cottages situated close
to a brook, or bordering on a lake, with the whole farm contiguous. As
the family increases, a little more land is cultivated; thus the country
is obviously enriched by population. Formerly the farmers might more
justly have been termed woodcutters. But now they find it necessary to
spare the woods a little, and this change will be universally beneficial;
for whilst they lived entirely by selling the trees they felled, they did
not pay sufficient attention to husbandry; consequently, advanced very
slowly in agricultural knowledge. Necessity will in future more and more
spur them on; for the ground, cleared of wood, must be cultivated, or the
farm loses its value; there is no waiting for food till another
generation of pines be grown to maturity.

The people of property are very careful of their timber; and, rambling
through a forest near Tonsberg, belonging to the Count, I have stopped to
admire the appearance of some of the cottages inhabited by a woodman's
family--a man employed to cut down the wood necessary for the household
and the estate. A little lawn was cleared, on which several lofty trees
were left which nature had grouped, whilst the encircling firs sported
with wild grace. The dwelling was sheltered by the forest, noble pines
spreading their branches over the roof; and before the door a cow, goat,
nag, and children, seemed equally content with their lot; and if
contentment be all we can attain, it is, perhaps, best secured by
ignorance.

As I have been most delighted with the country parts of Norway, I was
sorry to leave Christiania without going farther to the north, though the
advancing season admonished me to depart, as well as the calls of
business and affection.

June and July are the months to make a tour through Norway; for then the
evenings and nights are the finest I have ever seen; but towards the
middle or latter end of August the clouds begin to gather, and summer
disappears almost before it has ripened the fruit of autumn--even, as it
were, slips from your embraces, whilst the satisfied senses seem to rest
in enjoyment.

You will ask, perhaps, why I wished to go farther northward. Why? not
only because the country, from all I can gather, is most romantic,
abounding in forests and lakes, and the air pure, but I have heard much
of the intelligence of the inhabitants, substantial farmers, who have
none of that cunning to contaminate their simplicity, which disple