uous in the
peasantry produces even a simple gracefulness of deportment which has
frequently struck me as very picturesque; I have often also been touched
by their extreme desire to oblige me, when I could not explain my wants,
and by their earnest manner of expressing that desire. There is such a
charm in tenderness! It is so delightful to love our fellow-creatures,
and meet the honest affections as they break forth. Still, my good
friend, I begin to think that I should not like to live continually in
the country with people whose minds have such a narrow range. My heart
would frequently be interested; but my mind would languish for more
companionable society.

The beauties of nature appear to me now even more alluring than in my
youth, because my intercourse with the world has formed without vitiating
my taste. But, with respect to the inhabitants of the country, my fancy
has probably, when disgusted with artificial manners, solaced itself by
joining the advantages of cultivation with the interesting sincerity of
innocence, forgetting the lassitude that ignorance will naturally
produce. I like to see animals sporting, and sympathise in their pains
and pleasures. Still I love sometimes to view the human face divine, and
trace the soul, as well as the heart, in its varying lineaments.

A journey to the country, which I must shortly make, will enable me to
extend my remarks.--Adieu!

LETTER V.

Had I determined to travel in Sweden merely for pleasure, I should
probably have chosen the road to Stockholm, though convinced, by repeated
observation, that the manners of a people are best discriminated in the
country. The inhabitants of the capital are all of the same genus; for
the varieties in the species we must, therefore, search where the
habitations of men are so separated as to allow the difference of climate
to have its natural effect. And with this difference we are, perhaps,
most forcibly struck at the first view, just as we form an estimate of
the leading traits of a character at the first glance, of which intimacy
afterwards makes us almost lose sight.

As my affairs called me to Stromstad (the frontier town of Sweden) in my
way to Norway, I was to pass over, I heard, the most uncultivated part of
the country. Still I believe that the grand features of Sweden are the
same everywhere, and it is only the grand features that admit of
description. There is an individuality in every prospect, whi