NEW BOOKS.

VOYAGES AND 1 Captain Basil Hall's Voyages and I

• 3 Vols. Cadell.

TRAVELS.. j Travels 1

Conder's Italy 3 Vols. Duncan.

POETRY Landor's Gebir, and Other Poems Moxon. Jarman's Omnipotence Chappell. FICTION Wedded Life in the Upper Ranks 2 Vols. Colhurn and Bentley. SIOGRAPDY M`Crie's Life of Knox. Fifth Edit. 2 Vols. Blackwood.

BOTANY Richard's Elements of Botany ; 1

translated by Dr. M'Gillivray.. J LITERATVRE Valpy's Epitome of English Li.) terature, Vol. I.—Paley's Moral Valpy.

Philosophy French Family Library, Vols. I 1 and IL—Molibre I

SCIENCE AND 1 Arcana of Science and Art. Fourth i Aar 1 Year 1

Working Man's Companion Blackwood, Treuttel and Wiirtz.

Limbird.

Diffusion of Know- ledge Society.

THE SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

CAPTAIN BASIL HALL, under the title of Fragments of Voyages and Travels, has published a kind of autobiographical miscellany, the perusal of which has afforded us several clays of great enjoy- ment. It might have been called recollections of the more strik- ing passages of a life at sea. It consists of a sort of retrospective view of his career, of his experience, of his adventures, with a pretty constant moral commentary upon the best motives and guides of action. The author intends his book for the perusal of youth ; but.we doubt much whether youth will take the lively in- terest in it that we are very sure age will. Captain HALL is a very pleasing and elegant writer, of an ex- tremely amiable temperament, of great activity of mind, and a very accomplished scientific sailor. His experience has taken him into every quarter of the globe, with a spirit to enjoy all that was agree- able, and a taste for picking up all the knowledge presented by novelty, and a memory for storing the proceeds of his in- quiries. With these accomplishments, it may be readily supposed that he is highly qualified to read a lecture to the young and old on the dangers and the pleasures, the advantages and the difficul- ties, of a nautical life. This is what he has done, and admirably done it is. But Captain HALL is not a man to stop here. The same restless mind which leads him to inquire into the se- crets of nature and art, also takes him into the regions of govern- ment and politics, where he is calculated to shine with an ex- traordinarily vicious light. The Captain is an ingenious optimist, distinguished, like all optimists, by his quality of reaping enjoy- ment from things as they are, and corresponding apprehension of a change which might disturb his satisfaction. While, however, this disposition endows him with high opinions of all that is esta- blished, his natural shrewdness and acquired information teach him the value of new discoveries ; so that in the same breath we de- tect him in the act of demonstrating the beauty of the past and admiring the power of that which is to overthrow it. This posi- tion gives him an air of eternal temporizing when on these matters : he is always qualifying and glozing, shifting his ground, squaring and attudinizing with his subject; till his reader, who has gone to the bottom of it at once by the application of some plain principle, loses all patience with the book, and feels strongly in- clined to speak of its author with a disrespect which ought never to have been coupled with the name of so amiable and accom- plished a writer. But let these knots be slipped over, and let us think only of the generous upright sailor, the goodnatured and openhearted traveller, the ready expounder of science, the kind and benevolent gentleman - for such he is, and such he appears at almost every page of this pleasant little work, which we hope will be continued to thrice times three,—for we perceive signs of its being but the commencement of a series ; indeed the end of the third volume leaves the writer still a very young man, and not a very old sailor.

By way of example of the incident afforded by these volumes, we shall quote one specimen ; it is the destruction of a ship in a Nova Scotia fog. The more instructive part of the work, it is not so easy to exemplify as to describe. " On the 9th of May, we reached Halifax, off which port we were de- tained in a very disagreeable way ; for we had the misfortune to be kept three whole days off the harbour, in one of those Nova Scotia fogs which are celebrated all over the world. I can hardly give by description an idea of how gloomy they are ; but I think their effects can be compared to those of the sirocco ; with the further annoyance, that, while they last, we are not able to see far beyond our noses. They are even worse than rain, for they seem to wet one through sooner ; while they make every thing appear dreary, and certainly render all the world lazy and discontented.

On the day we made the land,we had great hopes of being able to enter the harbour, as the wind was fair : when, all at once, we were surrounded by so thick a mist, that, for the three succeeding days, we could not see above twenty yards on any side.

