that has ever been done against tyranny, short of absolute rebellion; but all in vain. The old governor was peremptory and relentless. "You are my guests," said he, "and this is the first time you have done me the honour of a visit, therefore you must do as I would have you; in future, when you come to see me, you may do as you like." He excused himself from sharing their toils and perils on the plea of his age. Unwilling to end their mortal existence in this formidable island, they procured that their boat should be brought to for them; and they were carried off, like wounded soldiers, in a state of distress from which they were a considerable time in recovering. 6 How much more in his element must an Englishman have been, in a visit to Videlinus, the Bishop of Iceland, who shews his guests into a library of five or six hundred volumes, the principal place of resort for the studious Icelanders, who here alone have the advantage of a good collection of books!? It contains several Dutch editions of the Classics, and a fine folio edition of an Icelandic Bible, printed in the island in 1584. Our author here met with a very hopeful young scholar and poet, of the name of Magnus Finnusen. Among the requisites to a well-ordered community, this capital has a cathédral, a court of justice, and a contrivancé which partakes of the nature and form of both stocks and pilJory. That there is another grand requisite, economy, is comfortably indicated by the circumstance, that the tailor of the place' has the occupancy of the court-house, when it is not otherwise employed.' The cathedral is a considerable building with large glass windows, which, however, as well as the tiles, are in a wretched state of repair; so much so, that the ravens, which abound in the country, are very troublesome during the time of service by getting on the roof, and disturbing the congregation with their noise and dirt. Some interesting notices and indications of the climate are afforded, in the account of the state of vegetation in the gardens of the town. In the one which was by far the best, in point of sheltered situation, soil, and cultivation, there were, 'in the month of August, good turnips about the size of an apple, and potatoes as large as the common Dutch. Radishes and turnip-radishes were very good in July and August. Mustard and cresses grow rapidly and well. But in the gardens in general, cabbages, turnips, potatoes, or carrots never arrive at any great degree of perfection. In many gardens our author found the potatoes and turnips coming to nothing; and the cabbages in the month of August not larger than might be covered with a half crown piece. And even in the best garden a careful attempt to raise some heinp and flax failed. It was, however, an unusually wet and cold season; and it is Hooker's opinion that in finer summers, with care and well-sheltered gardens, some of our more hardy vegetables may repay the natives for the labour of cultivating them,' If the site of Reikevig did not possess some maritime recommendations, we might have attributed the choice of it for a town, to the principles that prevailed in the arrangements of the monastery of La Trappe. The country immediately about Reikevig, and, indeed, for twenty or thirty miles from it, is ugly, barren, and scarcely to be called hilly. An extensive fresh-water lake comes close up to the back part of the town, but is on every other side, except that nearest to the town, surrounded by a bog, with here and there a piece of rock interspersed. Not a tree or shrub is any where to be seen, and all attempts that have been made in the most sheltered parts of the town to cultivate firs and other hardy trees, have universally failed, as have those which have been made for the cultivation of corn. p. 29, Our author appears to have exerted, both in the vicinity of Reikevig, and in every other part he afterwards visited, exemplary industry as a naturalist; and he enumerates, at intervals, the plants he was constantly adding to his collection. The animal kingdom affords very little variety, and no species very remarkable, or in the smallest degree formidable, except that the white bear is now and then conveyed to their northern coasts, by floating ice islands, from the opposite shore of Greenland; but none had been over since the preceding year, and those were soon dispatched by the people living in the neighbourhood.' p. 44. The naturalist's researches were greatly favoured by the cir cumstance of there being no darkness at this season of the year. The sun indeed was not above the horizon at midnight; but when the sky was not altogether overcast, the light at midnight was about as great as that of a moderately dull noon in winter in England.' A hot spring, bubbling up in the midst of a river, where the clothes of all the people many miles round are brought to be washed, and a bed of lava, ending in the sea, at the distance of twenty-five miles from its origin, were among the objects of inspection in the neighbourhood of the town. The description of the latter may be taken as a very characteristic section of the picture of the country,-a very large proportion of which consists of this material, which awakens ideas so very. different from any excited in beholding the common substance of the earth. At a little distance, this huge mass of lava has a most extraordinary appearance, its surface being every where as much broken and as uneven as that of a greatly agitated sea, and its boundaries very distinctly marked by the lighter colour of the natural rock, or by the vegetation which the latter produces, whilst the lava itself is almost black. On leaving my horse, and proceeding on foot, with no little difficulty upon the hraun (lava), I was still more struck with the strange and desolate appearance which surrounded me. The Tatsroed (Judge) of Iceland, who was present at the famous eruption of Skaptar-Jökul, informs me, that the torrents of lava, which ran with a smooth surface while in a heated and liquid state, in the act of cooling cracked and broke into innumerable pieces, many of which, of a monstrous size, were, by the expansive force of the air beneath, heaved from their bed, and remained by the side of the chasm which they once filled up. From a similar cause, the whole of this prodigious mass is composed of an infinite number of pieces of melted rock, of various sizes, some twenty and thirty feet high, and of the strangest figures; scattered about an extent of twenty-five miles in length, and from two and three to ten miles in width, in the wildest disorder possible. In appearance, a great part of this lava very much resembles the burnt cinders or coke, which have been used in drying malt, and is nearly of the same colour. The greater masses are generally quite bare of vegetation, but where the smaller pieces form a tolerably level surface, trichostomum canescens grows in great abundance, and reaches to the length of a foot, or a foot and a half, but is always barren.' p. 67. It was quite time to commence the intended incursion into the interior; and on being supplied with horses, tents, and a guide, by the Stiftsamptman (Governor), Mr. Hooker set out on a journey to the Geysers, or great boiling jets, with the short allowance of only a fortnight, from the proprietor of the ship which had conveyed him to the country, and which appeared likely to be the only one by which he would have the opportunity of returning before the winter. Seven horses were barely sufficient for himself, the guide, a German from the ship, who was to be interpreter by means of his speaking Danish, and the tents and provisions. • My guide rode before, holding a line, fastened to the mouth of the first luggage-horse, so that they all followed the same track, and, so accustomed are these horses to this mode of travelling, that, if they are not tied, they will still keep following each other, to the great annoyance of any person who may happen to be riding them, and may wish to go a little faster than the rest, or to leave the regular line.' They advanced, through a country consisting either of a dreary moor, over which large masses of rock were every where scattered, or of a disagreeable morass, in which their horses every now and then sunk up to their bellies. The first day they passed a 'perpendicular side of a hill, composed of basaltic columns, jointed here and there, like those in Staffa, but not more than eight or ten inches in diameter, and less regularly columnar.'