describes Scotch and North British scenery | yon, sirs; and wha that saw't would ever ask with the gusto of George Barrow sketching whether tragedy or the stage was moral, purging the gipsies of Spain. the soul as she did wi' pity and wi' terror? dreams wi' a' the destraction o' remorse and It could not stand comparison with " " But when the Shepherd discourses of a cosmopolite subject, about which many other That description is decidedly a failure. It is gifted intellects have written, we at once see an inventory of the points of the part, but not that the overwhelming power claimed for him an artistic picture. Take the broad Scotch by Professor Ferrier cannot be attributed to out of it, and when read in plain English it is him. "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth" is as nothing more than the rhetoric of windy rapfine a theme as could be given for a inaster-ture. description. The Shepherd evidently strains Talma's exquisite delineation of "Le Kain;" himself to rise to a level with that great sub- and the readers of "Villette" must recollect ject assigned to him by himself, and here we how sublimely the astonishing qualities of have his attempt:Mlle. Rachel have been portrayed by the same pen that recorded the sorrows of " Jane Eyre." Shepherd: As Leddy Macbeth! Her gran' We could express many errors in detail in the high straicht nosed face, whiter than ashes! Fix-above picture. "That masquerade of passion' ed een, no like the een of the dead, yet hardly is a fatal slip in trying to intensify a description, mair like them o' the leevin; dim, and yet licht and "the glimmering apprehension" at once wi' an obscure lustre, through which the tor- recalls the admired passage in Colly Cibber mented sowl looked in the chains o' sleep and on Betterton:-" Pity it is that the charms of despair and oh! sic an expanse o' fore- acting cannot, like those of painting or poetry, head for a warld o' dreadfu' thochts aneath the be their own record; that the animated graces braided blackness o' her hair, that had neverthe- of the player can live no longer than the inless been put up wi' a steady and nae uncarefu' stant breath and motion which paint them, or haun before the troubled leddy had lain doun, at best can but faintly glimmer through the for it behooved ane so high-born as she, in the memory of a few surviving spectators!" middle o' her ruefu' trouble, no to neglect what Thus we see that the Shepherd, like all she owed to her stately beauty, and to the head other characters, has his weak points, and that that lay on the couch of ane o' Scotland's thanes under a cloud of Scotticisms, mingled with noo likewise about to be, during the short vehement English, he can occasionally show space o' the passing o' a thundercloud, her blui- the contortions of false vigor. But his Gaelic dy and usurping king. North: Whisht-Tickler-whisht-no cough- pathos is pure and genuine, and our Laureate ing. might get some hints on the art of composing Shepherd: Onwards she used to come-no with manly pathos. There is nothing puling Sarah Siddons-but just Leddy Macbeth hersel or sickly in the following description of the -though through that melancholy masquerade sad work done by an accomplished hypoo' passion, the spectator aye had a confused glim- crite :merin apprehension o' the great actress-glidin wi' the ghostlike motion o' nicht-wanderin unShepherd; Then to see him sittin' a' the rest, unconscious o' surroundin objects-for oh! time beside the verra bonniest bit lassie in a' the how could the glazed yet gleamin een see aught pairty! leanin his great, broad, yellow, sweaty in this material world ?-yet, by some mysteri- cheeks, within an inch of her innocent carnaous power o' instinct, never touchin ane o' the tions! Sweet simple girl-she thinks him the impediments that the furniture o' the auld castle holiest o' men; and is blind and deaf to his brumicht hae opposed to her haunted footsteps. On talities. O save the lintwhite frae the houlat's she came, wring, wringin her hauns, as if washin nest! But the puir bonny boardin-school lassie them in the cleansin dews frae the blouts o' blood-but wae's me for the murderess out they wad no be, ony mair than the stains on the spat o' the floor where some midnicht-slain Christian has groaned out his soul aneath the dagger's stroke, when the sleepin hoose heard not the shriek o' departing life. Tickler: North, look at James's face. Confound me under the inspiration of the moment, if it is not like John Kemble's! has siller-a hantle o' siller-thousands o' poun's, aiblins five or sax-and in twa-three years ye see her walkin by her lane, wi' a girlish face, but white and sorrowful, leadin a toddlin bairn in her hand, and anither visible aneath her breast, nae husband near her, to gie her his arm in that condition-nae decent servant lass to help her wi' the wean-but quite her lane, no very weel dressed, and careless, speaking to nane she meets, and saunterin wi' a sair heart down the unfrequented lanes, and awa into a field to sit down on the ditch-side weepin, while her wee boy is chasing the butterflies among the flowers. Shepherd: Whether a' this, sirs, was natural or not, ye see I dinna-ken, because I never beheld ony woman, either gentle or semple, walkin in her sleep after having committed murder. But, Lord safe us! that hollow, broken-hearted voice, "Out, damned spot," was o' itsel aneuch to tell to a' that heard it that crimes done in the are mingled with the poetical passages pecuflesh during time will needs be punished in the liar to the "Noctes." But on a severe critispirit during eternity. It was a dreadfu' homily cism we discern some of the want of due dra The manner in which sense and reflection is matic shadings and individual sustainment of view. And who has been their salvation ?