our sympathy with one of the parties will disqualify us from guessing the result. Qui vixerit, videbit.

Warburton's last historical act was the founding of a lecture on Prophecy, in 1768, at Lincoln's Inn. He invested £500 for its support. Its specific design was "to prove the truth of religion in general, and of the Christian in particular, from the completion of the prophecies of the Old and New Testament which relate to the Christian Church, and especially to the apostasy of Papal Rome." He regarded prophecy as being perfectly systematic, though written in detached portions, and felt confident that a clear view of its connexions and dependences would very effectually aid the cause of true piety. The lecture was filled for many years by bishops Hurd, Halifax, Bagot, and others.

The bishop had now reached the goal to which he had looked in early life; his fame filled the land; his literary enemies felt shy about assailing him; and he began to look seriously to the close of his earthly career. It is a sad thought that a life devoted to knowledge and letters often terminates in a marked loss of mental power. Swift, Marlborough, and Southey, sank into an apathy from which scarcely any entertainment could arouse them. Thus it was with Warburton. The death of an only son, in 1775, increased his melancholy; his memory rapidly failed; and in 1779 he descended to his grave, in his 81st year. He was buried in his cathedral at Gloucester.

We close with a brief sketch of his character. In person he was tall, large, and robust; and had he lived "freely," he would have needed much time for recreation; but wishing to spend his hours in study, he formed habits of strict sobriety and abstinence. As a friend he was frank, courteous, and communicative. In conversation he was very animated, selecting topics of profound depth, enriching them by his mental treasures, and frequently, like Johnson and Coleridge, unconsciously usurping the whole discourse to himself. On such occasions he spoke his sentiments without reserve. The same ingenuousness marks his letters to Hurd; and what his enemies reprobated as wanton invective and sarcasm, may perhaps have been, in many cases, but a strong style of expressing his views of truth. His history is meagre of incidents illustrating his benevolence. That he was affectionate, appears from the grief he manifested at the loss of his mother and son: but beyond his own family, we see but very occasional specimens of kindly feeling. Perhaps, in his secluded life, he sought few opportunities of familiarizing himself with the trials and woes of suffering men.

We believe strength is the proper term by which to characterize

his mind. His memory was retentive, and always at command. Johnson says "it was full fraught." He forgot nothing that he had ever read, though he could not always recall the author in which he had found a sentiment. Hence he could draw at will from all repositories of learning, ancient or modern. He had perused all the English "pamphlets,"―a numerous horde,—and nearly all the modern romances. He studied Spanish simply for the pleasure of reading Don Quixote in the original. His wit was of a pungent order, though it often bruised as it cut. His humorous passages would constitute a goodly volume of Warburtoniana. When his judgment was unbiased, his discrimination was excellent; though he sometimes pursued his object too eagerly, and thus overshot his mark. His great mistake lay in his fancy for paradox. This abounds in all his writings, and nowhere more conspicuously than in his "Divine Legation." The result is, that while Butler and Paley form text-books for every theological student, Warburton lies upon an upper shelf, and is seldom disturbed except for curiosity or display.

His two great objects of dislike were Popery and infidelity. The latter he harassed with a sort of maniac delight, and loved to grapple with its wiliest advocates. The mere witling and superficial sciolist he utterly discarded; he dropped Voltaire for his levity alone. We are at a loss properly to estimate the effect of his labours. He has, indeed, written voluminously: but if we consider the paradoxes he proposed to defend, the daring and unnecessary admissions he made to his adversaries, the ridicule with which he gloried in assailing the sober opinions of his brethren in the faith of Jesus, and, above all, his most extravagant interpretations of the Scripture canon, it is a nice question to determine whether religion and sound Biblical criticism have been the gainers or losers by his writings. His sentiments on Popery fix in a great measure his Church position. With Warburton, Puseyism and its affinities have no sympathy. Oxford refused him her honours when he and Pope visited her shades; were he alive now, she would do so again, but upon theological issues. But we presume he would receive her dislike with indifference:-"I find," says he, "that the solicitor uses the word university as the Romish Church do the Church, to signify themselves, exclusive of those who in reality make both one and the other. The Church resides at Lambeth, and the University at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Many a good Christian is likely to die without the pale of the Church; and many a learned academician to remain unmatriculated.”

With Mr. Wesley, we trust his personal relations to religion were

safe and comfortable. If, according to Seneca, "literæ sunt vera amici absentis vestigia," we peruse with pleasure the following passage in a letter to Hurd:-"I believe no one hath suffered more from the vile passions of the high and low than I have. Yet God forbid that it should ever suffer me to be cold in the Gospel interests, which are, indeed, so much my own, that without it I should be disposed to consider humanity the most forlorn part of the creation."

ART. VI.-CALIFORNIA.

1. What I saw in California: being the Journal of a Tour, by the Emigrant Route and South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, across the Continent of North America, the Great Desert Basin, and through California, in the Years 1846, 1847. By EDWIN BRYANT, late Alcalde of San Francisco.

2. Notes of a Military Reconnoissance, from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California, including part of the Arkansas, Del Norte, and Gila Rivers. By Lieut. W. H. EMORY, Topographical Engineers.

