Norway. It is not so grand as regards the height of its mountains, yet its grandeur is far more solemn. It has a dozen fjords more startling than the Lake of Lucerne; in a day's journey you will pass waterfalls and cascades which would make a fortune to "proprietors" in Switzerland, and are not so much as mentioned in the Norwegian guidebooks. Switzerland is grand beyond compare, but it must be confessed it is a monotonous grandeur. Not so with Norway its charms of scenery are varied as they are unique. A coast wild and rugged; mighty pine-forests, interminable; lakes beautiful as Windermere; fjords awful in their grandeur; valleys rich in their fertility; fields bare and barren; sport with the gun, sport with the rod; these and a hundred other charms may be entered in the catalogue.

But all these are outweighed by the strange, weird beauty and grandeur of the neighborhood of the North Cape. I know of nothing that comes within the range of tourist experiences that will make a more lasting impression on the memory than a day or two in the region of the midnight sun.

For the student, the professional man, the overworked generally, and especially those whose brains are overworked, there is no tour that will be more beneficial than the one I propose briefly to sketch.

Go to Christiansand. Then, if you have never been to Norway, proceed to Christiania, and, after staying a day or two in that interesting town and neighborhood, continue your journey either to Trondhjem or Bergen, it matters not which, or, better still, if you can, do both. The trip to one, the other, or both, will give you a good idea of scenery in Norway. At either Bergen or Trondhjem take the steamer for Hammerfest. And then will commence one of the most delightful voyages it is possible to make.

The steamer keeps close to the shore, and the shore is the most curious in the world; you have but to look at a map to see its wonderful indentations; you cannot realize them until you find yourself now in a bay or a cove, now among groups of islands, then in the midst of a fjord, with

sheer rocks rising perpendicularly from the sea, and anon in the harbor of a little town, with groups of wondering peasantry around you. You will see some parts of the coast so wild that you cannot credit the fact that human. beings can be found there, and you will find verdant nooks so peaceful and pretty that you will be tempted to think that there, away from the world, you would like to build your house and finish up your days. At one time you will come to the haunts of water-fowl innumerable; at another a shoal of whales will be around you.

The towns and villages at which you will halt will have a special charm. The curious costumes of the people; the antique architecture of their houses and churches; the good but old-fashioned contrivances connected with their fishing avocations-all these will be novel.

Among the red-letter days of the trip will be a sail among the Loffoden Islands, "jagged as the jaws of a shark," and swarming with sea-fowl; a glimpse at the neighborhood of the Maelström, so celebrated in fable; a visit to a Lapp encampment, and an occasional stroll through some of the towns at which the steamer stays. Tromsö is one of these halting-places: it is a modern town, which has grown rapidly. It was only founded in 1794, and in 1816 had but three hundred inhabitants; now, owing to the success of its herring-fishery, it has grown strangely for Norway, and has a population of over 5000. It is charmingly situated on an island, and its rich fertility contrasts most singularly with the wildness of the surrounding mountains. Hammerfest, too, is interesting, not only because it is the most northerly town in the world, and because "in the season" it is crowded with representatives of all nations, who come here to trade, but because here you are within the limits of the region of the Midnight Sun, and from here you will take your boat (unless you continue by the Vadsö steamer) for the North Cape.

The effect of the midnight sun has been variously described. Carlyle revels in the idea that while all the nations of the earth are sleeping, you here stand in the presence of

that great power which will wake them all; Bayard Taylor delights in the gorgeous coloring; and each traveler has some new poetic thought to register. For myself the midnight sun has a solemnity which nothing else in nature has. Midnight is solemn in the darkness; it is a hundredfold more solemn in the glare of sunlight, richer than ever is sun under tropical skies. It is "silence, as of death;" not the hum of a bird, not the buzz of an insect, not the distant voice of a human being. Silence palpable. You do not feel drowsy, though it is midnight; you feel a strange fear creep over you as if in a nightmare, and dare not speak; you think what if it should be true that the world is in its last sleep, and you are the last living ones, yourselves on the verge of the Eternal Ocean?

It is amusing, afterwards, to think of the way in which you landed on your excursion to the North Cape; how everyone seemed impressed with the same idea that it was a sacrilege to break the silence, and the party that set forth. in high spirits had settled down into the gravity of a funeral cortège. And it is strange how the stillness and awfulness, felt while in the little boat upon the silent sea, held you spellbound and entranced; and the spell could not be broken until you set to work on the difficult climb to the head of the North Cape. And when you reached the top you feltwell, I don't know how.

To some standing on the highest part of the plateau, a thousand feet above the sea, and looking away to that great unknown Arctic Ocean, it has seemed as if they had come to the end of the earth; that they were gazing upon the confines of the eternal regions; that they saw in the distance the outlines of the land of which it is said, "There is no night there."

Every tourist mind has its own particular magnet. I do not know what event in the history of a tourist life most attracts my memory. No one can ever forget the day when he first gazes upon Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives; or Damascus seen from the Mount of Mohammed; or the sunny morning when he rounds the Golden Horn, and Constantinople bursts on the view.

These are memories which never grow dim; and I am inclined to think that when a tourist finds himself in a small boat at midnight, drawing near to the North Cape in the midst of the most gorgeous sunlight ever seen, he has found a sensation which will be green in his memory to the day of his death.

In this brief paper I have not found time to be practical. The trip to the North Cape should be made in June or July; it may be made in August or September, and in the latter month there is a chance of seeing the first blushes of the Aurora Borealis. I am much inclined to think that a winter excursion to the North Cape would be one of the grandest sensations that the tourist's heart could wish, but of this I am not in a position to judge.

If my readers are like myself, they never bring one summer trip to a close before they have arranged in their own minds for the next; and so I throw out the hint that ere the North Cape shall be scribbled over with the names of Smith and Jones; ere excursion boats, with Ethiopian serenaders on board, shall put forth from Hammerfest; ere a big hotel shall stand upon the summit, and a man shall blow a horn to announce when "the sun is at its best," it will be well to consider whether a trip to the North Cape is not worth serious consideration.

EUROPE

IN

Old Antwerp

By ROSE G. KINGSLEY

Flanders there are quaint cities, beautiful buildings, glorious pictures, and a tangled mass of historic interest. Thus it came to pass that we went to Brussels, and three days later we were steaming out into the (to us) unknown, on our way to Antwerp. Our three days had been chiefly spent in making closer acquaintance with Flemish art in the museum of the capital—a collection most valuable and typical, a collection too often ignored or hastily glanced through by the tourist, who, if by chance he cares for such things, hurries on to see Memling at Bruges, Van Eyck at Ghent, or Rubens at Antwerp. He forgets, or does not know, that, as Fromentin justly says, "Belgium is a magnificent book of art, of which, happily for provincial glory, the chapters are scattered everywhere, but of which the preface is at Brussels, and only at Brussels. To all who are tempted to skip the preface in order to get at the book, I should say they are wrong-that they open the book too soon and will read it ill." We therefore studied the preface with some care, and now were about to turn the first page of the book itself.

Everything seemed new, pretty, and amusing, as the train cleared the last of the suburbs of Brussels. The sun shone on the long lines of poplars, just burnished with autumn's gold, which cast their shadows on damp green meadows ruled off into squares with almost mathematical precision. Here a man in a brown apron and brilliant crim