I lay still, with meek-folded hands, and smiled struck by the opening door; he fell, and cut into the face of my fair-pictured future, my his forehead against the sharp corner of a table. beautiful new life, through this, my own child. The blood flowed, and I was terribly frightened. I fancied that all the struggle and pain and I caught him in my arms; he had turned sick perplexity of existence were past; I looked and quiet with the pain; but when I took back upon all past misery as one waking to him, he called out: "Papa! papa! papa, take some blissful reality looks back upon an ugly me!" I could not pacify him, so laid him in dream of the black night. I had found some- my husband's arms. thing so sweet, so pure, so delightfully dependent to live for, that I thought I now grasped Peace, had detained her with my poor weak hands till she had touched with her holy healing my brow and breast.

Yes! peace has come to me," I whispered softly to myself, raising the tiny baby-hand to my lips, while happy tears filled my eyes.

I returned, my boy was sitting on his father's I ran for water, sponges, and cloths; when knee, leaning his little head back against his shoulder, and smiling faintly at some funny his handkerchief to the wound. The child let story Harold was telling him, while he held me wash and bathe and plaster up the cut; but all the while he clung to his father's arm, My husband was infinitely glad, and kind and persisted in saying that mamma had hurt and tender. He showed to such advantage in him. He would not come to me, nor kiss me, my sick-room! I raised up my happy eyes but soon fell asleep in my husband's arms. proudly to him, it was so beautiful to see him Harold carried him up to the nursery, and subduing his strength to our weakness-my waited to see him quietly sleeping in bed. baby's and mine- or exerting it only for us; I should have done that, should I not? Was I bending his handsome head down so low, yet not his mother? then almost fearing to kiss the tiny baby-cheek; my heart had been so wounded. This was not the first time looking so concerned if the child uttered a cry, husband left the room with our boy, I threw When my so amused and happy if he woke a doubtful myself on the floor, and gave way to a wild smile in its queer little face! I thought this passion of grief: I wailed, and lamented. peace would last. I loved my baby so intensely. almost raved. He loved it dearly, and me anew through it. did not love me; it engrossed my husband's Even my child, my own child, I thought my deep love all that was needful to tenderness, and rendered me no love in remake me a good mother. I gave up everything turn. My passion, indulged, grew uncontrollato my child, and Harold thought me a paragon, ble. Jealousy gained sole possession of me. a perfect example of self-denying love. And Was I to be nothing now? nothing to father for a long time we lived, O, so quietly and hap- or child?

I

py together! we three my husband, my- By the time Harold came down, I had lost self, and our child. all command over myself. He took me up and Our child was a boy; he grew into a dark-laid me on the sofa; he knelt beside me, beghaired, blue-eyed, noble little fellow Harold. I turned God's free-given blessing in- at least tell him what was the matter. I turned a tiny ging and praying that I would be calm - would to a bane. How should I, undisciplined, unable my face away, and, burying it in the pillows, to rule myself, be able rightly to educate an- which I clenched between my aimless fingers, other life? My husband, with his clear, simple, shook the couch with the strength of my agopractical notions, and his decided judgment be- ny. Poor Harold! what could he do? pained tween right and wrong, was a far more judicious and perplexed as he was. He sent for our medand wise parent than I. The child felt it. I ical man, but he was long coming. When he worshipped, idolized him; and he would turn arrived, my passion had raved itself out: I was from my wild love to meet his father's calm weak as a child, and suffering from extreme tenderness. The older he grew, the more exhaustion. But my state revealed to Dr. Ryplainly he showed this preference. ton the violence of the paroxysm just past; I believe it was after seeing me that day, that he began first to entertain the opinion that sometimes I was insane.

"You hurt me, mamma, let me go; papa is coming," the boy exclaimed one day. I had been showing him pictures, telling him stories, lying on the ground beside him; he had been listening with tranced attention, his great blue eyes fixed full on mine; he heard his father's step in the hall, and directly he struggled to get free from my arms.

"Papa will come; stay with poor mamma, darling! Do you not love mamnia?"

It is no use. I cannot write calmly and slowly. I must hurry over all that is to come. When I again became the mother of a living child, baby was once more for a little while an child, at least, a girl angel of peace in the house. I thought that this with my brow and eyes, they said should be wholly mine. My hus"No," the boy answered boldly; he strug- band might engross the affection of our noble gled himself free, pushed me away, and tramp-boy, if only this little fragile white blossom, this led over me with his little eager feet. I ran lily of mine, might rest solely and always on after him, but could not catch him in time; my bosom. I did not like to have my husband Harold came in, and my child's head was kiss, I hardly liked that he should see, this

LIEUT. JOSEPH RENE BELLOT.
From the Examiner.

