A Northern Summer

THE ground which my pen is about to retrace has not very frequently been trodden by Englishmen. Northern travellers of celebrity, who have favoured the world with the fruits of their researches, have generally applied their learning and ingenuity more to illustrate the histories of the countries through which they have passed, than to delineate their national characteristics. Nature generally receives our last homage; we never wander from the contemplation of her simple charms, but we return to them with pleasure. As the attempt, although aiming at originality, is not of an aspiring nature, I feel the more confidence in stating, that the object of the following pages is to describe those features which principally distinguish us from our brethren in other regions, and them from each other.

I hope that the execution of my wishes will at least be without the fault of fortifying those prejudices which so unhappily divide nations that ought to be linked together by mutual love and admiration. Whilst I wish to amuse, I am desirous to facilitate the steps of those who may follow me, by giving the detail of coins, and post charges, and some little forms which are necessary to be observed in a northern tour. My descriptions follow the objects which they pencil, and partake of the irregularity of their

appearance. I write from my feelings; and as I propose that my Reader shall travel with me, it is reasonable that he should share some of the inconveniences as well as the enjoyments of the excursion. Before we smile together in the beautiful islands of Sweden, we must be content to bear with resignation the gloom of her almost interminable forests of fir.

If he will not commence the Tour upon these terms, and agree to support without disappointment those vicissitudes of amusement and of languor, that seldom fail to diversify all the roads both of literature and of life, much as I shall lament the separation, it will be best, for both parties, that we should not wander together over another page.

NORTHERN SUMMER;

TRAVELS ROUND THE BALTIC.

CHAP. I.

TIME OF SETTING FORTH-A WESTERN TOWN-HARWICH-THE POOR NORWEGIAN'S

TOMB-HELOGOLAND-FLOATING

MERRY FACESHUSUM-A STUHLWAGGON-THE FAIR-THE WONDER-NOVEL APPLICATION OF A CHURCH-WALTZES-A SHOCKING SECRET.

IT was on the 14th of May, 1804, that, impelled by an ardent desire of contemplating the great and interesting volume of man, and by the hope of ameliorating a state of health which has too often awakened the solicitude of maternal affection, and of friendly sympathy, the writer of these pages bade adieu to a spot in which the morning of life had rolled over his head, and which a thousand circumstances had endeared to him. I cannot quit England without casting a lingering look upon my favourite little town of Totnes, where, as a characteristic, family alliances are so carefully preserved, that one death generally stains half the town black, and where Nature has so united the charms of enlightened society to those of romantic scenery, that had a certain wit but tasted of the former, he would have spared the whole county in which it stands, and would not have answered, when requested to declare his opinion of the good people of Devon, that the further he travelled westward, the more persuaded he was that the wise men came from the east.

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A Northern Summer: Or, Travels Round the Baltic, Through Denmark, Sweden ...