bones, and a portion of the os calcis, were removed. Mr Whatton exhibited casts, taken from the foot at different periods after the operation, which, at the request of Professor Harrison, he presented to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Dr. Granville expressed his high admiration of the operation so admirably detailed, and proposed a resolution expressive of the particular approbation and thanks of the section, with a request that the author of it would not wait for the formal volume of the Transactions of the Association to publish such an admirable and useful operation, for the benefit of the profession and the community. Mr Carmichael, as the senior of the profession in Ireland present, begged leave to second the motion, and bore witness to the very inconvenient and almost useless condition of the limb after the transverse operation of Chopart had been performed; he did not hesitate to characterise Mr Whatton's operation as one of the most important improvements introduced into modern surgery." After some conversation, the resolution was agreed to.

TO OUR AGRICULTURAL READERS.-Many farmers are convinced that the great cause of the failure in the germination of potatoes for the last three years, We now pass from a subject which we certainly has been the injury they have sustained from heating should never have adverted to, but for the purpose of in the covered heaps in which they are almost geneAn effectual way of pointing out the impropriety of misquotation in literally kept through the winter. rature, from the confusion it is apt to create in rela- preventing this is to place them in thin layers, and to tion to real authorship. cover every layer or stratum with earth about an inch thick, until the heap is of the proper height and form. The heap thus formed should not be more than three feet wide at the base, and, when brought to the proper degree of sharpness, it should be covered with earth at least six inches thick, and then carefully thatched with straw, so as to keep out the frost. This ought to be done on a dry piece of ground, as the drier the earth thus intermixed with the potatoes, so much the better. When preserved in this manner,

EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM CHAMBERS, AUTHOR OF "THE BOOK OF SCOTLAND," &c., AND BY ROBERT CHAMBERS, AUTHOR OF "TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH," "PICTURE OF SCOTLAND," &c.

No. 200.

SUBURBS.

PRICE THREE HALFPENCE.

embowered haunts beginning to be put about and the Great Belleville Streets, and the Granville Places, DROP blindfold from the clouds in any part of a large troubled by the approach of a city, erst considered as and the Royal Terraces: look at these as names, and city, and, when the bandage is taken off, you will a day's journey distant-to see some long antenna of you would expect, when you got acquainted with know at once whether you be in the centre or the the monster Town coming ruthlessly down upon it, them as places, to find them filled with the masters of outskirts. It is not that a suburb is necessarily or piercing it perhaps through and through, or possibly the earth. In reality, these aspiring designations are essentially meaner than the main town; it may be environing it In its irresistible folds, till, mutilated, somewhat like the fine names occasionally found much handsomer, and yet you will know it to be a tortured, and dismayed, it seems a very Torso-to see among "the butler's children," marking rather the suburb. The marks by which you can distinguish a cot after cot pulled down, garden after garden laid humility, than the dignity of the origin. But even suburb are many; but there are some which catch waste, tree after tree uprooted, till, finally, almost in suburbs purely commercial, there is always a conattention more readily than others. There is almost every vestige of the ancient place is swept away, ex-siderable show of self-assumed importance. The palalways something new, raw, and sprawling about it. cepting perhaps some poor fool, who, faithful to loIn the central city, the houses may be old and de- cality, and unable by his very weakness to sorrow for cayed, but they usually have a dignified kind of air. the changes which have gone on around him, now They stand close up to each other, shoulder to shoul-wanders along streets which once were green lanes, der; are tall, solid, and substantial; and look as if conscious that there is no room amongst them for any fresh intruding tenement. The pavement, too, is good, and well kept; the shops are of the gayest and most opulent in goods; the finest public buildings are there; all looks firm, respectable, and of old established consequence. In the suburb you see nothing of this. In the very best shape which it ever takes that of a series of streets or cluster of villas, for the habitation of people in genteel circumstances there may be prettiness and even elegance, but nothing respectable or exclusive. The honours of a suburb are like those of a new mercantile gentleman-they have a quality of spick and span, which does not somehow excite veneration. The place, moreover, wants completeness and unity. You see houses whose sides betray that they were intended to have others stuck upon them all yawning, ghastly, unskinned, and irregular; you see infant shrubberies struggling in awkward parcels amidst lots of yet to be occupied ground, and clumps of fine places and squares looking down upon clumps of old half-ruined villages, which the spreading town has taken by surprise, and which have not yet had time to get out of the way. Here and there, flanking the genteel streets, are dull plebeian bricky rows, full of poor grocers and taverners, and which seem to have sprung up only for the annoyance of the gentlefolk. The arrangement of these better kinds of suburbs is also of such a formal character as, while striving not to be town, neither is perfectly country. The houses usually perk themselves primly up beside the highway, as if, so far from courting seclusion, they were anxious to see and be seen of all passing along. Or they run into dull lanes, where, if less under public notice, each is at least so closely adjacent to its neighbour, that the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, if ever it should be expelled from the stage, might easily be acted in the boxes. Very different is all this from the chance-dropped abodes of the open unsmoked country, where each house seems to settle and nestle in its own proper domain, whether of park, shrubbery, garden, or simply farm-yard and appurtenances. In the one case all seems natural: the house, the work of man, springs up amidst the works of creation, easily and fitly: all is truly rural. In the other case, we see that the houses have been "run up" upon speculation, or planted by tasteless affluence with a view to a convenient distance from town."

