fancy. Tombs may signify a history-a decline and fall. And on that midsummer day, I sat alone in a field whose rising ground gave me the view I wished-wood and water stretched away in sunlight and beauty further than I could see; and drawing back my gaze, I looked immediately around and felt that nature was beautiful and art was admirable. The chain of locks is divided into two sections; seven being in one, and four detached. Their length is thus apparently increased in the distance, which prevents their distinctness from being observed. They look like one continuous dark staircase, mounting the face of the hill, whose green summit was on a level with the poor little steamboat standing there, with its nose just peeping over the upper barrier. There is a little green nook at the bottom of that hill where I sat, and a flat stone on the brink of Roxen lake whereon I stood.-And then all was bright externally!

In an adjoining meadow the midsummer pole was dressed with green branches and flowers, and the people were dancing round it; for midsummer, or St. John's Eve, is kept in Sweden as merry May-day used to be kept when old England had some young life.

This is the spot, of the whole water journey, the most impressed on my memory. Why? That question need not be answered. The tall towers of Linköping rose to view on the opposite bank, and at Norsholm, near to this, was the estate of that faithful old ecclesiastical hero, its bishop, Hans Brask, who so long resisted the encroachments of the great Gustavus Vasa, and whom the Swedes call a robber; but whose honest, brave, and faithful adherence to what he believed was truth, I astonish them by admiring.

The coast of the Baltic, which we pursue a long way before coming to sweet Mälaren, is most curious: it ought to be seen in a map to give one any idea of it. Such a curious and interesting place, which bears no affinity to any notion we have of the sea, is called Skäregord in Swedish, which means a crowd of rocky islands, larger and smaller, bare and fir-wooded, through which the channel is marked out by poles and sticks, and sometimes by whitening the half sunken rocks. The passage is slow and cautious, but, to me, pleasing. We pass over a Vik, or arm of the Baltic, amid scenery which scarcely lets one believe the water is that of the salt sea.

Another watering-place of Sweden is reached,

the water-drinking Södertelje; a pretty place, and a very narrow canal; the latter supposed to be the successor of one originally cut by the celebrated Viking Olof, the pirate and saint of Norway.

Then we round a fine promontory, and we are in the Mälar-my dearly-loved Mälar! There is King Erik's hat; the iron hat set up on that rock which mariners, in old time, used to petition for a fair wind, because St. Erik, they say, could make a fair wind by simply waving his hat; and it is only in these hardened times that captains and crews have ceased even to bow to it in passing.

And at that midsummer time we entered Lake Mälar-beautiful Mälar! The waters were clear as crystal, sparkling as diamonds; the wooded islets were all doubly seen, reflected, reversed beneath the lake, which was broken by our keel only. Beautiful Mälar! I have grown more intimate with you now; many a time have I been with you since; in summer time and winter time have I sailed, or walked over your waters, and have not decided in which way I liked you best. In either extreme, most decidedly, rather than midway-not in autumn, nor in spring. There are one hundred and fourteen islands, large and small, in its course of seventy

VOL. I.

R

five miles. The wooded banks, contracting much, bring closer at intervals the luxuriant verdure; for leaf trees-as the Swedes emphatically term all trees that are not fir or pine-are here abundant, and dreary is the scene where they mingle not in the unchanging fir forests. Here their lighter green is mixed with the giant firs and rocks, which, opening at short intervals, disclose a pretty, snug-looking, red wooden house, with white or green painted windows, looking warm and comfortable and picturesque among green pastures and dark fir trees. And then come nice villas, wooden ones, of all colours and shades; then a handsome house or two, which are not wooden; and then rise up towers and spires, and a great massive building, and they cry out "The Palace!" THE BUILDING of Stockholm. And so, seated on her seven islands, instead of seven hills, appears the Venice of the North, which its inhabitants prefer, as if in burlesque, to call the "Paris of the North."

No! to Venice, naturally, some resemblance may be made out; to Paris, artificially, none.

Yet the natural resemblance to the former is but a faint one; it consists chiefly in both being the children of water. But Stockholm wants the

charming uniqueness of the true Venice, the only Venice; which, unlike any city of the earth, springs forth from the sea, without apparently a foot of land to rest upon. Stockholm, on the contrary, chiefly built on islands as it is, is clearly seen, even at a distance, to be partly elevated on a high rocky site, partly to descend even to the water's edge. The water here is bordered with trees, rocks, hills, and turf banks, covered with flowers. Venice rises from her bed of waters, undistinguished by a tree, a rock, a glimpse of solid land. But if it were not for this peculiarity of Venice, the water-approach to the northern capital might well compete the palm of beauty with the now mournful widow of the Adriatic.

Now, that most disagreeable practice, still maintained here, takes place; the startling gun rings sharply out to tell all Stockholm we are coming-the firing from boats never ceases in summer; when it does stop, you may know the water is closed.

Now, in the midsummer-tide, we land in the brightness of evening; the many-windowed, large, and very long white houses are flashing in radiancy almost incredible; the spire on the top of Riddarholmen Church is only seen to upraise on