Gotta's form remained quiet. "Have confidence in God," said she sweetly; "I am sure that he will not forsake you."

Van Huysum shook his head, and there was silence.

"Still," he continued, after a moment, in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, "still if I could get any assistance. Other painters are fortunate; they have scholars who second the efforts of their pencil." "My father could have scholars whenever he wished," remarked Gotta.

"So that they could filch away my secrets," interrupted the painter with glaring eyes, "so that no one could distinguish my pieces from those of the plagiarists! No, no; the bouquets of Van Huysum shall stand alone of their kind."

Then, as if he suddenly took courage, he quickly opened his box of colors, drew the curtain aside from the piece on which he had just been at work, and casting a suspicious look on his little girl, he said:

Perhaps you spoke that word for yourself. Perhaps you wish me teach you that which patience has enabled me to discover. No indeed! if you please! Presents which are too costly make ingrates. Seek it, my brave daughter, as I did. Since my illness you have painted more than usual. Have you made any progress? Let me see, Gotta. Show me your latest pieces." "It is too small a matter to deserve your attention," said the young girl, slightly embarrassed.

"Show them, show them!" replied Van Huysum persistently; "it is not my intention to refuse you all counsel. You have sufficient talent for making a good painter, Gotta. Let me observe your style; I look well to my own."

Gotta decided, as she ought, to satisfy her father. She left the room and soon returned with a little frame, in the midst of which she had painted a bouquet of the snowdrop and the azure campanula. Van Huysum examined it attentively, and at first his brow darkened.

struggling with the involuntary satisfaction which the perfection of this work afforded him.

"Ah, yes," he continued, in a low tone, "the little one has taste, but in detail it is not my style-not my coloring. Shall we sce, Gotta, how much Solomon will give for this bouquet?"

"Just what he has given for the preceding ones, I suppose, father, five ducats." "Very well," returned Van Huysum with a smile, "I should get fifty ducats for one of the very same size. Decidedly I am still quite alone in my style; no one has yet discovered my secret, and there is no one but myself that can make the flowers unfold beneath their pencil." Then, as if the last words had recalled his former thoughts, he added, in a tone of chagrin, • But what avails this beautiful superiority if I cannot profit by it? Unhappy man! The mine of gold is there, and strength fails me to draw it out. How far along in the month are we, Gotta ?"

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"To the twenty-ninth, my father." "The twenty-ninth is it possible? So in two days Van Bruk will come! in two days! Ah, God has abandoned me; I am lost without hope!"

The old painter threw himself back, and Gotta, while soothing him with sweet words, prepared a cordial for him which she had often tried with good effect. At this moment the door opened and the Jew Solomon appeared. On seeing him Gotta could not restrain an exclamation, and made a motion as if to prevent his entrance; but it was too late, Van Huysum had perceived him.

"There," he cried out with a feverish accent of despair, "he has come for his pictures. See, see! he has brought me the money for them!"

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In good Portuguese coin, master," said the Jew, clinking the gold in his leathern purse; "I know what money you prefer." The painter writhed in his chair.

"Take it away," stammered he. "Do not come to increase my regrets by showing me this sum! Take it away, I tell you, Solomon; I do not wish to see it."

The Jew took off his spectacles with an air of stupefaction.

"What is the matter ?" said he. "Do you not want my money?"

"No!" cried Van Huysum, distractedly, "because I have not finished the promised pictures."

LIFE IN THE POLAR REGIONS.

T is a strange life on which the seaman

the ice of the Northern Seas. Till that moment, the dangers he has encountered have been such as his nautical experience has taught him to avoid or meet; but, the ice once around him, all is changed. At this critical moment, when he feels that the perils of an almost untried and uncertain navigation call for every aid that his skill can suggest, he is gradually deprived of that friendly help which he has always regarded as his mainstay in the hour of need. Each day, as he approaches nearer to the magnetic pole of the earth, the compass becomes more sluggish, until, at length, it is "thrown aside as useless lumber." The wind rises to a gale, and, instead of the rocks and shoals, which, in other seas, offer, if we may so say, only a passive resistance to the sailor's course, here loose frozen masses dash against the vessel's side, with a violence which no skill or chart can avoid. Well might the British mariner, two centuries ago, be affrighted by the " very loathsome noise" so new to his ears, when an Arctic navigator of our own days describes it as such that "the orders of the officers and men could scarcely be heard," as they toiled through the heavily-laden breakers.

Strange, too, and magnificent, in approaching the portals of the Northern Ocean, must be the first sight of the huge floating mountains of ice, past which the vessel glides, their upper snow-capped surface, of alabaster white, sparkling in the sun, and contrasting with the beautiful azure of the base, against which the surf is dashing. These giants of the North are, at once, the friend and foe of the adventurous navigator. Now he courts their proximity, making fast to them for security, or slowly hauling past their huge sides; while, at other times, he steers wide of the glistening masses, fearing lest, like the fabled rocks of Grecian story, they should meet and crush his frail bark, or, perchance, lose their balance and fall upon him. In this latter case, it is but short warning that is given. The sound of a voice, the firing of a gun, or a blow with a boat-hook, is often enough to detach the loosened fragments, and endanger the equilibrium of the whole. Down into the sea, with a noise as of thunder, falls the mountain, for

a moment disappearing from view; then, suddenly, in the midst of a cloud of foam, shooting up again into the air. For a while

new position; into which, at last, it gradually subsides, while streams of water pour from its surface, glistening with emerald hues in the rays of the sun.