"There are few things, indeed, more provoking than these fogs off Halifax ; for, as they happen to be companions of that very wind, the south-east, which is the best for running in, the navigator is plagued with the tormenting consciousness, that if he could be allowed but a couple of hours' clear weather, his port would be gained, and his troubles over. The clearing up, therefore, of these odious clouds or veils is about the most delightful thing I know; and the instantaneous effect which a clear sight of the land, or even of the sharp horizon, when far at sea, has on the mind of every person on hoard, is quite remarkable. All things look bright, fresh, and more beautiful than ever. The stir over the whole ship at these moments is so great, that even persons sitting below can tell at once that the fog has cleared away. The rapid clatter of the men's feet, springing up the hatchways at the lively sound of the boatswain's call to make sail!' soon follows. Then comes the cheerful voice of the officer, hailing the topmen to shake out the reefs, trice up the staysails, and rig out the booms. That peculiar and well-known kind of echo, also, by which the sound of the voice is thrown-back from the wet sails, con-

tributes, in like manner, to produce a joyous elasticity of spirits, greater, I think, than is excited by most of the ordinary occurrences of a sea life.

" A year or two after the time I am speaking of, it was resolved to place a heavy gun upon the rock on which Sambro light-hoUse is built; and, after a good deal of trouble, a long twenty-four pounder was hoisted up to the highest ridge of this prominent station. It was then arranged that if, on the arrival of any ship off the harbour, in a period of fog, she chose to fire guns, these were to be answered from the light-house ; and in this way a kind of audible, though invisible telegraph might be set to work. if it happened that the officers of the ship were sufficiently fami- liar with the ground, and possessed nerves stout enough for such a groping kind of navigation, perilous at best, it was possible to run fairly into the harbour, notwithstanding the obscurity, by watching the sound of these guns, and attending closely to the depth of water. " I never was in any ship which ventured upon this feat; but I perfectly recollect a curious circumstance, which occurred, I think, to his Majesty's ship Cambrian. She had run in from sea towards the coast, enveloped in one of these dense fogs. Of course they took for granted that the lighthouse and the adjacent land, Halifax included, were likewise co- vered with an impenetrable cloud or mist. But it so chanced, by what freak of Dame Nature I know not, that the fog, on that day, was confined to the deep water ; so that we, who were in the port, could see it, at the distance of several miles from the coast, lying on the ocean, like a huge stratum of snow, with an abrupt face, frontin., the shore. The Cambrian, lost in the midst of this fog bank, supposing herself to be near the land, fired a gun. To this the light-house replied ; and so the ship and the light went on, pelting away, gun for gun, during half the day, without ever seeing one another. The people at the light-house had no means of communicating to the frigate, that, if she would only stand on a little further, she would disentangle herself from the cloud, in which, like Jupiter Olympus of old, she was wasting her thunder. At last the captain, hopeless of its clearing up, gave orders to pipe to dinner ; but as the weather, in all respects except this abominable haze, was quite fine, and the ship was still in deep water, he directed her to be steeredtowardsthe shore;and the lead keptconstantly going. As one o'clock approached, he began to feel uneasy, from the water shoaling, and thelight- house guns sounding closer and closer ; but, being unwilling to disturb the men at their dinner, he resolved to stand on for the remaining ten minutes of the hour. Lo and behold! however, they had not sailed half a mile further before the flying-jib-boom end emerged from the wall of mist—then the bowsprit shot into daylight—and, lastly, the ship herself glided out of the cloud into the full blaze of a bright and sunshine holiday.' All hands were instantly turned up to make sail; and the men, as they flew on deck, could scarcely believe their senses when they saw behind them the fog bank, right ahead the harbour's mouth, with the bold cliffs of Cape Sambro on the left, and, farther still, the ships at their moorings, with their ensigns and pendants blowing out, light and dry in the breeze. " A far different fate, alas ! attended his Majesty's ship Atalante, Cap- tain Frederick Hickey. On the morning of the 10th of November, 1813, this ship stood in for Halifax harbour in very thick weather, carefully feeling her way with the lead, and having look-out men at the jib-boom end, fore-yard-arms, and everywhere else from which a glimpse of the land was likely to he obtained. After breakfast, a fog signal-gun was fired, in the expectation of its being answered by the lighthouse on Cape Sambro, near which it was known they must be. Within a few minutes, accordingly, a gun was heard in the N.N.W. quarter, exactly where the light was supposed to lie. As the soundings agreed with the estimated position of the ship, and as the guns from the Atalante, fired at intervals of fifteen minutes, were regularly answered in the direction of the har- bour's mouth, it was determined to stand on, so as to enter the port under the guidance of these sounds alone. By a fatal coincidence of cir- cumstances, however, these answering guns were fired, not by Cape Sambro, but by his Majesty's ship Barossa, which was likewise entangled by the fog. She, too, supposed that she was communicating with the light-house, whereas it was the guns of the unfortunate Atalante that she heard all the time.

