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The Whale. By HERMAN MELVILLE. Three Volumes. London.

For a natural history of the whale, and of all the species of the whale, we must undoubtedly for the future consult these volumes. It is clear that hitherto we have had but erroneous views of his outward form, of his inward structure, and daily habits; and we may add, moreover, of his instincts and his mental and physical powers. In Herman Melville's opinion, the whale ought to be held in far higher estimation than he is, not merely from his huge bulk, but from his superior sagacity. The elephant he considers to be in every way inferior, and in no respect whatever to be placed in comparison with the whale. But the volumes are not confined to the whale alone, but to a variety of subjects, little or much, or not at all connected with the main theme. There is a story, of course, and a strange and tragical story; but the hero of the book is decidedly a whale of a peculiar appearance, of a peculiar ability, and a very peculiar character. His name or cognomen is Moby Dick; and for courage, sagacity, and good-luck, unequalled, perhaps, by any of his tribe. The catastrophe he at length caused was of precisely the same kind as happened to the whale ship Ann Alexander in August, 1850, while in the South Pacific; and to the whale ship Essex in the same seas about thirty years since. But we have in these volumes most graphically brought before us all that concerns whale-fishing generally: the fitting up of the craft the description of characters that sail in her their employments, their labours, their hardships, their dangers; and an awfully heathen set they would seem to be-Nantucket men chiefly with direct idolaters from the South Sea and Malay Islands as assistants. It is a wild life of adventure they lead: monotonous, perhaps, in its wildness, but still at times of the most exciting interest to the crew, from their great personal peril and their own personal interest to secure the one object of their pursuit. As a matter of course, Herman Melville writes in his own way to please himself: he certainly writes as few men but himself could, and pens down thoughts, the strangest at times, that were ever found on paper. Many of these would be better for pruning, and a pen run through a few of them would greatly improve a second edition. There is, nevertheless, much that is very clever in these volumes-much that is instructive and entertaining; for, kept to the text of "the whale," the writer is inimitable and most amusing it is only when he touches upon other and sacred subjects that he offends; but what he is, and what he can do, and what he ought not to do, he has on various occasions before made us to know and to

see. He can do very clever things-he can write very ably-he does, whenever he pleases, write pictures to the mind's eyevivid pictures of the incidents he relates: few can write so forcibly or describe so clearly when he will think soberly and put his thoughts on paper simply and naturally. As a specimen of his descriptive powers, we give a fragment of one of his allusions to his real hero, the white whale, Moby Dick:

"But, even stripped of these supernatural surmisings-there was enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike the imagination with unwonted power; for, it was not so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead and a high pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent features— the tokens whereby, even in the limitless unchartered seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him."

The rest of his body was so streaked and spotted and marbled with the same shrouded hue that in the end he had gained his distinctive appellation of the "white whale"-a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid aspect when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam all spangled with golden gleamings. Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror as that unexampled, intelligent, malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults-more than all his treacherous retreats-struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else; for, when swimming before his exulting pursuers with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known to turn round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their boats to splinters or drive them back in consternation to their ship:

"On several occasions Moby Dick availed himself of the opportunities the whale ships afforded him to display his warlike propensities, his decidedly great courage, and his skill in directing attacks upon his enemies. After a long and anxious look-out for him he was seen from the mast-head, when a gull-like cry was heard-There she blows!--hump like a snow hill !—it is Moby Dick!' He was at the time about half-a-mile a-head, at every roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air Ere long the boats neared him, when suddenly the fore part of him slowly rose from the water: for an instant his whole marble-ized body. formed a high arch, and, warningly waving his bannered flukes, he fully revealed himself, then sounded, and went altogether out of sight. An hour, in such cases, usually elapses before the whale again comes VOL. XXXI.-Q

This was

to the surface; but almost instantly afterwards there was seen under one of the boats, and deep down in the sea, a white spot-no bigger than a white weazel-with wonderful celerity uprising and magnifying as it rose till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white glistening teeth floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw: his vast shadow still half blending with the blue of the sea-the glittering mouth yawned beneath like an open-doored marble tomb. Through and through, through every plank and each rib, the boat thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely laying on his back, in the manner of a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within its mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled jaw curled high up into the open air; the bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw being within six inches of the captain's head and reaching even higher than that. In this attitude the white whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse: then, as the frail gunwales were bent in-collapsed and snapped-the jaws, like enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea midway between the two floating wrecks." one of the least of Moby Dick's exploits with that ship's crew. Again he was pursued by them, and when again they neared him, the captain, who had his own reasons for hating this whale especially, darted his fierce iron and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed, spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, suddenly canted the boat over and threw out three of the oarsmen; and then, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous, swiftness, the white whale darted through the weltering sea. Other thoughts, however, than those of flight seemed to possess the whale; for, wheeling round to present his blank forehead to the pursuing boats, he suddenly caught sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; and, seemingly, seeing in it the source of all his persecutions-bethinking it, it may be, a larger and nobler foe-he suddenly bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid showers of foam, and in spite of all that the terrified crew could do the white buttress of the whale's forehead smote the ship's starboard-bow till men and timbers reeled. Through the breach they heard the waters pour as mountain torrents down a lume. This is not the last we shall hear of Moby Dick's destructive propensities indeed, it was probably the same white whale who sunk Captain Deblois' ship the Ann Alexander; for, in the Times of November 21, 1851, will be found a letter on that subject, in which the whale would seem to have employed precisely the same tactics both on the boats and the ship-crushing the one

