opinion among the Bering Island Aleuts | other hand, not having reached its full that an early departure portends a severe size, has also not reached its full value. It winter, while on the other hand, if the an- is evident, then, since the slaughter of the imals remain beyond the usual time, a cows would be manifestly an unwise promore open season will be experienced. ceeding, that the males between the ages of two and five years should alone be killed, if it be desired to keep the rookeries undiminished in numbers and to obtain the best commercial results. This system, with still further limitations, is that adopted. The holluschack has uncon

Both on land and in the water it is with the fore limb that the seal progresses. When swimming, steering only is managed by the long hind flippers, which bear a singularly close resemblance, both in texture and appearance, to a lady's long blackkid glove. The animals seem to take par-sciously lent himself to its furtherance. ticular care of these appendages, either keeping them straight out at the side, or lifting them up in ridiculous manner when walking. The gait is awkward, making the creature appear as if partly paralyzed, a step or two being first taken with the fore limb and the hind-quarters then approximated by an arching of the spine, the method of progression thus resembling that of a 'geometer' caterpillar. Although slow, the seal can cover a good deal of ground and is often found at some distance from the sea. He is, moreover, a very passable climber, ascending rocks and cliffs which those unaccustomed to his habits would deem quite beyond the range of his powers. All, adults and young, are very sensitive to atmospheric changes. Their ideal weather is certainly not ours. A cold, raw fog is most appreciated, and sun, warmth, and clear skies drive them at once into the sea.

There is probably not another instance in the animal world in which the male differs so strikingly from the female as in the case of Callorhinus. Up to the age of three years they are alike in size, but after that period, while the female ceases to grow, the bull increases from year to year in size and fatness until he becomes gigantic. Thus, according to Mr. Elliott, the weight of a three-year-old male is about ninety pounds and its length about four feet, but an old bull would weigh six hundred pounds and measure seven feet. Enormous masses of fat load his chest and shoulders, and the increase in bulk renders him unwieldy and unable to get about like a holluschack. It is these old warriors, nevertheless, who get the best places in the rookery, where weight rather than agility wins the day. Taking the average weight of a female as ninety or one hundred pounds their consorts when arrived at full growth may be said to be just six times their size!

When the seal has reached its sixth year the fur it yields is much deteriorated in quality. Still older, it is practically worthless. The skin of the pup, on the

It

The playgrounds, being distinct and sepa-
rate, not only permit of his being driven
off comfortably to the slaughter without
any difficulties of separation from others
of different sex or age, but also obviate
the necessity of disturbing the breeding-
grounds, which are seldom penetrated even
by the officials. When therefore a "drive"
is resolved on, two or three natives run
in between the holluschicki and the sea
and herd them landwards, an operation
which with these slow-moving animals is
easily affected. As many as it is desired
to kill are then separated, and the march
to the place of execution commences.
is fittingly funereal in pace, for, if over-
driven, the animals not only die on the
road, but the quality of the fur in the sur-
vivors is spoiled. Even at the rate of half
a mile an hour many are compelled to fall
out of the ranks. No difficulty is experi
enced, and with a man or two on either
flank and in rear, the seals are herded
with far less trouble than a flock of sheep.
In some instances the killing-grounds
are at a considerable distance from the
rookery, in others they are quite near.
Strange to say, the proximity of thou-
sands of putrefying carcases of their kind
does not seem in any way to affect the sur-
vivors.

Arrived on the ground, the animals are left a while to rest and get cool, and are then separated out in small batches to be killed. A staff between five and six feet in length, with a knob at the end, weighted with lead, is used in the operation. The animal is struck on the head, and a knife thrust into the chest penetrates the heart or great vessels, and causes rapid death. Upon the subject of cruelty in the slaughter and skinning of the fur-seals much unnecessary ink has recently been shed. Whatever exists is neither more nor less than is perpetrated by English butchers in the course of their daily avocations. The skin is removed at once, and the carcase left to rot where it lies. In this way enor mous quantities of valuable oil are wasted. The animals killed are, without exception,

EOTHEN KINGLAKE.

males at the beginning of the third and | er's hold will be found on enquiry — of fourth years. the captain to have been killed on the. broad bosom of the Pacific.

write a book. And a friend of his added,
'he is wild about matters military, if so
calm a man is ever wild.' We all hope
that he may come home unscathed; that
no ill-natured fellow may say, 'Serve him
right for going at all."