—The way that tantalizes us with the idea of a cool, North: The Fall of Foyers is terrible-a deep abyss savage rock-work, hideous groans, ghostlike vapors, and a rumble as if from eternity. Tickler: The Falls of the Clyde are majestic. Over Corra Linn the river rolls exultingly; and, recovering itself from that headlong plunge, after some troubled struggles among the shattered cliffs, away it floats in stately pomp, dallying with the noble banks, and subsiding into a deep bright foaming current. Then what woods and groves crowning the noble rocks. How cheerful laughs the cottage pestered by the spray! and how vivid the verdure on each ivied ruin! The coming of the cushats is a solemn accompaniment to the cataract, and aloft in heaven the choughs reply to that voice of the Forest. Dash that passage with a few Scotticisms, and you have the Shepherd. But these and similar errors are the faults of affluence of mind. In the same passage, after North declares that nature is all in all, and art stark nought, Tickler rejoins : The last sentence is a capital stroke, and is in which the "Noctes" mingled the serious highly characteristic of the "rattling" away and the droll. Scattered through the convivial colloquies are a variety of dicta on the contemporary reputations of the time, delivered in a tone between jest and earnest. Vast pretensions are humorously assailed in a coarse style of banter. It is impossible not to laugh at the figure Doctor Parr makes: North: As an original thinker, I own he was Nemo-nobody; but as a scholar Tickler: Hum-hummior-hummissimus,—he was a mere Parolles in a Pedagogue's wig. His preface to Bellendenus, as all the world knows, was never looked into but for its oddities; first, that it talked about Fox, and Burke, and Lord North, in Latin-when others talked of them in English; secondly, that this Latin, as he called it, was a monster of deformity, being in facto a cento made up from every Roman on God's earth, beginning with Fabius Pictor, and the "Stercus Ennii," down to the "rank African isms" (to use Milton's phrase) of Arnobius. An English history could not be more extravagant, composed out of the hoary archaisms of Robert of Gloucester, compounded with the "threebeen at a great feast of languages, and had stolen piled' "Gibbonisms of Sharon Turner. "He had the scraps." North: I cannot help admiring his Spital sermon, as Tickler: Beyond all comparison the most without gas into the ethereal regions. empty balderdash that ever attempted to soar North His dissertation on the word Sublime at the end of Dugald Stewart's Philosophical Essays? Tickler Yet softly. Who planted those trees by that river side?-Art. Who pruned them?-Art. Who gave room to their giant arms to span that roaring chasm ?-Art. Who reared yon edifice on the cliff?-Art. Who flung that stately arch from rock to rock, under which the martins twitter over the unfeared cataract? Art. Who darkened that long line of precipice with dreadful or glorious associations?Art, polity, law, war, outrage, and history, writ ing her hieroglyphics with fire on the scarred visage of those natural battlements. Is that a hermit's cell? Art scooped it out of the living some superior remarks on the preposition Sub. Tickler: Ay, a sublime treatise on Mud, with stone. Is that an oratory? Art smoothed the The whole amount from a world of pother, floor for the knee of the penitent. Are the bones of the holy slumbering in that cemetery? Art parade, and pseudo-learning, is, that Sublime changed the hollow rock into a tomb, and when means, not that which is under the mud, but the dead saint was laid into the sepulchre, Art joined its music with the torrent's roar, and the mingled anthem rose to the stars which Art had numbered and sprinkled into stations over the that which is above it. Not the least interesting part of these most interesting papers are the comic and sentimental songs; but we must reserve our rethem until another occasion. In marks upon firmament of Heaven. What then would Bowle's be at, and why more last words to Roscoe ? Who made his ink, his pens and his paper? the meantime we will recommend this volume Art. Who published his books?-Art. Who as containing plenty of "light summer readcriticised them?-Art. Who would fain have ing," elevated with much originality of thought damned them?-The Art of the Edinburgh Re- and intensity of true poetical passion. From the Examiner. Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Member of the Geographical Societies of London and Paris, etc. With his Journal of a Voyage in the Polar Seas in Search of Sir John Franklin. