ws both their hearts and views, confirming the
former to their families, taking the handmaids of it into the circle of
pleasure, if not of interest, and the latter to the inspection of their
workmen, including the noble science of bargain-making--that is, getting
everything at the cheapest, and selling it at the dearest rate. I am now
more than ever convinced that it is an intercourse with men of science
and artists which not only diffuses taste, but gives that freedom to the
understanding without which I have seldom met with much benevolence of
character on a large scale.

Besides, though you do not hear of much pilfering and stealing in Norway,
yet they will, with a quiet conscience, buy things at a price which must
convince them they were stolen. I had an opportunity of knowing that two
or three reputable people had purchased some articles of vagrants, who
were detected. How much of the virtue which appears in the world is put
on for the world? And how little dictated by self-respect?--so little,
that I am ready to repeat the old question, and ask, Where is truth, or
rather principle, to be found? These are, perhaps, the vapourings of a
heart ill at ease--the effusions of a sensibility wounded almost to
madness. But enough of this; we will discuss the subject in another
state of existence, where truth and justice will reign. How cruel are
the injuries which make us quarrel with human nature! At present black
melancholy hovers round my footsteps; and sorrow sheds a mildew over all
the future prospects, which hope no longer gilds.

A rainy morning prevented my enjoying the pleasure the view of a
picturesque country would have afforded me; for though this road passed
through a country a greater extent of which was under cultivation than I
had usually seen here, it nevertheless retained all the wild charms of
Norway. Rocks still enclosed the valleys, the great sides of which
enlivened their verdure. Lakes appeared like branches of the sea, and
branches of the sea assumed the appearance of tranquil lakes; whilst
streamlets prattled amongst the pebbles and the broken mass of stone
which had rolled into them, giving fantastic turns to the trees, the
roots of which they bared.

It is not, in fact, surprising that the pine should be often undermined;
it shoots its fibres in such a horizontal direction, merely on the
surface of the earth, requiring only enough to cover those that cling to
the crags. Nothing proves