if you like, call in the assistance of Irish, when hard pressed."

"I have my fears on thnt score. There is no knowing where that might lead to discovesy. You know the story of the Knight of Kerry and Billy

Macabe ?"

"I fear I must confess my ignorance -I never heard of it."

"Then may be you never knew Giles Daxon ?"

"I have not that pleasure either." "Lord bless me, how strange that is! I thought he was better known than the Duke of Wellington or the travelling piper. Well, I must tell you the story, for it has a moral, too—indeed several morals; but you'll find that out for yourself. Well, it seems that one day the Knight of Kerry was walking along the Strand in London, killing an hour's time, till the house was done prayers, and Hume tired of hearing himself speaking; his eye was caught by an enormous picture displayed upon the wall of a house, representing a human figure covered with long dark hair, with huge nails upon his hands, and a most fearful expression of face. At first the Knight thought it was Dr. Bowring; but on coming nearer he heard a man with a scarlet livery and a cocked hat, call out, Walk in, ladies and gentlemen-the most vonderful curiosity ever exhibited-only one shilling the vild man from Chippoowango, in Africay-eats raw wittals without being cooked, and many other surprising and pleasing performances.'

denly, the savage gave a more frantic scream than before, and seized upon a morsel of raw beef, which a keeper extended to him upon a long fork, like a tandem whip-he was not safe, it appears, at close quarters ;-this he tore to pieces, eagerly, and devoured in the most voracious manner, amid great clapping of hands, and other evidences of satisfaction from the audience. I'll go, now, thought the Knight; for, God knows whether, in his hungry moods, he might not fancy to conclude his dinner with a member of parliament. Just at this instant, some sounds struck upon his ear that surprised him not a little. He listened more attentively; and, conceive if you can, his amazement, to find that, amid his most fearful cries, and wild yells, the savage was talking Irish. Laugh, if you like; but it's truth I am telling you; nothing less than Irish. Then he was jumping four feet high in the air, eating his raw meat; pulling out his hair by handfulls; and, amid all this, cursing the whole company to his heart's content, in as good Irish as ever was heard in Tralee. Now, though the Knight had heard of red Jews, and white Negroes, he never happened to read any account of an African Irishman; so, he listened very closely, and, by degrees, not only the words were known to him, but the very voice was familiar. At length, something he heard, left no further doubt upon his mind, and, turning to the savage, he addressed him in Irish, at the same time fixing a look of most scrutinizing import upon him,

"Who are you, you scoundrel ?" said the Knight.

Billy McCabe, your honour." "And what do you mean by playing off these tricks here, instead of earning your bread like an honest man ?”

66

Whisht," said Billy, "and keep the secret. I'm earning the rent for your honor. One must do many a queer thing that pays two pound ten an acre for bad land.”

This was enough: the Knight wished Billy every success, and left him amid the vociferous applause of a well-satisfied audience. This adventure, it seems, has made the worthy Knight a great friend to the introduction of poor laws; for, he remarks very truly, that more of Billy's countrymen might take a fancy to a savage life, if the secret were found out.

It was impossible for me to preserve my incognito, as Mr. O'Leary concluded his story, and I was obliged to join in the mirth of Trevanion, who laughed loud and long, as he finished it.

THE present publication may be regarded as a natural and appropriate sequel to Mr. Laing's former work"A Journal of a Residence in Norway"-of which some notice was taken in our number for April, 1837. From the intimate acquaintance which Mr. Laing, in that work, showed with the history of the country, and the habits and social condition of the people amongst whom he resided for nearly three years, we looked upon his Norwegian tour as having made a valuable contribution to our stock of information respecting the political and domestic economy of that interesting section of the Scandinavian peninsula. The sketches of society and manners which he gave were pleasing, and drawn with fidelity. His short notices of Norwegian literature and ancient history were the more appreciated from their novelty these being subjects fresh to most English readers. The same remark holds true of his statistical details, his account of the Storthing or parliament, of the courts of justice, and the general working of the constitution. His views on the state of agriculture had the advantage of being those of a practical man, personally conversant with the subject; and if we except some peculiar crotchets of his own, respecting the alleged advantages arising from the subdivision of property, the abolition of primogenital rights and hereditary nobility, the picture which he gave of the husbandry and farming classes of Norway was a fair and honest representation. Altogether, his Journal, as a book of travels, claimed a higher rank than can be allowed to the generality of publications belonging to its class.

