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respects, a drawback to the country.

Some sort of goods are heavily taxed, others altogether prohibited. This latter is the most unintelligible: the importation of watered silk, for instance, being prohibited, a dress of watered silk is the most fashionable and elegant you can wear in Sweden. Smuggling is thus encouraged, for the prohibited silk is worn by whoever can afford to get it. A shopkeeper of high standing told me this when showing me a piece of this high-priced silk.

"How, then, did it come here," I innocently asked, "if it is prohibited?"

She shook her head, and answered gravely, "I do not know how."

Another showed me some Scotch tartan, and told me it was not permitted to enter Sweden; and to a similar inquiry as to the manner in which the rebellious invaders crept in, replied that he only knew they were now for sale on his

counter.

I do not think that this system really benefits home manufacture; few lands are more backward in the mechanical, as well as in the fine arts, than Sweden is. Foreign goods are bought at high prices, and the people are deprived of the benefit of good models. Of late the manufactory of cutlery, and of all hardware and ironwork, has

greatly advanced; but from the monopoly system, or the want of sufficient workmen, English cutlery can be bought here at even lower price. Sweden, like Norway, is an agricultural and pastoral country; except in iron-works, cannon foundries, and steamboat building, it has made no great progress in common manufactures under its strict protective system; and it is not unreasonable to believe that, in their long winters, the peasants should still employ themselves at their looms, whether foreign cloths were accessible to them or not. As it is, travellers in the country parts are more likely to find a sheep-skin than a home-made blanket on their beds.

In one respect, indeed, the paucity of manufactures, and consequent dearness of bought clothing, is a real blessing to Sweden; it confines the people to their plain, substantial, and distinctive dress-home-made dress. The tawdry finery, the miserable affectation of finery and fashion, so common in England, even in the Highlands of Scotland, and among the ragged population of Ireland, are yet happily unknown to Sweden.

The plain, strong, distinctive, yet nice and becoming dress of the maid-servants here, is something quite refreshing, after the absurd

mimicry and setting-up airs of a similar class among ourselves. No bonnet is ever worn except by the upper ranks; the thick, rich black silk kerchief which supplies its place, and is tastefully yet carelessly tied beneath the chin, often costs more than the paltry bonnet, with its flowers and ribbons, does in England. A dark or black stuff dress-black is the state one-a paletot, or shawl, an apron, and a good pair of gloves, without which no decent servant would go out in the street, complete a simple attire which does not change with the changes of their superiors. Yet they are most addicted to dress in their own way, and think almost as much of it in others as the French people do. The class of servant-women in Stockholm is certainly the best looking, and, I might almost say, the most graceful of the persons I usually see. "They make you a curtsey," said an Englishman of rank, "worthy of a duchess."

I do not know if duchesses are famous for curtseys, but I know that I have been watching a workman and a servant girl talking in the street -the man with his hat in his hand, bowing to her as if she were a duchess, and she making a curtsey suited to a court drawing-room.

Many of these poor girls are, unhappily, miserably paid; two, or at most three pounds a year being the rate of wages. The best-looking get

places at restaurants or inns. It is a painful subject, and I must leave it here. My own smart little attendant, when I alluded to it, said—

"Yes, that is true; the girls at Stockholm are not good. That is the reason why I came to take service here. Families do not like to take them."

Ah Karin! many of those poor girls may have come to Stockholm quite as confident in their own superior virtue and goodness as you now are!

An Irish gentleman married a nice young woman who was servant at a restaurant here; she has made him a good wife, as he has made her a happy one; and on meeting a countryman of hers lately, in England, she said to him,

"Ah! sir, God has been a good help to me."

Those who forsake not God, God will not forsake, in any trial, any temptation, though the furnace be heated seven times more than it is wont to be heated for others.

The love of pleasure pervades all classes here; and what is singular is that it seems the same sort of thing in all; the channels in which it flows are

VOL. II.

C

not so opposite as in London. Country excursions, with little repasts at the inns or restaurants; dancing everywhere and on every occasion; the lesser theatres and the opera when it can be had; fancy balls, and, in a quieter way, what are called coffee drinkings-are among the chief amusements, and are eagerly followed by all. Family life in Sweden is more diversified than with us; the uniformity of our domestic evenings would be intolerable to people so addicted to amusement, especially as they are by no means a reading people. Every-day life here has perhaps a blending of the French and German, with a much stronger tendency to the latter. Their desire to resemble the French is rather an affectation than a reality; in frivolity and apparent levity they may sometimes appear to do so, but there is an essential seriousness in their character, and in their aspects, a heaviness, also, in general in their persons, which render their hilarity entirely national, and by no means like French vivacity.

Thus some Frenchman tells of a Swede who went to Paris, and fell in love with his landlady, who objected to him on the score of his not being lively (vif) like her own countrymen. One day she was alarmed by a most terrible noise overhead

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