21 less divine than those of Rome and Athens, it is not so fine a city as either ; though its public buildings may be thought to be in better repair. In fact, the town consists of wooden sheds one story high, built along the lava beach, and flanked at either end with a suburb of huts. In the centre are a few streets, whose dust no carriage wheel has ever desecrated. They are bordered with one or two storied wooden buildings covered with a coating of tar and paint. Lace curtains and pots of flowers were in many windows, giving them an air of taste and comfort. But we at first felt dis- appointed. There is none of the age and mystery about the dwellings which seem to hang over the the inhabitants. One looks upon the men as the last relics of a powerful people—the descendants of the very pith of ancient Norway, and, in a great measure, the colonizers of the world ; a people whose literature at one time stood first in Europe, and even to-day holds a very excellent place. Their little Capital, on the contrary, can give but one idea—that of a wooden fishing village. There are grand mountains in the distance, but, on every side, extends a desolate plain of lava that once must have boiled up red hot from some distant gateway of fire and fallen hissing into the sea. To the South are some strange volcanic formations, and there, in the spring-time, the people watch day by day for the first streak of the smoke of the steamer which returns from the outer world after an interval of four of five months. The men watch the sky with their glasses and the boys are always waiting ready to rush to the town with the good news of the arrival of the mail. The lions of the place were soon visited—the Governor’s house, a plain, whitewashed building ; the Cathedral ! (also whitewashed); the Schools ; and the Gaol, which has twelve cells, generally empty, but usually visited by tourists as it contains a bath. “Iceland is a country of contrasts,” for else- where one goes to visit cities and ruins ; here one sees nature in her most fantastic forms, there one pays a shillling or a franc for a warm bath in a vat of marble ; here, one bathes in a spring of any desired temperature, or plunges into a cool lake and swims to the region of a hot spring. In other lands one steps into palaces of marble and gold and finds hereditary legislators making laws ; here one sees a grass-grown amphitheatre where an

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