windows are specially noticed as movable furniture. No mention, however, is made of chairs or looking-glasses. If we compare this account, however trifling in our estimation, with a similar inventory of furniture in Skipton Castle, the great honour of the Earls of Cumberland, and among the most splendid mansions of the north,—not at the same period, for I have not found any inventory of a nobleman's furniture so ancient, but in 1572,— after almost a century of continual improvement, we shall be astonished at the inferior provision of the baronial residence. There were not more than seven or eight beds in this great castle, nor had any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or carpets. It is in this sense, probably, that we must understand Æneas Sylvius, if he meant anything more than to express a traveller's discontent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice to be as well lodged as the second class of citizens at Nuremberg. Few burghers of that town had mansions, I presume, equal to the palaces of Dunfermline or Stirling, but it is not unlikely that they were better furnished.

In the construction of farmhouses and cottages, especially the latter, there have probably been fewer changes; and those it would be more difficult to follow. Cottages in England seem to have generally consisted of a single room, without division of stories. Chimneys were unknown in such dwellings till the early part of Elizabeth's reign, when a very rapid and sensible improvement took place in the comforts of our yeomanry and cottagers.

HARRIET MARTINEAU:

1802.

The Coast of Norway.

EVERY one who has looked at the map of Norway must have been struck with the singular character of its coast. On the map it looks so jagged, such a strange mixture of land and sea, that it appears as if there must be a perpetual struggle between the

From

* Nuremberg, an ancient city of Bavaria, still famous for its picturesque architecture and relics of fine art, especially those of Albert Durer. an early period it has been noted for its industry, especially in the manufacture of stained glass and mathematical instruments. To us it is more familiarly known as the manufactory of all sorts of toy-wares, in the production of which machinery is employed to a surprising extent.

two-the sea striving to inundate the land, and the land pushing itself out into the sea, till it ends in their dividing the region between them. On the spot, however, this coast is very sublime. The long straggling promontories are mountainous, towering ridges of rock, springing up in precipices from the water; while the bays between them, instead of being rounded with shelving sandy shores on which the sea tumbles its waves, as in bays of our coast, are, in fact, long narrow valleys, filled with sea, instead of being laid out in fields and meadows. The high rocky banks shelter these deep bays (called fiords) from almost every wind; so that their waters are usually as still as those of a lake. For days and weeks together they reflect each separate tree-top of the pine forests which clothe the mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some sportive fish, or the oars of the boatman, as he goes to inspect the sea-fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or rod to catch the seatrout, or char, or cod, or herrings, which abound in their seasons on the coast of Norway.

It is difficult to say whether these fiords are the most beautiful in summer or in winter. In summer they glitter with golden sunshine; and purple and green shadows from the mountain and forest lie on them; and these may be more lovely than the faint light of the winter noons of those latitudes, and the snowy pictures of frozen peaks which show themselves on the surface; but before the day is half over out come the stars-the glorious stars, which shine like nothing that we have ever seen. There the planets cast a faint shadow, as the young moon does with us; and these planets, and the constellations of the sky, as they silently glide over from peak to peak of these rocky passes, are imaged on the waters so clearly, that the fisherman, as he unmoors his boat for his evening task, feels as if he were about to shoot forth his vessel into another heaven, and to cleave his way among the

stars.

Still along these narrow, deep sea valleys there is rarely silence. The ear is kept awake by a thousand voices. In the summer there are cataracts leaping from ledge to ledge of the rocks; and there is the bleating of the kids that browse there, and the flap of the great eagle's wings, as it dashes abroad from its eyrie, and the cries of whole clouds of sea-birds, which inhabit the islets; and all these sounds are mingled and multiplied by the strong echoes, till they become a din as loud as that of a city. Even at night, when the flocks are in the fold, and the birds at roost, and the echoes themselves seem to be asleep, there is occasionally a

sweet music heard, too soft for even the listening ear to catch by day. Every breath of summer wind that steals through the pine forests wakes this music as it goes. The stiff spiny leaves of the fir and pine vibrate with the breeze like the strings of a musical instrument, so that every breath of the night wind in a Norwegian forest wakens a myriad of tiny harps; and this gentle and mournful music may be heard in gushes the whole night long. This music of course ceases when each tree becomes laden with snow; but yet there is sound in the midst of the longest winter night.

There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting storm, a mass of snow, too heavy to keep its place, slides and tumbles from the mountain peak. There is also, now and then, a loud crack of the ice in the nearest glacier; and, as many declare, there is a crackling to be heard by those who listen when the northern lights are shooting and blazing across the sky.

