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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12313 ***
+
+PICTURES OF SWEDEN
+
+
+By
+
+HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
+
+Author of
+"The Improvisatore," &c.
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+
+1851.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+TROLLHÄTTA
+
+THE BIRD PHOENIX
+
+KINNAKULLA
+
+GRANDMOTHER
+
+THE PRISON-CELLS
+
+BEGGAR-BOYS
+
+VADSTENE
+
+THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN
+
+THE "SKJÄRGAARDS"
+
+STOCKHOLM
+
+DIURGAERDEN
+
+A STORY
+
+UPSALA
+
+SALA
+
+THE MUTE BOOK
+
+THE ZÄTHER DALE
+
+THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND
+
+FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE
+
+IN THE FOREST
+
+FAHLUN
+
+WHAT THE STRAWS SAID
+
+THE POET'S SYMBOL
+
+THE DAL-ELV
+
+DANEMORA
+
+THE SWINE
+
+POETRY'S CALIFORNIA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+We Travel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand
+their song? Well, hear it in a free translation.
+
+"Get on my back," says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, "and
+I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant
+beech woods, green meadows and corn-fields. In Scania, with the
+flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that
+you are still in Denmark."
+
+"Fly with me," says the swallow; "I fly over Holland's mountain ridge,
+where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north
+than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky
+ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is
+good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the
+table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a
+prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I
+have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves."
+
+"Come with me! come with me!" screams the restless sea-gull, and flies
+in an expecting circle. "Come with me to the Skjärgaards, where rocky
+isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower-beds along the
+coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!"
+
+"Rest thee between our extended wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us
+bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs
+(rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has
+long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our
+extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the
+mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the
+snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North
+Sea, on yonder side of Norway.
+
+"We fly to Jemteland, where the rocky mountains are high and blue;
+where the Foss roars and rushes; where the torches are lighted as
+_budstikke_[A] to announce that the ferryman is expected. Up to the
+deep, cold-running waters, where the midsummer sun does not set; where
+the rosy hue of eve is that of morn."
+
+[Footnote A: A chip of wood in the form of a halberd, circulated for
+the purpose of convening the inhabitants of a district in Sweden and
+Norway.]
+
+That is the birds' song. Shall we lay it to heart? Shall we accompany
+them?--at least a part of the way. We will not sit upon the stork's
+back, or between the swans' wings. We will go forward with steam, and
+with horses--yes, also on our own legs, and glance now and then from
+reality, over the fence into the region of thought, which is always
+our near neighbour-land; pluck a flower or a leaf, to be placed in the
+note-book--for it sprung out during our journey's flight: we fly and
+we sing. Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, where, in ancient times,
+the sacred gods came from Asia's mountains! land that still retains
+rays of their lustre, which streams from the flowers in the name of
+"Linnaeus;" which beams for thy chivalrous men from Charles the
+Twelfth's banner; which sounds from the obelisk on the field of
+Lutzen! Sweden, thou land of deep feeling, of heart-felt songs! home
+of the limpid elvs, where the wild swans sing in the gleam of the
+Northern Lights! Thou land, on whose deep, still lakes Scandinavia's
+fairy builds her colonnades, and leads her battling, shadowy host over
+the icy mirror! Glorious Sweden! with thy fragrant Linnaeus, with
+Jenny's soul-enlivening songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and
+the swallow, with the restless sea-gull and the wild swans. Thy
+birch-woods exhale refreshing fragrance under their sober, bending
+branches; on the tree's white stem the harp shall hang: the North's
+summer wind shall whistle therein!
+
+
+
+
+TROLLHÄTTA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Who did we meet at Trollhätta? It is a strange story, and we will
+relate it.
+
+We landed at the first sluice, and stood as it were in a garden laid
+out in the English style. The broad walks are covered with gravel, and
+rise in short terraces between the sunlit greensward: it is charming,
+delightful here, but by no means imposing. If one desires to be
+excited in this manner, one must go a little higher up to the older
+sluices, which deep and narrow have burst through the hard rock. It
+looks magnificent, and the water in its dark bed far below is lashed
+into foam. Up here one overlooks both elv and valley; the bank of the
+river on the other side, rises in green undulating hills, grouped with
+leafy trees and red-painted wooden houses, which are bounded by rocks
+and pine forests. Steam-boats and sailing vessels ascend through the
+sluices; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them
+up above the rock, and from the forest itself it buzzes, roars and
+rattles. The din of Trollhätta Falls mingles with the noise from the
+saw-mills and smithies.
+
+"In three hours we shall be through the sluices," said the Captain:
+"in that time you will see the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn
+up here."
+
+We went from the path through the forest: a whole flock of bare-headed
+boys surrounded us. They would all be our guides; the one screamed
+longer than the other, and every one gave his contradictory
+explanation, how high the water stood, and how high it did not stand,
+or could stand. There was also a great difference of opinion amongst
+the learned.
+
+We soon stopped on a ling-covered rock, a dizzying terrace. Before us,
+but far below, was the roaring water, the Hell Fall, and over this
+again, fall after fall, the rich, rapid, rushing elv--the outlet of
+the largest lake in Sweden. What a sight! what a foaming and roaring,
+above--below! It is like the waves of the sea, but of effervescing
+champagne--of boiling milk. The water rushes round two rocky islands
+at the top so that the spray rises like meadow dew. Below, the water
+is more compressed, then hurries down again, shoots forward and
+returns in circles like smooth water, and then rolls darting its long
+sea-like fall into the Hell Fall. What a tempest rages in the
+deep--what a sight! Words cannot express it!
+
+Nor could our screaming little guides. They stood mute; and when they
+again began with their explanations and stories, they did not come
+far, for an old gentleman whom none of us had noticed (but he was now
+amongst us), made himself heard above the noise, with his singularly
+sounding voice. He knew all the particulars about the place, and about
+former days, as if they had been of yesterday.
+
+"Here, on the rocky holms," said he, "it was that the warriors in the
+heathen times, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior
+Stärkodder dwelt in this district, and liked the pretty girl Ogn right
+well; but she was fonder of Hergrimmer, and therefore he was
+challenged by Stärkodder to combat here by the falls, and met his
+death; but Ogn sprung towards them, took her bridegroom's bloody
+sword, and thrust it into her own heart. Thus Stärkodder did not gain
+her. Then there passed a hundred years, and again a hundred years: the
+forests were then thick and closely grown; wolves and bears prowled
+here summer and winter; the place was infested with malignant robbers,
+whose hiding-place no one could find. It was yonder, by the fall
+before Top Island, on the Norwegian side--there was their cave: now it
+has fallen in! The cliff there overhangs it!"
+
+"Yes, the Tailor's Cliff!" shouted all the boys. "It fell in the year
+1755!"
+
+"Fell!" said the old man, as if in astonishment that any one but
+himself could know it. "Everything will fall once, and the tailor
+directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that
+if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he
+should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the
+first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down
+into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The
+Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she
+betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was
+seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed.
+That outside there is called 'The Thieves' Fall,' and down there under
+the water is another cave, the elv rushes in there and returns
+boiling; one can see it well up here, one hears it too, but it can be
+heard better under the bergman's loft.
+
+And we went on and on, along the Fall, towards Top Island,
+continuously on smooth paths covered with saw-dust, to Polham's
+Sluice. A cleft had been made in the rock for the first intended
+sluice-work, which was not finished, but whereby art has created the
+most imposing of all Trollhätta's Falls; the hurrying water falling
+here perpendicularly into the black deep. The side of the rock is here
+placed in connection with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge,
+which appears as if thrown over the abyss. We venture on to the
+rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on
+the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from
+the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the
+rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the
+fine spray. The torrent flows on each side, as if shot out from a
+gigantic cannon, fall after fall: we look out over them all, and are
+filled with the harmonic sound, which since time began, has ever been
+the same.
+
+"No one can ever get to the island there," said one of our party,
+pointing to the large island above the topmost fall.
+
+"I however know one!" said the old man, and nodded with a peculiar
+smile.
+
+"Yes, my grandfather could!" said one of the boys, "scarcely any one
+besides has crossed during a hundred years. The cross that is set up
+over there was placed there by my grandfather. It had been a severe
+winter, the whole of Lake Venern was frozen; the ice dammed up the
+outlet, and for many hours there was a dry bottom. Grandfather has
+told about it: he went over with two others, placed the cross up, and
+returned. But then there was such a thundering and cracking noise,
+just as if it were cannons. The ice broke up and the elv came over the
+fields and forest. It is true, every word I say!"
+
+One of the travellers cited Tegner:
+
+    "Vildt Göta stortade från Fjallen,
+     Hemsk Trollet från sat Toppfall röt!
+     Men Snillet kom och sprängt stod Hallen,
+     Med Skeppen i sitt sköt!"
+
+"Poor mountain sprite," he continued, "thy power and glory recede! Man
+flies over thee--thou mayst go and learn of him."
+
+The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to
+himself--but we were just by the bridge before the inn. The steam-boat
+glided through the opened way, every one hastened to get on board, and
+it directly shot away above the Fall, just as if no Fall existed.
+
+"And that can be done!" said the old man. He knew nothing at all about
+steam-boats, had never before that day seen such a thing, and
+accordingly he was sometimes up and sometimes down, and stood by the
+machinery and stared at the whole construction, as if he were counting
+all the pins and screws. The course of the canal appeared to him to be
+something quite new; the plan of it and the guide-books were quite
+foreign objects to him: he turned them and turned them--for read I do
+not think he could. But he knew all the particulars about the
+country--that is to say, from olden times.
+
+I heard that he did not sleep at all the whole night. He studied the
+passage of the steam-boat; and when we in the morning ascended the
+sluice terraces from Lake Venern, higher and higher from lake to lake,
+away over the high-plain--higher, continually higher--he was in such
+activity that it appeared as if it could not be greater--and then we
+reached Motala.
+
+The Swedish author Tjörnerös relates of himself, that when a child he
+once asked what it was that ticked in the clock, and they answered him
+that it was one named "_Bloodless_." What brought the child's pulse to
+beat with feverish throbs and the hair on his head to rise, also
+exercised its power in Motala, over the old man from Trollhätta.
+
+We now went through the great manufactory in Motala. What ticks in the
+clock, beats here with strong strokes of the hammer. It is
+_Bloodless_, who drank life from human thought and thereby got limbs
+of metals, stone and wood; it is _Bloodless_, who by human thought
+gained strength, which man himself does not physically possess.
+_Bloodless_ reigns in Motala, and through the large foundries and
+factories he extends his hard limbs, whose joints and parts consist of
+wheel within wheel, chains, bars, and thick iron wires. Enter, and see
+how the glowing iron masses are formed into long bars. _Bloodless_
+spins the glowing bar! see how the shears cut into the heavy metal
+plates; they cut as quietly and as softly as if the plates were paper.
+Here where he hammers, the sparks fly from the anvil. See how he
+breaks the thick iron bars; he breaks them into lengths; it is as if
+it were a stick of sealing-wax that is broken. The long iron bars
+rattle before your feet; iron plates are planed into shavings; before
+you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire--long
+heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around
+in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for
+steam-boats and locomotives, _Bloodless_ also here stretches out one
+of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man
+alone stands and is silenced by--_stop!_
+
+The perspiration oozes out of one's fingers'-ends: one turns and
+turns, bows, and knows not one's self, from pure respect for the human
+thought which here has iron limbs. And yet the large iron hammer goes
+on continually with its heavy strokes: it is as if it said: "Banco,
+Banco! many thousand dollars; Banco, pure gain! Banco! Banco!"--Hear
+it, as I heard it; see, as I saw!
+
+The old gentleman from Trollhätta walked up and down in full
+contemplation; bent and swung himself about; crept on his knees, and
+stuck his head into corners and between the machines, for he would
+know everything so exactly; he would see the screw in the propelling
+vessels, understand their mechanism and effect under water--and the
+water itself poured like hail-drops down his forehead. He fell
+unconscious, backwards into my arms, or else he would have been drawn
+into the machinery, and been crushed: he looked at me, and pressed my
+hand.
+
+"And all this goes on naturally," said he; "simply and comprehensibly.
+Ships go against the wind, and against the stream, sail higher than
+forests and mountains. The water must raise, steam must drive them!"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"Yes," said he, and again _yes_, with a sigh which I did not then
+understand; but, months after, I understood it, and I will at once
+make a spring to that time, and we are again at Trollhätta.
+
+I came here in the autumn, on my return home; stayed some days in this
+mighty piece of nature, where busy human life forces its way more and
+more in, and, by degrees, transforms the picturesque to the useful
+manufactory. Trollhätta must do her work; saw beams, drive mills,
+hammer and break to pieces: one building grows up by the side of the
+other, and in half a century hence here will be a city. But that was
+not the story.
+
+I came, as I have said, here again in the autumn. I found the same
+rushing and roaring, the same din, the same rising and sinking in the
+sluices, the same chattering boys who conducted fresh travellers to
+the Hell Fall, to the iron-bridge island, and to the inn. I sat here,
+and turned over the leaves of books, collected here through a series
+of years, in which travellers have inscribed their names, feelings and
+thoughts at Trollhätta--almost always the same astonishment, expressed
+in different languages, though generally in Latin: _veni, vidi,
+obstupui_.
+
+One has written: "I have seen nature's master-piece pervade that of
+art;" another cannot say what he saw, and what he saw he cannot say. A
+mine owner and manufacturer, full of the doctrine of utility, has
+written: "Seen with the greatest pleasure this useful work for us in
+Värmeland, Trollhätta." The wife of a dean from Scania expresses
+herself thus. She has kept to the family, and only signed in the
+remembrance book, as to the effect of her feelings at Trollhätta. "God
+grant my brother-in-law fortune, for he has understanding!" Some few
+have added witticisms to the others' feelings; yet as a pearl on this
+heap of writing shines Tegner's poem, written by himself in the book
+on the 28th of June, 1804:
+
+    "Gotha kom i dans från Seves fjallar, &c."
+
+I looked up from the book and who should stand before me, just about
+to depart again, but the old man from Trollhätta! Whilst I had
+wandered about, right up to the shores of Siljan, he had continually
+made voyages on the canal; seen the sluices and manufactories, studied
+steam in all its possible powers of service, and spoke about a
+projected railway in Sweden, between the Hjalmar and Venern. He had,
+however, never yet seen a railway, and I described to him these
+extended roads, which sometimes rise like ramparts, sometimes like
+towering bridges, and at times like halls of miles in length, cut
+through rocks. I also spoke of America and England.
+
+"One takes breakfast in London, and the same day one drinks tea in
+Edinburgh."
+
+"That I can do!" said the man, and in as cool a tone as if no one but
+himself could do it, "I can also," said I; "and I have done it."
+
+"And who are you, then?" he asked.
+
+"A common traveller," I replied; "a traveller who pays for his
+conveyance. And who are you?"
+
+The man sighed.
+
+"You do not know me: my time is past; my power is nothing! _Bloodless_
+is stronger than I!" and he was gone.
+
+I then understood who he was. Well, in what humour must a poor
+mountain sprite be, who only comes up every hundred years to see how
+things go forward here on the earth!
+
+It was the mountain sprite and no other, for in our time every
+intelligent person is considerably wiser; and I looked with a sort of
+proud feeling on the present generation, on the gushing, rushing,
+whirling wheel, the heavy blows of the hammer, the shears that cut so
+softly through the metal plates, the thick iron bars that were broken
+like sticks of sealing-wax, and the music to which the heart's
+pulsations vibrate: "Banco, Banco, a hundred thousand Banco!" and all
+by steam--by mind and spirit.
+
+It was evening. I stood on the heights of Trollhätta's old sluices,
+and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows
+like spectres, large and white. The sluice gates were opened with a
+ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of
+the secret council in Germany. The evening was so still that
+Trollhätta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were
+a chorus from a hundred water-mills--ever one and the same tone. In
+one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer
+through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature
+was felt. Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the
+forest, down towards the Falls. Was it the mountain sprite?--We will
+imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRD PHOENIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the garden of Paradise, under the tree of knowledge, stood a hedge
+of roses. In the first rose a bird was hatched; its flight was like
+that of light, its colours beautiful, its song magnificent.
+
+But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were
+driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's
+flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died
+in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one--the only
+one--the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up
+its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself up in
+its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out
+from the red egg.
