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officer in each county, or syssel, is called the sysselman, and is elected by the people. The sysselman is both sheriff and magistrate; and all suits at law in his syssel are tried before him, an appeal being allowed to the Supreme Court at Reykjavik. The supreme Court is presided over by the chief justice, who is appointed by the crown, and holds his office permanently. The sysselmen, in their respective syssels, call all public meetings, convene elections, and preserve order.

In the useful arts, so far as their productions and circumstances will allow, and in moral and religious improvement, Iceland has kept pace with the world. Printing was introduced in the year 1530; and the Reformation, which had being going on in Europe for some time, extended to Iceland in 1551. The Roman Catholic Church at this time, the established religion of the country, had become so corrupt, that the last Catholic bishop and his two illegitimate sons were beheaded for murder and other crimes. Since then to the present day, the religion of the country has been Lutheran, and there is said to be not a person residing in Iceland except Protestants. Such is a slight sketch of the settlement and progress of this isolated country.

THE geographical features of Iceland, and the manners and customs of the people, are no less interesting than the history of the nation. Iceland lies just south of the polar circle, between sixty-three and a half and sixty-six and a half north latitude, and between thirteen and twenty-four degrees west longitude from Greenwich. Its length from east to west, is about two hundred and eighty miles, and its average width one hundred and fifty. In extent of surface it is nearly as large as the State of New York, containing not far from forty thousand square miles. It is three hundred miles east of the coast of Greenland, a little over five hundred from the north of Scotland, nearly one thousand from Liverpool, thirteen hundred from Copenhagen, and about three thousand miles from Boston. The coast is deeply indented with bays, its valleys are drained by large rivers, and every part abounds more or less with lofty mountains. Though volcanic regions have many features in common, Iceland differs greatly from every country in the known world. It presents a greater array of remarkable natural phenomena than can be found throughout the whole extent of Europe and America. To the naturalist and the man of science, to the geologist, the botanist, and the ornithologist, it is probably less

known than any equal tract of accessible country in the world. The burning chimneys of Etna, Vesuvius, and Stromboli, have given inspiration to Horace and Virgil, and been minutely described by the pens of Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Pliny. Not so the region of Hekla and Skaptar Jokull. In the Mediterranean states, art and nature can both be studied; in Iceland, nature alone, but nature in her wildest moods. But how will those mountains in the south compare with these in the north? All the volcanoes in the Mediterranean would scarcely extend over more ground than a single county in the state of New York, while Iceland is one entire volcanic creation as large as the State itself. Though not active all at once, yet throughout the length and breadth of the land may be found smoking mountains, burning sulphur mines, hot springs that will boil an egg, and jets of blowing steam that keep up a roar like the whistle of a gigantic steam-engine. The volcanic region of Iceland may be set down as covering an area of sixty thousand square miles; for volcanoes have repeatedly risen up from the sea near the coast, and sometimes as far as seventy miles from land. Though Ætna is higher than any mountain in Iceland, and of such enormous bulk that it is computed to be 180 miles in circumference; yet if Skaptar Jokull were hollowed out, Ætna and Vesuvius both could be put into the cavity and not fill it!

Iceland, too, is classic ground. Not, however, in the same sense that Italy, Sicily, and Greece, are. The hundred different kinds of verse now existing in many volumes of Iceland poetry, the sagas, and other literary productions of the Icelanders, have not been read and re-read, translated and re-translated, like the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Tacitus, and Cicero, and for very good reasons. The country is not one of such antiquity; it is not a country renowned for arts and arms, and overflowing with a numerous population. As a state, it is nearly destitute of works of art, and its scanty population can only procure the

bare necessaries of life. Scarcely a page of Icelandic literature ever put on an English dress and found its way among the Anglo-Saxons, until the pen that gave us Waverley and Rob Roy, furnished us with a translation of some of the more important of the Iceland sagas. The author of the "Psalm of Life" and "Hyperion" has given us some elegant translations of Iceland poetry.

On stepping ashore in Iceland, the total absence of trees and forests, and the astonishing purity of the atmosphere, strike the spectator as among the more remarkable characteristics of the country. The fields are beautifully green: the mountains, clothed in purple heath, appear so near that you are almost tempted to reach forth your hands to touch their sides. At fifteen or twenty miles distance, they appear but three or four; and at seventy or eighty miles, they seem within ten or fifteen. Such is the effect of the magical purity of the atmosphere. In other countries you go and visit cities and ruins; here you see nature in her most fantastic forms. In other states you pay a shilling, a franc, or a piastre, for a warm bath in a vat of marble; here you bathe in a spring of any desired temperature, or plunge into a cool lake, and swim to the region of a hot spring in the bottom, guided by the steam on the surface. In other lands you step into marble palaces that are lined with gold and precious stones, and find hereditary legislators making laws to keep the people in subjection; here you see a grass-grown amphitheatre where an elective congress met and legislated in the open air for nearly a thousand years. In other and more favoured climes, you find comfortable houses, and "fruits of fragrance blush on every tree;" here, not a fruit, save one small and tasteless berry, and not a single variety of grain, will ripen, and their houses are mere huts of lava and turf, looking as green as the meadows and pastures. In other lands, coal and wood fires enliven every hearth; and mines of iron, lead, copper, silver, and gold, reward the labour of the delver; but here, not a particle of coal, not

DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY.

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one single mineral of value, and not one stick of wood larger than a walking-cane can be found. Many of the mountains are clad in eternal snows, and some pour out rivers of fire several times every century. But, though sterile the soil and scanty the productions, our knowledge of the country must be limited if we consider it barren of historical facts and literary reminiscences. A country like this, nearly as large as England, must possess few agricultural and commercial resources, to have at this time, nearly one thousand years after its first settlement, a population of only sixty thousand souls. Yet the Icelanders, while labouring under great disadvantages, are more contented, moral, and religious, possess greater attachment to country, are less given to crime and altercation, and show greater hospitality and kindness to strangers, than any other people the sun shines upon. Their contentment and immunity from crime and offence, do not arise from sluggishness and indolence of character; nor are they noted alone for their negative virtues. They possess a greater spirit of historical research and literary inquiry, have more scholars, poets, and learned men, than can be found among an equal population on the face of the globe. Some of their linguists speak and write a greater number of languages than those that I have ever met in any other country. Iceland has given birth to a Thorwaldsen, a sculptor whose name will descend to the latest posterity. His parents were Icelanders, but he was a child of the sea, born on the ocean, between Iceland and Denmark. Among their poets and historians will be found the names of Snorro Sturleson, Sæmund, surnamed FRODE, or THE LEARNED," Jon Thorlaksen, Finn Magnusen, Stephensen, Egilson, Hallgrimson, Thorarensen, Grondal, Sigurder Peterssen; and these, with many others, will adorn the pages of Icelandic literature as long as the snow covers their mountains, and the heather blooms in their valleys. Their navigators and merchants discovered and settled America long before Genoa gave birth to a Columbus, and while Europe was yet immured in the darkness of the middle ages. The works of