l'excès de sa production, mais par sa qualité supérieure. Les procédés introduits dès 1643, par Louis de Geer, à l'aide des ouvriers qu'il avait fait venir du pays wallon, ont assuré aux fers suédois la réputation méritée dont ils ont continué à jouir jusqu'à nos jours." The most celebrated iron mines are Dannemora, Taberg, Nora, and Phillipstadt. These latter places are all in the province of Wermland, the most beautiful part of Sweden. This district is very agreeable for travelling, on account of the excellence of the steamboats and the modern hotels. The Dannemora mines, well worth a visit, are accessible from Upsala, and may be taken en route to or from Dalecarlia; only here the tourist must be prepared for some rough travelling. These mines furnish annually 12,000 to 15,000 tons of mineral, yielding 30 to 70 per cent. of iron. To give an idea of the export of Swedish iron to Great Britain alone, we may mention that in 1860 pig-iron, to the amount of 6,131 tons, and bar iron, to the important figure of 49,556 tons, was bought by us. Probably the later returns would be still more considerable. Sweden owes a great deal to Swedenborg for initiating great improvements in the reduction of iron ores. Many of his plans have been superseded by modern inventions, but before he became a religious mystic he was the best practical chemist of his time. He held for many years the appointment of Assessor to the College of Mines. His principal work on science was the Regnum Minerale, printed at Leipsic in 1734. Two Swedish chemists, Swab and Gahn, were the first to obtain metallic antimony and metallic manganese, substances much used now in manufactures. We understand that a work has just been published at Stockholm, under Government auspices, entitled The Resources of Sweden. We should imagine it would supply useful information for special inquirers. Notwithstanding the development of the natural resources of the country, and the extension of commerce, there has been a great increase of emigration of late years. In Harper's Magazine,* an American publication, there occurs the following remarks in reference to Swedish settlers : "The Swedes form excellent and most desirable citizens in the United States, but on first arriving they are suspecting and doubt * March, 1871. ing; they give a great deal of trouble, for they dislike being questioned, and even refuse any information in reply. They generally go to Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota, where they find a climate not unlike their own, and soon become settled down as thrifty farmers. In 1869 upwards of 23,000 Swedish immigrants arrived in the United States, and of these it is safe to say that ninety per cent. go out West as agriculturists." The same Lubeckers who are said to have worked the mines of Falun were remarkable for their church architects; one Anders, called "the tower raiser," built twenty-two churches in Sweden of Lubeck workmanship. The Ecclesiologist will find many objects of interest, such as the cathedral of Upsala, Strengnas, Lund, and Westeras. M. Mandelgren, a Swedish artist, has made and published a collection of drawings of ecclesiastical antiquities. These include some of the ruined churches of Wisby, in Gothland, that curious old town, which is so frequently mentioned in medieval chronicles. Before the Norman conquest of England, it was a great commercial emporium, and was, indeed, the parent city of the Hanseatic League. Mr. Fergusson, in his Handbook of Architecture, says : "During the eleventh and twelfth centuries a great portion of the Eastern trade, which had previously been carried through Egypt or Constantinople, was directed to a northern line of communication, owing to the disturbed state of the East. At this time a very considerable trade passed through Russia, and centred in Novgorod. Thence it passed down the Baltic to Gottland, apparently chosen for its island position, and its capital, Wisby, became the emporium of the West." The "supreme maritime law of Wisby" has been adopted as the foundation for similar legislation in many countries. Its present aspect, gives the traveller the impression of a ruined city of the ancient world. So numerous were the nationalities that traded in the island, that there were a great variety of churches. Olaus Magnus says that amongst the foreigners who came thither may be reckoned "Gothi, Suedi, Russi, Prussi, Angli, Scoti, Flandri, Galli, Vandali, Saxones, and Hispani." The old wall, thirty feet high, is entire, as are nearly all the forty-five towers. The Church of the Holy Ghost, built in 1046, is very curious; it is a small octagonal structure, with a round massive Saxon arch for the main entrance, the windows and arches being in the same style. In another of the old churches, the pointed Norman and the round Saxon are found together. Ancient tombstones, with Runic characters, are debased to modern uses, and fragments of these precious memorials of a time long past may be found in the pavements and staircases of existing houses. The population, which was once supposed to have numbered over 50,000, has now dwindled down to something like 4,000; in fact, the inhabitants of the whole island