between his jaws, and sinking the other by knocking a great hole through her bottom with his head.

We may say, in addition, that we never knew the sea so well described by words as in these volumes. Mr. Melville speaks of it evidently from fully enjoying it and from being powerfully' impressed by it: his incidental descriptions of it, and his many beautiful allusions to it, form, perhaps, the most striking and almost poetical portions of the work, and will be admired, we judge, by all lovers of the sea, who best know how impossible it is for any one not perfectly conversant with it, and not ardently attached to it, adequately to describe the terrors of its storms or the beauties of its calms in the South Pacfic.

Views of Canada and the Colonists. By JAMES B. BROWN. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black.

WHEN We consider the important position occupied by Canada, both in respect to its magnitude as a colony and its relations with the mother country, it is somewhat surprising we should possess such limited information concerning it; the cursory experience of travellers constituting almost our entire knowledge of a country intimately associated with England, and extending over 196,000,000 acres—that is, between two and three times the size of Great Britain and Ireland.

The work before us is, we think, admirably calculated to supply this deficiency. The information it contains is of a voluminous nature, of an eminently practical character conveyed in a clear and intelligible manner, and well adapted to instruct the emigrant as to the character and resources of the country. The writer seems to speak without partiality or prejudice, and with the sole aim of affording a just estimate of a country of which, from a residence of eight years, he must have acquired considerable experience. Thus, after stating the advantages which Canada possesses in the fertility of its soil, the healthiness of its climate, the freedom guaranteed by its political constitution, the cheapness of land, and other particulars, Mr. Brown candidly admits the drawbacks of a long and severe winter, the difficulty and labour to be encountered by the farmer in clearing the immense forest trees from the land, and the disturbances which sometimes arise in the colony from the bitterness of party strife. In more minute considerations the author is equally free from bias, and scarcely a single town of importance is brought under notice without a full and impartial review of the inducements which it may present to the emigrant. With these remarks we commend the work to the reader, with the assurance that he will derive much valuable information from a perusal.

1. Auricular Confession, and Special Judicial Absolution: Examined by the Canon of Holy Scripture, and by the Ordinances of the Church of these Realms. An Essay. By WILLIAM PEACE, Esq. Second Edition. London: Painter, 1851. 8vo.

2. The History of the Confessional. By JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Bishop of the [Protestant Episcopal Church in the State or] Diocese of Vermont. New York: Harper and Brothers. London: Delf, 1850. Svo.

IN the system of the Romish Church the confessional is her right hand of strength. It is in the confessional that the Romish priesthood wield their vast and secret power over the people. It is by the confessional that they rivet the chains of superstition upon the conscience and the soul. The total abolition of this fearful despotism was one of the great blessings of the Reformation; and, therefore, the subject well deserves the serious attention of every one who desires to understand the value of his privileges as a follower of the true doctrine of the apostles, and to "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made him free."

In pp. 403-424 of our last volume we entered fully into the immorality of the Romish confessional, but did not refer to the scriptural, patristical, and historical evidence against it; as the publications, to which we were then desirous of directing the attention of our readers, did not treat on it. We have, however, much pleasure now in introducing to their notice the two treatises at the head of this article. Mr. Peace's "Essay " is the production of a thoughtful and intelligent layman, who has brought auricular confession to the unerring test of Scripture, and of the ordinances of our Church. It is eminently adapted for those who have not money to purchase, or time to read, larger volumes.

Bishop Hopkins's treatise is of much higher pretensions, and is not unworthy of the reputation which he has already acquired, in his own country, as an able and well-informed theologian. Moreover, his mode of treating the subject is such that no candid Papist can object to it. First, he states at large the Romish system in the words of the Catechism of Trent. Next, he sets forth the doctrine of the Church of England and of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America; and points out the contrast between them and the Romish Church under fifteen different particulars. The testimony of Scripture is then examined; and Bishop Hopkins carefully marks the false translations of the Douay Version of the Bible (from the Latin Vulgate), which is the English standard of the Romish clergy. The

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