In my rambles to-day I saw many of the peasantry, and the interiors of a few of their houses. The women are poor-looking creatures, dressed in the most wretched manner. They want the smart taste seen even among the poorest young females farther south, as is particularly evidenced in their head-dress, which consists merely of a coarse handkerchief tied under the chin--a sort of apology for a hood rather than a head-dress. There are great differences in the interiors of the peasants' houses; but certainly many of them are miserable little cabins. As yet, I see few symptoms of a prosperous life for the labouring-class in Norway. It is different with the peasant proprietors or yeomen, called _bonder_ in their own country. The house of a _bonde_ is a long, double-storeyed, wooden house, painted a dull red or yellow, with gauze window-curtains, and very neatly furnished within. The life of this class--the leading class of Norwegian society--seems generally comfortable, though not to the degree which is alleged in the glowing pages of Mr Laing; for they are very often embarrassed by debt, mostly incurred in order to pay off the claims of brothers and sisters to their inheritance. At present, the labouring-class are leaving Norway in considerable numbers to settle in America. There is one particular district in Wisconsin which they flock to, and which, I am told, contains at least 6000 of these poor people. A government officer, whom I conversed with at Christiania, says it is owing to the superabundant numbers of the people. The land, he alleges, has been brought to the utmost stretch of its productive power. Meanwhile, to use his expression, there is _trop du mariage_: the food being insufficient for the constantly-increasing numbers, they must needs swarm off. There is a like emigration of the humbler class of peasantry from Sweden. Thus we see that equally in the simple state of things which prevails in Scandinavia, and in the high-wrought system of wealthy England, there is but a poor life for the hireling unskilled labourer. Nowhere does it afford more than a bare subsistence; often scarcely gives this.