NORWAY.*

WE wish it were not almost too late in the year for a notice of this little book to decide some wavering, proposing tourist to go to Norway. It certainly would have decided us, had anything 80 delightful as a tour been in our programme. We feel it, indeed, a happy chance that has brought this book for our refreshment ; so that as we continue our work, for the edification of the public, while all the world makes holiday, we may, in our own study, in these sultry August days, at any rate, take it easily, and fancy ourselves for a time in the cool depths of Norwegian valleys, or sailing on the silent land-locked fjords, gazing up at the stupen- dous cliffs that seem jealous to exclude the cheerful light of day, or standing on the fragile bridge of a single pine-trunk in the dark and solitary gorge, where the "foss " tumbles and boils with deafening and unheeding roar, its spray drip- ping from every leaf of the thick over-hanging foliage, and from every frond of the moisture-loving ferns, and saturating the single decaying rail on which we lean, till—chill, and wet, and giddy with looking up to the point where the vast mass first pre- cipitates itself over the edge, and down into the steaming and fathomless cauldron, and yet fascinated and awestruck at the sight, and at the thought that this wonderful exhibition of beauty and power goes on for countless ages unknown and unheeded, except by the merest fraction of humanity—we regain the bank, and after a severe climb draw a long breath of mingled regret and relief as the dull thud of the fall dies away to our retreating ears. Or we can, in imagination, stand on the vast, melancholy, and lonely plateau, stretching away in rugged wildness of rock, and stream, and dreary morass, to the feet of the great mountain-chains, covered far down with their pure mantle of snow, even in these burning August days. Or we can visit the primitive eyries of the Norwegian farmer,—the lonely steer far up the mountain, but cheerful and active in the summer ; where a couple of maidens, in the perfect confidence of their simple nation, will, all alone for weeks and months, tend their flocks and herds, and gather the produce of the dairy, sleeping with unlocked doors, and bathed in the broad light in which the deep mysterious silence of midnight seems so passing strange ; or we can join the grave and serious crowds of reverent Norsemen at their solemn national festivals ; or later in the day, when—the religious duties duly and lovingly performed—the spirit of enjoyment is set free, and the dance supersedes everything except feasting, and will not be apbeased till morning ; or we can try the cariole and the sure-

Over the Davrehelde. By J. S. Shepard. London: Henry S. King and 0o.

footed pony, and learn how "dreadfully nice" it is to fly down the endless descent at the rate of sixteen miles an hour, whisking round innumerable sharp angles, the towering and perpendicular cliff rising sheer above us, and descending—within a few feet of the wheels of our fragile vehicle, protected by no fence— sheer below us into an abyss whence we hear the dull roar of the cataract. And all these and many other delights we can enjoy amongst the hospitable Norwegians — on their lovely lakes, in their snug homes, examining the rich remains of their ancient Cathedral of Trondjhem—while we turn over the pages of this little book, and—all too soon—find ourselves at the last.

We have read many books of Norwegian travel, but though some have been more comprehensive and more carefully written, we have seen none so pleasantly narrative in its style, and so varied in its subject. There is much careless English, and some expressions that make us fancy Mr. Shepard must be a Yankee, many errors of the presi, and worst of all, no map ; but on the other hand, there is none of the dreary detail of the common itinerary, which may well be left—now that Norway is tolerably well known to tourists and sportsmen—to Murray and the other compilers of guide-books, including Mr. Bennett, at whose expense Mr. Shepard allows himself something like s sneer, but whose value we have reason to know is anything but an unknown quantity to many of our countrymen and countrywomen.

The tour is a very brief one, only—as it calls itself—" over the Dovrefjelds." It carries us by lake, river, and mountain—Miosen, Logen, and Sneehatten—to Trondhjem, thence by fjord and many an islet to Molde, and so back again, through the Romadal- that put on, for July, a provokingly wintry and forbidding aspect which prevented the mountain journey to Bergen—to the Guld-

brandsdal and Christiania. The defects of the book are, perhaps, a little tediousness about St. Olaf and Harald Harfager, and a little too much of the cathedral at Trondhjern. That is, these are the defects of Mr. Shepard's authorship, from which we can preserve ourself by judicious skipping. The defect of his compilership is the want of a snap, and this is not so easily got over. Does Mr.

Shepard expect any one with two grains of " locality " in his com- position, to read a tour with interest, without knowing which way he is going, ignorant of the relative positions of the sun and the traveller during the day, at sea as to the bank of the river, and abroad as to the position of its source and the direction of its current; altogether in doubt as to whether he is running his head against a mountain, or in danger of gaining a headlong pace down a steep pass ; reading, as it were, blindfold, and at the mercy of the author—who, knowing all about it himself, is apt to forget that his readers probably won't know—for occasional infor- mation, when he finds to his disgust that he is turned quite round and upside down ? It is thoughtless and unkind to set a reader down to a book of travels without a guide ; as well might

you give a musician a score without key, or clef, or other instructions. What were we driven to do ? Why, to tear the map from our copy of Through Norway with a Knapsack,

and mutilate that dear old friend. Does Mr. Shepard think, perhaps, that because his little book is light, we should not mind

having our Black's Atlas (half-a-stone weight) on our knee the while? Such an incubus would have dispelled every illusion, and made each exquisite and magnificent scene a mere ray to render darkness visible. What travellers should do is to copy roughly their own skeleton map, mark on it each place they meution, have

the copy, thus marked, photographed and cut into pieces, and paste these pieces in the parts of the book to which they refer. Such a system would immensely improve their book and increase its sale.

