at work, on the top of the hill, shall be completed for their reception.  It was crowded with attentive worshipers, one of whom obligingly came forward and found a seat for us.  The minister, Mr. Frazer, had begun the evening service, and was at prayer.  When I entered, he was speaking of “our father the devil;” but the prayer was followed by an earnest, practical discourse, though somewhat crude in the composition, and reminding me of an expression I once heard used by a distinguished Scotchman, who complained that the clergy of his country, in composing their sermons, too often “mak’ rough wark of it.”

I looked about among these descendants of the Norwegians, but could not see any thing singular in their physiognomy; and but for the harsh accent of the preacher, I might almost have thought myself in the midst of a country congregation in the United States.  They are mostly of a light complexion, with an appearance of health and strength, though of a sparer make than the people of the more southern British isles.  After the service was over, we returned to our lodgings, by a way which led to the top of the hill, and made the circuit of the little town.  The paths leading into the interior of the island, were full of people returning homeward; the women in their best attire, a few in silks, with wind-tanned faces.  We saw them disappearing, one after another, in the hollows, or over the dark bare hill-tops.  With a population of less than three thousand souls, Lerwick has four places of worship—­a church of the Establishment, a Free church, a church for the Seceders, and one for the Methodists.  The road we took commanded a fine view of the harbor, surrounded and sheltered by hills.  Within it lay a numerous group of idle fishing-vessels, with one great steamer in the midst; and more formidable in appearance, a Dutch man-of-war, sent to protect the Dutch fisheries, with the flag of Holland flying at the mast-head.  Above the town, on tall poles, were floating the flags of four or five different nations, to mark the habitation of their consuls.

On the side opposite to the harbor, lay the small fresh-water lake of Cleikimin, with the remains of a Pictish castle in the midst; one of those circular buildings of unhewn, uncemented stone, skillfully laid, forming apartments and galleries of such small dimensions as to lead Sir Walter Scott to infer that the Picts were a people of a stature considerably below the ordinary standard of the human race.  A deep Sabbath silence reigned over the scene, except the sound of the wind, which here never ceases to blow from one quarter or another, as it swept the herbage and beat against the stone walls surrounding the fields.  The ground under our feet was thick with daisies and the blossoms of the crow-foot and other flowers; for in the brief summer of these islands, nature, which has no groves to embellish, makes amends by pranking the ground, particularly in the uncultivated parts, with a great profusion and variety of flowers.