At Munkholm, or Monk’s Island, called the Bastille du Nord, Heber saw, among other prisoners, a very old man, who had been confined there for above fifty years, and had lost in a great measure the use of his faculties; they were much moved by his appearance, and the answers which he gave. On being asked how old he was, he answered three hundred years. His crime was variously reported: some said he was sent there by his relations for violent behaviour to his father; others as being a spend-thrift; and M. Leganger said, as being mad. A pretty government this, where a man is shut up for his whole life, and three or four different reasons given for his imprisonment, all equally uncertain! In Norway, as well as in some parts of Hadramaut and the Coromandel coast, the cattle are fed upon the refuse of fish, which fattens them rapidly, but seems, at the same time, totally to change their nature, and render them unmanageably ferocious. Heber’s stay in Norway was short. He had the talent to describe whatever was presented to his view, but his mild and gentle nature inspired him with no sympathy for the craggy, barren, desolate scenery of the Norwegian mountains; and he appears to have hastened his return to the abodes of civilization from an instinctive perception of this fact. Upon passing from Norway into Sweden, they spent some time at Upsala and the capital; from whence they crossed the Gulf of Bothnia in a fishing-boat, to Abo, in Finland. From hence, however, as it seems to have contained nothing worth seeing, they proceeded with all possible celerity, the approved English mode of travelling, to Petersburg. Notwithstanding the rapidity of their movements, they found time to make one discovery, which, as it is the echo of what most travellers repeat of the countries they visit, I insert for the honour of the Finns and Russians: “In one point,” says he, “both the Finlanders and Russians are unfortunately agreed, I mean in the proverbial knavery of the lower classes. In Sweden every thing was secure from theft, and our carriage, with its harness, cushions, &c., stood every night untouched in the open street. But we soon found how very inferior the Sclavonian race is to the Gothic in honesty, and were obliged to keep a constant watch. I cannot account for this apparently generic difference. If the Russians only had been thieves I should have called it the effects of the slavery of the peasants, but Swedish Finland is just as bad, and the peasants are as free as in England.”