jocularity of his entertainers, who, strangers to delicacy, and insensible themselves to the shafts of satire, are apt to administer it with a barbarous clumsiness, lacerating to the feelings of one who, though confessing that he is unfortunate, feels himself a gentleman notwithstanding. Ten minutes in the atmosphere of this midnight hostel have set us perspiring at every pore, and in spite of the charms of his rhetoric, we bid adieu to the orator in the middle of one of his finest periods.

Our way lies still westwards, though not in the most beaten route, and we are soon on the skirts of what has always appeared to us, when viewed at this dead hour before the dawn, as the most remarkable and suggestive spectacle which London has to offer to the contemplation of the nightly wanderer. We allude to the apparently numberless and interminable rows of streets lying in the voiceless silence, and distinctly mapped out by the long and regular lines of lamps on either side of the way. There is no other spectacle that we know of that intimates so significantly the huge extent of this overgrown metropolis. The dead dumbness that reigns in these long, empty avenues appals the mind, and sends the imagination of the pedestrian wandering for ever onwards and onwards. Lost in some such reverie, we wander on unwittingly, till happening to trench upon the world of fashion, we are aroused suddenly by the consciousness that, amidst this city of the dead, there is a focus of feverish life, where pleasure holds her court while all around is hushed in tranquillity. The echoes are all at once invaded by the trampling of steeds and the rattle of chariots, which rush rapidly by us, and almost before we are aware of it we are in the presence of a score or two more, drawn up in double lines fronting the city residence of some one whose lady has been holding a soirée to-night, which is now on the point of breaking up. The honourable Miss So-and-so's carriage stops the way for a moment or two and then rolls off; there is a loud cry for my lord Somebody's vehicle, which the coachman has contrived to lock between two others, to the imminent danger of two footmen in calves, who are hanging on behind. The police have some trouble in disentangling the Gordian knot, and at length my lord is gone. "Lady Dashville's carriage!" is the next sonorous utterance which makes vocal the midnight air, and her ladyship is accommodated in her turn. In the meanwhile there is a sound of music and revelry in the brilliant drawing-room above, and the assembly, falling off by degrees, will occupy yet an hour in dissolving away. We have not leisure to await the finale, but turning our face northward, and quickening our pace, soon leave the gay world of bon-ton to its questionable enjoyments.

The moon, which for the last hour has got fixed by the horns in a low cloud, now glimmers out above it, and lights us pleasantly on our path as we enter upon a district the very reverse of fashionable, where the sons of trade who keep open market for the middle and lower classes, lead their lives of anxiety and toil. It is now half-past two o'clock, and the nearest approach to complete and general silence that London ever knows, reigns around as we pursue our solitary way. Hark! what noise is that? Bang! bang!" a loud and furious knocking at doors-the startling and in

cessant crash of rattles-the heavy tramp of hurrying feet-the vision of dusky forms hastening to and fro, which almost appear to rise out of the earth-and the loud and reiterated cry of "Fire! fire!" Householders, leaping from their sleep, throw up their windows, and projecting themselves half out in their night-gear, ask anxiously, "Where? where?" It is round the corner; and on coming in sight of the house we see the dense smoke issuing from the fan-light over the entrance to the shop, and from the interstices between the shutters. The policeman is banging at the door with all his might, but no one answers. The house appears to be empty. In a few minutes a crowd of some hundreds has collected, and the neighbours have illuminated their windows to throw light on the scene; but as yet, nothing can be done to check the conflagration. Already the long tongues of flame curl round the blistered shutters, which are glowing in a red heat, and soon fall in charred fragments to the ground. Now the windows of the first-floor burst outwards with a sharp explosion, and the flame pours forth like a stream rushing upwards. Now comes the first engine, crashing and galloping over the stones with a portentous deafening din but too well known to the dwellers in London. The street is ankle-deep in water from the mains which the turncock has opened, and in a few seconds after the arrival of the firemen, a copious stream from the hose is hissing in the flames. The neighbours on each side of the burning house are with good reason alarmed, and it is interesting to watch the difference in their conduct. The one on the right begins throwing out his goods, which the crowd receive, and, carrying them across the road, pile them up against an opposite house. The other, who appears to have confidence in the party-wall, or else in the exertions of the firemen, is seen walking about his drawingroom, carrying a candle with him, and occasionally feeling the wall with his hand-now taking down a picture or a mirror-now drawing away a piece of furniture from the hot brick-work. It is plain that he intends to risk his property, for, having sent off his family to the shelter of a neighbour's house, he follows himself, locking the door after him, and pocketing the key. The roof of the burning house falls in, and now nothing but the four walls, glowing red as an oven, remain. More engines have arrived; and though the destruction of the dwelling is complete, they prevent the spread of the fire by torrents of water on the houses adjoining. When the uproar has a little subsided, the voice of a female is distinguished screaming beneath the ground, when it is discovered that a very juvenile servant-girl and a baby have taken refuge in the coal-cellar, from which their egress is barred by accumulations of fallen rubbish. The firemen dig up the grating, and soon hoist them out; and then it appears they were the only persons in the house, the master and mistress having gone off early in the evening to join a wedding party, and left the girl to wait up for them till their return. She had fallen asleep with the babe in her lap, and being awoke by the fire, which occurred she cannot tell how, had barely time to escape with the infant into the coal cellar. This explanation is hardly furnished, when up drive the master and mistress in a cab. A single

