lions of cubic feet of ice. Two days after, several other ice islands were seen, some of them nearly two miles in circuit, and 600 feet high; and yet such was the force of the waves that the sea broke quite over them.

12. They exhibited for a few moments a view very pleasing to the eye; but a sense of danger soon filled the mind with horror; for had the ship struck against the weather side of one of these islands, when the sea ran high, she must in an instant have been dashed to pieces. The route to the southward was afterwards impeded by an immense field of low ice, the termination of which could not be seen, either to the east, west, or south.

13. In different parts of this field, were islands, or hills of ice, like those which had before been floating in the sea. At length these islands became as familiar to those on board as the clouds and the sea. Whenever a strong reflection of white was seen on the skirts of the sky, near the horizon, then ice was sure to be encountered.

14. Notwithstanding which, that substance itself was not entirely white, but often tinged, especially near th surface of the sea, with a most beautiful sapphirine, or rather berylline blue, evidently reflected from the water. This blue colour sometimes appeared twenty or thirty feet above the surface, and was probably produced by particles of sea water, which had been dashed against the mass in tempestuous weather, and had penetrated into its interstices.

15. In the evening, the sun setting just behind one of these masses, tinged its edges with gold, and reflected on the entire mass a beautiful suffusion of purple. In the larger masses were frequently observed shades or casts of white, lying above each other in strata, sometimes of six inches, and at other times of a foot in height.

16. This appearance seemed to confirm the opinion en tertained relative to the increase and accumulation of such huge masses of ice, by heavy falls of snow at different intervals; for snow being of various kinds, small grained, large grained, in light feathery locks, &c.; the various degrees of compactness may account for the various colours of strata.

17. The approximation of several fields of ice, of different magnitudes produces a very singular phenomenon. The smaller of these masses are forced out of the water,

and thrown on the larger ones, until at length an aggregate is formed of a tremendous height.

18. These accumulated bodies of ice float in the sea like so many rugged mountains, and are continually increased in height by the freezing of the spray of the sea, and the melting of the snow which falls on them. While their growth is thus augmented, the smaller fields, of a less elevation, are the meadows of the seals, on which these animals at times frolic by hundreds.

19. The collision of great fields of ice, in high latitudes, is attended by a noise, which for a time, takes away the sense of hearing any thing beside; and that of the smaller fields with a grinding of unspeakable horror. The water which dashes against the mountainous ice, freezes into an infinite variety of forms, and presents to the admiring view of the voyager, ideal towns, streets, churches, steeples, and almost every form which imagination can picture to itself.

Note. Spitzbergen is the most northerly country of Eu rope; lying north of Norway, east of Greenland, and west of Nova Zembla, in 740 north latitude.-Greenland is a country in the northeast part of North America, east of Davis' Straits, extending from 60° to 69° north latitude.

ICEBERGS.

1. ANALOGOUS to the ice-fields, described above, are those large bodies of ice, named Icebergs, which fill the valleys between the high mountains in northern latitudes. Among the most remarkable are those of the east coast of Spitzbergen. They are seven in number, and lie at considerable distances from each other, extending through tracts unknown, in a region totally inaccessible in the internal parts.

2. The most distant of them exhibits over the sea a front ⚫ three hundred feet in height, emulating the colour of the emerald cataracts of melted snow fall down in various parts; and black spiral mountains, streaked with white, bound the sides, rising crag above crag, as far as the eye can reach in the back ground. At times, immense frag

ments break off, and precipitate themselves into the water with a most alarming dashing.

3. A portion of this vivid green substance was seen by Lord Mulgrave, in the voyage above referred to, to fall into the sea; and, notwithstanding it grounded in twentyfour fathoms water, it spired above the surface fifty feet. Similar icebergs are frequent in all the arctic regions; and to their lapse is owing the solid mountainous ice which infests those seas.

4. The frost sports wonderfully with these icebergs, and gives them majestic, as well as other most singular, forms. Masses have been seen to assume the shape of a Gothic church, with arches, windows, and doors, and all the rich drapery of that style of architecture, composed of what the writer of an Arabian tale would scarcely have ventured to introduce among the marvellous suggestions of his fancy.

5. Tables with one foot or more; and often immense flat roofed temples, like those of Luxor on the bank of the Nile, supported by round transparent columns of cerulean hue, float by the astonished spectator. These icebergs are the creation of ages, and acquire annually additional height by falls of snow and rain, which latter often freezes instantly, and more than repairs the loss occasioned by the sun's heat.

