spectacle. I see them employed in mending boats, sawing wood, carrying mortar, and such work as necessarily brings them into communication with other labourers. They are even speaking to the children and women in the streets. It is not wise and certainly not pleasant, to have these malefactors constantly before the public. They lose all sense of their disgrace, and perhaps the citizens do the same.

Christiania, Wednesday, July 23. The weather excessively sultry, which is unusual here.

After considering and consulting about my mode of travelling, I have to-day bought a little secondhand cariole, for which, with the harness, I have paid twenty-five dollars, or about 31.: 18s. The Norwegian cariole is a little gig, just large enough for one person, and resting between two low light wheels, upon two cross bars of wood morticed in the shafts. They are made also with iron springs; but I preferred the wood, as in travelling it can easily be got repaired, which iron work cannot; besides, the shafts are so elastic, that the jolting is very slight on ordinary roads. Travelling, I am told, is very cheap; only one ort, about 94d. sterling, for a horse, per Norwegian mile, which is no less than seven of our degenerate English miles. One must, a few hours before starting, send off a forbud, in travellers' language, "a courier," but, in humble reality, a little ragged boy, who for four skillings, or 1d. a stage, precedes you in a baggage cart with your luggage, and leaves at each post station a printed notice, in

which you have previously filled up the number of horses you require, and the hour of your arrival. The station master sends notice to the farmers whose turn it is to furnish horses for this service, and is entitled to four skillings per horse for his trouble. The horses are always in readiness, if fair time be allowed by sending off the forbud the day before. A book is kept at each station, in which the traveller states how he has been served; and these books are examined and signed regularly by the local authorities, and checked by superior officers of the district, and any complaint of undue delay is examined into. This arrangement certainly makes travelling easy, even to a stranger unacquainted with the language; but I have been beset ever since I landed with couriers, valets, or interpreters, offering their services. These gentlemen seem to think it an infringement upon their privilege, that a foreigner, especially from England, should presume to travel without one of them to hold his purse. I have bought a travelling map, have made the waiter fill up forbud notices for horses, all the way up to what appears by this map to be the centre, or highest point of the country, where the waters part, and the great valleys begin, which is near a station called Jerkin. I have packed up and sent off my luggage this evening, by the forbud, and off I go by day-break to-morrow.

July 24.-Having set off this morning at four, I resolved to make a good offing at first from the metropolis, and jog on more leisurely when I

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should get into the heart of the country. fore travelled until sunset, and stopped at this single farmhouse, on the side of the Myosen lake, 10 Norwegian miles, about 75 English, from the capital. The house, I understand, is called Frognet. I have had one of those delightful days of which one never loses the impression, and which only passes in the midst of novel scenery. The Myosen is a splendid sheet of water. Its scenery I would class with the pastoral, or beautiful, rather than with the sublime. Its coasts are well cultivated, and with the exception of a few rough promontories dipping into the lake, the slopes are easy, and the back country in view not strikingly high. The crops of oats, bear, flax, peas, and potatoes, along its coast, are beautiful. The houses appear good. I have not seen one that could be called a poor habitation.

July 26.I got to this farmhouse, which is called Holmen, last night, about 8 Norwegian, or 58 English, miles from Frognet. The scenery of a river, as large here as the Tay at Dunkeld, filling the narrow valley in some places, and in others, forming a long motionless lake amidst the woods, or rushing like a mountain stream through the gorges, affords many picturesque points of view. At the end of the Myosen lake, there is a small village called Lille Hammer, which was formerly a town of some importance. It is the first village I have seen in the country. The extent of cultivation in the Strath of the Myosen, extending up to this village, surprised me. It is not merely a

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fringe between the hill and the shore, but reaches far back among the hills, and over the summits of the ordinary heights. I would compare its breadth to that of Strathmore in Forfarshire. The farming cannot be very bad, for the crops of oats, bear, and rye are excellent. Potatoes, which appear to occupy the place of the turnip in our farming, are clean, and well horse-hoed. Draining and clearing new land of roots of trees and stones, are going on in various quarters, and lime was laid out at one place for spreading. Farms appeared to be of various sizes; I observed many so large that a bell was used as in Scotland, to call the labourers to or from their work, which shows a certain regularity in their operations. Some are so small as to have only a few sheaves of corn, or a rig or two of potatoes, scattered among the trunks of the trees. These appear occupied by the farm-servants, or cottars, of the main farm, paying probably in work for their houses and lands, as in Scotland. Very good houses these are; loghouses of four rooms, and all with glass windows. The light does not come down the chimney, or through a hole in the wall, shut up at night with an old hat, or a pair of old breeches, as in some cottages in the county of Edinburgh. The division of the land among children, appears not, during the thousand years it has been in operation, to have had the effect of reducing the landed properties to the minimum size that will barely support human existence. I have counted from five and twenty to forty cows upon farms, and that in a country in which the

farmer must, for at least seven months in the year, have winter provender and houses provided for all the cattle. It is evident that some cause or other, operating an aggregation of landed property, counteracts the dividing effects of partition among children. That cause can be no other than what I have long conjectured would be effective in such a social arrangement; viz., that in a country where land is held, not in tenancy merely, as in Ireland, but in full ownership, its aggregation by the deaths of coheirs, and by the marriages of female heirs among the body of landowners, will balance its subdivision by the equal succession of children. The whole mass of property will, I conceive, be found in such a state of society to consist of as many estates of the class of 10007., as many of 1007., as many of 107. a-year, at one period, as at another. The state of Ireland is generally adduced as a proof of the evil which would result from the abolition of primogeniture. There it is stated, the sons of the peasant marry and settle upon a portion of the father's farm, itself originally too small for one family, and by this system of subdivision, the whole class of peasantry is reduced to a lower state in respect of decencies, comforts, and enjoyments, than any population which is ranked within the pale of civilised life. It has always appeared to me, however, that the state of Ireland instead of being a case in point, proves the very reverse. There the land and other property is not disseminated in ownership, or in small portions among the mass of the inhabitants. It is notoriously held in