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett. ever, to assume more firmness in the position in which I stand, and bethink me that I must absolutely arrive at something, The desire of showing gratitude for all that has been done for me, ought, of itself to constitute a very sufficient motive for me. Ought I not also to reflect that I am destined to support a numerous and beloved family, of whom I am the sole hope? I am considered ambitious, I am sure-and it is true; but THIS is a book welcome to the hearts of is there a nobler aim than that for the ambition Englishmen, for dear to the English is the me- of a young man? This laudable feeling, I well mory of Joseph René Bellot. The young know, is not the only one that makes me thus Frenchman, he perished at the age of twen- contemplate all my projects of glory and adty-seven, who won so much love and confi-vancement; perhaps even there is too much selflove in all my schemes; but these two motives dence on every side, and, fired with a gener-together must make me desirous of prompt adous sympathy for Lady Franklin, became ship- vancement. I must work to win a good reputamate with our Arctic sailors, proving himself tion, instead of lapping myself to sleep in ease as able and fine-hearted as any in their gallant band, gains a fresh hold on the affection of this country by the posthumous publication of this memoir, and of the frank unassuming journal that it prefaces. In every sense this French lieutenant was a noble fellow. Born in Paris, one of the four children of a common smith and farrier who removed when Joseph René was about five years old to Rochefort, Bellot always called himself a Rochefort 'man, for its municipality saw in him a child of promise, and materially helped to secure him the advantage of a solid education. At the instance of the Mayor, it gave him a demi-bourse at the Rochefort College; and because Mayor and Municipality had every reason to know that their protégé was worthy of protection, they helped to maintain him afterwards on his admission to the naval school. Truly then Bellot was a Rochefort man, for Rochefort it was. in a worldly sense that made a man of him. Grateful to it, grateful to his father for all sacrifice endured on his account, full of high aspirations, and with all his dreams of young ambition joining the home shapes that he loved, and the home duties he was proud to think that he might in atter days fulfil, young Bellot became a midshipman in the French navy, and set sail on his first service. He kept a private journal, and what manner of gentle and noble heart it was that communed with itself in secret after the following fashion, let any reader feel : and supineness, barely tolerable in a young man whose parents are wealthy. I too often forget what I have been: I do not reflect that my father is a poor workman, with a large family; that he has made very great sacrifices for me; that all the money I spend uselessly would be of great help at home. I ought to consider, that in those moments of forgetfulness, in which I lavish my money as if I was habituated to abundance, my poor mother is perhaps at her wit's end to provide for the necessities of the family. I am glad to have scrutinized the state of my heart, to have had the courage to explore its recesses, and put my hand on all the unsound places; perhaps I shall also have the courage to cure them. I will try, at any rate, and by the end of a certain time I shall perhaps come to enjoy that self-esteem which satisfies and renders one happy in all circumstances in which a man may be placed. 31st October. There is one I I do nothing but think of France, my good mother, and my sisters; and when I am an officer, if it be possible to realize my desires, the portraits of these dear friends shall cover the walls of my cabin; this will, per-· haps, make the distance that divides us seem less to me. I have not yet found the strength to execute my projects of yesterday. have already formed, which is to copy the roles of the Jena; I know not if I shall fulfil it: at all I would fain work, events I shall try to do so. but all I could undertake disgusts and wearies me beforehand: I have so much to do that I know not at which end to begin. Drawing and music, which I was so desirous of learning, remain still strangers to me. The most useful things to which I should apply myself are still unknown to me. I see that my good resolutions always melt away. I must, however, look well to myself. * * * * My negligence and apathy are extreme; I have not had the courage to write home; so here is an opportunity lost to me through my own fault. It is the first, but I must keep watch over myself, otherwise I shall fall into the greatest sloth. In It is plain I do not stand very well with the spite of all my fine resolutions to work, and my commander; I hardly know why, for I have alrecriminations against the jokes of my compan- ways been conscious of the sympathy I might inions, I have done nothing yet since our departure spire in any one; and though he has always been from France; and I am likewise afraid of letting very polite towards me, I am sure he ranks me myself give way to a fault from which I cannot in his affections greatly below X I am, guard myself too carefully. I am not so blind as perhaps, too childish, and attach too much imnot to see all these things, and yet I have not the portance to trifles, or those little commonplace strength to repress these defects. I ought, how-reproaches which are addressed to everybody; but, after all, I have more confidence in my in- | more exact the comparison becomes, the more I stinct than in my reason: the end will prove find myself out of sorts. I walk the deck; but whether or not I have been mistaken. Be the am thrown violently against the bulwark. Álas! solution of the question what it may, I must ap-in vain I try to conceal it from myself, I am seaply myself steadfastly to doing