ent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz,
under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein,
through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered
about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the
deep passages? Gloom--darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense
of oppression--a longing for air and light, which is by far the best;
and that we have now."

"But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!" said the man; and he
drew forth his "Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden," from which he
read: "Danemora's iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in
Sweden; the best in Europe. They have seventy-nine openings, of which
seventeen only are being worked. The machine mine is ninety-three
fathoms deep."

Just then the bells sounded from below: it was the signal that the
time of labour for that day was ended. The hue of eve still shone on
the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf,
it was a perfect twilight. Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the
workmen swarmed forth. They looked like flies, quite small in the
space below: they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the
steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places: they climbed
higher and higher--upwards, upwards--and at every step they became
larger. The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three
or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the
tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against
the side of the rock, so that they swung from it: and it became darker
and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!

"It is appalling!" said the man from Scania. "One ought, however, to
have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one _had_ been.
You, however, have certainly been down there," said he again to me.

"Believe what you will," I replied; and I say the same to the reader.

THE SWINE.

* * * * *

That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and
since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the
grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if
we think of the "prodigal son," we are at once in the midst of the
sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in
Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had
his sty, and that such a one as there is proba