The Sun.
London, England, 1855-09-04 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph Beng Bellot. 2 Vols.
Hurst and Blackett.
An anonymous biographer has undertaken to
celebrate in a brief but sufficient memorial the
career of that gallant French sailor whose life was
unfortunately sacrificed in the vain but chivalrous
endeavour to carry succour to the missing Arctic
Navigators. Prematurely though that career was
closed, it was nevertheless one so remarkable of its
kind as to deserve some more than ordinary com-
memoration. This more than ordinary commemo-
ration it has obtained in the two volumes here sub-
mitted to our notice—volumes comprising, besides
the anonymous memoiralready alluded to, the whole
of the singularly interesting journals written by
Lieutenant Bellot himself during the course of his
voyage made in the Polar Seas in search of Sir J.
Franklin and his ill-fated companions. These jour-
nals, beginning on the 22d of May, 1851, and ex-
tending to the Bth of September, 1852, embracing
an interval of very nearly sixteen months of ro-
mantic and sometimes perilous adventure' are fol-
lowed towards the close of the second volume by
a variety of illustrative notes and other documents,
these again, being in their turn succeeded by a
number of curious particulars relating to the famous
Bellot Testimonial. As an appropriate frontispiece
to the work, we have an engraving by Chas. Collin
from an original drawing by Jobbe Duval, por-
traying the face and figure of Joseph Rene Bellot,
the brave and the good, as he must have appeared
at the period when his noble life was upon the eve
of its premature termination. The capacious and
massive forehead, the gentle and observant eyes,
the calm courage expressed by lip and nostril,
every line, every lineament of the young mariner's
countenance appears to us strangely and strikingly
characteristic. Having mused for a while over this
effigy of his features so as to become familiarised
with their general expression, and in this manner
to have acquired as it were a personal acquaintance
with the aspect of the man as he was in life, as he
breathed and moved among his fellows—we turn
with increased interest to an examination of the bio-
graphic sketch of his history prefixed to the journals
in which he himself has graphically and vigorously
preserved to zemembrance the principal incidents of
that daring and generous enterprise which will be
his passport to the notice and admiration of pos-
terity.
Although Joseph Ren6 Bellot—the son of a
plain artisan, a smith and farrier—was born at
Paris, he regarded as his native city, by adoption,
the less important locality of the seaport of Roche-
fort. Rochefort was throughout his life viewed
by him with grateful affection, as the spot in which
he had acquired a partly gratuitous education, and
by the aid of the munificent municipality of which
he was enabled, at an early age, to enter upon the
honourable and gallant profession in which he very
rapidly acquired for himself peculiar distinction,
if death snatched from him the opportunity of any
very notable promotion. Bellot's life, beginning
on the 18th of March, 1826, closed at the early
age of 27 years and 5 months, on the 18th of Au-
gust, 1853, when he mysteriously disappeared on
the edge of a vast crack or fissure in a hummock
of ice, into which it was presumed he had been
blown by the heavy wind then prevailing, his
comrades at the time —(a couple of sailors
named David Hook and William Johnson)—
having found his stick lying on the verge of this
great aperture in the hummock, their shouts for
the owner, "Mr. Bellot ! Mr. Bellot !" remaining
unanswered. That is the last we hear of him—the last!
Johnson, in his simple and manly record of the ca-
tastrophe, tells us that almost immediately before
Lieutenant Bellot disappeared down this fissure
in the ice, he had been talking with him and his
other companion about the danger of their posi-
tion, and that when one of them remarked that the
American Expedition had been drawn up and
down this very channel, the Wellington Channel,
Bellot replied—" I know they were ' • and when the
Lord protects us, not a hair of our heads shall be
touched." A few seconds afterwards, it being
then about a quarter past eight a.m. on
Thursday, the 18th of August, 1853, Bellot having
remarked, after lashing up his books, that he would
go and see how the ice was driving, Johnson fol-
lowed him four minutes later round the angle of
the hummock, at the corner of which he had last
been observed. Within that brief interval the
noble-hearted tar had vanished ; and his place was
uo more known amongst his fellows ! His remains
were never recovered. His memory alone was
left; but that memory will long be kept green in
the popular heart, both of France and England.
A memorial obelisk of Aberdeen granite rising to
the height of 34 feet, and inscribed with the name
of BELLOT, and erected after the design of Mr.
Hardwick, R.A., is to commemorate henceforth
the career of the French sailor, in a conspicuous
position on the banks of the Thames at Greenwich.
