ed, and thus
inorganically arose a collection of writings which, with
all their simplicity, are for nothing more striking than
for the high moral beauty, warmed with natural feeling,
which displays itself through all their pages. With us,
the sailor is scarcely himself beyond his quarter-deck.
If he is distinguished in his profession, he is professional
merely; or if he is more than that, he owes it not to
his work as a sailor, but to independent domestic
culture. With them their profession was the school
of their nature, a high moral education which most
brought out what was most nobly human in them; and
the wonders of earth, and air, and sea, and sky, were a
real intelligible language in which they heard Almighty
God speaking to them.

That such hopes of what might be accomplished by
the Hakluyt Society should in some measure be disappointed,
is only what might naturally be anticipated
of all very sanguine expectation. Cheap editions are
expensive editions to the publisher, and historical
societies, from a necessity which appears to encumber
all corporate English action, rarely fail to do their work
expensively and infelicitously; yet, after all allowances
and deductions, we cannot reconcile ourselves to the
mortification of having found but one volume in the
series to be even tolerably edited, and that one to be
edited by a gentleman to whom England is but an
adopted country--Sir Robert Schomburgk. Raleigh's
"Conquest of Guiana," with Sir Robert's sketch of
Raleigh's history and character, form in everything but
its cost a very model of an excellent volume. For
every one of the rest we are obliged to say of them,
that they have left little undone to paralyze whatever
interest was reviving in Hakluyt, and to consign their
own volumes to the same obscurity to which time and
accident were consigning the earlier editions. Very
little which was really noteworthy escaped the industry
of Hakiuyt himself, and we looked to find reprints of
the most remarkable of the stories which were to be
found in his collection. They began unfortunately
with proposing to continue the work where he had
left it, and produce narratives hitherto unpublished
of other voyages of inferior interest, or not of English
origin. Better thoughts appear to have occurred
to them in the course of the work; but their evil
destiny overtook them before their thoughts could get
themselves executed. We opened one volume with
eagerness, bearing the t