and they are thus expressed in the concise language of an elegant historian :-" In the schools of philosophy anciently were taught the great maxims of true policy; the rules of every kind of duty; the motives for a true discharge of them; what we owe to our country; the right use of authority; wherein true courage consists; in a word, the qualities that form the good citizen, statesman, and great captain." Surely this is the true end of education.

Learning is but idle, is but worse than useless, if it fail to ennoble the soul, to cherish, and cultivate, and bring to maturity the secret and glorious treasures of the heart. To go on laying up store on store, and learning upon learning, even to the end of life, without having any better aim than to satisfy an insatiable craving, presents but a melancholy picture of the prostitution of capacity, and the misapplication of mental endowments. Our pity cannot be more excited than by the contemplation of a Bolingbroke or Chesterfield tottering to the

tomb, and yet, with unabated ardour, thirsting after the acquirement of knowledge, which is soon to be rendered useless by the hand of the Destroyer, and to be consigned, with themselves, to the forgetfulness of the grave. Some portion of intellectual greatness may be permitted to survive their material part; some portion glowing with the unextinguishable spark of genius, but which serves only to perpetuate and vivify the dark deformity within which it is encased.

In concluding these remarks, I would bid those who cast their offerings before the world, to remember, that it is their duty to instruct as well as amuse. I would remind them, that the numerous trifling publications and imaginative works of the day, have unnerved the public mind for more serious studies, and, therefore, that its tone will henceforth undoubtedly be regulated by those publications alone. It becomes, then, every author to remember that his writings will be the vehicles of good or evil.

Let him endeavour to improve men as well as to please them;-let him recollect, in the words of the virtuous Johnson, that "there are thousands of readers willing to be thought wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits; and therefore it is the duty of an author steadily to inculcate that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts; that it begins in mistake, and ends in ignominy."*

It would be well if an author never forgot the advice of Horace :

"Non, te ut miretur turba, labores;

Contentus paucis lectoribus. An tua demens

Vilibus in ludis dictari carmina malis ?"

CHAPTER VII.

THE MOUNTAINS.

WHEN I left Christiania, I walked in a northerly direction towards the lake Tyrie. On the second day, soon after leaving Jonsrud, the road began to ascend, and continued mounting higher and higher for many miles, passing through an immense forest of pines and firs. It is, however, a good road; and indeed the high roads generally throughout Norway and Sweden are surprisingly good. After toiling upwards for several hours, I came suddenly to the descent. This is effected through

a most singular and magnificent pass, which is situated at the extreme verge of a long line of mountains that form part of the district called the Ringarcedt. After climbing, as I have mentioned, to the summit of this boundary, the ground appears to have sunk, as it were, from the top to the bottom, so as to form a narrow chasm or pass, which affords a very steep descent of nearly half a mile, between precipitous mountains of craggy rock, whose narrow ledges yield scanty space for the graceful pines which ornament the sides, and stretch across the pass.

The stern, gloomy crags approach each other so closely, that there is barely room for the narrow road and the torrent which foams, and chafes, and leaps beside it. Downward we go, diving apparently into some gloomy abyss, until we perceive, lying far below, the head of Lake Tyrie, with its innumerable islands and little fishing boats, like specks on the water; and beyond the lake, a distant barrier of black