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far removed; for the spirit of opposition, when a King who could not, or would not, speak Swedish came to the throne, has forced the people back to their own language.

Still these transformed Frenchisms not only remain, but are constantly added to the language. The Swedes are at liberty to do as they like with their mode of speech; but I wish some stringent law were made at this critical time in England, to prevent the same barbarous infliction on ours.

I find in my truly waste note-book, this entry -"Stupid day-saw no one but Major P. ; talked of Louis Napoleon, and an invasion of England. Spent the evening with a serious Englishman, who fell asleep while I was arguing that the only French invasion we need fear, was from those foreign auxiliaries of our language, which were likely to become adopted children in it, as they had done in that of Sweden."

It was only

Nor is this fear unreasonable. during my last visit to London, that I read a novel by a Scotch M.P., in which I saw this vice beginning that career which I see in its greyhaired horrors in all the literature and speech of Sweden. Think of such an offence as coolly writing into English the word entrainé, thus

"he was entrainé'd." I do not know what critics said, but in my opinion this is the sort of French invasion against which our English militia should be called out. The conspirators against the purity of our language ought to meet with capital punishment.

I believe that the English are rich enough in words, as well as other things, if they chose to be content with them; but if they must borrow, let them not disguise their act, and send forth the loan in a miserable mask to perplex future generations. "Viséd" has become almost a common term, but fortunately it is one not likely to be incorporated into daily speech or writings. Were we to carry on this torturing system with all the French terms which, for brevity, or expressiveness, we are so much in the habit of using, what a strange appearance would our written language present? Much the same that the Swedish does, for we should spell all French words as we pronounced them; and thus the good creatures who now print them in hand-bills and newspapers, and post them on street walls, need not be at the trouble of taking a foreign garb for their ideas, but commit the vulgar sin of which a poor Irish servant accused her mistress of-"calling things

by their plain names." Accents and terminations are, indeed, already unthought of by our Frenchified good people; yet once have I had a specimen of the dangerous inroad making on our tongues and pens, by a young lady writing to me from England, that she was to have a swarry at her ragged school!

Let us take warning by the sight of Swedish books of course more especially of Swedish novels and be cautious, lest "swarry " should become only one of the words that might yet deface our own in an equal degree.

I am writing in a heat so extreme that the close shade of Venetian blinds, meant to exclude the sun, naturally leaves me almost in darkness. Is not this March heat of the northern sun something most wonderful?

Snow and ice, sledging and skating, go on more gaily and vigorously than ever. The ground is white; the sky blue, bright and beautiful. In the public gardens, not far from me, men and maidens, boys and girls, are gliding rapidly down the ice-hills, on those strange little sledges which I have quite a terror of when they

come five or six in a line down every icy and snow-frozen slope one meets, with their conductors lying flat upon them, as if swimming, and being the conducted, indeed, rather than the conducting, for they have no power over them when once the impetus is given.

A painful event has just happened in these gardens, which shows the danger of this favourite amusement. A young stout girl is killed; her sledge overturned, and another coming after her full speed, struck her on the head. The voices of swan and lark daily blend in the narration of human life. It is so bright, so beautiful here, that the thought of death seems like a great shadow momentarily crossing the sunshine.

The extraordinary power of the sun may be estimated by the fact, just related to me by my landlord, that on the north side of the house, that is in the court which is surrounded by a square of houses, the thermometer is only one degree above freezing point, while on the south, that is on my side, it rises to twenty-five degrees. Celsius, not Fahrenheit, is followed here, in this his native land.

And here I sit moveless, and try to keep my rooms cool; my door is open, my windows are

screened, and I say, "What a strange climate!" a thousand times a day. And every one else is astir at least I fancy so when I cannot stir-and merrily go the sledge-bells from morn to night, beneath and before my windows. You can hear them in these lines:

"Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens, seem to twinkle

With a christaline delight,

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintabulation that so musingly swells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells!

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells!"

Now, in that piece of rhyme you have heard the sledge-bells in the snow and sunshine away off in England, just as well as I hear them in Stockholm.

And all was bright and beautiful, and I was listening to the sledge-bells, and complaining that I was cut off from enjoyment; and now

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