PICTURE OF MODERN ROME.

1. FIGURE to yourself something of the desolation of Tyre and Babylon, so forcibly described in the sacred writings: how deep the silence and the solitude that have succeeded the din and the tumult of those conquerors of the earth, who once trod this soil! We still seem to hear the malediction of the prophet:

2. "These two things shall come upon them suddenly in one day, barrenness and widowhood." Here may be seen the scattered remains of a Roman road, which passed through places now untrodden by the foot of man; there the dried-up traces of the winter stream, which, when seen at a distance, have the appearance of vast beaten and frequented roads, yet is nothing but the bed of an impetuous

torrent, that, like the Roman people, has rolled away and is heard no more.

3. While scarce a tree is to be seen, you behold on every side the ruins of aqueducts and of tombs, which to the eye of the enthusiast, seem like the native trees and forests of a soil, composed of the wreck of empires, and the dust of departed greatness. Not unfrequently have I imagined that I beheld rich harvests waving at a distance on the plain, which, on a near approach, proved to be nothing but withered herbage, that cheated the eye with the semblance of fertility; yet beneath these barren harvests the traces of former cultivation are frequently distinguishable.

4. No sounds are heard, neither the chirp of birds nor the lowing of cattle; no villages, no labouring hinds appear to enliven the scene. Some few ruinous farm-houses are scattered over the naked plains; but the doors and windows are shut, no smoke curls over the roof, no sound is heard, no inhabitant seen.

5. In a word, one may say that no nation has dared to claim the title of successors to the masters of the world,. and that you behold their native fields, such as they were left by the ploughshare of Cincinnatus, and by the last Roman furrow. In the midst of this uncultivated waste, stands the mighty shade of the eternal city.

6. Shorn of her greatness and her splendour, she seems to have chosen her present desolate and insulated situation -to stand at a proud distance from the other cities of the earth; hither, like an empress hurled from her throne, she has retired in dignified composure, to conceal her sorrows in solitude.

7. I confess myself utterly inadequate to paint the feelings that overwhelm the soul, on beholding Rome stationed in the midst of this scene of desolation, rising, as it were, from the tomb in which she has so long reposed, and bursting at once upon the astonished sight. A thousand recollections burst upon the mind; a thousand mingled feelings rush upon the heart; one stands confounded at the view of that Rome, which has twice established the succession of the world, as the two-fold heir of Saturn and of Jacob.

8. Nothing can be more beautiful than the outline of the Roman horizon; nothing more airy and graceful than the summits of the mountains with which it blends in the distance. Frequently the vales assume the shape of an arena,

or circus, and the hills seem thrown into the form of a terrace, as if the powerful hand of the Romans had thus moulded them to their will.

9. A kind of transparent vapour, which is shed over the distance, gives a roundness to every point of the landscape, and softens down whatever might be too hard or prominent in its features. The shades have nothing dull or heavy about them, and they are never thrown into such deep masses, but that some straggling ray breaks through the foliage, or glances into the recesses of the rock.

10. The water, the land, and the sky, are marked with a peculiar tint, that harmonizes the whole; by means of an insensible gradation of colours, their différent surfaces blend so insensibly one with the other, that it is impossible to determine the point where one shade finishes and another begins. In viewing the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, you have no doubt admired that glow of light which seems to surpass nature herself in beauty, and is therefore thought to be the creation of the painter, yet this, believe me, is the very light of a Roman sky.

11. Whoever is desirous of devoting himself entirely to the study of antiquity and the fine arts-whoever is free, and has no farther bonds to attach himself to the world, that man should come and live at Rome. Here he can never want society; for the earth itself, which has been the mother of poets and philosophers, will nourish his af fections and engage his heart; in every solitary walk he will learn lessons of wisdom.

12. The stone upon which he treads whispers of the past; the very dust which is borne along by the wind, contains some relic of human greatness. If he is unhappyif he has mingled the ashes of the friend whom he loved, with the ashes of those illustrious dead, who once felt and wept like himself, what a pensive charm will he not feel, in passing from the sepulchre of the Scipios to the tomb of a virtuous friend, from the superb mausoleum of Cecili Metella to the humble grave of some pious and lamented sister.

13. If an enthusiast, he may imagine that the spirits of those whom he loved, take a pleasure in hovering over these monuments, associated with the shade of a Cicero, who still weeps over his beloved Julia, or of an Agrippina, who still hangs over the urn of her faithful Germanicus