transfixed the burly leviathan, that he succeeded in ripping him up and delivering the lost son to the happy father. The latter offered, in return, to bestow upon him the wealth stored in the subterrene caverns of Orkney Land. The young fisherman shook his head.

"Mighty little earl," replied he, "gold and silver have no uses in this island; but prevent me and my countrymen from perishing of cold in our long winters, and you will bestow a full reward on my service-the wood of the island is exhausted."

The dwarf then taught him the use of peat for fuel. Thence the natives gave him the sobriquet of Torfeid or Torfinage. The hardy fisher was made a great magnate of the land, and he settled at Kirkwall, and behaved in his new station with great prudence and discretion, especially increasing and encouraging the whale fishery, so that an Orkneyman was another name for a good whaler.

Kirkwall no longer retains its pre-eminence, the former fleet of near 200 ships have dwindled down to seven. Formerly the gallant seamen were so abundant in cash, that it was exchanged and passed to the canny Scot with an ease that betokened its plenty. Now the small remainder husband and economise their gains with a providence that tells the contrary tale.

To return from Norse legends to our friend Mysticetus, whom we left some pages back vehemently throwing out his jet of steam at regular intervals, all unconscious of the commotion caused by the discovery of "a blow." He was evidently, from his carelessness in wandering so far from his "family," an old one; the females being always found together, and the young bulls herding in company.

The sight and hearing of this whale are so good that many simple contrivances are used to mask the efforts of the enterprising whalers in his capture. If alarmed by the approach of a boat, downwards he plunges before it can be "fastened to" by means of the harpoon lines, leaving only, in place of the leviathan of the deep, a circular eddy to mark the spot where he lately floated. In this case, owing to the masses of ice in these dismal regions, the balana is often altogether lost to the exertions of the crew, as often, however, he reappears after a short interval, again to expire, or throw out his jet of vapour, which action in this tribe is accompanied by a loud noise similar to that air would create if forcibly drawn within a small orifice.

It was formerly erroneously imagined that the creature threw out of his air-hole a stream of water; whereas the white steam is nothing but the condensation of the breath emitted in feeding, &c. The situation of this opening on the upper surface of the head is remarkably adapted for the purpose, being the first part that comes to the surface. It also contains the organ of smell.

Now, with excited hearts, the boats' crews are all ready; the boat steerer of each boat with his line at hand, the bulk of which lies coiled in its box at the bottom of the boat; lance and harpoon in hardy fists, matches for even giant fin-backs. The struggle for precedence is made; the foremost boat has rowed to the whale; the others fall back, not to impede the proper movements in case the creature's tail is raised for an upsetting. Our improved gun is fired, lodged in the huge mass, and ere the unhappy monster has yet shewed sign of anger,

or recovered from the alarm of attack, or the paralysis of pain, another boat is there, and on the outer side still others crowd to affix themselves for the crowning result.

When pretty nearly our whole complement were engaged, and from the inactivity of the creature expecting, with uplifted spirits, an easy capture, a convulsive movement of the balæna sent the men of one boat into the water, and overturned it. Fortunately they were all saved, and none even disabled by their awful fall. After several lurches and stretches away from us, we had to let out line very fast, and even to join the line of one boat to that of another with the expedition which can only be given by urgent peril. He rose again however, not far off, and we were alongside in no time; a good lookout being constantly kept by the master in the vessel to warn us of any new appearance of balanopteræ, or of any sudden occurrence whatever. It is well-known that these, as it were, animate islands of concrete fat, peopling the waste of waters at the poles, or floating amid the icebergs, are as fierce in temper, as terrific in sound, and altogether in habits and disposition unlike the timid sperm whale, which is also smaller in girth and bulk (although these latter have been measured eighty feet in length!) The roar of the giant fin-back can only be likened to that of an enraged bull, but louder. After the first struggles of the wounded animal, exhausted by his Herculean endeavours to free himself from the barbed weapons thrust into his sides, our boats' heads were placed still closer, in order that the lances should pierce his more vital parts, which lie near the fin; the more distant whalers darting from a range of from forty to a hundred yards their proved harpoons, and succeeding in every case to lacerate his sides; and gain, as it were, an anchor in the living mass. At last one of the men who were upset, who righted their own boat by clinging to her sides and baling the water out, gave the fatal lance, and the thick ooze of the black blood issuing from the nostril proclaims the deed is done. Now are the floes near the dying creature covered with the gory stream, which frequently flows over the boatmen; and at length, without capacity to injure or strength to escape, it has risen again to the surface to breathe out its leviathan agonies. These convulsions agitate the water and even displace the ice in the most awful and extraordinary manner. Until the "flurry" is over, the body is urged along as in a whirlpool, until at length it floats an inert mass, a powerless carcase, upon the elastic element; where, but for the activity and the selfishness of man (but one atom of its size), it would still have remained a thing of truth and affection, a huge corporation of particles instinct with life.

