THE LEADER.

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EBBA: 
OR THE EMIGRANTS IN SWEDEN.

TRANSLATION FOR THE INTERNATIONAL, FROM THE FRENCH OF X. MARMIER.

BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.

Toward the end of November, in the year 1831, one of those rude sleighs, met with in winter on all the roads of Sweden, passed rapidly along the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia.  For several hours the pale winter sun had been like a lamp extinguished beneath the horizon.  The skies, however, had that transparent clearness which is one of the charms of the nights of the north.  Myriads of stars covered its surface with a network of gold, and glittered again on the snow which covered the surface of the earth.  The wind was calm:  space was silent.  Nothing was heard but the sounds of the hoofs of two horses attached to a light vehicle, and occasionally the voice of the Swedish postillion, who from time to time urged them on by a word of affectionate reproach, or a joyous eulogium.  A traveler sat in the sleigh, wrapped up in heavy furs, and from time to time cast aside the folds of the cloak which covered him, to take a thoughtful glance around him.  A stranger in Sweden, he was traveling through it, and during the last month had experienced a multitude of emotions, altogether unexpected, and which seemed to increase as he drew near the north.  After having crossed the southern provinces of that kingdom bounded by the Baltic, and those on the vast silver basin of Lake Milar, seen Stockholm in all its pride, Upsal, the city of the ancient gods, and Gebel, the active and industrious, he found himself amid a region entirely silent, inanimate, and wrapped in a snowy pall.  Soon he penetrated the bosom of a long pine forest, the shafts of which seemed, as it were, giants wrapped in cloaks of white.  Now he ascended steep hills, then rapidly hurried to the Gulf, the shores of which the waves had made to look like point-lace, and looked up at the immense rocks on which the waters broke.

Everywhere the same silence existed.  Far in the distance a light was seen to shine, either the glitter of a woodman’s fire, or the midnight torch kindled by some invalid.  This light, fixed like a point in space, was but another evidence of the isolation of man in these regions.

In this inanimateness of nature, in this sad uniformity of plains of snow, in this desert of fields and woods, such sadness, such distress was evident, that the heart of the traveler, who however was young and brave, was filled with a kind of mysterious fear.  Before him, among all the other stars, shone that of the pole, that faithful light which is nightly kindled like a pharos, and in the seasons of storm, smiles on the pilgrim who has gone astray, and guides the navigator’s steps.  The stranger, for a few instants, kept his eyes fixed on this benevolent light, as if to find some relief to the impressions he had received from the melancholy appearance of