[32 
CULTURE AND PROGRESS. 
GE0RG5£ 
CULTURE AND PROGRESS. 
Caton’s “Summer in Norway.’’* 
Mr. Caton is not our ideal traveler, but he pos- 
sesses some of those qualities which an ideal traveler 
could least of all afford to dispense with. He is an 
excellent observer, and his interest in the scenes he 
describes is singularly sincere and unaffected. His 
practical intelligence, unobscured by learned preju- 
dice, acts as an excellent reflector, representing the 
objects as they are, with the faintest imaginable tinge 
of individual coloring. A book of travel of this 
description is, naturally enough, not quite so enter- 
taining as it would have been if the author had dis- 
pensed his colors with a more lavish brush; but 
where the Horatian utile dulci is beyond realization, 
we would far rather renounce the superficial aesthetic 
pleasures of reading, if, as in the present case, we 
are to gain in exchange this supreme confidence in 
the author’s strict adherence to fact. And we appre- 
ciate this feature the more, because Norway has 
actually suffered so much in the past from the exag- 
gerations and misstatements of hasty travelers, that it 
is well if we may now at last acquire some reliable 
knowledge concerning the national character, and 
the industries and institutions of the country. 
Some thirty or forty years ago Harriet Martineau, 
probably with the very best intention, wrote her 
« Feats on the Fjord,” in which she handled the 
legends and traditions of the Norwegians with a 
poetic nonchalance which did more honor to her 
imagination than to her truthfulness; for even 
legends have their laws, which cannot be violated 
with impunity. The Norwegian peasants were by 
her represented as a chatty, nimble, and sentimental 
race, demonstrative in their emotions, and with 
choicely polished phrases always on their tongues’ 
ends. Since then English sportsmen have annually 
made their debut in literature by fantastically inac- 
curate extracts from the Norse Sagas, intermingled 
with strange popular legends and personal advent- 
ures, until at length it has become well-nigh a tradi- 
tion that every aspirant for literary laurels who is 
too shallow-brained to produce anything of inde- 
pendent merit, may, by indulging his unbridled fancy 
during a summer’s sojourn in Norway, gain an 
enviable distinction at his club, and moreover add 
to his name a faint aroma of authorship. The result 
of all this extravagant scribbling is, that Norway is 
to-day far less known, and more unfavorably known, 
than it deserves to be, and that regarding the 
national habits and characteristics, the most contra- 
dictory opinions find their way into our political 
Habits, Customs, and Peculia 
and Institutions of the Count 
Productions. Also an Accoi 
and Elk. By John Dean Ca 
the Supreme Court of the Sta 
McClurg & Co. 
With Notes on the Industries, 
ritles of the People ; the History 
•y, its Climate, Topography, and 
mt of the Red Deer, Reindeer, 
ton, LL.D., Ex-Chief-Justice of 
te of Illinois. Chicago: Jansen, 
papers, magazines, and even into the text-books used 
in our schools. 
Mr. Caton has evidently no theory to support 
about the peculiarities of Goth and Gaul, and, judg- 
ing from the straightforward and unphilosophical 
way in which he relates what he saw and heard, we 
should say that he has never read Taine. He saw 
no drunkenness in Norway, he says, although he 
traveled from one end of the country to the other. 
He is clearly not aware that the Goth, from imme- 
morial times, has got drunk, and that it must have 
been a deficiency in his eyesight if he did not dis- 
cover that the Norwegians were drunk when he saw 
them. Again, at the country inns, where he and 
his party spent the nights, they had clean bed-linen, 
and the inhabitants whom they visited, with the 
. exception of the Lapps, did not show any constitu- 
tional aversion to soap and water. Another lapsus 
lingu(E ; the uncivilized Goth has never been remark- 
able for cleanliness. 
These statements, however, are very easily recon- 
cilable with the accounts of Bayard Taylor and other 
travelers, whose observations seem to point in the 
opposite direction. It i§ a world-old tradition among 
the Norwegian peasantry that at weddings, funerals, 
and family festivals, it is quite respectable to be 
drunk ; and at the fishing seasons, when great num- 
bers of peasants are huddled together in miserable 
little sheds, and suffer from cold and wet, vast quan- 
tities of brandy are consumed; but, nevertheless, 
drunkenness is even then rare. The same observa- 
tion was made some twenty years ago by Mr. Charles 
Loring Brace, whose book, “The Norse-Folk,” is 
one of the best descriptions of Norway which we 
have ever read. 
We have praised Mr. Caton’s conscientious avoid- 
ance of hasty generalizations ; but, in spite of his 
good intentions, his book is not altogether free from 
blemishes. On page 289, for instance, he speaks 
of fast and slow stations, translating the Norwegian 
adjective fast by its English cognate; the Norse 
word, however, is only equivalent to the English in 
the sense of fixed, and can never mean rapid. Again, 
he interprets the Norwegian adverb saa as meaning 
assent or approval, while, like the German so, it is 
merely expressive of attention, and indicates that 
the person addressed is listening. Once, during a 
ramble along the Alten River, the author comes 
across a monument of that class which the natives 
call a Bautasten, and here indulges in a vague his- 
torical reverie which shows his ignorance of the 
actual historical facts. We should, on the whole, 
wish that Mr. Caton had contented himself with 
Norway of to-day, which he saw and knew, with- 
out essaying an ambitious flight into the remote 
Saga world. His historical notes are full of errors, 
and their inaccuracy mars an otherwise valuable 
record of travel. 
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