With these facts before us-with the knowledge of Mr. Laing's experience and opportunities as a northern tourist, we confess we were led to form very sanguine hopes of the result of his journey through Sweden. We expected a mass of statistical information from a person so accustomed as he is to minute inquiry. We anticipated the production of many new and important facts relative to the government, institutions, customs, civilization,

and social economy in that retired quarter of Europe, so rarely visited by English travellers. The remarks of so shrewd an observer as Mr. Laing, and one so well versed in Scandinavian history and politics, we thought must be of no ordinary value in throwing light on a region and a people who have not of late much attracted the notice of foreigners. In most of these respects we are compelled to confess that we have been disappointed. Mr. Laing's Tour in Sweden is a very flimsy and superficial affair. His topographical descriptions are meagre and unsatisfactory; and as for delineating the local scenery and charming landscapes of which that country affords so many picturesque specimens, Mr. Laing might almost, so far as the reader is concerned, have performed the journey with his eyes bandaged. He traverses the kingdom from shore to shore through its finest provinces, yet he gives no clear impression of its physical structure or outward appearance. Of its rivers he says little-of its canals nothing. The only observations of any value, are those suggested by the state of the peasantry, the quality of the crops, posting regulations, which are very absurd, and the bickerings between the government and the periodical press. On these topics his remarks are interesting, because they are new, and the latest we possess. Though he visited the capital and several of the principal towns, we are not much the wiser for the information he communi

cates. He appears to have mixed little in society, and to have visited few or none of the public institutions, such as the theatres, academies, &c.; at least he gives no account of them. What he has recorded of the organisation of the army, the attendance at the universities, the constitution of the Diet, the change of dynasty, the courts of justice, the statistics of crime, &c., has not the merit of originality. All these details are matters of fact, derived from history, or borrowed from official documents, and could have been compiled as easily in London, Dublin, or Edinburgh, as in Stockholm. Indeed Mr. Laing, in gathering his statistical

VOL. XIII.

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facts, has drawn very liberally from Forsell and other native writers, whose works, though admirable digests of their kind, are scarcely known in this country. Subtracting what he has drawn from these sources, and from the patent record of history, Mr. Laing's individual contribution to our knowledge of" the moral, political, and economical state of the Swedish nation" will shrink within very narrow dimensions.

To what Mr. Laing's falling off and failure in this instance, as a tourist, is to be ascribed, we shall not take upon us to say. Assuredly the cause lies not in the obscurity or lack of interest in the field of observation which he undertook to survey. Sweden is a noble country, rich in historic reminiscences, associated with all that is brilliant in military renown, and presenting to the contemplation of the traveller phenomena, both natural and political, such as is hardly to be encountered in any other kingdom in Europe. True, she cannot, like her sister kingdoms, boast of her Haralds and her Valdemars of old, or pretend to vie with them in the romantic glory of piratical achievements. But she has her Charles, her Gustavus Adolphus, and her Gustavus Wasa-names as heroic as any to be found in the Danish or Norwegian annals. As for changes and revolutions, Sweden has had her full share. Within our own memory, the intrigues of faction have led to the assassination of one monarch and the dethronement of another. The ancient boundaries of the kingdom have been altered; constitution has supplanted constitution; the hereditary crown of the Ynglingsthe sacred race of Odin-is now worn by a stranger; and for the last quarter of a century Scandinavia has been the theatre of one of the most important political experiments that arose out of the convulsions of the French revolution.

To observe the working of these new arrangements, to ascertain their effect on the monarchy, the government, the commercial enterprise, and social improvement of the country, was a task worthy of an intelligent traveller, and one which might have been made the vehicle of much useful and interesting information. Why Mr. Laing has failed in it, and come so far short of his previous work, we are at a loss to assign a satisfactory reason; but we suspect the fault lies not with the country or the people of Sweden, but in the perverse constitution or bias

of his own mind. To one so thoroughly tainted with modern liberalism as he is, who rails at every thing aristocratic, who denounces privileged classes and protecting duties, and considers the masses perfectly competent to govern themselves without kings, it is obvious that a nation so well supplied with nobility as the Swedes, and where privileged classes abound, must have presented many features in their character and habits little calculated to conciliate favour or attract admiration. In Norway, on the other hand, where hereditary nobility has been abolished, where the people live in a sort of republican equality, and are SO jealous of the kingly prerogative that they will not allow the monarch even to have a single official organ in the national Storthing, Mr. Laing found every thing to praise, and nothing to blame. The inhabitants were special favourites with him; he lauded their institutions, their free spirit, and virtuous manners; but the Swedes he finds to be the most slavish and immoral people on the face of the earth! It is, we apprehend, to the influence of perverse principle that we must ascribe the opposite effects produced by Mr. Laing's sojourn among the natives of the eastern and western states of Scandinavia. While he has applauded the democratical Norwegians perhaps beyond their deserts, he has certainly not done justice to the loyal Swedes; and of this charge we think we shall be able to bring proof even out of his own volume. But before proceeding to question the accuracy of his deductions and conclusions, it will be proper to give a short outline of his route.