The strength of our whale boats is proverbial. The sharpness of their form adapts them to the swift motion necessary to the work their crews so fearlessly engage in; while their buoyancy and stability alone enable them to resist the floes of ice, or the rough and boisterous seas they encounter. Strong as they are, the struggles and plunges of the animal they encounter frequently smash them to pieces by the repeated lashings of his tail against them. Indeed the chances of death are so many and so various in the capture of the balana, that the hardihood of whalers must certainly go to prove

those philosophers in the right who assert it is the nature of man to indulge in difficulty and grasp at peril. When the excitement of the pursuit is at its height, instances of heroic bravery and steadiness in danger are shown by these remarkable traders, who usually work their way upwards from steerers to captains, so that they are thoroughly au fait to every description of their toil and undertaking. To hear their animated cries while engaged in their duty, you would imagine them excited by pleasure: "Haul in the slack!" "Away from the spout!" "A blow, a blow!" These, shouted high, while the crew fire their harpoons, then rapidly row away from the spot before the balæna rears its head, or lashes his tail, or rushes at the foremost boat, or overturns it amid the waters, or coils the two hundred fathom rope around his huge body, bearing with it boat and crew, are, as it were, exclamations of sport rather than the absolute cries of desperate need. Great need of regulation exists now to stem the falling off of our supremacy in this fishery. We cannot conclude more forcibly than by an extract from the famous speech of Mr. Burke, in 1774, as an inducement to our own navigators not to give up to our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic in either skill, daring, or enterprise. That which is undoubtedly true of them in regard to their exertions in the sperm fishery, can easily be made equally veracious as of old in regard to our whale fishery, which it should be our great endeavour to promote by encouragement of its hardy and trustworthy sailors. Mr. Burke, after adverting to the wealth the colonists drew from their fisheries, continues-" And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other ports, and look at the manner in which the New England people carry on the whale fishery. While we follow them among the trembling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's and Davis's Straits; while we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seems too remote for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place for their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both poles. We learn that while some of them draw the line, or strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed with their fisheries, no climate that is not witness of their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pursued by this recent people-a people who are still in the gristle, and not hardened into manhood."

As soon as possible after the whale is defunct, the oil is extracted. This process is divided into several distinct operations, performed with the greatest celerity and cleanliness. After the blubber has been drawn from it, and all other useful portions of the carcase cut out, and the body undergone its flaying process, the formless mass is allowed to float away upon the waters.

PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS OF THE METROPOLIS.

"Let me play the fool

With mirth and laughter; so let wrinkles come."

SHAKSPEARE.

"To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly to the jaundiced they are yellow."-T. CARLYLE."

