but a secondary object in comparison with those great geographical problems, the solution of which was looked forward to as the principal and more important result, yet it is delightful to know that in the performance of higher duties of difficult achievement, and frequently environed by the most appalling dangers, these intrepid men neglected nothing which could in any way conduce to our knowledge of the countries they explored. The work now under consideration contains two hundred and forty species, which, with twenty-seven from the north-west coast, (either formerly described by Pennant, or more recently observed by Captain Beechey, but which did not fall under the observation of our land expeditions,) make the total number of ascertained species inhabiting the fur-countries, as before defined, two hundred and sixtyseven. In the introduction to the present volume, Dr. Richardson has presented, with his accustomed clearness and accuracy, various tabular views of the distribution of the species, both in relation to season and locality; and as it is only from data of that nature that a discovery of the laws which regulate the location of birds can be elicited, we view his contributions to ornithological geography as of great value. The subject, however, although one of the highest interest, involves too many matters of detail to admit of our entering at present upon its consideration. * It appears that, essentially, birds can scarcely be classed under the distinctive denominations of resident and migratory. Though many millions of a species may be observed to wing their way at certain seasons to or from particular countries, yet some portions of these vast assemblages travel through a much shorter space than others, while perhaps an equal number of the same species sojourn for ever in the districts where they had their birth. Thus, in the North Georgian islands, all the individuals of every species are driven southwards in autumn by the extreme rigour of that hyperborean region: there they are undoubtedly birds of passage. In the central and other portions of the fur-countries, again, we meet with species which occur there all the year round, and which, therefore, in their totality, cannot be regarded as migratory, but of which many individuals depart in summer to the polar shores both of continental America and of the North Georgian group; while others (of the same species), on the approach of winter, wing their flight to the United States. So, also, in Pennsylvania we have several species which reside there throughout the year, but of which, at the same time, numerous individuals pass their summer in the fur-countries; while, in the former state, *In addition to these, the M. Bonaparte enumerates thirty-six species which migrate northwards from or through Pennsylvania in the spring, and which, though not noticed by Dr. Richardson, may fairly be inferred to breed in the fur-countries.Specchio Comparativo delle Ornitologie di Roma e di Filadelfia. Pisa, 1827. many many species occur during the winter season, which entirely disappear northwards in summer, and leave behind no remnant of their race. Several of the species which breed in the temperate and even northern parts of North America, either disappear from that continent altogether during the colder season of the year, or occur sparingly in the southern states of the Union. Others take a much wider range: the pigeon-hawk (Falco palumbarius), for example, resides in Mexico during the winter, and on the approach of spring sets off at once for Hudson's Bay and other high latitudes, and is, consequently, only known in most of the intermediate regions as a passenger in spring and autumn. The Grallatores, which feed by preference in moist and marshy lands, frequent the Saskatchewan prairies only in the spring; and as soon as the warm and comparatively early summer has rendered the soil too dry for their accustomed purposes, they retire to their breeding places in the arctic circle. There,' says Dr. Richardson, the frozen sub-soil, acted upon by the rays of a sun constantly above the horizon, keeps the surface wet and spongy during the two short summer months, which suffice these birds for rearing their young. This office performed, they depart to the southward, and halt in the autumn on the flat shores of Hudson's Bay, which, owing to accumulations of ice drifted into the bay from the northward, are kept in a low temperature all the summer, and are not thawed to the same extent with the more interior arctic lands before the beginning of autumn. They quit these haunts on the setting in of the September frosts, and passing along the coasts of the United States, retire within the tropics in the winter.'-Introduction, p. 19. It is, of course, difficult to ascertain whether the individuals of the species which breed in the higher latitudes are the same that retire farthest southward during the winter season; and whether such as remain in the former latitudes throughout that season are those which had previously bred in the same localities in summer. Dr. Richardson seems to think that such is the case. Some species seem to claim a right of property within a certain beat, chasing away with great pertinacity all the other birds that they can master. In the instance, also, of the Falconidae, and some other tribes, which present a marked difference in the plumage of the old and young, we observe that the latter are expelled by their parents from the breeding places, and appear, both in summer and winter, in districts which none of the old birds visit. From a consideration of these and similar facts, we are inclined to believe that, of the species which are found all the year within certain parallels, the younger individuals make the widest excursions in search of food or proper breeding places; and that, as their strength is matured by age, they fill up the casual vacancies which occur in the districts best adapted for their constant residence.' VOL. XLVII. NO. XCIV. 2 c It It appears from the tenth table of this work (Introduction, p. 39), that as many birds breed in the sixty-fourth parallel as in the fortieth; and that the number of species which arrive from the north, merely to winter in Pennsylvania, exceeds the amount of such as migrate to that state from the southwards for the purpose of breeding. Indeed, the influence of the fine and continuous summer of the northern regions appears remarkable, and is well illustrated by the fact, that while M. Bonaparte enumerates only one hundred and four species as breeding in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, Dr. Richardson assigns one hundred and forty-one as the number of those that breed on the banks of the Saskatchewan, in lat. 54°. It was our intention to have drawn a parallel between the feathered tribes of Europe and North America; but we find that our doing so at present would force us still further to transgress those prescribed limits which, in truth, we have already somewhat exceeded. In the meantime, we beg to refer the reader to the eleventh table of the present work, which contains a list of nearly one hundred species common to the Old World and the fur-countries. ART. III.