definitely to point out the career which she subsequently followed; and from this time until the close of her life she worked diligently in her chosen field.  She rapidly acquired an appreciative public in and out of Sweden.  Many of her novels and tales were translated into various languages, several of them appearing simultaneously in Swedish and English.  In 1844 the Swedish Academy awarded her its great gold medal of merit.

Several long journeys abroad mark the succeeding years:  to Denmark and America from 1848 to 1857; to Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Palestine, and Greece, from 1856 to 1861; to Germany in 1862, returning the same year.  The summer months of 1864 she spent at Arsta, which since 1853 had passed out of the hands of the family.  She removed there the year after, and died there on the 31st of December.

Fredrika Bremer’s most successful literary work was in the line of her earliest writings, descriptive of the every-day life of the middle classes.  Her novels in this line have an unusual charm of expression, whose definable elements are an unaffected simplicity and a certain quiet humor which admirably fits the chosen milieu.  Besides the ones already mentioned, ‘Presidentens Doettrar’ (The President’s Daughters), ‘Grannarna’ (The Neighbors), ‘Hemmet’ (The Home), ‘Nina,’ and others, cultivated this field.  Later she drifted into “tendency” fiction, making her novels the vehicles for her opinions on important public questions, such as religion, philanthropy, and above all the equal rights of women.  These later productions, of which ‘Hertha’ and ‘Syskonlif’ are the most important, are far inferior to her earlier work.  She had, however, the satisfaction of seeing the realization of several of the movements which she had so ardently espoused:  the law that unmarried women in Sweden should attain their majority at twenty-five years of age; the organization at Stockholm of a seminary for the education of woman teachers; and certain parliamentary reforms.

In addition to her novels and short stories, she wrote some verse, mostly unimportant, and several books of travel, among them ’Hemmen i ny Verlden’ (Homes in the New World), containing her experiences of America; ‘Life in the Old World’; and ‘Greece and the Greeks.’

* * * * *

A HOME-COMING

From ‘The Neighbors’

LETTER I.—­FRANCISCA W. TO MARIA M.

Rosenvik, 1st June, 18.

Here I am now, dear Maria, in my own house and home, at my own writing-table, and with my own Bear.  And who then is Bear? no doubt you ask.  Who else should he be but my own husband?  I call him Bear because—­it so happens.  I am seated at the window.  The sun is setting.  Two swans are swimming in the lake, and furrow its clear mirror.  Three cows—­my cows—­are standing on the verdant margin, quiet, fat, and pensive, and certainly think of nothing.  What excellent cows they are!  Now the maid is coming up with the milk-pail.  Delicious milk in the country!  But what is not good in the country?  Air and people, food and feelings, earth and sky, everything there is fresh and cheering.