This marriage could not be without pain to Mary "Of all the ladies James V. of Scotland had seen in of Guise, for she was obliged to leave her darling and France, with the exception of his lovely and beloved only child, the little Duke of Longueville, behind Magdalene, he had admired Mary of Lorraine, Duchess of Longueville, the most. Indeed, there is reason to her, and (Frenchwoman as she was,) to go to a cold, believe that an impression was made on the susceptible semibarbarous country, where everything was strange

to her. However well-disposed she might be to her new home, and anxious to do her duty there, we are not surprised to hear that when some of the English Court asked Madame de Montrieul "How the new queen liked Scotland?" that lady somewhat smiled as she answered, "The Queen of Scotland loved France the best."

James V. and his second wife led a very happy life as far as conjugal affection is concerned, for he was passionately devoted to her; but their felicity lasted only for a brief period. The loss of his fine army in the Solway turned the king's brain, and brought him to his death-bed, at Falkirk, at the same time that his wife, in a state of great anxiety for him, gave birth, at Linlithgow, to a daughter-the celebrated Mary, Queen of Scots. All their other children were dead. Here ends Miss Strickland's first volume; and here begin the trials and troubles of Mary of Lorraine as Queen Regent of the distracted kingdom of Scotland. The next volume will contain much interesting matter.

THE LAND'S END.

HERE then we stood, the waves thundering below, and before us the Atlantic, without a shore nearer than America; the horizon line, not straight, but appearing, as it really is, the section of a circle, and blending softly with the summer sky;-here, amid a convulsion of rocks and precipices that form an irresistible barrier to the raging waters, we were impressed with the feeling of a position amidst a vast solitude, which some speak of experiencing in deserts. It is true there were no arid sands here; for the richest heaths, dwarf furze, almost all bloom, only three or four inches high, and several kinds of wild flowers, of which we did not know the names, enamelled the ground beneath our feet; but there was an overpowering loneliness, a sense of our own insignificance compared to what was around us, amidst a silence only broken by the hollow booming of a restless sca, that broke into the orifices of the cliff far beneath our feet, or now and then by the shrieking of a cormorant, or the rushing wing of a sea-mew.

THE PAST YEAR AND THE PRESENT.' WE gladly welcome a second series of the Illustrated Year Book of Wonders, Events and Discoveries, the design and execution of which we had occasion to commend last Christmas. The present volume is fully as well executed as its predecessor, and the occurrences of the past year which it describes, as well as those of the coming one of which it heralds the advent, confer on it, if possible, a more exciting interest.

Imagine for a moment a year-book during the reign of the Plantagenets, and such in fact are the romantic pages of Froissart. War must have needs been its sole burden, science and literature a mere blank. In 1357 we should have had a lively chronicle of the campaigns of the Black Prince in France. In 1850 we have Prince Albert establishing the apotheosis of peace, by setting on foot a grand exhibition of the works of all nations. Henceforth it must ever be one of the principal functions of a year-book to record the great feature of our own day-the astounding progress of science, and its application to the purposes of human life, and to the amelioration of our social condition. A few years back, and who would have believed in marvels that are now of everyday familiarity? The difficulty seems now to prescribe any bounds to the progress of discovery. Every season brings its wonder with it: last year it was the erection of the Britannia Bridge, this season it is the Electric Telegraph, and what it may be next year Heaven only knows.

But we will not delay our readers with reflections that must arise in every thoughtful mind; but proceed at once to the facts collected in the volume before us, and that pretty much in the order in which they are narrated, dwelling first on the lighter and more fugitive topics. The first popular rarity of the year was unquestionably the first appearance in England of a living hippopotamus from the remote shores of the Upper Nile. And here it may be remarked that among the many interesting problems that have been left for their solution to the science and enterprise of the present age, is that of the source of this patriarch of rivers, and there is at length every reason to believe that its discovery is near at hand. In a pleasant abridgement of the recent and arduous journey of Dr. Krapf to the mountains of Central

There is a tale related, with the customary exaggerations, respecting the fall of a horse over the rocks here, and of the narrow escape of the rider, which, as no name is mentioned, every one thinks he may tell in his own way. The officer's name whose horse thus fell over was Captain Arbuthnot, about forty years ago, upon the staff of the western district, accompanying his superior officer, General Wilford, who also had a command in the same district, to see the Land's End. The general dismounted on the brow of the descent; but Captain Arbuthnot, who did not know the nature of the ground, rode down some way, when, the grass being slippery, and his horse alarmed, he dismounted, and flinging the bridle over his arm, led on the animal, which, startled most probably at the roar of the sea in front, backed himself over the cliff which was near in another direction, and dragged veries: Edited by John Timbs." Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co.

(1) "The Year-Book of Remarkable Occurrences and Disco

Africa, we find that he succeeded in penetrating to the vicinity of the snow-covered peaks of Kilimanjaro, in which the head-waters of the Nile are to be sought for. The animal brought to this country was taken from its waters, as we learn, at a distance of two thousand miles above Cairo.