and is as cheerfully familiar with the city people who
occupy them, as he ever was with the rustics who
lived there of old! There must be many who, on re-
turning from a long sojourn in foreign climes, have felt
the pleasure of hailing an old well-remembered vil-
lage, which, during all the changes "which fleeting
time procureth," including that greatest of all which
has taken place in their own bodily and mental frame,
has not changed a single feature, but still seems to
swarm with the same children, and bees, and birds,
and butterflies, as ever. Many years ago, a young
man, when on the point of departing to pursue his
fortune in British Guiana, walked out on a May
morning to a village near the town in which he had
hitherto resided. The sun was shining, the birds
were singing; all nature was joyful and beautiful,
and William Grieve, an old rustic friend, was blithely
clipping the hedges which led into the village.
He took a farewell of this venerable worthy, and
of a place which he had known and delighted in
from earliest childhood; and that day took his de-
parture for South America. After spending seven-
teen years in Demerara, he returned, and on a May
morning precisely similar, walked out to revisit his
favourite village. There not only did every house
stand as once it stood: not only were the birds sing-
ing, and the sun shining, and the place as pleasant
and fair as ever, but William Grieve was still clipping
at the same hedges, as if it had only been the to-mor-
row of that day on which our friend last saw him. In
the interval, Bonaparte had been and was gone, and
the ploughshare of political ruin had passed over many
nations; but here were at least one place and one
man unchanged. The luxury of an acquaintance re-
newed under such circumstances may be imagined.
And it is chiefly because old villages, being nearly
the most durable of all things, serve so well to pro-
vide this enjoyment to those who spend their better
part of life in distant lands, that their destruction is
so much to be regretted. The suburb substituted for
them may be beautiful, may indicate the increase of
national and individual wealth; but it will not atone
for the erasure of the green where childhood played,
or the felling of that old commixture of tree and cot
which entered into the soul in youth, and, when once
away, would gladly be purchased back by the expen-
diture of gold.

triest shops have an air of tawdry finery-something pink and dirty, usually, in the windows, and plastered fronts painted bright green once a-year. If there be a whip-maker, he puts up "The Whip Manufactory," as if there were no other in the world. Dyeing is carried on by "the Dashville Dyeing and Renovating Company." The affix " & Co." is found attached to places of business, where there seems hardly a possibility of employment for the ninth part of a man. Every haberdasher who can command ten feet of signroom, fills it with CUMBERLAND HOUSE, or some similar title, in vast square letters, so that there is not any great wareroom in the city, which has not its three or four imitators in the suburbs. Suburban shopkeepers seem sensible that they are out of the way-that, for cheap rent, they have forfeited dense population--perhaps also, that, having missed fortune in more central situations, they are now apt to be looked down upon; and they accordingly feel it necessary to blazon over the poverty of the case by a little extra pretension. The fact is, that the commercial occupants of suburbs are apt to be persons who either never had any capital, or have lost what they had. In such situations, setting up is comparatively easy, for rents are cheap, and deficiencies of stock are not apt to be carefully scanned. All, therefore, who hope to advance from small things to great, all who have sunk from great things to small, alike try their fortune in the suburbs. Their set-out is not perhaps very great; but look at their shop-bills and newspaper advertisements. What magnanimous resolutions of cheapness! what assurances as to the excellence of the goods! Loudness of outcry makes up for obscureness and remoteness of place. A suburban shopkeeper never thinks of addressing only the inhabitants of Dashville, or whatever other ville he may have patronised by his presence. He calls upon the nobility, gentry, and public at large-he calls upon the whole world to inspect his cheap prints. In leafy June, you pass the shop, and find all a-flutter, all a-glitter, as if with conscious importance: you pass again in November, and not more effectually has nature furled her green ensigns, than has Cumberland House doffed all its gay and ostentatious attractions. Those doors and windows which formerly bristled with shop-bills are now pasted up with the bills of other "establishments," and a poor apple-stall is perhaps planted in that once so frequented entrance. It is wonderful how rapidly the Cumberland Houses of the suburbs come to decay. You see dress coats upon blocks within the doorway, with prices labelled upon them, not If suburbs do not command that respect which is much more than half of what you pay for the same paid to ancient and well-constituted cities, they are articles of dress in the city: you argue that there is The case of the little surprised villages is the sad- seldom found deficient in that affectation of conse- surely no resisting such temptations, and that all dest feature in the whole affair. Let the town swal-quence which so naturally arises where consequence mankind must, ere long, bring their custom hither. low up as much country as it pleases, let it realise is not conferred by surrounding opinion. Were we to Custom, however, has a way of its own, which it will even the Horatian hyperbole and leave hardly an acre judge of them by the names which are found attached not be put out of for every clever fellow who chooses to the plough; but let it spare the fine old romantic to their streets and rows, we might suppose them to to solicit it. The hardy pretensions, the patriotic hamlets those early emanations of the soil, as na- be places of the utmost importance. It is true we find anxiety to serve mankind, prove all in vain, and shops tural of growth as the venerable trees with which a few flimsy gewgaw-like names amongst them-such which come like shadows so depart. Suburban places they are surrounded, and whose right to the ground as Spring Gardens, Rose Lane, and Tulip Row-of business thus in their time play many parts. Their they occupy seems to rest amongst the statutes of Na-names suggesting the idea of a kind of summer camp, changes of facings are like very scene-shifting. What ture herself. How pitiable to see one of those old here to-day and away to-morrow. But then look at was last year "The Medical Hall," is now a recep

