"

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.

"The ship's bell rang to summon us to breakfast. There is a certain epic
copiousness about a Swedish _frukost_. On first getting up in the
morning it is customary to take a _Kop caffe med skorpor_, a cup