their own misfortunes, and as well suited to the subject of Trolbatta, those also of the king of France. One emigrant produces a long invective against the patriots. An Englishman writes nothing more than "what will you have us say?" The following, "Dieu benisse cette bonne et brave nation!" is signed Kosciusko. An immense number of pedants make flourishes of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic. In a word, the writers of inscriptions at Trolhatta, become sometimes so digressive from their subject, that travellers are found mutually reviling, and making personal allusions to one another." Honi soit qui mal y pense. We are assured that this " very indecent name" is only the title of a young English nobleman, which Mr. Acerbi has not very creditably mistaken. The travellers reached Stockholm at nine at night, and were greatly embarrassed because there are no inns in that metropolis. "There was, indeed, one set up by a Frenchman, but having made a fortune in a few years, this man retired from business, and left his house to a Swede, who knew not how to manage it. "When we arrived at this inn," says the writer, "all the apartments were occupied." We do not suppose that Mr. Acerbi can have written this work himself, and this figure of speech makes us suspect that he has employed a native of the sister kingdom to put his journal into English. By good fortune, while they were thus perplexed, they met "the most amiable and obliging man in all Sweden," who procured lodgings for them, sent them an excellent supper, and shewed them the city that same night. Some striking frost scenery at Stockholm is well delineated. "There is no part of this great mass of water that is not arrested and subdued by the frost, except the current under the north bridge, and on the south, near the king's stables. Here the water, which during the keenest frost dashes and foams with great noise through the arches of the bridge, sends up majestic clouds of vapour to a considerable height in the atmosphere; where, in the extreme rigour of winter, being converted by the intenseness of the cold into solid particles, they are precipitated down through their weight, and presenting their surface to the sun, assume the appearance of a shower of silver sand, reflecting the solar rays, and adorned with all manner of colours. "In the winter 1799, I beheld at Stockholm a spectacle of a very uncommon nature, and such as I never, in all probability, shall see a second time. It was a sugar house on fire in the suburb, on the south side of the city. The accident being announced by the discharge of cannon, all the fire engines were immediately hurried to the aid of the owners. The severity of that winter was so great, that there was not a single spot near, where the water was not frozen to the depth of a yard from the surface. It was necessary to break the ice with hatchets and hammers, and to draw up the water as from a well.. Immediately on filling the casks, they were obliged to carry them off with all possible speed, lest the water should be congealed, as, in fact, about a third part of it was, by the time it could be brought to the place where it was wanted. In order to prevent it as much as possible from freezing, they constantly kept stirring it about with a stick; but even this operation had only a partial effect. At last, by the united power of many engines, which launched forth a great mass of water, the fire was got under, after destroying only the roof, the house itself being very little damaged. that the stock of sugar was deposited; there It was in the upper stories of the building, The were also many vessels full of treacle, which being broken by the falling-in of the roof, the juice ran down along the sides of the wall. The water thrown up to the top of the house by the engines, and flowing back on the walls, staircases, and through the windows, was stopped in its downward course by the mighty power of the frost. After the fire was extinguished, the engines continued for some time to play, and the water they discharged was frozen almost the instant it came in contact with the walls already covered with ice. Thus a house was formed of the most extraordinary appearance that it is possible to conceive. It was so curious an object, that every body came to gaze at it as something wonderful. whole building, from top to bottom, was incrustated with a thick coat of ice: the doors and windows were enclosed up, and, in order to gain admission, it was necessary with hammers and hatchets to open a passage; they were obliged to cut through the' ice another staircase, for the purpose of All the ascending to the upper stories. rooms, and what remained of the roof, were embellished by long stalactites of multifarious shapes, and of a yellowish colour, composed of the treacle and congealed water. This building, contemplated in the light of the sun, seemed to bear some analogy to those diamond castles that are raised by the imagination of the poets." A print is annexed of a water cart in winter, but it by no means equals the