of Gothland do not much exceed the numbers who formerly dwelt within the walls of the town of Wisby. In no part of Scandinavia has the old folk-lore been so well preserved as in this island of the Baltic. Here, amongst a simple and isolated people, the usages, the superstitions, and the legends of ancient days, linger on to our own time, showing how traditional thoughts and sentiments may bridge over from past to present. Many of the ballads which the Swedish historian Geyer has been at pains to collect are here orally preserved, such as the pathetic story of "Axel and Walborg, and those strange questionings of fate, known as "Riddle Rimes." In Dr. Prior's introduction to his translation of Ancient Danish Ballads (page 46), he says: "I should be doing injustice to these northern nations if I did not add that in the whole vast collection of Danish, Swedish, and other Scandinavian ballads, there is not to my knowledge one of a demoralising tendency." William Howitt, in his Literature of Northern Europe, has somewhere said : "In the Scandinavian ballads Little Kerstin' is the universal favourite. She is the model of woman in her beauty and her perfect goodness of heart. She is often unfortunate, but never revengeful; constantly injured, but always forgiving. She is a creature of sweetest life and boundless affection. She may be drawn from the line of morality, but she is never vicious." One of Sweden's latest poets is King Carl XV., who died, alas! too early for his country and his fame, in the autumn of 1872. He published two volumes of poetry, En Samling Dikter and Smärre Dikter, which prove that he was, within certain limits, a true poet, and a writer, who, under severer discipline of life, might have produced better and more thorough work. A critique and some fragmentary transla tions of these poems appeared in the Cornhill Magazine.* We venture to transcribe a few lines from one of the poems —the Vikingasaga—as given in the above: • Mid the ancient pine-tree forests, Everywhere were found in Nature Saga tales of Sweden's childhood." The translator has well observed that "Were additional evidence requisite to prove the loyal and loving zeal with which the Bernadotte dynasty has ever striven to identify itself with all that is distinctively Scandinavian, and distinctively Swedish in particular, it would be found in these poems, the chief of which rest upon a thorough northern basis, and are supremely redolent in every page of Scandinavian thought and feeling." King Carl was a painter as well as a poet; when we visited the palace at Stockholm, a few days only before his lamented death, there stood in the picture gallery an unfinished painting of his, on the easel, just where the master's hand had left it. The subject was one of those forest-bordered lakes of Dalecarlia, with its lateral green valley and distant waterfall, seen at the hour when the soft after-glow of evening comes over earth and sky, in all the magic sweetness of the northern twilight. * January, 1873. The Transit of the Planet Venus in 1874. 93 ART. IV.-1. On the Preparatory Arrangements which will be Necessary for Efficient Observation of the Transits of Venus in the Years 1874 and 1882. By GEORGE BIDDELL AIRY, Astronomer Royal. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. XXIX. 2. The Universe and the Coming Transits. By R. A. PROCTOR, B.A. Longmans Green and Co. London. 1874. Pp. 233-303. WHEN the present issue of the London Quarterly Review is in the hands of its readers, some eighty stations on the surface of the globe will be occupied under exceptional circumstances by some of the most accomplished men of science which our age has produced. Many of the stations they will occupy are but little known, and almost inaccessible, being as inhospitable as they are uninviting. The parties these distinguished men will lead, as well as many of the leaders themselves, have been in all cases months, and in some instances years, in preparing themselves for their peculiar work. They are taking with them some exquisitely finished instruments, specially devised for their purpose, and of a nature never before employed; and others of a less special character, constructed for their particular use, and manufactured with the utmost delicacy possible to modern art and science. These groups of savants will represent nearly every civilised nation of importance on the face of the globe; and what they are doing will involve a probable outlay of not less than £250,000. It is not uninteresting or without importance, then, to inquire what the work is they are really engaged in, and to what issues it will lead. The event itself will occur on December the 9th of this year, and is simply a transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun: an astronomical event wanting certainly in every incident which we call imposing; and yet, doubtless, the largest and most important celestial occurrence of the nineteenth century. Our knowledge of the absolute dimensions of the universe can never be closely approximated until we are absolutely certain of the real distance in miles between the earth and the sun; and with this are involved many collateral problems, such as the |