In the months of July and August the coast of Norway offers an aspect of magnificent vegetation; the navigation is active; clouds of birds appear to animate the rocks that border the shore; the sky is pure, and the view enjoyed from Munkholm is enchanting. The nights, especially, have a peculiar charm; the air has something unctuous and _suave_, which seems to soften my melancholy reveries; the nights at this period are a species of twilight, for at midnight it is clear enough to read even the finest type. I have found in an external staircase a spot which has grown my favourite asylum, even when winter has commenced. There I am sheltered against the north winds; there, and in the company of my books, wrapped up in an old bearskin coat, I feel less a prisoner than elsewhere; though the eyes of the sentry plunge into the spot, my presence in it could not be suspected. Since the commencement of my stay on the island, I have regulated the employment of my time. I rise in summer at daybreak, and in winter at eight o'clock. I employ the first hour of the day in pious meditations; I then occupy myself with readings that require some mental effort; a short walk precedes my dinner; I take a longer walk after the meal. Reading the newspapers, romances, or theatrical pieces, generally ends my evenings. The days on which the public papers arrive are holidays with me. The fort chaplain pays me a visit now and then: the one who held this office on my arrival has been removed to Bergen. His conversation caused me pleasure, and that of his successor pleases me no less; I have found them both enlightened, charitable, disposed to relieve me by consolatory discourses, and by procuring me books. The Danish clergy, generally, are distinguished from the rest of the nation by their virtues and information. When the weather is bad, I walk in a large room in the tower of the fortress; this room served as a lodging for Count von Griffenfeldt. He was the son of a wine-merchant, and rose by his merit to the place of grand chancellor of the kingdom and the dignity of count. He governed the state wisely; if he had retained the power, he would have prevented the wars that ruined Denmark under Christian V. His enemies had him condemned to the punishment which the unhappy Struensee underwent; but on the scaffold itself the penalty of death, which had been too hasty, was commuted, as if by mercy, into a confinement on this rock, where he prolonged his wretchedness for nineteen years, and died of the gravel. "Such," I said to myself, "is the fate which menaces me; but I shall not wait so long for it, for I believe that I can already feel the same malady."