"There was, certainly, no inconsiderable risk incurred by running in for the harbour's mouth under such circumstances. But it will often happen that it becomes an officer's duty to put his ship, as well as his life, in hazard ; and this appears to have been exactly one of those cases. Captain Ilickey was charged with urgent despatches relative to the ene- my's fleet, which it was of the greatest importance should be delivered without an hour's delay. But there was every appearance of this fog lasting a week; and as he and his officers had passed over the ground a hundred times before, and were as intimately acquainted with the spot as any pilot could be, it was resolved to try the bold experiment; and the ship was forthwith steered in the supposed direction of Halifax. " They had not, however, stood on far, before one of the lookout men exclaimed, Breakers ahead ! Hard a-starboard!' But it was too late, for, before the helm could be put over, the ship was amongst those for- midable reefs known by the name of the Sisters' Rocks, or eastern ledge of Sambro Island. The rudder and half of the sternpost, together with great part of the false keel, were driven off at the first blow, and floated up alongside. There is some reason, to believe, indeed, that a portion of the bottom of the ship, loaded with one hundred and twenty tons of iron

ballast, was torn from the upper works by this fearful blow, and that the ship, which instantly filled with water, was afterwards buoyed up merely by the empty casks, till the decks and sides were burst through, or riven asunder by the waves.

" The captain, who, throughout the whole scene, continued as com-

posed as if nothing remarkable had occurred, now ordered the guns to be thrown overboard; but before one of them could be cast loose, or a breechin,, cut, the ship fell over so much that the men could not stand. It was, therefore, with great difficulty that a few guns were fired as sig- nals of distress. In the same breath that this order was given, Captain

Hickey desired the yard tackles to be hooked, in order that the pinnace might he hoisted out; but as the masts, deprived of their foundation, were tottering from side to side, the people were called down again. The quarter boats were then lowered into the water with some difficulty ; but the jolly-boat, which happened to be on the poop undergoing repairs, in being launched overboard, struck against one of the stern davits, bilged, and went down. The ship was now falling fast over on her beam ends, and directions were given to cut away the fore and main-mast:

Fortunately, they fell without injuring the large boat on the booms—

their grand hope. At the instant of this crash, the ship parted in two, between the main and mizen masts; and, within a few seconds after- wards, she again broke right across, between the fore and mainmasts ; so that the poor Atalante now formed a mere wreck, divided into three pieces, crumbling into smaller fragments at every send of the swell. " By this time, a considerable crowd of the men had got into the pin- nace on the booms, in hopes that she might float off as the ship sunk; but Captain Hickey, seeing that the boat, so loaded, could never swim, desired some twenty of the men to quit her ; and, what is particularly worthy of remark, his orders, which were given with the most perfect coolness, were as promptly obeyed as ever. Throughout the whole of these trying moments, indeed, the discipline of the ship appears to have been maintained, not only without the smallest trace of insubordina- tion, but with a degree of cheerfulness which is described as truly won-

derful. Even when the masts fel!, the sound of the crashing spars was drowned in the animating huzzas of the undaunted crew, though they were then clinging to the weather gunwale, with the sea, from time to time, making a clean breach over them, and when they were expecting every instant to be carried to the bottom

" As soon as the pinnace was relieved from the pressure of the crowd, she floated off the booms, or, rather, was knocked off by a sea, which

