same neighbourhood, on which much
money had been lavished; where Italian colonnades were placed to excite
the wonder of the rude crags, and a stone staircase, to threaten with
destruction a wooden house. Venuses and Apollos condemned to lie hid in
snow three parts of the year seemed equally displaced, and called the
attention off from the surrounding sublimity, without inspiring any
voluptuous sensations. Yet even these abortions of vanity have been
useful. Numberless workmen have been employed, and the superintending
artist has improved the labourers, whose unskilfulness tormented him, by
obliging them to submit to the discipline of rules. Adieu!

Yours affectionately.

LETTER IV.

The severity of the long Swedish winter tends to render the people
sluggish, for though this season has its peculiar pleasures, too much
time is employed to guard against its inclemency. Still as warm clothing
is absolutely necessary, the women spin and the men weave, and by these
exertions get a fence to keep out the cold. I have rarely passed a knot
of cottages without seeing cloth laid out to bleach, and when I entered,
always found the women spinning or knitting.

A mistaken tenderness, however, for their children, makes them even in
summer load them with flannels, and having a sort of natural antipathy to
cold water, the squalid appearance of the poor babes, not to speak of the
noxious smell which flannel and rugs retain, seems a reply to a question
I had often asked--Why I did not see more children in the villages I
passed through? Indeed the children appear to be nipt in the bud, having
neither the graces nor charms of their age. And this, I am persuaded, is
much more owing to the ignorance of the mothers than to the rudeness of
the climate. Rendered feeble by the continual perspiration they are kept
in, whilst every pore is absorbing unwholesome moisture, they give them,
even at the breast, brandy, salt fish, and every other crude substance
which air and exercise enables the parent to digest.

The women of fortune here, as well as everywhere else, have nurses to
suckle their children; and the total want of chastity in the lower class
of women frequently renders them very unfit for the trust.

You have sometimes remarked to me the difference of the manners of the
country girls in England and in America; attributing the reserve of the
former to the climate--to the absence of genial suns. But it must be
their st