course, first shown to the Pasha, (an honour claimed by royalty in all cases of prodigies,) the Hon. Mr. Murray was apprised of his arrival, and to his residence the young animal was conveyed, with a military escort, and the due form of imperial present-making. So far is the Hippopotamus now removed from the observation of men, that the present specimen created intense wonder and interest in Cairo; gaping crowds filled its narrow "The Zoological Society had long been anxious to sandy streets, and a whale at London Bridge would not obtain a living specimen of this great amphibious quad-excite half so much curiosity. ruped for their Menagerie. Several attempts with this object have been made within the last twenty years, but uniformly with ill success; so that the offer of an American agent at Alexandria to give 5,000l. for an animal of this species, delivered to him at the above city, entirely failed to induce any speculator to encounter the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile for this purpose. The desire of the Zoological Society was communicated to Abbas, Viceroy of Egypt, by the Hon. Mr. Murray, our excellent Consul at Cairo, and an energetic advocate of the interests of science everywhere. The Pasha was deaf to Mr. Murray's hint; doubtless, seeing the difficulty of gratifying the Society's wishes. Hasselquist, on the authority of 'a credible person,' who lived twelve years in Egypt, states it to have been impossible to bring the living animal to Cairo; and Cuvier remarks, the French sarans attached to the expedition to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one Hippopotamus; but M. Caillaud asserts that he saw forty in the Upper Nile; though, their resort lay some fifteen hundred miles, or more, from Cairo. Here they are often shot with rifle balls; but to take one alive was a much more difficult matter. However, the requisite commands were given by the Viceroy, and the proper parties sent in search of the animal.

It being thought safer for the animal to winter in Cairo than to proceed forthwith on his journey, the Consul had duly prepared to receive the young stranger, for whom he had engaged a sort of nurse, Hamet Safi Cannana. An apartment was allotted to the Hippopotamus in the court-yard of the Consul's house, leading to a warm or tepid bath: his milk-diet, however, became a troublesome affair; his craving for milk whilst under Mr. Murray's care actually created a scarcity of that article at Cairo, for the new comer never drank less than from twenty to thirty quarts daily.

This was in August, 1849, when the hunters having reached the island of Fobaysch, on the White Nile, about 2,000 miles above Cairo, shot a large female Hippopotamus in full chase up the river. The wounded creature turned aside and made towards some bushes on the island bank, but sunk dead in the effort. The hunters, however, kept on towards the bushes, when a young Hippopotamus, supposed to have been recently brought forth, being not much bigger than a new-born calf, but much stouter and lower, made a rush down the bank to the river; it had nearly escaped, owing to the slipperiness of its naked skin, and was only secured by one of the men striking the boat-hook into its flank, while another lifted it into the boat. The scar of the wound is still visible on the left side; but it was much nearer the haunch when the animal first arrived at Cairo, its relative position having changed with the growth of the body.

"The wound was of course dressed as soon after the capture as circumstances would admit, and the captors started with their charge down the Nile. The food of the young animal was their next anxiety; he liked neither fish, flesh, fruit nor grass, and, failing in these three courses, the hunters were fairly puzzled. They must, however, have been indifferent observers; else milk would at once have suggested itself as the best sustenance for a newly-born mammal. At length the thought came; the boat was stopped at a village, all the cows were seized and milked, and the young charge lapped up the produce with alarming celerity. They then took with them a stock of milk, but it would not keep; so they were compelled to take it in' new from the cow; or rather they took with them a good milch eow, just as that useful animal is taken on board an Indiaman, where, by the way, a large number of infantine passengers has made milk as scarce as would our Hippopotamus. But in this case, he had all the supply to himself; and in this milky way' he reached Cairo on the 14th of November, 1849. The colour of his skin at this time was a dull reddish brown. He was, of

"By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society; and great was the joy at No. 11, Hanover Square, and at the Regent's Park. Preparations were then made for shipping the animal for Alexandria. The chosen vessel was the Ripon, one of those well-appointed steamers which resembles a luxurious hotel rather than a sea-going vessel. On the main-deck was built a house from which were steps down into an iron tank in the hold, containing 400 gallons of water; the whole being constructed and fitted up at Southampton, from a plan by Mr. Mitchell, the able Secretary to the Zoological Society. The tank, used by the Hippopotamus as a bath, was filled with fresh water every other day; for which purpose, in addition to the supplies from time to time taken on board, was used the condensed water of the ship's engines, which amounted to 300 gallons per day. It was proposed to use sea water; but Mr. Mitchell foresaw that should the Hippopotamus take to salt water, how would he be affected by the change on his arrival in the Regent's Park, where the supply of the ocean draught might not be compatible even with the prospectus of the last new Water Company.

Early in May the Hippopotamus left the Consul's hospitable quarters, and was conveyed in the canal-boat with Hamet Safi Cannana to Alexandria. Here his debarkation was witnessed by 10,000 spectators. The Consul accompanied his four-footed friend, and, for safety, applied to the governor of Alexandria for an escort; and a strong body of the Pasha's troops accompanied the animal and Hamet to the spot where the Ripon was moored. Here he embarked. There were on board his Excellency General Jung Bahadur Ramagee, and the Nepaulese princes, his brothers. The Ripon also took to the Zoological Society a collection of quadrupeds and birds, among which were an ibex from Mount Sinai, a lion, a leopard, two lynxes, an ichneumon, some civet cats, and a variety of serpents, lizards, and desert rats. A young giraffe was also to have formed part of the collection, but it was unfortunately drowned in the canal after reaching Alexandria.

"The Hippopotamus bore the voyage so well as to increase in fatness; he lived exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints, yielded by several cows on board. He was very tame, allowed himself to be freely handled by his Arab attendant, Hamet, whom he followed like a faithful dog; and who was seldom away for more than five minutes without a summons to return in the sound of a loud grunt. Hamnet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus, strange bed-fellow as he was; and thus they arrived in the Ripon at Southamp ton, on Saturday, May 25. He was landed early in the morning, sent by special train by the South Western Railway to London, and was safely housed at ten o'clock