the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is delightful in the forest." So say we. It is delightful in the forest; not less so on the torrent-river of Scandinavia: "Before Homer sang, there were heroes; but they are not known, no poet celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature; they must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for what they are. The elvs of the North have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in unknown beauty. The world's great high-road does not take this direction; no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable. Schubert is, as yet, the only stranger who has written about the magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its greatness. "Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red-painted block-houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock. "Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become confluent and have one bed above Balstad. They have taken up rivers and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial riches to be found: the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand, smilingly pastoral, idyllic; one is drawn onward up to the very source of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut; one feels a desire to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in. "The first mighty fall, Njupesker's Cataract, is seen by the Norwegian frontier in Semasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms. "We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters over a porphyry soil, where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished. "We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees the water-sprite swim like the sea-horse, with a mane of green seaweed; and where the aërial images present visions of witchcraft in the warm summer day.