LITERARY PREMIUM. [A gentleman of this city has received from a friend in London, a letter, in the following terms.] "DEAR SIR,-Enclosed you will find a bill for £50, to be divided into three sums of £25, £15, and £10, as prizes for the best lines, in verse or prose, on the subject of Sir William Wallace's inviting Bruce to the Scottish throne; which I could wish to be so expressed, as not to give offence to our brethren south of the Tweed. "Perhaps there could be introduced into the composition, the propriety of erecting a tower or monument to the memory of Wallace, on Arthur Seat or Salisbury Craigs. If such an object could be accomplished, I would leave £1000 by my will to assist it. wasted the imperial city with fire and sword. "These works are the production of a divine hand," exclaimed the noble-minded Canova, when he first beheld the colossal statues of Mars and Adonis, which had been created by the chissel of the Scandinavian, whose ancestors bent before the gigantic and distorted effigies of Odin or Baldur, and whose skill could scarce enable them to trace the rude emblems of their barbarous divinities on the unhewn rock and the runic altar. The father of Albert Thorvaldsen was a poor Icelander, who had settled at Copenhagen, where he maintained himself and his children by following the trade of a stone-cutter; and Albert was born in the Danish capital in the year 1772. The boy would attempt to set himself at work even in his earliest infancy, and he would try to imitate his father's carvings. The old man saw that his son was destined for better things; and when Albert became a little older, he placed him in the free drawing-school, attached to the royal academy of the fine arts, established at Copenhagen. Here Albert learnt to draw. Genius was apparent in his sketches; yet he did not shew any decided vocation for drawing, neither did he study it with diligence; but the young sculptor obeyed the strong impulse which was rising within him, and, without instruction, he applied himself, with great ardour, to the art of modelling. An annual prize-medal is given by the academy of Copenhagen to the best modeller in clay. When Thorvalldsen had entered his sixteenth year, he thought that he too would attempt to enter the lists. According to for the prize is placed in a separate an academical bye-law, each candidate room, when, furnished with the proper tools and materials, he is required to form his model,-a regulation precluding all suspicion of assistance from more experienced artists. Thorvalldsen's courage began to fail when SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF ALBERT he was about to enter his cell; so THORVALLDSEN. THEY are of opinion at Rome, that Canova has but one rival there; and this rival, whose sculptures adorn the palaces which look down upon the broken columns and falling arches of the Cæsars, is a Goth by blood-a son of the Northern warriors, who once much indeed did he dread the impending trial, that by the advice of a friend he was induced to raise his spirits by quaffing, not the mead or ale which the maids of slaughter pour out in Odin's hall, but a few comfortable glasses of good brandy, and thus cheered he shut the door. In four hours Thorvaldsen came out of the room of probation bearing his basso relievo in his hands. To borrow the expressions of Mr d'Isracli, by whom the youth of genius" has been elegantly and feelingly illustrated, "the instant his talent had declared itself, his first work, the eager offspring of desire and love, astonished the world at once with the birth and the maturity of genius." Such extraordinary powers were displayed in this specimen, that, in addition to the prize for which he had contended, the academicians unanimously adjudged their golden medal to him, a reward which is always accompanied by a travelling stipend from the Danish government. The Danish academicians acted towards Thorvaldsen with judicious kindness. They considered that the raw and uneducated stripling could not be sent abroad with advantage to himself; therefore, under their direction, Thorvaldsen continued his studies at Copenhagen. He had now obtained many valuable friends. Abildgard, the celebrated historical painter, treated him with parental affection. The Danish nobility did not withhold their patronage, and his talents developed themselves more fully every day. At length, in the year 1797, Thorvalldsen set sail for Naples in a frigate belonging to the king of Denmark. The voyage had its perils; contrary winds drove the vessel towards the coast of Barbary, where she was nearly stranded, and she was afterwards compelled to put into Malta. Thorvalldsen was about twenty-four years old when he reached Naples. But he had not gained much knowledge of the world. Transplanted to the luxuriant shores of the Mediterranean, the child of the North could speak no other