hough the rain, from
two o'clock till four, fell in torrents, their spirits chafed not with
its pelting violence; but they sang, and laughed, and jested with each
other as if the sun was shining cheerfully over their heads. We stepped
on board the cutter at four o'clock, having been rowed eighteen miles in
three hours and a half.

For all the countries which I have traversed Nature appears not to have
done so much to make them agreeable to man, as she has for Norway, and
man so little to make his own soil suitable for himself as the
Norwegian; nor have I, in either hemisphere, felt more truly
spiritualized by the grandeur of the scenery, the honest frankness and
simplicity of its people, as here. I have wandered over many parts of
the earth; I have looked upon its lofty mountains shrouded in clouds, or
capped with snow; I have, loitering in its smiling valleys, seen its
waterfalls, and floated on its crystal torpid lakes, and rushing rivers;
yet this old land of Norway yields not in all to them, but bears on her
stern and rugged brow the soft impressions of a beneficent creation
impartially dispensed. Such reflections failed not, day by day, to force
themselves upon me; for I knew, that every step I now took removed me
farther and farther from a country, whose mighty mountains had, with
their solemnity, first taught me to think; and the integrity and
single-mindedness of whose children showed how, though fostered in the
flinty lap of poverty, happiness and heroic contentment were no fable.
The peasants, whom we sometimes met in the interior of the country,
where their livelihood must be earned with the hardest labour, and whose
necessity during the long and dismal months of winter must not be much
inferior to absolute want, ever seemed cheerful and ready, not only to
share their scanty fare with us, but to give us milk and butter, and
dried fish, or other dainties which they may have hoarded for the coming
time of cold and darkness. Black bread of barley, or of rye, sour and
unfit even for "Sailor," formed their daily diet, and meat had never
been tasted by thousands; nor did we obtain any other animal food,
except at Christiania and Bergen, and there but with difficulty, than
what we had brought from England; yet, under all their privations, the
contented and happy disposition of these people, added to their
independent bearing and dauntless bravery, was a lesson as instructive
to luxurious selfishness, as it must be g