The literary skill with which the writer of these volumes has told the story of the Austrian Arctic Expedition is quite equal to the best of similar narratives by any former Arctic explorer. He describes the really wonderful fortunes of the expedition, through all its many vicissitudes and perils, simply and modestly, yet with great vividness and realistic power. His story purports to be no more than a popular narrative of what Austria has accomplished in Arctic discovery; but it is really more than this. In addition to their interest as a record of courageous enterprise and patient resolution and endurance in the face of the most excessive hardships, the volumes possess a distinct scientific value; for their author is an accomplished man of science, as well as a brave navigator and explorer. In a portion of the introductory chapters, Lieutenant Payer treats at length and with great clearness the various theories that have at different times been put forward as to the existence of an open Polar sea. He unhesitatingly concludes that no such sea exists; a conclusion which agrees with the actual discoveries of our own Arctic expedition. From this opinion, however, his colleague Commander Weyprecht, dissents, as does also the eminent German geographer Dr Petermann. 'The Pole impracticable;' such was the brief telegraphic summary with which the announcement of the return of the _Alert_ and _Discovery_ was heralded. But Captain Nares has since modified this expression. He wishes it to be understood that all he means to affirm is, that the Pole is impracticable by the route taken by the _Alert_ and _Discovery_, and with the present existing scientific appliances. Impracticable the North Pole may perhaps ever remain, if the state of the ice encountered by our expedition and by Lieutenant Payer be its normal one. But of this we have as yet no certain proof; nor yet, in spite of our author's well-reasoned conclusions, that in some seasons an open sea may not exist. Some of our readers may remember that the American expedition in the _Polaris_, under Captain Hall, found open water where the sledging-parties of the _Alert_ and _Discovery_ found only vast ice masses of a hundred and fifty feet in height. It appears to us then that nothing dogmatic can be said on one side or the other in respect to this question.