We have in our commonest pursuits, and equally in our rarest, been supported by human sympathy. In our retirements from the world, which have been but short and few, and a relaxation instead of a pursuit, we have seen that which our fellows have seen. We have never been alone. Our privations have been all voluntary; and when a little more severe or annoying than common, the most they have demanded or received has been a fretful exclamation; and if there have been others with us, our efforts have done little more than to divide the feelings of impatience or disgust.

tion, than we have done, of its origin. For
this would look like a defence, or an apolo-
gy, where neither is required.

should become necessary. This is all well,
and just as it should be. The effect cor-
responds with the means, and a great
amount of comfort is produced by this con-
cert of the crowd. These would seem the
only terms upon which men could at all
live quietly together. If, like our "trav-
ellers," the individual were so much by and
for himself, it would be but a poor world
indeed.

In reading this narrative of Franklin, and the same is true of all similar works, we cannot fail to be struck with the vast effects which are produced under the most unfavourable circumstances, by a very few individuals. This is contrary to common observation and experience. We constantly see men acting together, and upon each other. The strong and ardent intellect, which gives the plan, or merely states the principle, has in ordinary cases accomplishNow in the men, about whom we write, ed its main purpose; and every degree and there is nothing of all this to be found. kind of human power, and circumstance, There is a patience so bold and indomita- which may be necessary, comes naturally ble, that we at last become more astonish- into requisition, to carry out and make efed and surprised at its failure, than at its fective, what the individual has newly continuance. Franklin's Narrative* fur- started. We every where see men acting nishes an instance of this, and explains our together, and in large masses, dividing lameaning. After having followed this trav- bour upon a pin as definitely as upon an eller through an unbroken series of per- empire. Men depend upon, and wait for sonal sufferings, and wondered and admired each other; and he who seems the freest, at the unexampled self-possession he has has always settled with himself how the every where shown,-having seen the tur-responsibility shall be divided, if a division bulent, and the vicious yielding to a personal authority, powerful and irresistible by its very mildness alone, we at length hear an expression of impatience from one of the party, and then a tone of irritation mingled with ill-temper; and for a moment we wonder that men, who have borne every thing, as nothing, could have found, in any kind of circumstance, an evil which could for a moment have conquered them. Our wonder, however, ceases with its expression. In travellers, we see human beings unWe learn in a moment the whole history. der new aspects. They are few in numThe mind at last is yielding to the body. ber, and removed from common influences. Hunger and cold have the mastery. The Each individual in so small a community night is no longer comfortable, nor the feels his personal importance. Each mind sleep refreshing with the thermometer at is constantly kept in action for one's self, 50° or more below zero,—the acrid mosses for there is little room for its wider operaand burnt bones have at length ceased to tion. The mind does not expand here at be palatable. The body will no longer least, with the remote and the uncertain, bear all this, and the mind is growing con- the solitary and the unbounded. Danger scious that existence on such terms is not is abroad every where; and if this were worth preserving. The mind grows weak less distinct, there is a pressure of the with this consciousness, and men who were present, which keeps the mind and the absolutely living upon the sustaining influ-heart at home. Suffering, in its extreme, ences of each other's minds, are peevish which is alike personal to all, which pecuand unkind to each other. This is the liarity of constitution and temperament most melancholy, the saddest moment in alike yield to, is here. There is no hope, this whole history. We cannot feel, in any for there is no time nor room for it. Presshape, the circumstances, we can under-ent want must be supplied, present danger stand perfectly its effects. How dreadful averted, and with present means too, where was the situation of these men, when they there seem to us no means. There is no could be unkind to each other. Theirs despair. These brave and glorious men was not the resource, if any such there be, are equally beyond this, as without hope. which we are taught to find in the world They may fall by the way and die, or the when friends grow cruel. There was noth-human savage, or the wild beast may kill ing for them but the miserable consciousness them, but this enters not into their account of a common suffering. The misery could for a moment. They are like enchanted only be added to, by its being felt, and men in the tales, and whether they next complained of, as individual. And this did find a palace or a grave, has been no matat last happen. It is unnecessary to tell ter of theirs. the reader that this state of things did not last long, or to offer any farther explana

* Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22. By John Franklin, Captain R. N., F. R. S. and Commander of the Expedition.

But in the midst and pressure of all this, we find human power true to itself, and exerting itself in a minuteness of detail which can hardly be credited. The daily record is made, whether of a new suffering; a new plant, or mineral; a dip of the needle, or a fall or rise of the barometer.

