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THROUGH LAPLAND. ig
love, but have little experience of the fighs and tender emotions
of that paffion. The people have a gloomy and ferious deport-
ment: the youth of both fexes remain in the company of each
other without the leaft of that playful gaiety which is fo becom-
ing in their years. I never once obferved a young man direét a
_fmile of complaifance towards a young woman. It is a pretty
general cuftom, however, for the youth of both fexes to fleep to-
gether, and what is ftill more extraordinary, without producing
any decifive evidence of too much familiarity. The father charges
himfelf with the marriage of his child; and the union of the
parties is a contract rather dictated by family convenience than
by any predilection for each other. At the fame time there have
been inftances of jealoufy, and even of madnef$ occafioned by
this paflion. There was a woman, it feems, ftill alive, who be-
came infane from love, and who in her frenzy killed her own
daughter. She is faid to have entertained a violent fufpicion of
a woman, whom fhe fuppofed had engaged the affections of her
hufband. We find contradi@tions in the character of every people
on earth, and this isa ftriking example in corroboration of that
obferyation. There is not an inftance of either robbery or murder
known in this country; but cafes of fuicide have happened :
people have drowned themfelyes, or made attempts upon their
lives in one fhape or another. Such exceffes are there attributed
neither to want nor to the paffion of love, but to madnefs, occa-
fioned by fome natural caufe, or to violent depreffion and lowneis
of {pirits.
D2 The
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