very persons you are meeting always, and can meet at any moment. And when the reverse happens, they always say, with such a kindly commiserating tone-that it cannot be amusing to me to meet strangers:-just what I am here to do.

As there is a sameness in the company, there is also a very great sameness in the routine of spending time, even in those social parties which are not balls. There are some houses where one can spend an evening in an intellectual and pleasant manner; but these are few, and the great hindrance to anything of the kind seems to be the singular determination with which ages and sexes agree to separate in this country. The young people, to whom in the gay season all seems given up, are by themselves; the men rush into a separate room, and, if there is not dancing, sit at cards; and the "elderly ladies" are left to sit in state on the seat of honour, the sofa, and discuss a little matter of scandal, or confer on matters of other interest. For my part, what I enjoy most is the coming away from these winter parties, there is something so curious to a stranger in the scene and scenery.

Just come with me to one of these balls, for when you have been with me once you can fancy

you have been with me for the last fifteen nights, during which I have most conscientiously gone out and come home again in the self-same manner, and spent the interval between going out and coming home in much the same way.

if the stairs are A covered sledge

Klockan half to nine; Karin enters and says, "Linquist is ready." I come to the tambour, where stands Linquist and his lantern; he descends the cold staircase before me, holding the lantern so as to light my steps; very slippery, I take his arm. is at the door; he puts me in, and gives the orders. We enter a court, or stop at a door, where one or two hundred other vehicles are putting down their freights.

mounts the box,

Linquist and his lantern approach me again: they conduct me up great stone stairs already marked by many feet, for every one who has mounted them has had a Linquist and a lantern. We enter a tambour, or cloak room, where many fair creatures in a chrysalis form are undergoing a transformation. Some have already cast off their swathings, and, starting out as full fledged butterflies, escape from the opposite door as I enter to submit myself to Linquist's operations, in the vain idea of coming out similarly beautified. Each fair

lady has her Linquist; and there is one young, pretty girl, leaning her back to the wall, while this indispensable footman is on his knees-how, think you, employed ?—well, he is pulling off her stockings! Poor Fröken! how shocked she was at my want of common decency in thinking of having a man to dress my hair! "Ah! yes," says my hostess, "but it was only the woollen stockings you saw the man take off."

Yes, certainly, that is true; for when the kneeling man had pulled off the worsted stockings, a pair of nice bloom-coloured silk ones appeared in their place. And there are a great many servants similarly engaged; and Linquist goes down on his knees and draws off my over boots-not stockings; and wants to put on my shoes, and takes off my cloak, and arranges my costume, and inquires from the servants of the house the hour of return; and then I disappear by one door and he by another.

There are no announcements, no names shouted from servant to servant; I go on in ignorance of where to come to. The host, glittering with orders, benevolence, and amity to all comers, receives me in the outer apartment, and—I speak of

my own reception as a stranger-convoys me to the hostess.

Now, before coming out, I have applied to my own good old Countess-housekeeper at home as to how I ought to demean myself, and the dear soul was delighted to instruct me. She said to me—

"Her Excellence will ask you to sit in the sofa." "Yes," I replied, "but what shall I do when I have sat on it?"

"You will speak; you will look round the room, and see something you can talk about; there will be a picture, or an ornament, or an instrument you can say something about. And then, when you have once begun to speak, that will go on. They will come to ask you then how long you have been in Sweden, and you will say that; and then they will ask, how you like Sweden, and how you amuse yourself in Stockholm."

"And will they ask how old I am?" I cried. "Well-that also they may do," she answered. Now all this foretelling comes to pass. I am placed on the sofa, and the sequence is just what the experience of the old lady predicted; and very often when I have come home, after some hours' absence, I have just been able to tell her

that all the little part she had told me to act had been acted, and all the interesting questions she told me would be put to me had been answered.

But I must go on in order. I am seated on the sofa, and presented to a great many persons, to whom I answer these questions over in succession. I am becoming very tired, and longing for a change-of any kind. I see a glimpse of two other rooms, one of which is full of men, and the other of young ladies, with a slight sprinkling of the other sex.

"I should like to go in there," I say.

"That is the young people's apartment," replies the elderly lady who is conversing with me.

"And is no one who is not young allowed to go there?"

"Certainly; if you wish to go there, you may do so."

"I do wish it, for I want to see some beauty;

"Ah! you must go far to see that—even to England."

I bow, smile, look much pleased: and, stupidly enough, instead of deprecating the compliment, or flinging it back from England to Sweden,-I answer, "Yes; the women of England are beauti