Viewed from the river this interesting monument
will have the fountain of the western esplanade or
green in the background, and above that on the
hill the famous Observatory. It is a historical
spot to have selected, a site, observes the editor of
these volumes, upon which " no English officer—
not even Nelson—has had a similar mark of
respect paid him," that of a monument raised in
his honour on the exterior of the great Hospital,
the Sailor's Palace at Greenwich. Bellot deserved
some peculiar recognition like this, and his memory,
has secured it amidst an universal feeling of sa-
tisfaction. He will be remembered by posterity,
as he was appreciated by his contemporaries.
"In promise," says Colonel Sabine, I have
rarely seen his equal, and never his superior." Sir
Roderick Murchison has spoken of him affection-
ately as his valued young friend," and admiringly
as " the good and intrepid Bellot." "Ma foi,
Monsieur," exclaimed the vivacious Jules Janin,
running up to the young officer in the May of
1851, when they accidentally encountered each
I other, at the time of the Universal Exhibition :
"Ma foi, Monsieur, I had a great wish to know
you ; you are a brave man ; allow me to clasp
your hand—" the impulsive tueilletonist, adding
afterwards when he related the incident, " I loved
him at once, the charming lad, whom I saw but for
two or three hours." Others have spoken of him
no less earnestly in the language of unaffected ad-
miration. M. Chasseriau, on the 16th of October,
1853, through an article in the M oniteur. M. de
la Roquette, in the memoir written by him
in the latter part of tho same year, that " re-
markable memoir," says Bellot's anonymous bio-
grapher, in which the memorialist has " worthily
appreciated the seaman, the voyager, and the stu-
dious geographer." Captain Ro wain Desfosses
(under whom ho served) spoke of him as a " dis-
tinguished eleve "—" good for everything, and full
of ardour to do everything ; superior in all points
to his position." Remember, for a moment, what
that position was : Bellot was the son, as we have
remarked, of a simple artisan—a smith or farrier of
Rochefort. His intelligence as a child induced the
municipality of that seaport to obtain for him, at
the instance of the mayor, a demiburse at the Col-
lege at Rochefort. At the age of little more
than seventeen he has fairly embarked in
his profession. He moves successively into
the Borda, into the Suffren, into the Friedland.
He makes his first cruise on board the cor-
vette Berceau. He quits France for the first
time in this way, as an eleve de marine, on
the 23d of June, 1844. Before twenty, he is, by
the Ist of November, 1845, an eleve of the first-
class, and, by the second of December following,
is named Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. A
little later we find him no longer in the corvette
Berceau, but, with the ribbon of the Great Order
at his button-hole, on board the frigate Belle
Poule. On the 15th of November, 1847, he is
promoted to the rank of enseigne de vaisseau. As
such he is in the Pandore, and, as such, a little
later, he sets sail on the 23d of July, 1848, for La
Plata and Oceania on board the corvette Triom-
phante. By the 25th of August, 1850, he is back
again at Rochefort. Then followed that voyage to
the Polar Seas which needs not here to be particu-
larised. It is vividly within the general recol-
lection. It is the source of all our interest in
Bellot. It is as much, as directly, as indisputably
the secret of his fame, as it was the cause of his
dissolution. Thus lived and died, for others more
than for himself, in the service of his country, in
the interests of humanity, beloved, respected, and
admired by all with whom he came in contact,
Joseph Rene Bellot—a self-made man, son of a
farrier of .Rochefort, officer of the Imperial navy
of France, chevalier of the Legion of Napoleon,
one to whose memory England, in gratitude not
less than in admiration, resolved to raise an
obelisk in granite upon the banks oletphieta,Tihuannider,
upon the esplanade of Greenwich Re-
the shadow of the Greenwich Observatory.
membering his brief and chivalrous lirfeern,
cially hearing in recollection hisksp
upon these
heroic death, close we our rawer abt uu tr
se sapned-
v t ibutive aspiration—
volumes of his Memoirs an
earnest sentence by d Journals, with one
f the young French
Hthoeno:arinede, hanendceftohrtelZfaabtay:faellr English hearts, be
Naval Lieutenant !

.
should
Embassies and Foreign, Courts : a _History of Bipio.
By " The Roving Englishman,,,
into friend
a mereTheG.
?Juicy.
outledge.
oeruartinotit
It really appears to us a sad pity that we
firtnodvinag brilliant English
Englishman
nitgr
degenerating
book-maker. Yet as such he actually appears be-
fore us in this his " History of
thing of " shreds and patches," relating
sorts of frivolous gossip about relating. to us all
Foreign Courts." Our author, in this manner,
" Embassies and
taring f31414419111itti UM hip y,
obby goes off at