description. "The horse was wrapped up, as it seemed, in a mantle of white down, which under his breast and belly was fringed with points and tufts of ice. Stalactical ornaments of the same kind, some of them to the length of a foot, were also attached to his nose and mouth. The servant that attended the cart had on a frock, which was encrusted with a solid mass of ice. His eye-brows and hair jingled with icicles, which were formed by the action of the frost on his breath and perspiration." Every year a tournament is held at Drottningholm, an island six miles from Stockholm, where the king has a palace. This apish mockery of chivalry was instituted by the late king; during the regency it was wisely discontinued, but his present majesty has thought proper to revive the festival, which is at his expence. The crown herald, at a jubilee ball, proclaimed, in the name of Gustavus IV. the most puissant king of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, that he, with a number of his knights, was ready, armed at all points, to maintain, that the laws of honour, enlivened by those of love, acquire double force in the hearts of valorous knights. Certain knights hereupon accepted the defiance, and pledged themselves to maintain, that the laws of honour have sufficient power of themselves in the hearts of valorous knights, and that, so far from receiving any additional force from love, it is on the contrary, by uniting with chivalry, that love obtains its splendour and duration. The costume of chivalry was preserved in this fête, and the prizes were distributed on the last day, under the direction of the queen. If children should think proper to divert themselves with such a game, it would be suffciently excusable; but kings and nobles should have something better to do than to play at tournaments. The moral picture of the inhabitants of Stockholm is not very favourable. The women are said not to feel such strong sentiments of friendship, tenderness, and love, as the natives of warmer climates; their principal object is dress, and on this they bestow their time and attention, not from a wish to please the men, but from an envious desire to outshine their rivals. They unite vanity and coldness with coquetry. It is more charitable to suspect Mr.Acerbi of forming too hastily a general judgment from particular characters, than to believe that such a representation can be accurate. The habits of savage life, indeed, will pervert all the instincts, and all the feelings of our nature; but in civilized countries, that have been agitated by no political tempest, the variations of the moral thermometer can never be very great. Wherever comfort and security exist, friendship, tenderness, and love, must exist also, and necessarily flourish. Mr. Acerbi mistakes the outward and visible sign, for the inward and spiritual grace; he did not perceive French smoke or Italian flame, and he did not remember, that neither flame nor smoke indicate the intensity of the fire." Of the passion of the Swedes for cards, a singular anecdote is related. "A nobleman of great rank having waited longer than usual for his dinner, and seeing that no preparation was made for it, went down to call his servants to an account, and to examine into the reason of the delay. He found his household, in imitation of their superiors, deeply engaged at cards. They him, that they were now at the most inexcused themselves to their master, by telling teresting point of the game; and the butler, who had the greatest stake, took the liberty of explaining the case to his excellency, who could not in conscience but approve his reasons. However, being unwilling to wait for his dinner till the game was decided, he sent the butler to lay the cloth, while he himself sat down with the other servants, and managed the interest of that individual in his absence." The account of the court of Stockholm, and the characters of the leaders, are mentioned by the author himself in his preface, as "too bold, perhaps, to meet the public eye." He adds, "but to have recomposed and softened it by the suppression of some particulars, however personally prudent for the author, would have been to withhold from the reader a just and accurate idea of the state of facts. It was incumbent upon him to sacrifice all inferior considerations to a respect for the public and for the truth." There is a danger that Mr. Acerbi, by acting upon this principle, may occasion some inconvenience to travellers who visit those countries after him. Some trifling inconveniences he himself experienced in consequence of Mr. Coxe's book-making inquiries. Nor would the reader have been deprived of any valuable information if the facts whereto he alludes had been suppressed. The anecdotes of the court and academies form the least interesting portion of the work. We will follow Mr. Acerbi on his journey, where he appears to more advantage. Enveloped in pelices of Russian bears skin, with fur caps, and fur gloves, the travellers set out in sledges for Finland, in the middle of March. They crossed the gulph of Bothnia