about nothing in all their affairs; - departments of state, and functionaries with high-sounding titles, superintend matters-such as the mining, naval, or canal business-which a director, with ten or twelve clerks, would manage in countries which have real business to do. Ambassadors and envoys are kept up at every court;-now, when the influence of Sweden in European affairs is less than that of many private mercantile firms-Consuls from Sweden are in every mercantile port in the world, with a mercantile shipping list not greater than that of single sea-port towns in America, Britain, or Holland. To appear of importance, since the reality is gone- to make a display that may impose upon her subjects as well as upon foreigners, is the rule upon which all is moulded in the domestic and foreign policy of Sweden, and with the same results as with private individuals the loss of the real comfort and wellbeing they might enjoy at home; and of the real respect and influence they might obtain abroad.

CHAPTER VIII.

BACCO.
WICK. WISBY.
ANCIENT

TO

STEAM TO THE ISLAND OF GOTHLAND.-SAINT OLAF. EVENING SCENERY.—OAKS. BUOYS.-WESTERANCIENT TOWN WALLS. RUINS. GREATNESS. - OLD CHURCHES. SAXON AND NORMAN STYLE OF ARCHITECTURE IN CHURCHES BUILT IN 1086. PURITY OF TASTE. MERCANTILE MARKS ON OLD TOMBS.- PORT OF WISBY. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY.PRICE OF LAND. SOIL. - CLIMATE. MEETING OF HERITORS. -ISLAND OF GOTHLAND. FORMATION. ORGANIC REMAINS. -POPULATION. MORAL CONDITION. CRIME.

PUNISHMENT.— -INQUISITION NOT ABOLISHED IN LUTHERAN COUNTRIES, BUT TRANSFERRED FROM THE CHURCH COURTS TO THE STATE. — DIFFERENT IDEAS OF CRIME IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.- DIFFERENT PRINCIPLES ON WHICH PUNISHMENTS ARE AWARDED IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE POSITION OF GOTHLAND IN THE BALTIC.- RUSSIA.SWEDISH POLICY. MILDNESS OF CLIMATE. -RUNIC INSCRIPTIONS. BERZELIUS. RETURN TO SWEDEN.- JONKIOPPING.— TABERG.— THE WETTER LAKE. THE COUNTRY BETWEEN THE WETTER AND WENER LAKES. BETWEEN THE WENER LAKE AND GLOMMEN. BEDS OF SHELLS OF EXISTING SPECIES AT UDDEVALLA.—— RISE OF THE LAND. RETURN TO NORWAY. — MOSS. DRAMMEN.

August 15. — I
I EMBARKED to-day in a small

steam vessel bound to the island of Gothland: our course has been up the lake Malare, following the most southerly branch of it to the extreme end, where a short canal connects it with a long sound or inlet of the Baltic. It was in this branch of the Malare, if I am not mistaken, that Saint Olaf, when a Viking, was penned up on one of his piratical

expeditions in the eleventh century, by the united fleets of the Swedish and Danish monarchs: they expected to starve him out, or to force him to engage with his few ships to a disadvantage. He made a ditch or canal from the lake to the Baltic, through which he carried his vessels to sea, leaving the enemy blockading the entrance of the branch of the lake. There is now a beautiful canal, and the transition from the lake to the sea is so imperceptible, that I was only aware of our being out of the fresh water on seeing medusæ and pieces of seaweed floating alongside. A little town, called Sodretellje, stands at the junction of the lake with the sea. I observed tobacco growing in some quantity about this place every cottage had a plot, like a cabbage garden, of tobacco plants, well hoed and weeded. The Swedes use a great deal of snuff, and the common people use it in a peculiar way; they put a large pinch of it under the tongue. The quality of their own tobacco is probably inferior for smoking or snuffing; but for this use, being mixed with saltpetre and other ingredients, it may be as good as foreign; and it is got without buying, which is the principle on which society moves in Sweden. It is not to earn, in order to buy as with our common people; but to do without buying-to want, rather than buy. We stopped this evening at sunset, and are lying alongside of a rocky bank of the narrow inlet for the night. We are in one of the most picturesque of Swedish landscapes. It is a great advantage in Baltic scenery, that you have no ebb-tide, leaving a wet, muddy interval be

tween the growing trees on the green banks and the water edge the water, also, is so shut in and sheltered in these narrow long inlets and bights, that its surface is calm and unruffled; and it is so deep, close to the shore, that vessels come up to the rock as to a quay. We are beautifully concealed in a little cove, overshadowed by a group of fine old oaks: the round masses of foliage of these magnificent trees are a relief to the eye, after the jagged fir-top outline of the northern forests. The oak arrives to a great size in this part of Sweden, and, as a planted tree, grows as far north as Gefle, or nearly to latitude 61°. In the park or Djur Garden at Stockholm there are oaks which could scarcely be matched in England for size and picturesque appearance: the leaf is of a paler green, and less dentated than that of the English oak; and the soil seems less congenial to the plant, for there is no underwood or copse, with young sprouts or saplings of oak growing like weeds on the ground, as in England in the oak-growing counties. We are in a bight, like a small pool rather than an inlet of the sea, surrounded by white rocks and green trees, and moored to a bank on which children are gathering strawberries to sell to the passengers.

Westerwick, August 16.- We proceeded at daylight this morning down the sound, and followed the line of coast on passing its mouth, leaving the chain of isles and rocks, the skeergard, outside of us, and sometimes winding among them through channels scarcely wider than the vessel. These channels are marked by buoys, of a better and far

less expensive kind than those used in our sea ways: a pole, or branch of a tree not thicker than a walking-stick, is anchored by one end, so that it stands upright in the water; - it presents no surface, like our kegs or barrel-shaped buoys, for the waves to act upon; it can never drag its anchor, or be broken loose by the force of the sea; is very visible, with a tuft of the small branches left upon the top of the stick; is easily replaced and costs only a rope, a stone, and a pole. It would be impossible to navigate along this coast without a succession of buoys close to each other; which it would require an enormous sum to keep up, if the Swedes used our expensive kind of buoy to mark out every sunk rock and turn in these intricate channels. Towards evening we passed a tract of the coast open to the sea, and arrived at this neat thriving town, Westerwick. It has a population of 3000 inhabitants, and several large vessels: -vessels built here are of oak, and considered the best of their class in Sweden. The decline of the Swedish commercial shipping from year to year is very remarkable, and must be alarming to the government. Sweden builds ships cheaply, yet cannot navigate them so cheaply as the Norwegians and other people who buy her vessels, and trade to and from Sweden with them. The cause is said to be the want of good shipmasters; and the restrictive system, by which good cannot be selected but only privileged and the interference of government in the detail of victualling the seamen, by which stowage in the vessels is wasted. At this place I was glad to get into a pretty good inn on shore. The