circumstances. I think the same of feature. I see here among the Tartars the large mouth, the thick lip, the broad flat nose, as well as in Africa. I see also in the same village as great a difference of complexion, from the fair hair, fair skin, and white eyes, to the olive, the black jetty hair and eyes; and these all of the same language, same dress, and, I suppose, same tribe. I have frequently observed in Russian villages, obscure and dirty, mean and poor, that the women of the peasantry paint their faces, both red and white. I have had occasion from this and other circumstances to suppose that the Russians are a people who have been early attached to luxury. They are everywhere fond of éclat. "Sir," said a Russian officer to me in Petersburg, "we pay no attention to anything but éclat." contour of their manners is Asiatic, and not European. The Tartars are universally neater than the Russians, particularly in their houses. The Tartar, however situated, is a voluptuary, and it is an original and striking trait in their character, from the Grand Seignior, to him who pitches his tent on the wild frontiers of Russia and China, that they are more addicted to real sensual pleasure than any other people. The Emperor of Germany, the Kings of England and France, have pursuits that give an entirely different turn to their enjoyments; and so have their respective subjects. Would a Tartar live on Vive le Roi? Would he spend ten years in constructing a watch? or twenty in forming a telescope?

The

After spending a week very agreeably at Barnaoul, Ledyard made preparations for recommencing his journey. From this place to Irkutsk it was arranged that he should travel post with the courier who had charge of the mail. He arrived at Tomsk, 300 miles, in three days, and thence journeyed to Irkutsk, at the head of Lake Baikal, which he reached in ten days from the time of leaving Tomsk. Here he stayed ten days, and then set out for Yakutsk, on the Lena, which he reached on the 18th of September, after a fatiguing sail on the river of twenty-two days.

At Yakutsk, Ledyard was told by the authorities that the journey to Okhotsk at that season was impracticable. This he did not regard; but when he saw that this was a mild manner of telling him that he must not go, he was exceedingly vexed, and in his journal gives vent to his feelings of bitter disappointment. Finding, however, that he must pass the winter there, he resolved to make the best use of his time, and lost no opportunity of gaining all the knowledge he could of the country and the people. A few extracts from his journal here will be interesting:-

PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE TARTARS.

The Tartar face, in the first impression it gives, approaches nearer to the African than the European; and this impression is strengthened on a more deliberate examination of the individual features and whole compages of the countenance; yet it is very different from an African face. The nose forms a strong feature in the human face. I have seen instances among the Kalmuks where the nose between the eyes has been much flatter and broader than I have ever witnessed in Negroes, and some few instances where it has been as broad over the nostrils quite to the end; but the nostrils in any case are much smaller than in Negroes. Where I have seen those noses, they were accompanied with a large mouth and thick lips; and these people were genuine Kalmuk Tartars. The nose protuberates but little from the face, and is shorter than that of the European. The eyes universally are at a great distance from each other, and very small; at each corner of the eye the skin projects over the ball; the part appears swelled; the eyelids go in nearly a straight line from corner to corner. When open, the eye appears as in a square frame. however, is of a middling size, and the remarkable features are the cheek bones. are very remote from each other, high, broad, and withal project a little forward. The face is flat. When I look at a Tartar en profile, I can hardly see the nose between the eyes, and if he blow a coal of fire, I cannot see the nose at all. The face is then like an inflated bladder. The forehead is narrow and low. The face has a fresh color, and on the cheek bones there is commonly a good ruddy hue.

The mouth generally, lips thin. The next These, like the eyes,

The faces of Tartars have not a variety of expression. I think the predominating one is pride; but whenever I have viewed them they have seen a stranger. The intermixture by marriage does not operate so powerfully in producing a change of features as of complexion, in favor of Europeans. I have seen the third in descent, and the Tartar prevailed over the European features. The Tartars, from time immemorial (I mean the Asiatic Tartars), have been a people of a wandering disposition. Their converse has been more among the beasts of the forest than among men; and when among men, it has only been those of their own nation. They have ever been savages, averse to civilization, and have never, until very lately,

mingled with other nations, and now rarely. Whatever cause may have originated their peculiarities of features, the reason why they still continue, is their secluded way of life, which has preserved them from mixing with other people. I am ignorant how far a constant society with beasts may operate in changing the features, but I am persuaded that this circumstance, together with an uncultivated state of mind, if we consider a long and uninterrupted succession of ages, must account, in some degree, for this remarkable singularity.

