Austria is a very fine country, and contains a great variety of people.  The principal artizans are tanners, furriers, boot makers, lace workers, and cabinet makers.  There are also workers in iron, copper, alum, saltpetre, besides many others.  The general habits of the Austrians are like those of the Germans, so I do not think I need tell you anything about them.

The Poles and Hungarians have also sent their industrial productions to the Great Exhibition; cloth, lace, furniture, brooms, linens, woollens, and other articles.  I dare say you have heard a good deal lately about the Hungarians, when they were fighting against the Austrians and Russians.  The Hungarian peasants are very hard-working; indeed, they cannot help being so, for as the nobility and gentry are not taxed, the poor people are forced to pay all the taxes, besides being obliged to give money and provisions to their masters, the Lords of the Manor, who, I am sorry to say, are excessively tyrannical.  They are also compelled to pay tithes to the clergy, the magistrates, and the soldiers, and to work for nothing on the public works; against which bad laws they fought.  Agriculture, and the breeding of cattle, are carried on to a considerable extent.

Hungary is occupied by a variety of people, with entirely different habits; it contains Frenchmen, Sclavonians, Turks, Jews, Spaniards, Gipsies, Germans, and Greeks.  The Magyar language, the original Hungarian tongue, is spoken by the peasants; but in the cities the people mostly use German and French.

The Poles live in a cold, flat, marshy country, in the north of Europe.  The peasantry are in a miserable state, very dirty and frequently drunken; and their land is in a wretched condition.

The Swedish and Danish people have made many things to be exhibited in the World’s Fair.  Sweden is in the north of Europe, and the climate is very disagreeable, for it is extremely cold in winter, and intolerably hot in summer.  The people do not live very luxuriantly; their bread is not only black and coarse, but so hard that they are sometimes obliged to break it with a hatchet; and this, with dried fish, and salt meat, forms the chief part of their food.  Yet they are very hardy and contented.  At Michaelmas, they kill their cattle and salt them, for the winter and spring.  Their favourite drink is beer, and they delight in malt spirits; some of them have tea and coffee.  Their houses are generally built of wood, and their cottages are made of rough logs; the roofs are covered with turf, on which the goats browse.  The Swedish women do everything that men are employed to do in other countries; they plough, sow, and thresh, and work with the bricklayers; the country women, as well as the ladies, wear veils to shade their faces from the glare of the snow in winter, and from the scorching rays of the sun reflected from the barren rocks in summer.

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The iron mines of Sweden are exceedingly useful; they furnish great quantities of metal, to be exported to England, for the use of our steel manufactories.  The extensive forests supply numerous pine trees, which are cut down and sent to foreign countries, for ship and house building; while pitch and tar are made from the sap,—­a preparation which gives employment to many of the inhabitants.