-After a miserable night's lodging, on the moist and swampy ground, they went to breakfast at the house of a priest. The only part of it to which we were admitted, was that in which the fish, tallow, wool, milk, &c. were kept; for this being the best part of an Icelandic building, it is used for the reception of strangers. It had walls of alternate layers of turf and stone, without either cement to unite them, or plaister to conceal their nakedness, and the floor was the bare earth. One chair was all our host could furnish, and, indeed, there' would have not have been room for more, so completely was the place lumbered up with old chests, old clothes, &c. What little provision there was in the house was most willingly offered, and it was with difficulty I could prevent him from killing a lamb to entertain us better.' P. 79. In stating the amount of the very humble emoluments of this hospitable ecclesiastic, Mr. H. does not say whether he made any inquiries concerning the value of English benefices," or about the labours of their possessors. He was perhaps too much occupied with his own, a little specimen of which, and of the harder toils of his horse, is given by the traveller. At noon our friend was obliged to take leave of us, as he was under the necessity of setting off for Reikevig, where he was to preach a sermon before the bishop on the following morning. As there was every appearance of the rain, which fell in torrents the whole day, continuing, and of our being consequently detained, the priest assured us he would, if possible, be home the following day, that he might accompany us to Thingevalle. We hardly expected him; for, in addition to his own weight, his horse had to carry two large chests, containing tallow, wool, and worsted stockings, which were to be bartered for iron, and other articles of necessity, at Reikevig.' The thing was, however, accomplished, the wet clothes having never been taken off, not even for the display before the bishop. Something of the state of the country is indicated in the economy of this gentleman's family. The chief employment of the female part of it, besides knitting, is making butter, skiur (thick curds), and sour whey, which constitute almost their only food. In the winter, if the weather is very severe, the priest is obliged to kill some of his cows and sheep, for want of a sufficient quantity of hay, and in such cases only can they afford to live upon flesh.' Having passed the large lake of Thingevalle, the travellers passed through a prodigious rent, with perpendicular sides, called Almannegiaa, and approached a tract where the ground is cleft in numberless deep chasms, crossing one another in various directions, though most of them are from east to west. Three, in particular, seemed to extend, in uninterrupted lines, the whole width of the plain, and to be terminated on one side by the lake. The chasms are, every where, so numerous, that we could scarcely go ten feet without coming to the edge of one that barred our further gress in that direction. Some at the bottom have snow and ice, others pro contain the purest water that can possibly be conceived, but so deep that, in many places no bottom is to be found, yet so clear that, on throwing in a stone, its descent may be traced by the eye for a considerable length of time. We saw abundance of small fish swimming here, some of which we caught, and found them to be the young of the Thingevalle trout; so that, though at a considerable distance from the lake, in all probability, some of the numerous subterraneous caves communicate with it.'A little herbage covers the intermediate spaces between the chasms.” Cattle are often sent here to graze, but not without the annual loss of several, which fall into the holes and perish. The priest Egclosen had himself a narrow escape from death, having one evening fallen into a chasm that was half filled with snow, where he remained till next morning, when he was searched for, and, fortunately, discovered in time to save his life.' We pursued our way among the innumerable cracks, rents, and hills of rugged lava, which rendered travelling extremely fatiguing to the horses, and by no means free from danger; for a false step, or a rolling stone, would easily have thrown the animal and rider to the bottom of a chasm. The passages between many of these chasms were scarcely of sufficient width for a single horse; and were also, so full of holes, that it required horses used to this country to attempt to go along them.' A distressing accident, which befel the priest Egclosen's horse, in proceeding on this dangerous ground, gives occasion for a remark, in which our author attributes to the Icelanders, generally, a resignation or an insensibility, the nature and cause of which the reader may perhaps think, he should have made an effort to enable himself to explain less conjecturally.. This misfortune, which lamed the poor animal considerably, and which, to a native of any other country, who, like this man, was worth only one horse in the world, would have been a cause of uneasiness, if not of complaint, had no such effect on Egclosen: he did not repine at what had happened, but went cheerfully on his way with his limping and bleeding horse, only observing on the accident, that it could not be helped, the place was so bad." I know not whether it arises from a peculiar resignation to the will and providence of God, produced by real piety, or whether it is ascribable to the effect of climate, and to the poverty and distress which attend upon the whole life of the Icelanders, that they seem to feel less for the calamities of themselves or of whatever surrounds them, than is the case with the natives of other countries. When I was lament ing the number of lives, which, Egclosen assured me, were lost among the holes that are here every where met with, he stopped me by saying, is God's will that it should be so. p. 97. 66 It The household and farming establishments of the priest of Thingevalle, afforded a specimen of the habits and condition of persons considerably advanced toward the uppermost rank; and it is mentioned as a most unequivocal sign of this condition that he was found smoaking his pipe. The women and girls were milking the sheep, many of which are said to have afforded a quart of milk of a rich quality; but that which |