+
+The bird hovers around us, rapid as the light, beautiful in colour,
+glorious in song. When the mother sits by the child's cradle, it is by
+the pillow, and with its wings flutters a glory around the child's
+head. It flies through the chamber of contentment, and there is the
+sun's radiance within:--the poor chest of drawers is odoriferous with
+violets.
+
+But the bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia's bird: it flutters in the
+rays of the Northern Lights on Lapland's icy plains; it hops amongst
+the yellow flowers in Greenland's short summer. Under Fahlun's copper
+rocks, in England's coal mines, it flies like a powdered moth over the
+hymn-book in the pious workman's hands. It sails on the lotus-leaf
+down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the Hindoo girl
+glisten on seeing it.
+
+The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? The bird of Paradise, song's
+sacred swan! It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and
+flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland's minstrel-harp
+glided the swan's red, sounding bill. It sat on Shakspeare's shoulder
+like Odin's raven, and whispered in his ear: "Immortality!" It flew at
+the minstrel competition, through Wartzburg's knightly halls.
+
+The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? It sang the Marseillaise for
+thee, and thou didst kiss the plume that fell from its wing: it came
+in the lustre of Paradise, and thou perhaps didst turn thyself away to
+some poor sparrow that sat with merest tinsel on its wings.
+
+The bird of Paradise! regenerated every century, bred in flames, dead
+in flames; thy image set in gold hangs in the saloons of the rich,
+even though thou fliest often astray and alone. "The bird Phoenix in
+Arabia"--is but a legend.
+
+In the garden of Paradise, when thou wast bred under the tree of
+knowledge, in the first rose, our Lord kissed thee and gave thee thy
+proper name--Poetry.
+
+
+
+
+KINNAKULLA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens! Thee will we visit. We stand by
+the lowest terrace in a plenitude of flowers and verdure; the ancient
+village church leans its grey pointed wooden tower, as if it would
+fall; it produces an effect in the landscape: we would not even be
+without that large flock of birds, which just now chance to fly away
+over the mountain forest.
+
+The high road leads up the mountain with short palings on either side,
+between which we see extensive plains with hops, wild roses,
+corn-fields, and delightful beech woods, such as are not to be found
+in any other place in Sweden. The ivy winds itself around old trees
+and stones--even to the withered trunk green leaves are lent. We look
+out over the flat, extended woody plain, to the sunlit church-tower of
+Maristad, which shines like a white sail on the dark green sea: we
+look out over the Venern Lake, but cannot see its further shore.
+Skjärgaardens' wood-crowned rocks lie like a wreath down in the lake;
+the steam-boat comes--see! down by the cliff under the red-roofed
+mansions, where the beech and walnut trees grow in the garden.
+
+The travellers land; they wander under shady trees away over that
+pretty light green meadow, which is enwreathed by gardens and woods:
+no English park has a finer verdure than the meadows near Hellekis.
+They go up to "the grottos," as they call the projecting masses of red
+stone higher up, which, being thoroughly kneaded with petrifactions,
+project from the declivity of the earth, and remind one of the
+mouldering colossal tombs in the Campagna of Rome. Some are smooth and
+rounded off by the streaming of the water, others bear the moss of
+ages, grass and flowers, nay, even tall trees.
+
+The travellers go from the forest road up to the top of Kinnakulla,
+where a stone is raised as the goal of their wanderings. The traveller
+reads in his guide-book about the rocky strata of Kinnakulla: "At the
+bottom is found sandstone, then alum-stone, then limestone, and above
+this red-stone, higher still slate, and lastly, trap." And, now that
+he has seen this, he descends again, and goes on board. He has seen
+Kinnakulla:--yes, the stony rock here, amidst the swelling verdure,
+showed him one heavy, thick stone finger, and most of the travellers
+think that they are like the devil, if they lay hold upon one finger,
+they have the body--but it is not always so. The least visited side of
+Kinnakulla is just the most characteristic, and thither will we go.
+
+The road still leads us a long way on this side of the mountain, step
+by step downwards, in long terraces of rich fields: further down, the
+slate-stone peers forth in flat layers, a green moss upon it, and it
+looks like threadbare patches in the green velvet carpet. The high
+road leads over an extent of ground where the slate-stone lies like a
+firm floor. In the Campagna of Rome, one would say it is a piece of
+_via appia_, or antique road; but it is Kinnakulla's naked skin and
+bones that we pass over. The peasant's house is composed of large
+slate-stones, and the roof is covered with them; one sees nothing of
+wood except that of the door, and above it, of the large painted
+shield, which states to what regiment the soldier belongs who got this
+house and plot of ground in lieu of pay.
+
+We cast another glance over Venern, to Lockö's old palace, to the town
+of Lendkjobing, and are again near verdant fields and noble trees,
+that cast their shadows over Blomberg, where, in the garden, the poet
+Geier's spirit seeks the flower of Kinnakulla in his grand-daughter,
+little Anna.
+
+The plain expands here behind Kinnakulla; it extends for miles around,
+towards the horizon. A shower stands in the heavens; the wind has
+increased: see how the rain falls to the ground like a darkening veil.
+The branches of the trees lash one another like penitential dryades.
+Old Husaby church lies near us, yonder; though the shower lashes the
+high walls, which alone stand, of the old Catholic Bishop's palace.
+Crows and ravens fly through the long glass-less windows, which time
+has made larger; the rain pours down the crevices in the old grey
+walls, as if they were now to be loosened stone from stone: but the
+church stands--old Husaby church--so grey and venerable, with its
+thick walls, its small windows, and its three spires stuck against
+each other, and standing, like nuts, in a cluster.
+
+The old trees in the churchyard cast their shade over ancient graves.
+Where is the district's "Old Mortality," who weeds the grass, and
+explains the ancient memorials? Large granite stones are laid here in
+the form of coffins, ornamented with rude carvings from the times of
+Catholicism. The old church-door creaks in the hinges. We stand within
+its walls, where the vaulted roof was filled for centuries with the
+fragrance of incense, with monks, and with the song of the choristers.
+Now it is still and mute here: the old men in their monastic dresses
+have passed into their graves; the blooming boys that swung the censer
+are in their graves; the congregation--many generations--all in their
+graves; but the church still stands the same. The moth-eaten, dusty
+cowls, and the bishops' mantle, from the days of the cloister, hang in
+the old oak presses; and old manuscripts, half eaten up by the rats,
+lie strewed about on the shelves in the sacristy.
+
+In the left aisle of the church there still stands, and has stood time
+out of mind, a carved image of wood, painted in various colours which
+are still strong: it is the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus. Fresh
+flower wreaths are hung around hers and the child's head; fragrant
+garlands are twined around the pedestal, as festive as on Madonna's
+birthday feast in the times of Popery. The young folks who have been
+confirmed, have this day, on receiving the sacrament for the first
+time, ornamented this old image--nay, even set the priest's name in
+flowers upon the altar; and he has, to our astonishment, let it remain
+there.
+
+The image of Madonna seems to have become young by the fresh wreaths:
+the fragrant flowers here have a power like that of poetry--they bring
+back the days of past centuries to our own times. It is as if the
+extinguished glory around the head shone again; the flowers exhale
+perfume: it is as if incense again streamed through the aisles of the
+church--it shines around the altar as if the consecrated tapers were
+lighted--it is a sunbeam through the window.
+
+The sky without has become clear: we drive again in under Cleven, the
+barren side of Kinnakulla: it is a rocky wall, different from almost
+all the others. The red stone blocks lie, strata on strata, forming
+fortifications with embrasures, projecting wings and round towers; but
+shaken, split and fallen in ruins--it is an architectural fantastic
+freak of nature. A brook falls gushing down from one of the highest
+points of the Cleven, and drives a little mill. It looks like a
+plaything which the mountain sprite had placed there and forgotten.
+
+Large masses of fallen stone blocks lie dispersed round about; nature
+has spread them in the forms of carved cornices. The most significant
+way of describing Kinnakulla's rocky wall is to call it the ruins of a
+mile-long Hindostanee temple: these rocks might be easily transformed
+by the hammer into sacred places like the Ghaut mountains at Ellara.
+If a Brahmin were to come to Kinnakulla's rocky wall, he would
+recognise the temple of Cailasa, and find in the clefts and crevices
+whole representations from Ramagena and Mahabharata. If one should
+then speak to him in a sort of gibberish--no matter what, only that,
+by the help of Brockhaus's "Conversation-Lexicon" one might mingle
+therein the names of some of the Indian spectacles:--Sakantala,
+Vikramerivati, Uttaram Ramatscheritram, &c.--the Brahmin would be
+completely mystified, and write in his note-book: "Kinnakulla is the
+remains of a temple, like those we have in Ellara; and the inhabitants
+themselves know the most considerable works in our oldest Sanscrit
+literature, and speak in an extremely spiritual manner about them."
+But no Brahmin comes to the high rocky walls--not to speak of the
+company from the steam-boat, who are already far over the lake Venern.
+They have seen wood-crowned Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens--and
+we also have now seen them.
+
+
+
+
+GRANDMOTHER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grandmother is so old, she has so many wrinkles, and her hair is quite
+white; but her eyes! they shine like two stars, nay, they are much
+finer--they are so mild, so blissful to look into. And then she knows
+the most amusing stories, and she has a gown with large, large flowers
+on it, and it is of such thick silk that it actually rustles.
+Grandmother knows so much, for she has lived long before father and
+mother--that is quite sure.
+
+Grandmother has a psalm-book with thick silver clasps, and in that
+book she often reads. In the middle of it lies a rose, which is quite
+flat and dry; but it is not so pretty as the roses she has in the
+glass, yet she smiles the kindliest to it, nay, even tears come into
+her eyes!
+
+Why does Grandmother look thus on the withered flower in the old book?
+Do you know why?
+
+Every time that Grandmother's tears fall on the withered flower the
+colours become fresher; the rose then swells and the whole room is
+filled with fragrance; the walls sink as if they were but mists; and
+round about, it is the green, the delightful grove, where the sun
+shines between the leaves. And Grandmother--yes, she is quite young;
+she is a beautiful girl, with yellow hair, with round red cheeks,
+pretty and charming--no rose is fresher. Yet the eyes, the mild,
+blissful eyes,--yes, they are still Grandmother's! By her side sits a
+man, young and strong: he presents the rose to her and she smiles. Yet
+grandmother does not smile so,--yes; the smile comes,--he is
+gone.--Many thoughts and many forms go past! That handsome man is
+gone; the rose lies in the psalm-book, and grandmother,--yes, she
+again sits like an old woman, and looks on the withered rose that lies
+in the book.
+
+Now grandmother is dead!
+
+She sat in the arm-chair, and told a long, long, sweet story. "And now
+it is ended!" said she, "and I am quite tired: let me now sleep a
+little!" And so she laid her head back to rest. She drew her breath,
+she slept, but it became more and more still; and her face was so full
+of peace and happiness--it was as if the sun's rays passed over it.
+She smiled, and then they said that she was dead.
+
+She was laid in the black coffin; she lay swathed in the white linen:
+she was so pretty, and yet the eyes were closed--but all the wrinkles
+were gone. She lay with a smile around her mouth: her hair was so
+silvery white, so venerable, one was not at all afraid to look on the
+dead, for it was the sweet, benign grandmother. And the psalm-book was
+laid in the coffin under her head (she herself had requested it), and
+the rose lay in the old book--and then they buried grandmother.
+
+On the grave, close under the church-wall, they planted a rose-tree,
+and it became full of roses, and the nightingale sang over it, and the
+organ in the church played the finest psalms that were in the book
+under the dead one's head. And the moon shone straight down on the
+grave--but the dead was not there: every child could go quietly in the
+night-time and pluck a rose there by the churchyard-wall. The dead
+know more than all we living know--the dead know the awe we should
+feel at something so strange as their coming to us. The dead are
+better than us all, and therefore they do not come.
+
+There is earth over the coffin, there is earth within it; the
+psalm-book with its leaves is dust the rose with all its recollections
+has gone to dust. But above it bloom new roses, above is sings the
+nightingale, and the organ plays:--we think of the old grandmother
+with the mild, eternally young eyes. Eyes can never die! Ours shall
+once again see her young, and beautiful, as when she for the first
+time kissed the fresh red rose which is now dust in the grave.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRISON-CELLS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By separation from other men, by solitary confinement, in continual
+silence, the criminal is to be punished and amended; therefore were
+prison-cells contrived. In Sweden there were several, and new ones
+have been built. I visited one for the first time in Mariestad. This
+building lies close outside the town, by a running water, and in a
+beautiful landscape. It resembles a large white-washed summer
+residence, window above window.
+
+But we soon discover that the stillness of the grave rests over it. It
+is as if no one dwelt here, or like a deserted mansion in the time of
+the plague. The gates in the walls are locked: one of them is opened
+for us: the gaoler stands with his bunch of keys: the yard is empty,
+but clean--even the grass weeded away between the stone paving. We
+enter the waiting-room, where the prisoner is received: we are shown
+the bathing-room, into which he is first led. We now ascend a flight
+of stairs, and are in a large hall, extending the whole length and
+breadth of the building. Galleries run along the floors, and between
+these the priest has his pulpit, where he preaches on Sundays to an
+invisible congregation. All the doors facing the gallery are half
+opened: the prisoners hear the priest, but cannot see him, nor he
+them. The whole is a well-built machine--a nightmare for the spirit.
+In the door of every cell there is fixed a glass, about the size of
+the eye: a slide covers it, and the gaoler can, unobserved by the
+prisoner, see everything he does; but he must come gently,
+noiselessly, for the prisoner's ear is wonderfully quickened by
+solitude. I turned the slide quite softly, and looked into the closed
+space, when the prisoner's eye immediately met mine. It is airy,
+clean, and light within the cell, but the window is placed so high
+that it is impossible to look out of it. A high stool, made fast to a
+sort of table, and a hammock, which can be hung upon hooks under the
+ceiling, and covered with a quilt, compose the whole furniture.
+
+Several cells were opened for us. In one of these was a young, and
+extremely pretty girl. She had lain down in her hammock, but sprang
+out directly the door was opened, and her first employment was to lift
+her hammock down, and roll it together. On the little table stood a
+pitcher with water, and by it lay the remains of some oatmeal cakes,
+besides the Bible and some psalms.
+
+In the cell close by sat a child's murderess. I saw her only through
+the little glass in the door. She had had heard our footsteps; heard
+us speak; but she sat still, squeezed up into the corner by the door,
+as if she would hide herself as much as possible: her back was bent,
+her head almost on a level with her lap, and her hands folded over it.
+They said this unfortunate creature was very young. Two brothers sat
+here in two different cells: they were punished for horse stealing;
+the one was still quite a boy.
+
+In one cell was a poor servant girl. They said: "She has no place of
+resort, and without a situation, and therefore she is placed here." I
+thought I had not heard rightly, and repeated my question, "why she
+was here," but got the same answer. Still I would rather believe that
+I had misunderstood what was said--it would otherwise be abominable.
+
+Outside, in the free sunshine, it is the busy day; in here it is
+always midnight's stillness. The spider that weaves its web down the
+wall, the swallow which perhaps flies a single time close under the
+panes there high up in the wall--even the stranger's footstep in the
+gallery, as he passes the cell-doors, is an event in that mute,
+solitary life, where the prisoners' thoughts are wrapped up in
+themselves. One must read of the martyr-filled prisons of the
+Inquisition, of the crowds chained together in the Bagnes, of the hot,
+lead chambers of Venice, and the black, wet gulf of the wells--be
+thoroughly shaken by these pictures of misery, that we may with a
+quieter pulsation of the heart wander through the gallery of the
+prison-cells. Here is light, here is air;--here it is more humane.
+Where the sunbeam shines mildly in on the prisoner, there also will
+the radiance of God shine into the heart.
+
+
+
+
+BEGGAR-BOYS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The painter Callot--who does not know the name, at least from
+Hoffmann's "in Callot's manner?"--has given a few excellent pictures
+of Italian beggars. One of these is a fellow, on whom the one rag
+lashes the other: he carries his huge bundle and a large flag with the
+inscription, "Capitano de Baroni." One does not think that there can
+in reality be found such a wandering rag-shop, and we confess that in
+Italy itself we have not seen any such; for the beggar-boy there,
+whose whole clothing often consists only of a waistcoat, has in it not
+sufficient costume for such rags.
+
+But we see it in the North. By the canal road between the Venern and
+Vigen, on the bare, dry rocky plain there stood, like beauty's
+thistles in that poor landscape, a couple of beggar-boys, so ragged,
+so tattered, so picturesquely dirty, that we thought we had Callot's
+originals before us, or that it was an arrangement of some industrious
+parents, who would awaken the traveller's attention and benevolence.
