Iceland from east to west is about 280 miles, and its average width 150; and though not active all at once, yet throughout the length and breadth of the land may be found smoking mountains, burning sulphur mines, hot springs that will boil an egg, and jets of blowing steam that keep up a roar like the whistle of a gigantic steamengine. Our author sets down the volcanic region of Iceland as covering an area of 60,000 square miles; and he adds, that though Ætna is higher than any mountain in Iceland, and of such enormous bulk that it is computed to be 180 miles in circumference, yet, if Skaptar Jokull were hollowed out, both Etna and Vesuvius could be put in the cavity and not fill it! Were it as steep and high, in proportion to its breadth of base, as the Peak of Teneriffe, its perpendicular height would be more than ten miles above the level of the sea. Next to Skaptar Jokull and Hekla, the most celebrated mountains in Iceland are the Eyjafjalla and Tindfjalla Jokulls in the south, and Snæfell Jokull in the west.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the country is the total absence of trees, as well as the extraordinary purity of the atmosphere. The fields are beautifully green; the mountains clothed in purple heath appear so near that one is almost tempted to put forth one's hands to touch their sides. But this is not the only difference between Iceland and other lands.

"In other countries," says Mr. Miles, "you go and visit cities and ruins ; here you see nature in her most fantastic forms. In other states you give a shilling, a franc, or a piastre [usually a good deal more] for a warm bath in a vat of marble; here you bathe in a spring of any desired temperature, or plunge into a cool lake, and swim to the region of a hot spring in the bottom, guided by the steam on the surface."

Cheap, agreeable, and convenient bathing this certainly; and in this and other respects Iceland possesses an immense superiority over other lands. But Iceland is not also without its characteristic drawbacks and disadvantages, for our author immediately adds:

"In other and more favoured climes, you find comfortable houses, and fruits of fragrance blush on every tree;' here, not a fruit save a small and tasteless berry, and not a single variety of grain will ripen, and their houses are mere huts of lava and turf, looking as green as the meadows and pastures. In other lands, coal and wood fires enliven every hearth; and mines of iron, lead, copper, silver, and gold, reward the labour of the delver; but here, not a particle of coal, not one single mineral of value, and not one stick of wood larger than a walking-cane can be found. Many of the mountains are clad in eternal snows, and some pour out rivers of fire several times every century."

The population of Iceland consists of some 60,000 souls-a small population, it must be confessed, especially when it is recollected that the country is nearly as large as England, and that something like

a thousand years have elapsed since its first settlement; but the few agricultural and commercial resources it possesses, will account for the excessive paucity of inhabitants. Mr. Miles estimates the increase of its population at less than one and a half per cent. annually. The Icelanders are a peaceful, contented, moral, and high-principled people, and distinguished by every species of negative and positive virtue. Indeed, we do not think that our author is guilty of the slightest exaggeration, when he says that they "are more contented, moral, and religious, possess greater attachment to country, are less given to crime and altercation, and show greater hospitality and kindness to strangers, than any other people the sun shines upon "-though whether they are such (as Mr. Miles tells us) in spite of the many great disadvantages under which they labour is a different question. There is a good deal of reality and sound philosophy in Goldsmith's well-known lines, which are not altogether inapplicable to Iceland :

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,

He sees his little lot, the lot of all;

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head,

To shame the meanness of his humble shed,
No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal,
To make him loathe his vegetable meal;
Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes.
At night returning, every labour sped,
He sits him down the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board;
And haply too some pilgrim thither led
With many a tale repays the nightly bed.

"Thus every good his native wilds impart,
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart;
And even those hills that round his mansion rise,
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies:
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
And dear that hill that lifts him to the storms;
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast,
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more."

It has been recently observed, "that the inhabitants of Iceland during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, created and maintained, amidst its snows and volcanic fires, a literature which would have honoured the happiest climes of Europe;" and Mr. Miles has more than once reiterated the same statement in the work we are reviewing. The present race of Icelanders has not degenerated from its ancestors. They are to this day quite a literary people; and they have men among them of the acutest intellect and highest attainments. Mr. Miles thus speaks of them in that respect :

"They possess a greater spirit of historical research and literary. inquiry, have more scholars, poets, and learned men than can be found among an equal population on the face of the globe. Iceland

has given birth to a Thorwaldsen, a sculptor whose name will descend to the latest posterity. . . . . Among their poets and historians will be found the names of Snorro Sturleson, Sæmund surnamed FRODE, or the learned, Jon Thorlaksen, Finn Magnusen, Stephensen, Egilson, Hallgrimson, Thorarensen, Grondal, Sigurder Peterssen; and these, with many others, will adorn the pages of Icelandic literature as long as the snow covers their mountains, and the heather blooms in their valleys. The works of their poets and literary men have been translated into nearly every language in Europe, and they in their turn have translated in their own beautiful language, more or less of the writings of Milton, Dryden, Pope, Young, Byron, Burns, Klopstock, Martin Luther, Lamartine, Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, and many others. In the interior of the country, a native Clergyman presented me with a volume-an Iceland annual, the Northurfari for 1848-9that contains, among many original articles, the Story of the Whistle,' by Dr. Franklin; a chapter from Irving's Life of Columbus': translations from Dryden; Byron's 'Ode on Waterloo'; Burns' 'Bruce's Address'; Kossuth's Prayer on the defeat of the Army in Hungary : part of one of President Taylor's messages to Congress; and extracts from the New York Herald, the London Times, and other publications. With scarcely a hope of fame, the intellectual labours of the Icelanders have been prosecuted from an ardent thirst of literary pursuits. As an example, we need only notice the labours of Jon Thorlaksen. This literary neophyte, immured in a mud hut in the north of Iceland, subsisting on his scanty salary as a Clergyman, which amounted to less than thirty dollars a year, together with his own labours as a farmer, yet found time, during the long evenings of an Iceland winter, to translate into Icelandic verse the whole of Milton's Paradise Lost,' Pope's Essay on Man,' and Klopstock's Messiah,' besides writing several volumes of original poetry."-Pp. 29, 30.