tacle for the sale of potatoes. What is now a scene of mean huckstry, may next month glisten with an exhibition of wax-work. Paper profiles are cut to-day, where yesterday heads were broken in drunken brawls. In fact, shops in the suburbs may be said to resemble a Highlander who once descended upon Edinburgh from his Perthshire home, in the hope of getting a situation either as a teacher or as a porter: they are ready for any thing, and answer for every thing. It might be supposed that the place which had once known genteel millinery or medicine would be incapable of condescending to the poor affairs of the applewoman: one might almost suppose it to have a soul which would rise against such an indignity. But suburban shops have no pride. They throw themselves open not more readily to him who deals in wood by the log, than to him who doles it out in fagots or in matches. Nay, long after the huckster has planted her yellow sand and whitening by the door, "The Medical Hall" may still flame above her head. A suburban shop often sails under false colours: the tartan chequers of a Scotch snuff-dealer are perhaps left over to illustrate a nascent coffin-manufactory. Or, if the front have been for some time neglected, it is not impossible that you may find a school conducted under what may be called an accidental variety of tints. That is to say, some of the superior strata of paint may be observed to have peeled off, leaving others cropping out below; while various fragmentary signs, containing a snatch of all the professions that the shop has been under for the last dozen years, might supply to the pupils of the present occupant a literary puzzle more bewildering than the tenth chapter of Nehemiah.

ROSS'S EXPEDITION.

