to bow at each other long after they have passed. In feature
and general appearance the Swedes are handsomer than the southern
races of Europe, and for that reason wear a nearer resemblance to the
Americans. I saw several men in Stockholm who would not have done
discredit to California, in point of fine faces and commanding
figures. The Swedish ladies are proverbially beautiful. It was really
refreshing, after my visit to Russia, to see so many pretty women as I
met here. Light hair, oval features, sparkling blue eyes, and forms of
intoxicating grace and beauty--ah me! why should such dangers be
permitted to threaten the defenseless traveler with instant
destruction, when the law provides for his protection against other
disasters by land and sea, assault and battery, false imprisonment and
highway robbery? Yet here were lovely creatures, gliding about at
large, shooting mutilation and death out of their bright blue eyes,
and apparently as indifferent to the slaughter they committed as if it
were the finest fun in the world! Talk of your French beauties, your
Italian beauties, your Spanish beauties! Give me, for the
impersonation of soul expressed in the human form divine--for features
"woven from the music of the spheres and painted with the hues of the
aurora borealis"--a Swedish beauty, the nearest approach upon earth to
an American beauty, which, being altogether angelic, must ever remain
the highest type of perfection known to mankind.

I don't wonder Swedenborg made so many heavens for his female
characters. His "conjugal felicity" required at least seven. One small
heaven, constructed upon the Swedish plan, would certainly afford but
limited accommodations for all the beauties of Stockholm.

A day or two after my arrival in Stockholm I called to Mr. Fristadius,
the American consul, from whom I obtained the latest news in reference
to the progress of the rebellion. Accustomed as we are in the United
States to read the newspapers every morning, wherever we may happen
to be, the deprivations in this respect to which an American traveler
in Europe is subjected must be experienced to be fully appreciated.
Even in the principal cities of Germany it is difficult to find a
newspaper that contains any thing more than a notice of the price of
stocks, a few telegraphic items about the petty court movements of
neighboring cities, a rehash of slander upon our country from the
London _Times_, or an item of news about the war,