Portraits from Carlyle.—If Carlyle had taken to the brush instead of to the pen he would probably have left a gallery of portraits such as this century has not seen. In his letters and journals, reminiscences, etc., for him to mention a man is to describe his face, and with what graphic pen and ink sketches they abound. Let me extract a few of them. Here is Rousseau’s face, from “Heroes and Hero Worship:” “A high but narrow contracted intensity in it; bony brows; deep, straight-set eyes, in which there is something bewildered looking—bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness—a face full of misery, even ignoble misery, and also of an antagonism against that; something mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by intensity: the face of what is called a fanatic—a sadly contracted hero!…”

Here we have Dickens in 1840: “Clear-blue, intelligent eyes; eyebrows that he arches amazingly; large, protrusive, rather loose mouth; a face of most extreme mobility, which he shuttles about—eyebrows, eyes, mouth, and all—in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this with a loose coil of common-colored hair, and set it on a small, compact figure, very small, and dressed À la D’Orsay rather than well—this is Pickwick.”

Here is a glimpse of Grote, the historian of Greece: “A man with straight upper lip, large chin, and open mouth (spout mouth); for the rest, a tall man, with dull, thoughtful brows and lank, disheveled hair, greatly the look of a prosperous Dissenting minister.”

In telling Emerson whom he shall see in London, he says: “Southey’s complexion is still healthy mahogany brown, with a fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem running at full gallop; old Rogers, with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as snow, with those large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf chin.”

In another letter he draws this portrait of Webster: “As a logic-fencer, advocate, or parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him, at first sight, against all the extant world. The tanned complexion; that amorphous, crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff mouth, accurately closed; I have not traced as much of silent Berserkir rage, that I remember of, in any other man.”—From John Burroughs’s “Fresh Fields.”

Scott at Work.—I never can forget the description Sir Adam Fergusson gave me of a morning he had passed with Scott at Abbottsford, which at that time was still unfinished, and swarming with carpenters, painters, masons, and bricklayers, was surrounded with all the dirt and disorderly discomfort inseparable from the process of house-building. The room they sat in was in the roughest condition which admitted of their occupying it at all; the raw, new chimney smoked intolerably. Out-of-doors the whole place was one chaos of bricks, mortar, scaffolding, tiles, and slates. A heavy mist shrouded the whole landscape of lovely Tweed side, and distilled in a cold, persistent and dumb drizzle.

Maida, the well beloved stag-hound, kept fidgeting in and out of the room. Walter Scott every five minutes exclaiming, “Eh, Adam! the puir beast’s just wearying to get out;” or, “Eh, Adam! the puir creature’s just crying to come in;” when Sir Adam would open the door to the raw, chilly air for the wet, muddy hound’s exit or entrance, while Scott with his face swollen with a grievous toothache, and one hand pressed hard to his cheek, with the other was writing the inimitably humorous opening chapters of “The Antiquary,” which he passed across the table, sheet by sheet, to his friend, saying, “Now, Adam, d’ye think that will do?” Such a picture of mental triumph over outward circumstances has surely seldom been surpassed. House-builders, smoky chimney, damp draughts, restless, dripping dog, and toothache form what our friend Miss Masson called a “concatenation of exteriorities,” little favorable to literary composition of any sort; but considered as accompaniments or inspiration of that delightfully comical beginning of “The Antiquary,” they are all but incredible.—From Mason’s “Traits of British Authors.”

Paradise Found.—Could it once be proven that the Arctic terminus of the earth has always been the ice-bound region that it is, and which for thousands of years it has been, it would of course be useless to entertain for a moment the hypothesis that the cradle of the human race was there located. Probably the popular impression that from the beginning of the world the far North has been the region of unendurable cold has been one of the chief reasons why our hypothesis is so late in claiming attention. At the present time, however, so far as this difficulty is concerned, scientific studies have abundantly prepared the way for the new theory.

That the earth is a slowly cooling body is a doctrine now all but universally accepted. In saying this we say nothing for or against the so-called nebular hypothesis of the origin of the world, for both friends and foes of this unproven hypothesis believe in what is termed the secular cooling or refrigeration of the earth. All authorities in this field hold and teach that the time was when the slowly solidifying planet was too hot to support any form of life, and that only in some particular time in the cooling process was there a temperature reached which was adapted to the necessities of living things. On what portion of the earth’s surface, now, would this temperature first be reached? Or would it everywhere be reached at the same time? … We asked the geologist this question: “Is the hypothesis of a primeval polar Eden admissible?” Looking at the slowly cooling earth alone, he replies: “Eden conditions have probably at one time or another been found everywhere upon the surface of the earth. Paradise may have been anywhere.” Looking at the cosmic environment, however, he adds: “But while Paradise may have been anywhere, the first portions of the earth’s surface sufficiently cool to present the conditions of Eden life were assuredly at the Poles.”—From Warren’s “Paradise Found.”

Separation of De Long and Melville.—De Long verbally directed both of us to keep, if possible, within hail, and reiterated his orders in case of separation: “Make the best of your way,” said he, “to Cape Barkin, which is eighty or ninety miles off, southwest true. Don’t wait for me, but get a pilot from the natives, and proceed up the river to a place of safety as quick as you can; and be sure that you and your parties are all right before you trouble yourselves about any one else. If you reach Cape Barkin you will be safe, for there are plenty of natives there winter and summer.” Then addressing me particularly, he continued: “Melville, you will have no trouble in keeping up with me, but if anything should happen to separate us, you can find your way in without any difficulty by the trend of the coast-line; and you know as much about the natives and their settlements as any one else.” This was our last conversation in a body.

So when De Long waved me permission to leave him, I hoisted sail, shook out one reef, and as we gathered way the boat shot forward like an arrow, and the spray flew about us like feathers. Heretofore we had been running dead before the wind on our southwest course for the land, but the heavy sea and lively motion of the boat caused the sail to jibe and fill on the other tack, whereupon we would broach to and ship water. For this reason I hauled up the boat several points, or closer to the wind, and our condition at once improved. Now that we were separated I resolved to concern myself directly with the safety of my own boat; so that when one of the men said that De Long was signaling us, I told him he must be wrong, and further directed that no one should see any signals now that we were cast upon our own resources.

When last seen, the second cutter was about one thousand yards astern of us, the first cutter probably midway between, and there is no doubt in my mind that she then foundered. A conversation with the only two surviving members of the first cutter (Nindemann and Noras) has confirmed me in this belief; for they witnessed the scene as I have described it, and state that it was the general opinion of DeLong’s crew that I had shared the same fate simultaneously with Chipp.—Melville’s “In the Lena Delta.”