lover, as poor as herself, and she sees no possibility of ever earning enough to enable her to return home, and become his wife. "It was in this province that I now found myself, and its inhabitants pleased me greatly. Nature has made them hardy and intelligent, for their life is a perpetual struggle to extract a scanty subsistence from the niggard and rocky soil. Unenervated by luxury, uncorrupted by the introduction of foreign vices, they have been at all periods conspicuous for their love of freedom, for their penetration in discovering, and promptness in repelling, attacks upon it. Faithful to their lawful sovereign, they yet brooked no tyranny; and when invaders entered the land, or bad governors oppressed them, they were ever ready to defend their just rights with their lives. From the remotest periods, such has been the character of this people, which has preserved itself unsophisticated, true, and free. It is interesting to trace the history of the Dalecarlians. Isolated in a manner from the rest of the world amongst their rugged precipices and in their lonely valleys, it might be supposed they would know nothing of what passed without; yet whenever the moment for action has come, they have been found alert and prepared. "At the commencement of the fifteenth century, Eric XIII., known also as the Pomeranian, ascended the Swedish throne. His own disposition was neither bad nor good, but he had too little knowledge of the country he was called upon to reign over; and his governors and vice-gerents, for the most part foreigners, tyrannized unsparingly over the nation. The oppressed people stretched out their hands imploringly to the king; but he, who was continually requiring fresh supplies of money for the prosecution of objectless wars, paid no attention to their complaints. Of all his Voegte, or governors, not one was so bad and cruel as Jesse Ericson, who dwelt at Westeraes, and ruled over Dalarna. He laid enormous imposts on the peasantry, and when they were unable to pay, he took every thing from them, to their last horse, and harnessed themselves to the plough. Pregnant matrons were compelled at his command to draw heavy hay-waggons, women and girls were shamefully outraged by him, and persons possessing property unjustly condemned, in order that he might take possession of their goods. When the peasants came to him to complain, he had them driven away with stripes, or else cut off their ears, or hung them up in the smoke till they were suffocated.