double windows and close doors, their rooms are kept comfortably
warm all the winter. The consequence is that much more cold is felt
in warmer climates during winter than in Sweden. A Swedish gentleman,
who had passed a winter in London, told me that he never felt
comfortably warm all the time. The case must be still more disagreeable
in Sicily and Italy, where there are often no fire places at all
and no means o f warming a room however cold the weather
may be.
As there are Ho taverns in Stockholm, i f we except the English
tavern, which is too small to accommodate any great number of persons,
and as the hotels or lodging houses do not furnish you with
dinner, a stranger is under some difficulty how to proceed. It is true
that there are many ordinaries; but such places are at best but disagreeable
to à foreigner who is unacquainted with the language ; and
are therefore nearly out o f the question. On this account it may be
worth while to mention two institutions which exist at Stockholm, by
introduction to either of which all your difficulties are completely removed.
The first o f these institutions is called the Société, the second
the SelsJcap, which means the same thing, only the first word is French,
the second Swedish. The first o f these institutions belongs to the nobility,
the second to the merchants. The second seemed to me upon
the whole the preferable one. It consists of a club of five hundred
individuals, who pay a certain sum annually, by mean's of which' a set
o f apartments are kept up for their use. They have a considerable
number of books, and get daily a variety of Swedish, German, Danish,
Russian, French, and English newspapers, magazines, reviews,
&C. which are left upon the fable for the perusal of all the members.
They have a dining room, where a dinner is prepared daily for as many
of the members as choose to come to it. About fifty persons' commonly
sit down to dinner, though I have seen as many as two hundred
dine together. The dinner is a very good one, and costs twenty-one
pence sterling a head, besides which you pay for whatever wine, porter,
ice-creams, coffee, &c. you choose to call for. Any of the members
has it in his power to introduce a stranger to this Selskap for a
month, by making himself answerable for the propriety of his conduct
while in the apartments of the society. By the goodness of Mr. Sider-
holm, a Swedish merchant, to whom I had a letter of introduction, I
was introduced to the selskap, and regularly dined at their table when
I was not otherwise engaged,
Q