+Nature does not form such things: there was something so bold in the
+hanging on of the rags, that each boy instantly became a Capitano de
+Baroni.
+
+The younger of the two had something round him that had certainly once
+been the jacket of a very corpulent man, for it reached almost to the
+boy's ancles; the whole hung fast by a piece of the sleeve and a
+single brace, made from the seam of what was now the rest of the
+lining. It was very difficult to see the transition from jacket to
+trowsers, the rags glided so into one another. The whole clothing was
+arranged so as to give him an air-bath: there were draught holes on
+all sides and ends; a yellow linen clout fastened to the nethermost
+regions seemed as if it were to signify a shirt. A very large straw
+hat, that had certainly been driven over several times, was stuck
+sideways on his head, and allowed the boy's wiry, flaxen hair to grow
+freely through the opening where the crown should have been: the naked
+brown shoulder and upper part of the arm, which was just as brown,
+were the prettiest of the whole.
+
+The other boy had only a pair of trowsers on. They were also ragged,
+but the rags were bound fast into the pockets with packthread; one
+string round the ancles, one under the knee, and another round about
+the waist. He, however, kept together what he had, and that is always
+respectable.
+
+"Be off!" shouted the Captain, from the vessel; and the boy with the
+tied-up rags turned round, and we--yes, we saw nothing but packthread,
+in bows, genteel bows. The front part of the boy only was covered: he
+had only the foreparts of trowsers--the rest was packthread, the bare,
+naked packthread.
+
+
+
+
+VADSTENE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Sweden, it is not only in the country, but even in several of the
+provincial towns, that one sees whole houses of grass turf or with
+roofs of grass turf; and some are so low that one might easily spring
+up to the roof, and sit on the fresh greensward. In the early spring,
+whilst the fields are still covered with snow, but which is melted on
+the roof, the latter affords the first announcement of spring, with
+the young sprouting grass where the sparrow twitters: "Spring comes!"
+
+Between Motala and Vadstene, close by the high road, stands a
+grass-turf house--one of the most picturesque. It has but one window,
+broader than it is high, and a wild rose branch forms the curtain
+outside.
+
+We see it in the spring. The roof is so delightfully fresh with grass,
+it has quite the tint of velvet; and close to it is the chimney, nay,
+even a cherry-tree grows out of its side, now full of flowers: the
+wind shakes the leaves down on a little lamb that is tethered to the
+chimney. It is the only lamb of the family. The old dame who lives
+here, lifts it up to its place herself in the morning and lifts it
+down again in the evening, to give it a place in the room. The roof
+can just bear the little lamb, but not more--this is an experience and
+a certainty. Last autumn--and at that time the grass turf roofs are
+covered with flowers, mostly blue and yellow, the Swedish
+colours--there grew here a flower of a rare kind. It shone in the eyes
+of the old Professor, who on his botanical tour came past here. The
+Professor was quickly up on the roof, and just as quick was one of his
+booted legs through it, and so was the other leg, and then half of the
+Professor himself--that part where the head does not sit; and as the
+house had no ceiling, his legs hovered right over the old dame's head,
+and that in very close contact. But now the roof is again whole; the
+fresh grass grows where learning sank; the little lamb bleats up
+there, and the old dame stands beneath, in the low doorway, with
+folded hands, with a smile on her mouth, rich in remembrances, legends
+and songs, rich in her only lamb on which the cherry-tree strews its
+flower-blossoms in the warm spring sun.
+
+As a background to this picture lies the Vettern--the bottomless lake
+as the commonalty believe--with its transparent water, its sea-like
+waves, and in calm, with "Hegring," or fata morgana on its steel-like
+surface. We see Vadstene palace and town, "the city of the dead," as a
+Swedish author has called it--Sweden's Herculaneum, reminiscence's
+city. The grass-turf house must be our box, whence we see the rich
+mementos pass before us--memorials from the chronicle of saints, the
+chronicle of kings and the love songs that still live with the old
+dame, who stands in her low house there, where the lamb crops the
+grass on the roof. We hear her, and we see with her eyes; we go from
+the grass-turf house up to the town, to the other grass-turf houses,
+where poor women sit and make lace, once the celebrated work of the
+rich nuns here in the cloister's wealthy time.
+
+How still, solitary and grass-grown are these streets! We stop by an
+old wall, mouldy-green for centuries already. Within it stood the
+cloister; now there is but one of its wings remaining. There, within
+that now poor garden still bloom Saint Bridget's leek, and once ran
+flowers. King John and the Abbess, Ana Gylte, wandered one evening
+there, and the King cunningly asked: "If the maidens in the cloister
+were never tempted by love?" and the Abbess answered, as she pointed
+to a bird that just then flew over them: "It may happen! One cannot
+prevent the bird from flying over the garden; but one may surely
+prevent it from building its nest there!"
+
+Thus thought the pious Abbess, and there have been sisters who thought
+and acted like her. But it is quite as sure that in the same garden
+there stood a pear-tree, called the tree of death; and the legend says
+of it, that whoever approached and plucked its fruit would soon die.
+Red and yellow pears weighed down its branches to the ground. The
+trunk was unusually large; the grass grew high around it, and many a
+morning hour was it seen trodden down. Who had been here during the
+night?
+
+A storm arose one evening from the lake, and the next morning the
+large tree was found thrown down; the trunk was broken, and out from
+it there rolled infants' bones--the white bones of murdered children
+lay shining in the grass.
+
+The pious but love-sick sister Ingrid, this Vadstene's Heloise, writes
+to her heart's beloved, Axel Nilsun--for the chronicles have preserved
+it for us:--
+
+"Broderne og Systarne leka paa Spil, drikke Vin och dansa med
+hvarandra i Tradgården!"
+
+(The brothers and sisters amuse themselves in play, drink wine and
+dance with one another in the garden).
+
+These words may explain to us the history of the pear-tree: one is led
+to think of the orgies of the nun-phantoms in "Robert le Diable," the
+daughters of sin on consecrated ground. But "judge not, lest ye be
+judged," said the purest and best of men that was born of woman. We
+will read Sister Ingrid's letter, sent secretly to him she truly
+loved. In it lies the history of many, clear and human to us:--
+
+"Jag djerfues for ingen utan for dig allena bekänna, att jag formår
+ilia ånda mit Ave Maria eller läsa mit Paternoster, utan du kommer mig
+ichågen. Ja i sjelfa messen kommer mig fore dit täckleliga Ansigte och
+vart kårliga omgange. Jag tycker jag kan icke skifta mig for n genann
+an Menniska, jungfru Maria, St. Birgitta och himmelens Härskaror
+skalla kanske straffe mig hårfar? Men du vet det val, hjertans käraste
+att jag med fri vilja och uppsät aldrig dissa reglar samtykt. Mine
+foräldrer hafva väl min kropp i dette fangelset insatt, men hjertät
+kan intet så snart från verlden ater kalles!"
+
+(I dare not confess to any other than to thee, that I am not able to
+repeat my Ave Maria or read my Paternoster, without calling thee to
+mind. Nay, even in the mass itself thy comely face appears, and our
+affectionate intercourse recurs to me. It seems to me that I cannot
+confess to any other human being--the Virgin Mary, St. Bridget, and
+the whole host of heaven will perhaps punish me for it. But thou
+knowest well, my heart's beloved, that I have never consented with my
+free-will to these rules. My parents, it is true, have placed my body
+in this prison, but the heart cannot so soon be weaned from the
+world).
+
+How touching is the distress of young hearts! It offers itself to us
+from the mouldy parchment, it resounds in old songs. Beg the
+grey-haired old dame in the grass turf-house to sing to thee of the
+young, heavy sorrow, of the saving angel--and the angel came in many
+shapes. You will hear the song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl
+who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber,
+sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him,
+and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and
+pleasure in Copenhagen. And all the nuns of the cloister sang: "Christ
+grant that such an angel were to come, and take both me and thee!"
+
+The old dame will also sing for thee of the beautiful Ogda and Oluf
+Tyste; and at once the cloister is revived in its splendour, the bells
+ring, stone houses arise--they even rise from the waters of the
+Vettern: the little town becomes churches and towers. The streets are
+crowded with great, with sober, well-dressed persons. Down the stairs
+of the town hall descends with a sword by his side and in fur-lined
+cloak, the most wealthy citizen of Vadstene, the merchant Michael. By
+his side is his young, beautiful daughter Agda, richly-dressed and
+happy; youth in beauty, youth in mind. All eyes are turned on the rich
+man--and yet forget him for her, the beautiful. Life's best blessings
+await her; her thoughts soar upwards, her mind aspires; her future is
+happiness! These were the thoughts of the many--and amongst the many
+there was one who saw her as Romeo saw Juliet, as Adam saw Eve in the
+garden of Paradise. That one was Oluf, the handsomest young man, but
+poor as Agda was rich. And he must conceal his love; but as only he
+lived in it, only he knew of it; so he became mute and still, and
+after months had passed away, the town's folk called him Oluf Tyste
+(Oluf the silent).
+
+Nights and days he combated his love; nights and days he suffered
+inexpressible torment; but at last--one dew-drop or one sunbeam alone
+is necessary for the ripe rose to open its leaves--he must tell it to
+Agda. And she listened to his words, was terrified, and sprang away;
+but the thought remained with him, and the heart went after the
+thought and stayed there; she returned his love strongly and truly,
+but in modesty and honour; and therefore poor Oluf came to the rich
+merchant and sought his daughter's hand. But Michael shut the bolts of
+his door and his heart too. He would neither listen to tears nor
+supplications, but only to his own will; and as little Agda also kept
+firm to her will, her father placed her in Vadstene cloister. And Oluf
+was obliged to submit, as it is recorded in the old song, that they
+cast
+
+    "----den svarta Muld
+     Alt öfver skön Agdas arm."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: The black mould over the beautiful Agda's arm.]
+
+She was dead to him and the world. But one night, in tempestuous
+weather, whilst the rain streamed down, Oluf Tyste came to the
+cloister wall, threw his rope-ladder over it, and however high the
+Vettern lifted its waves, Oluf and little Agda flew away over its
+fathomless depths that autumn night.
+
+Early in the morning the nuns missed little Agda. What a screaming and
+shouting--the cloister is disgraced! The Abbess and Michael the
+merchant swore that vengeance and death should reach the fugitives.
+Lindkjöping's severe bishop, Hans Brask, fulminated his ban over them,
+but they were already across the waters of the Vettern; they had
+reached the shores of the Venern, they were on Kinnakulla, with one of
+Oluf's friends, who owned the delightful Hellekis.
+
+Here their marriage was to be celebrated. The guests were invited, and
+a monk from the neighbouring cloister of Husaby, was fetched to marry
+them. Then came the messenger with the bishop's excommunication, and
+this--but not the marriage ceremony--was read to them.
+
+All turned away from them terrified. The owner of the house, the
+friend of Oluf's youth, pointed to the open door and bade them depart
+instantly. Oluf only requested a car and horse wherewith to convey
+away his exhausted Agda; but they threw sticks and stones after them,
+and Oluf was obliged to bear his poor bride in his arms far into the
+forest.
+
+Heavy and bitter was their wandering. At last, however, they found a
+home: it was in Guldkroken, in West Gothland. An honest old couple
+gave them shelter and a place by the hearth: they stayed there till
+Christmas, and on that holy eve there was to be a real Christmas
+festival. The guests were invited, the furmenty set forth; and now
+came the clergyman of the parish to say prayers; but whilst he spoke
+he recognised Oluf and Agda, and the prayer became a curse upon the
+two. Anxiety and terror came over all; they drove the excommunicated
+pair out of the house, out into the biting frost, where the wolves
+went in flocks, and the bear was no stranger. And Oluf felled wood in
+the forest, and kindled a fire to frighten away the noxious animals
+and keep life in Agda--he thought that she must die. But just then she
+was stronger of the two.
+
+"Our Lord is almighty and gracious; He will not leave us!" said she.
+"He has one here on the earth, one who can save us, one, who has
+proved like us, what it is to wander amongst enemies and wild animals.
+It is the King--Gustavus Vasa! He has languished like us!--gone astray
+in Dalecarlia in the deep snow! he has suffered, tried, knows it--he
+can and he will help us!"
+
+The King was in Vadstene. He had called together the representatives
+of the kingdom there. He dwelt in the cloister itself, even there
+where little Agda, if the King did not grant her pardon, must suffer
+what the angry Abbess dared to advise: penance and a painful death
+awaited her.
+
+Through forests and by untrodden paths, in storm and snow, Oluf and
+Agda came to Vadstene. They were seen: some showed fear, others
+insulted and threatened them. The guard of the cloister made the sign
+of the cross on seeing the two sinners, who dared to ask admission to
+the King.
+
+"I will receive and hear all," was his royal message, and the two
+lovers fell trembling at his feet.
+
+And the King looked mildly on them; and as he long had had the
+intention to humiliate the proud Bishop of Lindkjöping, the moment was
+not unfavourable to them; the King listened to the relation of their
+lives and sufferings, and gave them his word, that the excommunication
+should be annulled. He then placed their hands one in the other, and
+said that the priest should also do the same soon; and he promised
+them his royal protection and favour.
+
+And old Michael, the merchant, who feared the King's anger, with which
+he was threatened, became so mild and gentle, that he, as the King
+commanded, not only opened his house and his arms to Oluf and Agda,
+but displayed all his riches on the wedding-day of the young couple.
+The marriage ceremony took place in the cloister church, whither the
+King himself led the bride, and where, by his command, all the nuns
+were obliged to be present, in order to give still more ecclesiastical
+pomp to the festival. And many a heart there silently recalled the old
+song about the cloister robbery and looked at Oluf Tyste:
+
+    "Krist gif en sadan Angel
+    Kom, tog båd mig och dig!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: Christ grant that such an angel were to come, and take
+both me and thee!]
+
+The sun now shines through the open cloister-gate. Let truth shine
+into our hearts; let us likewise acknowledge the cloister's share of
+God's influence. Every cell was not quite a prison, where the
+imprisoned bird flew in despair against the window-pane; here
+sometimes was sunshine from God in the heart and mind, from hence also
+went out comfort and blessings. If the dead could rise from their
+graves they would bear witness thereof: if we saw them in the
+moonlight lift the tombstone and step forth towards the cloister, they
+would say: "Blessed be these walls!" if we saw them in the sunlight
+hovering in the rainbow's gleam, they would say: "Blessed be these
+walls!"
+
+How changed the rich, mighty Vadstene cloister, where the first
+daughters of the land were nuns, where the young nobles of the land
+wore the monk's cowl. Hither they made pilgrimages from Italy, from
+Spain: from far distant lands, in snow and cold, the pilgrim came
+barefooted to the cloister door. Pious men and women bore the corpse
+of St. Bridget hither in their hands from Rome, and all the
+church-bells in all the lands and towns they passed through, tolled
+when they came.
+
+We go towards the cloister--the remains of the old ruin. We enter St.
+Bridget's cell--it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and
+narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look
+from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We
+see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame
+around her God, whilst she read her morning and evening prayers. In
+the tile-stone of the floor there is engraved a rosary: before it, on
+her bare knees, she said a pater-noster at every pearl there pointed
+out. Here is no chimney--no hearth, no place for it. Cold and solitary
+it is, and was, here where the world's most far-famed woman dwelt, she
+who by her own sagacity, and by her contemporaries was raised to the
+throne of female saints.
+
+From this poor cell we enter one still meaner, one still more narrow
+and cold, where the faint light of day struggles in through a long
+crevice in the wall. Glass there never was here: the wind blows in
+here. Who was she who once dwelt in this cell?
+
+In our times they have arranged light, warm chambers close by: a whole
+range opens into the broad passage. We hear merry songs; laughter we
+hear, and weeping: strange figures nod to us from these chambers. Who
+are these? The rich cloister of St. Bridget's, whence kings made
+pilgrimages, is now Sweden's mad-house. And here the numerous
+travellers write their names on the wall. We hasten from the hideous
+scene into the splendid cloister church,--the blue church, as it is
+called, from the blue stones of which the walls are built--and here,
+where the large stones of the floor cover great men, abbesses and
+queens, only one monument is noticeable, that of a knightly figure
+carved in stone, which stands aloft before the altar. It is that of
+the insane Duke Magnus. Is it not as if he stepped forth from amongst
+the dead, and announced that such afflicted creatures were to be where
+St. Bridget once ruled?
