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24 TRAVELS
transcendantly great, that when the historical accounts of them
were lolt in the. dark ages, an opinion - preyailed ’that they had
been executed by supernatural and invisible agents. The kings of
Sweden, carrying back their views through a long line of ancestry
to a remote antiquity, and forward through proportionable spaces
of time, were naturally inspired with grand recolleftions and
grand defigns. Should an age of darkness again envelop Scandi-
navia, and bring back the reign of ignorance and superstition, the -
works of Trolhitta, like those of the Romans, would doubtless be
ascribed to giants, fairies, or gods.
At Trolhitta a book is presented to strangers when they are
about to leave the place ; and they are requested to inscribe their_
names 1 it, with some motto relative to the impression made. on
their minds by the falls, or other local circumstances. This book
18 one of the most curious miscellanies any where to be seen, and
15.11 my mind of more value than many other books, for the.
light it throws on the subje& of human nature. Throughout the
Whole" of this collection there reigns a particular humour ; I mean
a particular turn or temperament of mind, and what the French
call penchant ; an affeation of wit and fingularity, and aboye all,
an effort of self-love, or self-consequence, which unveils, not ob-
scurely, the true character and weakness of man. Like those epi-
taphs which lose fight of the dead to speak of the living, almost
all the inseriptions in this, as well as in other memorials of the
fame kind, are more charaReristic of their authors than of the.
fubje&s to which they refer. One takes an opportunity to shew
that
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