In these words, and with this somewhat far-fetched simile, does a German tourist, Edward Boas by name, commence his narrative of a recent pilgrimage to the far north. Undeterred by the disadvantageous accounts given of those regions by a traveller who had shortly before visited them, and unseduced by the allurements of more southerly climes, he boldly sets forth to breast the mountains and brave the blasts of Scandinavia, and to form his own judgment of the country and its inhabitants. Almost, however, before putting foot on Scandinavian ground, Mr Boas, who, as a traveller, is decidedly of the gossiping and inquisitive class, fills three chapters with all manner of pleasant chatter about himself, and his feelings, and his fancies, and the travelling companions he meets with. His liveliness and versatility, and a certain bantering satirical vein, in which he occasionally indulges, would have caused us to take his work, had we met with it in an English translation, for the production of a French rather than a German pen.

Leaving the railway at Angermunde, our traveller continues his journey by the mail, in which he has two companions; a lady, "with an arm like ivory," about whom he seems more than half inclined to build up a little episodical romance, and a young man from the neighbouring town of Pasewalk, "on whose thick lips," we are informed, "the genius of stupidity seemed to have established its throne." This youth expressed his great regret that the good old customs of Germany had become obsolete, and expatiated on the necessity of striving to restore them. "Those were fine times," he said, "when nobles made war on their own account, burned down the villages, and drove the cattle of the peasants on each other's territory. To themselves personally, however, they did no harm; and if by chance Ritter Jobst fell into the hands of Ritter Kurt, the latter would say, 'Ritter Jobst, you are my prisoner on parole, and must pay me a ransom of five hundred thalers.' And thereupon they passed their time right joyously together, drinking and hunting the livelong day. But Ritter Jobst wrote to his seneschal that, by fair means or foul, he must squeeze the five hundred thalers out of his subjects, who were in duty bound to pay, to enable their gracious lord to return home again. Those were the times," concluded the young Pasewalker, "and of such times should I like to witness the return."

Now, Mr Boas considerably disapproved of these aspirations after the days of the robber knights, and he accordingly, to avoid hearing any more of them, took a nap in his corner, which helped him on nearly to Stralsund.

"This city," he says, "has acquired an undeserved renown through Wallenstein's famous vow, 'to have it, though it were hung from heaven by chains.' This puts me in mind of the trick of a reviewer who, by enormous and exaggerated praise, induces us to read the stupid literary production of some dear friend of his own. We take up the book with great expectations, and find it—trash. It is easy to see that Stralsund was founded by a set of dirty fish-dealers. Clumsy, gable-ended houses, streets narrow and crooked, a wretched pavement—such is the city. A small road along the shore, encumbered with timber, old casks, filth and rubbish—such is the quay."

In this uninteresting place, Mr Boas is compelled to pass eight-and-forty hours, waiting for a steamer. He fills up the time with a little dissertation on Swedish and Pomeranian dialects, and with a comical legend about a greedy monk, who bartered his soul to the devil for a platter of lampreys. By a stratagem of the abbot's, Satan was outwitted; and, taking himself off in a great rage, he dropped the lampreys in the lake of Madue, near Stargard, where to this day they are found in as great perfection as in the lakes of Italy and Switzerland. This peculiarity, however, might be accounted for otherwise than by infernal means, for Frederick the Great was equally successful in introducing the sturgeon of the Wolga into Pomeranian waters, where it is still to be met with.

A day's sail brings our traveller to the port of Ystad, where he receives his first impressions of Sweden, which are decidedly favourable. At sunrise the next morning he goes on board the steamer Svithiod, bound from Lubeck to Stockholm. At the same time with himself are shipped three wandering Tyrolese musicians, who are proceeding northwards to give the Scandinavians a taste of their mountain melodies, and two or three hundred pigs, all pickled; the pigs, that is to say. He finds on board a numerous and agreeable society, of which and of the passage he gives a graphic description.

Truly a solid and savoury repast. Whilst discussing it in the cabin of the Svithiod, Mr Boas makes acquaintance with his fellow-voyagers.

