File:Arendal, with Töyöen (JW Edy plate 18).jpg

This view is taken from an eminence before the town, which has a most picturesque situation. A screen of high rocks protects the place against the fury of easterly and northerly winds. A few streets have heen made on the north side of the town, as commodiously as the uneven rocks permitted. On the south side the rocks are nearly perpendicular, having a small and unequal hase, notwithstanding which a row of the largest and the best houses in the place bears very gratifying testimony to the skill and perseverance manifested in their erection. In front of these houses is a wharf, or street, erected on piles, sufficiently commodious for purposes of trade In the evening this quay is the favourite promenade of the inhabitants.

A considerable degree of activity prevails in this town, owing to its advantageous situation for trade, and the vicinity of the richest iron mines in Norway. Wealth, the genial attendant on commerce, appears to be very generally distributed among the inhabitants; and a well-wisher to Britain will find much in this town to gratify his best feelings. In saying this, I cannot help adverting to ajudgment pronounced on the commercial part of the Norwegian people by an American, whom I once chanced to meet in Norway. " I will give you their character in a moment, sir/" said this person, with the characteristic keenness and coarseness of his countrymen: " Mammon is their god; Buonaparte is the next object worthy of their adoration ; the King of Denmark is at present their most convenient master; on the Danes they look down with pity and contempt; the English they detest, and would wish to see England blown up or sunk, if another wood market equally as profitable could be found. As for their hospitality, so much boasted of, I would advise every stranger to adopt the expedient of announcing himself as a timber-dealer, whatever he may in reality be. In that character he may, for obvious reasons, attract their notice. In short, they combine all the bad qualities which characterize the beasts and birds of prey in the country. They possess the ferocity of the bear, the voracity of the wolf, the cunning of the fox, and the Norway-eagle's ken is not near so piercing, when she espies some unsuspecting prey, as the quicksightedness of a Norwegian merchant. To repose confidence in him is to point out your weakest side. Candour, however, obliges me to make some allowance to men just emerging from barbarism, and they shall have the benefit of that, in whatever part of the world I may be called upon for my opinion of them."

I afterwards discovered, that the candour of that nice observer might with advantage have been stretched a little farther, and noticed the fact of a ship of his having been condemned in Norway. His indiscriminate invectives against a whole class of the community would then have received from me that modification of which, prima facie, they stood so much in need, and which I trust will not be withheld by the candid and disinterested portion of his hearers or readers, if he should enrich American literature with his travels in Norway.

Most assuredly a person who has been ill used, or thinks himself ill used in a country, is of all others least qualified to pass opinions on that country. Even under the most favourable circumstances, a traveller, who has moral observation for his object, is liable to error, and has great difficulties to overcome. The American alluded to, in his observations on the manners, habits, and institutions of Norway, cannot be supposed to have emancipated his mmd from the extensive and powerful dominion of association, to have extinguished the agreeable and deceitful feelings of national vanity, and to have cultivated that patient humility, which builds general inferences only upon the repetiton of individual facts. The harbour of Christiansand, for instance, with the Danish public and private armed vessels, and other concomitant objects, could never suggest those ideas, or give rise to those feelings which the port of Philadelphia would. On the contrary, it is rather to be apprehended that the scene of his disquietude, and perhaps ruin, forming part of a whole, would diffuse its sombre tints to every other object in the slighest degree connected with it. Besides, an observer of his description, and in his circumstances, laboured under other very serious impediments. His opportunities for observation had neither been frequent, nor of an extended kind. But even an easy circulation among the various societies of a people, will avail a stranger but little in his endeavours to gain a knowledge of their prevalent opinions and propensities, or to comprehend (what is commonly called) the genius of people, unless be possesses a familiar acquaintance with their language, and resides for a considerable time among them. Of these advantages our American had none. Some heaven-born travellers there may be, who entirely trust to their quickness in observation, to that intuitive glance, which requires only a part to judge of a whole, and who would disdain to acquire knowledge by ordinary means. Yet I cannot help agreeing with Fielding, that a man will not write or speak the worse for knowing something of his subject; and the achievements of but too many travellers amply demonstrate, that a judgment of foreign nations, founded on rapid observation, is almost certainly a mere tissue of ludicrous and disgraceful mistakes. How few travellers think it necessary to exclaim with Sterne: "But I have scarce set foot in your dominions."

In no country, perhaps, is a traveller more liable to error in his views and estimates of human nature than in Norway, because not only the inhabitants of a province but frequently those of a single parish, differ from each other in disposition character, customs, manners, and appearance. Too great caution cannot therefore be employed in appreciating the national character of the Norwegians, the more so if the observer should chance to be prepossessed with the following remark: "It is not possible for a writer of this country to speak ill of the Norwegians) for of all strangers, the people of Norway love and admire the British the most."¹ This is not only in direct opposition to the remark of the American gentleman previously alluded to (to which, however, very little credit ought to be attached), but it is as hostile to the opinions of others, who had every inclination to view the Norwegians in the most favourable light with regard to Britain. An attempt to reconcile judgments of so contrary a nature might probably appear an invidious, and would, perhaps, become an ungrateful, task. My object will therefore be simply to state what I myself saw and heard; and I shall do this perfectly unconcerned, whether my observations may favour or disfavour those notions concerning Norway, which travellers have formed, in many cases, perhaps, chiefly according to the different modes in which their personal interests may have been consulted.

1^ Edinburgh Review, No. IV. 1803, p. 306. Art. Tableau des Etats Danois, par J. P. Catteau.