THE POLAR REGIONS. 127 



summer ; and that the sun, as if to make amends 

 for its prolonged absence in winter, shines all night 

 as well as all day, blazing on the crystal icebergs and 

 pure snow (which never disappear from those seas) 

 with a degree of splendour that renders the far 

 north transcendently beautiful and pre-eminently 

 attractive. 



We admit freely that the prevailing character of 

 arctic seas, during the greater part of the year, is 

 dark, gloomy, forbidding. But this is the very 

 reason why their brief but cheering smiles should 

 be brought prominently into the foreground, and, if 

 they cannot in justice be dwelt on long, at least be 

 touched upon with emphasis. 



Why, in some of our cyclopaedia accounts of the 

 realms of " thick-ribbed ice," so much prominence 

 is given to " the horrors and wide desolation of the 

 scene," and so much graphic power is expended in 

 working up the reader's imagination to a conception 

 of the dreadful dangers and the appalling terrors 

 that await the madman who should dare to venture 

 within the arctic circle, that persons who have not 

 been there might well be tempted to shrink in 

 affright from the very contemplation of a region in 

 which there does not appear to be one redeeming 

 quality. 



We repeat, that we do not think the one side of 

 the picture has been too darkly painted, but the 

 other side has been painted too slightly. 



At the same time, we would caution our readers 