that

glance shows the extent of the calamity; from the skirts of the crowd we can discern nothing but a few gestures of alarm on the part of the husband, a few more of maternal feeling on the part of the wife; the nurse and babe are received into the cab, and the whole freight drives off again. Day-dawn is beginning to glimmer in the east as we leave behind us the scene of this brief but eventful act in the life of a London shopkeeper.

We are verging homewards, and are almost upon the boundary of the suburb where we dwell, when we are unexpectedly confronted by an intimation that the coming day is quarter-day. This intimation is one which we are sorry to observe is disgracefully common in London, and is nothing less than a stolen night-march, a surreptitious flitting by starlight from the threatening grasp of the landlord, by a defaulting tenant. A couple of those monster vans used for moving goods are drawn up, with their open mouths yawning towards the street door of a semi-genteel semi-villa. Both vans are loading at once, and with the aid of a dozen pair of hands, a whole auctioneer's catalogue of furniture is tumbled into them, and in less than twenty minutes the house will be empty of both goods and tenants. When the landlord comes, as he has threatened to come, at twelve o'clock, he will find neither debtor to dun, nor property to seize. If the migratory tenant be an old systematic practitioner, it is a chance whether he even find the key, and have not to redeem possession of his own house by payment of something more than a trifling gratuity.

The stars begin to pale in the sky; and that cold, winter-breathing wind, the sure precursor of coming dawn, stirs the dense foliage of June, as we hasten homewards. At this hour the cats have the sole possession of the causeway, and stalk leisurely and confidently from area to area, from wall to wall, and from roof to roof, making the morning twilight vocal with their squalling serenades. These are soon thrown into the shade by the sparrows, whose unnumbered hosts wake into voice at the first blink of daylight, and with endless chirrup and twitter commence their domestic duties. At this particular season their nests are filled with unfledged young, in whose behalf they do battle fiercely with one another for the possession of those thoughtless gentry the worms and slugs, who would risk their necks, if they had necks, for the sake of revelling in the fresh dew of the morning. Cock-sparrow is monarch of London during these "small hours," and certainly is more numerous in his generation than any other tribe, either of bipeds or quadrupeds, living above ground, located within the sound of Bow-bells. If a census could be taken of the London sparrows, we are inclined to think that the sum total would amount to five millions at least-more than doubling the human population.

Here we put an end to our ramble. We have spent twenty-four hours in wandering through the modern Babylon, and contemplating some few of the multiplied phases of life which her ever-shifting panorama presents to the eye. We have indulged in few reflections-not because the subject is not sufficiently suggestive, but because, on the contrary, it is so abounding in matter for the pro

foundest speculation, that any attempt of the kind would have led us beyond our limits, which it may be thought we have, as it is, too far exceeded. We leave our readers to manufacture their own philosophy out of the materials we have supplied. Varied, and fragmentary, and startling, and even repulsive as are some of the details in the general picture we have drawn, it has yet its bright and hopeful aspects, upon which it is a pleasure to dwell; and it must be a true picture, as far as it goes, because we have set down nothing which our own eyes have not witnessed. If we have sought sometimes to amuse, we have also had a higher object in view; and we may be allowed to commend the reader, in revolving the subject in his mind, to adopt the spirit of one of America's poets, in whose words we close our desultory survey.

