frontiers and the peace of Europe had commenced. Owing to the vast extent of topics for discussion, they were divided among eight committees. Up to the present hardly anything is known as to the course of the negotiations, as the documents have been kept secret: just as if regenerated Europe had cause to feel ashamed of her exertions and their result. The French, however, who had access to the documents, felt no inclination to make known a matter in which their national pride was so deeply wounded. After some general arrangement had been made about the future extent of France, the congress proceeded to divide the conquered country among the participators in the war. Here the four great powers stood in the first line. Russia desired Poland, Prussia thus seeing herself referred to Germany; while Austria demanded not only Tyrol, Salzburg, and the Inn district, but also the greater portion of Upper Italy. England, disinterested as usual, exerted all her influence to establish kingdoms on the north-east and south-east frontiers of France, which would separate that kingdom from Prussia and Austria, and would be bound through gratitude to England. An additional support was also expected in the Netherlands by the marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Princess Charlotte of Wales. In the discussions about the regulation of Germany, Prussia was most deeply interested, and demanded Saxony and the fortress of Mayence as protection for her Westphalian dominions; but Austria strenuously opposed this, and wished to give Mayence, with Frankfort and the country between the Rhine and Moselle, to Bavaria. The danger of entrusting a fortress of such importance to a second-rate power was repeatedly discussed by Stein and the Russian statesmen. Stein was always most energetic in all matters relating to his fatherland. He urged Hardenberg to strike the iron while it was hot, and earnestly begged the support of the Russian cabinet for his views. It was clear that the Prussian affairs must be settled in Paris. Here the remembrance of what Prussia's army and nation had effected was fresh and unweakened. Austria was hence disposed to give up Saxony. France was not regarded in the arrangements the allies made among themselves, and if England and Austria desired Prussian support in their claims in the Netherlands and Italy, they could not refuse to back her up in her German claims. All this Stein explained to Hardenberg. The king was also of the same opinion; but the chancellor signed blindly, without any reservation, and quitted Paris without any arrangements being made for Prussia's aggrandisement. The question was referred to Vienna. The Emperor Alexander, too, magnanimously neglected to have the regulations settled about Poland and Saxony, and the only arrangement fixed was that relating to Upper Italy and the Netherlands. The negotiations for peace were also greatly delayed by the magnanimity of Alexander, who wished to augment France instead of weakening her; and Louis XVIII., who had only just been drawn from his nothingness, displayed his gratitude towards the allies by demanding Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. These demands had to be combated inch by inch, and the Emperor Alexander began to display a coldness with reference to German affairs which augured ill for the future. The English ministers were only too glad to gain France to their side at the expense of a third party, and thus increase their influence on the Continent; and if Austria could be gained over, they could safely oppose Russia and Prussia. This commencement

of an opposing alliance was not hidden from Alexander, and he watched the signs of the times with apprehension. He was very much dissatisfied with Louis XVIII. and the Bourbons. In a conversation with Lafayette, he complained that they had nothing but the prejudices of old times; and when the general replied that misfortune must have improved them, he replied, "Improved! they are incorrigible. There is only one among them, the Duke of Orleans, who possesses liberal ideas: as for the others, you can never hope anything from them." He declared that the whole business was a mistake, and quitted Paris in a very desponding humour.

The discussions about peace and surrender of the country came to a conclusion about the end of May. Stein's business in France was thus terminated, and the weighty matters relating to the future of Germany awaited discussion at the Congress of Vienna. Stein longed for homepleasures, and begged the emperor to allow his return to Germany. This was granted, on the promise that he would be present at the congress, and write to the emperor regularly on these important matters. By the middle of June, Stein returned to his estate in Nassau, and was most heartily welcomed after his lengthened absence by his tenantry. But he could devote no long time to the simple pleasures of domestic society; the welfare of his country called him to Frankfort, where he was busily engaged for the rest of the summer in drawing up schemes relating to that brilliant ignis fatuus the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. At his residence, near the Eschenheimer Thor, Stein was surrounded by all the great and noble, who came to draw wisdom from his lips. During the summer the Crown Prince of Bavaria (better known to us as the friend of Lola Montès) spent a week in Frankfort, and never failed to make his appearance at Stein's tea-table. "In his wild and enthusiastic manner," Arndt tells us, "the crown prince spoke openly about German affairs, and was furious against Wrede and Montgelas. One evening, however, Stein became impatient, and said, 'I am not King of Bavaria, nor you either; if you cannot remove Wrede and Montgelas, I am still less able to do so. Your royal highness speaks so loudly, that the people out there must fancy I am holding a Jacobins' club.' Another anecdote, also referring to this period, we may quote from Arndt. A Rhenish count, who paid Stein a visit, walked up to him, and began rather solemnly to enumerate his titles and dignities. Stein interrupted him, laughingly, with the words, "Pray take a chair, my dear count; you see I have not sufficient seats for all those gentlemen."

