and
physical stamina between them and the Finns to the use of the vapor bath
by the latter and the aversion to water of the former. They are a race
of Northern gipsies, and it is the restless blood of this class rather
than any want of natural capacity which retards their civilisation.
Although the whole race has been converted to Christianity, and
education is universal among them--no Lapp being permitted to marry
until he can read--they have but in too many respects substituted one
form of superstition for another. The spread of temperance among them,
however, has produced excellent results, and, in point of morality, they
are fully up to the prevailing standard in Sweden and Norway. The
practice, formerly imputed to them, of sharing their connubial rights
with the guests who visited them, is wholly extinct,--if it ever
existed. Theft is the most usual offence, but crimes of a more heinous
character are rare.

Whatever was picturesque in the Lapps has departed with their paganism.
No wizards now ply their trade of selling favorable winds to the
Norwegian coasters, or mutter their incantations to discover the
concealed grottoes of silver in the Kiolen mountains. It is in vain,
therefore, for the romantic traveller to seek in them the materials for
weird stories and wild adventures. They are frightfully pious and
commonplace. Their conversion has destroyed what little of barbaric
poetry there might have been in their composition, and, instead of
chanting to the spirits of the winds, and clouds, and mountains, they
have become furious ranters, who frequently claim to be possessed by the
Holy Ghost. As human beings, the change, incomplete as it is, is
nevertheless to their endless profit; but as objects of interest to the
traveller, it has been to their detriment. It would be far more
picturesque to describe a sabaoth of Lapland witches than a
prayer-meeting of shouting converts, yet no friend of his race could
help rejoicing to see the latter substituted for the former. In
proportion, therefore, as the Lapps have become enlightened (like all
other savage tribes), they have become less interesting. Retaining
nearly all that is repulsive in their habits of life, they have lost the
only peculiarities which could persuade one to endure the inconveniences
of a closer acquaintance.

I have said that the conversion of the Lapps was in some respects the
substitution of one form of superstition for another. A tragic
exemplifi