which early made its hideousness known on the frontiers. It is women who suffer most in all the adventures and enterprises of men, and the greater burden of exile and solitude fell upon the mother in this case; but the full sense of this is so cumulative, and so little dependent on detachable passages, that the reader must go to the book itself for it.

The letters of Dr. Drake are not merely personal reminiscences, but faithful pictures of local manners and customs. We cannot advise any to turn to them for the realization of romantic ideas of the pioneers; but they are very interesting reading, and very instructive; they form part of our own history, which daily grows more venerable and precious; and we most heartily commend the volume, not only to collectors of such material, but to the average reader, as something very apt for his entertainment and then for his use. The biographical sketch by Mr. Charles D. Drake is satisfactory, and the preface a singularly sensible piece of writing.

Dr. Drake's boyhood was passed in that period just before backwoods life ceased to be a general condition. The Indian wars were ending in the West, the West of that day, which is now pretty far eastward, -and the Americans were in full and un