A young Swedish woman, named Maria, whose affecting little history Mr Boas learns and tells us—an Englishman—"a thorough Englishman, who, as long as he was eating, had no eyes or ears for any thing else," and a French commis voyageur, travelling to get orders for coloured papers, champagne, and silk goods, completed the list of all those of the party who were any way worthy of mention. The Frenchman, Monsieur Robineau by name, had a little ugly face, nearly hidden by an enormous beard, wore a red cap upon his head, and looked altogether like a bandy-legged brownie or gnome. The scene at daybreak the next morning is described with some humour.

Aided by the various talents and eccentricities of the passengers, by the grimaces of the Frenchman, and the songs of the Tyrolese minstrels, the time passed pleasantly enough; till, on the morning of the third day after leaving Ystad, the Svithiod was at the entrance of Lake Maeler, opposite the fortress of Waxholm, which presents more of a picturesque than of an imposing appearance.

Stockholm, the Venice of the North, has been thought by many travellers to present a more striking coup-d'oeil than any other European capital, Constantinople excepted. Built upon seven islands, formed by inlets of the sea and the Maeler Lake, it spreads over a surface very large in proportion to the number of its houses and inhabitants, and exhibits a singular mixture of streets, squares, and churches, with rock, wood, and water. The ground on which it stands is uneven, and in many places declivitous; the different parts of the city are connected by bridges, and on every side is seen the fresh green foliage of the north. The natural canals which intersect Stockholm are of great depth, and ships of large burden are enabled to penetrate into the very heart of the town. The general style of building offers little to admire; the houses being for the most part flat-fronted, monotonous, and graceless, without any species of architectural decoration to relieve their inelegant uniformity. It is the position of the city, the air of lightness given to it by the water, which traverses it in every direction, and the life and movement of the port, that form its chief recommendations. In their architectural ideas the Swedes appear to be entirely utilitarian, disdainful of ornament; and if a house of more modern and tasteful build, with windows of a handsome size, cornices, and entablatures, is here and there to be met with, it is almost certain to have been erected by Germans or some other foreigners. The royal palace, of which the first stone was laid in the reign of Charles XII., is a well-conceived and finely executed work; some of the churches are also worthy of notice; but most of the public buildings derive their chief interest, like the squares and market-places, from their antiquity, or from historical associations connected with them. Few cities offer richer stores to the lovers of the romance of history than does the capital of Sweden. One edifice alone, the Ritterhaus—literally, the House of Knights or Lords—in which the Swedish nobility were wont to hold their Diets, would furnish subject-matter for a score of romances. Not a door nor a window, scarce a stone in the building, but tells of some sanguinary feud, or fierce insurrection of the populace, in the troublous days of Sweden. From floor to ceiling of the great hall in which the Diet held its sittings, hang the coats of arms of Swedish counts, barons, and noblemen. A solemn gloomy light pervades the apartment, and unites with the grave black-blue coverings of the seats and balustrades, to convey the idea that this is no arena for showy shallow orators, but a place in which stern truth and naked reality have been wont to prevail. The chair of Gustavus Vasa, of inlaid ivory, and covered with purple velvet, stands in this room.

Mr Boas, the pages of whose book are thickly strewn with legends and historical anecdotes, many of them interesting, devotes a chapter to the Ritterhaus and its annals. One tragical history, connected with that building, appears worthy of extraction:

Concerning the ultimate fate of this luckless pair of lovers, Mr Boas deposeth not, but passes on to an account of the disturbances in 1810, when the Swedish marshal, Count Axel Fersen, suspected by the populace as cause of the sudden death of the Crown Prince, Charles Augustus, was attacked, while following the body of the prince through the streets of Stockholm. He was sitting in full uniform in his carriage, drawn by six milk-white horses, when he was assailed with showers of stones, from which he took refuge in a house upon the Ritterhaustmarkt. In spite of the exertions of General Silversparre, at the head of some dragoons, the mob broke into the house, and entered the room in which Fersen was. He folded his hands, and begged for mercy, protesting his innocence. But his entreaties were in vain. A broad-shouldered fellow, a shopkeeper, named Lexow, tore off his orders, sword, and cloak, and threw them through the window to the rioters, who with furious shouts reduced them to fragments. Silversparre then proposed to take the count to prison, and have him brought to trial in due form. But, on the way thither, the crowd struck and ill-treated the old man; and, although numerous troops were now upon the spot, these remained with shouldered arms, and even their officers forbade their interference. They appeared to be there to attend an execution rather than to restore order. The mob dragged the unfortunate Fersen to the foot of Gustavus Vasa's statue, and there beat and ill-treated him till he died. It was remarked of the foremost and most eager of his persecutors, that although dressed as common sailors, their hands were white and delicate, and linen of fine texture peeped betrayingly forth from under their coarse outer garments. Doubtless more than one long-standing hatred was on that day gratified. It was still borne in mind, that Count Fersen's father had been the chief instrument in bringing Count Eric Brahe, and several other nobles, to the scaffold, upon the very spot where, half a century later, his son's blood was poured out.

