24 
TRAVELS 
tranfeendantly great, that when, the hiitorical accounts of them 
were loll in the dark ages, an opinion prevailed that they had 
been executed by lupernatural and invifible agents. The kings of 
Sweden, carrying back their views through a long line of anceflry 
to a remote antiquity, and forward through proportionable fpaces 
of time, were naturally infpired with grand recollections and 
grand defigns. Should an age of darknefs again envelop Scandi¬ 
navia, and bring back the reign of ignorance and fuperftition, the 
works of Trolhiitta, like thofe of the Romans, would doubtlefs be 
afcribed to giants, fairies, or gods. 
At Trolhiitta a book is prefented to Grangers when they are 
about to leave the place ; and they are requeued to infcribe their 
names in it, wdth fome motto relative to the impreffion made on 
their minds by the falls, or other local circumftances. This book 
is one of the mofi curious mifcellanies any where to be feen, and 
is in my mind of more value than many other books, for the 
light it throws on the fubjeCt 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 affectation of wit and Angularity, and above all, 
an effort of felf-love, or felf-confequence, which unveils, not ob- 
fcurely, the true character and weaknefs of man. Like thofe epi¬ 
taphs which lofe fight of the dead to fpeak of the living, almoft 
all the infcriptions in this, as well as in other memorials of the 
fame kind, are more charaCteriftic of their authors than of the 
fubjeCts to which they refer. One takes an opportunity to fhew 
that 