upon the ice, fortythree English miles: the passage is ter rific, and Mr. Acerbi has described it well. "The sea, at first smooth and even, became more and more rugged and unequal. It assumed, as we proceeded, an undulating appearance, resembling the waves by which it had been agitated. At length we met with masses of ice, heaped one upon the other, and some of them seeming as if they were suspended in the air, while others were raised in the form of pyramids. On the whole they exhibited a picture of the wildest and most savage confusion, that surprised the eye by the novelty of its appearance. It was an immense chaos of icy ruins, presented to view under every possible form, and embellished by superb stalactites of a blue green colour. way. relieved from this weight, and feeling himself at perfect liberty, redoubled his speed, and surmounted every impediment. The sledge, which he made to dance in the air, by flight. When he had fled to a considerable alarming his fears, added new wings to his distance from us, he appeared from time to time as a dark spot, which continued to diminish in the air, and at last totally vanished from our sight. Then it was that we recognized the prudence of having in our party some spare horses, and we were fully sensíble of the danger that must attend a journey across the gulf of Bothnia, without such a precaution. The peasant, who was the sledges, went in search of him, trying to find owner of the fugitive, taking one of the him again by following the traces of his flight. As for ourselves, we made the best of our way to the isles of Aland, keeping as nearly as we could in the middle of the same, danger of losing one or other of our horses, still being repeatedly overturned, and always in "Amidst this chaos, it was not without which would have occasioned a very serious difficulty and trouble that our horses and journey, we did not meet with, on the ice, embarrassment. During the whole of this sledges were able to find and pursue their It was necessary to make frequent windings, ing creature. so much as one man, beast, bird, or any livand sometimes to return in a contrary di- desert, abandoned, as it were, by nature. Those vast solitudes present a rection, following that of a frozen wave, in order to avoid a collection of icy mountains only by the whistling of the winds against The dead silence that reigns is interrupted that lay before us. In spite of all our expedients for discovering the evenest paths, our the prominent points of ice, and sometimes sledges were every moment overturned to the by the loud crackings occasioned by their beright or to the left, and frequently the legs of ing irresistibly torn from this frozen expanse; one or other of the company, raised perpen-blown to a considerable distance. pieces thus forcibly broken off are frequently dicularly in the air, served as a signal for the the rents produced by these fractures, you Through whole caravan to halt. The inconvenience and the danger of our journey were still may see below the watery abyss; and it is further encreased by the following circumsometimes necessary, to lay planks across stance. Our horses were made wild and futhem, by way of bridges, for the sledges to rious, both by the sight and the smell of our pass over." great pelices, manufactured of the skins of Russian wolves, or bears. When any of the sledges was overturned, the horses belonging to it, or to that next to it, frighted at the sight of what they supposed to be a wolf or bear rolling on the ice, would set off at full gallop, to the great terror of both passenger and driver. The peasant, apprehensive of losing his horse in the midst of this desert, kept firm hold of the bridle, and suffered the horse to drag his body through masses of ice, of which some sharp points threaten to cut him in pieces. The animal, at last wearied out by the constancy of the man, and disheartened by the obstacles continually opposed to his flight, would stop; then we were enabled to get again into our sledges, but not till the driver had blindfolded the animal's eyes; but one time, one of the wildest and most spirited of all the horses in our train, having taken fright, completely made his escape. The peasant who conducted him, unable any longer to endure the fatigue and pain of being dragged through the ice, let go his hold of the bridle. The horse When they left Abo, a partial thaw had rendered the roads very bad. The want of inns was a less serious inconvenience in a hospitable country. Hospitality is one of the virtues which commerce destroys. The comforts and advantages of civilization are not to be had gratuitously; many a violet has been rooted up by the plough. The Finlanders appear to be a kind-hearted people, whose happiness will not be encreased by any political improvement of their country. They received the traveled them with whatever provisions they lers with great hospitality, and furnishcould supply, which in general was only fresh and curdled milk, salt herrings, and perhaps salt meat, but this is no despicable fare for a traveller. At