The murder of the Count-Marshal was followed by an attack upon the house of his sister, the Countess Piper; but she had had timely notice, and escaped by water to Waxholm. Several officers of rank, who strove to pacify the mob, were abused, and even beaten; until at length a combat ensued between the troops and the people, and lasted till nightfall, when an end was put to it by a heavy fall of rain. The number of killed and wounded on that day could never be ascertained.

These incidents are striking and dramatic—fine stuff for novel writers, as Mr Boas says—but we will turn to less sanguinary subjects. In a letter to a female friend, who is designated by the fanciful name of Eglantine, we have a sketch of the present state of Swedish poetry and literature. According to the account here given us, Olof von Dalin, who was born in Holland in 1763, was the first to awaken in the Swedes a real and correct taste for the belles lettres. This he did in great measure by the establishment of a periodical called the Argus. He improved the style of prose writing, and produced some poetry, which latter appears, however, to have been generally more remarkable for sweetness than power. We have not space to follow Mr Boas through his gallery of Swedish literati, but we will extract what he says concerning three authoresses, whose works, highly popular in their own country and in Germany, have latterly attracted some attention in England. These are—Miss Bremer, Madame Flygare-CarlÉn, and the Baroness Knorring, the delineators of domestic, rural, and aristocratic life in Sweden.

Upon the subjects of Swedish society and conversation, Mr Boas is pleased to be unusually funny. Like the foreigner who asserted that Goddam was the root of the English language, he seems prepared to maintain that two monosyllables constitute the essence of the Swedish tongue, and that they alone are required to carry on an effective and agreeable dialogue. "It is not at all difficult," he says, "to keep up a conversation with a Swede, when you are once acquainted with a certain mystical formula, whereby all emotions and sentiments are to be expressed, and by the aid of which you may love and hate, curse and bless, be good-humoured or satirical, and even witty. The mighty and all-sufficing words are, 'Ja so!' (Yes, indeed!) usually pronounced Jassoh. It is wonderful to hear the infinite variety of modulation which a Swede gives to these two insignificant syllables. Does he hear some agreeable intelligence, he exclaims, with sparkling eyes and brisk intonation, 'Ja so!' If bad news are brought to him, he droops his head, and, after a pause, murmurs mournfully, 'Ja so!' The communication of an important affair is received with a thoughtful 'Ja so!' a joke elicits a humorous one; an attempt to banter or deceive him is met by a sarcastic repetition of the same mysterious words.

The province of Dalarna, or Dalecarlia, which lies between Nordland and the Norwegian frontier, and in which Miss Bremer has laid the scene of one of her most recent works, is spoken of at some length by Mr Boas, who considers it to be, in various respects, the most interesting division of Sweden. Its inhabitants, unable to find means of subsistence in their own poor and mountainous land, are in the habit of wandering forth to seek a livelihood in more kindly regions, and Mr Boas likens them in this respect to the Savoyards. They might, perhaps, be more aptly compared to the Galicians, who leave their country, not, as many of the Savoyards do, to become beggars and vagabonds, by the aid of a marmoset and a grinding organ, but to strive, by the hardest labour and most rigid economy, to accumulate a sum that will enable them to return and end their lives in their native village.

It was nearly a century later that Gustavus Vasa, flying, with a price upon his head, from the assassins of his father and friends, took refuge in Dalecarlia. Disguised in peasant's garb, and with an axe in his hand, he hired himself as a labourer; but was soon recognised, and his employer feared to retain him in his service. He then appealed to the Dalecarlians to espouse his cause; but, although they admired and sympathised with the gallant youth who thus placed his trust in them, they hesitated to take up arms in his behalf; and, hopeless of their assistance, he at last turned his steps towards Norway. But scarcely had he done so, when the incursion of a band of Danish mercenaries sent to seek him, and the full confirmation of what he had told them concerning the massacre at Stockholm, roused the Dalecarlians from their inaction. The tocsin was sounded throughout the provinces, the Danes were driven away, and the two swiftest runners in the country bound on their snow-shoes, and set out with the speed of the wind to bring back the royal fugitive. They overtook him at the foot of the Norwegian mountains, and soon afterwards he found himself at the head of five thousand white-coated Dalecarlians.