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Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph René Bellot, lutely arrive at something, The desire of showever, to assume more firmness in the position in Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Membering gratitude for all that has been done for me, which I stand, and bethink me that I must absoof the Geographical Societies of London and ought, of itself to constitute a very sufficient moParis, etc. With his Journal of in the Polar Seas in Search of Sir John am destined to support a numerous and beloved a Voyage tive for me. Franklin. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett. Ought I not also to reflect that I THIS is a book welcome to the hearts of is there a nobler aim than that for the ambition family, of whom I am the sole hope? I am considered ambitious, I am sure-and it is true; but Englishmen, for dear to the English is the me- of a young man? This laudable feeling, I well mory of Joseph René Bellot. Frenchman, he perished at the age of twen- contemplate all my projects of glory and adThe young know, is not the only one that makes me thus ty-seven,-who won so much love and confi-vancement; perhaps even there is too much selfdence on every side, and, fired with a gener- love in all my schemes; but these two motives mate with our Arctic sailors, proving himself tion, instead of lapping myself to sleep in ease ous sympathy for Lady Franklin, became ship-together must make me desirous of prompt adas able and fine-hearted as any in their gallant and supineness, barely tolerable in a young man vancement. I must work to win a good reputa band, gains a fresh hold on the affection of this whose parents are wealthy. country by the posthumous publication of this what I have been: I do not reflect that my father memoir, and of the frank unassuming journal is a poor workman, with a large family; that he I too often forget that it prefaces. In every sense this French lieutenant was the money I spend uselessly would be of great has made very great sacrifices for me; that all a noble fellow. Born in Paris, one of the help at home. I ought to consider, that in those four children of a common smith and farrier moments of forgetfulness, in which I lavish my who removed when Joseph René was about money as if I was habituated to abundance, my five years old to Rochefort, Bellot always call-poor mother is perhaps at her wit's end to proed himself a Rochefort man, for its municipality saw in him a child of promise, and mavide for the necessities of the family. terially helped to secure him the advantage of a solid education. At the instance of the Mayor, it gave him a demi-bourse at the Rochefort College; and because Mayor and Municipality had every reason to know that their protégé was worthy of protection, they helped to maintain him afterwards on his admission to the naval school. Truly then Bellot was a Rochefort man, for Rochefort it was in a worldly sense that made a man of him. France, my good mother, and my sisters; and 31st October. Grateful to it, grateful to his father for all sa- my desires, the portraits of these dear friends I do nothing but think of crifice endured on his account, full of high as- shall cover the walls of my cabin; this will, perwhen I am an officer, if it be possible to realize pirations, and with all his dreams of young haps, make the distance that divides us seem less ambition joining the home shapes that he to me. I have not yet found the strength to exloved, and the home duties he was proud to ecute my projects of yesterday.. There is one I think that he might in atter days fulfil, young have already formed, which is to copy the roles Bellot became a midshipman in the French of the Jena; I know not if I shall fulfil it: at all navy, and set sail on his first service. He events I shall try to do so. kept a private journal, and what manner of but all I could undertake disgusts and wearies me gentle and noble heart it was that communed beforehand: I have so much to do that I know not I would fain work, with itself in secret after the following fashion, which I was so desirous of learning, remain still let any reader feel :— at which end to begin. Drawing and music, to me. strangers to me. The most useful things to melt away. I must, however, look well to mywhich I should apply myself are still unknown self. I see that my good resolutions always

heart, to have had the courage to explore its reI am glad to have scrutinized the state of my places; perhaps I shall also have the courage to cure them. I will try, at any rate, and by the cesses, and put my hand on all the unsound end of a certain time I shall perhaps come to enjoy that self-esteem which satisfies and renders one happy in all circumstances in which a man may be placed.

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boy when er of the ained all of home.