The wet drift wood is collected on the banks of the river, or the evergreen cut down, and the fire blazes cheerfully. The teakettle boils in the shower of rain or snow, the snow-drift is removed and a place for sleep prepared, the prayers for the dead are read, in addition to the evening service, over the grave of the murdered friend. At Fort Enterprise, in Franklin, where the extreme of illness was added to all other physical suffering, the courtesies, nay the decencies of common life, are observed in a manner as affecting as incredible. What makes this instance more striking is, that hope had preceded the travellers to this melancholy post, and it was there all blasted.

It was said that the individual was engrossed by his own wants. That the misery is too great to the individual, too personal to himself, to allow him to go farther. Were this to be taken as set down, we should be ashamed to have written it. Here would be common selfishness, vulgar enough in all its expressions, but far more vulgar in this than in all others. We would not wrong these men for the world. We would do honour to our own nature, in the testimony we bear to its dignity and supremacy in the individuals about whom we write. The case of the individual in these instances was emphatically the care of the whole. He who saved his own life, contributed largely and truly to the preservation of his comrades. It might almost be allowed us to say, that in these extreme cases, there is but one mind, but one individual. The desolation is alike around all. The cold and the hunger would as surely reach him who might, by unworthy means, seek to protect himself, or supply his own pressing wants, as him who boldly yielded his personal share to the common stock of suffering, and who, under its heavy pressure, found his irresistible motive to help others as well as himself. Where there is no escape, there must be a common feeling. Distinctions are lost in such a mass, and all are felt for in one's own feeling. Here we find the explanation of what is otherwise unaccountable to us who yield so readily, and are so little pleased with the best that is done for us. We understand how life may be preserved, and the mind be preserved, where there are apparently no present means for doing either. It may be that the mind gets new strength, by this continued contact with physical suffering, as the magnet is said to do by undisturbed contact with iron. New circumstances make it what we find it, and we admit, and understand too, its novel and vast effects.

The aspect is new in which we see men in these instances, in another regard. In leaving society, they have left its rules behind them; and we find in their place a new code in true, but terrible harmony with all the circumstances. Necessity has been said to have no law. But here it becomes a law itself. In Franklin, we despised the men who broke to pieces the canoes, which our own foresight showed us

borne by other men. Human power, as
displayed in these works, teaches us, who
have a common property in it with all the
world, how strangely capable we are; and
if we want a new motive for becoming re-
ligious men, we may find one here.

POETRY.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.
The sad and solemn night
Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires;

The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires:
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and round the heavens,
and go.

would soon become indispensably necessa- | evil is made even less by a greater, though
ry. But these men could scarcely carry
themselves, much less the comparatively
heavy canoes. When the faithful Hepburn
begs Richardson to let him shoot the mer-
ciless Michel; when he is shot, and the
dreadful uncertainty recurs to us as to the
final disposal of the body; the strange as-
sumption of function by one individual,
witness, judge, and executioner, never
startles us. It seems dreadful to us that a
society so small, reduced to three only,
should be made smaller by a violent death.
There was a slow coming of death to all,
foreboded by famine and cold; and it almost
seems to us, that murder might here have
been kind. But if life be made dear by our
care for it, and by suffering, in its ordinary
forms and degrees, how inestimably precious
was it to these wretched men. It was all
that remained to them. They were now ex-
hausted, and hardly able to totter a few
steps to get moss for their food, or fuel to
cook it. Michel remained strong; was
active, and oppressive by his mere physical
strength. He had lost his respect for one
of them, who in the common ranks of life
was far his superior. He had, above all, lost
his relationship to them. He had shot a
sick, and most beloved friend; one whom
we could not help loving in every page of
We said we
the narrative.
were not
startled by the act which killed him. The
morality of it was unquestioned. We felt
for an instant something as we did in one
of Scott's novels, where the mad enthusiast
in the hovel, starts up and puts the hour
hand of the clock forward, that the time for
a murder might be anticipated. Death
seemed surely too near to all to be hurried
on to any. But the horror is a momentary
one, and we rejoiced that one of the means
of destruction was removed.

These were religious men. It deserves to be noticed that men of this character have commanded some of the most important expeditions of a similar kind which have been recently fitted out by the government of England, and which have excited so strong an interest every where. Is it claiming too much for our religion to say, that it was this, which gave to these men's minds a tone and spirit which nothing could wholly depress or destroy? We know of nothing which could have sustained these men, under these circumstances, but their strong and abiding piety.

