moved, and was heard, as he marched, to | trait still preserved in the library at Zu be praying with great fervency, commit- rich, we may trace resolution and enering himself and the Church to the Lord. gy in his well-compacted head, and a farIt is a journey of not more than three seeing, penetrating understanding in his or four hours over the Albis from Zurich expansive forehead and full, clear eye; to Cappel, and the banner arrived at three but we confess that to ourselves his feao'clock P.M. The battle had already last- tures have a certain contraction that we ed three hours, with manifest advantage should hardly have expected in one who to the Zurichois, and a bold charge upon entertained such comprehensive views. In the foe might possibly have gained the his home he led a simple life, enjoying the day. But there was treachery in the Re- quiet of the domestic hearth, or the socieformed camp. Their captain, Goeldli, ty of his numerous friends. He frequentfrustrated every useful proposal, allowed ly supped abroad in the public guild all the commanding posts to be occupied rooms, or with the Council. He was no by the enemy, and refused to attack be- ascetic, and retained to the last his pasfore the morrow. It was Christmas Eve. sion for music. His time was carefully The day of our Lord's nativity dawned, distributed day by day. He rose with the and soon the strife began. In the outset sun in summer, gave the early hours to of the battle Goeldli and his men desert- prayer and study of the Bible, till sumed: yet, surrounded and betrayed, the moned to preach or lecture in "the Zurichois fought like lions against eight schools." At eleven he dined. Then he times their number, and the victory for a conversed with his family, received visits, time was doubtful: but at last they were or walked till two. In the afternoon, overborne. Zwingli had bent down to Greek and Roman literature occupied him comfort a wounded man with the words till supper. After all this, the night was of life, when a stone struck his helmet with often devoted to study. He could dissuch force, that he was hurled to the pense with repose; and we are told that, ground. He soon summoned strength to during the disputation at Baden, he hardrise, when he was pierced by a hostile ly rested for six weeks together. A spear. "What matters it ?" he cried. youth brought him, each evening, an ac"They may kill the body, the soul they count of the day's discussion, and he precan not kill." The wound was mortal, pared his remarks and suggestions in but he lingered on. A party of marauders time to be used on the morrow. drew near, and found him. "Will you loved the society of children, and the confess? Shall we fetch a priest ?" He charm of his address drew many a young can not speak, but signs in the negative. man from a vicious life to follow with him "Then call on the Virgin and saints in" a more excellent way." It was an honest, your heart." Once more, with eloquent simple, laborious life, guided throughout silence, he signs that he will not deny his by faith alone. Lord. "Die, then, obstinate heretic," cried Bochinger, and gave him a fatal stab. There was bitter wailing that night in Zurich. Baron von Geroldseck, Abbot of Einsiedeln, the Comthur Schmidt, the Abbot of Cappel, and twenty-two of the Reformed clergy, lay dead with Zwingli upon the field. His own friends, Ulrich Funk, Thumeisen, Schweizer, and Tonig, were not divided from him in death for the cause of faith and fatherland. Bitterest of all were the tears that fell around Zwingli's hearth. His widow bewailed a son, a brother, a son-in-law, and a brotherin-law, lost in that fight, as well as her noble spouse. Our sketch would hardly be complete without some notice of Zwingli in private life. He was a fine-looking man in form and figure; and from the admirable por He It was at the close of a summer's day that we reached the spot where Zwingli fell. The place is marked by a large, rude block of native granite, having an iron plate on either side, on which is recorded, in Latin and German, the day and year on which the great Reformer died a hero's death. It was a fitting scene for a Swiss patriot's grave: and as the sun slowly went down, and tinged with its declining rays the snow-clad Alps, we realized the scene that, at a like hour, must have met the Reformer's dying eye. Dark clouds hung in the sky, casting deep shadows on the mountain side, and intercepting the sunbeams, so that none save the highest peaks were kindled to a glowing light. Soon this died out, and all was cold and dull in the calm gray of evening, and we turned away in our disappointment at not having witnessed grander sunset effects. | hearts, and shone in the most emineut On a sudden all was changed as if by souls in Switzerland. We have had, alas! magic. The clouds rolled away from the since then the period, still surviving, of setting sun, and from peak to peak the dead and dull formalism-of every phase of pink gleam leapt, and diffused itself over neologian unbelief, with scarcely one ray the mountain forms, reflecting and being of spiritual life athwart the gloom. May reflected back, until every part was bathed the glimmer of truth that has reappeared in its lovely hue. As we gazed on the be but the harbinger of better things, scene, it seemed emblematic (may it prove when the truth which Zwingli once so!) of the truth for which Zwingli died. preached shall again prevail throughout In his own day that truth, amidst many a all that region. cloud, was yet received into some noble ARCTIC From the Eclectic Review. EXPLORATION OUR English character is a strange