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LITERARY NOTICES.

progressive teachers and advanced educational reformers that the government shall follow out the policy to its logical and consistent consequences, and assume the complete educational control of the young. From the time of weaning to graduation, the state (that is, the politicians who at any time happen to be in office) will hire the teachers and pay them, prescribe the studies, furnish the books, build the schoolhouses, and administer the discipline by which character is to be formed. This is an invasion of the domestic sphere, and an abrogation of those domestic functions by which the family was called into existence and has ever been maintained. Our school system is applauded on account of its imposing parade of statistics, its profuse expense, and the millions of children that the state has got charge of; but, when its indirect influences are taken into account, it may be found that, like most other human contrivances, it entails evil as well as good. Which shall preponderate, it remains for time to tell.

LITERARY NOTICES.

New Lands within the Arctic Circle. Narrative of the Discoveries of the Austrian Ship Tegetthoff, in the Years 1872-1874. By Julius Payer, one of the Commanders of the Expedition. With Maps and numerous Illustrations, from Drawings by the Author. Pp. 399. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Price, $3.50.

The honor will be unhesitatingly accorded to Lieutenant Payer of having written the most deeply-interesting volume that has yet appeared on arctic adventure and exploration. We have rarely been so fascinated by a book of any kind, upon any subject. The experiences of the party were tragic and of thrilling intensity, and the narrative of them is in a remarkable degree vivid and graphic; so that, with the numerous and admirable illustrations, all drawn on the spot from Nature, we are made deeply to participate in the feelings of the heroic group of adventurers who were so long locked up amid the terrible desolations of Nature in the arctic region.

In a preliminary notice by the translator, the leading features of the expedition are thus summarized:

"The interest which will be excited afresh in arctic discovery and adventure will doubtless sharpen the interest in the volumes which record the fortunes of the Austrian Expedition; and we venture to affirm—without undue partiality—that, though the history of arctic exploration and discovery abounds in records of lofty resolution and patient endurance of almost incredible hardships, the narrative of the voyage of the Tegetthoff will be found to fall below none in these high qualities. The mere destiny of the vessel itself equals, if it does not exceed, in the element of the marvelous, anything which has before been recorded. Surely this is borne out when we think that, on August 20, 1872, the Tegetthoff was beset off the coast of Nova Zembla; remained a fast prisoner in the ice, spite of all the efforts made by her officers and crew to release her; drifted, during the autumn and the terrible winter of 1872—amid profound darkness—whither they knew not; drifted to the 30th of August in the following year (1873), till, as if by magic, the mists lifted, and, lo ! a high, bold, rocky coast—latitude 79° 43' north, longitude 59° 33' loomed out of the fog, straight ahead of them. Close to this land—which could be visited with safety only twice, on the 1st and 3d of November of that year—the ship remained still fast bound in the ice. Not till the winter of 1873 had passed, and the sun had again returned, was it possible to explore the land which had been so marvelously discovered. On the 10th of March, 1874, the sledge-journeys commenced, and terminated May 3d, after 450 miles had been passed over, and the surveys and explorations completed, which enabled Payer to write the description of Kaiser Franz-Josef Land (pp. 258-270), which shows that other still undefined lands, with an archipelago of islands, have been added to the geography of the earth."

For more than two years the party were prisoners in their ship, of which they had lost all control, and, after passing two horrible winters in this distressing helplessness, it became clear that they must quit the ship or perish, and, in fact, there was small hope of saving their lives even by leaving it. Three boats were loaded with necessaries, and they started, May 20th, to dig their way through the deep snows and amid the mountainous ice-hummocks to open water. We extract from Payer's diary:

"The first day's work for twenty-three men, harnessed to boat or sledge, was the advance of one mile; and even this rate of progress, small as it was, was not constant. Many days it did not amount to half a mile. The sledges sank

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