billows in the shape of white bergs, whilst far away in the interior of the country the extremity of the immeasurable monster lay uncoiled among the snow-clad mountains which were the birth-place of its being and the nursery of its strength. Next, the new territory, to which the name of Washington has been given, was explored for some distance, until the survey was stopped by a steep overhanging headland, Cape Independence, in lat. 81° 22′ N. This tract is an extension of the Greenland Coast, or if distinct ground, the interval is spanned by the icy viaduct of Humboldt. On the opposite side of the Channel-let the reader suppose himself in the Straits of Dover, where the continent may roughly represent Greenland-the coast (say of the Eastern Counties, but here known as Grinnell Land) was charted for a still greater distance, the remotest point observed being a lofty mountain, to which the name of Parry was appropriately given. This rocky beacon, situate in lat. 82° 30′, is the nearest land to the pole which has yet been sighted. Lastly-for we need not advert to minor surveys-what light did the expedition throw upon the great problem of a Polar Sea? To their great surprise the party sent out to the north found that the floe in Smith's Strait-call it Dover Straits-became broken as they advanced; then great lanes of water appeared, in which a frigate might sail with ease; afterwards the ice grew scarce, and the surf broke full upon the naked rocks, until at length the channel 'expanded into an iceless area; for four or 'five small pieces, lumps, were all that could be seen over the ' entire surface of its white-capped waters. Viewed from the cliffs, ' and taking thirty-six miles as the mean radius open to reliable 'survey, this sea had a justly-estimated extent of more than four 'thousand square miles.' Like Balboa, when he first caught sight of the Pacific Ocean-sublime upon a peak in Darien-Mr. Morton, who made the discovery, could scarcely trust his eyes as he stood upon the height which brought this unexpected vision within reach of his gaze. Here, in a region where frost turns the very surges into icy heaps, and where the mountains pour down solid streams, there lay an ocean whose waves were as free and unfettered in their play as if they were sporting in rippled smiles or heaving with billowy laughter beneath the light of a Mediterranean sun. Dr. Kane does not attempt to say how far it may extend-whether it exists simply as a feature of the immediate region, or as part of the great unexplored area communicating with a Polar basin.' He is right in being cautious on the question. All is not gold that glitters. A sheet of melted snow, overlying a field of ice has more than once been mistaken for open water. Ships, too, have sailed one year where sledges have been driven the next. But the fact that the approaches to this basin, for a distance of more than fifty miles, were tolerably free from ice-the absence of all drift after a heavy gale of many hours' duration, coming from the north-east, the myriads of birds which skimmed the waters and lined the rocks, certainly afford some presumption that the liquidity of this area is not a mere transitory phenomenon, and that large expanses of fluid may exist beyond the poles of maximum cold. We have but little space for an allusion to the Earnest Appeal of Lieutenant Bedford Pim. This enterprising young officer was attached to the Resolute-one of the vessels abandoned by Sir Edward Belcher's orders, and which has been so gracefully returned by the American authorities. He has seen a considerable amount of Arctic service. It was he who acted as the Angel of Deliverance to the crew of M'Clure's vessel when impounded in Mercy Bay, and who therefore constituted the last living link in the chain of discovery which solved the problem of the North-west Passage. In conjunction with Dr. King, so well known for his Arctic enthusiasm, he has submitted a proposal to the Admiralty for a further expedition. They advocate a sea-search, in combination with a land-journey; the former, in a small screw-steamer, by Barrow's Strait and along Peel Sound; the latter, across the American continent and down Great Fish River. The rendezvous to be at the Magnetic Pole. The superior efficacy of this plan is assumed to lie in the concerted operations of the parties, and in the employment of the smallest possible number of people, consistent with the due execution of the scheme. Such an expedition would certainly dredge' separate tracts before the two detachments met; but the principle of mutual assistance could only be available when the junction was accomplished, and for the purpose of effecting their return homewards. We do not therefore discover so much 'novelty' in the proposal as to justify the idea that two such parties must succeed, where squadrons, acting in harmony, if not in unison, have completely failed. Dr. Rae's inquiries, however-inquiries confirmed by the subsequent researches of Messrs. Anderson and Stewarthave afforded some clue to the latitude and longitude of the Franklin disaster, and therefore the work of search might now be prosecuted with comparative simplicity, and with great reason to expect that some decisive intelligence would be procured. But the British Government have settled the question in Parliament, and refused to despatch the living in search of the dead. So far as this decision is founded upon the belief that the crews of the Erebus and Terror have all perished, the nation will probably acquiesce in its propriety; but, for our own part, if there Dr. John Tauler-Middle Age Mysticism. 353 are brave men who would be glad to undertake the service, and who would go out on the express understanding that the authorities should not be expected to despatch expeditions after them in case they too were missing,' we should have been as well pleased to find that Government was prepared to institute another and final search. No longer compelled to steer at random amongst the Arctic islands, or to pick their way by the light of delusive theories, the adventurers would be able to concentrate their energies upon the region where the tragedy was probably enacted; and though Franklin and his comrades could no longer benefit by their generous exertions, yet, if they could return with his Journal, we have no doubt that its discovery would excite more interest than the announcement at the market-cross of Europe, that the burning of the Alexandrian Library was a pure fiction, and that the whole of that splendid collection had been exhumed.* ART. III.