mixture of the domestic and adventurous. Each in its extreme supplements the other, and forms its fitting counterpart. The crackling embers never sound so cheerful, and the red coals never send forth so bright a glow or so genial a warmth, as when the wintry blast is howling without, and dreary blackness broods over the landscape. The vivid imagination and the warm heart, which find such a charm in home fireside, love to face the tempest, to climb the perilous hight, to battle with the raging seas, and to explore the icebound regions of the north. This last scene of enterprise has always had a fierce fascination for our English mind. It gives play to the wildest imagination, and food for the most insatiable scientific appetite. The most mysterious phenomena in nature -the fitful splendor of the northern lights, the theory of terrestrial magnetism, the diffusion of heat and cold, the areas of animal and vegetable life, the tides and currents of the ocean-all enchain the attention of the philosopher; while the quenchless thirst of adventure, the gloomy solitude and rugged wildness of the landscape, the floating mountains of ice, the grandeur of the midnight sun, wheeling its course along the northern sky; and the awful stillness of the night, on which for weeks together no dawn ever breaks VOL XLVIIL-NO. I. -fascinate the lover of the romantic and sublime. Three centuries ago, our ancestors, beginning to learn the value of eastern commerce, resolved to seek a passage to China by the northern coast of Asia or America. Now the shortest way from England to Behring's Straits, is almost directly by the North Pole; so that our forefathers were not far wrong in their reckoning of distance. But the shortest way is not always the best, and unfortunately for their schemes, the seas which had to be traversed in these North-East and NorthWest passages, were for the most part seas of ice. Several exploring expeditions went out, some of which never returned; while others returned with results more valuable to geographers than to merchants. The greatest discoverer was Baffin. Indeed, so far did he leave all others behind, that he was generally treated as a fabler and romancer, until Sir John Ross's expedition in 1818, thoroughly established his credit, even in the minutest particulars. This expedition was the result of a new zeal for the discovery of the North-West passage. But it failed. At the entrance of Lancaster's Sound, Ross, declaring that he saw land ahead, turned back and sailed to England, on the very threshold of success. It was soon known that his second in 2 command, Lieutenant Parry, a young man | West passage by Captain M'Clure. Parry of high promise, and destined to a career inscribed the names of his ship and the equally eminent with his captain's for its date of his voyage on a sand-stone rock in boldness of adventure, its successful dis- Winter Harbor. M'Clure, sailing eastcoveries, and its manly, unaffected Christ- ward from Behring's Straits, had sucian piety, believed the land ahead to be ceeded in connecting his discoveries with merely cloud-land, and thought the search Parry's; and so solved the problem of ought to have been continued. He was, the North-West passage. In 1851, he therefore, intrusted by the Admiralty reached Mercy Bay, to the north of with the command of another expedition; Banks's Land, and sledged over the strait and sailed in 1819, with the Hecla and to Winter Harbor. A record of his disGriper, on his first great voyage of dis- covery, and of his position in Mercy Bay, covery. On reaching the turning-point of was deposited on Parry's sand stone rock. the last year, he beheld with joy a broad The summer of 1852 passed; but the ice sheet of water, quite open, stretching in Mercy Bay never thawed. Winter away to the westward. We can imagine closed - their third winter in the ice. the exultation and anxiety the explorers The provisions were failing, and the must have felt, as they sailed along this magnificent channel; how eagerly their eyes must have strained to catch the faintest glimpse of land; with what wild bounds their hopes must have leapt forward to the completion of their voyage, in the discovery of the North-West pas sage! "They were the first Into that silent sea.' health of the crew was slowly giving way. Still they bore bravely up: the officers cheered the men; and all calmly awaited the dark and perilous future. In the spring of 1853, M'Clure divided his men; part were to try with sledges to reach some friendly settlement or ship; part, with him, were to risk another winter in the ice, with the certainty of death if they failed to make their way out the following summer. The men willingly submitted to the arrangement; though And the calm, but eloquent narrative of all knew how small was the chance of ever the captain, gives a deeply interesting meeting again. At last the week of partview of the hopes and fears with which ing arrived: but unhoped-for deliverance all were agitated. They sailed further was at hand. An expedition under Sir and further west; now running for days Edward Belcher left England in 1852, in without obstruction, now tacking and search of Franklin, and also of M'Clure, struggling with the loose ice, which some- who had announced his intention of trying times completely blocked up their passage. to reach Winter Harbor from the west. Every thing showed that they were not Thither, therefore, the Resolute and Inin a bay, but in an open channel: and trepid sailed; but found no trace of from that time the North-West passage M'Clure. One day, however, an officer has been a moral certainty. It was