invigorates their powers. While such a hope is strong in the soul of this noble woman, it will live in the hearts of all christendom until the lost are restored to home and kindred, or their graves are found, and their forms, untouched by decay, recognized by the hardy mariners who brave the dangers of an Arctic Sea. Who can tell if this lost company have not broken through into that open Ocean which is said to spread out beyond the barrier of ice, and found there a new world from which they cannot return to relate the story of their marvelous voyage? Who knows if they are not now reposing upon some island of that unknown Sea, where a modified climate, and a fertile soil furnish all the necessaries of life, or are vainly coasting along that wall of ice through which they unexpectedly entered, and from which they hope to escape by some opening like that in which they came? Perhaps, curiosity overcoming love of home and kindred, they have explored or are now exploring the unknown world upon which they have been permitted to enter, mapping its islands and bays, or passing on to the pole itself, full of high thoughts of the undying fame that will reward their toils, when the story of their return and their discoveries shall astonish the world, as when the

daring Genoese brought back to Spain and Europ the proofs of the existence of the continent which should have borne his name.

The discovery of a northwest passage to the Indies, was the first object of the daring navigators who explored the northern seas; the pursuit of the whale has since led a multitude of vessels among the icebergs and ice-fields of the frozen ocean. Any further expenditure of treasure, or hazard of life for the former purpose is uncalled for a mere waste of ma terial and a tempting of providence. Enough is

known to settle the question that any passage forced through those seas to Asia, would be too hazardous and too uncertain to render it of the least commercial advantage. The path to China marked out by nature, or rather by the God of nature, is by the isthmus which separates North and South America, and all ideas of an available northwest passage are simply Utopian. For the perfecting of the geography of the earth, for the purpose of ascertaining whether an open ocean, and a modified climate, and a productive soil are to be found beyond the fields of ice, may be worthy the efforts of civilized nations, yet it might be questioned whether the hardships of the navigation, and the risk of life in those remote

solitudes, would not justify an abandonment of a region guarded by such awful barriers, which could only be passed occasionally in the lapse of years. If it should appear, that a land like the garden of Eden lay beyond the domain of frost, how could it be made practically accessible, or used for the benefit of mankind? Would it not forever remain like that hidden city in the desert, which, according to the eastern fable, is concealed from all passers by, and only some favored traveler is perhaps once in a century permitted to gaze upon its deserted streets and behold its towers and palaces; or like the lost Atlantis, would it not be discovered only to disap pear forever?

For the rescue of the long lost company of Sir John Franklin, or for the purpose of ascertaining heir fate, too much can hardly be done. In such an enterprise, the noblest sympathies of our nature cannot fail to be enlisted, and higher and more worthy of remembrance than the conflict of arms, or the rivalry of the nations in their fabrics at the recent great fair of the world in the modern Babylon, has been the competition between England and the United States, in the voyages of discovery for the great arctic navigator, and his companions. In

such a contest the bonds of national brotherhood are strengthened, the friendship of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, who, descended from the same ancestry and speaking the same tongue, have been intrusted by the divine providence with the guardianship of civil and religious freedom, is cemented and made to soar above the petty rivalries, and the petty provocations, which have heretofore so often disturbed the good understanding which ought ever to prevail between those who are brethren in blood, who have a common ancestry, a common language, and a common faith. Despotism like a dark cloud is gathering over Europe; France, after numerous revolutions, and a multitude of grandiloquent protestations for freedom, has tamely yielded to a military dictatorship more degrading than the rnle of her most despotic monarchs, and nothing marks her incapacity for liberty, her profound social corruption and the utter loss even of the heroic element that characterized her in the worst days of the Bourbon dynasty, than the character of the man who has seized the reins of government. The shadow, or rather the mockery of a great name, with no reputation as a soldier, with no ability as a statesman, the dissolute and degenerate nephew of the great

Warrior, holds France under a rule more disgraceful to her than that of Louis XV., of whose vices he is an apt imitator. Under such circumstances, the continued friendship of Great Britain and the United States, is essential to the highest interests of our common humanity. Together they may defy the world in arms, and blockade the ports of all the despotic powers on the globe, and every generous concert of action, every noble rivalry like that which sent our ships in search for the lost Franklin, is an omen of good to the world, and a pledge that despotism is not to shroud the nations in darkness, superstition, and ignorance. The vast conspiracy which is now organizing from St. Petersburg to Paris, and from the Baltic to the Caspian, against a free press, free government and free speech, can only be defeated by the constant friendship and united resistance of the Anglo-Saxon race on both continents.

It is not a little remarkable that the American expedition should have originated in private benevolence, and that to the enlightened liberality of a single individual, the country owes an enterprise which reflects so much credit upon our republic. We read in the Scriptures of ancient nations and cities "whose merchants were princes:" if this