5 8 TRAVELS 
feafons travelling becomes almoft impoffible, and the capital as 
well as other towns, are fo clogged and blocked up with mud and 
dirt, that you can fcarcely move from one place to another. It 
is for this reafon that the Swedes fo generally wear outer fhoes, 
called galoches , which are very ufeful and neceffary for the pre- 
fervation of health, by keeping the feet from wet. At this feafon 
a carriage of one’s own becomes indifpenfably neceffary ; for the 
hackney coaches of Stockholm are fo filthy as not to be endured 
by any lady, or almoft any gentleman. 
It is not unnatural to fuppofe, that in the midft of a Swedifh 
winter an Italian w r ould run a rifk ot perifhing through cold; 
but this is by no means the cafe. I was at Stockholm all the 
winter of ] 799, when the cold was at or below twenty-five de¬ 
grees of the thermometer of Celfius ; and I can declare with 
perfect truth, that I fuffered much lefs from the feverity of the 
weather than I have fometimes done in Italy. If the cold in 
thofe climates be great, the means of warding off its effiefts are 
proportionably great. The Roves in Sweden are the mofi ingeni- 
oufly contrived for heating a chamber, and keeping it warm with 
a very fmall quantity of fuel, of any in Europe. They are rather 
dangerous, it is true, if entrufied to Rrangers, who do not know 
how to manage them, and who, by fhutting up the vent at an 
improper time, may occafion too great an expenditure of vital air. 
But the Swedes know fo exactly the moment when it is fit to 
clofe the air-hole, that there is fcarcely an infiance of any acci¬ 
dent happening from the ufe of Roves in Sweden. They are in 
general 
