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days does not allow many hours of clear bright sun­ shine; but then, the houses are not built like sum­ mer-houses, as many are in England; and stoves in the towns, and great wood- res in the country, and sometimes both,- e ectually oppose the power of the elements. There is not, in ct, a more com rtable abode, than that of a substantial land-owner, or a thriving merchant, on a winter's day in Norway. There are no cross-airs blowing through the house, as in many oftbe unsubstantial dwellings in England; nor does one know what it is to have one part of his body scorched with the re, while the other is su er­ ing under the in uence of_ cold. But independently of the in-door winter com rts of Scandinavia, the appearance of the external world, by day and by night, is beautiful and wondrous. Enter a rest when the sun breaks om the mists of the morning
upon the snows of the past night. Beauti l as a · rest is in spring, when the trees unfold their virgin blossoms ; beautiful as in summer, when the wander­ ing sunbeams, lling through the liage, chequer the mossy carpet beneath; beauti l as in autumn, when the painted leaves hang frail; it is more beau­ ti l still, when the tall pines and gnarled oaks stand in the deep stillness of a winter's noon, their long arms and ntastic branches heaped with the athery burden, that has never "caught one stain of earth." Then, too, the gray rocks, picturesque even in their nakedness, assume a thousand forms more curious still, dashed with the recent o ering. nd, when night comes-and who ever saw the glories of night, save in a northern clime ?-out burst the stars, countless and burning, studding the deep blue sky. Perhaps the Borealis, with its pale yellow light, streams over half a hemisphere; or, perhaps, the
THIRD BOOK OF