ip during
this voyage brought him into such prominence that during the next year he
was appointed by the Admiralty to command an expedition to travel overland
from Hudson's Bay to the Arctic Ocean. During the course of this expedition
he and his companions walked 5,560 miles and endured many hardships, of
which Franklin wrote a thrilling narrative on his return to England in
1822. He then married Eleanor Porden, the author of the heroic poem
"Coeur de Lion." In 1825 he was appointed to the command of another
overland Arctic expedition. When the day of his departure arrived, his wife
was dying of consumption. Lying at the point of death as she was, she would
not let him delay his voyage, and gave him for a parting gift a silk flag
to hoist when he reached the Polar Sea. On the day after Franklin left
England she died. When he returned again he was knighted and showered with
honors by various scientific societies of England and France. After serving
as Governor of Van Diemen's Land, Sir John, in 1845, was appointed an
admiral, and then another Arctic expedition to discover the Northwest
Passage was organized. He sailed from Sheerness on May 26, 1845, and was
last seen by a whaler in Baffin's Bay. Many years later a record was found
on the northwest shore of King William's Land, announcing that Sir John
Franklin died in the spring of 1847, and that the survivors of his
expedition had attempted to make their way back on the ice to the American
continent. To Sir John Franklin belongs the honor of the first discovery of
the northwest passage leading from Lancaster Sound to Behring Strait.

[Sidenote: O'Connell's last speech]

[Sidenote: Death of O'Connell]

On February 8, Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish Parliamentary leader, made
his last speech in the English House of Commons. The question on which he
spoke was a proposed bill for the relief of famine in Ireland: "I am
afraid," he said, in the course of this address, "that the English people
are not sufficiently impressed with the horrors of the situation in
Ireland. I do not think they understand the accumulated miseries which my
people are suffering. It has been estimated that 5,000 adults and 10,000
children have already died from famine, and that one-fourth of the whole
population must perish unless something is done." Failing in health
himself, O'Connell went to Italy. At Rome, Pope Pius IX. prepared a
magnificent reception for him. Before he could reach the Eternal