bers of the guild of surgeons of Amsterdan [the picture was painted for that guild], as shown by a paper held by one of them. They are attending to the lecture with very various expressions. They are all bare-headed, dressed in black, and with turned-over collars, except one, who still wears the old-fashioned, upright ruff. There are, perhaps, other persons present in the hall, as Tulp appears to be looking beyond the picture, as if about to address an audience not visible to the spectator; and it is here worthy of remark that Rembrandt's compositions are never imprisoned in their frames, but convey an idea of a wide space beyond them. It is somewhat singular that the spectator seems hardly to notice the corpse lying before him at full length, the feet of which he can almost touch, although it is strongly lighted in contrast to the surrounding black garments, and most faithfully represents the peculiar hue of a dead body, leaving no doubt that it was painted from nature as well as the living heads. The admirable art of the composition consists in its power of riveting the attention to the living in the presence of death."

Two other Rembrandt's in this collection-the Presentation in the Temple, and Susanna Entering the Bath-have also acquired celebrity, although they are quite eclipsed in the presence of the Anatomy. These pictures are small in comparison with their celebrated companion-piece, but the breadth of Rembrandt's canvas is never great, and, as compared with that of Rubens, it is very moderate. The so-called "Pearls of Rembrandt," at Munich, are quite small, and the Rembrandt's in the Florence, Vienna, Dresden, and Louvre galleries are none of them of more than ordinary dimensions. The Night Watch, which is largest of all, is of much less size than many of Rubens's pictures.

The madonnas, saints, and martyrs, which crowd the Italian museums of painting, are conspicuous in those of Holland by their absence. Per contra, a crowd of Dutch painters have rushed to another-in some respects an opposite-extreme in their passion for genre art. Jan Steen, the ablest of these, is liberally represented in the Amsterdam and Hague collections; as are also Frans Hals, Metsu, Mieris, Dou, Brauwer, Van Ostade, and many others of that class. But, while much genius has been exhibited in this kind of art, it fails to satisfy the higher love of the beautiful, and we turn from it with a sense of relief to the Rembrandt's, Vanderwerff's, and Wouverman's, and to such landscape gems as those of Ruisdael, Wynants, and Adrian Van der Velde.

Alaid E. Lu

LOST IN THE ICE

ELISHA KENT KANE'S ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS

"We were at work cheerfully sewing away at the skins of some moccasins by the blaze of our lamps, when, toward midnight, we heard the noise of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen came down into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more than their unexpected appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak.

Their story was a fearful one. They had left their companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring us the news. Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and Pierre were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not tell somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east; it was drifting heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed and care for the others; but the chances were sorely against them. It was in vain to question them further. They had evidently traveled a great distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come.

My first impulse was to move on the instant with an uncumbered party: a rescue, to be effective or even hopeful, could not be too prompt. What pressed on my mind most was, where the sufferers were to be looked for among the drifts. Ohlsen seemed to have his faculties rather more at command than his associates, and I thought that he might assist us as a guide; but he was sinking with exhaustion, and if he went with us we must carry him. There was not a moment to be lost. While some were still busy with the new-comers and getting ready a hasty meal, others were rigging out the 'Little Willie' with a buffalo cover, a small tent, and a package of pemmican; and, as soon as we could hurry through our arrangements, Ohlsen was strapped on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eider-down, and we were off upon the ice. Our party consisted of nine men and myself. We carried only the clothes upon our backs... It was not until we had traveled for sixteen hours that we began to lose our way. We knew that our lost companions must be somewhere in the area before us, within a radius of forty miles. Ohlsen, who had been for fifty hours without rest, fell asleep as soon as we began to move, and awoke now with unequivocal signs of mental disturbance. It became

evident that he had lost the bearings of the icebergs, which in form and color endlessly repeated themselves.

Pushing ahead of the party, and clambering over some rugged ice-piles, I came to a long, level floe, which I thought might probably have attracted the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our own. . . . I gave orders to abandon the sledge, and disperse in search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in cache, except a small allowance for each man to carry on his person; and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag. The thermometer had fallen by this time to 49° 3, and the wind was setting in sharply from the northwest. It was out of the question to halt; it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. I could not even melt ice for water; and, at these temperatures, any resort to snow for the purpose of allaying thirst was followed by bloody lips and tongue; it burnt like caustic.

It was indispensable that we should move on, looking out for traces as we went. Yet when the men were ordered to spread themselves, so as to multiply the chances, though they all obeyed heartily, some painful impress of solitary danger, or perhaps it may have been the varying configuration of the ice-field, kept them closing up continually into a single group. The strange manner in which some of us were affected I now attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the direct influence of the cold. Men like McGary and Bonsall, who had stood out our severest marches, were seized with trembling fits and short breath; and, in spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound bearing, I fainted twice on the snow.

