Strömstad in summer, and the Gymnastics of Stockholm in winter, are the Swedish panaceas, more especially for the daughters of Swedish families. For my part, I found two days at Strömstad rather too much of a good thing. It is a small group of houses held in granite jaws, without a bud or blossom, leaf or sprig, to diversify the earthen grey and iron-hard aspects of all around.

I lay awake all night in order to be in time to leave this Paradise of Swedish bath-lovers at four o'clock in the morning. The kind British Consul came to me with his little bill, and said I should have a rough day. I thought the morning looked charming.

"The Captain says he can go,” said the Consul, looking up, and out to sea.

I looked only at the sun, which was as bright as sun need be, though there was what I have heard sailors call "a bit of a breeze."

Well! what a day it proved to be! What a scene I beheld! I am glad I saw it, very glad; but I hope I may never see it again. I had imagined something to myself of the coast of old Scandinavia; I had heard of the granite frame of Sweden; I had seen it in sunny and calm weather. But fancy what it is to coast along the

bare ribs of that iron peninsula, within an islandlined channel; while the sea, rolling from windward, drives its billows and breakers right over your little bit of a steam-boat, which is too small even to allow of a cabin; and you sit on deck, piled up among baggage, and sick and half-dead passengers, and think if it be the will of Providence you perish among these in that strange sea, no friend, at home or elsewhere, can find out that you came off in a steam-boat to Strömstad, instead of going, as you intended, to Gottenburg. Such thoughts often distract one more than deeper ones do, when, in the sight of dangers, one reflects on the suspense and perplexities of absent friends.

I wish I could give you a sketch of what I have very distinct in my own mind, but cannot pourtray elsewhere. At one time we were going in a narrow channel, lined and studded with most enormous grey, earthy-coloured, and barren granite rocks; among, and sometimes over which the roaring sea was constantly flinging up jets d'eaux, which might have been a beautiful sight to see anywhere but from the deck of a pitching steam-boat. This was the most tranquil time; at another, the outer screen of rocks gave way, and then the open sea came rolling

in its breakers, and driving our wretched little boat all but keel uppermost; it would seem to go right over under the shock; and when the showerbath had passed over you, it was almost a surprise to feel that your head was still directed to the skies, which looked wonderfully bright all the time, and quite as pleasant as usual.

Now, in all cases of conjectured, imagined, or real sea danger, it has been my wont to look at the Captain; so now I fixed my eyes on our Captain, and I said to myself, "If that red face grows pale, or that great, rolling blue eye becomes firmly set, I shall know we are in danger. The bulky Captain stood, holding on by a rail, before the helm. I looked at him long and wistfully; and I saw the scarlet red face grow redder, and the restless blue eye roll more and more restlessly -now to the skies; now to the rocks; now to the billows; now to the chimney-top; now to the wheels; to the groaning, creeking, straining planks, every one of which seemed longing and striving to burst asunder and end their united contest. I knew not what to think.

"I am watching the Captain," said I to a sick man beside me; "when danger is urgent I shall know it by his face.”

was besieging that fortress, he was invading Norway.

"Yes, yes," he cried, with a vehemence that I thought was not like Norwegian calm; "yes, he was trying to do it, but he did not do it. He did not," he cried, pointing his hand to the fortress. "It is there still-it is ours-it is Norway's.

"And Norway is Sweden's," said I to myself, but I dared not say it aloud, so fierce, so proudly national, stood my little coachey, with his hand pointing to the fortress, while his foot was firmly set on the cavity made by the knee of Charles XII. of Sweden. The fortress was there, and there was the spot where the invader fell; and the little patriot brandished his whip, and was quite sure that if the King of Sweden planted his cannon against the fortress of Frederiksteen now, he would be served just the same way.

So he hammered me off a bit of the almost hammered-away pillar, that marks the spot where the invader died, whose hat, very like one of those now vulgarly called (I believe) a wideawake, is preserved in Stockholm, with the identical round hole made by the bullet, fired, it is generally believed, by the hand of an assassin

on the same level, and not from the fort he was besieging without foreseeing that that fortress, by means of things called treaties, and perhaps the intervention of a few British menof-war, would be one day quietly brought round to the service of his country.

And I came away from Frederiksteen, perhaps a little wiser than when I went there. One thing is certain, I came away impressed with the idea, that if Frederiksteen were in England, very few poor little peasant boys would tell me anything of its history, and still fewer would feel so much pride in pointing to the untaken fortress, and saying of the invader, "he tried to take it, but he could not do it!" How much do our peasants know of our history? As much, perhaps, as an old Londoner, who, in arguing with me once on behalf of Unitarianism, said, "The Unitarians are of the oldest religion, for there were Unitarians in England in the time of William the Conqueror, and William the Conqueror was before Christ."

Well, my little patriotic conductor, and my intelligent little guide, who made me comprehend more by her expressive and graceful gesticulations than she did by her words, put me into