No large town there affords opportunity for pomp or gaiety, or for the commission of smaller or greater sins.

Rarely does a foreigner enter the island, whose remoteness, severe climate, inhospitality, and poverty, are uninviting.
The grandeur and peculiarity of its natural formation alone makes it interesting, and that does not suffice for the masses.
I therefore expected to find Iceland a real Arcadia in regard to its inhabitants, and rejoiced at the anticipation of seeing such an Idyllic life realised.

I felt so happy when I set foot on the island that I could have embraced humanity.

But I was soon undeceived.
I have often been impatient at my want of enthusiasm, which must be great, as I see every thing in a more prosaic form than other travellers.
I do not maintain that my view is _right_, but I at least possess the virtue of describing facts as I see them, and do not repeat them from the accounts of others.
I have already described the impoliteness and heartlessness of the so-called higher classes, and soon lost the good opinion I had formed of them.

I now came to the working classes in the vicinity of Reikjavik.
The saying often applied to the Swiss people, "No money, no Swiss," one may also apply to the Icelanders.