moderation, which borders on timidity, favours the least respectable
part of the people.

I saw on my way not only good parsonage houses, but comfortable
dwellings, with glebe land for the clerk, always a consequential man
in every country, a being proud of a little smattering of learning,
to use the appropriate epithet, and vain of the stiff good-breeding
reflected from the vicar, though the servility practised in his
company gives it a peculiar cast.

The widow of the clergyman is allowed to receive the benefit of the
living for a twelvemonth after the death of the incumbent.

Arriving at the ferry (the passage over to Moss is about six or
eight English miles) I saw the most level shore I had yet seen in
Norway. The appearance of the circumjacent country had been
preparing me for the change of scene which was to greet me when I
reached the coast. For the grand features of nature had been
dwindling into prettiness as I advanced; yet the rocks, on a smaller
scale, were finely wooded to the water's edge. Little art appeared,
yet sublimity everywhere gave place to elegance. The road had often
assumed the appearance of a gravelled one, made in pleasure-grounds;
whilst the trees excited only an idea of embellishment. Meadows,
like lawns, in an endless variety, displayed the careless graces of
nature; and the ripening corn gave a richness to the landscape
analogous with the other objects.

Never was a southern sky more beautiful, nor more soft its gales.
Indeed, I am led to conclude that the sweetest summer in the world
is the northern one, the vegetation being quick and luxuriant the