thirty examining narrowly Parry's sand-stone years, however, before this moral certain-block, caught sight of a roll of paper. He ty became the certainty of demonstration; snatched it up, and read with amazement for, on reaching Melville Island, they were the announcement of the discovery of the stopped by a vast sea of ice which stretches North-West passage, and the position of westward, occupying the whole ocean the Investigator in Mercy Bay. As soon north of the American continent a as sledging was possible, Lieutenant Pim dreary sea, spoken of by the Esquimaux, was scudding over the ice. He was just with superstitious dread, as the "Land of in time. the white bear," into which no sail even that of the adventurous M'Clure has ever succeeded in penetrating. After wintering at Melville Island, therefore, at a place which he called Winter Harbor, Parry was obliged to return to England, having made one of the greatest geographical discoveries of modern times. - not ― His voyage is connected, by a romantic incident, with the discovery of the North "While walking near the ship,' says Captain M'Clure, 'in conversation with the first lieutenant we perceived a figure walking rapidly towards us from the rough ice at the entrance of the bay. From his pace and that he was some one of our party pursued gestures we both naturally supposed at first by a bear, but as we approached him doubts arose as to who it could be. He was certainly unlike any of our men; but recollecting that it a was possible some one might be trying a new traveling dress, preparatory to the departure of our sledges, and certain that no one else was near, we continued to advance. When within about two hundred yards of us, this strange figure threw up his arms, and made gesticulations resembling those used by Esquimaux, besides shouting at the top of his voice words which, from the wind and intense excitement of the moment, sounded like a wild screech; and this brought us both fairly to a stand-still. The stranger came quietly on, and we saw that his face was as black as ebony; and really at the moment we might be pardoned for wondering whether he was a denizen of this or the other world, and had he but given us a glimpse of tail or a cloven hoof we should assuredly have taken to our legs: as it was, we gallantly stood our ground, and had the skies fallen upon us we could hardly have been more astonished when the dark-faced stranger called out—"I'm Lieutenant Pim, late of the Herald, and now in the Resolute. Captain Kellet is in her at Dealy Island. To rush at and seize him by the hand was the first impulse, for the heart was too full for the tongue to speak. The announcement of relief being close at hand, when none was supposed to be even within the Arctic circle, was too sudden, unexpected, and joyous for our minds to comprehend it at once. The news flew with lightning rapidity, the ship was all in commotion; the sick, forgetting their maladies, leapt from their hammocks; the artificers dropped their tools, and the lower deck was cleared of men, for they all rushed for the hatchway to be assured that a stranger was actually amongst them, and that his tale was true. Despondency fled the ship, and Lieutenant Pim received a welcome-pure, hearty, and grateful —that he will assuredly remember and cherish to the end of his days.' Icing-in is the great danger of Arctic navigation. Where a broad stream of water is found one year, it may be expect ed to be there the next. But the mere cracks in the ice, up which vessels frequently venture, may be open one year and never afterwards. M'Clure's danger was not a solitary instance. In 1829, Sir John Ross got blocked up near the bottom of Boothia Bay, and was unheard of for four years. Every body believed him dead; when one morning the Isabella, at the head of Baffin's Bay, saw two boats sailing at some distance towards her. She sent a boat to meet them. "What's the name of your ship?" cried a voice from one of the stray boats. "The Isabella, of Hull, once commanded by Captain Ross," was the reply. "Then I'm that Captain Ross," answered the first voice. In vain the good sailor from the Isabella assured him that he had been dead two years and more. The captain knew better; and in a few weeks the fame of his exploits, discoveries, hardships, and escape, was known over the length and breadth of England. At the age of seventy-five, the same brave old navigator was once more wintering in the ice-in vain search for Sir John Franklin. Captain Kane lost his vessel in the same way, and had to travel with his scurvy-weakened crew for some months in open boats. From the evidence yet obtained, we suspect the same fate befel the illstarred Erebus and Terror. In connection with this danger, we may mention that ice accumulates much more off a northern than off a southern shore. The coast is usually rather steep; and the sun, which never rises high, melts the snow on hills with a southern aspect, before its slanting rays have ever touched the face of those with a northern. The ice on the south of a channel has therefore more sun, and receives the melting snows, and reflected rays from hills and cliffs adjoining; while the ice on the north side is subjected to these thawing influences only for a shorter time, and in a smaller degree. These circumstances have much more to do with the early breaking-up of the ice, than a few degrees' change in latitude. The accumulation of ice on one side of a channel, running north and south, is traceable to another less obvious cause. Dr. Kane, finding such an accumulation on the west side of Smith's Sound, where a southern current