n of wellnigh fourscore years. It may be so,
and yet we hope, we pray, for the return of him who lights our century
with the lustre of the great creative genius of the world.

L.H.H.

SPIRITS IN SCANDINAVIA.

Although it is generally known that there have been of late great and
peculiar changes in the laws which regulate the sale of intoxicating
drinks in the Scandinavian peninsula, there is not among foreigners an
accurate idea of these changes. It may not therefore be uninteresting
to state them a little in detail, as well as to glance at the results as
gathered from personal experience and observation in different parts of
Sweden and Norway. It should be premised that the peculiar "vanity" of
both the Swedes and the Norwegians is spirits, and that the recent
licensing laws in Scandinavia have been largely levelled against the
sale of these drinks. For about a century prior to 1854, Sweden was so
given to drunkenness that one who has had special opportunities of
judging described it as "the most drunken country in the world." Free
trade in spirits was practically in force: every small land-owner could
distil on payment of a nominal license fee, and in towns every burgher
had the right of sale. The whole country may be said "to have been
deluged with spirits;" but, profiting by the exertions of the apostles
of temperance, a public opinion was created which twenty-four years ago
produced a bill on which the existing _general_ law is based. It
abolished the small stills and imposed a comparatively heavy duty on the
popular drink, _branvin_. It established a sort of threefold control
over the issue of new licenses for the sale of spirits, under which the
communal committee, the commune and the governor of a province have
power to restrict or lessen the number of such licenses, while each
seller of spirits was required to pay to the local rates a tax on the
amount of spirits sold. The licenses were issued for periods of three
years, and sold by auction to the highest bidders. To such an extent has
the sale of spirits been swept under this law from the rural parts of
Sweden that in 1871 there were only four hundred and sixty places for
the sale of spirits in the country, the towns excepted. From observation
and from the report of others the writer is able to say that the effect
of this has been most beneficial in the rural parts, materially
contributing to the sobriety and the moral welfare of the people. The
g