They are, as a people, as little given to other vices as in any country of Europe, perhaps I might say, in the world. The statistical tables show that many, very many, children are born into the world whose parents are not lawfully married, and it is therefore set down to the discredit of Sweden and Norway that they are very lax in their social morals. There is this, however, to be said on this delicate subject, the law forbids the marriage of any parties who have not taken the Lord’s Supper, and many do not wish to become communicants in the church, who are also quite willing to be married. But the church will not sanction their union, and they live together in the marital relation, true to each other, but without the blessing of the church. Their children are returned in the census to the discredit of the morals of Sweden! Here is an interesting point for moralists to study. The practice is wrong, and so is the law that has made the practice so common. The mysterious words, Riddarholm kyrkan, provided always your education has not extended into the language of Sweden, are used to define a kyrkan or kirk, the Riders’ or Horsemen’s or Knights’ Church in Stockholm, decidedly the most peculiar and interesting of all I have seen in the north of Europe. Divine service is celebrated within its walls but once a year. It is not a house for the living to pray in, but for the dead to lie in. It is not for the dead of common clay, but for the dust of kings only,—a royal mausoleum. It is a structure of nameless architecture, once Gothic doubtless, but worked over until small trace of its original design appears. A spire once almost reached the clouds, and when the lightnings played too fiercely on it, it was replaced by one of cast iron, which tapers finely to a lofty height, and defies the thunders. It is a symbol, the whole church is, of a rude age and land. The doors were opened at noon of a bright summer day, and yet as we entered, a sense of gloom, of ruin, of vast antiquity, and the utter emptiness of this poor life of ours, came over me like a thick cloud. Every stone of uneven, broken pavement was a tomb, and the inscriptions long since were worn away by the feet of strangers. In dumb silence, for centuries the royal remains of successive dynasties have been resting here, and their names are forgotten, rubbed out, and unwritten elsewhere. The flags, spears, drums, swords, guns, and implements of war unused in modern times, are hung around the walls, as if this were an arsenal and not a sepulchre. In front of the high altar, with recumbent effigies of ancient kings, and in the midst of inscriptions hard to read and some still harder to understand, was one epitaph in these words:— JUSTITIÆ SPLENDOR PATRIÆ PATER VIVAS IN ETERNUM O MAGNE BEATE.