end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, he had not only attempted to do, but actually done, things in Norway that no one had done before, and which, therefore, no one believed ought to be done. He had brought a steamboat, in pieces, overland for forty-six English miles, and put it up on the lake, which had, until that time, been traversed only by sailing ones. For such a substitution Herr Y. was deemed as mad as poor De Caus, the steam projector, was nearly three hundred years ago. Every one, he says, except his wife, thought him mad. That was, indeed, an admirable exception. That noble woman encouraged his patriotic zeal, and now his country had reaped for more than twenty years its benefits. The steam-boat was on the lake, and the steam-boat prospered; but Herr Y. had not yet reaped the harvest of his fame. In all progressive times, it usually happens that the first projector, or mover, falls to the rear; is surpassed and eclipsed by his successors. Some natures take that position passively, satisfied to see the good they aimed at being done, without striving for the honour of doing it; these, however, are the exceptions, not the rule; and good Herr Y. inclined to follow the rule.

Now an impetus to progress in Norway was given from another hand. Steam had been long introduced on its fine lakes, on some of them at least; and now others would introduce steam on its dreadfully bad high-roads. Scientific men were coming to Norway, and the grateful friends of Herr Y., and of his steam-boat, seized the auspicious moment for the presentation of the clock, and for the speech, which unfolded the tale of his merits and his deeds. Nothing could have been more excellently arranged. It was executing, in a complete manner, the old proverb of killing two birds with one stone-the enormous dinner to the distinguished foreigner, and the national presentation to the distinguished native, were comprised in one ever-memorable act.

The scene being ended, and my mystifications thus drolly cleared away, I felt it a very great relief to escape from a dinner which had lasted for two hours and a half, and to enjoy the rest of a beautiful evening in a walk to a splendid waterfall in the neighbourhood; and sitting beside its foamy flood, I ceased to remember, at least ceased to be tormented by or fretted with, the sundry little points which do so provokingly appear in the characters even of great men.

Nature and nature's God are all in which greatness is not mingled with littleness; are all therefore that do not disappoint when seen too near.

After this tremendous dinner, there was an equally tremendous supper, at which I did not appear, being enclosed in my pretty little room, from whence I was to start at six in the morning for lovely Gulbrandsdal.

At that hour ten carriages of various descriptions were assembled in the court, waiting for our party. I left my room, but breakfast was still to be got through, and my kind host took me in the meantime to see some of the details of Norse housekeeping. He took me into the kitchen, where I found the young hostess, who had attended at the side-table the day before, now standing at the hearth, with a large shawl folded many times over her chest and tied behind, already engaged in superintending the cooking of an immense breakfast, while her betrothed husband was trying in the commotion to drink a cup of coffee at one side of it, before he went out to his employments. Indeed I think the cook must have been at work all night; I am sure I heard the same sounds of whizzing and frying going on at four o'clock in the morning; and when it is

considered that the Northerns only take the neverending coffee, and coffee cakes, in the morning, I greatly fear that whatever ideas this Norse maiden had formed of English gormandising habits and manners, were by no means improved by this foray on her hospitable mansion.

To my great delight, therefore, I saw the breakfast scantily eaten, but to my still greater regret I found the day threatened to be disagreeable; it was cold and cloudy, but, what was worse to me, was that the state of the natural atmosphere too closely agreed with the moral one in which I was placed; my host having given me, as my sole companion in his carriage, a particularly sulky and odd-tempered young lady, whom he said I should find the most suitable society. Perhaps she was as ill-placed as I was; but undoubtedly, had the skies been bright and warm, the human face beside me would have cast a gloom over nature and the day. How much is it in the power of fellow-creatures to destroy or improve for each other even the pleasures which nature can bestow! How many a fair scene is blackened in memory's glass by having been viewed in companionship with a cold, unsympathetic or selfish fellow-traveller!

Let me then have solitary travel, unless Heaven in its bounty give me that richest of earthly gifts, the fellowship and communion of a noble, pure, unselfish heart.

The charms of Gulbrandsdal, however, though seen through a double mist, were not quite lost to me. Its varying aspect, sometimes a narrow ravine, sometimes a broad vale; its mountains, with their tumbling cascades; its beautiful river, the Logan, famed for the size of its trout, with its treeclad banks; its fine waterfall, and sundry other aspects of things both beautiful and fair, made me long exceedingly to retrace it in the dear delights of solitude-a solitude dearer than the companionship of ten carriages and their occupants.

I had intended to go by Gulbrandsdal to Trondhjem, or as we English, and others, stupidly choose to spell it, Drontheim, and so to my winter quarters in Stockholm; but the extraordinary wetness of the season, and the fatal influence of No. 13 in the Hotel de Scandinavie, have changed the complexion of my Norway excursion, and even altered the line of my route.

We left our carriages just as a cold, small rain commenced, and advanced up a charming lake in a little steamer. Above this lake the valley be