It will be perceived, from what has been said in this article, that our interest in these works is not so much found in their histories of new regions and new manners, as in the conduct of the men who give them. It is the operation of the new and the terrible upon beings like ourselves, and the whole manner in which this operation displays itself, the high moral bearing, the intellectual resource the severe patience, the fine disinterestedness,-it is all this which attracts us so irresistibly in these works, and makes the fate of their authors so deeply interesting. There is much that

is salutary in them, if we will be taught by them, as well as entertained. The lesser

Day, too, hath many a star
To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:
Through the blue fields afar,
Unseen, they follow in his flaming way.
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,
Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Alone, in thy cold skies,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dip'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth
Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure
walls.

Alike, beneath thine eye,
The deeds of darkness and of light are done;
High towards the star-lit sky
Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun-

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud-
And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and

cloud.

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,
On thy unaltering blaze

Fixes his steady gaze,
And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;
And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,
Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their foot-
steps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,
Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood

Did in thy beams behold
A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray
The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

THE GLADIATOR.

They led a lion from his den,

The lord of Afric's sun-scorched plain;
And there he stood, stern foe of men,
And shook his flowing mane.
There's not of all Rome's heroes, ten
That dare abide this game.
His bright eye nought of lightning lacked;
His voice was like the cataract.

B.

They brought a dark-haired man along,
Whose limbs with gyves of brass were bound;
Youthful he seemed, and bold, and strong,
And yet unscathed of wound.
Blithely he stepped among the throng,
And careless threw around

A dark eye, such as courts the path
Of him, who braves a Dacian's wrath.

Then shouted long the plebeian crowd-
Rung the glad galleries with the sound;
And from the throne there spake aloud
A voice, "Be the bold man unbound!
And, by Rome's sceptre yet unbowed,
By Rome, earth's monarch crowned,
Who dares the bold-the unequal strife,
Though doomed to death, shall save his life."

Joy was upon that dark man's face,
And thus, with laughing eye, spake he:
"Loose ye the lord of Zaara's waste,
And let my arms be free;

He has a martial heart,' thou sayest,
But oh, who will not be

A hero, when he fights for life,

And home, and country,-babes, and wife:

And thus I for the strife prepare;
The Thracian falchion to me bring;
But ask th' imperial leave to spare
The shield-a useless thing.
Were I a Samnite's rage to dare,
Then o'er me should I fling
The broad orb; but to lion's wrath
The shield were but a sword of lath."

And he has bared his shining blade,
And springs he on the shaggy foe;
Dreadful the strife, but briefly played-
The desert-king lies low,

His long and loud death-howl is made,
And there must end the show.

And when the multitude were calm,
The favourite freedman took the palm.

"Kneel down, Rome's emperor beside:"
He knelt, that dark man;-o'er his brow
Was thrown a wreath in crimson died,
And fair words gild it now:

"Thou'rt the bravest youth that ever tried
To lay a lion low;

And from our presence forth thou go'st
To lead the Dacians of our host."

Then flushed his cheek, but not with pride,
And grieved and gloomily spoke he:
"My cabin stands where blithely glide
Proud Danube's waters to the sea;

I have a young and blooming bride,
And I have children three;
No Roman wealth nor rank can give
Such joy, as in their arms to live.

My wife sits at the cabin door,
With throbbing heart and swollen eyes;
While tears her cheek are coursing o'er,
She speaks of sundered ties.
She bids my tender babes deplore
The death their father dies;
She tells these jewels of my home,
I bleed to please the rout of Rome.
I cannot let those cherubs stray
Without their sire's protecting care;
And I would chase the griefs away
Which cloud my wedded fair."
The monarch spoke, the guards obey,
And gates unclosed are;

He is gone-no golden bribes divide
The Dacian from his babes and bride.

THE VENETIAN GONDOLIER.
Here rest the weary oar!- soft airs

Breathe out in the o'erarching sky;
And Night!-sweet Night-serenely wears
A smile of peace ;-her noon is nigh.
Where the tall fir in quiet stands,

And waves, embracing the chaste shores,
Move o'er sea-shells and bright sands,-
Is heard the sound of dipping oars.

Swift o'er the wave the light bark springs,
Love's midnight hour draws lingering near:
And list!-his tuneful viol strings

The young Venetian Gondolier.

Are the scenes of slumber his footsteps greet;
And he thinks, while viewing the reckless throng,
That the hour of his triumph must come ere long-failure of this branch of the North-West
The hour when beauty and youth shall fade,
And both in their couch of repose be laid,
Enwrapped in that sleep which shall know no waking
"Till the hoary pillars of earth are shaking.

in the hope of communicating with the
Griper.

own accord, one thousand pounds a canto for Don Juan, and afterwards reduced it to five hundred pounds, on the plea of piracy, and complained of my dividing one canto into two, because 1 happened to say something at the end of the third canto of having done so."

