than he began singing,
"_Frie dig ved lifvet_." It was an intensely hot day, and the shores of
Ulvik were perfectly dazzling. The turf had a silken gloss; the trees
stood darkly and richly green, and the water was purest sapphire. "It is
a beautiful bay, is it not?" said the farmer who furnished us with
horses, after we had left the boat and were slowly climbing the fjeld. I
thought I had never seen a finer; but when heaven and earth are in
entire harmony, when form, colour and atmosphere accord like some rich
swell of music, whatever one sees is perfect. Hence I shall not say how
beautiful the bay of Ulvik was to me, since under other aspects the
description would not be true.

The farmer's little daughter, however, who came along to take back one
of the horses, would have been a pleasant apparition at any time and in
any season. She wore her Sunday dress, consisting of a scarlet boddice
over a white chemise, green petticoat, and white apron, while her
shining flaxen hair was plaited into one long braid with narrow strips
of crimson and yellow cloth and then twisted like a garland around her
head. She was not more than twelve or thirteen years old, but tall,
straight as a young pine, and beautifully formed, with the promise of
early maidenhood in the gentle swell of her bosom. Her complexion was
lovely--pink, brightened with sunburnt gold,--and her eyes like the
blossoms of the forget-me-not, in hue. In watching her firm yet graceful
tread, as she easily kept pace with the horse, I could not realise that
in a few more years she would probably be no more graceful and beautiful
than the women at work in the fields--coarse, clumsy shapes, with frowzy
hair, leathery faces, and enormous hanging breasts.

In the Bergenstift, however, one sometimes sees a pretty face; and the
natural grace of the form is not always lost. About Vossevangen, for
instance, the farmers' daughters are often quite handsome; but beauty,
either male or female, is in Norway the rarest apparition. The grown-up
women, especially after marriage, are in general remarkably plain.
Except among some of the native tribes of Africa, I have nowhere seen
such overgrown, loose, pendant breasts as among them. This is not the
case in Sweden, where, if there are few beauties, there are at least a
great many passable faces. There are marked differences in the blood of
the two nations; and the greater variety of feature and complexion in
Norway seems to indicate a l