turned her bottom upwards, and whelmed her into the surf, amidst the fragments of the wreck. The people, however, imitating the gallant bearing of their captain, and keeping their eyes fixed upon him, never, for one instant, lost their self-possession. By dint of great exertions, they succeeded net only in righting the boat, but in disentanelingher from the confused heap of spars, and the dash of the breakers, so as to place her at a little distance from the wreck, where they waited for further orders from the captain, who, with about forty men, still clung to the poor remains of the gay Atalante—once so much admired ! " An attempt was next made to construct a raft, as it was feared the three boats could not possibly carry all hands ; but the violence of the waves prevented this, and it was resolved to trust to the boats alone, though they were already, to all appearance, quite full. It was now, however, absolutely necessary to take to them, as the wreck was disan- pearine° rapidly ; and in order to pack close, most of the men were re- moved to the pinnace, where they were laid flat in the bottom, like her- rings in a barrel, while the small boats returned to pick off the rest. This was no easy matter in any case, while in others it was impossible ; so that many men had to swim for it ; others were dragged through the waves by ropes, and some were forked off by oars and other small spars. " Amongst the crew there was one famous merry fellow, a black fiddler, who was discovered, at this critical juncture, clinging to the main chains, with his beloved Cremona squeezed tightly but delicately under his ari- a ludicrous picture of distress, and a subject of some joking amongst the men, even at this moment. It soon became absolutely necessary that he shouldloseone of two things—his fiddle or his life. So at last, after a pain- ful struggle, the professor-and his violin were obliged to part company ! " The poor negro musician's tenacity of purpose arose from sheer love of his art. There was another laugh raised, however, about the same time, at the expense of the captain's clerk, who, stimulated purely by a sense of duty, lost all recollection of himself, in his anxiety to save what was intrusted to his care, and thus was very nearly being drowned. This zealous person had general instructions, that whenever guns were fired, or any other circumstance occurred likely to shake the chronome- ter, he was to hold it in his hand, to prevent the concussion deranging its works. As soon, therefore, as the ship was dashed against the rocks, the clerk's thoughts naturally turned exclusively on the time-piece. He caught the watch up, and ran on deck; but as be was no swimmer, he was obliged to cling to the mizen-mast, where he stuck fast, careless of every thing but his important charge. When the ship fell over, and the mast became nearly horizontal, he managed to creep along till he reached the mizen-top, where he seated himself in some trepidation—grinning like a monkey that has run off with a cocoa-nut—till the spar gave way, and he was plunged, chronometer and all, right overboard. Every eye was turned to the spot, to see whetherthis most public-spirited of scribes was ever to appear again ; when, to the great joy of all hands, he emerged from the waves—watch still in hand and was with great difficulty dragged into one of the boats, half drowned. "With the exception of this fortunate chronometer, and the Admiral's despatches, which the captain had secured when the ship first struck, every thing on board was lost. "The pinnace now contained seventy-nine men and one woman, the cut- ter forty-two, and the gig eighteen, with which cargoes they barely floated. Captain Hickey was, of course, the last man who left the wreck ; though, such were the respect and affection felt for him by his crew, that those who stood along with him on this last vestige of the ship, evinced the greatest reluctance at leavine° their commander in such a perilous predi- cament. So speedy, indeed, was the work of destruction, that by the time the captain was fairly in the boat, the wreck had almost entirely `melted into the yest of waves.' The crew, however, gave her three hearty cheers as she went down, and then finally abandoned the scattered fragments of what had been their house and home for nearly seven years. "rhe fog still continued as thick as ever ; the binacles had both been washed overboard, and no compass could be procured. As the wind was still light, there was great difficulty in steering in a straight line. Had there been a breeze, it wouldperhaps have been easier to have shaped a course. In this dilemma a resource was hit upon, which, for a time, an- swered pretty well to guide them. It being known, loosely, before leav- ing the wreck, in what direction the land was situated, the three boats were placed in a row pointing that way. The sternmost boat then quitted her station in the rear, and pulled a-head till she came in a line with the other two boats, but took care not to go so far as to be lost in the fog; the boat which was now astern then rowed ahead, as the first had done ; and so on, doubling along, one after the other. This tardy method of proceeding, however, answered only for a time ; and at length they were completely at a loss which way to steer. Precisely at this moment of greatest need, an old quarter-master, Samuel Shanks by name, recol- lected that at the end of his watch-chain there hung a small compass- seal. This precious discovery was announced to the other boats by a joyous shout from the pinnace.

The compass being speedily handed into the gig, to the captain, was placed on the top of the chronometer, eo nobly saved by the clerk ; and as this instrument worked on jimbles, the little needle remained upon it sufficiently steady for steering the boats within a few points. "This was enough to insure hitting the land, from which they had been steering quite wide. Before reaching the shore, they fell in with an old fisherman, who piloted them to a bight called Portuguese Cove, where they all landed in safety, at the distance of twenty miles from the town of Halifax."

Of this agreeable work we may add, that it ought to be con- sidered as a companion to all books of voyages and travels; for

the explanations of nautical proceedings are so full and clear, that " shoretroing people" will find a great number of difficulties which formerly obscured the most interesting scenes and proceedings in the description of voyages abundantly cleared up. We trust con- fidently to Captain HALL for a continuation ; for he tells us, that he wants only the approbation of the public,—which we take the liberty to promise him.