KYTSJORD lies five hundred and fifty-three English feet above the sea. The distance to Christiania was fourteen English miles, and the way lay through deep vallies among the hills. These miles we passed in a most delightful sum mer morning, a favour which seemed to he conferred on us by heaven that the view of the wonderful country round Christiania might be enjoyed by us in all its glory. What variety! What astonishing forms of objects, looking down from the height of Egeberg! The large town at the end of the bay, in the midst of the country, spreads out in small divergent masses in every direction, till it is at last lost in the distance among villages, farm-houses, and well-built country-houses. There are ships in the harbour, ships behind the fascinating little islands before the bay, and other sails still appear in the distance. The majestic forms in the horizon of the steep hills rising over other hills, which bound

the country to the westward, are worthy of Claude Lorrain. I have long been seeking for a resemblance to this country, and to this landscape. It is only to be found at Geneva, on the Savoy side, towards the mountains of Jura; but the lake of Geneva does not possess the islands of the Fiord, the numerous masts, and the ships and boats in sail.

Here we have the impression of an extraordinary and beautiful country, united in a wonderfully diversified manner with the pleasure derived from the contemplation of human industry and activity.

"We descended by numerous serpentine windings the steep height of the Egeberg, through the remains of the old town of Opslo, and through a continued row of houses along the bay to Christiania, which we reached about mid-day of the 30th of July. What makes Christiania the capital of Norway, is not merely the presence of the principal constituted authorities and public

bodies

bodies of the country, nor is it the superiority of its population, for Bergen contains double the number of inhabitants; but it is rather the extensive influence of this town over the greatest part of the country, the various connections of the inhabitants partly with the capital of the kingdom, and partly with the foreign countries, and the social mode of life and cultivation of these inhabitants. Whatever chauge takes place in any part of Europe, is in the same manner as in Germany keenly felt and eagerly followed: but this is not the case in Bergen. Many means of assistance, which are generally looked for in a capital, and where men meet actively together in great bodies, are to be found united in Christiania much more than in Drontheim, and still more than in the narrow-minded Bergen as for Christiansand it is boo small.

"Whoever is acquainted with northern towns, will discover, from the exterior of Christiania, that it is a distinguished, a thriving, and even a beautiful town; for the streets are not only broad and straight, and nearly all intersect one another at right angles, which gives a gay and animated appearance to the whole but almost all the houses are built of stone; and wooden log-houses are, for the most part, banished to the remotest streets of the suburbs. When a Norwegian descends from his hills to the town, he stares at these stone houses as an unparalleled piece of magnificence; for perhaps he never saw before, in the interior of the country, a single house of stone: and those who have lived some time in Drontheim or Bergen, where stone houses are rarities, and wholly

concealed among the wooden houses, are willingly disposed to consider the houses in Christiania a very great luxury; they attribute to them a beauty which they do not in themselves possess, and they involuntarily connect with it the idea of a general prosperity, of a brisk trade, and of the superiority of this town over every other.

"In this case, however, they would not judge altogether correctly, for it is not optional with the inhabitants to build as they do, as log houses have been long prohibited by the government in the circumference of the town; and the wisdom of the prohibition has been confirmed by experience. There is not a town in Norway which has not been once, at least, burnt to the ground. The fire rages terribly among the dry boards. Whole streets burst into flames at once, and it is in vain to think of either extinguishing the fire or saving the property. How much has Bergen suffered from fire, where the houses are closely crowded together among the rocks! How much Drentheim and Skeeh! Moss was twice, in the course of the year 1807, devastated by fire; and in Sweden, Gottenburg, Uddewalla, Norkiöping, Gefle; a slight inattention lays the whole town in ashes; and what costs centuries to build is annihilated in a few moments. Christiania bears also the alarm drum as often as other Norwegian and Swedish towns; but since its origin, during nearly two whole centuries, it has never lost entire streets, and seldom more than ten houses at once.

"If it were not for the prohibi tion, the inhabitants would, in general, soon return to wooden houses; and the greater cheapness as yet,

and

and greater quickness of erection, would overbalance in their minds the idea of safety, of life, and property. The government itself, with no great consistency, thought proper, in 1906, to erect a large, beautiful, and excellent military hospital of logs, on an eminence at one of the ends of the town: a considerable fabric, which appears full in view all the way from Egeberg. With this royal building in sight at every corner of the town, we are less disposed to suspect that the building with stone was not perfectly free on the part of the inhabitants. It is a pity that so few of the houses will bear a narrow inspection some of them are neatly built; but these are rare. Even the rich chamberlain, Berndt Ancker, who was surrounded with such extravagant luxury, left behind him no buildings to do honour either to his native town or himself.

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Formerly the proprietors of houses seem to have deemed it a very great ornament to mark the initials of their name, and the year of erection, with great iron hooks, on the outside of the houses. It de forms the houses very much.

"The town is by no means uniform, but is divided into several small towns, the boundaries of which may almost be laid down with certainty; and in these the exterior, the houses, trades, and manner of living, are very different from one another. In great towns we accustomed to see this; but in a town like Christiania we are hardly prepared to expect it. There is an exact boundary between the part of the town occupied with the inland trade and that where the foreign trade is carried on.

are

"The straight streets, which

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cross at right angles, run up from the harbour, but do not extend all the way to the country. The capitalists, the wholesale dealers, the ship owners, those who hold government offices, find more room here than elsewhere for their large houses; and the consequence is, a greater stillness, and almost a dead silence in these streets. They are called the quartale, and every person in the quartale, according to the way of thinking here, is considered richer, finer, and more polished than the inhabitants of the other streets.

