to an officer, she contracted, after his death, several
engagements, all of which she broke off, whereby her reputation in
some degree suffered. At last she gave her hand to Carlen, a very
middling sort of poet, some years younger than she is; and she now
styles herself--following the example of Madame Birch-Pfeiffer, and
other celebrated singers--Flygare-Carlen. She lives very happily at
Stockholm with her husband, and is at least as good a housewife as
an authoress, not even thinking it beneath her dignity to
superintend the kitchen. Her great modesty as to her own merits,
and the esteem she expresses for her rivals, are much to her
credit. She is a little restless body, and does not like sitting
still. Her countenance is rather pleasing than handsome, and its
charm is heightened by the lively sparkle of her quick dark eyes.

"The third person of the trio is the Baroness Knorring, a very
noble lady, who lives far away from Stockholm, and is married to an
officer. She is between thirty and forty years old, and it is
affirmed that she would be justified in exclaiming with
Wallenstein's Thekla--

'Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.'

She was described to me as nervous and delicate, which is perhaps
the right temperament to enable her accurately to depict in her
romances the strained artificiality and silken softness of
aristocratic existence. Her style also possesses the needful
lightness and grace, and she accordingly succeeds admirably in her
sketches of high life, with all its elegant nullities and
spiritless pomp. One of her best works is the romance of
_Cousinerna_, (The Cousins,) which, as well as the other works of
Knorring, Bremer, and Flygare, has been placed before the German
public by our diligent translators."

Upon the subjects of Swedish society and conversation, Mr Boas is
pleased to be unusually funny. Like the foreigner who asserted that
Goddam was the root of the English language, he seems prepared to
maintain that two monosyllables constitute the essence of the Swedish
tongue, and that they alone are required to carry on an effective and
agreeable dialogue. "It is not at all difficult," he says, "to keep up a
conversation with a Swede, when you are once acquainted with a certain
mystical formula, whereby all emotions and sentiments are to be
expressed, and by the