+
+Pace lightly over the floor! Thy foot treads on the graves of the
+pious: the flat, modest stone here in the corner covers the dust of
+the noble Queen Philippa. She, that mighty England's daughter, the
+great-hearted, the immortal woman, who with wisdom and courage
+defended her consort's throne, that consort who rudely and barbarously
+cast her off! Vadstene's cloister gave her shelter--the grave here
+gave her rest.
+
+We seek one grave. It is not known--it is forgotten, as she was in her
+lifetime. Who was she? The cloistered sister Elizabeth, daughter of
+the Holstein Count, and once the bride of King Hakon of Norway. Sweet
+creature! she proudly--but not with unbecoming pride--advanced in her
+bridal dress, and with her court ladies, up to her royal consort. Then
+came King Valdemar, who by force and fraud stopped the voyage, and
+induced Hakon to marry Margaret, then eleven years of age, who thereby
+got the crown of Norway. Elizabeth was sent to Vadstene cloister,
+where her will was not asked. Afterwards when Margaret--who justly
+occupies a great place in the history of Scandinavia, but only
+comparatively a small one in the hearts--sat on the throne, powerful
+and respected, visited the then flourishing Vadstene, where the Abbess
+of the cloister was St. Bridget's grand-daughter, her childhood's
+friend, Margaret kissed every monk on the cheek. The legend is well
+known about him, the handsomest, who thereupon blushed. She kissed
+every nun on the hand, and also Elizabeth, her, whom she would only
+see here. Whose heart throbbed loudest at that kiss? Poor Elizabeth,
+thy grave is forgotten, but not the wrong thou didst suffer.
+
+We now enter the sacristy. Here, under a double coffin lid, rests an
+age's holiest saint in the North, Vadstene cloister's diadem and
+lustre--St. Bridget.
+
+On the night she was born, says the legend, there appeared a beaming
+cloud in the heavens, and on it stood a majestic virgin, who said: "Of
+Birger is born a daughter whose admirable voice shall be heard over
+the whole world." This delicate and singular child grew up in the
+castle of her father, Knight Brake. Visions and revelations appeared
+to her, and these increased when she, only thirteen years of age, was
+married to the rich Ulf Gudmundsen, and became the mother of many
+children. "Thou shalt be my bride and my agent," she heard Christ say,
+and every one of her actions was, as she averred, according to his
+announcement. After this she went to Niddaros, to St. Oluf's holy
+shrine: she then went to Germany, France, Spain and Rome.
+
+Sometimes honoured and sometimes mocked, she travelled, even to Cyprus
+and Palestine. Conscious of approaching death, she again reached Rome,
+where her last revelation was, that she should rest in Vadstene, and
+that this cloister especially should be sanctified by God's love. The
+splendour of the Northern lights does not extend so far around the
+earth as the glory of this fair saint, who now is but a legend. We
+bend with silent, serious thoughts before the mouldering remains in
+the coffin here--those of St. Bridget and her daughter St. Catherine;
+but even of these the remembrance will be extinguished. There is a
+tradition amongst the people, that in the time of the Reformation the
+real remains were carried off to a cloister in Poland, but this is not
+certainly known. Vadstene, at least, is not the repository of St.
+Bridget and her daughter's dust.
+
+Vadstene was once great and glorious. Great was the cloister's power,
+as St. Bridget saw it in the prospect of death. Where is now the
+cloister's might? It reposes under the tomb-stones--the graves alone
+speak of it. Here, under our feet, only a few steps from the church
+door, is a stone in which are carved fourteen rings: they announce
+that fourteen farms were given to the cloister, in order that he who
+moulders here might have this place, fourteen feet within the church
+door. It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister's
+power was greater than that of all sinners: the stone on his grave
+records it with no ordinary significance of language.
+
+Gustavus, the first Vasa, was the sun--the ruling power: the
+brightness of the cloister star must needs pale before him.
+
+There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene's rich palace which he
+erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister. At a far
+distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its
+splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged
+edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the
+windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round
+about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage
+road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored
+image.
+
+We now stand before it in daylight. Not a pane of glass is to be found
+in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the
+balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and
+resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers
+aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a
+sun-dial it shows the time--the time that is gone. The other two balls
+are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the
+space below is used as a cow-stall.
+
+The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish: they seem as
+if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new.
+In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was
+opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome
+greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down: we go through
+the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene
+palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the
+eye.
+
+Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space: even
+the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of
+timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the
+dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark grey dropping
+stones.
+
+We walk from hall to hall, and the wooden shutters are opened to admit
+daylight. All is vast, lofty, spacious, and adorned with antique
+chimney-pieces, and from every window there is a charming prospect
+over the clear, deep Vettern. In one of the chambers in the ground
+floor sat the insane Duke Magnus, (whose stone image we lately saw
+conspicuous in the church) horrified at having signed his own
+brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of
+Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to
+see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she
+came--he thought she came--in the form of a mermaid, raising herself
+aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate
+Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this
+window, and below it we saw the deep moat in which he sank.
+
+We enter the yeoman's hall, and the council hall, where, in the
+recesses of the windows, on each side, are painted yeomen in strange
+dresses, half Dalecarlians and half Roman warriors.
+
+In this once rich saloon, Svanta Steenson Sture knelt to Sweden's
+Queen, Catherine Léjonhufved: she was Svanta Sture's love, before
+Gustavus Vasa's will made her his Queen. The lovers met here: the
+walls are silent as to what they said, when the door was opened and
+the King entered, and saw the kneeling Sture, and asked what it meant.
+Margaret answered craftily and hastily: "He demands my sister Martha's
+hand in marriage!" and the King gave Svanta Sture the bride the Queen
+had asked for him.
+
+We are now in the royal bridal chamber, whither King Gustavus led his
+third consort. Catherine Steenbock, also another's bride, the bride of
+the Knight Gustavus. It is a sad story.
+
+Gustavus of the three roses, was in his youth honoured by the King,
+who sent him on a mission to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. He
+returned adorned with the Emperor's costly golden chain--young,
+handsome, joyous and richly clad, he returned home, and knew well how
+to relate the magnificence and charms of foreign lands: young and old
+listened to him with admiration, but young Catherine most of all.
+Through him the world in her eyes became twice as large, rich, and
+beautiful; they became dear to each other, and their parents blessed
+their love. The love-pledge was to be drunk,--when there came a
+message from the King, that the young Knight must, without delay,
+again bear a letter and greeting to the Emperor Charles. The betrothed
+pair separated with heavy hearts, but with a promise of mutual
+inviolable troth. The King then invited Catherine's parents to come to
+Vadstene palace. Catherine was obliged to accompany them; here King
+Gustavus saw her for the first time, and the old man fell in love with
+her.
+
+Christmas was kept with great hilarity; there were song and harp in
+these halls, and the King himself played the lute. When the time came
+for departure, the King said to Catherine's mother, that he would
+marry the young girl.
+
+"But she is the bride of the Knight Gustavus!" stammered the mother.
+
+"Young hearts soon forget their sorrows," thought the King. The mother
+thought so likewise, and as there chanced to come a letter the same
+day and hour from the young Knight Gustavus, Fra Steenbock committed
+it to the flames. All the letters that came afterwards and all the
+letters that Catherine wrote, were burnt by her mother, and doubts and
+evil reports were whispered to Catherine, that she was forgotten
+abroad by her young lover. But Catherine was secure and firm in her
+belief of him. In the spring her parents made known to her the King's
+proposal, and praised her good fortune. She answered seriously and
+determinedly, "No!" and when they repeated to her that it should and
+must happen, she repeatedly screamed in the greatest anguish, "No no!"
+and sank exhausted at her father and mother's feet, and humbly prayed
+them not to force her.
+
+And the mother wrote to the King that all was going on well, but that
+her child was bashful. The King now announced his visit to Torpe,
+where her parents, the Steenbocks, dwelt. The King was received with
+rejoicing and feasting, but Catherine had disappeared and the King
+himself was the successful one who found her. She sat dissolved in
+tears under the wild rose tree, where she had bidden farewell to her
+heart's beloved.
+
+There was merry song and joyous life in the old mansion; Catherine
+alone was sorrowful and silent. Her mother had brought her all her
+jewels and ornaments, but she wore none of them: she had put on her
+simplest dress, but in this she only fascinated the old King the more,
+and he would have that their betrothal should take place before he
+departed. Fra Steenbock wrested the Knight Gustavus's ring from
+Catherine's finger, and whispered in her ear: "It will cost the friend
+of thy youth his life and fortune; the King can do everything!" And
+the parents led her to King Gustavus, showed him that the ring was
+from the maiden's hand; and the King placed his own golden ring on her
+finger in the other's stead. In the month of August the flag waved
+from the mast of the royal yacht which bore the young Queen over the
+Vettern. Princes and knights, in costly robes, stood by the shore,
+music played, and the people shouted. Catherine made her entry into
+Vadstene Palace. The nuptials were celebrated the following day, and
+the walls were hung with silk and velvet, with cloth of gold and
+silver! It was a festival and rejoicing. Poor Catherine!
+
+In November, the Knight Gustavus of the three roses, returned home.
+His prudent, noble mother, Christina Gyldenstjerne, met him at the
+frontiers of the kingdom, prepared him, consoled him, and soothed his
+mind: she accompanied him by slow stages to Vadstene, where they were
+both invited by the King to remain during the Christmas festival. They
+accepted the invitation, but the Knight Gustavus was not to be moved
+to come to the King's table or any other place where the Queen was to
+be found. The Christmas approached. One Sunday evening, Gustavus was
+disconsolate; the Knight was long sleepless, and at daybreak he went
+into the church, to the tomb of his ancestress, St. Bridget. There he
+saw, at a few paces from him, a female kneeling before Philippa's
+tomb. It was the Queen he saw; their eyes met, and Gustavus hastened
+away. She then mentioned his name, begged him to stay, and commanded
+him to do so.
+
+"I command it, Gustavus!" said she; "the Queen commands it."
+
+And she spoke to him; they conversed together, and it became clear to
+them both what had been done against them and with them; and she
+showed him a withered rose which she kept in her bosom, and she bent
+towards him and gave him a kiss, the last--their eternal
+leave-taking--and then they separated. He died shortly afterwards, but
+Catherine was stronger, yet not strong enough for her heart's deep
+sorrow. Here, in the bed-chamber, in uneasy dreams, says the story,
+she betrayed in sleep the constant thought of her heart, her youth's
+love, to the King, saying: "Gustavus I love dearly; but the rose--I
+shall never forget."
+
+From a secret door we walk out on to the open rampart, where the sheep
+now graze; the cattle are driven into one of the ruined towers. We see
+the palace-yard, and look from it up to a window. Come, thou
+birch-wood's thrush, and warble thy lays; sing, whilst we recal the
+bitterness of love in the rude--the chivalrous ages.
+
+Under that window there stood, one cold winter's night, wrapped in his
+white cloak, the young Count John of East Friesland. His brother had
+married Gustavus Vasa's eldest daughter, and departed with her to his
+home: wherever they came on their journey, there was mirth and
+feasting, but the most splendid was at Vadstene Palace. Cecilia, the
+King's younger daughter, had accompanied her sister hither, and was
+here, as everywhere, the first, the most beautiful in the chase as
+well as at the tournament. The winter began directly on their arrival
+at Vadstene; the cold was severe, and the Vettern frozen over. One
+day, Cecilia rode out on the ice and it broke; her brother, Prince
+Erik, came galloping to her aid. John, of East Friesland, was already
+there, and begged Erik to dismount, as he would, being on horseback,
+break the ice still more. Erik would not listen to him, and as John
+saw that there was no time for dispute, he dragged Erik from the
+horse, sprang into the water himself, and saved Cecilia. Prince Erik
+was furious with wrath, and no one could appease him. Cecilia lay long
+in a fever, and during its continuance, her love for him who had saved
+her life increased. She recovered, and they understood each other, but
+the day of separation approached. It was on the night previous that
+John, in his white cloak, ascended from stone to stone, holding by his
+silk ladder, until he at length entered the window; here they would
+converse for hours in all modesty and honour, speak about his return
+and their nuptials the following year; and whilst they sat there the
+door was hewn down with axes. Prince Erik entered, and raised the
+murderous weapon to slay the young Lord of East Friesland, when
+Cecilia threw herself between them. But Erik commanded his menials to
+seize the lover, whom they put in irons and cast into a low, dark
+hole, that cold frosty night, and the next day, without even giving
+him a morsel of bread or a drop of water, he was thrown on to a
+peasant's sledge, and dragged before the King to receive judgment.
+Erik himself cast his sister's fair name and fame into slander's
+babbling pool, and high dames and citizens' wives washed unspotted
+innocence in calumny's impure waters.
+
+It is only when the large wooden shutters of the saloons are opened,
+that the sunbeams stray in here; the dust accumulates in their twisted
+pillars, and is only just disturbed by the draught of air. In here is
+a warehouse for corn. Great fat rats make their nests in these halls.
+The spider spins mourning banners under the beams. This is Vadstene
+Palace!
+
+We are filled with sad thoughts. We turn our eyes from this place
+towards the lowly house with the grass-turf roof, where the little
+lamb crops the grass under the cherry-tree, which strews its fragrant
+leaves over it. Our thoughts descend from the rich cloister, from the
+proud palace, to the grassy turf, and the sun fades away over the
+grassy turf, and the old dame goes to sleep under the grassy turf,
+below which lie the mighty memorials of Vadstene.
+
+
+
+
+THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an elderly man on the steam-boat, with such a contented face
+that, if it did not lie, he must be the happiest man on earth. That he
+indeed said he was: I heard it from his own mouth. He was a Dane,
+consequently my countryman, and was a travelling theatrical manager.
+He had the whole _corps dramatique_ with him; they lay in a large
+chest--he was a puppet showman. His innate good-humour, said he, had
+been tried by a polytechnic candidate,[D] and from this experiment on
+his patience he had become completely happy. I did not understand him
+at the moment, but he soon laid the whole case clearly before me; and
+here it is.
+
+[Footnote D: One who has passed his examination at a polytechnic
+school.]
+
+"It was in Slagelse," said he, "that I gave a representation at the
+parsonage, and had a brilliant house and a brilliant company of
+spectators, all young persons, unconfirmed, except a few old ladies.
+Then there came a person dressed in black, having the appearance of a
+student: he sat down amongst the others, laughed quite at the proper
+time, and applauded quite correctly; that was an unusual spectator!
+
+"I was bent on ascertaining who he was, and then I heard that he was a
+candidate from the polytechnic school, who had been sent out to
+instruct people in the provinces. At eight o'clock my representation
+was over; the children were to go early to bed, and one must think of
+the convenience of the public.
+
+"At nine o'clock the candidate began his lectures and experiments, and
+now _I_ was one of _his_ auditory.
+
+"It was remarkable to hear and look at! The chief part of it went over
+my head and into the parson's, as one says. Can it be possible,
+thought I, that we human beings can find out such things? in that
+case, we must also be able to hold out longer, before we are put into
+the earth. It was merely small miracles that he performed, and yet all
+as easy as an old stocking--quite from nature. In the time of Moses
+and the prophets, such a polytechnic candidate would have been one of
+the wise men of the land, and in the Middle Ages he would have been
+burnt. I could not sleep the whole night, and as I gave a
+representation the next evening, and the candidate was there again, I
+got into a real merry humour.
+
+"I have heard of an actor, who when playing the lovers' parts, only
+thought of one of the spectators; he played for _her_ alone, and
+forgot all the rest of the house; the polytechnic candidate was my
+_her_, my only spectator, for whom I played. And when the performance
+was over, all the puppets were called forward, and I was invited by
+the polytechnic candidate to take a glass of wine with him; and he
+spoke about my comedy, and I of his science; and I believe we each
+derived equal pleasure from the other. But yet I had the advantage,
+for there was so much in his performance that he could not account
+for: as for instance, that a piece of iron which falls through a
+spiral line, becomes magnetic,--well, how is that? The spirit comes
+over it, but whence does it come from? it is just as with the human
+beings of this world, I think; our Lord lets them fall through the
+spiral line of time, and the spirit comes over them--and there stands
+a Napoleon, a Luther, or a similar person.