The Danes were approaching, and one of their bishops asked—"How many men the province of Dalarna could furnish?"

"At least twenty thousand," was the reply; "for the old men are just as strong and as brave as the young ones."

"But what do they all live upon?"

"Upon bread and water. They take little account of hunger and thirst, and when corn is lacking, they make their bread out of tree-bark."

"Nay," said the bishop, "a people who eat tree-bark and drink water, the devil himself would not vanquish, much less a man."

And neither were they vanquished. Like an avalanche from the mountains, they fell upon their foes, beat them with clubs, and drove them into the river. Their progress was one series of triumphs, till they placed Gustavus Vasa on the throne of Sweden.

The last outbreak of the Dalecarlians was less successful. On the 19th of June 1743, five thousand of these hardy and determined men appeared before Stockholm, bringing with them in fetters the governor of their province, and demanding the punishment of the nobles who had instigated a war with Russia, and a new election of an heir to the crown. They were not to be pacified by words; and even the next morning, when the old King Frederick, surrounded by his general and guards, rode out to harangue them, all he could obtain was the release of their prisoner. On the other hand, they seized three pieces of cannon, and dragged them to the square named after Gustavus Adolphus, where they posted themselves.

Returning from Dalecarlia to Stockholm, Mr Boas takes, not without regret, his final farewell of that city, and embarks for Gothenburg, passing through the Gotha canal, that splendid monument of Swedish industry and perseverance, which connects the Baltic with the North Sea. He passes the island of MÖrkÖ, on which is HÖningsholm Castle, where Marshal Banner was brought up. A window is pointed out in the third story of the castle, at which Banner, when a child, was once playing, when he overbalanced himself and fell out. The ground beneath was hard and rocky, but nevertheless he got up unhurt, ran into the house, and related how a gardener had saved him by catching him in his white apron. Enquiry was immediately made, but, far or near, no gardener was to be found. By an odd coincidence, Wallenstein, Banner's great opponent, when a page at Innspruck, also fell out of a high window without receiving the least injury.

On the first evening of the voyage, the steamer anchors for the night near Mem, a country-seat belonging to a certain Count Saltza, an eccentric old nobleman, who traces his descent from the time of Charles XII., and fancies himself a prophet and ghost-seer. His predictions relate usually to the royal family or country of Sweden, and are repeated from mouth to mouth throughout every province of the kingdom. And here we must retract an assertion we made some pages back, as to the possibility of our supposing this book to proceed from any other than a German pen. No one but a German would have thought it necessary or judicious to intrude his own insipid sentimentalities into a narrative of this description, and which was meant to be printed. But there is probably no conceivable subject on which a German could be set to write, in discussing which he would not manage to drag in, by neck and heels, a certain amount of sentiment or metaphysics, perhaps of both. Mr Boas, we are sorry to say, is guilty of this sin against good taste. The steamer comes to an anchor about ten o'clock, and he goes ashore with Baron K——, a friend he has picked up on board, to take a stroll in the Prophet's garden at Mem. There they encounter Mesdemoiselles Ebba and Ylfwa, lovely and romantic maidens, who sit in a bower of roses under the shadow of an umbrageous maple-tree, their arms intertwined, their eyes fixed upon a moonbeam, piping out Swedish melodies, which, to our two swains, prove seductive as the songs of a Siren. The moonbeam aforesaid is kind enough to convert into silver all the trees, bushes, leaves and twigs in the vicinity of the young ladies with the Thor-and-Odin names; whilst to complete this German vision, a white bird with a yellow tuft upon its head stands sentry upon a branch beside them, the said bird being, we presume, a filthy squealing cockatoo, although Mr Boas, gay deceiver that he is, evidently wishes us to infer that it was an indigenous volatile of the phoenix tribe. Sentinel Cockatoo, however, was caught napping, and the garrison of the bower had to run for it. And now commences a series of hopes and fears, and doubts and anxieties, and sighings and perplexities, which keep the tender heart of Boas in a state of agreeable palpitation, through four or five chapters; at the end of which he steps on board the steam-boat Christiana, blows in imagination a farewell kiss to Miss Ebba, of whom, by the bye, he has never obtained more than half a glimpse, and awaking, as he tells us, from his love-dream, which we should call his nightmare, sets sail for Copenhagen.