-The Life of Archbishop Cranmer. By the Rev. Henry John Todd, M.A. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1831. IVE me my liar,' was the phrase in which Charles the Fifth 'GIV was used to call for a volume of history; and certainly no man can attentively examine any important period of our annals without remarking, that almost every incident admits of two handles, almost every character of two interpretations; and that, by a judicious packing of facts, the historian may make his picture assume nearly what form he pleases, without any direct violation of truth. To the characters which distinguished the period of the reformation, this remark is particularly applicable. It is with almost all of them as with Wolsey in the play. A Catharine's version of him is, that he was a man who ranked himself with princes; who held simony fair; whose own opinion was his law; double in his words and meaning; never pitiful, but when he meant to ruin; mighty in his promises, in his performance mean; unchaste in his morals-pernicious in his example. A Griffith's version of the same Wolsey is, that though certainly of an humble stock, he was stamped for honour; that if he was lofty, it was only to those who loved him not; that if he was unsatisfied in getting, he was most princely in bestowing; that he was a scholar, and the friend and patron of scholars; great in prosperity, greater in misfortune, and that he crowned the glories of his life by dying in the the faith and fear of God. Sir Thomas More is another leader of those times presented to us in strangely conflicting aspects: the tender husband and parent; pleasant in his household; sportive with his friends; simple in his pursuits; fond of animals (a taste rarely connected with a harsh nature); tolerant in his principles; enlightened in his creed. And again, the inveterate bigot; the cruel inquisitor; the calm spectator of the conscientious martyr's pains, as he struggled under the scourge in his garden at Chelsea, or writhed upon the rack which he had prepared for him in the Tower. Cromwell, Earl of Essex, is a worthy, according to some chroniclers, almost without a fault; wise in counsel; resolute in execution; or, like Cæsar, if doing wrong, never doing it but in just cause.' According to others again, he conducts his intrepid attempts at ecclesiastical reformation, with one eye to the interests of religion, with another to his own interest; and orders, without scruple, abbots to be tried and executed,' castigatque auditque, or the torture to be applied by way of experiment. Pole is exhibited in as many cross lights as there are authors who have described him. His historical character ranges from the sanguinary persecutor to the lenient counsellor of mercy, and the chivalrous friend, leaving Burnet to recant in his third volume what he had said of him in his second. Gardiner is the man of blood-he is the man who abstained from blood, suffering Bonner to shed it, who loved it;-he is the betrayer of the great interests of the nation in his embassy at Paris-he is the assertor of its rights and liberties, in his negotiations with Philip before his marriage. But all this is natural. The epoch which saw these distinguished persons acting their momentous parts on the stage of life was one of extreme exasperation, and friends and foes did not leave, in those times, cause for the wistful sigh, that they would be either cold or hot. Cranmer was not likely to fare better than his less conspicuous contemporaries. With respect to him, above all, there has been, from his own day to ours, the forward voice to speak him well, and the backward voice to utter foul speeches, and to detract, till it is hard to believe the subject of so much praise and vituperation to be one and the same. Mr. Todd, in his recent life of him, has produced some new documents, and investigated some old accusations, in a manner which will tend to establish the truth concerning him; more than this, Cranmer would not ask- Speak of me as I am.' We shall take for granted, that our readers are acquainted with the leading circumstances of the Archbishop's history, and shall merely touch upon such passages in it as may seem to require a remark. Cranmer received his early education from a parish-clerk. 2 c2 This This may seem singular, for he was of gentle blood, and was entered at Cambridge amongst the better sort of students.' But probably such shifts were not unusual before the Reformation. The monasteries indeed had schools attached to them in many instances. In Elizabeth's time a complaint is made by the Speaker of the Commons, that the number of such places of education had been reduced by a hundred, in consequence of the suppression of the religious houses. Still it must often have happened (thickly scattered as the monasteries were) that the child lived at an inconvenient distance from any one of them; mothers, too, might not have liked to trust less robust children to the clumsy care of a fraternity; and probably little was learned in these academies after all. Erasmus makes himself merry with the studies pursued in them; and it is remarkable that no sooner did the love of learning revive, than the popularity of the monasteries declined. For thirty years before the Reformation, there were few or no new religious foundations, whilst schools, on the other hand, began to multiply in their stead; a fact which sufficiently marks the state of public opinion with regard to the monasteries as places of education-for education began now to be the desire of the day. Schools, therefore, in the present acceptation of the term, in Cranmer's boyhood there were scarcely any; and it was the crying want of them in London that induced Dean Colet to establish that of St. Paul's, which, under the fostering care of Lily, the first master, not only became so distinguished in itself, but set the example, and prepared the way, by its rules and its grammar, for so many others which followed in its wake. Edward VI., with the natural feeling of a boy fond of knowledge, and himself a proficient for his years, was aware of the evil, and projected the remedy. Colet might be his model-but he was embarrassed in his means by courtiers, who were for ever uttering the cry of the horse-leech's daughters; and, besides, his days were soon numbered. Cranmer, who perhaps remembered the obstacles in his own way, and who certainly foresaw the great calamity of an ignorant clergy, pressed for the establishment of a school in connexion with every cathedral-a school, as it were, of the prophets-where boys intended for holy orders might be brought up suitably to the profession they were about to adopt, and where the bishops might ever find persons duly qualified to serve God in the church. But Cranmer was overruled, and a measure, which might have helped to catch up the church before it fell into that abyss of ignorance which seems to have immediately succeeded the Reformation, (the natural consequence of a season of convulsion and violence,) was unhappily lost. It was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the evil was at all adequately met, nor fully |