A Swedish Visitor to England, 1809-1810
Roger Pilkington describes how the Swedish poet, historian and philosopher, Erik Gustaf Geijer, made a tour of England when acting as a private tutor.
Hammers resound along the streams large and small. Where I was born there were set in a little brook which ran down from a woodland lake into the River Klara no less than three hammers in a quarter of a (Swedish) mile. It was a remote corner of the world where I was brought up, and it is with a kind of homesickness that I still recall that a mere eighth of a mile from my parents’ home the road simply ended. For those who could only go by carriage this was the limit of the civilized world.’