Such a contempt have they, in fact, for every species of fraud, that
they will not allow the people on the western coast to be their
countrymen; so much do they despise the arts for which those traders
who live on the rocks are notorious.
The description I received of them carried me back to the fables of
the golden age: independence and virtue; affluence without vice;
cultivation of mind, without depravity of heart; with "ever smiling
Liberty;" the nymph of the mountain. I want faith!
My imagination hurries me forward to seek an asylum in such a
retreat from all the disappointments I am threatened with; but
reason drags me back, whispering that the world is still the world,
and man the same compound of weakness and folly, who must
occasionally excite love and disgust, admiration and contempt. But
this description, though it seems to have been sketched by a fairy
pencil, was given me by a man of sound understanding, whose fancy
seldom appears to run away with him.
A law in Norway, termed the odels right, has lately been modified,
and probably will be abolished as an impediment to commerce. The
heir of an estate had the power of re-purchasing it at the original
purchase money, making allowance for such improvements as were
absolutely necessary, during the space of twenty years.
