armers are hospitable as well as independent. Offering once to pay
for some coffee I drank when taking shelter from the rain, I was asked,
rather angrily, if a little coffee was worth paying for. They smoke, and
drink drams, but not so much as formerly. Drunkenness, often the
attendant disgrace of hospitality, will here, as well as everywhere else,
give place to gallantry and refinement of manners; but the change will
not be suddenly produced.

The people of every class are constant in their attendance at church;
they are very fond of dancing, and the Sunday evenings in Norway, as in
Catholic countries, are spent in exercises which exhilarate the spirits
without vitiating the heart. The rest of labour ought to be gay; and the
gladness I have felt in France on a Sunday, or Decadi, which I caught
from the faces around me, was a sentiment more truly religious than all
the stupid stillness which the streets of London ever inspired where the
Sabbath is so decorously observed. I recollect, in the country parts of
England, the churchwardens used to go out during the service to see if
they could catch any luckless wight playing at bowls or skittles; yet
what could be more harmless? It would even, I think, be a great
advantage to the English, if feats of activity (I do not include boxing
matches) were encouraged on a Sunday, as it might stop the progress of
Methodism, and of that fanatical spirit which appears to be gaining
ground. I was surprised when I visited Yorkshire, on my way to Sweden,
to find that sullen narrowness of thinking had made such a progress since
I was an inhabitant of the country. I could hardly have supposed that
sixteen or seventeen years could have produced such an alteration for the
worse in the morals of a place--yes, I say morals; for observance of
forms, and avoiding of practices, indifferent in themselves, often supply
the place of that regular attention to duties which are so natural, that
they seldom are vauntingly exercised, though they are worth all the
precepts of the law and the prophets. Besides, many of these deluded
people, with the best meaning, actually lose their reason, and become
miserable, the dread of damnation throwing them into a state which merits
the term; and still more, in running after their preachers, expecting to
promote their salvation, they disregard their welfare in this world, and
neglect the interest and comfort of their families; so that, in
proportion as they a