contained only about eleven per cent. of the total
population of the kingdom, whereas at the present moment the proportion
is double that of 1835.[10] This urban agglomeration, Dr. Broch shows,
has been 'due principally to causes which have operated in the rest of
Europe. Facilitated means of communication promoted the migration of the
agricultural population towards the towns, where the development of
industry and commerce offered the lure of gains or salaries higher than
those in rural districts.' One of the causes, he justly adds, of the
displacement of the population has been the immense and laudable
progress of public instruction, 'and the growing taste for intellectual
and material enjoyments which gave a great force of attraction to the
towns.'

As in other advancing countries, the attraction of towns, and the
facilities for obtaining employment in them, operate also in Norway, to
the disadvantage of the yeomen farmers of the present day. Among the
causes of the economic decline of the Province of North Bergen, the
Prefect mentions that

'the disinclination of young men of the yeoman farmer class
to take permanent service is very general in this district,
and is easily explained by the ease with which men in the
prime of their strength obtain occupation as labourers in
the fisheries. The great bulk of the day labourers do not
seek with any great eagerness for work in the fields, so
long as they hold previously acquired means sufficient to
provide them with the necessaries of life, however scantily.
As a rule, so long as want does not look in at the window,
they will not engage themselves for such work, except at
very good wages. The wages for a yearly labourer have
doubled during the last twenty years.[11] At the same time
the houseman has lost the command he previously had over his
workmen, and consequently does not get the same amount of
work out of them as formerly. Fishing attracts labour by a
larger immediate return, acquired with less bodily exertion
than in husbandry. It gives the population less taste for
harder work.'

We leave Mr. Laing in doubt whether the steam-engine could 'ever be
brought to perfection.' That doubt was speedily removed, and in 1852
Norway followed in the wake of other European nations by building
railways, their total length in 1883 having reached very little short of
a thousand English mi