of success, which were implicated in this most gratifying discovery. The wine, spirits, sugar, bread, flour, and cocoa, were in equally good condition, with the exception of a part of the latter, which had been lodged in provision casks. The lime-juice and the pickles had not suffered much; and even the sails, which had been well made up, were not only dry, but seemed as if they had never been wetted. It was remarkable, however, that, while the spun yarn was bleached white, all appearance and smell of tar had vanished from it. We proceeded now to the beach where the Fury had been abandoned, but not a trace of her hull was to be seen. We therefore returned on board, and and provisions to complete our equipment for two made preparations for embarking a sufficiency of stores years and three months, being what we expected to want on the one hand, and to obtain on the other. Yet all that we could possibly stow away seemed scarcely to diminish the piles of canisters, of which we embarked whatever we could, together with such flour, cocoa, and sugar, as we wanted, all that we took being in excellent condition. We had found the spare mizen-topmast of the Fury, and this was selected by the carpenter for a new boom, in place of one that we had lost. We also got some anchors and hawsers, together with some boatswain's and carpenter's stores, to make up our deficiencies." After selecting these and other stores, the Victory stood along the coast to the southward. It was here Captain Ross found the land, which he named Boothia Felix, but which seems rather to have been the imposing of a new name, than making any discovery. Captain Parry had twice visited the same land before. The progress now made was but slow, for they had large masses and floes of ice, and contrary winds, to contend with, while their miserable engines could not help them onwards more than a mile an hour. fast to an iceberg, and drift with it. Sometimes they had to make After this, Captain Ross passed along the coast southward for about 150 miles to the south of Cape Parry, but was obliged to bring up for the winter in what he was glad to consider a commodious harbour, and upon which, always rendering honour to whom THE twofold project of approaching the north pole and it is due, he bestowed the name of Felix Harbour. making the north-west passage—that is, sailing round Those critics who are still querulous of the captain's the northern extremity of America, from the Atlantic sayings and doings, and even yet advocate a northwest passage, here find fault with thus creeping along to the Pacific-after lying long dormant, was revived the coast. Having reached their winter home, the in 1817, chiefly by Captain Scoresby and his son, who first step was to lighten the ship, then to throw overfor many years followed the whale-fishing trade from board the unserviceable engines, and to make such Hull with enterprise and success. From the repre-arrangements and regulations for the winter as apsentations that were made, an expedition was fitted peared to be proper. The lightening of the ship made it necessary to cut away the ice from around her, to out to attempt the discovery of the supposed passage, allow her to settle at the natural line. She rose nine but with no useful result. Betwixt 1817 and 1826, inches by the operation. The men then proceeded to ten voyages and journeys overland took place, all at build an embankment of snow and ice all around her, to shelter her from the cold. The upper deck was the public expense. They, however, produced nocovered with two feet and a half of snow, which, after thing beyond hazardous enterprises and a few disco- being trodden down into a solid mass of ice, was veries within the arctic circle. The government be- sprinkled with sand, and made like a gravel walk. ing at length tired of fitting out expeditions of this A rooting over all was made from the spare sails of description, the project of another voyage was set on the wrecked vessels, the canvass sides being carried so foot by Captain Ross, and his nephew Commander low as to cover the sides of the ship down to the embankment of snow at the gunwale. The lower deck, Ross, with the assistance of a private patron, Felix which was the floor of the house, was covered with Booth, a rich merchant and distiller in London, who hot sand every morning, and scrubbed with sand until advanced L. 18,000 to purchase and equip a vessel to eight o'clock, the usual breakfast hour. Copper flues proceed upon the voyage. were placed round the apartment to carry off the vapour; iron tarks, with the open side downwards, were placed over the apertures in the upper deck, to receive the flues from the steam kitchen, oven, and other parts of the lower deck. By this plan, the apartments were kept dry and warm. The system of comfort and economy within was as perfect as could be desired; and although the temperature without usually ranged so low as 37 minus, yet the men, if there were no wind, could take exercise and make hunting excursions. When confined to the house, walking for some hours a-day upon the upper deck and beneath the canvass roof, was another mode of occupation towards keeping the crew healthy. Spirits were not served out, it being supposed that the use of them in these regions is conducive to scurvy; but the men had tea regularly every evening at five o'clock. They seem to have been unable or averse to muster a dramatic corps, but they had an evening school, which they attended with some degree of profit. Each Saturday night they were always allowed to dance, and to drink to sweethearts and wives. On Sunday, no work was performed, and the day was spent principally in religious observances.

The ship which was by this means engaged was the Victory, a vessel, it seems, unsuitable for the expedition. She was fitted up with steam-engine and paddles, but the enginery was very inadequate. She sailed from Woolwich, May 23, 1829. A second vessel, named the John, was taken to carry stores and provisions; but the crew of the John mutinied, and the Victory was allowed to proceed alone. Upon the 23d of July, the Victory reached Holsteinberg, a Danish settlement in Davis' Straits. Captain Ross there purchased stores from a wrecked vessel, and the governor presented him with six Esquimaux dogs; afterwards of essential use in dragging the sledges. The Victory then stood to the northward along the coast of Bathin's Bay; and having reached the latitude of 74° 14' on the 3d of August, ran across to, and on the 5th reached the entrance of, Lancaster Sound. On the 11th August, he steered direct for the south-west side of Prince Regent's Inlet; and having passed Elvin and Batty Bays, saw the spot where the Fury had been wrecked in 1825. It had been one of Captain Ross's speculations to avail himself of the stores of the Fury, a vessel abandoned by Captain Parry; and it turned ont decidedly successful. The following is his account of the wreck and her stores :

