Among the happy returns, we cannot conclude without mentioning the pretty kitten sent on board the Erebus just before starting, and which we declared to be a "Pole-cat." It has certainly become one, with a thick rich fur, as if the antarctic seasons had agreed with it. There is also a goat shipped at Van Diemen's Land, which has stood all the hardships of three years' iceing. They are now animals of considerable interest; and, like their commanders, we are glad to observe, they give themselves no airs about it.

birds, and several specimens were brought | mimics. One of our officers danced and sung from this quarter. Altogether, we understand, Jim Crow to a set of them; and a Fuegian imabout sixty have been sent or brought home, mediately, to the great entertainment of the out of which, no doubt, some will augment our ships' crews, copied both dance and song; the fauna. Shooting these was one of the principal first to perfection, and the last so well that it amusements of the officers, when not on duty. was thought he pronounced every absurd word From Kerguelen's Land we have on our ta- whilst he jumped Jim Crow! ble, kindly presented to us by Lieut. Smith, a beautiful specimen of the fossil wood-a black silex, with the woody fibres obviously circling in the anterior, and the outer bark, particularly on one side, of a different brown consistency. It is about five inches in diameter, and very heavy. From Van Diemen's Land we have also silicified vegetable remains, of singular beauty; and in mentioning the place whence they came, we are happy again to notice the hearty welcome from Sir Jahn Franklin, who made it a home to the expedition. But before we leave Kerguelen's Land, we must revert to the scientific operations there, though merely to mention that the "ambulatory" observatories, from which so much information has been acquired, have all been safely relanded in EngEMBASSIES TO CHINA.-La Presse observes, that land, and are ready for any other expedition. as a French Ambassador is about to be appointed These houses answered their purposes admir- to China, it may not be uninteresting to know the ably, as did the instruments generally; and dates and duration of all the European embassies as the Erebus and Terror worked simultane- sent to the Celestial Empire. The following is an ously, and communicated the results by signal arrived at Pekin the 17th of July, 1656, and reexact list of them:-1. The Dutch embassy, which daily, there cannot be a doubt of the correct-mained there 91 days. 2. A Dutch embassy, which ness of the experiments and observations. This is of infinite consequence, for it must prevent all question, or cavil, or pretence from other quarters.

arrived the 20th of June, 1667, and remained 46 days. 3. A Russian embassy, which arrived the 5th of November, 1692, and remained 106 days. 4. A Russian embassy, which arrived the 18th of November, 1720, and remained 114 days. 5. An embassy from the Pope, which arrived in 1720, and remained 91 days. 6. A Portuguese embassy, which arrived the 1st of May, 1753, and remained 39 days. 7. An English embassy, which arrived on the 4th of August, 1793, and remained 47 days. 8. A Dutch embassy, which arrived the 10th of January, 1795, and remained 35 days. 9. A Ruswhich set out in February, 1816, and remained 15 sian embassy in 1806. 10. An English embassy, days. 11. That about to be conducted by M. La

The visit to Cape Horn, whither they ran from the Falkland Islands, brought them (as we observed) acquainted with the natives of that wild promontory. They met them on an island, not on the mainland, but a place evidently much frequented by them. They never met more than six or seven of the men together, and found them a fearless and rather robust, active, and well-looking race. They were matchless imitators, and very dexterous thieves had nothing to offer in barter but small pieces of greene. "It must be remarked," adds La Presse, skins; and were careful to prevent the appear-that the English ambassadors never approached ance of their women. These were kept sedu- the Emperor of China, because they always prolously out of sight; and in one instance, where tested against the laws of etiquette observed at the a party from the ships surprised two of them court of the Celestial Empire. In order to approach crouching in a concealed part, they leapt up the emperor it is necessary to proceed from the and ran from them, screeching with terror. door to the throne on the knees, to strike the head The "Jerdan Island" of Capt. Weddell's map nine times against the ground, and to kiss the left was near; and upon it, as upon others, rabbits heel of the sublime emperor several times.-Colo(brought from the Falkland Isles) were put nial Magazine. ashore; and as the soil is light and sandy, and covered with grass and brushwood, they will no PROF. WHEATSTONE'S ELECTRO-METEOROLOGIdoubt thrive, and replenish the land. Our kind CAL REGISTER (noticed in Lit. Gaz. No. 1372) for voyagers also, on other remote shores where observing the states of the barometer, thermomevessels will hereafter touch, landed rabbits, poul-ter, and psychrometer, every half-hour, and printtry, goats, and sheep, of which their future suc- ing the results, is now completed. It requires no attention for a week, and then five minutes suffice cessors may reap the advantage. The boats of the natives of the Terra del to prepare it for another week's operation. The Fuego are curiously built, and their bottom bal- daily record will be given next meeting. Col. Sabine stated that it was a matter of great importlasted with clay, on which their cooking is per-ance to have this instrument completed during the formed. The men, as we have said, are great