London is a vast laboratory for the analysis of every question, whether practical or theoretical, which enters its enormous crucible. Here we have matters foreign, agricultural, commercial, literary, political, pleasant, or polite, stripped threadbare and re-clothed; resolved into their pristine elements, and again commingled; their intrinsic worth and weight estimated, upon the whole, by no unworthy judgment or incommensurate scale. And for this reason-that the many can appreciate that which the few only have capacity to create. The highest order of intellects give law and precedent to the inferior order, so that (always with the qualification necessary in this world of motley) "judgment and reason have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a sailor." And so they ever will be. Viewed in this light, we shall find a state matter canvassed and discussed till it is found out but a base and sorry jest against the sense of the nation; while some mere amusement of worthless husk or appearance, such as a farcical afterpiece at a minor theatre, or even the gambols of a child on his father's digitals, shall, the one point a truth for ever on the minds of the million, the other, perchance, create an enduring modelpiece for the genius of the statuary. While advancing the taste of the fine arts, and directing and encouraging the public amusements, Pericles believed he was best advancing the true glory of Athens. The Medician age did as much for the celebrity of the states of Italy(witness Raphael, Guido, and Salvator Rosa,) as the early epocha of Rome for its renown to posterity. The fame of Phidias, Praxiteles, or Scopos, of the poets and actors of Greece, shall endure beyond that of the Cæsars and Alexanders; although the more divine works of the former have perished, and shall perish alike with the conquests of the latter. Montaigne justly says "les jeux des enfans ne sout pas jeux;" nor are the pastimes of children of a larger growth. They are alike serious in their habitual consequence. We therefore wholly set at nought the churlish frown of the sectarian, and the interdiction of the pseudo-saint, and roundly assert that these, our public amusements, are the indices which guide the philosopher and the historian to the truthful judgment of the nation whom he pourtrays; that all ranks of the cultivated should uphold them, so to weed their somewhile grossness; and, even as mint directors ever and anon call in the coin of the country to test and restore it, so shall we, the censors of its pleasures, call over and review and criticise, for the common benefit, its shows and its performances.

Having thus, as much behoved us, set apart a page for the maintenance of the dignity of our pleasant observership, we at once plunge into its detail.

The opening and re-closing of COVENT GARDEN, the late exposé of its past affairs by Mr. H. Wallack, its unpromising future, altogether form a melancholy picture of dramatic misadventure. The whole thing is redolent of little jealousies and large disbursements in wrong quarters. No due encouragement to merit can be anticipated while the reverse of Romeo's theory of "What's in a name?" is acted upon by those theatrically concerned. It would almost seem that a few months' or year's daily publishing of certain names in the bills of the playhouse were sufficient to render such available as notes of hand for ready cash, how little soever the public may rate the services of the personages to whom the said appendages belong. We wish, rather than believe, that the forthcoming season shall prove auspicious to manager and public. We have now to record the production of Mr. J. Morton's farce on the boards of this house, on the 19th inst., as an excellent rifacimento, if not an impromptu dish of fresh materials, full of smart equivoque and merry concatinations. Keeley exhibits in his best manner of quaint drollery the "slight mistakes" occasioned by officious and meddlesome interference in the concerns of ones' neighbours. The name chosen for the busy-body (Paternoster) is not so well selected for popularity as that of Paul Pry, its undoubted prototype. For the rest," Slight Mistakes," thus excellently perpetrated by little Keeley, are certain, not only of laughter, but of applause from spectators of all classes.

What shall we expound of Drury, the transmogrified Thespian twin? Of operas warbled where erst the sock and buskin trod in mimic majesty? There is a time for everything done under the sun. These sorry changes intimate that the time for bona fide tragedy, of sterling comedy, have past away; we can only trust not for ever and a day! However, it is certainly pleasant to be reminded of our nursery rhymes in mid-age

"With so many singers, and belles on their toes,
The world shall have music wherever it goes."

Donizetti's opera of "La Favorite" will never be a favourite with the public. It wants the usual peculiarity of the composer's stylesimplicity. His best operas abound in melodies of a pure correctness that remind one of Mozart; his worst are worn-out likenesses of Rossini's compositions. The verve and originality of his more laboured pieces are discovered best in those themes supported by the whole strength of the orchestra, on account of the specialty we have before observed: the singleness and want of artificiality of the motives leave ample scope for the effective display of instrumentation. But we need throughout this whole opera the tenderness prevalent in "I Puritani," the voluptuousness of "L'Elisir," the unity of "Lucrezia," the pathos of "Lucia di Lammermoor;" and, above all, we want that brevity of action in the music, without which, as in speech and in writing, the mind becomes weary and the attention tired,