tolerably good stockings is from five shillings to half-a-guinea per pair. They are all knitted. The very fine ones, which are esteemed superior in value to silk, will pass

these times are amazingly quick; and they astonish the spectator with the rapid change of their form. They break out in places where none were seen before, skimming briskly along the heavens are sud-through a small finger ring. The different denly extinguished, and leave behind au uniform dusky tract. This again is brilJiantly illuminated in the same manner, and as suddenly left a dull blank. In certain nights they assume the appearance of vast columns, on one side of the deepest yellow, on the other declining away, till it become undistinguished from the sky.

They have generally a strong tremulous motion from end to end, which continues till the whole vanish. According to the state of the atmosphere they differ in colours. They often assume the colour of blood, and make a most dreadful appear ance. The rustic sages represent these phenomena as prognosticative of future events, and thereby affright the gaping multitude with dread of war, famine, and pestilential devastations.

The soil of these islands is various, In some places it consists of deep moss with a sandy bottom; in others the moss does not exceed a foot in thickness; over a stratum of clay. The cultivated parts consist, generally, of a mixture of clay aud small stones. In some places there is abundance of tough clay similar to that used in Britain for manufacturing bricks or pottery. Though no coal has hitherto been discovered in these islands, yet copper and iron ore, free-stone, lime-stone, and other mineral productions have been found in several of them. All the animals are of a diminutive size. The sheep are the most profitable part of their live stock, and are calculated to be from 110,000 to 120,000 in number; one between three and five years old sells at from four to seven shillings.

In winter, especially when the ground is covered with snow, these animals feed on the sea-weed, with which the shores are covered. This they resort to by a kind of natural instinct for as soon as the tide begins to ebb, the whole body of them (although feeding several miles off,) make for the sea shores, where they stay as long as the tide will permit them, and then return to their usual walks.

The wool of these sheep is remarkably soft and fine; but there is so much diver sity in its quality, that some stockings at L. 2, 28. per pair, and others at sixpence are made from it. The common price of

colours of the wool are white, black, light grey, and sometimes a russet. The sheep are never shorn; but early in June the wool is pulled off without injuring the animal. In this process care is taken to leave the long hairs which grow amongst the wool, by which means the young wool is sheltered, and the animal kept warm and comfortable.

Many of the inhabitants feed, during the season, on the eggs and young of wild birds, which they procure in a very dangerous manner from cliffs, that in some places are from sixty to one hundred fathoms in height.

The dauntless adventurer descends by a The attempt is mostly made from above. rope made either of straw or hog's bristles, and held by a person at the top. Oftentimes the rope breaks, and the unhappy fowler is dashed to pieces or drowned. place to place, with the impending weight The necessity of shifting the rope from of the fowler and his prey, renders the attempt much more hazardous.

In Foula they drive a small stake or dag. ger in the soil at the top of the precipice, to which they fasten a fishing line. By this slender assistance they descend to the place where the nests are, which they plunder, and ascend again with amazing intrepidity. This manner of fowling was, by the Norwegian law, considered a species of suicide. tom has so hardened the Shetlanders What is still more extraordinary, cusagainst all sense of danger, that they will wander among the rocks at night, in order to surprise the old fowl upon the nests.

The eggs and young of the black-backed and herring gulls, compose the chief part of the booty acquired in these predatory and desperate attempts.

Agriculture, in the Shetland Islands, is at a very low ebb, and is chiefly performed by the women; but so prevatent is the rage of the inhabitants for fishing, that the only cultivated land is to be found near the coast, and it bears and uncultivated. The population of no proportion to that which lies waste these islands, according to the last census, amounted to 22,379 persons, among whom there are about two considerable

land owners, but a great number of small ones.

The whole land-rent amounts to about | Resolution arrived in the dreary arctic L. 5,000 per annum, which is a small sum regions, passing numerous Icebergs, and when compared with the profits the pro- being occasionally made fast to some of prietors make by the fisheries, in which them. they are all concerned. This business is carried on by the tenants; an affair which tends much to affect the state of the common people at large. The landlords make their lands subservient to this trade, by setting them in small portions to fishermen: and, in order the more to propagate the human species for the purpose of fishing, the young men get premiums of small subdivisions of land, (though without lease,) on their taking wives. The poor, who thus swallow the matrimonial bait, getting more numerous familes than they can maintain, and having no way of supporting themselves but by the fish which they take, (and which they are obliged to sell to their landlords at a fixed price,) are often necessitated, either to go on board such merchant vessels as call in here, or to enter voluntarily into his Majesty's Navy. In many places, three or four families are found on a farm which thirty or forty years ago was possessed only by one.

Unmarried men have another inducement to enter into matrimony; for when Government requires a number of men for the Navy, the proprietors take good care to send off those who are unmarried. By these factitious regulations, the population has become superabundant, insomuch that the produce of the islands does not support their inhabitants more than seven or eight months in the year.

Before the proprietors of lands became so deeply engaged in the fishing business, juvenile or premature marriages were, in these islands, looked on as next to a crime, because thereby the population might increase to such a degree as to become ruinous and oppressive to the whole community. For this reason, a regulation was made against marriage, unless when the -parties could produce evidence that they possessed L. 40 Scots, or L. S: 6: 8 Sterling. This salutary law is now never enforced, to the great prejudice of the whole inhabitants.

On the island of Jan Mayen, our author beheld some vestiges of the temporary buildings where the whale fishers formerly boiled their blubber; but this practice of boiling blubber in the north has long since been discontinued, and is now performed on the return of the vessels to their respective ports.