Various and fantastic are the forms assumed by these mountains of ice, to deceive or amuse the sailor. At whiles, the cry of "a sail" startles him, and, half doubting, half hopeful, he prepares his packet of home letters, all to no purpose. Again, his fancy spreads before him, gorgeous in tints of gold and emerald, a palace not unworthy of fairy-land, with crystal colonnades and diamond-studded gates: or, once more, it is a huge pavilion that meets his eye, from whose entrance he almost expects some uncouth form to issue, to do the honors of the North, and welcome the strangers to his frozen abode.

In these regions all is rude and colossal. The huge ice-mountain, itself hundreds of feet in height, is but a small fragment of a vast glacier on the shore, extending often for two or three miles inland. The separation of the berg from its parent field has been described by an eye-witness of the avalanche:

"This occurred on a remarkably fine day, when the stillness of the bay was first interrupted by the noise of the falling body. We had approached one of these stupendous walls of ice, and were endeavoring to search into the innermost recesses of a deep cavern near the foot of the glacier, when we heard a report, as of a cannon; and turning to the quarter from whence it proceeded, we perceived an immense piece of the front of the berg sliding down from the height of two hundred feet, at least, into the sea, and dispersing the water in every direction, accompanied by a loud grinding noise, followed by a quantity of water, which, being previously lodged in fissures, now made its escape in numberless small cataracts over the front of the glacier."

All in keeping, too, with the scene are the wonders of animated nature. Here, spouting the water from his nostrils, a whale lies basking on the surface of the sea, until, alarmed by the unwonted intrusion on his solitude, he suddenly dives head foremost, lashing the water into foam with his broad, forked tail. There, the scene will be diversified by a walrus, formidable with its huge tusks and ponderous bulk, reclining leisurely on the brink of the ice, or moving sedately about in one of the

pools of water. A little further on, a seal is lying in wait at the edge of a hole, watching his opportunity to dive after a fish; while above, on the ledge of the berg or rock, a great white bear, himself on the look out for the seal, alarmed by the dip of oars or the strange sound of human voices, plunges head foremost into the sea, over a precipice many feet in height. Should his visitors be at leisure for a chase, he is not let off thus easily; the excitement of a bear-hunt is usually too attractive for the opportunity to be allowed to slip. The eye of the mariner is now directed upward; and here Nature seems, in a manner, to change her course, and work signs and wonders in the heaven over head. Now, the sun appears no longer circular, but of an oval form, or perhaps there is no longer one sun in the sky, but two suns mock his wondering gaze; and, in like manner, at night, two moons shed their silvery beams on the icebergs, past which the vessel glides in her phantom-like course. Again, the whole of one quarter of the heavens is illuminated with golden rays, dimming the radiance of moon and stars, while flickering shafts of light shoot swiftly upward to the zenith. The ignorant native of these frozen shores, when he sees these glittering portents, cries aloud to his comrades, that "the spirits of the air are rushing by." The wiser seaman gazes in scarce less wonder at the sight, but he knows that he is nigh | the "birth-place of the Aurora Borealis." Onward speeds the ship; but now the ice gathers closer, and her situation becomes, each hour, more and more perilous. Once caught in the "pack," she is entirely at its mercy. Instances have been known, where a vessel has drifted, helplessly and hopelessly, for scores, nay, hundreds of miles, without possibility of extrication.* At times, she is violently heaved up, high and dry, above the surface of the ice, and then again dashed down into the hollows, her timbers groaning, and her masts quivering with the shock. The skill of the seaman is of no avail. Admiral Beechey relates that, in one case, "the

The "Resolute," abandoned in 1853, a little to the southeast of Melville Island, was afterward found in Davis's Straits, having drifted a distance of about twelve hundred miles, by an

American whaler, and brought safely into Norfolk. Her subsequent history our readers are, no doubt, well acquainted with.

motion of the ship was so great, that the ship's bell, which, in the heaviest gale of wind, had never struck of itself, now tolled so continually that it was ordered to be muffled, for the purpose of escaping the unpleasant associations it was calculated to excite." Often, when the perilous crisis seems furthest off, it is in reality most imminent. On the 21st of August, 1853, two ships, a steamer and a transport, were drifting, in close-packed ice, at the entrance of Wellington Channel There was scarcely any wind, and none dreamed of danger close at hand. All at once, the watch on board the transport were alarmed by the sudden and unaccountable closing in of the ice around them. There was not even time to give notice to the sleepers in the hammocks below, when they were awakened by the fearful sound of the ice crushing in at the bows. In less than fifteen minutes from the first alarm, the "Breadalbane" was crushed, and ingulfed in the heaving ice, her crew having only just time to escape with their lives. The spectators of the catastrophe, from the deck of the "Phoenix," scarcely knew that anything unusual had occurred, when the transport sank before their eyes, her pendant fluttering in the breeze as she vanished from their view.

But, for the present, let us suppose these dangers to have been avoided, and that the long Arctic winter is now fast approaching. As the brief summer draws to a close, the vessel, still slowly advancing through the intervals of open water, is gradually arrested in her course by the rapid formation of the "young ice" on the surface. Often, with all sails set, and a fair breeze astern, she remains motionless, reminding the baffled crew of Gulliver, helpless in the toils of his Lilliputian antagonists. The warning is not slighted, and a convenient spot is selected for winter-quarters. The union jack is hoisted on shore; and the ship is, in a few hours, firmly frozen in, her topmasts struck, and the upper deck securely housed over, with the prospect of well-nigh three quarters of a year of hopeless durance in her icy fetters. Shorter, and still shorter, grows the scanty daylight. Magnificent hues of gold, purple, and crimson, in the clear sky, attend the rising and setting of the slowlydeparting sun, as though to compensate for the long period of darkness now so near at hand. At length, from the mast