At the time of my visit to Gottenburg, one of the leading matters of local interest was the erection of an Exchange upon an unusually handsome scale. I had an opportunity of inspecting the building, when it was all but finished, on my return from the north, and I must say that I have rarely seen any edifice presenting a more elegant interior. There are, besides the Exchange-room on the street-floor, a ball-room and supper-room, also the apartments required for a restaurant and coffeehouse up stairs; and the whole are decorated in a style of taste far beyond any similar place in England that I am acquainted with. The outlay, I was told, would be L.60,000 sterling; a remarkable sum to be given for such a purpose in so small a town. Verily, I thought, if some of my friends, who speak of Sweden as little better than the Frozen Regions, were to be transported into the midst of the fairy palace here erected in one of its second-rate towns, their ideas about these northern countries could not fail to undergo a change. They might turn, it is true, to the hotel, and remark with some bitterness, derived from their own experiences, that Gottenburg, while going a century ahead in an Exchange, was lingering two centuries behind in its accommodations for strangers. I had afterwards some pleasure in looking over the Chalmers School, an institution founded by a Scotch gentleman of that name in order to give young men an education in the mechanical and physical sciences. It is a large establishment, conducted in a most efficient manner, and attended by abundance of pupils. Here, again, Gottenburg is ahead of many other places of greater pretensions. Mr Keiller's iron-foundry, where 170 people are employed, and where everything seemed in the best order, occupied an hour agreeably. Another was well devoted to Messrs Carnegie and Company's porter brewery at Klippen, a suburb of Gottenburg. The favourite beverage of London is here produced of excellent quality; and I was informed that it is extensively used in Sweden, though it might be more so but for a liquor more recently introduced--Bavarian beer--which is much better adapted to the means of the generality of the people. I likewise paid a visit to Messrs Gibson and Son's establishment at Jönsered, a few miles from town, where, in a charming rural situation, iron-founding and sailcloth-making are conducted on a large scale, the whole population concerned being about 700. The entire arrangements seemed admirable, but none more so than the general fact of the near and constant association of the people with beautiful natural scenes, in which they could, at their leisure hours, rove without restraint. When a factory can be conducted in such local circumstances, the noted drawbacks usually attending huge agglomerations of labour in a great measure vanish; and one can only wish that so were they all.