wants, and all their riches. Here it seemed as if the heart could no longer ache, as if ambition might wish to be what he beheld, and that love might ponder on the past without a pang. The inside of the cottage was neat and chearful; the good old lady, with the children in their shirts playing round her, sat knitting by the light of a sprightly fire, and under locks of snow presented a face at peace with all the world. upon hearing that we wished to have some supper, the fisherman, with a countenance of health and gaiety, descended into a little creek, where his boats were moored, for some perch, confined in a wicker well in the water, whilst his young wife, who had a pair of very sweet expressive eyes, laid a cloth in a detached room facing the cottage. Whilst supper was preparing I rambled over this little paradise. Night came on, and all the beauties of the preceding evening, with some variety of new forms, returned; the same bright baspangled heaven! the same serenity; the same silence! yielding only to the unceasing rippling of a little stream of rock water, to which, as it gushed from a bed of long moss, and as our fair hostess presented her pitcher, thriftily fenced with wicker, might be applied the beautiful inscription of Bosquillon, on the fountain in the street of Notre Dame des Victoires in Paris:

"La nymphe qui donne de cette eau

Au plus creux de rocher se cache:
Suivez un exemple si beau;

Donnez sans vouloir qu'on le sache."

Or thus in English:

"Prompt to relieve, tho' viewless wrapt in stone,
The nymph of waters pours her generous stream:
Go, gentle reader, do as she has done;

See while you bless, but blessing be unseen,

J. C.

The islands, after we had passed Aland, and as we approached the Gulf, ceased to present any picturesque object; they appeared but a little aboye the water, and were cantily covered with slender weak

firs, whose naked branches were whitened over with hoary moss, and at length, from their number and similarity, became very tedious, and as dull as the melancholy forests through which our road lay on shore.

About two English miles before we reachedAbo, we entered a very narrow channel, not above forty feet wide, which was marked out by piles, not wide enough to admit of large vessels, which are obliged to moor a little before the entrance of it. On the left we passed by the castle, built of brick stuccoed: it is very ancient, and has a very picturesque appear ance, and was once the prison of the bloody Eric IV., but is now a garrison. A little further on the same side is the house of the gallant Admiral Steddynk, who in the last reign displayed distinguished skill and bravery, in several engagements with the Russians, and who has the command of the gun-boats, which are ranged in a long line of boat-houses near his residence. It is a matter worthy of observation, particularly at this period, that the gun-boats used in the naval conflicts between Russia and Sweden with so much effect, originally suggested to France the idea of using them against this country.

Beyond the boat-houses is the custom-house, from whence an officer came on board, and proceeded up the river with us to the town, which, with the cathedral, now presented the appearance of a large and populous city. We soon reached the quay, and very gladly landed in the capital of Swedish Finland.

In our inn yard I beheld the first indication of our being in the neighbourhood of Russia, in a clumsy kibitka, the ordinary carriage of that country, and which was here exposed for sale. It is a small cart, very much resembling a cradle, round at the bottom, about five feet long, and in which two persons can sit or lie, the latter is the usual posture, and who are pro tected from the weather by a semicircular tilt, open in front, made of broad laths interwoven, and covered

with birch or beech bark; it has no iron in it, but is fastened to the body of the carriage without springs, by wooden pins and ropes: the driver sits upon the front of it, close to the horses' tails. At dinner we had some delicious wild strawberries, the first fruit that we had tasted for the year.

Abo is situated upon a point of land where the gulfs of Finland and Bothnia unite, is a large town, and carries on a tolerable commerce. Many of the houses are handsome: they are mostly built of wood, but some are of brick stuccoed, and the inhabitants are said to exceed ten thousand. The fir of Finland is superior to that of any other part of Sweden, and par ticularly preferred for building: great quantities of it are annually sent from Abo to Stockholm. The cathedral is a very ancient massy pile of brick, displaying no attractions to the eye; and the gloom of the interior is augmented by a barbarous representation of drapery in blue, upon a leaden-coloured ground: it contains the tombs of many illustrious families. Christina, who with all her levities was a learned woman, and the munificent friend of learning, endowed an university here, which has a library containing ten thousand indifferent volumes: the former is not in a flourishing condition, and the latter worthy of little notice. We ascended the craggy rocks impending over one side of the town, which, with the windings of the Aura, and occasional glimpses of the gulf of Finland, shining through the openings of those dark forests that cover its shores on this side, presented a somewhat interesting, but sombre prospect.

