ment. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice; his children-but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of his portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the farthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed; a little calendar of small sticks lay at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh; I saw the iron enter into his soul. I burst into tears; I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

EXERCISE.-66. PARSING, ETC.

1. Parse the following sentences:-(a). Beshrew the sombre pencil. (b). The Bastile is an evil not to be despised. (c). "I can't get out," said the starling.

2. Pick out the prepositions in the second paragraph, and state the words that are governed by them.

3. Analyse the first sentence in the last paragraph but one.

4. Relate in your own words the touching picture given above of a captive languishing in a dungeon.

5. What was the Bastile ? By whom was it built, and when was it destroyed?

WINTER IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.

re-sist-ance [L. re, against; sisto, to stand], opposition. nav-i-gation [L. navis, a ship; ago, to lead or conduct], the art of conducting vessels from one place to another. pro-vi-sions [L. pro, before; video, to see], food, victuals, stores. prep-a-ra-tions [L. præ, before, paro, to make ready], measures taken to get ready for any particular purpose. In the summer of 1857, the Fox, a small vessel of about 180 tons register, with auxiliary steam-power applied to a lifting screw, was dispatched to the Arctic regions, under the command of Captain, now Sir Leopold, M'Clintock, to make another search for Sir John Franklin and his missing vessels. The Fox left Aberdeen on July 1st, and, after taking in coal at the Waigat Straits, and purchasing a supply of seal beef, and thirty dogs for sledge travelling at Proven and Upernavik, reached latitude 75° 10' north, longitude 58° west, on August 12th. From this point she made but little

progress northward; and, on September 7th, the crew found themselves surrounded by ice-floes, from which it was impossible to get free. The tinker had come round, as the seamen say, and soldered them in; and from that time until the 17th of April, 1858, they never moved, except at the mercy of the ice, and drifted by the winds and currents. They had lost all command over the ship, and were freezing in the moving pack.

Preparations for the winter were now made in earnest. They had thirty large dogs to feed besides themselves, and no opportunity was lost of shooting seals. The sea-birds had all left for the southward; and the bears, which occasionally came to look at the ship, the sailors could not chase, on account of the broken state of the ice. Provisions were got up upon deck, sledges and travelling equipages prepared, boats' crews told off, and every arrangement made by the captain in event of the crew being turned out of the ship. As the winter advanced, the ship was housed over with canvas and covered over with snow, for both captain and men had made up their minds for a winter in the pack, and a drift-whither? This they could not tell, but they argued from the known constant set to the southward, out of Baffin's Sea and Davis' Straits, that if their little ship survived through the winter, they would be released in the southern parts of Davis' Straits during the following

summer.

Their first anxiety arose from a fear that the ship would be dashed to pieces against some grounded icebergs, towards which the mass of ice in which the Fox was imbedded was drifting. The floes opened and tore up against the bergs like turf before the plough; and, had the ship come in contact with any of them, it must have been instantly destroyed. This peril, however, was happily escaped, and in a few days the vessel and the surrounding ice had drifted out of danger.

Officers and men were constantly out all day long with their rifles, by the side of the water-pools, watching to shoot the seals in the head when they came up to breathe. But by November 2nd, the sun had taken his departure from the latitudes in which they were, and it was getting almost too

dark for seal-shooting. A bear, however, came to look at the ship at night, and was chased by the dogs on to some thin ice, through which he broke. All hands turned out on this occasion to see the sport; and, notwithstanding the intense cold, many of the men, in their excitement, did not wait to put on their extra clothes. The bear was despatched with their rifles, after making some resistance and maiming several of the dogs.

In December, a school for reading, writing, and navigation was commenced, for Captain M'Clintock lost no opportunity of attending to the amusement and recreation of the men, so necessary in such a dreary life. Besides the ordinary duties of the ship, the men were also exercised daily in building snow houses, and preparing travelling equipages.

At the winter solstice, December 21st, they had only about half an hour's partial daylight, once in twenty-four hours, by which the type of the Times newspaper could just be distinguished on a board facing the south, where, near noon, a slight glimmer of light is refracted above the horizon, while in the zenith and northwards, the stars are shining brilliantly. In the absence of light and shade, it is not possible to see to walk over the ice, for the hummocks can scarcely be distinguished from the floe; all presents a uniform level surface; and, in walking, one constantly falls into the fissures, or runs full butt against the blocks of ice.

All must now, therefore, be content with an hour or two's tramp alongside, or on the snow-covered deck under housing; and, during the remainder of the day, they must sit below in their cabins, which are crystallized by the breath condensing and freezing on the bulkheads, endeavouring to read and talk away the time. But, the common subjects of conversation get miserably worn out, the stories that are told get old, and are oft-repeated, impossible theories are started, and wagers are laid on the result of the observations as to progress, as vessel and crew unconsciously drift and drift before the gale.

At night, officers and men retire once more to their beds, thankful that another day has passed: a death-like stillness reigns around, broken only by the ravings of some sleep

talker, the tramp of the watch upon deck, a passing bear causing a general rousing of the dogs, or a simultaneous rush of these poor ravenous creatures at the cherished stores of seal-beef in the shrouds; and as the wakeful listen to the distant groaning and sighing of the ice, they are prompted to thank God that they have still a home in those terrible wastes.

After Christmas, the days of these men, who were held as prisoners by the ice, were mere repetitions of one another. They saw no change, nor did they hope for any till the spring. Gale followed gale; and, an occasional alarm of a disruption in the ice, a bear or seal hunt formed their only excitement; indeed, they sometimes hoped for some crisis, were it only to break the dreadful monotony of their lives. Their walks abroad afforded them no recreation; on the contrary, it was really a trying task to spin out the time necessary for exercise. Talk of a dull turnpike-road at home! Are not the larks singing and the farm boys whistling? But with these Arctic voyagers, what a contrast! Their walks were without an object, for there was literally nothing to see or hear; turn north, south, east, or west, still snow and hummocks. You see a little black mark waving in the air; walk to it, it is a crack in a hummock. think a berg is close to you; go to it, still a hummock refracted through the gloom. The only thing you can do is to walk to windward, so as to be certain of returning safe and not frost-bitten, to pick out a smooth place and form imaginary patterns with your foot prints.

You

By January 29th, 1858, the Fox had drifted into latitude 72° 46' north, longitude 62° west, and, by the aid of refraction, the crew saw the sun for the first time since November 2nd in the preceding year. The weather had now become intensely cold, the mercury was frozen, and the spirit thermometer registered 46° below zero. The men had great difficulty in clearing their bed-places of ice, and their blankets froze nightly to the ship's-side; but they had the sun to shine on them, and that made amends for all. A different world was then before their eyes. Even in those dreary regions where nothing moves and no sounds are heard save the rustling of the snow-drift, the effects of the