They kept their first Christmas in these regions in due form; indeed, the minced pies and cherry-brandy from "We found the coast almost lined with coal, and it the Fury's stores enabled them to do this in the most was with no common interest that we proceeded to appropriate manner. After Christmas they were amused the only tent which remained entire. This had been by an unexpected visit from a tribe of Esquimaux, the mess tent of the Fury's officers; but it was too who, to the number of thirty, made their appearance evident that the bears had been making frequent visits. upon the 9th January 1830. Miserable and forlorn Where the preserved meats and vegetables had been as these people are, they were found by our voyagers deposited, we found every thing entire. The canisters to have some useful knowledge, and they showed prohad been piled up in two heaps; but though quite ex- vident habits. Some of them, and, as in Parry's case, posed to all the chances of the climate for four years, one of them a female, could even give such lessons they had not suffered in the slightest degree. There in geography as our travellers were glad to receive. had been no water to rust them, and the security of They were acquainted with Winter Island and Rethe joinings had prevented the bears from smelling pulse Bay. One man drew with a pencil several lage their contents. On examining the meats, they were lakes close to that part of the country-showed the not found frozen, nor did the taste of the several arti-spots where his countrymen were to be found and cles appear to have been in the least degree altered. This was, indeed, s all satisfaction, as it was not our luxury, but our very existence, and the prospect

assured the voyagers that the land might be crossed in
nine days to the ocean. Captain Ross, it ought here
to be mentioned, had it in his power to show gratitude

to the schoolmaster, by rather a singular recompense. Tallapin, one of his instructors, had lost a limb by having been frost-bit, and the captain presented him with a wooden-leg, which he received with the most reverential gratitude and wonder at its suddenly, yet effectually, restoring to him the power of locomotion. Commander Ross set out on a land expedition about the beginning of April. He was accompanied by the chief mate, Blanky, and two Esquimaux guides, with their sledges and provisions. The result of the journey seems to have been, that the commander and his party, having crossed an isthmus a little to the south and west of the ship, reached the ocean; whereupon he says:-"I concluded that we wers now looking upon the Great Western Ocean, of which these people had so frequently spoken to us, and that the land on which we stood was part of the great continent of America." A second and third journey were undertaken by the commander towards the end of April. The commander, besides acquir ing, in augmentation of his stores, two musk oxen, now possessed himself fully of the geography of the isthmus connecting the peninsula, now named Boothia,

with that land which has been considered above as part of the great continent of America. The isthmus was found to separate Prince Regent's Inlet from the Western Sea. A fourth expedition made it certain

that the extent of the isthmus was about fifteen miles in width, consisting of a lake, ten miles long, in the centre, and of five miles of land.

In place, therefore, of proving an inlet into the Western Ocean, the expeditions of Commander Ross showed that Prince Regent's Inlet was shut in by land; and it having been ascertained that the southern and western shores of the inlet were closed round with land, the next important point was to ascertain whether the land to the south of the isthmus was part of the continent of America. This could only be done by Commander Ross and his party tracing the western shore, and that again depended upon the limited quantity of provisions which they could carry with them. The matter of short allowance had to be well considered. It being generally agreed to persevere a little longer, Ross proceeded, first, to a projecting headland, which he called Cape Felix; then twenty miles farther, over hummocks, ice, and snow, brought them to another headland, which he named Victory Point, and which was found to be in lat. 69° 37′ 49", and long. 98° 40′ 49′′. They saw a still more distant point, which they named Franklin Point; the difference of latitude between which and the general line of the coast of America seemed barely one degree. The distance from Victory Point to Cape Turnagain is stated to be not greater than the space they had travelled from the ship-namely, two hundred and ten miles. But the commander was here obliged to desist, and to

return.

The party had hardly enough of provisions, even at a reduced allowance, to carry them back to the ship. Before quitting Victory Point, the travellers erected, in testimony of their visit, a cairn of stones, six feet in height, and they placed in it an account of their proceedings, contained in a canister, but with little hope that their brief chronicle would ever meet an European eye. During the months of August, September, and October, attempts were made to put to sea; but the season proving singularly unpropitious, and the ice forming early, it became evident that they were doomed to pass another winter upon the spot, and as much of the following summer as might expire before circumstances permitted of their liberation; they therefore once more commenced housing the ship, and building embankments, and they resumed all those practices and devices, formerly used with so much success, for passing the long dreary winter.

Second Year. In April 1831, Captain Ross and his nephew, the commander, set off on an expedition towards the isthmus. The captain's object appears to have been to ascertain the height of the land above the Western Sea, the commander's to fix the position of the magnetic pole. It was presumed, on their leaving England, that the magnetic pole was in lat. 70°, long. 98° 30′ west. The commander has fixed the spot at lat. 70° 5' 77", and long. 96° 46′ 45′′ west; but in this there is a good deal conjectural and unsettled, and it may be stated that neither of the ex peditions resulted satisfactorily. The ship became loose upon the 28th of August; but after various attempts to get her free, they began again, in October, to dismantle and make their winter preparations. This winter passed away much as the last..