As we proceeded, the face of the country began to undulate; we observed that the houses were con→ structed of fir trees rudely squared by the axe, and laid, with a little moss between, upon each other, the ends of which, instead of being cut off, are generally left projecting beyond the sides of the building, and have a most savage and slovenly appearance. The roof is also of fir, sometimes stained red; the win

dows are frequently cut with the axe after the sides of the house are raised. Such of these as were well finished had a good appearance, and are very warm and comfortable within. Our servant, who was well acquainted with the Swedish language, began to find himself, every mile we advanced, more and more puzzled. The patois of this province is a barbarous and unintelligible mixture of Swedish and Russ. The summer, now the eleventh July, burst upon us with fiery fury, with no other precursors than grass and green leaves. On a sudden the flies, which experience a longer date of existence in the north than in the milder regions of Europe, on account of the stoves used in the former, awoke from the torpor in which they had remained, between the discontinuance of artificial warmth and the decisive arrival of the hot weather, and annoyed us beyond imagination. They are the musquitos and plague of the north. No one, but those who have suffered, could believe them capable of producing so much torment.

One night we put up at Mjolbollsted, a solitary post-house in the midst of a gloomy forest of fir, which lay upon the borders of an arm of the gulf of Finland. The post-master ushered us into a little hole in a wooden shed, opposite to the post-house, the latter being occupied by his family. We had the consolation of finding that we had the place to ourselves, from which we could never have expected to emerge, if, notwithstanding the treachery of our vor bode some time before, we had not formed a high opinion of Swedish morality. The windows, which looked into the depth of the forest, were as immoveable as the building; this was somewhat satisfactory. It is always a pleasant thing to strengthen favourable impressions with judicious precautions. The sides of the room were completely encrusted with flies, who at this moment were recruiting themselves for the mischief of the next day; and mice and tarrakans, or beetles, shared the possession of the floor. In two

corners of this dolorous hole stood two cribs, each furnished with a bed of straw, a bronze-coloured blanket well charged with fleas, and a greasy coverlid. Cribs are the usual bedsteads in the north.

As the sultry sun was flaming in the meridian, we passed a large portion of a forest on fire. This cir cumstance was not the effect of accident nor of a natural cause, which in these regions is frequently followed by the most direful consequences, and to which I shall have occasion to allude hereafter. By some smart touches of the whip, we saved our ser vant, horses and carriage, from being a little toasted on one side. What we saw arose from the farmers clearing the ground, who confine the flames to the proper boundary by making an interval of felled trees. In the evening we passed by, at some distance, another forest which was in the same predicament, and had a very sublime and novel effect.

The country about Borgo, agarrison town most miserably paved, and where our passports were demanded, is undulating and fertile, but the cottages in that part of Swedish Finland are very miserable, and the peasantry wretchedly clothed. The men, the women, and the children, had no other covering than ragged shirts; although the sun was too intense to induce any one to pity them on account of their exposure to the weather, yet their appearance was that of extreme penury. The roads were still excellent, and enabled us to proceed with our accustomed velocity. The time did not admit of our attempting to see the celebrated Swedish fortress of Sveaborg, which occupies seven islands in the gulf of Finland, and is capable of protecting the fleets of Sweden against the Russians. The batteries, basons, and docks, are of hewn granite, and said to be stupendous. I was reconciled afterwards to my not having attempted to see this place, as I found some English travellers of great respectability were about this time refused permission to view it, and that too with some degree of rudeness.