-The History and Life of the Reverend Dr. John Tauler of Strasbourg; with Twenty-five of his Sermons (Temp. 1340). Translated from the German, with Additional Notices of Tauler's Life and Times, by SUSANNA WINKWORTH, and a Preface by the REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Smith, Elder, and Co. It is said to have been the custom of an eastern king, whenever he saw in his travels a tree remarkable for stature or for beauty, to have it dug up, and conveyed by his elephants to the royal gardens. There it was planted (among many others, similarly transported from every part of his dominions) on an eminence called the Green Mount, directly in view of his palace windows. It was one of his choice pleasures to watch these stateliest products of his many provinces, as they put forth their leaves in their season, and developed their various tints of green, and glittered with their several kinds of fruit. Now every good man may enjoy a prerogative and a pleasure similar to this, if his heart be large enough. We are free to gather together, from every communion, and people, and time, the fairest specimens of Christian life. We may set them up in view of our souls as in an ideal garden of the Lord,' and find in the contemplation of them that we grow in wisdom while we grow in love. They who, by their historic labours, help us in any way to such enjoyment and such profit, are certainly entitled to our thanks. Among those to whom acknow * Since writing the above the death of Dr. Kane has been reported. ledgment of this kind is due, no small share should be awarded to the authoress of the tasteful modern-antique before us-the lady who gave to English readers the Theologia Germanica, and who has now safely conveyed to them, in an excellent translation, certain cuttings for their Green Mount,' taken from a mighty tree that once braved sore tempests in the old German land-a tree in whose shadow many way-worn, thirsting souls found a shelter from the heat, and in whose branches many heavenly thoughts and praising voices had their habi tation. Great are the practical advantages to be derived from a course of mental travel among forms of Christian belief in many respects foreign to our own. Nothing so surely arrests our spiritual growth as a self-complacent, insular disdain of other men's faith. To displace this pride by brotherly-kindness-to seek out lovingly the points whereon we agree with others, and not censoriously those wherein we differ, is to live in a clearer light, as well as a larger love. Then again, the powers of observation and of discrimination called into exercise by such journeyings among brethren of another speech will greatly benefit us. We must set out remembering George Herbert's counsel to the traveller: 'Keep all thy native good, and naturalize All foreign of that name; but scorn their ill. Now the very endeavour to distinguish between the good in others which we should naturalize and assimilate for ourselves, and the error which could be profitable neither for them nor for us, is most wholesome. Such studies lead us to take account of what we already have and believe; so that we come to know ourselves better by the comparison both in what we possess and in what we lack. Every section of the Church of Christ desires to include in its survey the whole fabric of revealed truth. What party will admit to an antagonist that its study of the divine edifice has been confined to a single aspect? And yet the fact is beyond all candid questioning that each group of worshippers, with whatever honesty of intention they may have started to go round about the building, and view it fairly from every side, have, notwithstanding, their favourite point of contemplation-one spot where they are most frequently to be found, intent on that side of truth to which, from temperament or circumstance, they are most attached. There is both good and evil in this inevitable partiality; but the good Lessons to be Learnt from the Story of the Mystics. 355 will be most happily realized, and the evil most successfully avoided, if we have liberality enough now and then to take each other's places. It is possible, in this way, both to qualify and to enrich our own impressions from the observations of those who have given themselves, with all the intensity of passion, to some aspect of truth, which, while it may be the opposite, is yet the complement of the view preferred by ourselves. How often, as the result of an acquaintance made with some such diverse (and yet kindred) species of devotion, are we led to ask ourselves- Is there not a fuller meaning than I had supposed in this passage, or that other, of Holy Writ? "Have I not, because certain passages have been abused, 'allowed myself unconsciously to slight or to defraud them of 'their due significance?' And, in this way, both those parts of Scripture we have most deeply studied, and those which we have but touched with our plummet, may disclose their blessing to us, and fill higher the measure of our joy. Nor is this all. We gather both instruction and comfort from the spiritual history of others who have passed through the same darkness, doubt, or sorrow, which we ourselves have either encountered, or may be on our way to meet. How glad was Christian when he heard the voice of a fellow-pilgrim in the valley of the Shadow of Death! And when suns are bright, and the waters calm, and the desired wind blows steadily, he is the wise mariner who employs his leisure in studying the records of others who have made voyage already in those latitudes; who learns from their expedients, their mishaps, or their deliverances, how best to weather the storms, or to escape the quicksands that await him. Of all who have sailed the seas of life, no men have experienced a range of vicissitude more wide than has fallen to the lot of some among the mystics. Theirs have been the dazzling heights; the lowest depths also have been theirs. Their solitary vessels have been swept into the frozen North, where the ice of a great despair has closed about them like the ribs of death, and through a long soul's winter they have lain hidden in cold and darkness, as some belated swallow in the cleft of a rock. It has been theirs, too, to encounter the perilous fervours of that zone where never cooling cloud appears to veil insufferable radiance, and to glow beneath those glories with an ardour so intense that some men, in their pity, have essayed to heal it as a fever, and others, in their wrath, to chain it as a frenzy. Now afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, ere long there hath been built for them at once a palace and a place of rest; their foundations have been laid with sapphires, their windows |