We had been nearly eighteen hours out without water or food, when a new hope cheered us. I think it was Hans, our Esquimaux hunter, who thought he saw a broad sledge track. The drift had nearly effaced it, and we were some of us doubtful at first whether it was not one of those accidental rifts which the gales make in the surface snow. But as we traced it on to the deep snow among the hummocks, we were led to footsteps, and, following these with religious care, we at last came in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little Masonic banner hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades. We reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.

The little tent was nearly covered. I was not among the first to come up, but when I reached the tent-curtain the men were standing in silent file on each side of it. With more kindness and delicacy of feeling than is often supposed to belong to sailors, but which is almost characteristic, they

intimated their wish that I should go in alone. As I crawled in, and, coming upon the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me. They had expected me; they were sure I would come!'

We were now fifteen souls; the thermometer seventy-five degrees below the freezing point; and our sole accommodation a hut barely able to contain eight persons. More than half our party were obliged to keep from freezing by walking outside while the others slept. We could not halt long. Each of us took a turn of two hours' sleep, and we prepared for our homeward march.

We took nothing but the tent, furs to protect the rescued party, and food for a journey of fifty hours-everything else was abandoned. Two large buffalo-bags, each made of four skins, were doubled up so as to form a sort of sack, lined on each side with fur, closed at the bottom but open at the top. This was laid on the sledge, the tent smoothly folded serving as a floor. The sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffalo-robes, in a halfreclining posture; other skins and blanket-bags were thrown above them, and the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but a single opening opposite the mouth for breathing. This necessary work cost us a great deal of time and effort, but it was essential to the lives of the sufferers. It was completed at last, however, all hands stood round, and, after repeating a short prayer, we set out on our retreat. Our march for the first six hours was very cheering. We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly a mile an hour, and reached the new floes before we were absolutely weary. Our sledge sustained the trial admirably. Ohlsen, restored by hope, walked steadily at the leading belt of the sledge-lines; and I began to feel certain of reaching our half-way station of the day before, where we had left our tent. But we were still nine miles from it, when, almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming failure of our energies. An immediate halt could not be avoided, and we pitched our tent with much difficulty."-Extract from Stedman's Library of American Literature, Vol. VII.

MINOR TOPICS

HONORABLE ROBERT C. WINTHROP

HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATED

(Tribute from Mr. Daniel Goodwin)

When Thomas Lindall Winthrop married Elizabeth Bowdoin Temple at Boston, in July, 1786, the wedding brought together in one ancestral tree a very rare and remarkable union of families--the most rare and remarkable I have ever yet examined. Enumerating his American ancestry alone, Robert C. Winthrop, the offspring of that union, is descended from two Governors Winthrop; from Chief Justice Waite Winthrop ; from Governors Thomas and Joseph Dudley; from Governor James Bowdoin of Huguenot blood; from the Hon. John Erving, one of the king's council before the Revolution; from the Hon. Edward Tyng, one of the king's council in 1687; from the Hon. Simon Lynde, the father and grandfather of two chief justices; from Francis Brown, the ancestor also of Justice Joseph Story. His mother's father was Sir John Temple, the friend of Franklin and sonin-law of Governor Bowdoin. Nearly all his male ancestors had graduated at Harvard for generations. His father was of the class of 1780. When Mr. Winthrop entered Harvard in 1823, the country was fairly started on the up grade in letters and learning, and among his college-mates were numbers who have contributed to the peerless position occupied by the country to-day.

He graduated at nineteen, the third in a class of fifty-three, and with a commencement oration that was soon copied into the school-books as a model of English eloquence, he showed from the very start that his family, wealth, and distinction were not crutches to be leaned on, but that he had inherited the glorious aspiration to toil and labor for the good of mankind. Coming upon the historic stage with the widest range of distinguished ancestors, he was fortunate in the time and place of his advent. He was born in Boston May 12, 1809. He attended the Latin school, and won the Franklin medal, and a gold medal for a Latin poem. After graduating at Harvard he studied law under Daniel Webster, and was admitted to the bar in 1831. In 1833, in behalf of the young men of Boston, he made the welcoming speech to Henry Clay at the Tremont. In 1834 he was elected to the Massachusetts house, and in 1835 made a speech remarkable for its eloquence, its fire, its lofty spirit of liberality and justice in favor of compensating the Catholics for the destruction of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown by a mob. He was captain of the Boston Light Infantry, lieutenant of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and on the staff of three successive governors.

In 1839 Mr. Winthrop's reputation outgrew its local celebrity, and he delivered