"Daily" may be a word misapplied through a considerable portion of the time, when the sun was shining over their heads for three weeks together.-Ed. L. G.

first year of their occupation of the observatory at Kew, which had been conceded by the Government for the use of the British Association. He also pointed out the great advantage of it for universal meteorological observations, dispensing with a corps of observers, &c. It cost only £25.-Lit. Gaz.

THE ENGLISH ON THE CONTINENT.

From the Foreign Quarterly Review.

1. The Mountains and Valleys of Switzerland. By Mrs. Bray. 3 vols. London.

1841.

2. A Summer in Western France. Trollope, Esq., B. A. 2 vols.

1841.

By J. A.
London.

grosser vice of excess. It must be granted that no people in the civilized world sit so long at table as the English. In France, the preparation of a dinner is a grave piece of science; in England, the work of gravity begins when dinner is served up. And it is the apparition of this uncongenial seriousness which procures us such a reputation abroad as great feeders ; and which, by the AN English party, devouring sandwiches naked force of contrast, makes the people and drinking bottled stout amidst the brok-around us appear so frivolous in our eyes. en walls of the Amphitheatre, might sit for the portraits of a large class of our travelling countrymen. The ruins of antiquity go for something; but they would be of no account without the debris of the luncheon. Eating is the grand business of a weighty majority of the English out of England. It arises partly from a certain uneasy apprehension that they cannot get any thing fit to eat anywhere else; and this very fear of not finding any thing they can eat, probably tempts them to eat every thing they can find. It is a common occurrence at a continental table d'hôte to hear an Englishman declare, after having run the gauntlet of twenty or thirty plates, that he hasn't had a morsel to eat.

A great deal of this feeling may be traced to the sudden conflict of habits and antipathies, brought face to face at that moment in the day when a man is least inclined to compromise his desires; but making all due allowances on that score, there is no doubt that the English carry a mighty stomach with them everywhere: the voracity of the shark, the digestion of the ostrich. Their physical sensations are in advance of their intellectual and mental cravings-even of their curiosity. The first inquiry at an hotel is—at what o'clock do you dine? They cannot stir another step without something to eat. If the climate is hot, it exhausts them, and they must recruit; if cold, they get hungry with astonishing celerity, the air is so keen and bracing. Change of air, change of scene, change of diet, the excitement of moving from place to place, the clatter of a new language-every thing contributes to this one end as if the sole aim and business of travelling was to get up an appetite.

The French make a delicate, but important distinction between the gourmand and the gourmet; and they include us, wholesale, under the former designation. We try to get rid of the imputation by sneering at the elaborate labors of their cuisine, just as if we never made any fuss about eating and drinking ourselves; but they take their revenge, and ample it is, upon our

We can as little understand their exuberant gaiety, as they can reconcile themselves to our animal stupor. They nickname us Roast-Beef, by way of showing that the paramount idea in the mind of an Englishman is that of substantial good living; and we resent it by calling them Soup-maigre, a sort of ignominious hint of vital animation at starvation point. There is no justice at either side. The French eat as much as the English, but they do not set about it so doggedly.

Great mistakes in national character, beginning in prejudices on the surface, and at last sinking into traditions and by-words, have their origin generally in the absurd process of applying the same test to dissimilar things; of trying opposite manners and different circumstances by the same moral or social standard. But of all nations, we have the least right to complain of any injustice of this kind, because, of all people, we are the most sullen and intractable, and have the least flexibility, the least power of adaptation, the least facility in going out of ourselves and falling into the habitual commonplaces of others. We cannot comprehend the reasonableness of usages that differ from our own. We are at once for setting them down as so much bigotry or tomfoolery. We cannot change sides for a moment, and, by the help of a little imagination, endeavor to see things from a different point of sight from that to which we have been all our lives accustomed. We allow nothing for varieties of temperament, for constitutional antago nisms. We are solidly inert and impenetra ble, and oppose ourselves bodily, bone and muscle, to all strange tastes and fashions.