Lord Byron's Letter.

got into the shallows of Hudson's Bay, they were reluctantly compelled to edge away for Salisbury Island, still hoping that a few The Griper communicated with the Esfine and favourable days would restore to quimaux, natives of the Upper Savage Islthem their lost ground. The bad weather, ands, all of whom had frequently seen Euhowever, still continued, and there was ropeans. They were less savage in their much difficulty in watering the ship at habits and manners than their more norththese places, from a stream of ice. A num- ern brethren, but they showed a strong ber of natives came off to them in their ca- thievish disposition; they endeavoured to “Ravenna, February 7, 1920. noes, and trafficked their clothes for iron steal the oars and iron-works from the and spears. At length, the hopeless con- boats. The Griper also communicated with third canto of Don Juan into two, because "DEAR MURRAY,-I have copied the tinuance of bad weather, the wretched the natives of various parts of Southamp-it was too long, and I tell you this beforecondition of the ship (from her incapaci- ton Island, who had never seen a ship beties), the officers and crew having suffered fore. They, however, expressed but very tween you and me, these two are only to go hand, because in case of any reckoning bemore hardships than on any previous voy- little surprise; they evinced more gentleage, the advanced stage of the season, withness in their manners, than any other of for one, as this was the original form, and numerous other concomitant miseries, com- the Esquimaux tribes, and were much better in fact the two together are not longer than pelled Captain Lyon to consent that the looking and cleaner in their persons-the one of the first; so remember that I have not made this division to double on you, but ship should be got out of Hudson's Straits women were rather pretty. All those (an extent of eight hundred miles of dan- people reside in the Walrus-hide huts, merely to suppress some tediousness in the gerous navigation), which place they had which are described in Captain Lyon's last aspect of the thing. I should have served scarcely cleared, when a southerly gale voyage. you a pretty trick, if I had sent you, for drove them up to Davis' Straits, one hunexample, cantos of fifty stanzas each dred and fifty miles to the southward of Resolution Island. Providentially a change of wind enabled them soon after to proceed on a southern passage homeward, and the Griper arrived here in six weeks, in the

state we have described.

The Griper is ordered to be paid off, and sold out of the navy. A vessel better adapted to the peculiarities of the service, will, no doubt, be provided for Captain Lyon and his meritorious officers and crew on the opening of the season, for further investigation. Captain Franklin, we understand, is to leave England, on his land expedition, in February next.

LORD BYRON.

Captain Medwin, p. 169.

but it seems inevitable. I had no reason to "I don't wish to quarrel with Murray, gnani wrote to me, offering to purchase the be pleased with him the other day. Galicopy-right of my works, in order to obtain an exclusive privilege of printing them in France. I might have made my own terms, and put the money in my own pocket; instead of which I enclosed Galignani's letter to Murray, in order that he might conclude the matter as he pleased. He did so, very advantageously for his own interest; but never had the complaisance, the common politeness, to thank me or acknowledge my letter."

Lord Byron's Letter.