+
+"'All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are
+so accustomed to them that we call them things of every-day life.' And
+he spoke and he explained, so that it seemed at last as if he lifted
+my scull, and I honestly confessed, that if I were not an old fellow,
+I would go directly to the polytechnic school, and learn to examine
+the world in the summer, although I was one of the happiest of men.
+
+"'One of the happiest!' said he, and it was just as if he tasted it.
+'Are you happy?' 'Yes!' said I, 'I am happy, and I am welcome in all
+the towns I come to with my company! There is certainly one wish, that
+comes now and then like a night-mare, which rides on my good-humour,
+and that is to be a theatrical manager for a living company--a company
+of real men and women.'
+
+"'You wish to have your puppets animated; you would have them become
+real actors and actresses,' said he, 'and yourself be the manager? you
+then think that you would be perfectly happy?'
+
+"Now he did not think so, but I thought so; and we talked for and
+against; and we were just as near in our opinions as before. But we
+clinked our glasses together, and the wine was very good; but there
+was witchcraft in it, or else the short and the long of the story
+would be--that I was intoxicated.
+
+"That I was not; my eyes were quite clear; it was as if there was
+sunshine in the room, and it shone out of the face of the polytechnic
+candidate, so that I began to think of the old gods in my youth, and
+when they went about in the world. And I told him so, and then he
+smiled, and I durst have sworn that he was a disguised god, or one of
+the family!--And he was so--my first wish was to be fulfilled: the
+puppets become living beings and I the manager of men and women. We
+drank that it should be so! he put all my puppets in the wooden chest,
+fastened it on my back, and then let me fall through a spiral line. I
+can still hear how I came down, slap! I lay on the floor, that is
+quite sure and certain, and the whole company sprang out of the chest.
+The spirit had come over us all together; all the puppets had become
+excellent artists--they said so themselves--and I was the manager.
+Everything was in order for the first representation; the whole
+company must speak with me, and the public also. The female dancer
+said, that if she did not stand on one leg, the house would be in an
+uproar: she was master of the whole and would be treated as such.
+
+"She who played the queen, would also be treated as a queen when off
+the stage, or else she should get out of practice, and he who was
+employed to come in with a letter made himself as important as the
+first lover. 'For,' said he, 'the small are of just as much importance
+as the great, in an artistic whole.' Then the hero demanded that the
+whole of his part should only be retorts on making his exit, for these
+the public applauded; the prima donna would only play in a red light,
+for that suited her best--she would not be blue: they were all like
+flies in a bottle, and I was also in the bottle--for I was the
+manager. I lost my breath, my head was quite dizzy! I was as miserable
+as a man can be; it was a new race of beings I had come amongst; I
+wished that I had them altogether again in the chest, that I had never
+been a manager: I told them that they were in fact only puppets, and
+so they beat me to death. That was my feeling!
+
+"I lay on the bed in my chamber; but how I had come there from the
+polytechnic candidate, he must know best--for I do not. The moon shone
+in on the floor where the puppet-chest lay upset, and all the puppets
+spread about--great and small, the whole lot. But I was not floored! I
+sprang out of bed, and threw them all into the chest; some on their
+heads, and some on their legs; I smacked the lid down and sat myself
+upon it: it was worth painting, can't you conceive it? I can! 'Now you
+shall be there!' said I, 'and I will never more wish that you may
+become flesh and blood!' I was so glad; I was the happiest man
+alive--the polytechnic candidate had tried me! I sat in perfect bliss,
+and fell asleep on the chest; and in the morning--it was, properly
+speaking, at noon, for I slept so very long that morning--I sat there
+still, happy and edified--I saw that my previous and only wish had
+been stupid. I inquired for the polytechnic candidate, but he was
+gone, like the Greek and Roman gods.
+
+"And from that time I have been the happiest man alive. I am a
+fortunate manager; my company does not argue with me, neither does the
+public; they are amused to their heart's content, and I can myself put
+all my pieces nicely together. I take the best parts out of all sorts
+of comedies that I choose, and no one troubles himself about it.
+Pieces that are now despised at the large theatres, but which thirty
+years ago the public ran to see, and cried over--those pieces I now
+make use of. I now present them before the young folks; and the young
+folks--they cry just as their fathers and mothers used to do. I give
+'Johanna Montfakon' and 'Dyveke,' but abbreviated; for the little
+folks do not like long, twaddling love-stories. They must have it
+unfortunate--but it must be brief. Now that I have travelled through
+Denmark, both to the right and left, I know everybody and am known
+again. Now I have come to Sweden, and if I am successful and gain much
+money, I will be a Scandinavian, if the humour hold; and this I tell
+you, as you are my countryman."
+
+And I, as his countryman, naturally tell it again--only for the sake
+of telling it.
+
+
+
+
+THE "SKJÄRGAARDS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The canal voyage through Sweden goes at first constantly upwards,
+through elvs and lakes, forests and rocky land. From the heights we
+look down on vast extents of forest-land and large waters, and by
+degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents. At Mem
+we are again down by the salt fiord: a solitary tower raises its head
+between the remains of low, thick walls--it is the ruins of Stegeberg.
+The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests,
+which enclose small grass-grown valleys. The screaming sea-gulls fly
+around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze:
+it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings,
+sons of high-born fathers, exercised their deeds here. The same sea's
+surface then appeared to them as now to us, with its numberless isles,
+which lie strewed about here in the water by thousands along the whole
+coast. The depth of water between the rocky isles and the solid land
+is that we call "The Skjärgaards:" their waters flow into each other
+with varying splendour. We see it in the sunshine, and it is like a
+large English landscape garden; but the greensward plain is here the
+deep sea, the flower-beds in it are rocks and reefs, rich in firs and
+pines, oaks and bushes. Mark how, when the wind blows from the east,
+and the sea breaks over sunken rocks and is dashed back again in spray
+from the cliffs, your limbs feel--even through the ship on which you
+stand--the power of the sea: you are lifted as if by supernatural
+hands.
+
+We rush on against wind and sea, as if it were the sea-god's snorting
+horse that bore us; from Skjärgaard to Skjärgaard. The signal-gun is
+fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house. Sometimes
+we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark,
+stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water: one has
+the form of the tortoise's arched shell, another has the elephant's
+back and rough grey colour. Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that
+the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.
+
+We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks
+of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat
+with the blast; the Skjärgaards sometimes become only a narrow canal,
+sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone,
+and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little
+fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the
+land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose
+red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background. A group of
+cows lies basking in the sun on the stony surface, near a little
+smiling pasture, which appears to have been cultivated here or cut out
+of a meadow in Scania. How solitary must it not be to live on that
+little island! Ask the boy who sits there by the cattle, he will be
+able to tell us. "It is lively and merry here," says he. "The day is
+so long and light, the seal sits out there on the stone and barks in
+the early morning hour, and all the steamers from the canal must pass
+here. I know them all; and when the sun goes down in the evening, it
+is a whole history to look into the clouds over the land: there stand
+mountains with palaces, in silver and in gold, in red and in blue;
+sailing dragons with golden crowns, or an old giant with a beard down
+to his waist--altogether of clouds, and they are always changing.
+
+"The storms come on in the autumn, and then there is often much
+anxiety when father is out to help ships in distress; but one becomes,
+as it were, a new being.
+
+"In winter the ice is locked fast and firm, and we drive from island
+to island and to the main land; and if the bear or the wolf pays us a
+visit we take his skin for a winter covering: it is warm in the room
+there, and they read and tell stories about old times!"
+
+Yes, old Time, how thou dost unfold thyself with remembrances of these
+very Skjärgaards--old Time which belonged to the brave. These waters,
+these rocky isles and strands, saw heroes more greatly active than
+actively good: they swung the axe to give the mortal blow, or as they
+called it, "the whining Jetteqvinde."[E]
+
+[Footnote E: Giantess.]
+
+Here came the Vikings with their ships: on the headland yonder they
+levied provisions; the grazing cattle were slaughtered and borne away.
+Ye mouldering cliffs, had ye but a tongue, ye might tell us about the
+duels with the two-handed sword--about the deeds of the giants. Ye saw
+the hero hew with the sword, and cast the javelin: his left hand was
+as cunning as his right The sword moved so quickly in the air that
+there seemed to be three. Ye saw him, when he in all his martial array
+sprang forwards and backwards, higher than he himself was tall, and if
+he sprang into the sea he swam like a whale. Ye saw the two
+combatants: the one darted his javelin, the other caught it in the
+air, and cast it back again, so that it pierced through shield and man
+down into the earth. Ye saw warriors with sharp swords and angry
+hearts; the sword was struck downwards so as to cut the knee, out the
+combatant sprang into the air, and the sword whizzed under his feet.
+Mighty Sagas from the olden times! Mouldering rocks, could ye but tell
+us of these things!
+
+Ye, deep waters, bore the Vikings' ships, and when the strong in
+battle lifted the iron anchor and cast it against the enemy's vessel,
+so that the planks were rent asunder, ye poured your dark heavy seas
+into the hold, so that the bark sank. The wild _Berserk_ who with
+naked breast stood against his enemy's blows, mad as a dog, howling
+like a bear, tearing his shield asunder, rushing to the bottom of the
+sea here, and fetching up stones, which ordinary men could not
+raise--history peoples these waters, these cliffs for us! A future
+poet will conjure them to this Scandinavian Archipelago, chisel the
+true forms out of the old Sagas, the bold, the rude, the greatness and
+imperfections of the time, in their habits as they lived.
+
+They rise again for us on yonder island, where the wind is whistling
+through the young fir wood. The house is of beams, roofed with bark;
+the smoke from the fire on the broad stone in the hall, whirls through
+the air-hole, near which stands the cask of mead; the cushions lie on
+the bench before the closed bedsteads; deer-skins hang over the balk
+walls, ornamented with shields, helmets, and armour. Effigies of gods,
+carved, on wooden poles, stand before the high seat where the noble
+Viking sits, a high-born father's youngest son, great in fame, but
+still greater in deeds; the skjalds (bards) and foster-brothers sit
+nearest to him. They defended the coasts of their countrymen, and the
+pious women; they fetched wheat and honey from England, they went to
+the White Sea for sables and furs--their adventures are related in
+song. We see the old man ride in rich clothing, with gloves sewn with
+golden thread, and with a hat brought from Garderige; we see the youth
+with a golden fillet around his brow; we see him at the _Thing_; we
+see him in battle and in play, where the best is he that can cut off
+the other's eyebrows without scratching the skin, or causing a wink
+with the eyes, on pain of losing his station. The woman sits in the
+log-house at her loom, and in the late moonlight nights the spirits of
+the fallen come and sit down around the fire, where they shake the
+wet, dripping clothes; but the serf sleeps in the ashes, and on the
+kitchen bench, and dreams that he dips his bread in the fat soup, and
+licks his fingers.
+
+Thou future poet, thou wilt call forth the vanished forms from the
+Sagas, thou wilt people these islands, and let us glide past these
+reminiscences of the olden time with the mind full of them; clearly
+and truly wilt thou let us glide, as we now with the power of steam
+fly past that firmly standing scenery, the swelling sea, rocks and
+reefs, the main land, and wood-grown islands.
+
+We are already past Braavigen, where numberless ships from the
+northern kingdoms lay, when Upsala's King, Sigurd Ring, came,
+challenged by Harald Hildetand, who, old and grey, feared to die on a
+sick bed, and would fall in battle; and the mainland thundered like
+the plains of Marathon beneath the tramp of horses' hoofs during the
+battle:[F] bards and female warriors surrounded the Danish King. The
+blind old man raised himself high in his chariot, gave his horse free
+rein, and hewed his way. Odin himself had due reverence paid to
+Hildetand's bones; and the pile was kindled, and the King laid on it,
+and Sigurd conjured all to cast gold and weapons, the most valuable
+they possessed, into the fire; and the bards sang to it, and the
+female warriors struck the spears on the bright shields. Upsala's
+Lord, Sigurd Ring, became King of Sweden and Denmark: so says the
+Saga, which sounded over the land and water from these coasts.
+
+[Footnote F: The battle of Braavalla.]
+
+The memorials of olden times pass swiftly through our thoughts; we fly
+past the scene of manly exercises and great deeds in the olden
+times--the ship cleaves the mighty waters with its iron paddles, from
+Skjärgaard to Skjärgaard.
+
+
+
+
+STOCKHOLM.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We cast runes[G] here on the paper, and from the white ground the
+picture of Birger Jarl's six hundred years old city rises before thee.
+
+[Footnote G: "To cast runes" was, in the olden time, to exercise
+witchcraft. When the apple, with ciphers cut in it, rolled into the
+maiden's lap, her heart and mind were infatuated.]
+
+The runes roll, you see! Wood-grown rocky isles appear in the light,
+grey morning mist; numberless flocks of wild birds build their nests
+in safety here, where the fresh waters of the Mälaren rush into the
+salt sea. The Viking's ship comes; King Agna stands by the prow--he
+brings as booty the King of Finland's daughter. The oak-tree spreads
+its branches over their bridal chamber; at daybreak the oak-tree bears
+King Agna, hanged in his long golden chain: that is the bride's work,
+and the ship sails away again with her and the rescued Fins.
+
+The clouds drive past--the years too.
+
+Hunters and fishermen erect themselves huts;--it is again deserted
+here, where the sea-birds alone have their homes. What is it that so
+frightens these numberless flocks? the wild duck and sea-gull fly
+screaming about, there is a hammering and driving of piles. Oluf
+Skötkonge has large beams bored down into the ground, and strong iron
+chains fastened across the stream: "Thou art caught, Oluf
+Haraldson,[H] caught with the ships and crews, with which thou didst
+devastate the royal city Sigtuna; thou canst not escape from the
+closed Mälar lake!"
+
+[Footnote H: Afterwards called Saint Oluf.]
+
+It is but the work of one night; the same night when Oluf Hakonson,
+with iron and with fire, burst his onward way through the stubborn
+ground; before the day breaks the waters of the Mälar roll there; the
+Norwegian prince, Oluf sailed through the royal channel he had cut in
+the east. The stockades, where the iron chains hang, must bear the
+defences; the citizens from the burnt-down Sigtuna erect themselves a
+bulwark here, and build their new, little town on stock-holms.[I]
+
+[Footnote I: Stock, signifies bulks, or beams; holms, i.e. islets,
+or river islands; hence Stockholm.]
+
+The clouds go, and the years go! Do you see how the gables grow? there
+rise towers and forts. Birger Jarl makes the town of Stockholm a
+fortress; the warders stand with bow and arrow on the walls,
+reconnoitring over lake and fjord, over Brunkaberg sand-ridge. There
+were the sand-ridge slopes upwards from Rörstrand's Lake they build
+Clara cloister, and between it and the town a street springs up:
+several more appear; they form an extensive city, which soon becomes
+the place of contest for different partisans, where Ladelaas's sons
+plant the banner, and where the German Albrecht's retainers burn the
+Swedes alive within its walls. Stockholm is, however, the heart of the
+kingdom: that the Danes know well; that the Swedes know too, and there
+is strife and bloody combating. Blood flows by the executioner's hand,
+Denmark's Christian the Second, Sweden's executioner, stands in the
+market-place.
+
+Roll, ye runes! see over Brunkaberg sand-ridge, where the Swedish
+people conquered the Danish host, there they raise the May-pole: it is
+midsummer-eve--Gustavus Vasa makes his entry into Stockholm.
+
+Around the May-pole there grow fruit and kitchen-gardens, houses and
+streets; they vanish in flames, they rise again; that gloomy fortress
+towards the tower is transformed into a palace, and the city stands
+magnificently with towers and draw-bridges. There grows a town by
+itself on the sand-ridge, a third springs up on the rock towards the
+south; the old walls fall at Gustavus Adolphus's command; the three
+towns are one, large and extensive, picturesquely varied with old
+stone houses, wooden shops, and grass-roofed huts; the sun shines on
+the brass balls of the towers, and a forest of masts stands in that
+secure harbour.
+
+Rays of beauty shoot forth into the world from Versailles' painted
+divinity; they reach the Mälar's strand into Tessin's[J] palace, where
+art and science are invited as guests with the King, Gustavus the
+Third, whose effigy cast in bronze is raised on the strand before the
+splendid palace--it is in our times. The acacia shades the palace's
+high terrace on whose broad balustrades flowers send forth their
+perfume from Saxon porcelain; variegated silk curtains hang half-way
+down before the large glass windows; the floors are polished smooth as
+a mirror, and under the arch yonder, where the roses grow by the wall,
+the Endymion of Greece lives eternally in marble. As a guard of honour
+here, stand Fogelberg's Odin, and Sergei's Amor and Psyche.