Nor is this all. Wherever there is a nook between the rocks on the shore, where a man may build a house, and clear a field or two, where there is a platform beside the cataract, where the sawyer may plant his mill, and make a path from it to join some great road, there is a human habitation, and the sounds that belong to it. Thence, in winter nights, come music and laughter, and the tread of dancers, and the hum of many voices. The Norwegians are a sociable and hospitable people; and they hold their gay meetings, in defiance of their arctic climate, through every season of the year.

FROM SCENES AND LEGENDS.

Willie, the "Poor Lost Lad."

Ir is now well-nigh thirty years since Willie Watson returned, after an absence of nearly a quarter of a century, to the neighbouring town. He had been employed as a ladies' shoemaker in some of the districts of the south; but no one at home had heard of Willie in the interval, and there was little known regarding him at his return, except that when he had quitted town so many years before, he was a neat-handed industrious workman, and what the elderly people called a quiet, decent lad.

And he was now, though somewhat in the wane of life, even a more thorough master of his trade than before. He was quiet and unobtrusive, too, as ever, and a great reader of serious books.

H

And so the better sort of the people were beginning to draw to Willie by a kind of natural sympathy; some of them had learned to saunter into his workshop in the long evenings, and some had grown bold enough to engage him in serious conversation when they met with him in his solitary walks. At last, out came the astounding fact- and important as it may seem, the simpleminded mechanic had taken no pains to conceal it-that, during his residence in the south country, he had laid down Presbyterianism and become a member of a Baptist church.

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There was a sudden revulsion of feeling towards him, and all the people of the town began to speak of Willie Watson as a poor lost lad."

The "poor lost lad," however, was unquestionably a very excellent workman; and as he made neater shoes than anybody else, the ladies of the place could see no great harm in wearing them.

He was singularly industrious too, and indulged in no extraordinary expense, except when he now and then bought a good book, or a few flower seeds for his garden. He was withal a single man, with only himself, and an elderly sister, who lived with him, to provide for; and what between the regularity of his gains on the one hand, and the moderation of his desires on the other, Willie, for a person of his condition, was in easy circum

stances.

It was found that all the children in the neighbourhood had taken a wonderful fancy to his shop. Willie was fond of telling them good little stories out of the Bible, and of explaining to them the prints he had pasted on the walls.

Above all, he was anxiously bent on teaching them to read.

Some of the parents were poor, and some of them were careless; and he saw that, unless they learned their letters from him, there was little chance of their ever learning them at all. Willie, in a small way, and to a very small congregation, was a kind of missionary; and what between his stories and his pictures, and his flowers and his apples, his labours were wonderfully successful. Never yet was school or church half so delightful to the little men and women of the place as the workshop of Willie Watson," the poor lost lad."

Years of scarcity came on; taxes were high, and crops not abundant; and the soldiery abroad, whom the country had employed to fight against Bonaparte, had got an appetite at their work, and were consuming a good deal of meat and corn. price of food rose tremendously; and many of the townspeople,

The

who were working for a very little, were not in every case secure for that little when the work was done. Willie's small congregation began to find that the times were exceedingly bad; there were no more morning pieces among them, and the porridge was less than enough. It was observed, however, that in the midst of their distresses Willie got in a large stock of meal, and that his sister began to bake as if she were making ready for a wedding. The children were wonderfully interested in the work, and watched it to the end; when lo! to their great and joyous surprise, Willie divided the whole baking among them.

Every member of the congregation got a cake; there were some who had little brothers and sisters at home, and they got two; and from that day forward, till times got better, none of Willie's young friends lacked their morning piece. The neighbours marvelled at Willie; and all agreed that there was something strangely puzzling in the character of "the poor lost lad."

I have alluded to Willie's garden. Never was there a little bit of ground better occupied; it looked like a piece of rich needlework. He had got wonderful flowers too-flesh-coloured carnations streaked with red, and double roses of a rich golden yellow. Even the common varieties-auriculas and anemones, and the particoloured polyanthus-grew better with Willie than with anybody else..

It was no fault of Willie's that all his neighbours had not as fine gardens as himself; he gave them slips of his best flowers, flesh-coloured carnation, yellow rose and all; he grafted their trees for them, too, and taught them the exact time for raising their tulip roots, and the best mode of preserving them. Nay, more than all this, he devoted whole hours at a time to give the finishing touches to their parterres and borders, just in the way a drawing-master lays in the last shadings and imparts the finer touches to the landscapes of his favourite pupils.

All seemed impressed by the unselfish kindliness of his disposition; and all agreed that there could not be a warmer-hearted or more obliging neighbour than Willie Watson," the poor lost lad."

Everything earthly must have its last day. Willie was rather an elderly than old man, and the childlike simplicity of his tastes and habits made people think of him as younger than he really was; but his constitution, never a strong one, was gradually failing; he lost strength and appetite; and at length there came a morning in which he could no longer open his shop. He continued to creep out at noon, however, for a few days after, to