doubt, if you are in the habit of visiting the
first class music halls, you have noticed the
talented Devanti family. Those are my curses,
sir, all turned into blessings, earning good
salaries, keeping themselves respectable, and
honouring their father and their mother so like
Christians that you wouldn't know the difference,
though they are only performers at a music
hall, and their father is a broken-down
Pantaloon.

IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.

I HAD spent the summer on the banks of
the Tana river, the other side the North
Cape, salmon fishing; and having nothing
particular to do, determined on trying what an
Arctic winter resembled; so I took up my
abode at a worthy pastor's house in lat.
68° 54'. It was a pretty log-built house, the
interstices both on the inside and out being
stuffed with moss, as is general, and thus
effectually excluding the cold in winter, and the
intense heat of perpetual day in the summer;
but affording unlimited refuge to all sorts of
disagreeable creatures. Still, it was a comfortable
residence enough; and if only the worthy pastor
and his amiable family had not had such a decided
aversion to fresh air, and if they had not kept
up the temperature of the "keeping room" to
an "orchidaceous " heat, I should have liked it
much better than I did. Often and often have
I been obliged to rush out into the night air
and bathe my face in the snow, or I do believe
the skin on my forehead would have burst, or
my eyes have started out from their sockets.

When the reader is told that the province of
Nordland boasts of no roads (except some of a
few miles long, maybe, from the sea-coast into
the interior), and that only those parts in the
immediate neighbourhood of the Fjords or the
open sea are inhabited by permanent residents,
he will be prepared to learn that civilisation in
this part of the Arctic Circle has not attained to
any high degree of development, and that life up
there must be of a somewhat rude and primitive
nature. But let me hasten to tone down this
assertion by adding that, if simplicity of manners,
if the proffer of genuine hospitality can cover
a multitude of other deficiencies, a man must be
pitied indeed who could not make himself very
comfortable for a few months at least in the
north of Norway.

One thing that especially struck me was the
contempt for danger, and the daring
recklessness which the Nordland peasant evinces.
Peasant I feel to be a misnomer, for more than half
their time is spent on the sea, and yet they are
not entirely fishermen, but a sort of amphibious
race between the two. But the sea is their
proper home, and they never look so happy, nor
so animated, as when scudding before a gale of
wind. Ashore I am afraid they are lazy;
consequently agricultural pursuits are at a very low
ebb amongst them. They are a peaceable race.
Fights and quarrels are rare, and drunkenness,
that besetting sin of northern countries, is not
nearly so prevalent as in the south of Norway.

I never saw such fellows to dance— I include
the gentle sex. Their powers of endurance
exceed all belief. They think nothing of dancing
the whole afternoon, and a great part of the
night, with an energy that seems never once to
flag. No christening ever took place without a
dance. At a marriage it follows as a matter of
course, and I would not venture to assert
positively that it does not accompany a funeral.
Whenever a fishing-boat is detained by stress
of weather the nearest fiddler is in immediate
request.

I went one night to a dance with my
young friend Fritz, the pastor's son, as a passive
participator. I was certainly amused. The great
event of the evening was a wager between a lad
and his betrothed and the musician, to see which
would tire first—they of dancing or he of fiddling.
He was a lanky fisherman, and the way in which
he whirled about his partner, a blooming, flaxen-
haired, strong-built lass, surpasses description.
I have seen a Highland fling danced, and have
read graphic descriptions of the dancing
dervishes; but I would back a genuine Nordlander
to tire out any dervish or Highlander going.

Education, of course, is at rather a low ebb,
though not nearly so low as in the generality of
agricultural villages in England. For it is an
exceptional thing to find man or woman who
cannot read, and at least make an attempt at
writing their names. Owing to the little esteem
in which agriculture is held, and to the absence
of large forest tracts, one never meets with a
really wealthy peasant in Nordland. All here are
pretty much on the same level; and if ever it does
happen that a man, either by greater diligence,
or by some freak of fortune, becomes possessed
of some few hundred dollars (no mean fortune
there), it makes not the slightest difference in
his habits, or in his manner of living.

The merchants (handelsmœnd) are shrewd
business men, and from their periodical visits
to Bergen, acquire a good deal of worldly
tact, and of general information, to which the
genuine Nordlander is a stranger. Some of
them manage to scrape together a good sum of
money. But with all this they are neither stuck
up, nor do they ever forget to be hospitable.
Nowhere have I ever experienced such
unbounded hospitality as in Nordland. They
seem to consider that the obligation lies on
their side, and that a gentlemanly and educated
guest confers a great favour on the house by
putting up at it. Nearly all of them can
speak German readily. It is not, however,
difficult to detect the same peculiarities of
character in them, as in the common Nordland
peasant. There is the same shy manner, the
same retiring disposition. And this I do not
hesitate to lay to the charge of external nature. In
Nordland the landscape is of a very depressing
and sombre character. There is nothing lively
about it; rugged mountains and a rocky coast,
and an absence of vegetable growth, are
ingredients, I take it, which will stamp any