244 ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



that he has not penetrated far beyond the wreck of the Fury. The 

 most reasonable conjecture is, that by means of steam, he has ad- 

 vanced into trackless fields of ice, from which, on the exhaustion 

 of his fuel, lie has never been able to emerge. We think it highly 

 probable that he still exists for his arrangements were made for an 

 absence of many years and in every probability his vessels are yet 

 unharmed, amidst mountains of impassable ice. 



No sailing vessel will in any probability ever reach this ill-fated crew: 

 for when we recal to mind the rapidity of the adverse current, and 

 the heart-breaking toils of Captain Parry and his companions, who 

 strove in vain to accomplish even the remaining fifteen miles to the 

 84th degree of north latitude, in order to secure the reward of 

 10,000, offered by the Board of Longitude, we feel assured that no 

 effectual progress will ever be made in those seas, except by the use 

 of steam. 



We therefore submit to the patrons of this generous undertaking, 

 that a steam-boat will be the only effectual vehicle of proceeding in 

 quest of our gallant countrymen : and most devoutly do we wish 

 a prosperous termination of an enterprize which ranks among the 

 foremost of those humane and magnanimous efforts, which pre-emi- 

 nently distinguish this country from all surrounding nations. The 

 managers of the affair have already committed one glaring absurdity: 

 let them not, after this fair warning, be guilty of another. 



BITS OF BIOGRAPHY. 



No. I. 



BLAKE, THE VISION SEER, AND MARTIN, THE YORK MINSTER 



INCENDIARY. 



BLAKE was an embodied sublimity. He held converse with 

 Michael Angelo, yea, with Moses ; not in dreams, but in the placid 

 still hours of night alone awake with such powers as he pos- 

 sessed in their full vigour. Semiramis was often bodily before him ; 

 he chatted with Cleopatra, and the Black Prince sate to him for a por- 

 trait. He revelled in the past ; the gates of the spiritual world were 

 unbarred at his behest, and the great ones of bygone ages, clothed in 

 the flesh they wore on earth, visited his studio. He painted from 

 spectres. I have seen several of his pictures of men who died 

 " many anno-dominis ago," taken from their ghosts. The shadow 

 of a flea once appeared to him, and he drew it. 



His may be deemed the most extraordinary case of spectral illusion 

 that has hitherto occurred. Is it possible that neither Sir Walter 

 Scott, nor Sir David Brewster, the authors of " Demonology and 

 Witchcraft," and " Natural Magic," ever heard of Blake ? Allan 

 Cunningham, unless I am grossly mistaken, had, even prior to the 

 appearance of the former work, introduced the Vision-seer to the 

 public in which of his productions, however, I cannot recollect; so 



