In the evening I arrived at Laurgaard, where it was necessary to spend the night.
[2] I am told that these habits do not exist in good society at Christiania.
[3] The greatest summer height of the Miösen Lake is 430 feet; the winter height, 410. Finding the level at this time ten feet below the mark considered as that of highest water, I considered the lake as being now 420 feet above the sea.
[4] Laug in Norwegian signifies _water_. It is a generic term here specially applied.
[5] See Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, September 1837, where the original ballad is also given.
The long vacation is over--cholera has flown away, or gone into winter quarters--the raising of blinds and unclosing of shutters in stylish streets indicate the return of families whose absence has been prolonged by fears of contagion--business, long stagnant, is reviving--street-traffic is resuming its wonted density--the new Lord Mayor has 'showed' himself, as of old--the November fogs are entombing us in their fuliginous darkness--all of which, whether fact, figure, or fancy, is an intimation that we are in the advent of another London season.
Butchers and bakers are of course busy under the influx of mouths, and not they alone, for booksellers are 'looking up,' and making proclamation of literary supplies. Some famous names are already announced--Guizot, Grote, and Lord Campbell in matters of history; Washington Irving in a trio of biographies of individuals so opposite in character--Washington, Mohammed, Goldsmith--as to make one imagine that Knickerbocker must have written all three at once, on the principle that change of work is as good as play. Reprints are in force; travels and adventures are not lacking; while fiction is as copious as ever, or more so, for we are promised a re-publication of the works of two well-known writers of romance in shilling and eighteenpenny volumes. Quite a boon this for travelling readers who love the exciting, and patronise railway libraries. Besides these, there is the usual inundation of pocket-books, almanacs, _et id genus omne_, which for a time urges printing-presses into preternatural activity. 'Cooking up an almanac,' as the old song has it, must be a profitable business: the 'throwing off' of that delightful periodical vouched for by 'Francis Moore, physician,' to the extent of hundreds of thousands, is divided among three of our 'city' printers--no small item in the Christmas bill. The wide sale of a work relying on credulity for its success is no compliment to the intelligence of the age; yet, as I myself know, there are hundreds of people, especially in rural districts, who would rather give up fifty pages of their Bible, than forego the almanac with its annual prognostications. Power-presses are kept constantly at work for weeks to supply the multifarious demand.