This is the real character of the Englishman, and the true reason why he is so uncomfortable abroad, and why he makes every body so uncomfortable about him. Out of England, he is out of his element. He misses the unmistakable cookery, the rugs and carpets, the bright steps and windows, the order, decorum, the wealth and its material sturdiness. He comes out of his fogs and the sulphurous atmosphere of

The insular position of the English, and a protracted war, which shut them up for half a generation in their workshops and their prejudices, contributed largely to foster this hard and obstinate character, this egotistic and selfish intolerance. The peculiarities of other nations, like colors in the prism, dissolve into each other at their frontier lines; but the English are waterlocked; they enjoy none of the advantages of that miscellaneous experience, that free expanse of observation and intercourse, which elsewhere have the effect of enlarging the capacity of pleasure, of furnishing materials for reflection, of strengthening, elevating, and diffusing human knowledge and sympathy. The sea has been compared to the confines of eternity; and the English may be said to have been looking out upon eternity while other races have been engaged in active commerce with their fellow men.

his sea-coal fires, into an open laughing as the lengthening shadows track the declimate. His ears are stunned with songs cline of light. It was so with all the gorand music from morning till night; every geous republics of antiquity, with Tyre and face he meets is lighted up with enjoy- Athens, and with imperial Venice, when, ment; he cannot even put his head out of crowned like another mistress of the world, the window without seeing the sun. What she married the Adriatic, and thought herwonder the poor man should be miserable, self immortal! and wish himself at home again! He has no notion of pleasure unassociated with care. He must enter on pleasure as a matter of business, or it is no pleasure for him. There must be an alloy to preserve the tone of his mind, for he has a motto, that there is no happiness without alloy; and so, where there is none, he makes it. He has always a safe resource in his own morbid fancy, and has only to fall back upon himself to escape effectually from any surrounding influences that happen to throw too strong a glare upon his moroseness, or to affront his egotism by showing that other people can be happier than himself. The fundamental error of the travelling English consists in bringing their English feelings and modes with them, instead of leaving them behind to be taken care of with their pictures and furniture. You can detect an Englishman abroad by that repulsion of manner which covers him over like frost-work, and within the range of All this sounds very oddly in reference which nobody can enter without being bit- to a people who have amassed such enorten with cold. His sense of superiority mous wealth, who have been the great freezes the very air about him; you would navigators and colonizers of the world, think he was a statue of ice, or a block who exercise sovereignty in every quarter dropped from a glacier of the loftiest Alps. of the globe, and upon whose possessions It would be as easy for the sun to thaw the the sun never sets! Yet it is true, nevereternal peak of the snowy Jungfrau, as for theless. All this work of colonization and any ordinary warmth of society to melt extension of empire is transacted at a writthat wintry man into any of the cordial ing-desk. The counting-house in a twicourtesies of intercourse. Why is this? light alley, in the murky depths of the Why is it that the English alone treat all city, is the laboratory where the portable foreign countries through which they pass gases are generated, which are thus carried with such topping humors and contempt-off and distributed over the remotest relooking down upon them as if they belong-gions. Half-a-dozen dismal men meet ed to an inferior clay, as if they alone were round a table, scratch their signatures to a the genuine porcelain, as if arts and civili- paper, and a new empire starts up in the zation, knowledge and power, grace and Southern Pacific; they part in silence, and beauty, intelligence, strength, and the god- go home to dinner, with as much apathetic heraldry of goodness and wisdom, were regularity as if nothing had happened out one vast monopoly within the girth of of the way; and for the rest of the evening Great Britain? Why is this? Why, sim- nurse their family phlegm as they had done ply because the corruption of gold has eat- any time all their lives long. In a single en into their hearts; because they are the morning, the basis of a teeming trade of purse-holders of the world; because money centuries hence is laid down; but it brings is power, and they have only to put their no change in the inner life of the individual. hands into their pockets if they would make The hands move outwards, but the works the earth pant on its axis. The English are of the clock still keep their dark routine. It not exempt from the frailties of universal is one thing to ship off our superfluous nature; and pride and vainglory, and lus- population to distant lands, to plant the trous pomp, with its eyes amongst the Union Jack on some savage rock, and stars, follow in the train of gold as surely crack a bottle with a huzza! to the health

ting none. There is this remarkable point of contrast, too, that the former becomes at once a citizen of the country he visits, and the latter never ceases to be the petty lord of the manor, the common council man, the great gun of the village or the county. The universe is only Big Little Pedlington to Hopkins.