Let it not be supposed that education is confined to one or two classes of society. It pervades every class. We have the authority of Mr. Miles for the statement, that the Icelanders are universally educated to the extent that all can read and write, and that the Bible or New Testament, and usually many other books, particularly historical and poetical works, are found in nearly every house in Iceland. He adds that he never saw a child above nine years of age that could not read in a masterly style, and write with great elegance. During their long winter evenings-and what these winter evenings are will be appreciated when it is recollected that in December the sun is above the horizon only three or four hours-when both males and females are engaged in domestic labours, spinning, weaving, or knitting, by turns one will take a book, some history, biography, or the Bible, and read aloud. Education is, in a great measure, confined to the family circle. There is but one school or educational establishment in the whole country-the College at

Reykjavik. It has a It has a president, and eight professors, and usually from eighty to one hundred students. The boys educated here are nearly all trained for Clergymen, or else they fill some of the civil offices in the island, whilst a few go abroad. The present president is a native Icelander of the name of Johnson, whom Mr. Miles considers as one of the first linguists in Europe. Mr. Miles saw a good deal of that gentleman whilst in Iceland; and they two seem to have been regular correspondents since. Some of Mr. Johnson's letters are given in the volume before us. They are in English, and are well written; and indeed it is evident that President Johnson is a man of powerful intellect, and of vast attainments. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Danish, English, and French, and most of the sciences, are taught at this college; and during his stay in the country, Mr. Miles states that he often met some of the students who could converse fluently in Latin, Danish, French, or English. The Icelander, like the Russian, appears certainly to have a wonderful facility for acquiring languages.

Another circumstance referred to by Mr. Miles, strikingly corroborates what has been stated in regard to the literary turn of the Icelanders. He says:

"We shall see by comparison, and looking at facts, what their intellectual resources are. The number of books, of all sizes, published in Iceland in each of the years 1847 and 1848 was seventeen-thirtyfour volumes in two years; and these for a community of 60,000 people. Were there as many in proportion printed for our population of twenty-five millions, the numbers of books-distinct works, independent of periodicals-published annually in the United States would be over seven thousand. Most of the Iceland books are 12mos and 8vos; the largest volume for the year 1847 contained 928 pages. This was a sort of 'Congressional Globe,' though not issued in numbers— a record of the proceedings of their Althing or Congress. of the works published in Icelandic are issued from the press at Copenhagen; but the majority of them are printed and bound in Iceland. They have several printing presses constantly at work, and three newspapers, one issued once a week, and two once a fortnight.”P. 224.

Some

Mr. Miles adds that, in mechanical execution, Iceland works are turned out in better style than most of those which issue from the American press. It does not by any means follow from this that their typographical execution is first-rate, for most American works are turned out wretchedly. However, we have no doubt they are well got up. Printing was first introduced in Iceland in 1530.

We have already referred to some of the peculiarities of this extraordinary country and people. We will briefly mention a few more of their distinctive characteristics. All travel and transportation of goods and the mail through the interior of the island, are per

formed on horseback. There is not a carriage or wheeled vehicle, a steam-engine, a post-office, a fort, a soldier, or even a lawyer in the whole island! So says Mr. Miles-though at the same time it is not very easy to understand how there can be a supreme court," and a "chief justice," (as he has told us there are) as well as sysselmen, who are not only sheriffs, but also magistrates, and of what possible utility they can be, if there be not a single lawyer in the place. Goods, dried fish, and valuables, are left out of doors unguarded, with perfect impunity, stealing being all but unknown. There has never been but one prison in the island, and that was also used as an almshouse; and even then it was nearly useless, and almost always without a tenant. Finally, to make some sort of use of it, it was converted into the Governor's residence. Taxes also are very light. As to physicians, they are nearly as uncommon in Iceland, as are the " trees and 66 fruits of fragrance," alluded to in a preceding page; and the distances they have to travel often make their services of no avail, death in most instances carrying off the patient before the doctor's arrival. Mr. Miles seems to think that longevity is not as great in Iceland as in most countries in the temperate zones. The malady to which the Icelanders are most subject is complaint of the lungs, and more die of consumption than of any other disease. Our author attributes the prevalence of this disease to the exposure attendant on the business in which the greater portion of the male population of Iceland is so constantly engaged-fishing. About 500 years ago the plague visited Iceland, but cholera and the yellow fever have never been there.

The religion professed in Iceland is the Lutheran form. The Reformation extended to that country in 1551; and that some practical reforms were needed there in religious matters-to say nothing of doctrinal ones-seems pretty evident. The Roman Catholic was at that time the established religion of the country, but it had become so frightfully corrupt, that the last Bishop and his two illegitimate sons were actually beheaded for murder and other crimes. Since that period, the established religion of Iceland has been that of the mother country; and it is stated that there is not a single person residing in Iceland who is not a Protestant. Iceland is the seat of a Bishop's See.

In complexion the Icelanders resemble the Anglo-Saxon race, and they have handsome countenances. They have fine figures, and frequently tall. In the north-west the men wear their beards, a practice which has been in vogue for centuries. The Icelanders live by farming and fishing. Their season for sea fishing is from the beginning of February to the middle of May. They also catch large quantities of trout and salmon in their streams and lakes. Grass is their only agricultural production of any value, grain not being cultivated. Of the other productions of the