law-books, but was alarmed at the idea of having to study that sort of thing. His home life and religious education had given him a distaste for everything that concerned the common interests of people. Through the ceaseless repetition of the maxim that young men should not interfere with politics, that is to say, with the common weal, and through Christian individualism and introspection, John had become a consistent egoist.

"Let every one mind his own business" was the first command of this egotistic morality. Therefore he read no papers and troubled little how things were going on about him, what was happening in the world, how the destinies of men were being shaped, or what were the thoughts of the leading minds of the time. Therefore it never occurred to him to go to the meetings of the club where questions of common interest were dealt with. "There were enough to look after those things," he thought.

He was not alone in that opinion, so that the meetings of the club were managed by a few energetic fellows, who were regarded perhaps wrongly, as egoists and managed public business in their own interests. John who let the affairs of the little society go as they liked, was perhaps a greater egoist, occupied as he was with the affairs of his own soul. But in his own defence and on behalf of many of his countrymen it must be said that he and they were shy. This shyness, however, should have been got rid of at school by practice in public speaking. In this shyness there was also a degree of cowardice, the fear of opposition or ridicule, and especially the fear of being thought presumptuous or wishing to push oneself forward. Every youth who did so, was at once suppressed, for here the aristocracy of seniority prevailed in a very high degree.

When he found the room too stuffy, he went out of the town. But the depressing landscape with its endless expanse of clay made him sad. He was no plain-dweller, but had his roots in the undulating scenery of Stockholm, diversified by water channels. The flat country depressed him and he suffered from homesickness to such a degree that when he returned to Stockholm at Christmas and saw again the smiling contours of the coast of Brunsvik, he was moved to the point of sentimentality. When he saw once more the gentle curves of the woods of Haga Park he felt his soul, as it were, attuned again, after having been so long out of tune. To such a degree were his nerves affected by his natural surroundings.

Under other circumstances, the society of a smaller town like Upsala would have been more congenial to him than that of the great town which he hated. Had the small town been but a developed form of the village, preserving the simple rustic appliances for health and comfort, with fragments of landscape between the houses, it would have been far preferable to the great town. But now the small town was merely a shabby pretentious copy of the great town with its mistakes, and therefore the more offensive. It also reeked with provinciality. Every one mentioned their birthplace, "My name is Pettersson, from Ostgothland," "Mine is Andersson, from Småland." There was a keen rivalry between the members of different provinces. Those from Stockholm regarded themselves as the first and were therefore envied and despised by the "peasants." There was much dispute as to whom the first place really belonged. The Wormlanders boasted of having produced Geijer whose portrait hung in their hall, while the Smålanders had Tegner, Berzelius and Linnæus. The Stockholm students who had only Bergfalk and Bellmann were called "gutter-snipes." This was not a very brilliant piece of wit especially as it emanated from a Kalmar student who was thereupon asked "whether there were no gutters in Kalmar?"

There was something pettifogging also in the way in which the professors fought for advancement by means of pamphlets and newspaper articles. The election to any particular professorial chair rested in the last resource with the Chancellor of the University who lived at Stockholm.

In 1867 the University had no especially distinguished teachers. Some of them were merely old decayed tipplers. Others were young immature dilettantes who had obtained advancement through their wives and the modicum of talent which they possessed. The only one who enjoyed a certain reputation was Swedelius. This, however, was rather due to his bonhomie and the anecdotes which gathered round him, then to his own talent. His learned activity was confined to the composition in an austere style of textbooks and memorial addresses. These were not strictly scientific, but showed traces of original research.

On the whole all the subjects of study were introduced from abroad, for the most part from Germany. The textbooks in most departments were in German or French. Very few were in English which was little known. Even the Professor of Literary History could not pronounce English and began his lectures with an apology for not being able to do so. There was no doubt that he knew the language for he had published translations of Swedish poems. "But why did he not learn the pronunciation?" the students asked. Most of the dissertations for degrees were mere compilations from the German; occasionally they were direct translations which caused a scandal.

The fact was that the period had no special feature to characterise it. There is no such thing as Swedish culture any more than there is Belgian, Swiss, or Hungarian. Sweden had indeed produced a Linnæus and a Berzelius, but they had had no successors.

John had no spirit of enterprise. At school his work had been settled for him; at the university it was all left to him. He was overcome by lethargy and listlessness and worried by not knowing what to do at the end of the term. He saw that he must seek for a position in which he could support himself. A friend had told him that one might become an elementary teacher in the country without passing any more examinations and could very well support oneself in such a post. Now it was John's dream to live in the country. He had a natural dislike to towns though he had been born in the metropolis. He could not accustom himself to live without light and air, nor flourish in these streets and market-places, where the outward signs of a higher or lower position in the absurd social scale counted for so much, e.g. such subordinate things as dress and manner. He had hostility to culture in his blood and could never conceive of himself as anything else than a natural product, which did not wish to be severed from its organic connection with the earth. He was like a plant vainly feeling with its roots between the pavement-stones for some soil; like an animal pining for the forest.

There is a fish which climbs up trees, and an eel can go on land to look for a pease-field, but both of them return to the water. Fowls have been domesticated so long that their ancestral characteristics have died out, but they preserve the habit of sleeping on a perch which represents the branch on which the black-cock and the wood-grouse roost. Geese become restless in autumn, for an instinct in their blood tells them that it is migrating time. So in spite of accommodation to new circumstances there is always a tendency to go back.

Thus is it also with men. The dweller in the north, so long as he preserves civilised habits, has not been able to acclimatise himself thoroughly, and is still liable to consumption. His stomach, nerves, heart and skin were able to accommodate themselves, but not his lungs. The Eskimo on the other hand, originally a southerner, succeeded in acclimatising himself but had to give up civilised habits.

And what is the meaning of the northerner's longing for the south unless it be the wish to return to his first home, the land of the sun, the bank of the Ganges where he was cradled? And the dislike of children to meat, their longing for fruit and love of climbing, what is it all but "reversion to type?" Therefore civilisation means a continual strain and struggle to combat this backward tendency.