"Not in the solitude

Alone may man commune with heaven, or sce Only in savage wood

And sunny vale, the present Deity;

Or only hear his voice

Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice.
"Even here do I behold

Thy steps, Almighty;-here amidst the crowd,
Through the great city roll'd,

With everlasting murmur deep and loud

Choking the ways that wind

'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind.

"Thy golden sunshine comes

From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies, And lights their inner homes;

For them thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies, And givest them the stores

Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores.

COMMANDER M'CLURE AND THE

NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. THE enterprise of ages has at last been all but accomplished, after baffling the skill and daring of the most competent naval commanders and wellappointed crews. We refer to the circumnavigation of North America, commonly called the northwest passage, though, as now nearly performed, an opposite direction has been followed-that of a north-east route from Behring's Strait. Three centuries and a half have elapsed since the attempt commenced to find a shorter passage to India, through some strait or inlet believed to exist in the northern part of the western world, which might prove a navigable channel from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. Of our own countrymen, the names of Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, Bylot, and Baffin, seamen of the sixteenth century, occur among those who engaged in hazardous undertakings to realize this delusive idea. Though classed in modern times with hopeless speculations, (and properly so, as to any line of practicable and useful

66

navigation being discovered in the arctic regions,) still the scheme of a north-west passage has been prosecuted with ardour, principally to solve the geographical problem, whether the American continent pushed its way northward to the pole, or had an oceanie termination short of it, while the gain of some results of interest to magnetic and meteorological science might be expected from the exploration. In consequence of maritime and overland expeditions under Parry, Ross, Beechey, Franklin, Back, Richardson, and the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, it has been known for some years that the mainland of America terminates generally to the north, about the parallel of 70°, where it is bounded by an ocean choked with islands, loaded with enormous masses of ice, and completely frozen up through the long polar winter. We now know further, that it is not an absolute impossibility for a ship to force its way through the greater part of the ice-encumbered sea, though years must be devoted to the task, and dreary winters be spent fast bound in frozen fetters, with the imminent hazard, nay, almost certainty, of some fatal catastrophe occurring. This result has been ascertained by commander Robert M'Clure, one of the officers sent in search of Sir John Franklin's missing expedition, backed by a chosen band of British sailors, who entered the arctic ocean by the western inlet of Behring's Strait, and has sent home one of his lieutenants with despatches by the eastern opening of Baffin's Bay. M'Clure served as first lieutenant in the Enterprise," under Sir James Ross, in 1848-9, in the first search for Franklin, and was promoted to the rank of commander for that service. He then volunteered for another expedition with the same object in view, and left Plymouth in the "Investigator," on the 20th of January, 1850, departing from the shores of England with the confidence of winning his post rank, by either finding the lost navigator, or making the passage of the icy sea. Having sailed through the Strait of Magellan, he cleared the Sandwich islands on the 5th of July, passed the Aleutian group by the Strait of Amoutka on the 20th, and stated, in a letter bearing that date, "No alarm need be felt, should the 'Investigator' not be heard of until 1854." Behring's Strait was passed by the 27th, the "Plover" seen on the 29th, and the "Herald" on the 31st. The men were then in excellent health and high spirits. Captain Kellett, in command of the " Herald," states, "I went over the ship, and was highly pleased with the comfort and cleanliness: everything appeared in its right place. Commander M'Clure did not much extol her sailing qualities, but spoke in high praise of her capabilities for taking the ice. He parted from me at midnight, with a strong northeast wind, and under every stitch he could carry, and he was seen again by the " Plover" on the 5th, in lat. 70° 44', long, 159° 52', steering to the north with a strong south-west wind; the two vessels could only communicate by exchanging numbers." It is said that captain Kellett deemed it advisable to recall M'Clure, and made the signal accordingly, but the latter parted from his senior officer with the response, also by signal, "Can't stay!"-"Own responsibility!" From that time nothing more was heard of him at home till four o'clock in the morning of Friday, October 7th, 1853, upwards of three

years, when one of his officers, lieutenant Cresswell, reached the admiralty with despatches from the gallant adventurer.