We gather from Mr. Shepard's experience that both roads and hotels are much improved in the last dozen years ; and yet we also gather with pleasure, that except in the neighbourhoods of the large seaports, neither the simplicity and honesty of the

people, nor their hospitality and the extreme reasonableness of their charges, have lost anything of their attractiveness to tourists. A propos of the subject of coat, let us make only two very short extracts :— "The larder was but a limited one, and she could only give us eggs and bacon, which soon came in smoking appetisingly, and although the bacon was nearly raw, our hunger made us overlook the slight draw- back and make a very satisfactory repast, our Arcadian feast being appropriately washed down with draughts of new milk. The making out our bill could not have greatly taxed the ingenuity of our hostess, who was as innocent of the art of 'charging' as a new-born babe— eight skillings for the two of us, or, a penny-three-farthings each, being the enormous sum-total we were amerced in It is strange, but no less true, that the station-masters, or rather mistresses—for the women are absolute rulers in the house—rarely avail themselves of the full power tho tariff gives them, and many of the regnings (reckonings) presented, come as near to realising that

unknown quantity of next-to-nothing as may well be. It was so in the present instance. We had fared sumptuously—we had eaten and drunk of the best they could give us—meat, eggs, fish, tea, coffee, and white bread had all disappeared down our ravenous maws, and for supper, beds, and breakfast, together with sundry other services rendered, in the shape of linen washed and clothes dried, we were amerced in the tremendous sum of one mark and twelve skillings, or just eightpence per head. On looking through our notes. we find that this was the most moderate bill in all our Norwegian experience, although we have often been charged very little more for the same items. Taking, however, a fair average, the following may be looked upon as the ordinary station charges on the principal roads, varying somewhat according to the moderation or otherwise of the respective proprietors. Supper, bed, and breakfast, two marks, and if coffee be taken at either of the meals, it is. especially in the Bergen district, charged as an extra. Dinner is nearly always one mark, and the price is the same, no matter how many dishes there may be."

The " mark " is equal to 104d. of our money.

Besides very graphic descriptions of the beautiful surroundings of Christiania, and of the half-empty, silent Trondj hem, of the rich Guldbrandsdal, the impetuous Logen, the lovely but treacherous Miiisen, the various grandeur and beauty of the innumerable "fosses," the wide and dreary plateaus, &c., &c., the book is very pleasantly diversified by reference to the youthful enthusiasm of our author's young thirteen-year-old boy-companion, and by lively sketches of station, steter, and country-house life.

In speaking of the very great antiquity and former loveliness of Trondhjem Cathedral—which loveliness, or much of it, is quite capable of restoration—Mr. Shepard tells us that £120,000 would suffice to restore all that can be restored, but that that sum is an impossible one for a poor and thinly-populated country like Norway. Would it not be a worthy object of ambition for some of our rich English millionaires, to obtain a nation's gratitude and the gratitude of all lovers of art for all time, by providing this sum ?—a mere trifle out of the great fortunes of many of our countrymen, noblemen and commoners, from the Brasseys and Bairds and the Marquis of Bute, downwards.

We will conclude with a striking passage descriptive of the Fjords, certainly the characteristic, par excellence, of Norwegian scenery :—

" The rocks, forming their shores, generally rise perpendicularly, their summits, thousands of feet above, being often clothed in per- petual snow, while their bases are laved in well nigh unfathomable waters. The main channel of the fiord rarely exceeds four or five miles in width, and that of the branch fiords from one to two, while here and there they contract to a mere rift in the rocks, like the Neer° (narrow) Fiord, a tributary of the Segue, which is barely 500 yards from shore to shore. There is something very peculiar and weird-like in the aspect of these fiords, their most striking feature being the almost utter absence of life, human or animal, throughout their extent. Save at the mouths of the mountain rivers that here and there run into them, scarce a habitation is to be seen, for so steep and sterile are the over- hanging rocks, that hardly a goat can with difficulty keep its footing and snatch a precarious subsistence. Now and then a sail glimmers on the horizon, and the smoke of the little steamer, that at regular inter- vals carries all the advantages of civilisation into these secluded inlets, darkens the blue sky; but these are rare occurrences, and days often pass away without the still waters being disturbed by even a fishing

boat As our paddles dashed the waters into foam, we could not avoid the thought that a steamer is the last place from which to see a fiord to advantage. The still, peaceful calm and desert-like solitude that are its great charms are altogether destroyed by the shrieking, puffing iron monster, which seems to challenge comparison for man's skill and power with the giant forces of nature that surround it. In a frail boat, with perchance the descendants of the Vikings who ravaged our coasts a thousand years ago urging it onwards, we feel more completely our own miserable insignificance, and as the eye strains to reach the peaks towering to the clouds, and the ear is deafened by the descending cataracts, wo acknowledge and adore the Almighty Power that brought it all into being."