Of the various places visited by Mr Boas during his ramble, few seem to have pleased him better than Copenhagen, and he becomes quite enthusiastic when speaking of that city, and of what he saw there. The pleasure he had in meeting Thorwaldsen is perhaps in part the cause of his remembering the Danish capital with peculiar favour. He gives various details concerning that celebrated sculptor, his character and habits, and commences the chapter, which he styles, "A Fragment of Italy in the North," with a comparison between Sweden and Denmark, two countries which, both in trifling and important matters, but especially in the character of their inhabitants, are far more dissimilar than from their juxtaposition might have been supposed. Listen to Mr Boas.

In his house, and as a private individual, Thorwaldsen is as amiable and estimable as in his studio. In the centre of one of his rooms is a four-sided sofa, which was embroidered expressly for him by the fair hands of the Copenhagen ladies. The walls are covered with pictures, some of them very good, others of a less degree of merit. They were not all bought on account of their excellence; Thorwaldsen purchased many of them to assist young artists who were living, poor and in difficulties, at Rome. Dressed in his blue linen blouse, he explained to his visitor the subjects of these pictures, without the slightest tinge of vanity in his manner or words. None of the dignities or honours that have been showered upon him, have in the slightest degree turned his head. Affable, cheerful, and even-tempered, he appears to have preserved, to his present age of sixty, much of the joyous lightheartedness of youth. With great glee he related to Mr Boas the trick he had played the architects of the church of Our Lady at Copenhagen.

"Architects are obstinate people," said he, "and one must know how to manage them. Thank God, that is a knowledge which I possess in a tolerable degree. When the church of Our Lady was built, the architect left six niches on either side of the interior, and these were to contain the twelve apostles. In vain did I represent to them that statues were meant to be looked at on all sides, and that nobody could see through a stone wall; I implored, I coaxed them, it was all in vain. Then thought I to myself, he is best served who serves himself, and thereupon I made the statues a good half-foot higher than the niches. You should have seen the length of the architects' faces when they found this out. But they could not help themselves; the infernal sentry-boxes were bricked up, and my apostles stand out upon their pedestals, as you may have seen when you visited the church."

Thorwaldsen is devotedly attached to Copenhagen, and has made a present to the city of all his works and collections, upon condition that a fitting locality should be prepared for their reception, and that the museum should bear his name. The king gave a wing of the Christiansburg for this purpose, the call for subscriptions was enthusiastically responded to, and the building is now well advanced. Its style of architecture is unostentatious, and its rows of large windows will admit a broad decided light upon the marble groups. Pending its completion, the majority of the statues and pictures are lodged in the palace.

Mr Boas appears bent upon establishing his parallel between Denmark and Italy. He traces it in the fondness of the Danes for art, poetry, and music, in their gay and joyous character, and in their dress. He even discovers an Italian punchinello figuring in a Danish puppet-show; and as it was during the month of August that he found himself in Denmark, the weather was not such as to dispel his illusions.

"It would be erroneous," he says, "to suppose that Danish costumes weaken or obliterate the idea of a southern region conveyed by this country. A Bolognese professor would not think of covering his head with the red cap of a Lazzarone, and Roman marchesas dress themselves, like Danish countesses, according to the Journal des Modes. National costumes in all countries have taken refuge in villages, and the peasants in the environs of Copenhagen have no reason to be ashamed of their garb, which is both showy and picturesque. The men wear round hats and dark-blue jackets, lined with scarlet and adorned with long glittering rows of bullet-shaped buttons. The women are very tasteful in their attire. Their dark-green gowns, with variegated borders, reach down to their heels, and the shoulder-strap of the closely fitting boddice is a band of gold lace. The chief pains are bestowed upon the head-dress, which is various in its fashion, sometimes composed of clear white stuff, with an embroidered lappet, falling down upon the neck; sometimes of a cap of many colours, heavily embroidered with gold, and having broad ribands of a red purple, which flutter over the shoulders. One meets every where with this original sort of costume; for the peasant women repair in great numbers to the festivals at the various towns, and in Copenhagen they are employed as nurses to the children of the higher classes.