Third Year. In February 1832, the effects of the long seclusion and peculiar habits of the voyagers be gan to be too perceptible. An old wound in the captain's side now broke out with bleeding, a sure indication of scurvy; and the medical report bore that all the crew were much enfeebled. The purpose to abandon the ship and try the boats came to be entertained; and towards the end of April they commenced carrying forward with the sledges a certain quantity of provisions and the beats. The labour of travelling over ice and snow was very severe, and made more so by the occasional wind and snow-drift. The final abandonment of the ship took place on the 29th May 1832.

After a month's fatiguing work, and every attempt at escape having been baffled, they had once more to fix themselves in winter quarters, which they did at Fury Beech, where they constructed a house thirtyone by sixteen feet, seven feet in the ceiling to be covered with canvass, and upon which they bestowed the

name of Somerset House.

Here they set the carpen- upon the government, who had not appointed them, ter to work to repair the three boats remaining of the or given its sanction, in any way whatever, to the exFury. Upon the 1st of August, the ice unexpectedly pedition, but which had been throughout a mere pribroke up, and the travellers set off in the boats in the vate adventure. They became claimants, however. hope of reaching Baffin's Bay before the departure of Their applications for relief were well received, and, the whalers. The sudden setting in of the ice, how- in the tide of general sympathy, readily and liberally ever, obliged them again to desist. They hauled the complied with. The men, by order of the Lords of boats on shore, left them there, and, on the 25th of the Admiralty, received double full pay until they September, set out across the ice on their return to finally abandoned the ship, and full pay after that until Somerset House, where they arrived, after a most toil- their arrival in England, amounting in gross to a sum some and harassing march, on the 7th of October. of L.4580. Captain Ross himself received L.5000 by a They had still in store plenty of flour, sugar, soap, vote of Parliament, and, along with his friend and papeas, vegetables, pickles, and lemon-juice; but of pre-tron Booth, received the honour of knighthood. The served meats there was not more than might suffice gunner and purser of the Victory were promoted to for another voyage in the boats during next season. ships of the line; the medical officer was put in the Fourth Year. The death of that most important way of being made full surgeon in the navy; and member of a ship's crew, the carpenter, cast a damp Commander Ross was appointed to a ship, and put upon the party. He expired on the 28th February upon full pay for twelve months, in order that he 1833. Want of employment-short allowance of food might at the end of that service receive the rank of -the melancholy induced by the uniform waste, where post-captain. Add to all this, that Sir John Ross snow and ice were the only elements, had the effect published his travels in a dear form by general subby this time of reducing the whole party to a more in- scription, whereby he no doubt expected to realise different state of health than had hitherto been expe- further remuneration. rienced. Mr Thom, the purser, and two of the seamen, were severely afflicted with scurvy. The monotonous and depressed state of existence into which they had thus fallen, is well expressed in the following passage:"When snow was our decks, snow our awnings, snow our observatories, snow our larders, snow our salt, and when all the other uses of snow should be at last of no more avail, our coffins and our graves were to be graves and coffins of snow. Is this not more than enough of snow than suffices for admiration? Is it not worse, that during ten of the months in a year the ground is snow, and ice, and 'slush ;' that during the whole year its tormenting, chilling, odious presence, is ever before the eye ?"

Without calling in question the measure of reward bestowed on Ross and his party, we may be permitted to say, that the expedition has produced no result of the least value, in the way of either geographic or general scientific discovery. It has been a voyage which has led to nothing. The question as to the existence of a north-west passage is still as far from being answered satisfactorily as ever, while, with reference to Captain Ross's expedition, the fuss which has been made about it, not to speak of the silly manner in which it has been dramatised and puffed, has thrown an air of ridicule over what ought to have excited feelings of a contrary nature.

THE SILVER ARROW,

A STORY.

in and decided the question. The general, a spare, pale, temperate man, to whom such a disease seemed impossible, was carried off by apoplexy; leaving a sickly, gentle-tempered widow and two children; a son of high promise, who had just left college, and set out on a long tour through half of Europe and much of Asia; and one daughter, a delicate girl of fourteen, whom her mother, in consideration of her own low spirits and declining health, sent immediately to

school.

Six years had elapsed between the general's death and the date of my little story, when Horace Vernon, returning home to his affectionate relations, embrowned by long travel, but manly, graceful, spirited, and intelligent, even beyond their expectations, found them on the eve of the archery meeting, and was prevailed upon by his mother, far too ailing a woman to attend public places, to escort his sister and her chaperone— a female cousin on a visit at the house-to the appointed scene of amusement.

