inconsiderable part of their provision,
their houses being, at the same time, comfortable, though small, with
wooden floors and glass windows.

Apart from these exceptionally situated proprietors, Mr. Laing found
there really was 'no difference between the residence of a public
functionary, of a clergyman, or of a gentleman of larger property and
that of a _Bonde_, or peasant. The latter are as well, as commodiously
and even showily, lodged as the former can be, and the properties are as
good.' Mr. Laing, however, makes a reservation under this head in
respect of the 'cultivated classes,' as being indisputably superior in
mental acquirements to the yeoman farmer, and who lived in the same
manner as the corresponding classes in England.

Towards the end of his stay in Norway, Mr. Laing often heard 'from the
most intelligent men in the country' that the yeoman farmer lived too
high; indulged too much in expensive luxuries, as coffee and sugar; in
frequent and expensive entertainments at each other's houses; in
carrioles, sledges, and harness of a costly kind; and even in a horse or
two more than the farm work required; and he certainly thought this had
resulted in a general want of money among them to pay even the most
trifling taxes and other sums. A man with land worth three or four
thousand dollars, and with horses, cows, and all sorts of products in
abundance, was often at a loss for five or ten dollars. Nevertheless, he
was of opinion that 'the increase of the tastes and habits which belong
to property tended to keep population within the bounds of what can be
comfortably subsisted, and without which the increase of subsistence
would tend to evil rather than good.' It was, indeed, 'a good thing that
they all had the ideas, habits, and character of people possessed of
independent property upon which they were living without any care about
increasing it, and free from the anxiety and fever of money making or
money losing.'

Their subsistence, Mr. Laing exultingly and repeatedly points out, was
derived mainly from husbandry, carried on under less favourable
conditions of soil, climate, crops, and pasturage than in the Scotch
highlands;--

'but on the simple Norwegian system, to live on the produce
of the land being the main object, and the labourer (the
cotter) being paid chiefly in land, a good crop would be an
unmingled blessing; whereas in countries where agriculture
is carried on as a