My negligence and apathy are extreme; I have not had the courage to write home; so here is an opportunity lost to me through my own fault. It is the first, but I must keep watch over myself, otherwise I shall fall into the greatest sloth. In spite of all my fine resolutions to work, and my commander; I hardly know why, for I have alrecriminations against the jokes of my compan-ways been conscious of the sympathy I might inIt is plain I do not stand very well with the ions, I have done nothing yet since our departure spire in any one; and though he has always been from France; and I am likewise afraid of letting very polite towards me, I am sure he ranks me myself give way to a fault from which I cannot in his affections greatly below X-. I am, guard myself too carefully. I am not so blind as perhaps, too childish, and attach too much imnot to see all these things, and yet I have not the portance to trifles, or those little commonplace strength to repress these defects. I ought, how-reproaches which are addressed to everybody;

I must sho

but, after all, I have more confidence in my in- more exact the comparison becomes, the more I stinct than in my reason: the end will prove find myself out of sorts. I walk the deck; but whether or not I have been mistaken. Be the am thrown violently against the bulwark. Álas! solution of the question what it may, I must ap-in vain I try to conceal it from myself, I am seaply myself steadfastly to doing my duty well, sick. O shame! O despair! I look round to and especially to the assumption of more gravi see who are the witnesses of my dishonor; forty; for I am conscious that I show myself great-tunately I have none but accomplices. Mr. ly inferior in reason to all my comrades. Leask and Mr. Hepburn, the only two whom this fatal sickness spares, are not present. I wear

Need it be said that a young sailor so mind-myself out in efforts to read and write, but can ed was not a man to miss the love of his com- do neither. Yet I have great need of applicarades or the confidence of his commander, Be the most remarkable man, the most accomtion. Oh, the nothingness of human nature! certainly not a man to miss opportunities of multiplying his acquirements, or of displaying foot on board a ship, and there you are reduced plished savant, be Arago, Lamartine-put your in action promptitude and ardor. He display- to naught, not an idea left you. Du plus grand ed the last at Tamatave, and repeatedly he des humains voilà ce qui vous reste! A shadow inwas reported to the Government at home in capable of pronouncing anything but inarticulate terms of the most emphatic admiration. He sounds. A smell of whisky proves to me that was but a boy when they made the artisan's all my shipmates are not sick only from the moson Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. But tion of the ship; and that some of them, before he still joined all pleasure of success to becoming real teetotallers, have been bidding a thoughts of home. Of a little brother he last farewell to the powers of this world. wrote, "I must show a good example to our tion of the sea, and offer to Neptune a sacrifice I bethink me of the pagan practice of invocayoung Alphonse." Of his sisters his dream he cannot fail to appreciate at its true worth. I was, I will write books that shall be their cut off a superb beard, and his wrath is appeasmarriage portions." Of his mother, he wrote ed. Quos ego-at last I can admire, at my ease, to Mr. Barrow at the Admiralty, when ambi- the northern coasts of Scotland, and the snowtious of appreciation by the English, and ap-topped mountains reflecting the rays of the sun. preciated by them thoroughly already, he was setting out on his first arctic Expedition, "You

His surprising aptitude for knowledge, and have been so kind to me already, that I am his ardor in the acquisition of it, had already almost ashamed to ask fresh services at your made him master of four languages. He hands. I shall be doubtlessly deprived of op-hoped also, he said, to pick up Russian on the portunities to write to my family, and I would northern coasts, and on board the Prince Alask you whenever an English paper gives any bert we find a line set down to note that he news about the Prince Albert, to cut out the was "preparing a dictionary of the language paragraph and send it to Madame Bellot, of the Esquimaux." Here is an account of an Rochefort-sur-Mer. Esquimaux hut visited by him :

It is his own journal of the voyage in the Prince Albert that has now been published. It was not without the help of one of the byThe intention with which it was written, how-standers that I could guess that an opening hardever, was not that it should be published as a ly two feet high, and covered with a skin, was diary. It was merely kept in this form with the door. Puffs of hot air loaded with fetid a view to the ultimate publication of a book-emanations reach me; I feel my courage waver, a sister's marriage portion-which would have but at last I make my way in, after crawling a been if we are right in our impression, the couple of yards through a sort of sewer with first Arctic book by a French sailor. When damp walls, the foot of which rests in a muddy he set out, in a true spirit of chivalry, court-shall never forget the impression made on me compost of blood, water, oil, and grease. No; I ing danger and honor, but declining Lady by what I saw, though I thought myself prepar Franklin's offered pay, M. Bellot was only a ed for everything by the numerous descriptions midshipman in his own navy. But the French I had read of these miserable hovels. This one, Ministry of Marine, prompt to reward distin- too, is in a place comparatively civilized, where guished merit, promoted him at once to a lieu- the example of Europeans must, and does, cretenancy, and favored in other respects the ate wants and notions of comfort unknown to opening career of a man who promised to be-wandering tribes, in an establishment visited come an honor to his country.

every year by an inspector sent by the government of Copenhagen. A rectangular enclosure of stones, covered on the outside with a

Like a true Frenchman he must set out on his voyage with sea-sickness, and thus good-thick layer of earth, and on the interior with humoredly he records his deep humiliation :

4th June-The Prince Albert pitches frightfully, and will certainly carry away some of her sticks at sea. Light as a bird of the storm, like it she rolls on the crests of the waves; and the DXCV. LIVING AGE. VOL. XI. 12

three or four planks, forms the body of the hut; at each of the doors and at the further end, a sort of trellis, a foot from the ground, and three or four feet wide, serving for bed and table. In the middle space, of about three feet, lies half a seal, from which the fat has been removed, but

the bloody flesh, trampled under foot, is there at hand whenever the inmates of the hut feel disposed to eat.

