THROUGH LAPLAND. 
1-9 
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 lead of that playful gaiety which is fo becom¬ 
ing in their years. I never once obferved a young man dired a 
fmile of complaifance towards a young woman. It is a pretty 
general cuftom, however, for the youth of both fexes to deep to¬ 
gether, and what is dill 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 contrad rather didated by family convenience than 
by any prediledion for each other. At the fame time there have 
been indances of jealoufy, and even of madnefs occafioned by 
this paffion. There was a woman, it feems, dill 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 die fuppofed had engaged the affedions of her 
hufband. We find contradidions in the charader of every people 
on earth, and this is a {hiking example in corroboration of that 
obfervation. There is not an inftance of either robbery or murder 
known in this country ; but cafes of fuicide have happened : 
people have drowned themfelves, or made attempts upon their 
lives in one fhape or another. Such exedfes 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 lownefs 
of fpirits. 
D 2 
The 