+
+[Footnote J: The architect Tessin.]
+
+We now descend the broad, royal staircase, and before it, where, in
+by-gone times, Oluf Skötkonge stretched the iron chains across the
+mouth of the Mälar Lake, there is now a splendid bridge with shops
+above and the Streamparterre below: there we see the little steamer
+'Nocken,'[K] steering its way, filled with passengers from Diurgarden
+to the Streamparterre. And what is the Streamparterre? The Neapolitans
+would tell us: It is in miniature--quite in miniature--the
+Stockholmers' "Villa Reale." The Hamburgers would say: It is in
+miniature--quite in miniature--the Stockholmers' "Jungfernstieg."
+
+[Footnote K: The water-sprite.]
+
+It is a very little semi-circular island, on which the arches of the
+bridge rest; a garden full of flowers and trees, which we overlook
+from the high parapet of the bridge. Ladies and gentlemen promenade
+there; musicians play, families sit there in groups, and take
+refreshments in the vaulted halls under the bridge, and look out
+between the green trees over the open water, to the houses and
+mansions, and also to the woods and rocks: we forget that we are in
+the midst of the city.
+
+It is the bridge here that unites Stockholm with Nordmalen, where the
+greatest part of the fashionable world live, in two long Berlin-like
+streets; yet amongst all the great houses we will only visit one, and
+that is the theatre.
+
+We will go on the stage itself--it has an historical signification.
+Here, by the third side-scene from the stage-lights, to the right, as
+we look down towards the audience, Gustavus the Third was assassinated
+at a masquerade; and he was borne into that little chamber there,
+close by the scene, whilst all the outlets were closed, and the motley
+group of harlequins, polichinellos, wild men, gods and goddesses with
+unmasked faces, pale and terrified crept together; the dancing
+ballet-farce had become a real tragedy.
+
+This theatre is Jenny Lind's childhood's home. Here she has sung in
+the choruses when a little girl; here she first made her appearance in
+public, and was cheeringly encouraged when a child; here, poor and
+sorrowful, she has shed tears, when her voice left her, and sent up
+pious prayers to her Maker. From hence the world's nightingale flew
+out over distant lands, and proclaimed the purity and holiness of art.
+
+How beautiful it is to look out from the window up here, to look over
+the water and the Streamparterre to that great, magnificent palace, to
+Ladegaards land, with the large barracks, to Skipholmen and the rocks
+that rise straight up from the water, with Södermalm's gardens,
+villas, streets, and church cupolas between the green trees: the ships
+lie there together, so many and so close, with their waving flags. The
+beautiful, that a poet's eye sees, the world may also see! Roll, ye
+runes!
+
+There sketches the whole varied prospect; a rainbow extends its arch
+like a frame around it. Only see! it is sunset, the sky becomes
+cloudy over Södermalm, the grey sky becomes darker and darker--a
+pitch-dark ground--and on it rests a double rainbow. The houses are
+illumined by so strong a sunlight that the walls seem transparent;
+the linden-trees in the gardens, which have lately put forth their
+leaves, appear like fresh, young woods; the long, narrow windows in
+the Gothic buildings on the island shine as if it were a festal
+illumination, and between the dark firs there falls a lustre from the
+panes behind them as of a thousand flames, as if the trees were
+covered with flickering--Christmas lights; the colours of the rainbow
+become stronger and stronger, the background darker and darker, and
+the white sun-lit sea-gulls fly past.
+
+The rainbow has placed one foot high up on Södermalm's churchyard.
+Where the rainbow touches the earth, there lie treasures buried, is a
+popular belief here. The rainbow rests on a grave up there: Stagnalius
+rests here, Sweden's most gifted singer, so young and so unhappy; and
+in the same grave lies Nicander, he who sang about King Enzio, and of
+"Lejonet i Oken;"[L] who sang with a bleeding heart: the fresh
+vine-leaf cooled the wound and killed the singer. Peace be with his
+dust--may his songs live for ever! We go to your grave where the
+rainbow points. The view from here is splendid. The houses rise
+terrace-like in the steep, paved streets; the foot-passengers can,
+however, shorten the way by going through narrow lanes, and up steps
+made of thick beams, and always with a prospect downwards of the
+water, of the rocks and green trees! It is delightful to dwell here,
+it is healthy to dwell here, but it is not genteel, as it is by
+Brunkaberg's sand-ridge, yet it will become so: Stockholm's "Strada
+Balbi" will one day arise on Södermalm's rocky ground.
+
+[Footnote L: "The Lion in the desert;" i.e. Napoleon.]
+
+We stand up here. What other city in the world has a better prospect
+over the salt fjord, over the fresh lake, over towers, cupolas,
+heaped-up houses, and a palace, which King Enzio himself might have
+built, and round about the dark, gloomy forests with oaks, pines and
+firs, so Scandinavian, dreaming in the declining sun? It is twilight;
+the night comes on, the lamps are lighted in the city below, the stars
+are kindled in the firmament above, and the tower of Redderholm's
+church rises aloft towards the starry space. The stars shine through
+there; it is as if cut in lace, but every thread is of cast-iron and
+of the thickness of beams.
+
+We go down there, and in there, in the stilly eve.--A world of spirits
+reigns within. See, in the vaulted isles, on carved wooden horses,
+sits armour, that was once borne by Magnus Ladelaas, Christian the
+Second, and Charles the Ninth. A thousand flags that once waved to the
+peal of music and the clang of arms, to the darted javelin and the
+cannon's roar, moulder away here: they hang in long rags from the
+staff, and the staves lie cast aside, where the flag has long since
+become dust. Almost all the Kings of Sweden slumber in silver and
+copper coffins within these walls. From the altar aisle we look
+through the open-grated door, in between piled-up drums and hanging
+flags: here is preserved a bloody tunic, and in the coffin are the
+remains of Gustavus Adolphus. Who is that dead opposite neighbour in
+the chapel, across there in the other side-aisle of the church? There,
+below a glass lid, lies a dress shot through, and on the floor stands
+a pair of long, thick boots--they belonged to the hero-King, the
+wanderer, Charles XII., whose realm is now this narrow coffin.
+
+How sacred it is here under this vaulted roof! The mightiest men of
+centuries are gathered together here, perishable as these moth-eaten
+flags--mute and yet so eloquent. And without there is life and
+activity: the world goes on in its old course; generations change in
+the old houses; the houses change--yet Stockholm is always the heart
+of Sweden, Birger's city, whose features are continually renewed,
+continually beautified.
+
+
+
+
+DIURGAERDEN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Diurgaerden is a large piece of land made into a garden by our Lord
+himself. Come with us over there. We are still in the city, but before
+the palace lie the broad hewn stone stairs, leading down to the water,
+where the Dalkulls--i.e., the Dalecarlian women--stand and ring with
+metal bells. On board! here are boats enough to choose amongst, all
+with wheels, which the Dalkulls turn. In coarse white linen, red
+stockings, with green heels, and singularly thick-soled shoes, with
+the upper-leather right up the shin-bone, stands the Dalkull; she has
+ornamented the boat, that now shoots away, with green branches. Houses
+and streets rise and unfold themselves; churches and gardens start
+forth; they stand on Södermalm high above the tops of the ships'
+masts. The scenery reminds one of the Bhosphorus and Pera; the motley
+dress of the Dalkulls is quite Oriental--and listen! the wind bears
+melancholy Skalmeie tones out to us. Two poor Dalecarlians are playing
+music on the quay; they are the same drawn-out, melancholy tones that
+are played by the Bulgarian musicians in the streets of Pera. We stept
+out, and are in the Diurgarden.
+
+What a crowd of equipages pass in rows through the broad avenue! and
+what a throng of well-dressed pedestrians of all classes! One thinks
+of the garden of the Villa Borghese, when, at the time of the wine
+feast, the Roman people and strangers take the air there. We are in
+the Borghese garden; we are by the Bosphorus, and yet far in the
+North. The pine-tree rises large and free; the birch droops its
+branches, as the weeping willow alone has power to do--and what
+magnificently grand oaks! The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees,
+beautiful to the painter's eye; splendid green grass plains lie
+stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close
+past, as if it were a river. Large ships with swelling sails, the one
+high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied
+numbers.
+
+Come! let us up to Byström's villa; it lies on the stony cliff up
+there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur: we
+see from here the whole tripartite city, Södermalm, Nordmalm and the
+island with that huge palace. It is delightful, the building here on
+this rock, and the building stands, and that almost entirely of
+marble, a "Casa santa d'Italia," as if borne through the air here in
+the North. The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but
+heavy: there is nothing genial. Round about stand large marble figures
+by Byström, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity. Madonna is
+encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the
+flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the
+weeping Cupid, one thinks of a _pose_ arranged by a ballet-master.
+
+Let us, however, see what is pretty. The little Cupid-seller is
+pretty, and the stone is made as flexible as life in the waists of the
+bathing-women. One of them, as she steps out, feels the water with her
+feet, and we feel, with her, a sensation that the water is cold. The
+coolness of the marble-hall realizes this feeling. Let us go out into
+the sunshine, and up to the neighbouring cliff, which rises above the
+mansions and houses. Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices
+in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and
+the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze
+bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that
+Scandinavian improvisatore. Here he lay in the grass, composed and
+sang his anacreontic songs, and here, in the summer-time, his annual
+festival is held. We will raise his altar here in the red evening
+sunlight. It is a flaming bowl, raised high on the jolly tun, and it
+is wreathed with roses. Morits tries his hunting-horn, that which was
+Oberon's horn in the inn-parlour, and everything danced, from Ulla to
+"Mutter paa Toppen:"[M] they stamped with their feet and clapped their
+hands, and clinked the pewter lid of the ale-tankard; "hej kara Sjæl!
+fukta din aske!" (Hey! dear soul! moisten your clay).
+
+[Footnote M: The landlady of an alehouse.]
+
+A Teniers' picture became animated, and still lives in song. Morits
+blows the horn on Bellmann's place around the flowing bowl, and whole
+crowds dance in a circle, young and old; the carriages too, horses and
+waggons, filled bottles and clattering tankards: the Bellmann
+dithyrambic clangs melodiously; humour and low life, sadness--and
+amongst others, about
+
+    "----hur ögat gret
+     Ved de Cypresser, som ströddes."[N]
+
+[Footnote N: How the eyes wept by the cypresses that were strewn
+around.]
+
+Painter, seize thy brush and palette and paint the Maenade--but not
+her who treads the winebag, whilst her hair flutters in the wind, and
+she sings ecstatic songs. No, but the Maenade that ascends from
+Bellmann's steaming bowl is the Punch's Anadyomene--she, with the high
+heels to the red shoes, with rosettes on her gown and with fluttering
+veil and mantilla--fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose
+of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks
+with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about
+breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible
+that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce
+to us the human heart's sadness and hope.
+
+
+
+
+A STORY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the apple-trees in the garden had sprung out. They had made haste
+to get blossoms before they got green leaves; and all the ducklings
+were out in the yard--and the cat too! He was, so to speak, permeated
+by the sunshine; he licked it from his own paws; and if one looked
+towards the fields, one saw the corn standing so charmingly green! And
+there was such a twittering and chirping amongst all the small birds,
+just as if it were a great feast. And that one might indeed say it
+was, for it was Sunday. The bells rang, and people in their best
+clothes went to church, and looked so pleased. Yes, there was
+something so pleasant in everything: it was indeed so fine and warm a
+day, that one might well say: "Our Lord is certainly unspeakably good
+towards us poor mortals!"
+
+But the clergyman stood in the pulpit in the church, and spoke so loud
+and so angrily! He said that mankind was so wicked, and that God would
+punish them for it, and that when they died, the wicked went down into
+hell, where they would burn for ever; and he said that their worm
+would never die, and their fire never be extinguished, nor would they
+ever get rest and peace!
+
+It was terrible to hear, and he said it so determinedly. He described
+hell to them as a pestilential hole, where all the filthiness of the
+world flowed together. There was no air except the hot, sulphurous
+flames; there was no bottom; they sank and sank into everlasting
+silence! It was terrible, only to hear about it; but the clergyman
+said it right honestly out of his heart, and all the people in the
+church were quite terrified. But all the little birds outside the
+church sang so pleasantly, and so pleased, and the sun shone so
+warm:--it was as if every little flower said: "God is so wondrous good
+to us altogether!" Yes, outside it was not at all as the clergyman
+preached.
+
+In the evening, when it was bed-time, the clergyman saw his wife sit
+so still and thoughtful.
+
+"What ails you?" said he to her.
+
+"What ails me?" she replied; "what ails me is, that I cannot collect
+my thoughts rightly--that I cannot rightly understand what you said;
+that there were so many wicked, and that they should burn
+eternally!--eternally, alas, how long! I am but a sinful being; but I
+could not bear the thought in my heart to allow even the worst sinner
+to burn for ever. And how then should our Lord permit it? he who is so
+wondrously good, and who knows how evil comes both from without and
+within. No, I cannot believe it, though you say it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was autumn. The leaves fell from the trees; the grave, severe
+clergyman sat by the bedside of a dying person; a pious believer
+closed her eyes--it was the clergyman's own wife.
+
+"If any one find peace in the grave, and grace from God, then it is
+thou," said the clergyman, and he folded her hands, and read a psalm
+over the dead body.
+
+And she was borne to the grave: two heavy tears trickled down that
+stern man's cheeks; and it was still and vacant in the parsonage; the
+sunshine within was extinguished:--she was gone.
+
+It was night. A cold wind blew over the clergyman's head; he opened
+his eyes, and it was just as if the moon shone into his room. But the
+moon did not shine. It was a figure which stood before his bed--he saw
+the spirit of his deceased wife. She looked on him so singularly
+afflicted; it seemed as though she would say something.
+
+The man raised himself half erect in bed, and stretched his arms out
+towards her.
+
+"Not even to thee is granted everlasting peace. Thou dost suffer;
+thou, the best, the most pious!"
+
+And the dead bent her head in confirmation of his words, and laid her
+hand on her breast.
+
+"And can I procure you peace in the grave?"
+
+"Yes!" it sounded in his ear.
+
+"And how?"
+
+"Give me a hair, but a single hair of the head of that sinner, whose
+fire will never be quenched; that sinner whom God will cast down into
+hell, to everlasting torment."
+
+"Yes; so easily thou canst be liberated, thou pure, thou pious one!"
+said he.
+
+"Then follow me," said the dead; "it is so granted us. Thou canst be
+by my side, wheresoever thy thoughts will. Invisible to mankind, we
+stand in their most secret places; but thou must point with a sure
+hand to the one destined to eternal punishment, and ere the cock crow
+he must be found."
+
+And swift, as if borne on the wings of thought, they were in the great
+city, and the names of the dying sinners shone from the walls of the
+houses in letters of fire: "Arrogance, Avarice, Drunkenness,
+Voluptuousness;" in short, sin's whole seven-coloured arch.
+
+"Yes, in there, as I thought it, as I knew it," said the clergyman,
+"are housed those condemned to eternal fire."
+
+And they stood before the splendidly-illumined portico, where the
+broad stairs were covered with carpets and flowers, and the music of
+the dance sounded through the festal saloons. The porter stood there
+in silk and velvet, with a large silver-headed stick.
+
+"_Our_ ball can match with the King's," said he, and turned towards
+the crowd in the street--his magnificent thoughts were visible in his
+whole person. "Poor devils! who stare in at the portico, you are
+altogether ragamuffins, compared to me!"
+
+"Arrogance," said the dead; "dost thou see him?"
+
+"Him!" repeated the clergyman; "he is a simpleton--a fool only, and
+will not be condemned to eternal fire and torment."
+
+"A fool only," sounded through the whole house of Arrogance.
+
+And they flew into the four bare walls of Avarice, where skinny,
+meagre, shivering with cold, hungry and thirsty, the old man clung
+fast with all his thoughts to his gold. They saw how he, as in a
+fever, sprang from his wretched pallet, and took a loose stone out of
+the wall. There lay gold coins in a stocking-foot; he fumbled at his
+ragged tunic, in which gold coins were sewed fast, and his moist
+fingers trembled.
+
+"He is ill: it is insanity; encircled by fear and evil dreams."