"On the other hand, there is more stir in that part of the town which runs out into the country. The houses are more closely crowded together, and every bit of ground is carefully occupied. Whatever comes from the country must pass through these streets. All the artizans, shopkeepers, and retailers, who wish to dispose of rheir commodities to the country people, draw near to them; and signs and posts without number invite the entrance of purchasers. I have often considered, with astonishment, the multitude of small shops and booths. How is it possible, said I to myself, that so many people can derive a living in so small a town from the same trade? I looked over the lists, and found, that of nine thousand and five inhabitants, which Christiania contained in 1801, including the garrison, one hundred and ten were shopkeepers, two hundred and twenty retail dealers, and two hundred and forty-two master artizans. In what other town, with the same population, shall we find even the quarter of this number?-But let a person wait for the weekly market, and still more for the annual fair, or winter, which connects G

every

every place together, and he would then be almost tempted to believe that different nations were collected together in this place; for the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians, assuredly do not differ more from one another than the inhabitants of various vallies, who assemble from all parts to the annual fair. This is one of the most interesting spectacles for every stranger who visits Norway, and for every person who wishes to examine human nature, and to trace by what routs and as sociations man gradually advances in the progress of cultivation towards his destination.

"For several days before the annual fair, which is held on the thirteenth of January, the town is filled with country people from all quarters; and figures make their appearance, such as before were not seen in the streets. The strong and robust inhabitant of Guldbrandsdalen, in his long coat of the seventeenth century, and with his little red cap on his head, walks by the side of the comparatively ele gant boor of Walders, who, in features and dress, is as unlike him as if he came from beyond the sea. The rich proprietors from Hedemarken pass along as if they were of the inferior order of townspeople; and their coats of home-made cloth are cut in an antiquated fashion, as is usual in country places. From Oesterdalen, on the Swedish boundaries, appears a higher class of men; but we may easily see, from their carriage, that it is borrowed from their neighbours. On the other hand, we ree the rough and almost stupid native of Hallingdalen, in a true national uniform, and the sturdy men of Oevre Tellemarken, still more rough and stupid. They alone yet continue to wear the broad northern

girdle round the waist; which the native of Telemarken embroiders and ornaments in quite a different manner from the other; and in this girdle they fix a large knife like the Italians, which was formerly as often used by them for attack and warfare as for conveniency. They wear a short jacket, with a sort of epaulette on it, and a small cap on the head: thin short leathern breeches contain in the side pockets all the wants of the moment, and almost always the important small iron tobacco-pipe. Every step and movement of these men is characteristic and definite. They have only one object in view, and nothing which surrounds them can deaden the eagerness with which they pursue that object. The boor of Foulloug and Moss is far from having this distinct character. Nearer to the town, his business is also more various, and he looks around him with ;tention and caution to discover any little advantages which may bring him easier and more securely to his end; he no longer lives insulated in his valley, relying on his own individual physical strength, but bas become, through common interest and connections, a part of a nation.

"This has been effected by the capital: it, and it alone, bas effected this diversity among the country people, and it proves itself to be a capital in gradually burying, and even altogether changing, and extirpating, all nationality through so great an extent. Who would believe that in the times of Harald Haarfager, or Saint Oluf, the people in Guldbrandsdalen lived and dressed as at present? Who would suppose that the people of Oesterdalen, and the people of Hedemarken, possessed many remains of those times? But to be convinced

that

that all these changes have proceeded from the town, we need travel but a very short way. An inbabitant of Guldbrandsdalen, in his long bottomed coat, and monstrous stiff and indented flaps over his coat pockets, has quite a strange appearance when he appears in the streets of Christiania; but the form of the dress and the men change upon us imperceptibly when we travel through their vallies.

"In the suburbs of the town we find the same fashions that were prevalent in the quartale three or four years before; and there they again follow the fashion shortly before set by Paris and London. The peasant nearest the town, particularly in the neighbourhood of the streets leading to the country, takes a pattern from the coat he sees worn in the suburbs He seldom penetrates farther into the town, and to the quartale he is altogether a stranger. It appears as if he changed his nature and habits with his dress; and this is natural enough; for it is only through more important connections he acquires the knowledge of this new fashion. In the clothes of the boors of Hedemarken and Foulloug, there is not the smallest trace of the national dress. The same fashion prevailed twenty-five years ago in Germany, and probably also in Christiania. As we ascend the country, the cut becomes older and older, but the dress of their ancestors is always perceptible; and when we come to the strange dress in Guldbrandsdalen, what else is it but the regimental uniform of the times of Eugene and Marlborough? It is the same with the women; they change perhaps slower and later; but they must also at last yield to the influence of the town.

When we see a woman from

Guldbrandsdalen in her full dress," said the noble and intelligent chamberlain Rozenkrantz in Christiania to me one day, "we imagine ourselves standing before our old northern grandmothers, as they are occasionally to be seen in our antiquated family portraits."

"If Hallingdalen, Walders, and especially Oevre Tellemarken, have yet retained in their exterior something exclusively peculiar to the country, they owe it to the remoteness of their vallies, and the difficulty of communication with the town. They are consequently seldom to be seen in the towns on the coast.

"That the national character is in this manner limited to a few remote districts; and that the towns have so powerful and extensive an influence on the surrounding country, and render the Norwegian a quite different being from what he was in the time of Snorro Sturleson, is lamented by many, and those among the most exalted characters, as a national calamity; and they earnestly wish that it were possible to arrest the further progress. But why? Are men to remain for ever stationary like insects? Do they imagine that they have gained the golden fleece with that degree of virtue which can be practised in remote vallies? And though this virtue may have somewhat of a national physiognomy, shall we con cede to it any thing more than a relative excellence? And can, or should this excellence endure through the length of time? It is certainly great and becoming to as sert ones freedom boldly and vigorously in remote vales: but what if this freedom is never endangered? Through social institutions, a still higher freedom may be acG 2

quired.