During the interval that necessarily occurred between the treaty of Paris and the meeting of the Congress of Vienna, Saxony was greatly disquieted by attempts to restore the imprisoned monarch. Even the army joined in the movement, and for a while it seemed as if the country would be exposed to anarchy and rebellion. Stein, however, took his measures with great skill, and the settlement of the Saxon affair was deferred until the Congress of Vienna, that great curer of evils to which all Europe was looking with such eagerness, and which was destined to prove a stumbling-block and rock of offence.

A TRIP TO NORWAY.*

It would not be a disagreeable alternative to exchange, at this season of the year, urban, or even rural, England for the climate and scenery of more northerly countries, and to awake some fine morning, after having been rocked all night by the stormy waters of the Skager Rack, in the tranquil fiord of Christiana. Every country has its beauties which are unlike the beauties of other countries. The fiords of Norway are dotted with innumerable islands, some small, some large, sometimes in groups, at others dispersed or isolated, sometimes rocky, at others pastoral, with villas and cottages, groves and orchards. Then, again, the day is divided into five or six climates, each very distinct from the other. The early morning is enveloped in fog; at ten there is almost invariably a slight fall of rain; at twelve a touch of a Syriac sun; at four the sea breeze, dry and cold; and in the evening a calm. The sunsets are splendid to a degree, and are followed by nights of unexampled stillness. Christiana itself is a quaint city, built upon the ruins of Opslo, destroyed by fire in 1624. It has its Oscarlot, or royal palace, a handsome prison, a splendid railway station, and a picturesque bazaar. Grouped in a small central mass, the town has long, irregular suburbs, of which those near the harbour are known as Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco-names significant enough of their dubious morality. There is a university, a Konst-Forening, or gallery of paintings, a museum of antiquities, and a theatre, the artists of which are Danes. The prison of Christiana has a legend attached to it of a certain Ouli-Eiland-a Norwegian Jack Sheppard-who was always escaping from durance vile.

He was often arrested, tried, condemned, and imprisoned. He cared little about it, and did not even take the trouble to defend himself. When he heard his sentence, he used to bow to the judges, and then, in allusion to his proximate flight, he would smile and say, "Poor governor! how grieved he will be to hear that I have left him again." They would take him back to prison and cast him into a dungeon, but somehow or other the bolts would come undone, the iron bars would give way, or the walls would open of themselves, for Ouli-Eiland would make his escape. When he was imprisoned, it used to be a matter of dispute as to how long he would remain so. That he would effect his escape, no one doubted for a moment. The unfortunate gaoler exhausted his ingenuity in his endeavours to frustrate the audacity of his prisoner. One day he rejoiced exceedingly. He had succeeded in having constructed an arm-chair of extraordinary elasticity; the flexible back adapted itself to the human form, whilst its strong yet pliant arms enveloped the person who sat in it in a terrible embrace the arm-chair, in fact, caught hold of the person, while it itself was made fast to the flooring by thick bars of iron. It was a chef-d'œuvre. The governor was proud of it. He sent for Ouli-Eiland, that he might contemplate the marvel designed for his express benefit, and he showed to him its peculiarities with the pride of a triumphant gaoler turned an inventor. But Ouli-Eiland could not understand the thing. He walked round it, as a fox who has lost its tail walks round a trap, and in the most innocent manner possible he said, "Well, it is of no use; I keep looking, but I can't understand it."

Stupid! nothing is more simple. See, now."

* La Norvége. Par Louis Enault.

So saying, the governor illustrated his invention by sitting down in it; whereupon it seized him at once, and held him fast.

"Ah!" said Ouli-Eiland, "I understand now;" and at the same moment he threw the table-cover over the governor's head. Five minutes afterwards he was in the country.

The authorities were perplexed. They declared Ouli-Eiland to be an outlaw and a public enemy; almost an army of men were employed to capture him; more than a league of forest was invested, and he was blockaded in its recesses. At length he got hungry, and went himself to ask for the reward promised to whosoever should capture him. The return of the highwayman assumed all the proportions of a political event. The governor sent for him. Eiland," he said, "you are

me."

a prisoner again; this time you shall not escape

The prisoner looked at him without uttering a word.

"I have found a vigilant keeper. He will not leave you for a moment; he shall sleep with you, eat with you, awake with you; you shall not move a step without him. And I tell you more than that, he is one of the sharpest-witted fellows in Norway."

"It is yourself, then, your excellency,"

"No; it is yourself!"