+
+And they flew away in haste, and stood by the criminals' wooden couch,
+where they slept side by side in long rows. One of them started up
+from his sleep like a wild animal, and uttered a hideous scream: he
+struck his companion with his sharp elbow, and the latter turned
+sleepily round.
+
+"Hold your tongue, you beast, and sleep! this is your way every night!
+Every night!" he repeated; "yes, you come every night, howling and
+choking me! I have done one thing or another in a passion; I was born
+with a passionate temper, and it has brought me in here a second time;
+but if I have done wrong, so have I also got my punishment. But one
+thing I have not confessed. When I last went out from here, and passed
+by my master's farm, one thing and another boiled up in me, and I
+directly stroked a lucifer against the wall: it came a little too near
+the thatch, and everything was burnt--hot-headedness came over it,
+just as it comes over me, I helped to save the cattle and furniture.
+Nothing living was burnt, except a flock of pigeons: they flew into
+the flames, and the yard dog. I had not thought of the dog. I could
+hear it howl, and that howl I always hear yet, when I would sleep; and
+if I do get to sleep, the dog comes also--so large and hairy! He lies
+down on me, howls, and strangles me! Do but hear what I am telling
+you. Snore--yes, that you can--snore the whole night through, and I
+not even a quarter of an hour!"
+
+And the blood shone from the eyes of the fiery one; he fell on his
+companion, and struck him in the face with his clenched fist.
+
+"Angry Mads has become mad again!" resounded on all sides, and the
+other rascals seized hold of him, wrestled with him, and bent him
+double, so that his head was forced between his legs, where they bound
+it fast, so that the blood was nearly springing out of his eyes, and
+all the pores.
+
+"You will kill him!" said the clergyman,--"poor unfortunate!" and as
+he stretched his hands out over him, who had already suffered too
+severely, in order to prevent further mischief, the scene changed.
+
+They flew through rich halls, and through poor chambers;
+voluptuousness and envy, all mortal sins strode past them. A recording
+angel read their sin and their defence; this was assuredly little for
+God, for God reads the heart; He knows perfectly the evil that comes
+within it and from without, He, grace, all-loving kindness. The hand
+of the clergyman trembled: he did not venture to stretch it out, to
+pluck a hair from the sinner's head. And the tears streamed down from
+his eyes, like the waters of _grace_ and love, which quenched the
+eternal fire of hell.
+
+The cock then crowed.
+
+"Merciful God! Thou wilt grant her that peace in the grave which I
+have not been able to redeem."
+
+"That I now have!" said the dead; "it was thy hard words, thy dark,
+human belief of God and his creatures, which drove me to thee! Learn
+to know mankind; even in the bad there is a part of God--a part that
+will conquer and quench the fire of hell."
+
+And a kiss was pressed on the clergyman's lips:--it shone around him.
+God's clear, bright sun shone into the chamber, where his wife,
+living, mild, and affectionate, awoke him from a dream, sent from God!
+
+
+
+
+UPSALA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is commonly said, that Memory is a young girl with light blue eyes.
+Most poets say so; but we cannot always agree with most poets. To us
+memory comes in quite different forms, all according to that land, or
+that town to which she belongs. Italy sends her as a charming Mignon,
+with black eyes and a melancholy smile, singing Bellini's soft,
+touching songs. From Scotland Memory's sprite appears as a powerful
+lad with bare knees; the plaid hangs over his shoulder, the
+thistle-flower is fixed on his cap; Burns's songs then fill the air
+like the heath-lark's song, and Scotland's wild thistle flowers
+beautifully fragrant as the fresh rose. But now for Memory's sprite
+from Sweden, from Upsala. He comes thence in the form of a student--at
+least, he wears the Upsala student's white cap with the black rim. To
+us it points out its home, as the Phrygian cap denotes Ganymede.
+
+It was in the year 1843, that the Danish students travelled to Upsala.
+Young hearts met together; eyes sparkled: they laughed, they sang.
+Young hearts are the future--the conquering future--in the beautiful,
+true and good; it is so good that brothers should know and love each
+other. Friendship's meeting is still annually remembered in the
+palace-yard of Upsala, before the monument of Gustavus Vasa--by the
+hurra! for Denmark, in warm-hearted compliment to me.
+
+Two summers afterwards, the visit was returned. The Swedish students
+came to Copenhagen, and that they might there be known amongst the
+multitude, the Upsala students wore a white cap with a black rim: this
+cap is accordingly a memorial,--the sign of friendship's bridge over
+that river of blood which once flowed between kindred nations. When
+one meets in heart and spirit, a blissful seed is then sown. Memory's
+sprite, come to us! we know thee by the cap from Upsala: be thou our
+guide, and from our more southern home, after years and days, we will
+make the voyage over again, quicker than if we flew in Doctor Faustus'
+magic cloak. We are in Stockholm: we stand on the Ridderholm where the
+steamers lie alongside the bulwarks: one of them sends forth clouds of
+thick smoke from its chimney; the deck is crowded with passengers, and
+the white cap with the black rim is not wanting.
+
+We are off to Upsala; the paddles strike the waters of the Mälar, and
+we shoot away from the picturesque city of Stockholm. The whole
+voyage, direct to Upsala, is a kaleidescope on a large scale. It is
+true, there is nothing of the magical in the scenery, but landscape
+gives place to landscape, and clouds and sunshine refresh their
+variegated beauty. The Mälar lake curves, is compressed, and widens
+again: it is as if one passed from lake to lake through narrow canals
+and broad rivers. Sometimes it appears as if the lake ended in small
+rivulets between dark pines and rocks, when suddenly another large
+lake, surrounded by corn fields and meadows, opens itself to view: the
+light-green linden trees, which have just unfolded their leaves, shine
+forth before the dark grey rocks. Again a new lake opens before us,
+with islets, trees and red painted houses, and during the whole voyage
+there is a lively arrival and departure of passengers, in flat
+bottomed boats, which are nearly upset in the billowy wake of the
+vessel.
+
+It appears most dangerous opposite to Sigtuna, Sweden's old royal
+city: the lake is broad here; the waves rise as if they were the
+waters of the ocean; the boats rock--it is fearful to look at! But
+here there must be a calm; and Sigtuna, that little interesting town
+where the old towers stand in ruins, like outposts along the rocks,
+reflects itself in the water.
+
+We fly past! and now we are in Tyris rivulet! Part of a meadow is
+flooded; a herd of horses become shy from the snorting of the
+steamer's engine; they dash through the water in the meadow, and it
+spurts up all over them. It glitters there between the trees on the
+declivity: the Upsala students lie encamped there, and exercise
+themselves in the use of arms.
+
+The rivulet forms a bay, and the high plain extends itself. We see old
+Upsala's hills; we see Upsala's city with its church, which, like
+Notre Dame, raises its stony arms towards heaven. The university rises
+to the view, in appearance half palace and half barracks, and there
+aloft, on the greensward-clothed bank, stands the old red-painted huge
+palace with its towers.
+
+We stop at the bulwark near the arched bridge, and so go on shore.
+Whither wilt thou conduct us first, thou our guide with the
+white-and-black student's cap? Shall we go up to the palace, or to
+Linnaeus's garden! or shall we go to the church-yard where the nettles
+grow over Geier's and Törnro's graves? No, but to the young and the
+living Upsala's life--the students. Thou tellest us about them; we
+hear the heart's pulsations, and our hearts beat in sympathy!
+
+In the first year of the war between Denmark and the insurgents, many
+a brave Upsala student left his quiet, comfortable home, and entered
+the ranks with his Danish brothers. The Upsala students gave up their
+most joyous festival--the May-day festival--and the money they at
+other times used to contribute annually towards the celebration
+thereof, they sent to the Danes, after the sum had been increased by
+concerts which were given in Stockholm and Vesteraas. That
+circumstance will not be forgotten in Denmark.
+
+Upsala student, thou art dear to us by thy disposition! thou art dear
+to us from thy lively jests! We will mention a trait thereof. In
+Upsala, it had become the fashion to be Hegelianers--that is to say,
+always to interweave Hegel's philosophical terms in conversation. In
+order to put down this practice, a few clever fellows took upon
+themselves the task of hammering some of the most difficult technical
+words into the memory of a humorous and commonly drunken country
+innkeeper, at whose house many a _Sexa_ was often held; and the man
+spoke Hegelianic in his mellow hours, and the effect was so absurd,
+that the employment of philosophical scraps in his speech was
+ridiculed, understood, and the nuisance abandoned.
+
+Beautiful songs resound as we approach: we hear Swedish, Norwegian and
+Danish. The melody's varied beacon makes known to us where Upsala's
+students are assembled. The song proceeds from the assembly-room--from
+the tavern saloon, and like serenades in the silent evening, when a
+young friend departs, or a dear guest is honoured. Glorious melodies!
+ye enthral, so that we forget that the sun goes down, and the moon
+rises.
+
+    "Herre min Gud hvad din MÃ¥nen lyser
+     Se, hvilken Glands ut ofver Land och Stad!"
+
+is now sung, and we see:
+
+    "Högt opp i Slottet hvarenda ruta
+     Blixtrar some vore den en ädelsten."[O]
+
+[Footnote O: Lord, my God, how Thy moon shines! See what lustre over
+land and city! High up in the palace every pane glistens as if it
+were a gem.]
+
+Up thither then is our way! lead us, memory's sprite, into the palace,
+the courteous governor of Upland's dwelling; mild glances greet us; we
+see dear beings in a happy circle, and all the leading characters of
+Upsala. We again see him whose cunning quickened our perceptions as to
+the mysteries of vegetable life, so that even the toad-stool is
+unveiled to us as a building more artfully constructed than the
+labyrinths of the olden time. We see "The Flowers'" singer, he who led
+us to "The Island of Bliss;" we meet with him whose popular lays are
+borne on melodies into the world; his wife by his side. That quiet,
+gentle woman with those faithful eyes is the daughter of Frithiof's
+bard; we see noble men and women, ladies of the high nobility, with
+sounding and significant family names with _silver_ and
+_lilies_,--_stars_ and _swords_.
+
+Hark! listen to that lively song. Gunnar Wennerberg, Gluntarra's poet
+and composer, sings his songs with Boronees,[P] and they acquire a
+dramatic life and reality.
+
+[Footnote P: Gluntarra duets, by Gunnar Wennerberg.]
+
+How spiritual and enjoyable! one becomes happy here, one feels proud
+of the age one lives in, happy in being distant from the horrible
+tragedies that history speaks of within these walls.
+
+We can hear about them when the song is silent, when those friendly
+forms disappear, and the festal lights are extinguished: from the
+pages of history that tale resounds with a clang of horror. It was in
+those times, which the many still call poetic--the romantic middle
+ages--that bards sang of its most brilliant periods, and covered with
+the radiance of their genius the sanguinary gulf of brutality and
+superstition. Terror seizes us in Upsala's palace: we stand in the
+vaulted hall, the wax tapers burn from the walls, and King Erik the
+Fourteenth sits with Saul's dark despondency, with Cain's wild looks.
+Niels Sture occupies his thoughts, the recollection of injustice
+exercised against him lashes his conscience with scourges and
+scorpions, as deadly terrible as they are revealed to us in the page
+of history.
+
+King Erik the Fourteenth, whose gloomy distrust often amounted to
+insanity, thought that the nobility aimed at his life. His favourite,
+Goran Persson, found it to his advantage to strengthen him in this
+belief. He hated most the popularly favoured race of the Stures, and
+of them, the light-haired Niels Sture in particular; for Erik thought
+that he had read in the stars that a man with light hair should hurl
+him from the throne; and as the Swedish General after the lost battle
+of Svarteaa, laid the blame on Niels Sture, Erik directly believed it,
+yet dared not to act as he desired, but even gave Niels Sture royal
+presents. Yet because he was again accused by one single person of
+having checked the advance of the Swedish army at Bähüs, Erik invited
+him to his palace at Svartsjö, gave him an honourable place at his
+royal table, and let him depart in apparent good faith for Stockholm,
+where, on his arrival, the heralds were ordered to proclaim in the
+streets: "Niels Sture is a traitor to his country!"
+
+There Goran Persson and the German retainers seized him, and sat him
+by force on the executioner's most miserable hack; struck him in the
+face so that the blood streamed down, placed a tarred straw crown on
+his head, and fastened a paper with derisive words, on the saddle
+before him. They then let a row of hired beggar-boys and old
+fish-wives go in couples before, and to the tail of the horse they
+bound two fir-trees, the roots of which dragged on the ground and
+swept the street after the traitor. Niels Sture exclaimed that he had
+not deserved this treatment from his King and he begged the groom, who
+went by his side, and had served him in the field of battle, to attest
+the truth like an honest man; when they all shouted aloud, that he
+suffered innocently, and had acted like a true Swede. But the
+procession was driven forward through the streets without stopping,
+and at night Niels Sture was conducted to prison.
+
+King Erik sits in his royal palace: he orders the torches and candles
+to be lighted, but they are of no avail--his thoughts' scorpions sting
+his soul.
+
+"I have again liberated Niels Sture," he mutters; "I have had placards
+put up at every street-corner, and let the heralds proclaim that no
+one shall dare to speak otherwise than well of Niels Sture! I have
+sent him on an honourable mission to a foreign court, in order to sue
+for me in marriage! He has had reparation enough made to him; but
+never will he, nor his mighty race, forget the derision and shame I
+have made him suffer. They will all betray me--kill me!"
+
+And King Erik commands that all Sture's kindred shall be made
+prisoners.
+
+King Erik sits in his royal palace: the sun shines, but not into the
+King's heart. Niels Sture enters the chamber with an answer of consent
+from the royal bride, and the King shakes him by the hand, making fair
+promises--and the following evening Niels Sture is a prisoner in
+Upsala Palace.
+
+King Erik's gloomy mind is disturbed; he has no rest; he has no peace,
+between fear and distrust. He hurries away to Upsala Palace; he will
+make all straight and just again by marrying Niels Sture's sister.
+Kneeling, he begs her imprisoned father's consent, and obtains it; but
+in the very moment, the spirit of distrust is again upon him, and he
+cries in his insanity:
+
+"But you will not forgive me the shame I brought on Niels!"
+
+At the same time, Goran Persson announced that King Erik's brother,
+John, had escaped from his prison, and that a revolt was breaking out.
+And Erik ran, with a sharp dagger into Niels Sture's prison.
+
+"Art thou there, traitor to thy country!" he shouted, and thrust the
+dagger into Shire's arm; and Sture drew it out again, wiped off the
+blood, kissed the hilt, and returned the weapon to the King, saying:
+
+"Be lenient with me, Sire; I have not deserved your disfavour."
+
+Erik laughed aloud.
+
+"Ho! ho! do but hear the villain! how he can pray for himself!"
+
+And the King's halberdier stuck his lance through Niels Sture's eye,
+and thus gave him his death. Sture's blood cleaves to Upsala
+Palace--to King Erik always and everlastingly. No church masses can
+absolve his soul from that base crime.
+
+Let us now go to the church.
+
+A little flight of stairs in the side aisle leads us up to a vaulted
+chamber, where kings' crowns and sceptres, taken from the coffins of
+the dead, are deposited in wooden closets. Here, in the corner, hangs
+Niels Sture's blood-covered clothes and knight's hat, on the outside
+of which a small silk glove is fastened. It was his betrothed one's
+dainty glove--that which he, knight-like, always bore.
+
+O, barbarous era! highly vaunted as you are in song, retreat, like the
+storm-cloud, and be poetically beautiful to all who do not see thee in
+thy true light.
+
+We descend from the little chamber, from the gold and silver of the
+dead, and wander in the church's aisles. The cold marble tombs, with
+shields of arms and names, awaken other, milder thoughts.
+
+The walls shine brightly, and with varied hues, in the great chapel
+behind the high altar. The fresco paintings present to us the most
+eventful circumstances of Gustavus Vasa's life. Here his clay
+moulders, with that of his three consorts. Yonder, a work in marble,
+by Sargel, solicits our attention: it adorns the burial-chapel of the
+De Geers; and here, in the centre aisle, under that flat stone, rests
+Linnaeus. In the side chapel, is his monument, erected by _amici_ and
+_discipuli_: a sufficient sum was quickly raised for its erection, and
+the King, Gustavus the Third, himself brought his royal gift. The
+projector of the subscription then explained to him, that the purposed
+inscription was, that the monument was erected only by friends and
+disciples, and King Gustavus answered: "And am not I also one of
+Linnaeus's disciples?"