WOMAN.

I have observed among all nations that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that, wherever found, they are the same kind, civil, obliging, humane,, tender beings; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest. They do not hesitate, like man, to perform a hospitable or generous action; not haughty, nor arrogant, nor supercilious, but full of courtesy and fond of society; industrious, economical, ingenuous; more liable in general to err than man, but in general also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so; and to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught, and, if hungry, ate the coarse morsel, with a double relish.

On the 29th of December, Ledyard left Yakutsk to return to Irkutsk, which he reached in seventeen days. Here, by an order from the Empress, he was arrested, under the pretence of his being a spy; but the fact is the Russian government did not wish their trade and resources and policy to be too closely examined by such a man as Ledyard. He was conducted by two guards with all the speed with which horses and sledges could convey them towards Moscow, exposed to the extreme rigors of a Siberian winter; and, though no evidence

could there be brought against him, the same guards took him to Poland, set him at liberty, and told him that if he ever entered Russia again it would be at the cost of his life. While on the journey, he thus writes on the

BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY.

Though born in the freest of the civilized countries, yet, in the present state of privation, I have a more exquisite sense of the amiable, the immortal nature of liberty than I ever had before. It would be excellently qualifying if every man, who is called to preside over the liberties of a people, should once -it would be enough-actually be deprived of his liberty unjustly. He would be avaricious of it more than of any other earthly possession. I could love a country and its inhabitants if it were a country of freedom. There are two kinds of people I could anathematize with a better weapon than St. Peter's; those who dare deprive others of their liberty, and those who suffer others to do it.

Here he was, in a destitute situation, without friends or means, all his hopes blasted, and his health enfeebled. He, however, disposed of a draft for five guineas, on Sir Joseph Banks, and by this expedient was enabled to purchase his journey to London, where he was received with great cordiality by this munificent patron of letters and science. He had not been in London a day before a plan was proposed to him to explore Central Africa, and when asked when he would be ready to set out, "To-morrow morning," was his prompt answer; which, considering his recent bitter disappointments, is one of the most extraordinary instances of decision of character to be found on record.

All the preparations for his journey having been made, he left London on the 30th of June, under the patronage of the "African Association." He went first to Paris, thence to Marseilles, thence sailed to Alexandria, and arrived at Cairo on the 19th of August. Here, after having spent three months in making every inquiry and preparation for his hazardous journey, just as he was about starting, he was attacked by a bilious fever. The best medical skill of Cairo was called to his aid without effect, and he closed his life of vicissitude and toil at the moment when he imagined his severest cares were over, and when the prospects before him were more flattering than they had been at any former period.'

1 He died towards the end of November, 1788, in the thirty-eighth year of his age.

Such was the end of one of the most remarkable of men, in whom the spirit of romantic adventure was ever conspicuous. That he accomplished but little compared with the magnitude of his designs, seems to have been his misfortune, not his fault. "The acts of his life demand notice less on account of their results than of the spirit with which they were performed, and the uncommon traits of character which prompted to their execution. Such instances of decision, energy, perseverance, fortitude, and enterprise have rarely been witnessed in the same individual, and, in the exercise of these high attributes of mind, his example cannot be too much admired or imitated."

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 1706-1790.

THIS distinguished philosopher and statesman was born in Boston, on the 17th of January, 1706. His father, who was a tallow-chandler, was too poor to give him the advantages of a collegiate education, and at ten years of age he was taken from the grammar school to aid in cutting wicks for the candles, filling the moulds, and attending the shop. When he was twelve years of age, having a strong passion for reading, and thinking that a printer's business would give him the best opportunity to indulge it, he was bound to his brother, who had recently returned from England with a press and type. He soon made himself master of the business, while he employed all his leisure time and his evenings to the improvement of his English style, by reading the best books he could find, among which, happily, was Addison's "Spectator," to which he labored to make his own style conform. In 1721 his brother started a weekly newspaper called "The New England Courant," for which Benjamin, though so, young, wrote with great acceptance. Soon, however, from jealousy or other cause, the elder brother quarrelled with the younger, who thereupon, at the age of seventeen, started alone for Philadelphia. The following is his own account of his

The reader will not fail to make himself acquainted with Sparks' Life of Ledyard, one of the most interesting pieces of biography extant.