Ouli took a step backwards: he did not relish the idea of taking care of himself.

"It is my idea," continued the governor. "I make you a prisoner on parole. You shall give me your word as a thief that you will not run away, and you shall be left at liberty-in prison. Add to that, bread and beer à discrétion."

The poor devil had been hungry for a long time: he accepted. From that moment a new era commenced for Ouli-Eiland. The gaolers, having no apprehensions of his evasion, loaded him with attentions. But he was not happy; the kind of life did not suit him. He asked to see the governor. "My lord," he said, "I come to inform you that it is my intention to go away."

But

your parole ?"

Precisely so; I come to recal it."

"It is, then, who shall succeed, you or I."

The governor had a great cage constructed with the trunks of fir-trees. Each cross-bar made a bell ring the moment it was touched. This cage was placed in the centre of a stone house constructed on purpose; keepers were placed in the house, sentinels around it, and Ouli was shut up in the cage.

Bells, keepers, bars, and sentinels were of no avail. In six weeks' time Ouli was once more at liberty.

The people, as usual in such cases, began to take an interest in the thief, and even to sympathise with him. They actually rejoiced at his successful evasions, for Ouli had never killed any one, and he had often given to the poor what he had stolen from the rich.

At last matters ended as badly with the outlaw as with others-that is a kind of satisfaction which is due to public morality. He perished at thirty years of age, miserably enough, after having displayed in his crusade against society as much energy and invention as would have rendered ten generals illustrious, or have enriched ten financiers. All that he wanted, like many others, was a stage upon which to change his crimes into glorious actions. A woman said of him, He was only a brigand because he could not be a hero." Unfortunately, at the criminal court, prisoners are not tried or defended by women, and arguments of that kind are not admitted as extenuating cir

cumstances.

Whoever goes to Norway is soon satisfied with its cities. What the tourist longs for is Norway where it frowns in its mighty terrors, and that is precisely what is not easily reached. Once beyond the Mjosen, to

which you can go by rail, and across the lake by steam, there are no public conveyances of any description; the tourist has no resource but the vogns or harrioles of the country-vehicles which appear at first sight to be simply inconvenient, but which finish by becoming insupportable instruments of torture. So at least M. Louis Enault affirms, and, from what we have experienced of Russian and Turkish karrioles, we readily believe him. But this is not all. Take our French tourist's experiences for an example. The traveller must know something of the language of the country, or, as our tourist expresses it, “Se livrer à tous les périls d'une prononciation de fantaisie au service d'une langue très imparfaitement sue." Then he must drive himself, and our French tourist admits the difficulty of the undertaking, but, as usual, in a way to salve his vanity. It was only, he says, because he was engaged in studying how his horse, carriage, and harness got on, and not from any difficulties presented by the new position in which he was placed, that he exposed himself to be suddenly stopped by his postboy.

"Why don't you look ?" exclaimed the peasant, stopping the pony suddenly.

"I looked."

The fact was, that he had driven, without knowing it, across one of those wooden bridges which make lowlanders, unaccustomed to Alpine scenery, shudder as they look down from them. This was in the Gulbrandsdal. At the Vaalin Elv, two torrents rushed through their rocky beds in close contiguity. "It is noise," he exclaims, "motion, life! my horse stops to breathe the humid dust that refreshes it; it would wish to bathe in that impetuous froth." We can easily believe that the horse stopped from much less poetical reasons.

Our tourist was pleased with the scenery, the cultivation, and the peasants of the Gulbrandsdal-indeed, with all that it presented. He remarks, justly enough:

In a country where there is no longer a nobility nor yet a bourgeoisie, where industry is null, and commerce does not extend itself beyond the precincts of a few towns, it is in the country that we must seek for the nation. In Norway, the peasant constitutes the people. The state of the peasant constitutes the whole social state.

Norway is a country completely by itself, and what we see there must not be compared with what we see in any other portion of Europe. The Norwegians possess the sense of their own strength, hence they do not have recourse to any deceptions to lead the traveller astray in forming an opinion of them, as is the case with those vain nations who have only a theatrical appearance and a false grandeur.

Elsewhere he argues that all the peasants alike are descendants of the nobility of olden times. You may dine one day with a descendant of Haco, or of Hroll the Walker. The grand-nephews of Harald Harfager are now postmasters. But, he adds with some naïveté, "I must admit that the simple grandeur, somewhat too calm, of the Norwegian peasant, has nothing in it that reminds me of the impetuous audacity of the seakings, who, like their brothers, the Germans, had only one fear, which was that heaven should fall on their heads. They rather resemble the sons of patriarchs than the descendants of Vikings.'

On ascending from the lovely Gulbrandsdal to the uplands of Dovre,