FORSELL, CARL AF, a Swedish philanthropist and statistician, was born at Slottorp, in tho province of Skaraborg, on the 18th of March 1783. His father was a colonel in the army, his mother, whose name was Do Bruce, was descended from a Scottish family rattled iu Sweden. At the school of Skara where he received his first education he was frequently flogged, and was remarkably dull ; at the military academy of Carlsberg, where corporal punishment was prohibited, he gained a succession of prizes. In 1801 he commenced his career as an officer on board the Bellona frigate, during the armed neutrality of the northern powers, but he was never fond of the eea, and was soon transferred to the land-service. Ho was for some time engaged iu taking surveys of parts of Sweden for the great map by Baron liennelin, which was made at Hermelin's expense, and in 1808 with bis brother in taking similar surveys for the projected Gotha canal, which was carried into effect by Telford the engineer of the Caledonian Canal, and which, like the Scottish undertaking, was far from success ful as a pecuniary speculation. In 1809 on hearing that Adlemparre, the commander of a portion of the army of Finland, was on his march to Stockholm to effect an alteration in the government, Forsell instantly went off to the insurgents and offered his services, which were accepted. General Dada, to whom Forsell was sent with some proposals, threatened to have him shot as a rebel, but in a few days the question was decided without a blow. Gustavus IV. was dethroned, and his uncle Charles XIII. succeeded. Foresail was appointed adjutant to the newly-elected crown-prince, Charles Augustus of Auguetenburg, and attended him in his expedition to Seania, where the prince's sudden death put an end to the hopes of seeing the three crowns of Scandinavia united on one head. Fenton was also present at the most disgraceful scene in the modern history of Sweden, when Count von Ferran, wrongfully suspected of having poisoned the prince, was torn to pieces at his funeral by the mob of Stockholm. The now crown prince, Bernadotte, continued Forsell in his post, and he accompanied him during all the war in Germany, having under hi. eharge the maps required for the campaign, which were not lea. than 5000. After the peace he was raised in 1817 to the order of nobles, and in 1821 became chief of the surveying department with the rank of colonel. A new map of Sweden in eight sheets on a larger scale than Ilennelin's was constrnoted under his superintendence, awl Norway, now united to Sweden, was mapped on the same scale by Norwegian officers. A aeries of statistical tables, originally pub limbed In a quarto volume as an accompauhneut to the map, was found so useful that it was republished In a separate form under the title of IStatistik bfver Sverige,' in 1831, was trauainted into Danish and German, and ran through severe] editions, the last of which was issued In 1844. It is the book most frequently referred to by writers
on the subject A volume of notes, ' Auteckuingar och Statittiska Upplysniogar sifter Sverige,' pnblished in 1837, hi a companion, and is intended to correct some of the injurious notions of Sweden diffused by Laing. Fos-sell took an active part In introducing into his native country several of the Improvement, of modern times, both moral and meehauleal. In 1819 he wrote • pamphlet and founded a company for the introduction of steam-boats, and it was a subject of pride that the first two steamers in Sweden were built in Swedish waters, at Stockholm and 114-suite, but one was in Mr. Owen's establishment, and the other at Mr. Stafford's ; and the latter was so bad that it occasioned a loss to the shareholders. In 1820 and 1521 he intro duced savings banks, in 1830 temperance societies, in 1834 a society in imitation of the English Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know ledge, which published a periodical entitled for Folket ' (' Reading for the People'). In 1834 he visited England for the purpose of studying the management of iufant schools. The visit was a very unfortunate one, for it was begun when he was unwell, it was continued in ill-health, and it all but ended fatally in an attack of the cholera at Manchester, where ho finally rose from a sick bed without money to carry him home, but was set at ease by his Quaker physician, Dr. Ransom, who told him he would discharge his hotel bill and wait for his own till his patient had arrived at Stockholm. In 1885 he published his 'Notes on the occasion of a Tour to England at the end of the Summer of I834,' in which he gives an account of his visit to Mr. Clowes'e printing-office, to his old friend Mr. Telford, to his countryman Mr. Ericsson, stc., but the volume on the whole bears signs of the feebleness of the author's health. lie supplied an account of education in Sweden to the sixth volume of the London 'Journal of Education,' and a notice of the provision for the poor in Sweden to the English Poor-Law Commissioners, which was printed in their report laid before parliament. Fondl died at Stockholm on the 25th of October 1848, universally respected as a zealous bene factor of his fellow-citizeus. The name is common in Sweden, and the Carl Persson who in 1836 published a handsome volume of costumes under the title of Ett Ar i Sverige' (' A Year in Sweden'), is not akin to the statistician.