could keep up with him. On coming to that part where the bridge widens to the right, he suddenly made a right angle from the road, and stood still at the corner, beneath which the stream rushes, and the poplars rear their lofty heads to the granite balustrade. Here he dropped my arm, turned towards me with an angry expression of countenance, and said with a vehement, but suppressed voice :

"Tell me now! Is all that which you have just expressed, that accursed galimatias of love, your really earnest sentiments?"

"My earnest sentiments!" exclaimed I.

"That I never can believe," continued he with warmth, " or pity you from my very heart. Good heavens! how is it possible that you can so mistake and contemn the highest and most sacred feeling in life? Why, when I hear such speeches I can scarcely keep myself from being rude. How can any one be so

narrow-minded-nay, I must say so stupid, and see things in such perverted-such a wrong, and thoroughly false light! I could be angry when I hear a woman, who is created for love and to be loved, so mistake herself, and allow herself to be so misled by the little paltry things of life, as to confound them with that of which thought has no idea, and the tongue no expression, but which exists as certainly on earth as it does in heaven, and is the only feeling by which we can comprehend happiness, and which alone imparts worth to life. Speeches about knowledge and philosophy, which are to ennoble the heart and life! They are altogether trash, I say, compared with the ennobling influence of a noble love!"

"This is, indeed, quite a select spot for a tête-à-tête, and a sermon on love," thought I, smiling within myself as I regarded the violent gestures of the Viking, and the multitude of people passing by on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, of whom he in his ire never seemed to take the least notice. I certainly was a little confounded by his behaviour towards me, but still I was pleased with him. I looked upon the boisterous billows beneath me; I gazed on the tumultuous spirit before me, and I knew not what fresh breeze wafted through my soul. I was yet silent, when Brenner continued as before :

"And that wretched glass-case prudence, which makes a man shut himself up in a cage for fear of his life, stew himself to death in a stove for fear of the fresh air, and waste his soul for fear of strong feelings and great passions; tell me, how can you endure these? It is, in fact, just as false as it is pitiable, and good for nothing, say I!"

And the Viking struck with his clenched fist on the balustrade with such violence, that it would have shook again had it not been of stone.

As I still continued standing there, like Lot's wife, turned into a pillar of salt during the rain of fire, and was seized by a singular feeling, he proceeded with increasing warmth:

"Tell me; I wish to know what, or who it is that has influenced you with such distrust of life and of mankind, nay, even of our Lord himself? If it is your extolled philosophy, then away with it into the river!"

With the violent motion of the arm, which Brenner made to give additional force to his words, he struck

against my reticule, that rested on the balustrade; it fell into the river, and was rapidly borne along by its waves into the sea.

At this catastrophe, and the Viking's look of consternation, my immoveability all at once relaxed and resolved into a hearty laugh, and when Brenner seemed to be preparing to take some measures for saving the reticule, I held him back, and said:

"Do not trouble yourself in the least about it! There are only a few rennets that have suffered shipwreck with it. I do not care any thing about it. Let your anger go with it to the sea, for, in truth, you do me wrong!

"Do I wrong you? Well, then, thank God for it!" exclaimed Brenner, with a look which deeply affected me.

I proceeded:

"Yes; for notwithstanding what I have just expressed, and which has so roused your indignation, is really the sentiment of my heart, I have still some points of restriction on this subject. I distinguish between Amor and Eros, and I have seen more of the former than of the latter in life; and it is of that which I spoke."

"But I suppose you believe in the other?"

"That I do; that is to say, I believe in the truth and order of feeling of which you speak generally; but in individual cases I am always mistrustful, in consequence of certain experiences I have made. At the same time I return you my sincere thanks for the proof of friendship you have now given me. Oh, let me think of love as I will, in friendship I do believe, and feel that we are friends."

And with this I took his arm, and began to proceed towards our residence. The Viking replied:

"Love, friendship, can they be separated? and how can we mistrust the one, and believe in the other?"

To this question I did not please to make any reply, and our conversation was now interrupted by the company we left behind having overtaken us. They regarded us with an expression of some surprise, and made various observations" about our rapid return home."

The Viking replied:

"Mam'selle Sophia lost her bag, or reticule, in the

river."

But in what manner it was lost, he did not say. They began to deliberate on the means of its recovery, and the Viking--now in good humour-made several break-neck and impracticable proposals.

February 6th.

But a far more beautiful reticule, containing a bouquet of myrtles and roses, has been presented to me by him, under the name of the lost one, which-as he says- - was fished up in that condition out of the

stream.

"The water-spirit desires to speak to you in these flowers of his love," said the Viking, and eagerly awaited the reply he would receive.

I said: "Only the very best thanks!"

"And if he should not be satisfied with this?" asked Brenner.

"He shall take back his flowers," answered I, half in jest, half in earnest.

"You would have to throw them into the river," rejoined the Viking, quite seriously. "Have you no fear of inflicting any wound or pain? Can you be hard-hearted, unsparing

"You forget," said I, curtailing, "that the waterspirit and his feelings are a fiction, and I am no longer of an age in which people believe in such things; still less, however, am I able to perceive why a nice joke-which in itself is a very harmless, agreeable thing, and for which I am mnch obliged to you-should be taken in such a serious light."

The Viking was silent, but looked dissatisfied.

I begin to fear that the man has a very bad temper.

February 7th.

The Viking also begins to discover a great number of faults in me. To-day he has reproached me witn my obstinacy, or "Finnish spirit," as he calls it. I told him that this was precisely the best quality about my character, and as he shook his head at this, I gave him to understand that I was descended from the family Wasastjerna, who had given to the world one of the finest examples of Finnish national temper.

When the Russians, in the year 1809, subjugated Finland, there lived two brothers in the city of Wasathe one a Lagman (judge) of the High Court of that place, the other a merchant-who, when the inhabitants of that city were compelled to take the oath of allegiance to the Emperor of Russia, alone and stedfastly refused to comply.

"We have sworn fidelity to the King of Sweden,