islands
girdled by the "melancholy main," and dwelt so long on the great joy of
treading "the blessed acres" trodden by the Saviour's feet, that at last
she resolved on a pilgrimage thither. She made the journey to Palestine.
She visited Jerusalem, and other hallowed scenes, and she returned in
safety. She came, therefore, to the conclusion that she was not
presumptuously tempting the providence of God, or laying herself open to
the charge of wishing to excite the admiration of her contemporaries, if
she followed her inward impulse, and once more adventured forth to see
the world. She knew that travel could not but broaden her views, elevate
her thoughts, and inspire her with new sympathies. Iceland, the next
object of her desires, was a country where she hoped to see Nature under
an entirely novel and peculiar aspect. "I feel," she says, "so
wonderfully happy, and draw so close to my Maker, while gazing upon such
scenes, that no difficulties or fatigues can deter me from seeking so
great a reward."

* * * * *

It was in the year 1845 that Madame Pfeiffer began her northward journey.
She left Vienna on the 10th of April, and by way of Prague, Dresden, and
Altona, proceeded to Kiel. Thence the steamer carried her to Copenhagen,
a city of which she speaks in favourable terms. She notices its numerous
splendid palaces; its large and regular squares; its broad and handsome
promenades. At the Museum of Art she was interested by the chair which
Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, formerly used; and at the Thorvaldsen
Museum, the colossal lion executed by the great Danish sculptor. Having
seen all that was to be seen, she took ship for Iceland, passing
Helsingborg on the Swedish coast, and Elsinore on the Danish, the latter
associated with Shakespeare's "Hamlet;" and, through the Sound and the
Cattegat, entering upon the restless waters of the North Sea. Iceland
came in sight on the seventh day of a boisterous voyage, which had tried
our traveller somewhat severely; and at the close of the eleventh day she
reached Havenfiord, an excellent harbour, two miles from Reikiavik, the
capital of Iceland.

Her first impressions of the Icelandic coast, she says, were very
different from the descriptions she had read in books. She had conceived
of a barren desolate waste, shrubless and treeless; and she saw grassy
hillocks, leafy copses, and even, as she thought, patches of dwarfish
woods. But as she drew nearer, and could distin