my duty well, and especially to the assumption of more gravity; for I am conscious that I show myself greatly inferior in reason to all my comrades. sick. O shame! O despair! I look round to see who are the witnesses of my dishonor; fortunately I have none but accomplices. Mr. Leask and Mr. Hepburn, the only two whom this fatal sickness spares, are not present. I wear myself out in efforts to read and write, but can do neither. Yet I have great need of application. Oh, the nothingness of human nature! Be the most remarkable man, the most accomfoot on board a ship, and there you are reduced plished savant, be Arago, Lamartine-put your to naught, not an idea left you. Du plus grand des humains voilà ce qui vous reste! A shadow incapable of pronouncing anything but inarticulate sounds. A smell of whisky proves to me that all my shipmates are not sick only from the motion of the ship; and that some of them, before becoming real teetotallers, have been bidding a last farewell to the powers of this world. tion of the sea, and offer to Neptune a sacrifice I bethink me of the pagan practice of invocaOf his sisters his dream he cannot fail to appreciate at its true worth. I I will write books that shall be their cut off a superb beard, and his wrath is appeasmarriage portions." Of his mother, he wrote ed. Quos ego-at last I can admire, at my ease, to Mr. Barrow at the Admiralty, when ambi- the northern coasts of Scotland, and the snowtious of appreciation by the English, and ap- topped mountains reflecting the rays of the sun. preciated by them thoroughly already, he was setting out on his first arctic Expedition, "You have been so kind to me already, that I am almost ashamed to ask fresh services at your hands. I shall be doubtlessly deprived of opportunities to write to my family, and I would ask you whenever an English paper gives any news about the Prince Albert, to cut out the paragraph and send it to Madame Bellot, Rochefort-sur-Mer. Need it be said that a young sailor so minded was not a man to miss the love of his comrades or the confidence of his commander, certainly not a man to miss opportunities of multiplying his acquirements, or of displaying in action promptitude and ardor. He displayed the last at Tamatave, and repeatedly he was reported to the Government at home in terms of the most emphatic admiration. He was but a boy when they made the artisan's son Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. But he still joined all pleasure of success to thoughts of home. Of a little brother he wrote, "I must show a good example to our young Alphonse." was, It is his own journal of the voyage in the Prince Albert that has now been published. He His surprising aptitude for knowledge, and his ardor in the acquisition of it, had already made him master of four languages. hoped also, he said, to pick up Russian on the northern coasts, and on board the Prince Albert we find a line set down to note that he was "preparing a dictionary of the language of the Esquimaux." Here is an account of an Esquimaux hut visited by him : I It was not without the help of one of the byThe intention with which it was written, how-standers that I could guess that an opening hardever, was not that it should be published as a ly two feet high, and covered with a skin, was diary. It was merely kept in this form with the door. Puffs of hot air loaded with fetid a view to the ultimate publication of a book- emanations reach me; I feel my courage waver, a sister's marriage portion-which would have but at last I make my way in, after crawling a been if we are right in our impression, the couple of yards through a sort of sewer with first Arctic book by a French sailor. When damp walls, the foot of which rests in a muddy he set out, in a true spirit of chivalry, court- shall never forget the impression made on me compost of blood, water, oil, and grease. No; ing danger and honor, but declining Lady by what I saw, though I thought myself preparFranklin's offered pay, M. Bellot was only a ed for everything by the numerous descriptions midshipman in his own navy. But the French I had read of these miserable hovels. This one, Ministry of Marine, prompt to reward distinguished merit, promoted him at once to a lieutenancy, and favored in other respects the opening career of a man who promised to become an honor to his country. too, is in a place comparatively civilized, where the example of Europeans must, and does, create wants and notions of comfort unknown to wandering tribes, in an establishment visited every year by an inspector sent by the gov Like a true Frenchman he must set out on sure of stones, covered on the outside with a ernment of Copenhagen. A rectangular enclohis voyage with sea-sickness, and thus good-thick layer of earth, and on the interior with humoredly he records his deep humiliation : 4th June. The Prince Albert pitches frightfully, and will certainly carry away some of her sticks at sea. Light as a bird of the storm, like it she rolls on the crests of the waves; and the LIVING AGE. VOL. XI. 12 DXCV. three or four planks, forms the body of the hut; at each of the doors and at the further end, a sort of trellis, a foot from the ground, and three or four feet wide, serving for bed and table. In the middle space, of about three feet, lies half a seal, from which the fat has been removed, but the bloody flesh, trampled under foot, is there at hand whenever the inmates of the hut feel