Kinglake was in the Crimea at the above
date. He was with Lord Raglan's staff at
the storming of the heights of Alma. The
first sensation of being in battle he likened
to the excitement of fox-hunting; but in
far other terms he described the night
scene, when the din and turmoil of the
fight was over. He was amongst those
who carried succor to the wounded-
succor to friend and foe alike. on the
dead encumbered field, where many a
ghastly sight was seen under the dancing
lanterns borne by the searchers.

Kinglake's interest in military matters was indeed very genuine; it was a great disappointment to him in life that his extreme shortness of sight rendered him physically unfit for the profession which of all others he would have preferred. In the daily routine of conventional existence his nature became somnolent; it was probably the unconscious effort to escape from this deadening influence that sent him in early life to encounter the dangers and difficulties of Eastern travel, and again at intervals to Algeria and to the Crimea, that the blast of trumpets and the roll of drums might stir to action the frost-bound volcano of the soul within him.

or parodied. He was often at his best when two or three were gathered together, or long ago at his mother's dinnertable, when the world was younger, and before Louis Napoleon had found his chronicler.

Kinglake was only an intermittent talker in general society, for - rare habit even among the wisest of us. he never spoke unless he had something to say. Ye gods, what golden silence there would be if this were an abiding law in our hearts! Crabb Robinson averred that Kinglake sometime slept for a brief space, when his interest in the conversation flagged, much as he himself describes ministers doing at the celebrated Cabinet Council where peace and war were in the balance.

Mr. Grote was once heard to remark "that for a person of his reputation, Mr. Kinglake was the dullest man that he had ever met at a dinner-party." But then, as Sydney Smith said, "Mr. Grote was so ladylike." He was in fact, in his measured, courteous manner, the very type of that "utter respectability "which is railed against as soul-deadening and antipathetic to the natural man in the pages of "Eōthen." Kinglake, encased in his own formality, would doubtless have warmed towards "the gentlemanlike Mrs. Grote," who, with her robust language and trenchant remarks, never lost time over euphemisms, or cared to call a spade by any other name. Kinglake, by force of contrast, liked dash and vigor in a talking companion; he declared that his heart stopped if he was bored. A lady friend of his suggested that his pulse should be felt at dinner after the second entrée, and if not satisfactory he should be allowed to change places.

Mr. Kinglake's defective sight may in some degree be held responsible for the shyness and formality of his manners in general society. In person he was short and slight, with finely chiselled features and an intellectual brow; he had a singularly bloodless complexion, not the pallor Kinglake was certainly not in a state of of ill-health, but rather the grey whiteness boredom when he shrewdly observed, in of a two thousand years old Greek bust. speaking of the sage of Chelsea, whom he His cold, impressive manner, his slowness did not love, "Carlyle talks like Jeremiah ; of speech, and gentle voice, were strangely but so far from being a prophet, he is a at variance with the biting sarcasm that at bad Scotch joker," adding, "I believe he times fell from his lips. But his pen was knows himself to be a windbag." Kingever more virulent than his spoken word. lake was not in sympathy with German His hatred of wrong-doers was expressed modes of thought; his early prejudice with so much elaboration and reiteration against everything Teutonic was very that the tirade occasionally lost somewhat marked. He went so far as to say that he of the genuine force of spontaneity. In did not believe in any one succeeding in his happier moods of table talk, Kinglake life who took up strongly with the German would poise his epigrams with extraordinary deliberation. His wit had the charm of all true wit-unexpectedness; you felt that he said what no one. else would ever have thought of saying; therein was the quintessence of its flavor, a manner of thought and expression not to be imitated