On one side of the hut is an old woman, nearly blind, with grisly locks, bare legged and bare armed, sewing skins which she moves about with her feet and hands. Her red eyelids, contrasting with her bistre skin, seem still more prominent from the leanness which is only found in individuals of her race. She looks the image of one the witches of Macbeth. Near her lies her son, who sits up to do me the honors of his house. At the further end a young woman nearly naked, is suckling a naked infant, which she holds with one hand, whilst with the other she snatches some skins which constitute her garments. Two lamps fed with fetid oil do the double service of lighting and warming the apartment. Harpoons, lances, and rolls of skin hang from the walls, or are laid against it, the lower ends resting in rub. bish and offal of all sorts. There is no opening for the escape of smoke; a single hole near the entrance, glazed with the thin intestinal membranes, alone allows it to be seen that there is an outer world.

up

I feel suffocated; my nose, throat, and eyes, all are affected, but I want to see. I even try to conceal my sensations; and when an oily hand is stretched out to me in token of welcome, I hold out a handkerchief as a gift, and thus avoid the good natured grasp that threatens me. Some trifling presents soon make friends of these poor disinherited children of nature; and, like the diver, preparing for a long effort, I try to see as much as possible, holding my breath and inhaling as little as I can of that atmosphere.

on whose path of enterprise he had entered may be seen by this criticism upon Franklin and Parry, wonderful when we consider it as written by a Frenchman in the Frozen Seas!

I cannot reflect without sorrow, first, on the

impossibilty to which we should of course be reduced of doing anything for those whom we are going to succor, and then at the terrible blow this would be to poor Lady Franklin, whose last The floes break with a crackling hope we are. noise against our sides; it is impossible to close an eye. Read over Sir John Franklin's voyages again. What admirable simplicity, and what real superiority is apparent in those unpretending phrases, which say only what those eminent men have seen in a clear manner, yet poetical withal, for they are faithful painters of nature! In reading these voyages, as well as those of Parry, we are possessed with implicit confidence; and, without analyzing our feelings, we are instinctively prompted to believe the writers; and yet they never deal in high-sounding empty phrases, but give us facts in every line. They are painters after Humboldt's manner; we feel how substantial and dignified, how full of instructive matter are their narratives, as we can tell by the sound of a cask struck with a finger whether it is full or empty.

We will add only one other extract, from an entry made before a perilous coasting journey, which preceded by not very many months the coasting journey upon which he perished:

A week ago, I accomplished my twenty-sixth The "poor disinherited children of nature year; in the last ten years I have passed through learnt his name not in that but only. After more dangers than men of my age usually meet his death among the ice, when men of science with. I have passed safely through those trials; in all parts of Europe grieved for the loss of destination, I do not mean that I place my conand when I speak of my lucky star, or of prea fellow-laborer, when hard-handed English fidence in anything astrological; that would be sailors grieved for the loss of a chief who was too absurd and too impious. No; my confidence in their eyes as a brother, when Alphonse, is placed higher; I do not believe that Proviand the sisters, and, above all, the mother at dence has guided and sustained me hitherto to home were to hear that their pride was gone, abandon me in the midst of my greatest trial. I and to refuse to be comforted-the Esquimaux, do not care to lose myself in the labyrinth of reinformed of his death by Captain Inglefield ligious systems, in which I believe there is little on his way home, cried out" Poor Bellot! beside sophisms, more or less fallacions; but I listen to that inner voice which tells me that we Bellot!" and shed tears. They remempoor bered among other acts of kindness, how when he once saw one of their people with a broken leg dragging himself painfully over the snow, he designed a wooden leg, and had it made by the ship's carpenter as a gift to the poor cripple.

are not thrown upon this earth by chance withian to protect us. My prayer is offered up direct out compass to guide our conduct, without guardto the throne of the Almighty who created me, and renews my existence day by day.

