Where education is so general, one may naturally expect to find a high degree of intellectual cultivation among the clergy, the public functionaries, and the wealthier part of the population. Their classical knowledge is one of the first things that strike the stranger with astonishment. He sees men whose appearance too frequently denotes an abject poverty conversant with the great authors of antiquity, and keenly alive to their beauties. Travelling to the Geysirs, he is not seldom accosted in Latin by his guide, and stopping at a farm, his host greets him in the same language. I have specially named Jon Thorlakson, but Iceland has produced and still produces many other men who, without the hope of any other reward but that which proceeds from the pure love of literature, devote their days and nights to laborious studies, and live with Virgil and Homer under the sunny skies of Italy and Greece. In the study of the modern languages, the Icelanders are as far advanced as can be expected from their limited intercourse with the rest of the world. The English language, in which they find so many words of their own and so many borrowed from the Latin, is cultivated by many of the clergy. The German they find still more easy; and as all the Scandinavian languages proceed from the same root, they have no difficulty in understanding the Danish and the Norwegian tongues. Of all the modern languages or dialects which have sprung from the ancient Norse, spoken a thousand years ago all over Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, none has undergone fewer changes than the Icelandic. In the sea-ports it is mixed up with many Danish words and phrases, but in the interior of the island it is still spoken as it was in the times of Ingolfr and Eric the Red, and in the whole island there is no fisherman or day laborer who does not perfectly understand the oldest writings. It may easily be imagined that among a people so fond of literature, books must be in great request. Too poor to be constantly increasing their small collections of modern publications, or of old “sagas” or chronicles, by new acquisitions, one assists the other. When the peasant goes on Sundays to church, he takes a few volumes with him, ready to lend his treasures to his neighbors, and, on his part, selects from among those which they have brought for the same purpose. When he is particularly pleased with a work, he has it copied at home, and it may be here remarked that the Icelanders are frequently most excellent calligraphists.