WE have directed the attention of our readers to the works whose titles furnish the caption to this article, not because they are the most recent, for every week produces something new; but because they are the most complete and reliable accounts that have come under our notice since the publication of the reports of Col. Fremont. Mr. Bryant is a gentleman of intelligence and good sense, of which his book furnishes evidence on every page. He accompanied the overland emigration of 1846, as far as Fort Laramie, at which place he, with a select company, exchanged their wagons and oxen for mules, having determined to travel more rapidly than the main body of the emigrants. Instead of pursuing the old travelled route by way of Fort Hall, he followed a newly explored road by the south end of the great Salt Lake, which, as our readers are doubtless aware, is situated in the north-western corner of the great desert basin. This lake is one of the most singular sheets of water in the world. Receiving the waters of a considerable river, and several smaller streams, none of which are appreciably saline, the water of the lake itself is a saturated solution of common salt. From five gallons of the water of this lake, Col. Fremont obtained, by evaporation, fourteen pints of nearly pure chloride of sodium. We have somewhere noticed an observation, that lakes which have no outlet are always impregnated with mineral salts, which are brought down by their affluents. As the water escapes only by

evaporation, the water of the lake becomes, in the course of time, entirely saturated. This speculation, whether scientifically correct or not, appears very plausible: we therefore recommend it to the examination of our scientific friends. Near this singular body of water is the chosen home of those singular fanatics, the Mormons. Driven by violence from their homes in Illinois, they have here selected a place of residence, where they can enjoy, unmolested, the practice of their absurd faith. Their location is about two hundred and thirty miles from the South Pass; and, from the circumstance of its position-being in the high road from Oregon to Californiawill ultimately be an important point, independent of the value that will attach to the Salt Lake. To the south of this body of water is the Utah lake, a large body of fresh water directly communicating with the former. The trail pursued by Mr. Bryant led the party across the great salt desert, a journey of seventy-five miles, without water or grass. It will be at once seen that the necessity of crossing this fatal plain must always constitute a serious objection to this route, as those travelling with wagons would be necessarily two or three days in crossing it. The company traversed the desert on the trail followed by Fremont a year previous. While on this part of the journey, they witnessed in perfection those singular deceptions common on desert wastes. The annexed quotation furnishes a vivid description of one of these optical illusions:

"As I have before stated, I had dismounted from my mule, and, turning it in with the caballada, was walking several rods in front of the party, in order to lead in a direct course to the point of our destination. Diagonally in front, to the right, our course being west, there appeared the figures of a number of men and horses, some fifteen or twenty. Some of these figures were mounted and others dismounted, and appeared to be marching on foot. Their faces and the heads of their horses were turned towards us, and, at first, they appeared as if they were rushing down upon us. Their apparent distance, judging from the horizon, was from three to five miles. But their size was not correspondent, for they seemed nearly as large as our own bodies, and consequently were of gigantic stature. At the first view I supposed them to be a small party of Indians, (probably the Utahs) marching from the opposite side of the plain. But this seemed to me scarcely probable, as no hunting or war party would be likely to take this route. I called to some of our party nearest to me to hasten forward, as there were men in front, coming towards

us.

Very soon the fifteen or twenty figures were multiplied into three or four hundred, and appeared to be marching forward with the greatest action and speed. I then conjectured that they might be Capt. Fremont and his party, with others, from California, returning to the United States by this route, although they seemed to be too numerous even for this. I spoke to Brown, who was nearest to me, and asked him if he noticed the figures of men and horses in front? He answered that he did, and that he had observed the same appearances several times previously, but that they had disappeared, and he believed them to be optical illusions similar to the mirage. It was then, for the first time, so perfect was the deception, that I conjectured the probable

fact that these figures were the reflection of our own images by the atmosphere, filled as it was with fine particles of crystallized matter, or by the distant horizon, covered by the same substance. This induced a more minute observation of the phenomenon, in order to detect the deception, if such it were. I noticed a single figure, apparently in front, in advance of all the others, and was struck with its likeness to myself. Its motions, too, I thought were the same as mine. To test the hypothesis above suggested, I wheeled suddenly around, at the same time stretching my arms out to their full length, and turning my face sidewise to notice the movements of this figure. It went through precisely the same motions. I then marched deliberately, and with long strides, several paces; the figure did the same. To test it more thoroughly, I repeated the experiment, and with the same result. The fact was then clear. But it was more fully verified still, for the whole array of this numerous shadowy host in the course of an hour melted entirely away, and was no more seen. The phenomenon, however, explained and gave the history of the gigantic spectres which appeared and disappeared so mysteriously at an earlier hour of the day. The figures were our own shadows, produced and re-produced by the mirror-like composition impregnating the atmosphere and covering the plain. I cannot here more particularly explain or refer to the subject. But this phantom population, springing out of the ground as it were, and arraying itself before us as we traversed this dreary and heaven-condemned waste, although we were entirely convinced of the cause of the apparition, excited those superstitious emotions so natural to all mankind."

Pursuing their journey until they reached Mary's river, denominated by Fremont, Humboldt's river, they followed the windings of its valley, which furnishes grass for the animals, with willow and cotton-wood sufficient for fuel. Arriving at what is known amongst the trappers as the Sink of Mary's river, another jornada is to be accomplished, of forty-five miles, without water or grass, to the waters of Truckee, or Salmon Trout river, a tributary of the Pyramid Lake. This stream rises in the Sierra Nevada, near the emigrants' pass, which is known as the Salmon Trout Pass, at which point the traveller emerges from the great desert basin. There is not on the continent so singular a geographical feature as this great interior basin of California. It is bounded on the east by the great chain of the Rocky Mountains; on the west by the Sierra Nevada; on the north and south by ranges running at right angles to these two great chains. It is thus isolated from the rest of the world; having its own system of mountains, lakes, and streams, the latter of which empty neither into the Atlantic nor Pacific. Its largest stream is Bear river, which, after a tortuous course of two hundred miles, discharges its waters into the great Salt Lake, on the eastern rim of the basin. Besides this there are many others, each of which empties into some lake, or is lost in the sands of the desert. The soil is, in the main, sterile, except along the margins of the streams, and the slopes of the mountains. These fertile spots constitute delightful oases in the howling waste, where the animals of the weary emigrant can obtain grass and water to sustain them on their