Mamalo they met a blind old man, with a long white beard, and a bald forehead, singing verses to the children; but the children forsook their Homer to gaze at the strangers and laugh at them, and the poor skald begged their charity. Near the little village of Yervenkyle they visited a noble cataract. "It is formed by the river Kyro, which, issuing from a lake of the same name, precipitates itself through some steep and rugged tocks and falls, so far as I could guess, from a height of about seventy yards. The water, dashing from rock to rock, boils and foams, till it reaches the bottom, where it pursues a more tranquil course, and after making a large circuit, loses itself again between mountainous banks, which are covered with fir trees. That we might have a more commanding view of the picture, we took our station on a high ground, from which we had a distant prospect of a large tract of country, of a varied surface, and almost wholly covered with woods of firs, the pleasing verdure of which acquired additional lustre from the solar rays, and formed an agreeable contrast with the snow and masses of ice hanging from the margin over the cascade, "The fall presented us with one of those appearances which we desired much to see, as being peculiar to the regions of the north, and which are never to be met with in Italy. The water, throwing itself amidst enormous masses of ice, which here and there have the aspect of gloomy vaults, fringed with curious crystallizations, and the cold being of such rigour as almost to freeze the agitated waves and vapours in the air, formed gradually two bridges of ice across the cascade, of such solidity and strength, that men passed over them in perfect security. The waves raging and foaming below with a vast noise, were in a state of such violent motion, as to spout water now and then on the top of the bridge; a circumstance which rendered its surface so exceedingly slippery, that the peasants were ebliged to pass it creeping on their hands and knees. "I saw in this forest the disastrous wreck of one of those conflagrations which had devoured the wood through an extent of six or seven miles, and which exhibited a most dismal spectacle. You not only saw trunks and large remains of trees lying in confusion on the ground, and reduced to the state of charcoal, but also trees standing upright, which, though they had escaped destruction, had yet been miserably scorched; others black and bending down to one side, whilst in the midst of the ruins of trunks and branches, appeared a group of young trees, rising to replace the former generation; and, full of vigour and vegetable life, seemed to be deriving their nourishment from the ashes of their parents. "The devastations occasioned by storms in the midst of those forests, is still more impressive, and presents a picture still more diversified and majestic. It seems wholly inconceivable in what manner the wind pierceз through the thick assemblage of those woods, carrying ruin and desolation into particular districts, where there is neither opening nor scope for its ravages. Possibly it descends perpendicularly from heaven, in the nature of a tornado, or whirlwind, whose violence nothing can oppose, and which triumphs over all resistance. Trees of enormous size are torn from their roots; magnificent pines, which would have braved on the ocean tempests more furious, are bent like a bow, and touch the earth with their humbled tops. Such as might be thought capable of making the stoutest resistance are the most roughly treated; and those hurricanes, like the thunder of heaven, which strikes only the loftiest objects, passing over the young, and sparing them, because they are more pliant and flexible, seem to mark the strongest and most robust trees of the forest, which are in condition to meet them with a proud opposition, as alone worthy of their rage. Let the reader fancy to himself three or four miles of forest, where he is continually in The scenery of the country is very the presence of this disastrous spectacle; let striking. "The dreary silence and obscurity of a thick wood, whose branches forming a vaulted roof, cut off the traveller from a view of the skies, and admit only faint and dubious rays of light, is always an imposing object to the imagination; the awful impression the mind experiences under this majestic gloom, this dismal solitude, this desertion of nature, is not to be described. The temperature of the air is much milder in the interior of this wood, than the external atmosphere; a difference which is extremely perceptible to one who like us enters the wood after traversing a lake or open plain. The only noise the traveller hears in this forest, is the bursting of the bark of the trees, from the effect of the frost, which produces a loud but dull sound. AxN. RET. VOL. L him represent to his imagination the view of a thick wood, where he can scarcely see one upright tree; where all of them being thus forcibly inclined, are either propped by one another, or broken in the middle of the trunk, or torn from their