disposed to eat. On one side of the hut is an old woman, nearly blind, with grisly locks, bare legged and bare armed, sewing skins which she moves about with her feet and hands. Her red eyelids, contrasting with her bistre skin, seem still more prominent from the leanness which is only found in individuals of her race. She looks the image of one the witches of Macbeth. Near her lies her son, who sits up to do me the honors of his house. At the further end a young woman nearly naked, is suckling a naked infant, which she holds with one hand, whilst with the other she snatches up some skins which constitute her garments. Two Iamps fed with fetid oil do the double service of lighting and warming the apartment. Harpoons, lances, and rolls of skin hang from the walls, or are laid against it, the lower ends resting in rub. bish and offal of all sorts. There is no opening for the escape of smoke; a single hole near the entrance, glazed with the thin intestinal membranes, alone allows it to be seen that there is an outer world. I feel suffocated; my nose, throat, and eyes, all are affected, but I want to see. I even try to conceal my sensations; and when an oily hand is stretched out to me in token of welcome, I hold out a handkerchief as a gift, and thus avoid the good natured grasp that threatens me. Some trifling presents soon make friends of these poor disinherited children of nature; and, like the diver, preparing for a long effort, I try to see as much as possible, holding my breath and inhaling as little as I can of that atmosphere. " on whose path of enterprise he had entered may be seen by this criticism upon Franklin and Parry, wonderful when we consider it as written by a Frenchman in the Frozen Seas! I cannot reflect without sorrow, first, on the impossibilty to which we should of course be reduced of doing anything for those whom we are going to succor, and then at the terrible blow this would be to poor Lady Franklin, whose last hope we are. The floes break with a crackling noise against our sides; it is impossible to close an eye. Read over Sir John Franklin's voyages again. What admirable simplicity, and what real superiority is apparent in those unpretending phrases, which say only what those eminent men have seen in a clear manner, yet poetical withal, for they are faithful painters of nature! In reading these voyages, as well as those of Parry, we are possessed with implicit confidence; and, without analyzing our feelings, we are instinctively prompted to believe the writers; and yet they never deal in high-sounding empty phrases, but give us facts in every line. They are painters after Humboldt's manner; we feel how substantial and dignified, how full of instructive matter are their narratives, as we can tell by the sound of a cask struck with a finger whether it is full or empty. We will add only one other extract, from an entry made before a perilous coasting journey, which preceded by not very many months the coasting journey upon which he perished: A week ago, I accomplished my twenty-sixth The "poor disinherited children of nature year; in the last ten years I have passed through learnt his name not in that hut only. After more dangers than men of my age usually meet his death among the ice, when men of science with. I have passed safely through those trials; in all parts of Europe grieved for the loss of and when I speak of my lucky star, or of prea fellow-laborer,-when hard-handed English fidence in anything astrological; that would be destination, I do not mean that I place my consailors grieved for the loss of a chief who was too absurd and too impious. No; my confidence in their eyes as a brother, when Alphonse, is placed higher; I do not believe that Provi and the sisters, and, above all, the mother at dence has guided and sustained me hitherto to home were to hear that their pride was gone, abandon me in the midst of my greatest trial. I and to refuse to be comforted-the Esquimaux, do not care to lose myself in the labyrinth of reinformed of his death by Captain Inglefield ligious systems, in which I believe there is little on his way home, cried out "Poor Bellot ! beside sophisms, more or less fallacious; but I poor Bellot!" and shed tears. They remem-listen to that inner voice which tells me that we bered among other acts of kindness, how are not thrown upon this earth by chance, withwhen he once saw one of their people with a ian to protect us. My prayer is offered up direct out compass to guide our conduct, without guardbroken leg dragging himself painfully over to the throne of the Almighty who created me, the snow, he designed a wooden leg, and had and renews my existence day by day. it made by the ship's carpenter as a gift to the Beforo undertaking a journey, the chances of poor cripple. The English character is honored by the admiration of a man like this. Bellot, himself possessing the best English qualities enriched with a French liveliness of thought and all the finer traits that make the special worth and charm of the true Frenchman, was an Anglo-French Alliance in himself. He stood between two equal nations, understanding both and by both understood. How well he appreciated, for example, the Arctic leaders which it is impossible to foresec, I will once And now, let the struggle with the physical and moral perplexities of life on earth come when they may, I feel full of strength, of cour age, and of hope. My brother, my Alphonse, if |