prevails, referred the fact to the diurnal rotation of the earth. This motion increasing as we recede from the pole, a body traveling southward, would have a slower easterly velocity than that part of the earth to which it was going. This would create a tendency in the body to move to the west as it got further south; and such we find in the trade-winds, which blow so constantly within the tropics. So, too, a train moving southwards, tends to run off the line to the west; one moving northward, to the east. The Atlantic gulf-stream also, which flows northwards from near the equator, sloughs off sea-weed in large quantities to the east, and but little to the west. The same law, acting on a southern current, would cause such an accumulation of ice as Dr. Kane observed on the west of Smith's Sound. Perhaps the subject demands more attention than scientific men have yet given it. converted into solid balls of ice, upon their brows. It was impossible, with all their efforts, to drag their sledge more than seven miles a day. Fields of ice are the loose fragments and floes welded together by the freezing of the water between, and further incrusted with fresh layers of saturated snow, which is gradually converted into ice by the cold of the winter. No wonder, then, that this ice is far from smooth, and is found intersected by vast hummocks, or raised mounds, crossing the surface in all directions. It is scarcely necessary to point out to the reader how materially this must interfere with the sledging, which we ordinarily deem so easy and delightful a mode of traveling. The ice-fields thus formed, however, though the largest, are not the most striking feature of the Arctic seas. The most remarkable objects are those floating mountains of ice which tower majestically from the surrounding waters, and are known under the familiar name of icebergs. Sometimes seventy or a hundred of these wonderful masses may be But there is something more than danger to be noticed about this frozen region. Let us take a look at the navigator as he ventures into its cold shade. The moment he leaves the open sea, and enters the ice, his old seamanship goes for nothing. A new art is required to work his vessel in these half-solid seas. Clumsy, heavy, but tight and snug little craft these vessels are. The shocks they encounter from the drifting ice, and the nips and blows they receive on all hands, would crunch up any ordinary vessel like a walnut in the gripe of the nut-crackers. Far on every side stretch floating islands of ice, now separating so as to leave a broad alluring channel for the vessel, then closing with a rapidity which seems to cut off all hope of escape. The treacherous quickness of their approach, and their magically sudden changes, are the marvel and terror of mariners. The most open sea yields no security. Many a vessel has been caught and sunk before those near her dreamed of her danger. These floes are fragments broken by thaw and currents from the vast surfaces called fields, and are them-seen at a time. The imagination might selves often of enormous size. Parry saw one half a mile in diameter. We can understand with what horror the seaman beholds such a mass floating towards him, as he lies off the shore of some rocky promontory. Parry describes the terrific crash of one of these floes against a precipice and the piles of broken ice splintered cities of ice, with spire and dome and from it in the shock. If the ice is thick, minaret, all gleaming in the sunset's and the shore shelving, ships may be blaze-fairy halls of ice spangled with brought so near the land that the floe jewels of every hue, and flashing in the strands before reaching them. And so noontide with the splendor of a myriad heavy is the ice in these regions, that the rainbows-mountains of ice, pale, cold, mariner often owes his safety to this expe- and spectral, with that awful light which dient. Dr. Kane found a piece standing distinguishes the snow-clad summits of the nine feet above water, and, since there is Alps amidst the gathering shadows of the six times as much below as above, the evening. Their size is enormous; one of total thickness must have been sixty-three them, seen by Captain Fenton, of the feet. This thickness is not the result of Judith, who accompanied Sir Martin direct freezing. When the young ice is Frobisher's third expedition, stood sixtyformed, the snow often weighs it down five fathoms above the water. The deep and cracks it. The sea-water, issuing blue of the base, rising from the surf like through, makes a snow sludge, which the a precipice of solid sapphire, and the winter freezes into solid ice. When dazzling whiteness of their crown of snow, Captain M'Clure sledged from Princess render them amongst the most strikingly Royal Island to Banks's Strait-the expe- beautiful objects of these regions. They dition which first determined the North- are at once the most terrible foes and the West passage-the snow was so impreg- most steadfast friends of the mariner. nated with sea-water that it became as When the storm-swell rolls in from the tenacious as clay. The exertion to make Atlantic, when the blocks of ice pitch and way was fearful, the perspiration stream-roll among the waves, grinding and crashing in big drops, instantly, before falling, ing with a fearful noise, and hurrying the weary itself with running riot amidst the fantastic forms and beauties they present. Temples of ice, with sculptured aisles and fretted columns, and solemn archways, grouped together in glorious symmetry, or thrown in hideous confusion and ruin by the shock of some terrible earthquake |