It appears that M'Clure coasted eastward from Behring's Strait, passed the mouth of the Mackenzie river, and soon after reaching Cape Bathurst, open water was observed to the northward. He therefore took leave of the American shore, and proceeded in that direction, discovering an unknown coast after having made the distance of about sixty miles, which was named Baring island. This lies to the south of Melville island, where Parry wintered, and thus the farthest longitude attained from the east by that commander in 1820, was reached from the west by M'Clure in 1850. The season suddenly changing, the ship was beset with ice in motion. It soon became compact, and the vessel was firmly frozen up, October the 8th, remaining so for the space of nine months. During this interval the commander started at the head of a travelling party over the ice. He discovered the western entrance into Barrow's Strait, which leads through Lancaster Sound into Baffin's Bay, and thus established beyond all doubt the existence of a north-west passage.

The ice broke up July the 14th, 1851, and the vessel was again fairly afloat. But the season proved unpropitious to progress, the sea remaining open little more than two months, and all the time much encumbered. North-east winds drifted large masses of ice into Barrow's Strait, and effectually barred the passage. After gaining a little higher northern latitude, and approaching nearer to Melville island, winter quarters were selected in a well-sheltered spot, to which the name of the Bay of Mercy was given. Here, on the night of September the 24th, the "Investigator" was once more firmly frozen in. Some extracts from the journal of her commander sufficiently reveal the dangers encountered down to this period. "October 8, 1850: Since the 11th of last month have been drifting in the pack-narrowly escaping de struction several times-until, with a heavy nip at 3 A. M. this day, which lifted the ship 34 degrees, we were firmly fixed for the space of nine months in lat. 729 47', long. 117° 34'." 'August 29, 1851: Ship in great danger of being dashed or driven on shore by the ice coming in with heavy pressure from the polar sea, driving her along within a hundred yards of the land for half a mile, heeling her fifteen degrees, and raising her bodily one foot eight inches, when we again became sta tionary and the ice quiet." September 19: Clear water along shore to the eastward; cast off and worked in that direction, with occasional obstructions, and several narrow escapes from the stupendous polar ice, until the evening of the 23rd, when we ran upon a mud-bank, having six feet water under the bow and five fathoms astern; hove off without sustaining any damage." Two remarkable discoveries are mentioned in the journal, namely, some smoking hillocks and a petrified forest. Before quitting the American coast, friendly intercourse was had with the Esquimaux, through the medium of an interpreter; but off the Mackenzie river they assumed a hostile attitude. Drift wood was also encountered in great abundance, and much game. In the vicinity of the Bay of Mercy, reindeer and hares abounded on the hills, which

66

remained the entire winter, and furnished the crew with a seasonable supply of provisions.

The ice not breaking up at all around the "Investigator" in the following year, she remained in her cold prison, and was still there when last heard of, May 21, 1853, after an interval of one year and eight months. The Bay of Mercy being about 70 miles to the south-west of Melville island, M'Clure, with a party of seven, proceeded thither over the ice in April, 1852, and deposited a record of his proceedings at Winter-harbour, with an intimation of his position. By a singular coincidence, it so happened that the very same captain Kellett, the last person with whom he shook hands in Behring's Strait, had returned to England, and had been sent out in the "Resolute," a ship belonging to sir E. Belcher's squadron, with orders to proceed to Melville island, to deposit provisions there for the use of the "Investigator," which was expected to have arrived at that spot. Kellett safely reached his destination, discovered the despatch which had been left, and was thus informed of the whereabouts of M'Clure and his imprisoned crew. Lieutenant Bedford Pim, one of his officers, being sent to make out the Bay of Mercy, succeeded in doing so; and thus, for the first time, parties encountered each other in the polar sea, who had gone into it at opposite points-by the western and eastern entrances of Behring's Strait and Baffin's Bay. This was early in April, 1853. M'Clure, and his first lieutenant were walking upon the floe as Pim came in sight, proceeding very fast-a strange object and one at first utterly inexplicable. What could it be moving over the eternal, ice? A bear? That idea was soon dispelled, as the lessening distance showed the proportions of the mysterious appearance. Coming within a hundred yards, Pim shouted and threw up his hands. But his face was as black as a hat, and his words were not distinctly heard. At length, the space narrowing, M'Clure called out, "Who are you, and where are you come from?" The reply was, of course, Lieutenant Pim, 'Resolute,' captain Kellett." But this answer for the moment made confusion more confounding to M'Clure, as the stranger approached from the east, and he had left Kellett more than a thousand miles behind in the west. Matters were speedily explained; and on news of the arrival reaching the "Investigator," the sick jumped from their hammocks, the crew forgot their despondency, and all was changed on board by the certainty of relief being near.

