s eulogium. A
traveler sat in the sleigh, wrapped up in heavy furs, and from time to
time cast aside the folds of the cloak which covered him, to take a
thoughtful glance around him. A stranger in Sweden, he was traveling
through it, and during the last month had experienced a multitude of
emotions, altogether unexpected, and which seemed to increase as he drew
near the north. After having crossed the southern provinces of that
kingdom bounded by the Baltic, and those on the vast silver basin of Lake
Milar, seen Stockholm in all its pride, Upsal, the city of the ancient
gods, and Gebel, the active and industrious, he found himself amid a
region entirely silent, inanimate, and wrapped in a snowy pall. Soon he
penetrated the bosom of a long pine forest, the shafts of which seemed,
as it were, giants wrapped in cloaks of white. Now he ascended steep
hills, then rapidly hurried to the Gulf, the shores of which the waves
had made to look like point-lace, and looked up at the immense rocks on
which the waters broke.

Everywhere the same silence existed. Far in the distance a light was seen
to shine, either the glitter of a woodman's fire, or the midnight torch
kindled by some invalid. This light, fixed like a point in space, was but
another evidence of the isolation of man in these regions.

In this inanimateness of nature, in this sad uniformity of plains of
snow, in this desert of fields and woods, such sadness, such distress was
evident, that the heart of the traveler, who however was young and brave,
was filled with a kind of mysterious fear. Before him, among all the
other stars, shone that of the pole, that faithful light which is nightly
kindled like a pharos, and in the seasons of storm, smiles on the pilgrim
who has gone astray, and guides the navigator's steps. The stranger, for
a few instants, kept his eyes fixed on this benevolent light, as if to
find some relief to the impressions he had received from the melancholy
appearance of the earth. He then tapped the postillion on the shoulder,
and said to him, with the laconism compulsory on him from his knowledge
of the Swedish tongue, "_Aland?_" This was the name of the halting-place.
"_Intet tu,_" (not yet,) replied the postillion, as he took his arm from
the sheepskin which surrounded his shoulders. At the same time he cracked
his whip, as if to show how impatient he was to reach his halting-place.
The animals, thus excited, set forth at a long gallop across that po