which appear to have been broken up, as I saw pieces of the different articles with the Esquimaux, and together with some silver spoons and forks, purchased as many as I could obtain. A list of the most important of these I enclose, with a rough pen-and-ink sketch of the crests and initials on the forks and spoons. The articles themselves shall be handed over to the Secretary of the Hon. H. B. Co., on my arrival in London.

"None of the Esquimaux with whom I conversed had seen the "whites," nor had they ever been at the place where the dead were found, but had their information from those who had been there, and those who had seen the party when alive.

"From the head of Pelly Bay I crossed sixty miles of land in a westerly direction, traced the west shore from Castor and Pollux river to Cape Porter of Sir James Ross, and I could have got within thirty or forty miles of Beloit Strait, but I thought it useless proceeding further, as I could not complete the whole.

"Never in my former Arctic journeys had I met with such an accumulation of obstacles. Fogs, storms, rough ice and deep snow we had to fight against. On one occasion we were four and a half days unable to get a glimpse of the sun, or even to make out his position in the heavens. This, on a level coast, where the compass was of little or no use, was perplexing in the extreme.

"The weather was much finer on our return journey than when outward bound, and our loads being lighter, our days' marches were nearly double the distance, and we arrived at Repulse Bay on the 26th May, without accident, except in one instance, in which one of the party lost a toe from a frost bite.

"The commencement of spring was very fine, but June and July were colder. We were unable to get out of the bay until August.

"Our progress along the coast as far as Cape Fullerton was much impeded by ice; but on getting to the southward of the cape we had clear water, and saw no ice afterwards.

The conduct of the men, I am happy to say, was, generally speaking, good; and we had not a single case of sickness all the time of our absence.

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Being anxious to send this to Red river by the first boats, I write in haste and briefly, but shall have the pleasure of sending a more detailed account by some future opportunity.'

Alas! that their fate should have been so sad! Our own hopes of Sir John Franklin's restoration to the world, had, we confess, long ceased; but who could have been prepared for the fearful reality?-a miserable and fearful death from literal starvationpossibly, as Dr. Rea conjectures, worse than starvation-on the frozen and desolate shores of the Arctic Ocean. Such are human hopes such the fate of Ambition!

BUILDING A HOUSE.

A HOUSE is the shape which a man's thoughts take when he imagines how he should like to live. Its interior is the measure of his social and domestic nature; its exterior, of its esthetic and artistic nature. It interprets, in material forms, his ideas of home, of friendship, of comfort; a word which signifies, in the main, the happiness which we derive from pleasant intercourse with friends.

Every man is, in a small way, a creator. We seek to embody our fancies and thoughts in some material shape-to give them an incarnation. Born in our spirit-invisible and intangible-we are always seeking to thrust them forth, so that they shall return to us through some of the physical senses. Thus speech brings back our maginings to the ear; writing brings them back to the eye; painting brings out the thoughts and feelings, in forms and colors, addressed, through the eye, to several inward tastes; and building presents to our senses our thought of home-life.

But one's dwelling is not always to be taken as the fair index of his mind, any more than the richness of one's mind is judged by one's fluency in speech, or skill in writing. The conceiving power may be greater in us than the creative or expressing power. But there are other considerations which usually have more to do with building, especially in America, than a man's inward fancies. In fact, in the greatest number of instances, a man's house may be regarded as the measure of his purse. It is a compromise between his heart and his pocket. It is a memorial of his ingenuity in procuring the utmost possible convenience and room, from the least possible means; for our young men-ninety-nine in a hundredare happily born; that is, born poor, but determined to be rich. This gives birth to industry, frugality, ingenuity, perseverance, and success, inward and outward; for, while making his fortune, the man is making himself. He is extracting manly qualities out of those very labors or endurances by which he achieves material wealth. Now, in the career of every such young man, his little accumulations have to perform three functions-to carry on his business, to meet the annual expenses of his little, but growing family, and to build and beautify their home. Thus, his property, slender at best, even if it all rose in one channel, must move in a threefold channel, to carry three mills. The portion set apart for building, therefore, must be very little. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether one in a hundred knows how he shall pay for more than half his house, when he begins, and he is seldom much wiser when he ends. He draws upon hope, and when, in five or ten years, the house is paid for, it would puzzle him to say how he had done it. Now, under such circumstances, it would be absurd to look for what are called architectural effects. There must be, if possible, a kitchen and a bed-room. In pioneer life, even these must come toge

ther, and one room serve every purpose. But, usually, a man can afford a kitchen, a dining room, (which is also, after meals, a parlor,) and a bed-room. These three rooms are the seed and type of all other rooms which can be built, for all apartments must serve our bodily wants, our social domestic wants, and our social public wants. The kitchen and dining-room, and all appurtenances thereof, are for the animal nature; our bed-room and sitting-room are for our home social wants; and our parlors, halls, etc., for our more public social necessities. While one is yet poor, one room must serve several uses.

In the old-fashioned country houses the kitchen was also the dining-room; and never will saloon, how admirable soever, be so pleasant as our remembered hours in the great, broad, hospitable kitchen. The door opened into the well-room on one side, whence came the pitcher, all dripping and bedewed; another door opened into the cheese-room, rich with rows of yellow cheese; while the front door, wide open in summer, attracted often hens and chickens, who cocked an eye at you, or even ventured across the threshold after a stray crumb.