of Old England; and another to maintain When a Frenchman, or an Italian, comes intimate relations and constant interchange to England, he brings his sunshine with with nations as civilized as ourselves, to him. When an Englishman goes to France rub off the rust of isolation and drudgery, or Italy, he cannot leave his fogs behind to lift ourselves out of the one idea of him. He is like a rolling mass of darkness, money-getting, and to draw in humanity absorbing all the encircling light, but emitand good humor from our neighbors. In the large and philosophical sense of the word, we have never acted upon the true principle of colonization; we never conciliate the races we subdue-we conquer every thing but their affections. Our settlements are camps in a hostile country, as completely apart from the native population as swans' nests in a stream. In India, we are hedged in on all sides by jealousy and distrust; the war of races in Canada is as bitter at this moment as it was in 1760; and the animosities of the pale still flourish as rankly as ever in Ireland, in spite of free trade, two rebellions, the Union, Catholic Emancipation, and Reform. This comes of our immobility-of our elemental resistance to fusion.

The same thing that happens upon a great scale in political affairs, is illustrated in a minor way in the intercourse of travelling. Our social tariff amounts almost to a prohibition. Exchange of ideas takes place only at the extreme point of necessity. We are as reluctant to open our mouths or our ears as our ports, and have as profound a horror of foreign vivacity and communicativeness as of foreign corn. Habit goes a long way with us. People are so used to cry out 'The farmers are ruined,' that they must keep up war prices after a peace of nearly thirty years. We have a similar difficulty in relaxing our manners. The bulk of our continental travellers enter an hotel with as much severity and suspicion in their looks as if we were fighting the battles of legitimacy over again, and were doomed to fight them for ever.

But it is surprising how a little knocking about in steamboats, and railways, and diligences, and schnell-posts and voitures of all sorts, and hotels with every variety of perfumes, shakes a man out of his sluggish thoughts and opake humors. It is the best of all constitutional remedies for mind and body, although it acts but slowly on the whipcord nerves of the English. It is good for the brains and the stomach. It invigo rates the imagination, loosens the blood and makes it leap through the veins, dispels the nebulous mass of the stay-at-home animal, and, liberating the spirit from its drowsy weight of prejudices, sends it rebounding back, lighter and brighter than ever, with the fresh morning beams throbbing in its pulses. There is nothing in this levelling world of ours which so effectually annihilates conventional respectability as travelling. It tumbles down with a single blow the whole wire and gauze puppet, reducing its empty length and breadth to mere finery and sawdust. All our staid, solemn proprieties, that beset and check us at every land's turn like inauguration mysteries, as if we were entering upon some esoteric novitiate every day of our lives-all our family pride and class instincts-our local importance and stately caution-paddocks and lawnsBy staying so much at home, and being liveries, revenues, and ceremonials-all go kept so much at home by the pressure of for nothing in the swirl and roar of the livexternal circumstances, our ideas and feeling tide. A great landed gentleman cannot ings become introverted. We turn eter- bring his ten-feet walls, his deer-park, or nally upon ourselves. We accumulate im- his parish-church, with its time-honored mensely, but undergo little or no sensible slabs and monuments, in the palm of his modifications of character. We advance hand to the continent; he cannot stick the in the direction of utility, but are still pret-vicar and the overseer and the bench of ty much the same people we were a couple justices in his hatband; he cannot inscribe of hundred years ago. The only marked the terrors of the tread-mill on his traveldifference is that we are less hearty, less frank and joyous. We drop our old customs, our games and festivals, one by one, and grow more and more plodding and selfish. 'Merry England' survives only in ballads. Robin Hood and Little John are gone to the workhouse.

ling-bag; he cannot impress every body abroad as he can at home with the awful majesty of his gate-house, and the lump of plush that slumbers in the padded armchair; he has passed out of the artificial medium by which he has hitherto been so egregiously magnified, and he is forced,