Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Letter II
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Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
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(historik)
senses. Yet who will deny that the imagination and
understanding have made many, very many discoveries
since those days, which only seem harbingers of others
still more noble and beneficial? I never met with
much imagination amongst people who had not acquired
a habit of reflection; and in that state of society in
which the judgment and taste are not called forth, and
formed by the cultivation of the arts and sciences, little
of that delicacy of feeling and thinking is to be found
characterised by the word sentiment. The want of
scientific pursuits perhaps accounts for the hospitality,
as well as for the cordial reception which strangers
receive from the inhabitants of small towns.
Hospitality has, I think, been too much praised by
travellers as a proof of goodness of heart, when, in my
opinion, indiscriminate hospitality is rather a criterion
by which you may form a tolerable estimate of the
indolence or vacancy of a head; or, in other words, a
fondness for social pleasures in which the mind not
having its proportion of exercise, the bottle must be
pushed about.
These remarks are equally applicable to Dublin, the
most hospitable city I ever passed through. But I
will try to confine my observations more particularly
to Sweden.
It is true I have only had a glance over a small part
of it; yet of its present state of manners and acquirements
I think I have formed a distinct idea, without
having visited the capital—where, in fact, less of a
national character is to be found than in the remote
parts of the country.
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