The sitting-room and parlor, too, must often be one and the same, and in the same space must be the library, if such a thing is known in the dwelling. Bed-rooms are more independent and aristocratic than any thing else, cultivating very exclusive habits. Yet, even bed-rooms must contrive to be ingenious, and curtained corners, cloth partitions, trundle and sofa beds, that disappear by day, and, like some flowers, unfold at night. These are the necessities of bed-rooms. But, in proportion as one's means increase, the rooms, like branches in a plant, grow out of each other, kitchen and dining-room have to separate and live by themselves. The sitting-room withdraws from the parlor, taking all the ease and comfort with it, and leaving all the stateliness and frigid dignity. All the books walk off into a little black-walnut room by themselves, where they stand in patient splendor and silent wisdom, behind their glass doors. The flowers abandon the windows, and inhabit a formal conservatory. Bed-rooms multiply, each one standing in single blessedness. The house is full grown. Alas! just then all its comfort goes, just as when the rose is fully grown, it is ready to drop its leaves! How many persons, from out their two-story framed dwellings, have sighed across the way for the log cabin! for the log cabin! How many persons have moved from a home into a house; from low ceilings, narrow halls, rooms of multifarious uses, into splendid apartments, whose chief effect was to make them homesick. But this is because pride or vanity was the new architect. For a large house is a grand and almost indispensable element to our fullest idea of comfort. But it must be social largeness. The broad halls must seem to those that enter ke open arms holding out a welcome, not like the aisles of a church, lifted up out of reach of human sympathy. The staircase should

be so broad and gentle in inclination, that its very looks invite you to try it. But, then, a large house ought to have great diversity; some rooms should have a ceiling higher than others; doors should come upon you in unexpected places; little cosy rooms should surprise you in every direction. Where you expected a cupboard, there should be a little confidential entry-way. Where you expected the door to open into the yard, you should discover a perfect nest of a room, that no one ever built there on purpose. All sorts of closets and queer cupboards should by degrees be found out.

Now, such a house never sprang full-grown from an architect's brain, as did the fabled deity from Jupiter's head. It must grow. Each room must have been needed for a long time, and when they could no longer be done without, they will come into being with a decided character impressed upon them. They will have been aimed at some real want, and, meeting it, will take their subtle air and character from it. Thus, one by one, the rooms will be born into the house as children are into the family. And, as our affections have undoubtedly a certain relation to form, color, and space, so our rooms will in their forms, dimensions, and hues, indicate the faculties which most wrought in their production.

We all know what is meant, in painting, in music, and in writing, by conventionalism. Men write or fashion, not to give ease to an impulse in them that struggles for a birth, but because they have an outside knowledge that such and such things would be proper and customary. So do men build conventional houses. They put in all the customary rooms in all the customary manner. They express themselves in this room as kitchens are usually expressed; they fashion parlors as they remember that parlors have been made; they go to their books, their plans, and portfolios of what has been done, and, selecting here a thing and there a thing, they put a house together as girls do patchwork bed-spreads, a piece out of every dress in the family for the last year or two. These are conventional houses. Such are almost all city houses-the original type of which was a ladder; from each round of which rooms issue, in ascending order, and the perpendicular stairs still retaining the peculiar properties of the type. Such, too, are almost all ambitious country houses, built in conspicuous places, in the most intrusive and comeand-look-at-me manner; painted as brilliantly as flash wagons, or parrots' wings. The best way is to build as trees grow, season by season; and all afterbranches with a symmetrical sympathy with older ones. In this way, too, one may secure that mazy diversity, that most unlookedfor intricacy in a dwelling, and that utter variation of lines in the exterior, which pleases the eye, or ought to please it, if it be trained in the absolute school of Nature, and which few could ever invent at once, and on purpose!

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[N. Y. Independent.

The Guardian.

VOL. V.-DECEMBER, 1854.-No. XII.

MARY MAGDALENE.

II.

BY THE EDITOR.

We have seen into what deep ruin Mary Magdalene had fallen, and also the happy change which took place in her condition through the mercy of the Saviour. Having witnessed this wonderful change in her, we are naturally anxious to know something of her subsequent history. Where, then, do we find her next, and in what is she engaged? Just where it is most agreeable to find her, and engaged in what is to her everlasting honor and praise. We find

§ III. MARY MAGDALENE MINISTERING TO THE SAVIOUR.

It is said in Luke 8: 1, 2, 3, Jesus "went throughout every village and city, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, which ministered unto him of their substance." Matt. 27: 55. When he was on his last journey to Jerusalem "many women followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him; among whom was Mary Magdalene." From these two passages it is evident that, from the time that he delivered her from the sad dominion of the seven devils, she followed him like a ministering angel till he hung upon the cross.

He had need of sympathy, and of just such attention as the faithful, loving heart of woman could afford. The presence, the constancy, the ministrations, and the love of those who had shared his blessings, afforded him daily encouragment. The weariness of his soul subsided in the circle of these devoted and grateful hearts.

It is said that these women who followed him, of whom Magdalene was one, "ministered to him of their substance." Whether they were rich or not is not known; but that is a matter of no importance; for we know that it is not generally the rich whose hands and hearts are open widest in the way of gifts to the needy.