above the sea level, the waters of the Baltic and of the ocean must have been the same in saltness; for the whole country, from the coast of Norway to the Hartz almost, must, with the exception of a few high points as islands, have been under water, and the Baltic filled from the ocean, by its whole breadth, instead of by the small openings, the Sound and Belt. The animals on both sides of the peninsula must have been of the same species. The land must have left the sea, therefore-not the sea the land -to account for the fact of their diversity; and the difference in the relation of land and sea must have been local, and not extending to the general shape of the land. The Baltic must have been always so enclosed by the land as to be a brackish inland sea, not adapted to the oceanic molluscæ at the time when parts of the land were two hundred feet nearly below their present elevation.

On crossing the frontier at Swinesund, one of those long narrow inlets of the sea or clefts in the rock, which are characteristic of the peninsula, the traveller sees at once that he is among a different people: the soil and farming worse; but every thing in order -- the sticks even on the roadside marking out the portions of road to be kept up by each farmer, painted white and red, and neatly lettered and numbered: the bridges, rails, fences, in a finished state; the houses in good repair; a spirit of conservation every where visible. At the falls of the Glommen there is an extensive establishment of saw-mills; and an activity and

order which show that English capital and enterprise are at work there.

I arrived at Moss, a small town on the side of the Christiana fiord, which is frequented in summer for sea-bathing by all the beau-monde of Christiana; and crossing the fiord at Droback, reached Drammen, the point from which I set out on this tour in Sweden.

CHAPTER IX.

SWEDISH POLICY TO BE STUDIED IN NORWAY.

SUPPOSED COUP D'ETAT IN 1836. WHY UNSUCCESSFUL.- CONSERVATIVE POWER OF THE CIVIL INSTITUTIONS. — STORTHING.PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS. STATE OF DENMARK AND NORWAY UNDER OPPOSITE SYSTEMS OF LEGISLATION. PUBLIC DEBT OF DENMARK — OF NORWAY. - DIRECT TAXES. FICE TRANSMISSION OF NEWSPAPERS IN NORWAY.-FOREIGN NORWEGIAN NEWSPAPERS.

NEWSPAPERS.

-

POST-OF

EDITORIAL WINTER OF 1836 IN

SOCIETY.

HOUSES.

FURNITURE. EN

JOYMENTS OF THE LOWER CLASSES. - COLD. CALMNESS. MONTAGNES RUSSES. PEASANTS' COSTUME. FEASTS. - COFFEE AND SUGAR, OR MILK, THE BEST BREAKFAST FOR A NATION? - -DEAD BEAR. LYNX. ENVIRONS. SHAPE OF PENINSULA.

SWEDEN, cut off territorially and politically from the other European states, has no other field in which her government and statesmen can exert their influence but Norway; it is in her transactions with that country that the spirit and principle on which she acts are displayed. I passed the winter of 1836 in Christiana, and great part of the year 1837, and shall condense the various observations I then made on the political relations of the two countries, as more illustrative of the policy and affairs of Sweden during the present reign, than the more hasty memoranda of the traveller.

The sudden dissolution of the Norwegian storthing, in June, 1836, without any reasonable

motive or object that could be divined in the midst of unfinished public business; the budget not passed; and many important acts only in progress through its committees - was viewed by the liberals of the north of Europe as a little coup d'etat in its way, made in the secret expectation that the irritation and excitement which it could not fail to produce in the public mind would lead to acts or expressions of the storthing or the people, which would furnish a plausible pretext for the interference of the executive government, and for the remodelling of this democratic constitution on principles more agreeable to the Swedish aristocracy, and to the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance into whose arms the Swedish monarch has thrown himself. It was not to be endured that a country which the Swedish nobles consider a province given to Sweden as a compensation for Finland, and to be governed on Swedish principles for Swedish interests and account, should have maintained its independence, and be flourishing so remarkably under its own legislation, without privileged orders or hereditary legislators; without Swedish help, or interference in its internal affairs; the executive power, invested with a suspensive veto only, and storthing after storthing rejecting unanimously the royal propositions for investing the King with the sole initiative in making laws, and with an absolute veto. It was even whispered, that the visit of the late Swedish minister of state, Count Wetterstedt, to London and Paris, during the summer of 1836, on account of his health, was

not to mend his own constitution only, but the Norwegian to sound the great powers who guarantee the independent existence and free institutions of Norway, as a kingdom united under one crown with Sweden; whether, if plausible pretext from internal tumult were given, an interference with the independence of Norway as a state, or with the ground principles of its constitution, would be permitted. If such a coup was intended, it failed from the confidence of the nation in the

conservative power of its civil establishments.

In France a coup d'etat succeeds - the limited monarchy of to-day is a despotism to-morrow; and a republic before Saturday night Saturday night- because the whole machinery of a government, all the functionaries, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, depend entirely upon the executive power, whatever it may be, and whether acting constitutionally or not. They are in the hands, and at the mercy, of the power of the day for their daily bread, and at its good will, for their future professional advancement; the nation has nothing between it and misgovernment, or aggression on its freedom, but the fear of tumult and popular commotion. But in Norway, the public functionary, from the lowest clerk to the highest dignitary, has his defined rights connecting him with the legislative, as much as his duties with the executive, branch of the state he cannot be displaced but by the sentence of a court of law: he cannot even be removed from one locality to another against his will: his salary cannot be diminished, and he has a legal