It is something rather new for an author to introduce into his book a criticism of another work on the same subject. This, Mr Boas, who appears to be a bold man, tolerably confident in his own capabilities and acquirements, has done, and in a very amusing, although not altogether an unobjectionable manner. He must be sanguine, however, if he expects his readers to place implicit faith in his impartiality. Under the title of "A Tour in the North," he devotes a long chapter to a bitter attack on the Countess Hahn-Hahn's book of that name. Here is its commencement:—

And thereupon, Mr Boas does "strike in," as he calls it; but however soothing his words may prove to his ill-used Swedish friends, we have considerable doubts as to their emollient effect upon the Countess, supposing always that she condescends to read them. He hits that lady some very hard knocks, not all of them, perhaps, entirely undeserved; makes out an excellent case for the Swedes, and proves, much more satisfactorily to himself than to us, that Madame Hahn-Hahn is of a very inferior grade of bookmaking tourists.

"In the first place" he says, "I declare that her work on Sweden is no original, but a dull imitation of Gustavus Nicolai's notorious book, 'Italy, as it really is.' Like that author, the Countess labours assiduously to collect together all the darkest shades and least favourable points of the country and people she visits; exaggerates them when she finds them, and invents them when she does not. For the beauties of the country she has neither eye nor feeling; she intentionally avoids speaking of them, and her book is meant, like that of Nicolai, to operate as a warning, and scare away travellers. The good lady says this very explicitly. 'Travellers are beginning to turn their attention a good deal to the north, for the south is becoming insufficient to gratify that universal rage for rambling, with which I myself, as a true child of the century, am also infected. But the north is so little known—I, for my part, only knew it through Dahl's poetical landscapes—that one feels involuntarily disposed to deck it with the colours of the south, because the south is beautiful, and the north is said also to be so. Thus one is apt to set out with a delusion, and I think it will therefore be an act of kindness to those who may visit Sweden after me, if I say exactly how I found it.' Uncommonly good, Gustavus the second. But it would be unfair to Nicolai to assert that his book is as dull and nonsensical as that of the Countess Hahn-Hahn. He went to Italy with the idea that it never rained there, and that oranges grew on the hedges, as sloes do with us. This was childish, and one could not help laughing at it. But when his imitatress perpetually laments and complains, because on the Maeler lake, under the 59th degree of latitude, she does not find the sultry southern climate—it becomes worse than childish, and one is compelled to pity her. The Countess chanced to hit upon a cool rainy month for her visit—I am wrong, she was not a month in Scandinavia altogether—and thereupon she cries out as if she were drowning, and despises both country and people."

It is easy to understand that there can be little sympathy between the Countess Hahn-Hahn, an imaginative and somewhat capricious fine lady, with strong aristocratic and exclusive tendencies, and such a matter-of-fact person as Mr Boas, who, in spite of his sentimentality, which is a sort of national infirmity, and although he informs us in one part of his book that he is a poet, leans much more to the practical and positive than to the imaginative and dreamy, and we moreover suspect is a bit of a democrat. Having, however, taken the Countess en grippe, as the French call it, he shows her no mercy, and, it must be owned, displays some cleverness in hitting off and illustrating the weak points of her character and writings.

"Hardly," he resumes, "has the female Nicolai reached Stockholm, when she begins with her insipid comparisons. 'The golden brilliancy of Naples and the magic spell of Venice are here entirely wanting.' Is it possible? Only see what striking remarks this witty and travelled dame does make! In the next page she says:—'Upon this very day, exactly one year since, I was in Barcelona; but here there is nothing that will bear comparison with the land of the aloe and the orange. Three years ago I was on the Lake of Como, in that fairy garden beyond the Alps! Five years ago in Vienna, amongst the rose-groves of Laxenburg;' &c. Who cares in what places the Countess has been? Surely it is enough that she has written long wearisome books about them. Every possible corner of Italy, Spain, and Switzerland is dragged laboriously in, to furnish forth comparisons; and soon, no doubt, a similar use will be made of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. These comparisons are invariably shown to be to the disadvantage of Sweden; and although the lady is oftentimes compelled to confess to the beauty of a Swedish landscape, she never forgets to qualify the admission, by observing how much more beautiful such or such a place was. For example, she is standing one night at her window, looking out on the Maeler lake. 'I wrapped my mantilla shiveringly around me, stepped back from the window, shut it, and said with a slight sigh: In Venice the moonlight nights were very different.' Really this would be hardly credible, did any other than a countess assure us of it."