language except his harsh native dialect: And had he not been restrained by shame, he would have returned without delay to his native clime.Alone and dispirited, he became homesick, and he nearly sank beneath that mental malady, which the Germans emphatically term the Heimweh. He proceeded, however, to Rome, and during two years he passed his time merely in contemplation of the wonders of ancient and modern art. At the end of this period, during which his mind had been actively employed, though his hands were quiet, he applied himself in earnest to the practice of his art. Zoya, who then resided at Rome, became his warmest, and at the same time his most sincere friend. Perpetually rousing the enthusiasm of the student, by pointing out the inferiority of his productions, when compared to the relics of classical antiquity, the learned Dane never with-held his censures from his youthful countryman. And Thorvaldsen, in confident emulation, not in despair, destroyed many a bust and many a statue upon which other artists would have been contented to found their claims to distinction. Thorvalldsen was retired in his habits, he shrunk from the crowd.When his model of Jason was exhibited to the public, all acknowledged it to be a masterpiece, but still scarcely any one at Rome knew the name of Thorvalldsen. And at the table where he dined every day, in common with the other students, one of them, who had been a constant guest, inquired of him, whether he was acquainted with the clever young Dane, the modeller of Jason. It will be readily anticipated, that Thorvalldsen remained no longer in obscurity. Mr Hope, whose well-directed munificence is almost proverbial, employed him to copy the model of Jason in marble. After he had completed it, he modelled a large bassorelievo, containing a subject taken from Homer, which excited universal admiration. His reputation was placed beyond doubt or cavil, and he advanced steadily in the path of excellence. In the year 1808 he finished his statues of Mars and Adonis; they are considered as forming an era in the history of modern art. Orders were given to him, in the following year, by the king of Denmark, to execute four large basso relievos for the new palace then building, which he performed with his usual skill. The King presented him with the Danebrog cross, which, we believe, confers nobility on the wearer. Old Harry's apophthegm will be recollected, such gifts are merely valuable as speaking the sense of the nation by whose chief they are bestowed. Thorvaldsen has lately become the husband of the daughter of an English peer. And he will now grow old in the enjoyment of the rewards which he has earned with credit and honour. NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. Expedition under Captain Ross and Lieutenant PARRY, in the MY DEAR SIR,-You were pleased ranging down the western coast of Baffin's Bay to the southward; but we have learnt from experience, that in these regions one does not increase the cold by increasing the latitude, as I shall now proceed to shew you more fully. I must premise, however, that I am writing to you without book. Our commodore took possession of all the logs, journals, remark-books, and charts, and carried them off with him from the Humber to the Admiralty, so that all our opinions and speculations on what we have done, and what we have left undone, are at headquarters;-I mention this in order to claim indulgence for any lack of preci sion in dates and numbers; but the main facts of the voyage are too strongly imprinted on my mind to need any written monitor. About the 9th of August we got so far up the coast of Greenland as to recognise the Cape Dudley Digges of Baffin, but still hampered with the ice. When near this Cape, we very unexpectedly observed something like human beings moving towards us on the ice, which separated us from the shore about seven or eight miles. On a nearer approach we perceived that they were actually men, sitting on low sledges, driven by five or six dogs in each. When within a mile or less of the ships, they stopped short, but hallooed and shouted at a great rate. Just at this time some signals were making between the ships, which probably alarmed them, for they suddenly wheeled round, and set off again towards the shore in full gallop, at a speed which we supposed to be at least equal to that of our mail-coaches; of course we soon lost sight of them behind the hummocks of ice. Every body regretted their sudden disappearance; and in order if possible to bring them back, and to explain our friendly intentions, Captain Ross caused white flag to be hoisted on a hillock of ice, on which was painted a hand holding a green branch of a tree—a colour by the way, and an object not very common in this part of the world; there were also left on the ice some such as spirits could carry; they ask- presents