ese evanescent graces seemed the effect of enchantment; and I
imperceptibly breathed softly, lest I should destroy what was real, yet
looked so like the creation of fancy. Dryden's fable of the flower and
the leaf was not a more poetical reverie.

Adieu, however, to fancy, and to all the sentiments which ennoble our
nature. I arrived at Laurvig, and found myself in the midst of a group
of lawyers of different descriptions. My head turned round, my heart
grew sick, as I regarded visages deformed by vice, and listened to
accounts of chicanery that was continually embroiling the ignorant. These
locusts will probably diminish as the people become more enlightened. In
this period of social life the commonalty are always cunningly attentive
to their own interest; but their faculties, confined to a few objects,
are so narrowed, that they cannot discover it in the general good. The
profession of the law renders a set of men still shrewder and more
selfish than the rest; and it is these men, whose wits have been
sharpened by knavery, who here undermine morality, confounding right and
wrong.

The Count of Bernstorff, who really appears to me, from all I can gather,
to have the good of the people at heart, aware of this, has lately sent
to the mayor of each district to name, according to the size of the
place, four or six of the best-informed inhabitants, not men of the law,
out of which the citizens were to elect two, who are to be termed
mediators. Their office is to endeavour to prevent litigious suits, and
conciliate differences. And no suit is to be commenced before the
parties have discussed the dispute at their weekly meeting. If a
reconciliation should, in consequence, take place, it is to be
registered, and the parties are not allowed to retract.

By these means ignorant people will be prevented from applying for advice
to men who may justly be termed stirrers-up of strife. They have for a
long time, to use a significant vulgarism, set the people by the ears,
and live by the spoil they caught up in the scramble. There is some
reason to hope that this regulation will diminish their number, and
restrain their mischievous activity. But till trials by jury are
established, little justice can be expected in Norway. Judges who cannot
be bribed are often timid, and afraid of offending bold knaves, lest they
should raise a set of hornets about themselves. The fear of censure
undermines all energy of character; and