"I am always sorry," says a witty French writer, "when a woman becomes an author: I would much rather she remained a woman." Does Mr Boas, perchance, partake this implied opinion, that authorship unsexes; and is it therefore that he allows himself to deal out such hard measure to the Countess Ida? Even if we agreed with his criticisms, we should quarrel with his want of gallantry. But it is tolerably evident that if Madame Hahn-Hahn, finding herself on the shores of the Baltic, in a July that might have answered to December in the sunny climes she had so recently left, allowed her account of Swedes and Sweden to be shaded a little en noir by her own physical discomforts; it is evident, we say, that on the other hand, our present author, either more favoured by the season, or less susceptible of its influence, sins equally in the contrary extreme, and throws a rosy tint over all that he portrays. Though equally likely to induce into error, it is the pleasanter fault to those persons who merely read the tour for amusement, without proposing to follow in the footsteps of the tourist. Your complaining, grumbling travellers are bores, whether on paper or in a post-chaise; and, truth to tell, we have noticed in others of the Countess's books a disposition to look on the dark side of things. But this is not always the case, and, when she gets on congenial ground, she shines forth as a writer of a very high order. Witness her Italian tour, and her book upon Turkey and Syria, with which latter, English readers have recently been made acquainted through an admirable translation, by the accomplished author of Caleb Stukely. She has her little conceits, and her little fancies; rather an overweening pride of caste, and contempt for the plebeian multitude, and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with small personal and egotistical details about herself, and her sensations, and what dresses she wears, and how thin she is, and so on. But with all her faults, she is unquestionably a very accomplished and clever writer. Her criticisms on subjects relating to art, and especially her original and sparkling remarks on painting and architecture, although qualified by Mr Boas as twaddle, stamp her at once as a woman of no common order. She has profound and poetical conceptions of Beauty, and at times a felicity of expression in presenting the effects of nature and art upon her own mind, that strikes and startles by its novelty and power. As a delineator of men and manners, she is remarkable for shrewdness, subtle perception, and truthfulness that cannot be mistaken. Should our readers doubt our statements, or haply Mr Boas turn up his nose at the eulogium, we would simply refer them and him to the last work that has fallen from her pen, the Letters from the Orient, and bid them open it at the page which brings them to a Bedouin encampment—a scene described with the vigour that belongs to a masculine understanding, and all the fascination which a feminine mind can bestow.

Still we are free to confess that the Countess has written perhaps rather too much for the time she has been about it, and thus laid herself open to an accusation of bookmaking, the prevailing vice of the present race of authors. The incorrigible and merciless Mr Boas does not let this pass.

"The question now remains to be asked," says he; "Why did Ida Hahn-Hahn, upon leaving a country in which she had passed a couple of weeks—a country of the language of which she confesses herself ignorant, and with which she was in every respect thoroughly displeased, deem it incumbent on her forthwith to write a thick book concerning it? The answer is this: her pretended impulse to authorship is merely feigned, otherwise she would not have troubled herself any further about such a wearisome country as Sweden. Through three hundred and fifty pages does she drag herself, grumbling as she goes; a single day must often fill a score of pages, for travelling costs money, and the honorarium is not to be despised. If I thus accuse the Countess of bookmaking, I also feel that such an accusation should be supported by abundant proof, and such proof am I ready to give."

Oh fye, Boas! How can you be so ruthless? Besides the impolicy of exposing the tricks of your trade, all this is very spiteful indeed. You would almost tempt us, were it worth while, to take up the cudgels in earnest in defence of the calumniated Countess, and to give you a crack on the pate, which, as Maga is regularly translated into German for the benefit and improvement of your countrymen, would entirely finish your career, whether as poet, tour-writer, or any thing else. But seeing that your conceits and lucubrations have afforded us one or two good laughs, and considering, moreover, that you are of the number of those small fry with which it is almost condescension for us to meddle, we will let you off, and close this notice of your book, if not with entire approbation, at least with a moderate meed of praise.