cured rests upon these walls, and is covered with turf and sods. On one side (generally facing the south) are several gable ends and doors, each surmounted with a weather-cock. These are the entrances to the dwelling-house proper, to the smithy, store-room, cow-shed, etc. A long narrow passage, dark as pitch, and redolent of unsavory odors, leads to the several apartments, which are separated from each other by thick walls of turf, each having also its own roof, so that the peasant's dwelling is in fact a conglomeration of low huts, which sometimes receive their light through small windows in the front, but more frequently through holes in the roof, covered with a piece of glass or skin. The floors are of stamped earth; the hearth is made of a few stones clumsily piled together; a cask or barrel, with the two ends knocked out, answers the of a purpose chimney, or else the smoke is allowed to escape through a mere hole in the roof. The thick turf walls, the dirty floor, the personal uncleanliness of the inhabitants, all contribute to the pollution of the atmosphere. No piece of furniture seems ever to have been cleaned since it was first put into use; all is disorder and confusion. Ventilation is utterly impossible, and the whole family, frequently consisting of twenty persons or more, sleep in the same dormitory, as well as any strangers who may happen to drop in. On either side of this apartment are bunks three or four feet in width, on which the sleepers range themselves.

Such are in general the dwellings of the farmers and clergy, for but very few of the more wealthy inhabitants live in any way according to our notions of comfort, while the cots of the poor fisherman are so wretched that one can hardly believe them to be tenanted by human beings.

The farm-houses are frequently isolated, and, on account of their grass-covered roofs and their low construction, are not easily distinguished from the neighboring pasture-grounds; where four or five of them are congregated in a grassy plain, they are dignified with the name of a village, and become the residence of a Hrepstior, or parish constable.

Then also a church is seldom wanting, which however is distinguished from the low huts around merely by the cross planted on its roof. An Icelandic house of prayer is generally from eight to ten feet wide, and from eighteen to twenty-four long; but of this about eight feet are devoted to the altar, which is divided off by a partition stretching across the church, and against which stands the pulpit. A small wooden chest or cupboard, placed at the end of the building, between two very small square windows not larger than a common-sized pane of glass, constitutes the communion-table, over which is generally a miserable representation of the Lord's Supper painted on wood. The height of the walls, which are wainscoted, is about six feet, and from them large wooden beams stretch across from side to side. On these beams are placed in great. disorder a quantity of old Bibles, psalters, and fragments of dirty manuscripts. The interior of the roof, the rafters of which rest on the walls, is also lined with wood. On the right of the door, under which one is obliged to stoop considerably on entering, is suspended a bell, large enough to make an intolerable noise in so small a space. A few benches on each side the aisle, so crowded together as almost to touch one another, and affording accommodation to thirty or forty persons when squeezed very tight, leave room for a narrow passage.

These churches, besides their proper use, are also made to answer the purpose of the caravanseras of the East, by affording a night's lodging to foreign tourists. They are indeed neither free from dirt, nor from bad smells; but the stranger is still far better off than in the intolerable atmosphere of a peasant's hut.

Mr. Ross Browne thus describes the church and parsonage at Thingvalla; "The church is of modern construction, and, like all I saw in the interior, ist made of wood, painted a dark color, and roofed with boards covered with sheets of tarred canvas. It is a very primitive little affair, only one story high, and not more than fifteen by twenty feet in dimensions. From the date on the weather-cock it appears to have been built in 1858. The congregation is supplied by the few sheep-ranches in the neighborhood, consisting at most of half a dozen families. These unpretending little churches are to be seen in the vicinity of every settlement throughout the whole island. Simple and homely as they are, they speak well, for the pious character of the people.

"The pastor of Thingvalla and his family reside in a group of sod-covered huts close by the church. These cheerless little hovels are really a curiosity, none of them being over ten or fifteen feet high, and all huddled together with out the slightest regard to latitude or longitude, like a parcel of sheep in a storm. Some have windows in the roof, and some have chimneys; grass and weeds grow all over them, and crooked by-ways and dark alleys run among them and through them. At the base they are walled up with big lumps of lava, and two of them have board fronts, painted black, while the remainder are

patched up with turf and rubbish of all sorts, very much in the style of a stork's nest. A low stone wall encircles the premises, but seems to be of little use as a barrier against the encroachments of live-stock, being broken up in gaps every few yards. In front of the group some attempt has been made at a pavement, which, however, must have been abandoned soon after the work was commenced. It is now littered all over with old tubs, pots, dish-cloths, and other articles of domestic use.