language or its literature. Though far
from being a typical Englishman, he had
some amusing insular prejudices. One of
the few canons of his creed was
at least
he averred it was -a belief that if a French-
man behaved well, he would be rewarded
by finding himself born an Englishman in

a future life; and vice versâ, a badly con- | sedate friendships with the other sex ; his ducted Britisher would be degraded into life-long regard for Mrs. Proctor is an inbecoming French in his secondary stage stance. After his return from the East he of existence. read with her husband for the Chancery Bar; and in this way became acquainted with one of the cleverest, and at the same time one of the most sarcastic, women in London society. It was believed amongst his associates that Mrs. Proctor was · Our Lady of Bitterness," alluded to in the preface to “Eōthen." This preface, by the way, unlike most things of the kind, is excellent reading. Kinglake felt and believed in female influence; he used to say, "Men will never be made really religious till the Church establishes an order of Priestesses. Women have their spiritual pastors; a man should have his priestess his Egeria."

In describing "Marshall St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy," Kinglake says he was the impersonation of what our forefathers had in their minds when they spoke of "a Frenchman; " then follows, as every one will remember, the pitiless dissection of a character whose nearest approach to virtue was personal daring and unscrupulous ambition. Kinglake's bitter animosity against this soldier of France, may be explained by the fact that he had been with St. Arnaud in Algiers; had ridden with him in fellowship across the desert when the French forces were sent to punish the revolted tribes. The Englishman had cordially admired the handsome colonel, with his charming manner and eager style | of speech, little thinking that beneath that gay exterior and light-hearted vanity there lay concealed, in grave secrecy, the hellish purpose that doomed five hundred fugitives to a hideous death in the cave of Shelas. St. Arnaud's letter to his brother describes the event with unparalleled cynicism. He says:

I had all the apertures [of the cave] hermetically stopped up. I made one vast sepulchre. No one knew but myself that there were five hundred brigands therein. . . . Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste and nature. I have done my duty as a commander, and to-morrow I would do the same again.

The disgust and horror excited by this foul deed, executed in secrecy and cold blood, in close proximity to where he stood, as he (Kinglake) thought, on the field of a fair fight, made a deep and lasting impression on him; in truth it must be allowed to be the key-note of his detestation of the "brethren of the Elysée.'

Whether the time and manner of Kinglake's unsparing attack on the emperor of the French was well chosen or in good taste under the circumstances, may be questioned. Louis Napoleon is reported to have said on reading the volumes, in reference to the attack on himself, "c'est ignoble." History has had her final word since then and scored for Kinglake.

The quid nuncs who are always suspecting the "eternal feminine," declared that the historian had a grievance against Prince Louis that made his hatred a very personal matter indeed. Kinglake liked the society of clever women; the illogical vivacity of the female mind amused and excited him. He was capable of very

On being asked why he had never married, certainly being no woman hater, he replied, "Because he had observed that wives always preferred other men to their own husbands." Kinglake was chivalrous about ideal men and women; his imagination revelled in a picturesque glamor of things; but his fastidious nature would never have borne with equanimity the inevitable rubs of life in double harness.

The

Kinglake's fastidiousness moulded his manner into its ultimate form of literary presentment. His letters generally were wanting in the characteristic brilliancy of style that marked his finished work. Some men's letters, on the contrary, in their freshness and freedom, are better reading than their more labored productions. The proof-sheets of some portions of the "Invasion of the Crimea were a perfect marvel of elaborate and careful finish. The corrections and interpolations were endless. The writer was evidently a severe critic of his own work. balance of a sentence was very often rearranged, and other words and phrases substituted for those that stood in the first reading. The corrections were done with such consummate skill that you came to see it would not be possible to find language more terse, more lucid, or more appropriate than that of the final form adopted by Kinglake to express what he had to say. It is the old remark exemplieasy reading is hard writing. But with all its elaboration, perhaps over-elaboration of style there is nothing in the "History" which can at all compete with the charm of that single volume of travel which made Kinglake's reputation.

fied

"Eōthen "in a chapter of autobiography written in the happiest vein of humorous self-portraiture. Who can forget the inci