Having resolved to pass the summer of 1838 in Sweden, Mr. Laing sailed for Hamburgh in April; thence he proceeded to Kiel, Copenhagen, Holmestrand, Drammen, and Christiania. Leaving the Norwegian capital in the beginning of June, he crossed the Glommen river at Kongsvinger, and took the route to Stockholm by Carlstad, on the upper end of the Wener Lake, Orebro, Arboga, and Westeraas; from which he proceeded down the Maelar, by steam, to the metropolisthe whole journey being performed in less than two months. His remarks on the people and the country through which he passed, are less interesting than might have been expected from a traveller so conversant with Scandinavian scenery and manners as Mr. Laing. He observes that the whole

district between the Glommen and the Wener, a distance of nearly 100 English miles, appears, in ancient times, to have been a chain of lakes, drained probably by the bursting of the water of the Wener through the Falls of Trolhætta, which opens a passage through the Gotha river between that Lake and the Baltic. Were this rocky gap dammed up by some convulsion of nature, he supposes the chain of basins in the district of Carlstad, now dry land, would again be filled with water up to the valley of the Glommen, "so that the east side of Scandinavia would be an archipelago of innumerable rocks and islands, with long ribs of land here and there projecting from the present back bone of the Peninsula."

Various facts and natural appearances corroborate this theory; and it is supposed that the Glommen once made its way direct to the Wener from Kongsvinger, where it now takes a very remarkable turn. In proof of this we may mention an authority of which Mr. Laing seems not to have been aware. Colonel Forsell, the distinguished Swedish statist, informs us that in high floods part of the waters of the Glommen still run into the Wener, through the small rivers Wrangselve and Byelve; and this direction, he remarks, seems more natural than its present course, by the sharp angular bend which it takes at Kongsvinger, in its way to the sea at Frederickstadt. Perhaps it may be regarded as a curious confirmation of this hypothesis, that in the early ages of the North, all the districts to the west of the Wener belonged not to Sweden but to Norway-the eastern boundary of which then extended as far as the Gotha river. This was the frontier established by Harald Haarfager, and it continued to be so for a few centuries later. Hence it is not unreasonable to presume that in the infancy of those kingdoms, the Glommen, now the boundary of Norway, had its course more eastward than at present, and fell into the Wener lake.

One other antiquarian remark we must make. In embarking at Westeraas for Stockholm, Mr. Laing says he took his passage in a smart little steamboat, called the Ingve Fry; and that being exceedingly puzzled to discover who this Mr. Ingve Fry was, he conIcluded that he must be some ironmonger or ship-builder at Westeraas. Now, to one so deeply read in Scan

dinavian antiquities as Mr. Laing is, we wonder it did not at once occur to him that this supposed merchant or mechanic was no other than the celebrated monarch-the reputed grandson of Odin-who gave his name to a whole race of Swedish kings, called the Ynglings. No doubt strange freedoms are sometimes taken with the names of such vessels, and in one of the Highland lochs at this day a smart steamer

the Euphrosyne-is metamorphosed by her Celtic steersman into the Hugh Fraser. But for a Scandinavian antiquary not to know who Ingve Fry was, is as unpardonable as for a Frenchman to wonder who Hugh Capet was, or an Englishman to imagine old Henry Plantagenet was a Plymouth shipwright.

The towns of Carlstadt, Arboga, and Westeraas, with their environs, do not elicit much topographical remark from Mr. Laing. The country around Carlstadt is rich, and the husbandry good. The soil is divided, as in Norway, among small proprietors ; and, judging from the description given of their houses, they seem deficient in those accommodations and appendages necessary to domestic comfort. There are no benches at the doors, as in Norway, for the patriarch of the family to sit on and smoke his pipe in the evening. The windows are broken; the dunghills are not under cover; the door and window-frames are fixed to the walls with clumsy nails, the heads of which are not sunk into the wood; the floors and ceilings are boarded in the same rough way; the doors are without handles, but have the key on one side, and on the other a piece of clumsy iron to pull it open by; there are no stoves, but only hearths in the common rooms. The wages of common country labour are very low, and altogether there is a want of those outward signs that indicate the well-being and prosperity of the working classes. The only feature that interrupts the level or flatness of the country, are gently swelling elevations, and those huge erratic blocks called boulder-stones, which are scattered indiscriminately over the surface, and so profusely that scarcely an acre of land is without one or more heaps of them.

Orebro is an ancient town, and famous in Swedish history as the seat of the Diet of 1540, which settled the succession of the crown on Gustaf Wasa. Westeraas is a thriving place;