Before undertaking a journey, the chances of which it is impossible to foresee, I will once again place myself in the midst of all those I love, and ask the blessing of Heaven upon them Full of confidence in the Divine

and

upon me.

The English character is honored by the admiration of a man like this. Bellot, himself possessing the best English qualities enriched with a French liveliness of thought and mercy, I acknowledge all my imperfections; and all the finer traits that make the special worth if my conscience is at rest, it is because I trust, and charm of the rue Frenchman, was an inexhaustible as it is boundless. not in my own justification, but in a goodness as Anglo-French Alliance in himself. He stood And now, let the struggle with the physical between two equal nations, understanding and moral perplexities of life on earth come both and by both understood. How well he when they may, I feel full of strength, of courappreciated, for example, the Arctic leaders age, and of hope. My brother, my Alphonse, if

my counsels cannot be given to you, remember, True soul! Well might he feel that he had dear child, before beginning any arduous under- not been "thrown upon this earth by chance." taking, always to invoke him who has said, It is not to Alphonse alone that he has left a "Knock, and it shall be opened! Ask, and it bright and noble example. shall be given !" And then, with thy conscience to guide thee, and thy heart in thy hand, march fearlessly on!

GRAY AND STEPHEN DUCK.-It may appear somewhat surprising that Gray was in any way indebted for a notion to Queen Caroline's thrasher poet, but I cannot help thinking that such was the fact.

In the Midsummer Wish, printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1731, speaking of Windsor, Duck says:—

"Where tufted grass and mossy beds
Afford a rural, calm repose-
His crystal current Thames displays,
Through meadows sweet by flowers made,
Along the smiling valleys plays,

And bubbling springs refresh the glade."

These lines are somewhat similar to those in
Gray's Poem, "On a distant Prospect of Eton
College."

"And ye that from the stately brow

Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey;
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers
among

Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way."

succeeding in the rhymes which he had committed to memory in his boyish days.-N. and Q.

MILITARY BANDS IN LHE LAST CENTURY. -I have before me a letter, dated July 2, 1793, written by the late Mr. W. J. Mattham, innkeeper of Lavenham, Suffolk, from which the following is an extract:

"We have had four companies of the West Middlesex Militia quartered upon us for three days, consisting of three officers and forty-nine men, who had the best band I ever heard,―'t is worth mentioning to those who are lovers of superior music. It consisted of five clarinets, two French horns, one bugle horn, one trumpet, two bassoons, one bass drum, two triangles (the latter played by boys about nine years old), two tambourines,-the performers mulattos,—and the clash-pans by a real blackamoor, a very active man, who walked between the two mulattos, which had a very grand appearance indeed!"

I may mention that Mr. Mattham was a much respected member of the West Suffolk troop of Yeomanry Cavalry, and a competent judge of music. It is well known that, during a conBut in these lines which, in both poems, almost siderable part of the last century, it was cusimmediately follow, there is a still greater resem-tomary in wealthy families to keep a black footblance and if Gray was not indebted to Duck man; we see this pleasingly illustrated by the in this instance, it is a curious coincidence. great painter of mankind," Hogarth; whether, in the words of Mr. Mattham, it was considered Speaking of the Thames, Duck says:— to have "a very grand appearance indeed," I am unable to say. It appears, however, to have

"Where'er his purer stream is seen

The god of health and pleasure dwells.
Let me thy pure, thy yielding wave,
With naked arm once more divide:
In thee my glowing bosom lave

And gently stem thy rolling tide."

So in Gray, we find a succession of the same ideas, sprightliness or health, pleasure, and cleaving

the wave:

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Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on my margent green,
The path of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?"

And then, to make the resemblance more com-
plete, Duck has "herbage green" to rhyme with
stream is seen" while Gray employs a similar
rhyme. In 1731 Gray was a boy at Eton, in his
fifteenth or sixteenth year. He no doubt was
well acquainted with Duck's poem, and when
composing his ode in after years, may have been
unconsciously influenced by the train of ideas

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met with the concurrence of the learned Dr. Johnson, who kept a black servant, and bequeathed to him the greater part of his property.

It was a practice disapproved of by the late William Cobbett, who observed, in his characteristic manner: "Blacks don't smell like other people."

The African race generally appear cheerful, contented and happy, when under the influence of humane treatment. Many years since, being at New York, I observed groups of negroes employed in discharging the cargoes of vessels; on commencing to raise the respective bales of goods, one of the party commenced singing the first words of a sentence resembling a glee or catch; which, being responded to by the others, produced altogether a pleasing degree of harmony-reminding me of a couplet in Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry":.