A happy party were they that evening! Horace, restored to his own country and his own home, his birthplace, and the scene of his earliest and happiest recollections, seated between his mild, placid, gracious mother, and the pretty timid sister, with whose simplicity and singleness of mind he was enchanted, seemed to have nothing more to desire on earth. He was, however, sensible to something like a revulsion of feeling; for, besides being a dutiful inheritor of his father's aversions and prejudices, he had certain ancient quarrels of his own skirmishes with gamekeepers, and shooting and fishing squabbles, and such like questions to settle with Mr Page. He did certainly feel something like disappointment when, on inquiring into those family details which his long absence had rendered so interesting, he found this their old hereditary enemy, the man whom he thought it meritorious But deliverance was at hand. They finally quitted to hate, transmuted into their chief adviser and friend. Somerset House, Fury Beach, upon Monday the 8th Mr Page had put a stop to a lawsuit in which his July 1833, with their boats. They were detained for mother's dower and his sister's small fortune were ina short time at Batty Bay; but finding the ice to se- [In the leading article of our 195th number we adverted to the volved, and had settled the matter for them so advanparate, and a lane of water to open out, they succeeded petty mischiefs and vexations which sometimes arise among next-tageously that they were better off than before; Mr in crossing over to the eastern side of Prince Regent's door neighbours, on account of the silly antipathies which they Page had discovered and recovered the family plate Inlet. They then stood along the southern shore of form towards each other. The following story by Miss Mitford, abstracted by a thieving butler, and had moreover Barrow's Strait, and upon the 26th of August 1833, abridged from her "Belford Regis" and other works, will show contrived, to the unspeakable comfort of both ladies, they discovered a sail. Tantalising delays and disap- how little will frequently serve to eradicate such hatreds among that the thief should not be hanged; Mr Page had pointments ensued for a time, but they at length sucpersons who ought to live on terms of mutual friendship.] sent out to Russia, in a most advantageous situation, ceeded in making themselves visible to the crew of one HORACE and FRANCES VERNON were the only chil- the old steward's grandson, the pet and protégé of the of her boats, who speedily came to the rescue. "She dren of a very gallant officer of high family and mo- family; Mr Page had transported to the Swan River was soon alongside," says Captain Ross, "when the derate fortune, who had during his lifetime been one a vautrien cousin, the family plague; Mr Page had mate in command addressed us, by presuming that of the most zealous followers of the two factions who di-new-filled the conservatory; Mr Page had new-clothed we had met with some misfortune, and lost our ship. vided H-shire, and had bequeathed to his son as the garden wall; and, finally, as Frances declared This being answered in the affirmative, I requested abundant a legacy of prejudices and feuds as would have with tears in her eyes, Mr Page had saved her dear to know the name of his vessel, and expressed our done honour to a border chieftain of the fifteenth cen- mother's life by fetching Mr Brodie in the crisis of a wish to be taken on board. I was answered that it tury. The good general's prime aversion, his pet quinsey, in a space of time which, considering the diswas the Isabella of Hull, once commanded by Cap-hatred, had of course fallen upon his nearest opponent, tance, would seem incredible. This last assertion tain Ross;' on which I stated that I was the identical his next neighbour, who, besides the sin of espousing completely silenced Horace, who, to the previous feats, man in question, and my people the crew of the Vic- one interest in Hshire, as the general espoused had exhibited a mingled incredulity of the benefits betory. That the mate who commanded this boat was another, had committed the unpardonable crime of ing really conferred, and an annoyance at receiving as much astonished at this information as he appeared making his own large fortune as a Russia mer- benefits from such a quarter, supposing them to be as to be, I do not doubt; while, with the usual blunder- chant; and, not content with purchasing a consi- great as their glowing gratitude represented. He said headedness of men on such occasions, he assured me derable estate, which the general, to clear off old mort- no more; but the feeling continued, and when poor that I had been dead two years. I easily convinced gages, had found it convenient to sell, had erected a Frances began to talk of her dear friend and schoolhim, however, that what ought to have been trus, ac- huge staring red house within sight of the hall win- fellow Lucy, Mr Page's only child-of her talent and cording to his estimate, was a somewhat premature dows, where he kept twice as many horses, carriages, beauty, and her thousand amiable qualities and when conclusion, as the bear-like form of the whole set of and servants, and saw at least three times as much Mrs Vernon added a gentle hint as to the large fortune us might have shown him, had he taken time to dis- company, as his aristocratic neighbour. If ever one that she would inherit, Horace smiled and said nocover that we were certainly not whaling gentlemen, good sort of a man hated another (for they were both thing, but went to bed as thoroughly determined to and that we carried tolerable evidence of our being excellent persons in their way), General Vernon hated hate Mr Page, and to find his daughter plain and dis'true men, and no impostors,' on our backs, and in John Page. agreeable, as his deceased father, the general, could our starved and unshaven countenances. A hearty have done for the life of him. "I see your aim, my congratulation followed, of course, in the true seaman dear mother and sister," thought he to himself; "but style; and after a few natural inquiries, he added, if my fortune be limited, so are my wishes; and I am that the Isabella was commanded by Captain Humphnot the man to enact Master Fenton to this Anne reys; when he immediately went off in his boat, to Page of yours, or Lucy, or whatever her name may communicate his information on board, repeating that be, though she were the richest tallow-merchant's we had long been given up as lost, not by them alone, daughter in all Russia." but by all England.