On the 19th of April, the captain and crew of the "Resolute," at Melville island, were made acquainted with Pim's successful meeting with M'Clure, by their arrival at the vessel. A private letter of that date, from one on board, states:-"This is really a red-letter day in our voyage, and shall be kept as a holiday by our heirs and successors for ever. At nine o'clock of this day, our look-out made the signal for a party coming in from the westward, and went out to meet them and assist them in. A second party was then seen. Dr. Domville was the first person I met. I canne describe my feeling when he told me that captain M'Clure was among the next party. I was not long in reaching him, and giving him many hearty shakes-no purer were ever given by men in this world. M'Clure looks well,

but is very hungry." The present state of the arctic question may now be briefly defined. The Investigator" discovery ship has been brought from Behring's Strait on the west, to within a comparatively short distance of a point in the polar sea which has been reached by vessels from Baffin's Bay on the east. An enormous mass of ice intervened at the date of the last advices. It did not break up in the summer of 1852, but may have done so in the summer of 1853. In this case, the ship will have been liberated, and may spend the next winter in Barrow's Strait, making her appearance in England in 1854, thus effecting in an inverse direction the north-west passage. But should the ice remain firm, she must of course be abandoned, and her crew be transferred over it to one of sir E. Belcher's searching vessels. In this event, the honour will still belong to Robert M'Clure, of having been the first to conduct communication through the polar sea from west to east, at the north extremity of the American continent. Whatever be the issue, it must be sufficiently obvious to the greatest enthusiast for arctic discovery, that no passage available for useful purposes exists between Baffin's Bay and Behring's Strait. England will not therefore be justified in exposing her seamen to imminent hazard of destruction, and expending her treasure, perhaps already considerably exceeding a million, in continuing the quest of a route which may be possible, but is only so under favourable circumstances, at uncertain intervals, after immense difficulty and danger. It may be added to the foregoing particulars, that no trace of sir John Franklin's expedition has been met with by the recent searching ships; and that their routes, lying in another direction, furnish no evidence for or against the conjectural large polar sea, more or less open, into which he may have penetrated, and become entangled. We would have every effort made to rescue survivors of the ill-fated party, if any are in existence-a forlorn hope-or to ascertain their fate. When this is done, we shall do well to abandon the arctic seas to whalers and sealers, or to those scientific expeditions, which may be conducted without risking the wholesale sacrifice of human life, and plunging a nation in anxiety for years. Another paper, "The Lost in the Polar Seas," we hope hereafter to give, as a tribute to the memory of those who have been sought anxiously but in vain, and have probably perished long ago in the icy zone.

66

the

THE WRITTEN ROCKS OF MOUNT SINAI. WITH the exception of Jerusalem, there is perhaps no spot upon earth consecrated by more sacred and sublime associations than Sinai. What "the holy city" was to the new dispensation, that was mount of God" to the old. Here the voice from the burning bush summoned Moses to the glorious task of delivering his nation; here the law was given amid "blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words;' here the prophet, whom neither the tempest, nor the earthquake, nor the fire could terrify, wrapped his face in his mantle and worshipped, as the still small voice fell mysteriously