placed on a stool, and an Es- The We gave them some bread, but they spat it out; some rum, but they could not bear it; and we learned from Jack that they lived entirely on animal food, mostly on the flesh of seals, sea-unicorns, bears, foxes, and birds; and when all these failed them, that they eat their dogs. The bones of the animals which serve them for food, supply them also with fuel; and a very fine soft moss, with long fibrous roots, when dipped in fish oil, is used by them as candles or torches. This moss grows in great plenty, and very luxuriant. The bones also serve them to make their sledges, which are fastened together with thongs of skins. Their knives are certainly the rudest instruments of the kind in the whole world: they are nothing more than a flattened piece of iron, like a bit of a hoop, passed longitudinally in the groove of a fish's bone, and extending beyond it, at one end, about an inch; and they are thus fixed, without the faculty of opening or shut ting. Mr Sabine took great pains, through the medium of Jack's interpretation, to learn where they got the iron, and how they worked it; the result of which was, that it was hewn by a sharp stone, from a large mass found in the mountains at no great distance from the spot where we were; of course it was concluded that it must be native iron; and supposing it to have been recently discovered, this circumstance may, in some measure, account for the rudeness of their manufacture, as the stitching of their clothes and boots, and the putting together of their sledges, were by no means contemptible performances. They described two pieces of iron from which they derived their supply; and each of which, by their account, might be equal to a cube of two feet. They called it Sowie, and the place where it was found Sowie-lick, the former of which Jack observed to be the name given to iron by the Southern Esquimaux. We now find, since our arrival, that this iron turns out to be meteoric, and that it contains the usual proportion of Nickel; so that Jack's interpretation, which some of us were disposed to doubt, has been justified. Indeed he is a man on whom the utmost dependence may be placed; very intelligent, and always ready to oblige; willing to learn, and grateful to those who will take the trouble to instruct him, whether in writing, drawing, or any thing that he wishes to undertake, he is indeed a most valuable man. While speaking of him I may observe, that we were once afraid we had lost him, to the great regret and sorrow of every man on board. He had gone on shore, and did not return for two or three days; but, on sending after him, he was found in the hut of a Southern Esquimaux, with his collar bone broken. On inquiring how it happened, it turned out that his musket burst; Jack having loaded it too deeply with powder, on the principle (as he said) of " plenty powder, plenty kill." It is very remarkable, that this new tribe of Esquimaux (which I find by the newspapers are ridiculously called a New Nation) have no boats, nor any means of going upon the water, except on the ice, though the greater part of their subsistence is derived from that element; but we understood that they managed matters very well without them. The way in which they proceed to catch seals, is by going to the openings or chasms in the ice, lying down, and imitating the cry of a young seal, when the old ones immediately peep up; and while they are endeavouring to scramble upon the ice, they are knocked on the head by the hunters, or run through with a kind of spear made of bone. I re member reading of a similar practice among the Southern Esquimaux. They gave us some specimens of this Seal-music, and also of their songs, which were any thing but music, and accompanied with the most ridiculous gestures and grimaces. On the murging of these notes in the ice, they also watch for the rising of the sea-unicorns to blow, which it seems they are frequently obliged to do. The flesh of this animal dried is a considerable article of their winter food. Though afraid at first to go into the boat, they appeared soon to be sensible of the advantages of being able to float on the water, and one of them shewed a great desire to get possession of Jack's canoe, after he had been told the use of it, of which he was before perfectly ignorant; and nothing could more strongly prove their complete insularity from their more southern neighbours, than the circumstance of their not having the word kayiack (canoe) in their language. Rude and ignorant as these poor creatures are, you must not believe what is stated in the newspapers, that they had no knowledge of a Supreme Being: this is not a subject to obtain correct notions about from savages, whose language we do not compre hend. Jack distinctly admitted that they entertained the same notions of a good and evil spirit as their southern |