In something less than three weeks after quitting the Shetland Isles, the

These floating mountains of ice, to which Dutch navigators have given the name of Icebergs, and which are of all different magnitudes, are originally formed on land. The sun, even in those high latitudes, has a considerable power in melting the snow on the mountains, which, running down into the valleys, and again congealing, segments frequently break off from the entire mass, and fall into the sea. The ice of which these floating masses are composed, is of various colours. The original fresh water ice is sometimes incrusted with that formed from the sea-water, and this again is covered with new ice formed of fallen snow. The different positions of the spectator re latively to the incidental rays of light, vary likewise the seeming buc of the whole. In some parts it emulates the vividuess of the emerald, and in others, the most beautiful sapphire. When the Iceberg is totally composed of melted snow which is sometimes but partly the case, the refraction of the solar rays is the most beautiful; and the appearance of those floating mountains on the side opposite the sun, presents such a blaze of light, intermingled with different glowing tints, as totally to baffle description.

quently piled on each other, to a considerIn storms, large masses of ice are freoften assume a very fantastic appearance. able height; these are called packs, and The grinding noise occasioned by the collision of those huge masses of ice against each other, and against the ship, not only fill the mind of the auditor with a degree of horror, but for a considerable time deprives him of the sense of hearing.

Spitzbergen is a general appellation given to a vast assemblage of frozen islands, lying between South Cape, in 76o 30', and Verlegan Hook, in 80° 7', north latitude.

The general aspect of this gloomy and sterile country, affords a scene truly pictu resque and sombre. The shores are rugged, bold, and terrific, being in many places formed by lofty, black, inaccessible rocks, some of which taper to exceedingly high points, and are altogether bare, and almost destitute of vegetation. The entire face of the country exhibits a wild, dreary land. scape, of amazingly high sharp-pointed mountains, some of which rear their summits above the clouds, and are capt with

strata of snow, probably coeval with the creation of the world.

In latitude 81° 50', by observations, the ship was in a sea, almost quite free from ice with a great well; the weather

was serene.

Had our object been the making of discoveries, there was not, apparently, any thing to have prevented us from going a good way farther to the north; at least we did not perceive any large fields of ice in that direction; though it is more than probable we should have very soon fallen in with them. We were a little farther north than Captain Phipps, who ran a great risk of being locked up entirely by the ice. He was, in fact, ice-bound from 31st July to 10th August, and during that time the packed ice rose as high as the main-yard. The want of ice in that place where we then were, was perhaps owing to the effects of some late gale clearing it away. The great swell in the sea appeared to indicate this to have been the case.

In a subsequent voyage, performed in 1807, the vessel could not penetrate higher than 78° 30'; her farther progress being wholly prevented by a ridge

of ice.

Having made a prosperous voyage, the ship safely returned to Whitby.

In the course of his work, Mr. Laing has introduced several pleasing notices respecting the natural history of the inhabitants of the Northern Ocean, the mode of catching whales, &c. for which we must refer to his pages. The appendix contains an interesting account of the Dutch, English, and Whale fisheries, some important observations on the variation of the compass, &c. and some extracts from Capt. Scoresby's valuable Memoir on Polar Ice, in the Wernerian Society's transactions.

At the present time, when every information relative to the frozen ocean excites more than ordinary attention, Mr. Laing's volume will be read with considerable interest. We have been much pleased with the seaman-like observations, which he has interspersed in various parts of his book; and return him our thanks for presenting them to the public in so cheap a form. In the hands of a clever manufacturer, his remarks might easily have been expanded into a quarto volume.

The Spirit of the Gospel; or, the Four
Evangelists elucidated by explanatory
Observations, Historical References, and
Miscellaneous Illustrations. By the Rev.
Stephen Gilly, M.A. Svo. 10s. Law and
Whittaker, London. 1818.

This work is designed to contain such an exposition of the Gospels as shall briefly explain their principal difficulties, and the most prominent of their beauties by means of elucidation drawn from the consideration of the best commentators and expositors, as well as from the researches of those who have applied the manners and customs of the east to the illustration of the sacred volume.

Too expensive, too learned, or too dry, are the objections commonly made to compositions explanatory of Scripture. There is one class of persons who cannot gain access to the folios which contain the treasures of Biblical exposition-there is another, who, though they are not deeply versed in learned lore, and cannot therefore follow the theologian through all his profound inquiries, would wish to understand the tendency of them, and to know to what they lead, being fond of sacred reading, and anxious to give an answer to the hope that is in them: and there is another, who, from their prejudice or indifference, require to be shewn that the study of the Gospel is far from being so uninviting, or so destitute of literary charms, as they have been led to imagine. With a view to accommodate the subject to each of these, the Author has reduced his materials within the compass of a single volume, has offered few explanations, which the plainest English reader may not perfectly understand, and has not, Where it upon any occasion, inserted an illustration in any language, but our own. was necessary to have recourse to ancient or foreign authorities, the substance is communicated through the medium of a translation. He has likewise taken every opportunity of admitting such matter as may sometimes relieve the mind from the contemplation of graver topics, and fix it upon those beauties and graces with which the Holy Memoirs, as the Gospels have been happily called, are frequently interspersed. An historical reference, a tale or anecdote to the point, a custom or characteristic of the age or country in which our Saviour lived, or an elegant turn which some ancient or modern poet may have given to the subject-these have not been rejected,