John Page, on his side, who scorned to be outdone in an honest English aversion by any man in Christendom, detested the general with equal cordiality; and a warfare of the most inveterate animosity ensued between them at all places where it was possible that disputes should be introduced, at vestries and county meetings, at quarter-sessions and at the weekly bench. In these skirmishes the general had much the best of the battle. Not only was his party more powerful and influential, but his hatred, being of the cold, courtly, provoking sort that never comes to words, gave him much advantage over an adversary hot, angry, and petulant, whose friends had great difficulty in restraining him within the permitted bounds of civil disputation. An ordinary champion would have been driven from the field by such a succession of defeats; qualities, good and bad, which prevented his yielding an inch. He was game to the back-bone. Let him be beaten on a question fifty times, and he would advance to the combat the fifty-first as stoutly as ever. He was a disputant whom there was no tiring down.

As we approached slowly after him to the ship, he jumped up the side, and in a minute the rigging was manned; while we were saluted with three cheers as we came within cable's length, and were not long in getting on board of my old vessel, where we were all received by Captain Humphreys with a hearty seaman's welcome. The ludicrous soon took place of all other feelings; in such a crowd and such confusion, all serious thought was impossible, while the new buoy-but our reformer (so he delighted to style himself) had ancy of our spirits made us abundantly willing to be amused by the scene which now opened. Every man was hungry, and was to be fed; all were ragged, and were to be clothed; there was not one to whom washing was not indispensable, nor one whom his beard did not deprive of all English semblance. All, every thing, too, was to be done at once; it was washing, dressing, shaving, eating, all intermingled; it was all the materials of each jumbled together; while, in the midst of all, there were interminable questions to be asked and answered on both sides; the adventures of the Victory, our own escape, the politics of England, and the news which was four years old. But all subsided into peace at last. The sick were accommodated, the seamen disposed of, and all was done for all of us which care and kindness could perform."

The fate of Captain Ross and his crew had been long lamented in England, where it was universally believed that his voyage had terminated fatally. Of course, his reappearance along with his party was hailed with great rejoicing as a kind of resurrection from the dead. Their exertions and sufferings had been great, still neither he no his men had any claim

John Page was of a character not uncommon in his class in this age and country. Acute and shrewd on many subjects, he was yet on some favourite topics prejudiced, obstinate, opinionated, and conceited, as your self-educated man is often apt to be: add to this that he was irritable, impetuous, and violent, and we have all the elements of a good hater. On the other hand, he was a liberal master, a hospitable neighbour, warm and generous friend, a kind brother, an affectionate husband, and a doating father: note, beside, that he was a square-made little man, with a bluff but good-humoured countenance, a bald head, an eagle eye, a loud voice, and a frank and unpolished but by no means vulgar manner, and the courteous reader will have a pretty correct idea of Mr John Page.

a

Whether he or his aristocratic adversary would finally have gained the mastery at the bench and in the vestry, time only could have shown. Death stepped

So thinking he went to bed, and so thinking he arose the next morning-the great morning of the archery meeting; and his spleen was by no means diminished, when, on looking out of his window, the great ugly red house of his rich neighbour stared him in the face; and on looking to the other side of the park, he was differently but almost as unpleasantly affected by an object on which most persons would have gazed with delight-his pretty little sister, light and agile as a bird, practising at the target, and almost dancing with joy as she lodged an arrow within the gold-for Horace, just arrived from the Continent, was not only quite free from the prevailing mania, but had imbibed a strong prejudice against the amusement, which he considered too frivolous for men, and too full of attitude and display for women-effeminate in the one sex, and masculine in the other.

He loved his sister, however, too well to entertain the slightest idea of interrupting a diversion in which she took so much pleasure, and which was approved by her mother and sanctioned by general usage. He joined her, therefore, not intending to say a word in disapprobation of the sport, with a kind observation on her proficiency, and a prognostic that she would win the silver arrow, when all his good resolutions were overset by her reply.

"Oh, brother!" said Frances in a melancholy tone, "what a pity it is that you should have stayed all the summer in Germany, where you had no opportunity of target practice, or else you too might have won a silver arrow, the gentlemen's prize!"

"I win a silver arrow !" exclaimed Horace, nearly as much astonished, and quite as much scandalised, as