ch is abundant, is rarely properly cooked,
and game, of which Sweden has a great variety, is injured by being
swamped in sauces. He must be very fastidious, however, who cannot live
passably well in Stockholm, especially if he has frequent invitations to
dine with private families, many of whom have very excellent cooks.

My Swedish friends all said, "You should see Stockholm in summer! You
have passed the worst part of the whole year among us, and you leave
just when our fine days begin." I needed no assurance, however, of the
summer charm of the place. In those long, golden evenings, which give
place to an unfading twilight, when the birch is a network of silver and
green, and the meadows are sown with the bright wild flowers of the
North, those labyrinths of land and water must be truly enchanting. But
were the glories of the Northern Summer increased tenfold, I could not
make my home where such a price must be paid for them. From the time of
our arrival, in February, until towards the close of April, the weather
was of that kind which aggravates one to the loss of all patience. We
had dull, raw, cloudy skies, a penetrating, unnerving, and depressing
atmosphere, mud under foot, alternating with slushy snow,--in short,
everything that is disagreeable in winter, without its brisk and bracing
qualities. I found this season much more difficult to endure than all
the cold of Lapland, and in spite of pleasant society and the charms of
rest after a fatiguing journey, our sojourn in Stockholm was for a time
sufficiently tedious.

At first, we lived a rather secluded life in our rooms in the
Beridarebansgatan, in the northern suburb, devoting ourselves
principally to gymnastics and the study of the Swedish language,--both
of which can be prosecuted to more advantage in Stockholm than anywhere
else. For, among the distinguished men of Sweden may be reckoned Ling,
the inventor of what may be termed anatomical gymnastics. His system not
only aims at reducing to a science the muscular development of the body,
but, by means of both active and passive movements, at reaching the
seat of disease and stimulating the various organs to healthy action. In
the former of these objects, Ling has certainly succeeded; there is no
other system of muscular training that will bear comparison with his;
and if he has to some extent failed in the latter, it is because, with
the enthusiasm of a man possessed by a new discovery, he claimed too
much.