Though little has been effected towards solving the geographical problem of a northwest passage by this voyage, yet some most interesting elucidations of the deviation of the compass have been brought to light. The compasses began to waver The European press is teeming with puband contradict each other when abreast lications, occasioned by the death of this of the Savage islands; and, as the ship distinguished character, in the form of elegot to the westward, the compasses got gies, monodies, biographies, recollections, unsteady and useless. Whilst the ship &c. &c., and he has even been already made was in Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome, they the subject of fiction. Somebody has pubfrequently would not traverse at all, but lished a "Narrative of Lord Byron's Voyage stood in whatever position the card was to Corsica and Sardinia in the summer of "Ravenna, 9bre 4, 1820. placed. Should a passage be discovered by 1821," full of events as remarkable and as "I have received from Mr Galignani the Captain Parry through the Prince Regent's well authenticated as those of Sinbad the enclosed letters, duplicates, and receipts, Inlet, it is considered more than probable, Sailor, Baron Munchausen, or Lemuel Gulli- which will explain themselves. As the poems from the irregular movements of the ice, ver. None of these publications appears are your property, by purchase, right, and that it may never be entered again. The to have excited more attention than Med-justice, all matters of publications &c. &c. are Griper spoke several whalers, all of which win's Conversations of Byron; and it would for you to decide upon. I know not how far had been unsuccessful in the fishery; no seem that they have been proved to contain my compliance with Mr Galignani's request ship had more than two fish, and many none a good deal of either accidental or wilful might be legal, and I doubt that it would not whatever. From the Captain Phenix whal- misrepresentation. In this work, Lord Byron be honest. In case you choose to arrange er, Captain Lyon heard that Captain Par- is reported to have stated certain facts not with him, I enclose the permits to you, and ry's Expedition had been seen, in the middle of August, in latitude 71°, beset with very honourable to his publisher, Mr Mur- in so doing, I wash my hands of the business ray, and to have made some complaints of altogether; I sign them merely to enable ice. On the whole, the season has been the manner in which he had been treated you to exert the power you justly possess more boisterous, and, consequently, the sea by him. Mr Murray has thought proper to more properly; I will have nothing to do less clear, than it has been known for thirty circulate a small pamphlet relative to these with it further, except in my answer to Mr years. It was very questionable if Captain statements, in which he shows the utter Galignani, to state, that the letters, &c. &c. Parry would be able to reach Lancaster groundlessness of every syllable imputed to are sent to you, and the causes thereof. If Sound. Had the Griper effected a winter-Lord Byron, and refutes most completely you can check those foreign pirates, do; if ing at Repulse Bay or Wager River, or every particular item of these injurious not, put the permissive papers in the fire. I Chesterfield Inlet, Captain Lyon with a and scandalous insinuations. Mr Murray's can have no view nor object whatever but strong party, would have made a land jour- pamphlet is very honourable to him. It to secure to you your property. ney to Point Turnagain, near the Copper- labours at no reasoning, but simply states mine River, a distance of seven hundred facts, and produces Lord Byron's own let-advantage from the proposed agreement, which was Note by Mr Murray.-Mr Murray derived no miles; for which expedition they were fully ters to confound Lord Byron's Conversa- by no means of the importance here ascribed to it equipped. Captain Parry, if he succeed in tions with Captain Medwin. As these are into effect: the documents alluded to are still in his and therefore was never attempted to be carried passing the Lancaster Sound and getting of very considerable interest, and illustrate to the southward down Prince Regent's his lordship's character and life, we think possession. Inlet (by which Captain Lyon was next it worth while to insert them entire. year to communicate with him), he will send a land expedition, if possible, in the same direction, as well as to Repulse Bay,

Captain Medwin, pp. 169, 171. "Murray has long prevented the Quar terly from abusing me. Some of their bullies "Murray offered me [Lord Byron,] of his have had their fingers itching to be at me;

Captain Medwin, p. 167, (Eng. Ed.)

two poems, the Siege of Corinth and Parisina, heard that Lord Byron was in pecuniary
which his lordship had previously, at a short inter- difficulties, he immediately forwarded fifteen
val, presented to Mr Murray as donations. Lord hundred pounds to him, with an assurance
Byron was afterwards induced, by Mr Murray's
earnest persuasion, to accept the one thousand that another such sum should be at his ser-
guineas, and Mr. Murray has his lordship's assign-vice in a few months; and that if such assis-
ment of the copy right accordingly.
tance should not be sufficient, Mr Murray
would be ready to sell the copy right of all
his lordship's works, for his use.

Captain Medwin, p. 170. "My differences with Murray are not the author or abetter of any thing of the When he purchased Cain,' The kind on Gifford, lies in his throat; I always Two Foscari,' and 'Sardanapalus,' he sent regarded him as my literary father, and myme a deed, which you may remember wit-self as his prodigal son. If any such comYou nessing. Well; after its return to England position exists, it is none of mine. know, as well as any body, upon whom I have or have not written, and you also know, whether they did or did not deserve the same. So much for such matters.

it is not from a disdain of the universal such clause is to be found; but that this instrument peculiar with the public, for we are here idol-nor from the present superfluity of his treasures-I can assure you, that I refuse to worship him;—but what is right is right, and must not yield to circumstances."

Note.-On referring to the deed in question, no was signed in London, by the Hon. Douglas Kin- jumbled a little together for the present. naird, as Lord Byron's procurator, and witnessed "On Sunday, the 15th I believe, I had a by Richard Williams, Esq., one of the partners insudden and strong convulsive attack, which Mr Kinnaird's banking house; and that the signa-left me speechless, though not motionless, ture of Captain Medwin is not affixed. for some strong men could not hold me; but Mr Murray adds, that having accidentally whether it was epilepsy, catalepsy, cachexy.