y sung by this poor girl.
It was too early for thee to be abandoned, thought I, and I hastened out
of the house to take my solitary evening's walk. And here I am again to
talk of anything but the pangs arising from the discovery of estranged
affection and the lonely sadness of a deserted heart.

The father and mother, if the father can be ascertained, are obliged to
maintain an illegitimate child at their joint expense; but, should the
father disappear, go up the country or to sea, the mother must maintain
it herself. However, accidents of this kind do not prevent their
marrying, and then it is not unusual to take the child or children home,
and they are brought up very amicably with the marriage progeny.

I took some pains to learn what books were written originally in their
language; but for any certain information respecting the state of Danish
literature I must wait till I arrive at Copenhagen.

The sound of the language is soft, a great proportion of the words ending
in vowels; and there is a simplicity in the turn of some of the phrases
which have been translated to me that pleased and interested me. In the
country the farmers use the _thou_ and _thee_; and they do not acquire
the polite plurals of the towns by meeting at market. The not having
markets established in the large towns appears to me a great
inconvenience. When the farmers have anything to sell they bring it to
the neighbouring town and take it from house to house. I am surprised
that the inhabitants do not feel how very incommodious this usage is to
both parties, and redress it; they, indeed, perceive it, for when I have
introduced the subject they acknowledged that they were often in want of
necessaries, there being no butchers, and they were often obliged to buy
what they did not want; yet it was the custom, and the changing of
customs of a long standing requires more energy than they yet possess. I
received a similar reply when I attempted to persuade the women that they
injured their children by keeping them too warm. The only way of
parrying off my reasoning was that they must do as other people did; in
short, reason on any subject of change, and they stop you by saying that
"the town would talk." A person of sense, with a large fortune to ensure
respect, might be very useful here, by inducing them to treat their
children and manage their sick properly, and eat food dressed in a
simpler manner--the example, for instance, of a count's l