got ready; the crippled were re-packed in their robes, and we sped busily toward the hummock-ridges which lay between us and the Pinnacly Berg.

The hummocks we had now to meet, came properly under the designation of squeezed ice. A great chain of bergs, stretching from north-west to south-east, moving with the tides, had compressed the surface-floes, and, rearing them up on their edges, produced an area more like the volcanic pedragal of the basin of Mexico, than anything else I can compare it to.

It required desperate efforts to work our way over it,—literally, desperate, for our strength failed us anew, and we began to lose our self-control. We could not abstain any longer from eating snow: our mouths swelled, and some of us became speechless. Happily the day was warmed by a clear sunshine, and the thermometer rose to -4° in the shade-otherwise we must have frozen.

Our halts multiplied, and we fell half sleeping on the snow. I could not prevent it. Strange to say it refreshed us. I ventured on the experiment myself, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes, and I felt so much benefited by it, that I timed the men in the same way. They sat on the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were forced to wakefulness when their three minutes were out.

By eight in the evening we emerged from the floes. The sight of the Pinnacly Berg revived us. Brandy, an invaluable resource in emergency, had already been served out in tablespoonful doses. We now took a longer rest, and a last but stouter dram, and reached the brig at 1 p.m., we believe, without a halt.

I say, we believe; and here, perhaps, is the most decided proof of our sufferings. We were quite delirious, and had ceased to entertain a sane apprehension of the circumstances about us. We moved on like men in a dream. Our footmarks seen afterward, showed that we had steered a bee-line for the brig. It must have been by a sort of instinct, for it left no impression on the memory. Bonsall was sent staggering ahead, and reached the brig, God knows how, for he had fallen repeatedly at the track-lines; but he delivered with punctilious accuracy the messages I had sent by him to Dr. Hayes. I thought myself the soundest of all; for I went through all the formulæ of sanity, and can recall the muttering delirium of my comrades when we got back into the cabin of

our brig. Yet I have been told since of some speeches, and some orders, too, of mine, which I should have remembered for their absurdity if my mind had retained its balance.

Petersen and Whipple came out to meet us about two miles from the brig. They brought my dog-team, with the restoratives I had sent for by Bonsall. I do not remember their coming. Dr. Hayes entered with judicious energy upon the treatment our condition called for, administering morphine freely, after the usual frictions. He reported none of our brain-symptoms as serious, referring them properly to the class of those indications of exhausted power which yield to generous diet and rest. Mr. Ohlsen suffered some time from strabismus and blindness; two others underwent amputation of parts of the foot, without unpleasant consequences; and two died in spite of all our efforts. This rescue party had been out for seventy-two hours. We had halted in all eight hours, half of our number sleeping at a time. We travelled between eighty and ninety miles, most of the way dragging a heavy sledge. The mean temperature of the whole time, including the warmest hours of three days, was at minus 41.2°. We had no water except at our two halts, and were at no time able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing.

"April 4, Tuesday.-Four days have passed, and I am again at my record of failures, sound but aching still in every joint. The rescued men are not out of danger, but their gratitude is very touching. Pray God that they may live."

Arctic Explorations.

THE CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND QUESTION.

GOLDWIN SMITH.

It seems to me that the aim of all social effort, and the object of all social aspiration, is to produce a real community, every member of which shall fully share the fruits and benefits of the social union. I say this in no communistic or revolutionary sense, but in the sense in which it must be felt to be true by all, whether Liberals or Conservatives, who are trying to improve the condition of the poor, and especially by those are doing so in obedience to the social principles laid down in the Gospel. Such is the goal to

which the progress of society through all its various and successive phases would seem to be tending, if it is tending to any goal at all, and is not a mere blind and aimless current. That English society in its present state is very far from having reached this goal, is what you will scarcely think it Jacobinical to assert. It is an open question among writers on economical history, whether the mass of the peasantry in this country have really shared at all, in the increase of wealth and comfort which has accrued to the upper classes in the course of the last three hundred years. No one will venture to say that they have shared in anything like a fair proportion. Too many of them are still in a state of great misery, of brutal ignorance, and of the vice which misery and ignorance always bring in their train. Millions of our labouring population live constantly in view of penal pauperism, and nearly a million. of them on the average are actually paupers. They pass through life without hope; they die in destitution; the only haven of their old age, after a life of toil, is the workhouse. In most cottages of many counties, the children are under-fed that the father may have enough to work upon; and any physician who has been much among the poor, will tell you that numbers of them die in their infancy, from want of proper food and clothing. In Ireland, centuries of horrors to which, I say most deliberately, history affords no parallel, seem to be closing in the extirpation of a people. There are wealth, luxury, and splendour, such as, perhaps, the world never saw, in the palaces of our nobles and our wealthy merchants and stockbrokers; but there are hunger, and the horrible diseases that wait on hunger, at the palace gates. Pass from the dwellings of the rich to those of the poor, and you will own, that though we may be a great and powerful nation, a community in the full sense of the term we are not. These things are freely stated, and even exaggerated by Conservative writers, whose object it is to disparage the present in honour of the past; and I do not see why it should be treason to state them, when the object is to prevent the same party from destroying the opening prospects of the future.