"The interior of this strange abode is even more complicated than one would be led to expect from the exterior. Passing through a dilapidated doorway in one of the smaller cabins, which you would hardly suppose to be the main entrance, you find yourself in a long dark passage-way, built of rough stone, and roofed with wooden rafters and brushwood covered with sod. The sides are ornamented with pegs stuck in the crevices between the stones, upon which hang saddles, bridles, horse-shoes, bunches of herbs, dried fish, and various articles of cast-off clothing, including old shoes and sheepskins. Wide or narrow, straight or crooked, to suit the sinuosities of the different cabins into which it forms the entrance, it seems to have been originally located upon the track of a blind boa-constrictor. The best room, or rather house—for every room is a house-is set apart for the accommodation of travellers. Another cabin is occupied by some members of the pastor's family, who bundle about like a lot of rabbits. The kitchen is also the dog-kennel, and occasionally the sheep-house. A pile of stones in one corner of it, upon which a few twigs or scraps of sheep-manure serve to make the fire, constitute the cooking apartment. The floor consists of the original lava-bed, and artificial puddles composed of

slops and offal of diverse unctuous kinds. Smoke fills all the cavities in the air not already occupied by foul odors, and the beams, and posts, and rickety old bits of furniture are dyed to the core with the dense and variegated atmosphere around them. This is a fair specimen of the whole establishment, with the exception of the travellers' room. The beds in these cabins are the chief articles of luxury."

The poverty of the clergy corresponds with the meanness of their churches., The best living in the island is that of Breide'-Bolstadr, where the nominal stipend amounts to 180 specie dollars, or about £40 a year; and Mr. Holland states that the average livings do not amount to more than £10 for each parish in the island. The clergymen must therefore depend almost entirely for subsistence on their glebe land, and a small pittance to which they are entitled for the few baptisms, marriages, and funerals that occur among their parishioners. The bishop himself has only 2000 rix-dollars, or £200, a year, a miserable pittance to make a decent appearance, and to exercise hospitality to the clergy who visit Reykjavik from distant parts.

It can not be wondered at that pastors thus miserably paid are generally obliged to perform the hardest work of day laborers to preserve their families from starving, and that their external appearance corresponds less with the dignity of their office than with their penury. Besides hay-making and tending the cattle, they may be frequently seen leading a train of pack-horses from a fishingstation to their distant hut. They are all blacksmiths also from necessity, and the best shoers of horses on the island. The feet of an Iceland horse would be cut to pieces over the sharp rock and lava, if not well shod. The great resort of the peasantry is the church; and should any of the numerous horses have lost a shoe, or be likely to do so, the priest puts on his apron, lights his little charcoal fire in his smithy (one of which is always attached to every parsonage), and sets the animal on his legs again. The task of getting the necessary char

coal is not the least of his labors, for whatever the distance may be to the nearest thicket of dwarf-birch, he must go thither to burn the wood, and to bring it home when charred across his horse's back. His hut is scarcely bet

ter than that of the meanest fisherman;

a bed, a rickety table, a few chairs, and a chest or two, are all his furniture. This is, as long as he lives, the condition of the Icelandic clergyman, and learning, virtue, and even genius are but too frequently buried under this squalid poverty.

But few of my readers have probably ever heard of the poet Jon Thorlakson, but who can withhold the tribute of his admiration from the poor priest of Backa, who with a fixed income of less than £6 a year, and condemned to all the drudgery which I have described, finished at seventy years of age a translation of Milton's "Paradise Lost," having previously translated Pope's "Essay on Man.”

Three of the first books only of the "Paradise Lost" were printed by the Icelandic Literary Society, when it was dissolved in 1796, and to print the rest at his own expense was of course impossible. In a few Icelandic verses, Thorlakson touchingly alludes to his penury :-" Ever since I came into this world I have been wedded to Poverty, who has now hugged me to her bosom these seventy winters, all but two; and whether we shall ever be separated here below is only known to Him who joined us together."

As if Providence had intended to teach the old man that we must hope to the last, he soon after received the unexpected visit of Mr. Henderson, an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, who thus relates his interview:

"Like most of his brethren at this season of the year, we found him in the meadow assisting his people in hay-making. On hearing of our arrival, het made all the haste home which his age and infirmity would allow, and bidding us welcome to his lowly abode, ushered us into the humble apartment where he translated my countrymen into Icelandic. The door is not quite four feet in height, and the room may be about eight feet in length by six in breadth. At the inner end is the poet's bed, and close to the door, over against a small window, not exceeding two feet square, is a table where he commits to paper the effusions of his Muse. On my telling him that my countrymen would not have forgiven me, nor could I have forgiven myself, had I passed through this part of the island without paying him a visit, he replied that the translation of Mil