gnition for the gay Lothario, who
exchanged signals with several of the women performers. We felt sure
that he must be some well-known character about town, and upon
returning to the hotel described him and asked who he was. "Oh!" said
the proprietor, "that was the Portuguese Minister!"

Some of the public streets of the city are quite steep, so as to be
impassable for vehicles,--like those of Valetta in the island of
Malta, and those in the English part of Hong Kong. The northern
suburb is the most fashionable part of Stockholm, containing the
newest streets and the finest private residences. Among the statues
which ornament the public squares and gardens, that of Charles XII.
in King's Park is perhaps the most remarkable,--he whom Motley called
"the crowned gladiator." It stands upon a pedestal of Swedish
granite, surrounded by four heavy mortars placed at the
corners,--spoils which were taken by the youthful hero in battle.
Touching the individual figure, which is of bronze and colossal, it
struck us as full of incongruities, and not at all creditable to the
well-known designer Molin.

The Swedish and Norwegian languages are very similar, and, as we were
assured by persons of both nationalities, they are becoming gradually
amalgamated. The former is perhaps the softer tongue and its people
the more musical, as those two delightful vocalists and envoys from
thence, Jenny Lind and Christine Nilsson, would lead us to infer.
Both countries are undoubtedly poor in worldly riches, but yet they
expend larger sums of money for educational purposes in proportion to
the number of their population than any other country except America.
The result here is manifest in a marked degree of general
intelligence diffused among all classes. One is naturally reminded in
this Swedish capital of Linnaeus and Swedenborg, both of whom were
born here. The latter graduated at the famous University of Upsala,
the former in the greater school of out-door Nature. Swedenborg was
as eminent a scientist as religionist, and to him was first intrusted
the engineering of the Gotha Canal; but his visionary peculiarities
growing upon him it was found necessary to substitute a more
practical individual, so that the great work was eventually completed
by Sweden's most famous engineer and mechanician, Kristofer Polhem.

The stranger often meets in the streets of Stockholm a conspicuous
class of peasant women dressed very neatly but somewhat gaudily in