Orebro, June. - This is an ancient town almost in the centre of the country, at the head of the Hielmare lake, which is connected by a canal with the Malare lake, upon which Stockholm is situated. The distance from the Wener to the Hielmare is about 55 miles. The most remarkable feature in this tract of country is the immense number of those blocks or rolled masses of granite, gneiss, and other primary rocks which cover the surface. The whole peninsula, Denmark, and Lower Germany, are strewed over with these erratic blocks, as they are termed by German geologists, and it is difficult to conceive where they have come from, or how they have been transported. Those to the north of the Wener are rounded or rolled, and appear to have been exposed to much friction; but it strikes me those between the Wener and Hielmare are of a different character-the edges and corners are sharp, and they could not have been rubbed and rolled about so much by torrents or the sea, and this difference of character seems to increase, the further east they are found.

The country in this district is inhabited in hamlets. The fields are large; some which were preparing for rye are among the longest ploughed fields I ever saw. Such is the rapidity of vegetation here that rye is in ear which four weeks ago must have been under snow; grass is fit for pasturage, and peas which are a common field crop, and all the spring sown corn, are above ground. The land is very clean, which I attribute less to good farming, or destroying the weeds by fallowing or

working the land, than to climate, which kills the seeds of the annuals by early frosts before they are all ripened. Docks, thistles, ragweed, and such root weeds as infest our land, seem rare here, even on the roadside, or in neglected corners.

The Swedish diet, which settled the succession of the crown on Gustavus Vasa, was held at Orebro in 1540. The building is like an old French chateau surrounding a small open court. This town has a considerable inland trade. The numerous but small iron manufactories create a demand for goods, and as particular places only are privileged to trade, and the burgesses of such places only entitled to open shops upon obtaining rights and licenses, those towns have a monopoly of the business of the adjacent country, without competition from country dealers.

I got into an inn here, which may give the traveller an idea of the way of living on the road. At every mile or mile and a-half Swedish, that is, from seven to ten miles English-there is a Skyds-station, or a post station to which the peasants are obliged to bring their horses upon certain days in regular tour of duty, to be in waiting to post with travellers. If more happen to arrive than the horses on duty for the day can accommodate, a certain number of reserve horses liable in turn to this duty on that day, but allowed to be working at home until required, may be called out; but of course the traveller may wait an hour or two before these can be got to the station. The master of the station is also obliged to keep horses of his own to take the

duty in turn. A book is delivered every month to the master of the station by the local authorities, in which every traveller must insert his name and business or rank, whence he came, where he is going to, with what passport, and the number of horses he has taken-whether those on duty, or of the reserve horses, or of the station keepers. There is also a column for inserting any complaint he has to make of delay. As every day is provided with its own horses, according to an exact roll of the duty of all the peasants obliged to give horses to this service, if any undue neglect or delay is complained of, it is immediately seen what farm ought to have furnished a horse and boy at the Skyds station, and at what time; and those books are as regularly given in and checked every month as excise returns with us. Pretty sharp fines, corporal punishment when fines cannot be paid, and a body of functionaries with little to do, little pay, and an interest in fines, keep this system effective. The station master has the advantage of being the only innkeeper in the country. In the towns, others are also licensed to keep inns. I put up at the Skyds house at Orebro, and I suppose it is in much the same state as in the days of Gustavus Vasa. It is built round a court-yard, in which horses, peasants, carts, boys, dogs, and travellers, with a few pigs, and servant girls half undressed for heat, and scudding to and from the kitchen, are mingled in glorious confusion. The bed-room, however, which I got was much cleaner than I expected: but for dinner I was referred to another

house in which people keep food but not beds for travellers. Here you order a portion according to a carte or list of dishes; but in country towns the carte seldom tells of more than three sorts of dishes, of which only one generally is of any sort of meat. If you want any thing to drink, except it be anise brandy, or ale, which in general is very good, you must go to a third house, the Kallare or town's cellar, where you may get wine. Should you want a desert, you must go to a fourth, the conditor's or confectioner's, where you get pastry, coffee, and liqueurs. The Swede comes home at last to take his siesta, which all classes enjoy as regularly as in Spain or Italy at this season. The labouring people regularly sleep in the shade for an hour or two; and the middle classes go to bed after dinner during the summer.

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The system of posting is evidently very oppressive. The rate paid for each horse is one-third of a dollar banco, or about 7d. sterling for the Swedish mile, equal to seven English. This is one third less than is paid in Norway for the same distance but neither rate can indemnify the husbandman for the loss of a day's work of horse and man, in seed time or harvest. It is, besides, an infringement of the sacredness of property to impress it against the owner's will for the convenience of his fellow-subjects. It shows but rude notions of the rights of property, to consider the payment, even if large enough to satisfy the horse owner, as a justification of this legal violation of those rights. It is an old abuse unworthy of an enlightened country in the present age.

Arboga, June. I proceeded to this town of about 3000 inhabitants, and apparently a good deal of business. The road and streets were crowded with carts, carrying iron to the town. It is near to the canal which unites the Hielmare and Malare, and is an entrepôt for the iron to be shipped at Stockholm. In all these little towns, the most considerable houses are those inhabited by the public functionaries under government, and the clergy. Private people of fortune, noblemen, or gentlemen not in trade or public office, do not reside in the towns. The mansion-houses of the gentry, which I have seen from the road, are large, and apparently all connected with large farms in the hands of the proprietors, the farm offices, and ploughed land, being close around the main dwelling, and generally an iron foundery close to it.

The country all from the frontier, or even the Glommen, is as flat as the middle counties of England. The view is only obstructed by gently swelling features of land in a distant horizon. The erratic blocks of primary rock are not, as more to the north, scattered indiscriminately over the surface and so profusely that scarcely an acre of land in one sheet is without one or more heaps of them. Here they are collected in long spits, or tongues, resting upon large plains which are quite free of and unconnected with them, for the land does not shape into valleys and depressions, nor the waters run according to these elevations upon it. They are upon the face of the country, like gravel upon a table, which a child has swept into long