CHAPTER XI. CHRISTIANIA.-FIORD FROZEN.-POPULATION.-UNIVERSITY. Christiania, February, 1836.- THIS town, which I thought dull and deserted on my arrival in Norway, appears now busy, bustling, and crowded. The difference, I suspect, is not so much in itself, as in the impressions of the traveller- then fresh from the stir and life of English towns, now from the solitude and quiet of the Fjelde valley. The meeting of the Storthing, however, adds no doubt The university also is something to the bustle. now sitting; and its six hundred students make the streets fuller than in summer. The driving also is good this winter; all the wood and other articles for exportation are brought into town at this season by the country people from great distances, and produce a little movement in the market-place. I was surprised to find the Fiord here quite frozen, although the sea is ten fathoms deep; horses, sledges, and people are travelling in all directions over it, while the fresh water of the Myosen, for forty or fifty miles up, is quite clear of ice. The Fiord is no doubt narrower at Christiania than the Myosen, and more shut in by islands and points of land than the lower end of that lake. As the vessels are frozen in, and no arrivals can take place, little business is going on; and from the appearance of the accommodation for shipping, the want of warehouses, of an open exchange, or of the conveyance of goods in the streets, the mercantile business cannot be very great. Professional men, public functionaries - those whom the courts of law, the university, and the various departments of administration, support, - form the principal part of the society, and that by which a great part of the other citizens live. In the construction of its society, it is the Edinburgh of Norway. Christiania is considered to have twenty-four thousand inhabitants. The town appears small for this population; but there are suburbs stretching out like spiders' legs from the body of the place, and little connected with it. It contains no building of any importance. The streets are not particularly clean, although wide, and in straight lines. It is altogether inferior to Dronthiem. The inhabitants also are by no means so handsome as the Dronthiemers. It is probably not a very healthy place. The people look pale and sickly; and there is not, from the form of the ground, such a rapid drainage into the sea as Dronthiem possesses. The university has not buildings, as yet, sufficient for its business. The professors lecture in detached rooms, not in any public edifice. The library is considerable, but not rich in old or valuable editions of scarce works. It is entirely for use, and upon a very liberal footing. It is open for two hours daily for lending out books; but there are reading rooms for those who wish to consult maps, manuscripts, or works of too great value to be lent out. It is not necessary to be a member or a student in order to have the use of the books. Any householder giving his note for their return enables the stranger to get them out upon his own receipt; and the number of persons, of all classes, whom I have seen changing books at the hours of delivery gives a favourable impression of the reading disposition of the people. The students at this university have none of the silly propensities of the German students: no affectation of being a separate class, or of distinguishing themselves, as Burschen, by peculiarity of dress or roughness of manner. They are dressed like other gentlemen,-live like the students at Edinburgh, mixed with the inhabitants, and associating with them. They have a society to which they all belong, and subscribe to its funds; but its objects are altogether literary, and the money is employed in providing elementary books, of which the university library cannot be expected to have so many copies as must be required at once by those attending a course of lectures. If they ever dabbled in political questions, government had no power to prevent them; and therefore being made of no importance, they were of none. They form no distinct body at war with the citizens. Many give instruction in families, or to younger students preparing to pass examinations; and from the number of advertisements in the newspapers to and from tutors and teachers for all classes, the diffusion of knowledge appears to be going on very rapidly. It is not at all uncommon to see a person advertised for to teach in a bonder family, and frequently in two neighbouring ones, or in a small country circle. The considerable number of periodical publications which circulate in Norway, proves a state of education among the people which is far from being limited. There are two daily newspapers, and at least six published two or three times a week, all in extensive circulation. Every little town also-as Stavanger, Arendal, and others—has local newspapers. A penny or skilling magazine has an extensive sale, and also another publication on the same plan. It is not merely from the sale of these works, but from their matter, the advertisements to and from parties, and the subjects treated of, that I infer, in proportion to the population, a considerable reading public in Norway. There are also periodical works of a higher class, literary journals, and others on peculiar branches of knowledge, antiquarian, topographical, military. The education of the body of the people in country parishes is provided for by an arrangement similar to that in Scotland. There are parochial schoolmasters, of whom some have fixed houses, others live six months in one locality and six in another. From the great extent of country, and its being inhabited in valleys or districts, separated by uninhabitable and in many cases impassable ridges or by fiords, it is impossible that education can be brought to the door of each isolated little community; nor can any just conclusion be drawn from the state of intelligence and knowledge in one of these little societies as to its state in others. There are districts in which, from peculiar circumstances, as the example and success of some one self-taught individual, some of the finer mechanical arts which require considerable powers of mind as well as manual dexterity, as watch and clock making, are spread generally among the bonder. There are others in which, by the same means, a knowledge of the practical branches of mathematics is so general, that every lad is acquainted with land-measuring. In the parish in which I passed the last winter, there were eleven schools for a population of five thousand persons, besides |