His retirement from so active and enterprising a pursuit as had engaged the subject of these records during a period, altogether, of six-and-thirty years of his life, was by no means an event of unmixed benefit. It was far otherwise. For the effect of wear and tear on the constitution, whilst for this long period subjected to circumstances of peculiar anxiety and excitement of adventure, soon became apparent under the trial of absolute leisure and the deprivation of ordinary stimulus. It is, indeed, a well-ascertained characteristic of the human system, strikingly indicative of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, to derive temporary energy from the very stimulus of the demands for energy. Thus strength, beyond all previous imagination, is often yielded for special occasions, whilst the capability of action is wonderfully maintained for the period of protracted necessity or duty. But the trial comes when the tension of the mysterious fabric of the human system has to be relaxed. The strength, for the occasion, being beyond the ordinary powers of renovation, is maintained by the nervous stimulant at the expense of a wear and tear which not only becomes apparent on the cessation of the undue exercise, but in aggravated proportion by reason of the natural reaction. How far these operations in a too long continued stretch of the natural powers might have induced the inferior state of my Father’s health, during the six years of his life succeeding the time of his retirement from the sea, it is impossible to say; though the fact of this deterioration of health, in the interval of leisure, was abundantly apparent. SECTION IV.—_General Results of his entire Whale-fishing Adventures._ In conclusion of these records of my Father’s Arctic enterprises, commercially, there remain yet to be given the _general_ comparisons and results, in which we shall again find them to be great and pre-eminent. The materials for these comparisons, on my Father’s part, are compendiously exhibited in the following summary of his various voyages:— TABULAR VIEW OF THE SUCCESSES OF THE LATE W. SCORESBY, ESQ., IN HIS ADVENTURES IN THE GREENLAND WHALE-FISHERY.