While the mass of the people have so little interest in the existing state of things, and while they are at the same time so wanting in the education and intelligence requisite for the exercise of political rights, our statesmen naturally shrink from giving them the franchise; though all of us, even the strongest Conserva

tives, are conscious that it is not a just and sound system under which the bulk of the community, while they all bear political burdens, while they pay heavy taxes and shed their blood for the country in war, are excluded from all political rights. A fraction of our citizens (if it is not a mockery to use the term) enjoy the franchise. The rest enjoy what even the leader of the Conservative party has derided as the ironical franchise of "virtual representation;" that is to say, they are left in the hands of classes whose interests are often quite different from theirs. Great progress has been made since the Middle Ages in every respect, except, perhaps, the most romantic qualities, among the upper classes of society; but the condition of the unenfranchised labourer, if you look at the real facts, instead of being satisfied with the mere name of freemen, is little above that of the mediæval villein. He is even still, under the Law of Settlement, in some measure bound to the soil.

No man who loves his kind, and feels that his own happiness depends on the happiness of his fellows, can desire that such a state of things should be final. No man of sense and reflection, I believe, imagines that it will be so.

Now the experiment which is being made in America for the benefit, as it seems, of mankind in general (at least of those who have no particular class interests, and look only to the general good), is twofold. The Americans are trying not only whether society can be placed on a broader, and, as most men would allow, sounder and juster basis than that of opulence ruling over pauperism, but whether religion, when deprived of the support of State authority (a support which you must see is beginning to prove not adamantine), can rest securely on free conviction. Whether this part of the experiment has succeeded or failed, is a question far too large to be dealt with here. It is clear that religion, though free, retains its hold upon the American nation The voluntary payments for the maintenance of churches, exceed in amount the revenues of the richest establishment in the world. There is a good deal of religious zeal, combined, if De Tocqueville may be trusted, with full social toleration. Theological questions excite great interest; and the theology of the Americans, if less learned than ours, and inferior in literary qualities, is more robust, grapples more vigorously with great questions, and is therefore more likely in the end to lead to truth. Appeals are

made in extremity to the religion of the American people—and even, in spite of the diversity of sects, to its common religionas confidently and with as much success as to ours. The conflict between religious principles and material objects, in a great commercial nation, is severe; but, though we are far removed from the days of the Puritan fathers, it cannot be said that religious principles have as yet succumbed.

Letter to a Whig Member of the Southern Association.

EXTRACT FROM AN ORATION ON THE POWER OF

НАВІТ.

J. B. GOUGH.

I WILL now speak of another habit, which I believe is, more than any other, debasing, degrading, and embruting to a man, both physically, intellectually, and morally. I am not going to give you an address full of my favourite theme, but I must speak of it. I must speak of it before this assembly, for I shall never see you again till we meet on that day when we shall see things as they are. Let me then speak of one habit which, in its power, and influence, and fascination, seems to rear its head like a Goliath or Saul above all its kindred agencies of demoralization: I allude to the habit of using intoxicating liquors as a beverage, until that habit becomes a fascination. You will allow me to give my opinions upon these points freely. I consider drunkenness not only to be a moral evil but also a physical evil. A physical evil; and it depends a great deal more upon the temperament, and constitution, and disposition of the young man, whether, if he falls into the drinking usages of society, it becomes a habit or not, than it does upon his strength of mind or firmness of purpose.

Take a young man, and he shall be full of fire and poetry. He shall be of a nervous temperament, and generous heart; fond of society, and open and manly in everything he does. Every one loves him. That is the man most liable to become intemperate. He enters into the outer circle of the whirlpool, and throws care to the winds. There he thinks to stay, but he gets nearer and nearer to the fatal gulf, until he is swept into the vortex before he dreamed of danger. This thing, habit, comes gradually. Many a man who has acquired a habit of drinking, but does not exactly

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