roots and prosbranches, and the ruins of the forest, intertrated on the ground; every where trunks, rupting his view of the road, and exhibit ing a singular picture of confusion and ruin. transparent as crystal, discovered under our feet the whole depth of the element below, insomuch that we could see even the smallest fishes. In the first moment of surprise, having had no previous notice of the change, we fancied ourselves inevitably lost, and that we should be swallowed up, and perish in the awful gulf. Even the horse himself was startled at the novelty of his situation; he suddenly stopped short, and seemed unwilling to go forward. But the impulse he had acquired in travelling, pushed him forward in spite of himself, and he slid, or rather skated upon his four jointless legs, for the space of eight or ten yards. This strange mode of travelling with a skating horse, upon an element where we could count the fishes under the sledge, and under the horse's feet, was not very amusing to us, though we were already accustomed to a road of ice. I was at some pains to satisfy myself as to the reason why the ice was so clear and pellucid in particular parts of the river only; and I think I discovered it in the united action of the solar rays, and of the wind. The wind having swept away the snow, and cleared the surface of the ice, the sun, at the end of March and beginning of April, having acquired a considerable force, had melted and rendered smooth the surface, which at first is always somewhat rough and uneven; this being frozen during the night, formed a mirror of the most perfect polish. The lustre of the ice on this river is very remarkable; had it not been for the little shining and perpendicular fissures, which shewed the diameter of the ice's thickness, it would have been utterly impossible for us to distinguish it from the water below. Where the river happened to be of a profound depth, we could perceive our vast distance from the bottom only by an indistinct greenish colour: the reflection that we were suspended over such an abyss, made us shudder. Under this terrifying impression, the vast depth of the river, and dazzled by the extraordinary transparency and brilliancy of the ice, we crept along the surface, and felt inclined to shut our eyes, or turn away our heads, that we might be less sensible of our danger. But when the river happened to be only a yard or two deep, we were amused to be able to count the pebbles at the bottom of the water, and to frighten the fishes with our feet." province of Upsala!" who had put nature to the rack to dis- From Wasa they travelled 190 miles along the shores of a flat country to Uleaborg, crossing the rivers and arms of the sea. "We have before observed, that the frost is here so intense, as to arrest the sea in its waving motion. The sun becoming more powerful with the advancement of, the season, melted considerably the ice on the surface. The water thus produced during the day, collected in the cavities or.furrows, and formed little pools or rivulets, which we were under the necessity of traversing in our sledges; and as they were always a considerable depth in the middle, we saw ourselves descending we knew not where, and actually thought we should sink to the bottom of the ocean. The intrepidity, or rather indifference with which the Finlander made his way through those pools, encouraged us a little; but the recollection that we were upon the sea, and a consciousness that the water was entering our sledge, excited at first frightful apprehensions, and a continued disagreeable feeling. In nights of severe and intense cold, such as frequently occur at that time of the year, a crust of ice is formed over those pools, insomuch that the water becomes inclosed between two plates of ice: in this case the sledge, as it passes over the upper crust, which is generally but of a brittle texture, breaks it, and suddenly falls into the water, which bubbles up all about the sledge, nor does it stop till it gets to the second layer of ice. This unexpected fall produces a horrible sensation; and though there are rarely more than two feet of distance from one stratum of ice to the other, yet the sight of the water, the plunging of the horse, &c. are exceedingly alarming." At Wasa, a flourishing little town, they found a very intelligent clergyman, who had known Linnæus: if the anec- which it stands, is a flourishing and poUleaborg, considering the country in dotes which he related be true, and there pulous town; it contains about 3800 is no reason to doubt them, the vanity persons; exports a considerable quantity of the naturalist seems to have been as of tar, butter, tallow, dried fish, and monstrous as was that of sir Godfrey planks; and imports wine, oil, lemons, Kneller. He was exhibiting his museum and salt; it sends four ships to the Meto a lady, who, in her admiration, ex-diterranean; the public revenue which claimed "I no longer wonder that Lin- 'it supplies, is about 8000 rix-dollars yearnæus is so well known over the whole ly. There are mineral springs here, and |