+
+The monument was raised, and a hall built in the botanical garden,
+under splendid trees. There stands his bust; but the remembrance of
+himself, his home, his own little garden--where is it most vivid? Lead
+us thither.
+
+On yonder side of Fyri's rivulet, where the street forms a declivity,
+where red-painted, wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as
+fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnaeus's garden. We
+stand within it. How solitary! how overgrown! Tall nettles shoot up
+between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges. No water-plants appear more
+in that little, dried-up basin; the hedges that were formerly clipped,
+put forth fresh leaves without being checked by the gardener's shears.
+
+It was between these hedges that Linnaeus at times saw his own
+double--that optical illusion which presents the express image of a
+second self--from the hat to the boots.
+
+Where a great man has lived and worked, the place itself becomes, as
+it were, a part and parcel of him: the whole, as well as a part, has
+mirrored itself in his eye; it has entered into his soul, and become
+linked with it and the whole world.
+
+We enter the orangeries: they are now transformed into assembly-rooms;
+the blooming winter-garden has disappeared; but the walls yet show a
+sort of herbarium. They are hung round with the portraits of learned
+Swedes--herbarium from the garden of science and knowledge. Unknown
+faces--and, to the stranger, the greatest part are unknown names--meet
+us here.
+
+One portrait amongst the many attracts our attention: it looks
+singular; it is the half-length figure of an old man in a shirt, lying
+in his bed. It is that of the learned theologian, Oedmann, who after
+he had been compelled to keep his bed by a fever, found himself so
+comfortable in it, that he continued to lie there during the remainder
+of his long life, and was not to be induced to get up. Even when the
+next house was burning, they were obliged to carry him out in his bed
+into the street. Death and cold were his two bugbears. The cold would
+kill him, was his opinion; and so, when the students came with their
+essays and treatises, the manuscripts were warmed at the stove before
+he read them. The windows of his room were never opened, so that there
+was a suffocating and impure air in his dwelling. He had a
+writing-desk on the bed; books and manuscripts lay in confusion round
+about; dishes, plates, and pots stood here or there, as the
+convenience of the moment dictated, and his only companion was a deaf
+and dumb laughter.
+
+She sat still in a corner by the window, wrapped up in herself, and
+staring before her, as if she were a figure that had flown out of the
+frame around the dark, mouldy canvas, which had once shown a picture
+on the wall.
+
+Here, in the room, in this impure atmosphere, the old man lived
+happily, and reached his seventieth year, occupied with the
+translation of travels in Africa. This tainted atmosphere, in which he
+lay, became, to his conceit, the dromedary's high back, which lifted
+him aloft in the burning sun; the long, hanging-down cobwebs were the
+palm-trees' waving banners, and the caravan went over rivers to the
+wild bushmen. Old Oedmann was with the hunters, chasing the elephants
+in the midst of the thick reeds; the agile tiger-cat sprang past, and
+the serpents shone like garlands around the boughs of the trees: there
+was excitement, there was danger--and yet he lay so comfortably in his
+good and beloved bed in Upsala.
+
+One winter's day, it happened that a Dalecarlian peasant mistook the
+house, and came into Oedmann's chamber in his snow-covered skin cloak,
+and with his beard full of ice. Oedmann shouted to him to go his way,
+but the peasant was deaf, and therefore stepped quite close up to the
+bed. He was the personification of Winter himself, and Oedmann fell
+ill from this visit: it was his only sickness during the many years he
+lay here as a polypus, grown fast, and where he was painted, as we see
+his portrait in the assembly-room.
+
+From the hall of learning we will go to its burial-place--that is to
+say, its open burial-place--the great library. We wander from hall to
+hall, up stairs and down stairs. Along the shelves, behind them and
+round about, stand books, those petrifactions of the mind, which might
+again be vivified by spirit. Here lives a kind-hearted and mild old
+man, the librarian, Professor Schröder. He smiles and nods as he hears
+how memory's sprite takes his place here as guide, and tells of and
+shows, as we see, Tegner's copy and translation of Ochlenschloeger's
+"Hakon Jarl and Palnatoke." We see Vadstene cloister's library, in
+thick hog's leather bindings, and think of the fair hands of the nuns
+that have borne them, the pious, mild eyes that conjured the spirit
+out of the dead letters. Here is the celebrated Codex Argentius, the
+translation of the "Four Evangelists."[Q] Gold and silver letters
+glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic
+manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's
+Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings
+and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in
+spirit, and longs to be out in the free air--and we are there; by
+Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf,
+out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church
+stands--the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes
+gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it
+leads us close past Upsala's old hills--Odin's, Thor's and Freia's
+graves, as they are called.
+
+[Footnote Q: A Gothic translation of the Four Evangelists, and
+ascribed to the Moesogothic Archbishop Ulphilas.]
+
+There once stood ancient Upsala, here now are but a few peasants'
+farms. The low church, built of granite blocks, dates from a very
+remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple. Each of
+the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands.
+Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin
+greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old
+housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the
+silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The
+wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden,
+and for the heart's constant thoughts--young love!
+
+Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been
+remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! and years after, when the same
+wanderer again stood here, she, the blooming rose, had been laid in
+the earth; the spring roses had strown their leaves over her coffined
+clay; the sweet music of her lips sounded but in memory; the smile in
+her eyes and around her mouth, was gone like the sunbeams, which then
+shone on Upsala's hills. Her name in the greensward is grown over; she
+herself is in the earth, and it is closed above her; but the hill
+here, closed for a thousand years, is open.
+
+Through the passage which is dug deep into the hills, we come to the
+funereal urns which contain the bones of youthful kindred; the dust of
+kings, the gods of the earth.
+
+The old housewife, from the peasant's cot, has lighted half a hundred
+wax candles and placed them in rows in the otherwise pitchy-dark,
+stone-paved passage. It shines so festally in here over the bones of
+the olden time's mighty ones, bones that are now charred and burnt to
+ashes. And whose were they? Thou world's power and glory, thou world's
+posthumous fame--dust, dust like beauty's rose, laid in the dark
+earth, where no light shines; thy memorials are but a name, the name
+but a sound. Away hence, and up on the hill where the wind blows, the
+sun shines, and the eye looks over the green plain, to the sunlit,
+dear Upsala, the student's city.
+
+
+
+
+SALA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sweden's great King, Germany's preserver, Gustavus Adolphus, founded
+Sala. The little wood, close by, still preserves legends of the heroic
+King's youthful love--of his meeting here with Ebba Brahe.
+
+Sala's silver mines are the largest, the deepest, and oldest in
+Sweden: they reach to the depth of one hundred and seventy fathoms,
+consequently they are almost as deep as the Baltic. This of itself is
+enough to awaken an interest for a little town; but what is its
+appearance? "Sala," says the guide-book, "lies in a valley, in a flat,
+and not very pleasant district." And so truly it is: it was not very
+attractive approaching it our way, and the high road led directly into
+the town, which is without any distinctive character. It consists of a
+long street with what we may term a nucleus and a few fibres. The
+nucleus is the market-place, and the fibres are the few lanes
+diverging from it. The long street--that is to say, long in a little
+town--is quite without passengers; no one comes out from the doors, no
+one is to be seen at the windows.
+
+It was therefore with pleased surprise that I at length descried a
+human being: it was at an ironmonger's, where there hung a paper of
+pins, a handkerchief and two tea-pots in the window. There I saw a
+solitary shop-boy, standing quite still, but leaning over the counter
+and looking out of the open door. He certainly wrote in his journal,
+if he had one, in the evening: "To-day a traveller drove through the
+town; who he was, God knows, for I don't!"--yes, that was what the
+shop-boy's face said, and an honest face it was.
+
+In the inn at which I arrived, there was the same grave-like stillness
+as in the street. The gate was certainly closed, but all the inner
+doors were wide open; the farm-yard cock stood uplifted in the middle
+of the traveller's room and crowed, in order to show that there was
+somebody at home. The house, however, was quite picturesque: it had an
+open balcony, from which one might look out upon the yard, for it
+would have been far too lively had it been facing the street. There
+hung the old sign and creaked in the wind, as if to show that it at
+least was alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass in
+the street had got the mastery over the pavement. The sun shone
+brightly, but shone as into the bachelor's solitary room, and on the
+old maid's balsams in the flower-pots. It was as still as a Scotch
+Sunday--and yet it was a Tuesday. One was disposed for Young's "Night
+Thoughts."
+
+I looked out from the balcony into the neighbouring yard: there was
+not a soul to be seen, but children had been playing there. There was
+a little garden made of dry sticks: they were stuck down in the soft
+soil and had been watered; a broken pan, which had certainly served by
+way of watering-pot, lay there still. The sticks signified roses and
+geraniums.
+
+It had been a delightful garden--alas, yes! We great, grown-up men--we
+play just so: we make ourselves a garden with what we call love's
+roses and friendship's geraniums; we water them with our tears and
+with our heart's blood; and yet they are, and remain, dry sticks
+without root. It was a gloomy thought; I felt it, and in order to get
+the dry sticks in my thoughts to blossom, I went out. I wandered in
+the fibres and in the long threads--that is to say, in the small
+lanes--and in the great street; and here was more life than I dared to
+expect. I met a herd of cattle returning or going--which I know
+not--for they were without a herdsman. The shop-boy still stood behind
+the counter, leaned over it and greeted me; the stranger took his hat
+off again--that was my day's employment in Sala.
+
+Pardon me, thou silent town, which Gustavus Adolphus built, where his
+young heart felt the first emotions of love, and where the silver lies
+in the deep shafts--that is to say, outside the town, "in a flat, and
+not very pleasant district."
+
+I knew no one in the town; I had no one to be my guide, so I
+accompanied the cows, and came to the churchyard. The cows went past,
+but I stepped over the stile, and stood amongst the graves, where the
+grass grew high, and almost all the tombstones lay with worn-out
+inscriptions. On a few only the date of the year was legible.
+"Anno"--yes, what then? And who rested here? Everything on the stone
+was erased--blotted out like the earthly life of those mortals that
+here were earth in earth. What life's dream have ye dead played here
+in silent Sala?
+
+The setting sun shone over the graves; not a leaf moved on the trees;
+all was still--still as death--in the city of the silver-mines, of
+which this traveller's reminiscence is but a frame around the shop-boy
+who leaned over the counter.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUTE BOOK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the high road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house.
+Our way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the
+windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard,
+in an arbour of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The
+corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that
+forenoon. No one stood by and wept over that dead man; no one hung
+sorrowfully over him; his face was covered with a white cloth, and
+under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was
+a whole sheet of grey paper, and between each lay withered flowers,
+deposited and forgotten--a whole herbarium, gathered in different
+places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave
+with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower.
+
+"Who is that dead man?" we asked, and the answer was: "The old student
+from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned
+languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was
+something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and
+himself up to drinking spirits, and as his health suffered by it, he
+came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and
+lodging.
+
+"He was as gentle as a child, when the dark humour did not come over
+him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted
+deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book
+with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day and look at one
+plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his
+cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might
+have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the
+lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful
+rest in the grave!"
+
+They raised the winding-sheet. There was peace in the face of the
+dead: a sunbeam fell on it; a swallow in its arrowy flight, darted
+into the new-made arbour, and in its flight circled twittering over
+the dead man's head.
+
+How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out old letters
+from the days of our youth and read them: a whole life, as it were,
+then rises up with all its hopes, and all its troubles. How many of
+those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as
+the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of
+them for many years--them whom we once thought we should always cling
+to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with.
+
+The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the
+friend--the friend of his school-days--the friend for life. He fixed
+this leaf on the student's cap in the green wood, when the vow of
+friendship was concluded for the whole of life. Where does he now
+live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign
+conservatory-plant, too fine for the gardens of the North--it looks as
+if there still were fragrance in these leaves!--_she_ gave it to
+him--she, the young lady of that noble garden.
+
+Here is the marsh-lotus which he himself has plucked and watered with
+salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters. And here is a
+nettle: what does its leaf say? What did he think on plucking it--on
+preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley from the woodland
+solitudes; here are honeysuckle leaves from the village ale-house
+flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass.
+
+The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead
+man's head; the swallow again flies past; "quivit! quivit!" Now the
+men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse,
+whose head rests on the Mute-Book--preserved--forgotten!
+
+
+
+
+THE ZÄTHER DALE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything was in order, the carriage examined, even a whip with a
+good lash was not forgotten. "Two whips would be best," said the
+ironmonger, who sold it, and the ironmonger was a man of experience,
+which travellers often are not. A whole bag full of "slanter"--that
+is, copper coins of small value--stood before us for bridge-money, for
+beggars, for shepherd's boys, or whoever might open the many
+field-gates for us that obstructed our progress. But we had to do this
+ourselves, for the rain pattered down and lashed the ground; no one
+had any desire to come out in such weather. The rushes in the marsh
+bent and waved; it was a real rain feast for them, and it whistled
+from the tops of the rushes: "We drink with our feet, we drink with
+our heads, we drink with the whole body, and yet we stand on one leg,
+hurra! We drink with the bending willow, with the dripping flowers on
+the bank; their cups run over--the marsh marigold, that fine lady, can
+bear it better! Hurra! it is a feast! it pours, it pours; we whistle
+and we sing; it is our own song. Tomorrow the frogs will croak the
+same after us and say, 'it is quite new!'"
+
+And the rushes waved, and the rain pattered down with a splashing
+noise--it was fine weather to travel in to Zäther Dale, and to see its
+far-famed beauties. The whip-lash now came off the whip; it was
+fastened on again, and again, and every time it was shorter, so that
+at last there was not a lash, nor was there any handle, for the handle
+went after the lash--or sailed after it--as the road was quite
+navigable, and gave one a vivid idea of the beginning of the deluge.
+
+One poor jade now drew too much, the other drew too little, and one of
+the splinter bars broke; well, by all that is vexatious, that was a
+fine drive! The leather apron in front had a deep pond in its folds
+with an outlet into one's lap. Now one of the linch-pins came out; now
+the twisting of the rope harness became loose, and the cross-strap was
+tired of holding any longer. Glorious inn in Zäther, how I now long
+more for thee than thy far-famed dale. And the horses went slower, and
+the rain fell faster, and so--yes, so we were not yet in Zäther.
+
+Patience, thou lank spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin
+thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as
+still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the
+carriage to Zäther. But to the inn, by the road side, close to the
+far-famed valley, I got at length, towards evening.
+
+And everything was flowing in the yard, chaotically mingled; manure
+and farming implements, staves and straw. The poultry sat there washed
+to shadows, or at least like stuck-up hens' skins with feathers on,
+and even the ducks crept close up to the wet wall, sated with the wet.
+The stable-man was cross, the girl still more so; it was difficult to
+get them to bestir themselves: the steps were crooked, the floor
+sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air
+was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on
+the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made
+by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells
+and purling brooks.
+
+It was a long hollow; I saw the tops of the trees looming up, and the
+rain drew its thick veil over it. The whole of that long evening did I
+sit and look upon it during that shower of showers. It was as if the
+Venern, the Vettern and a few more lakes ran through an immense sieve
+from the clouds. I had ordered something to eat and drink, but I got
+nothing. They ran up and they ran down; there was a hissing sound of
+roasting by the hearth; the girls chattered, the men drank "sup,"[R]
+strangers came, were shown into their rooms, and got both roast and
+boiled. Several hours had passed, when I made a forcible appeal to the
+girl, and she answered phlegmatically: "Why, Sir, you sit there and
+write without stopping, so you cannot have time to eat."
+
+[Footnote R: Swedish, _sup_. Danish, _snaps_. German, _schnaps_.
+English, _drams_.]
+
+It was a long evening, "but the evening passed!" It had become quite
+still in the inn; all the travellers, except myself, had again
+departed, certainly in order to find better quarters for the night at
+Hedemore or Brunbeck. I had seen, through the half-open door into the
+dirty tap-room, a couple of fellows playing with greasy cards; a huge
+dog lay under the table and glared with its large red eyes; the
+kitchen was deserted; the rooms too; the floor was wet, the storm
+rattled, the rain beat against the windows--"and now to bed! said I."
+
+
+
+I slept an hour, perhaps two, and was awakened by a loud bawling from
+the high road. I started up: it was twilight, the night at that period
+is not darker--it was about one o'clock. I heard the door shaken
+roughly; a deep manly voice shouted aloud, and there was a hammering
+with a cudgel against the planks of the yard-gate. Was it an
+intoxicated or a mad man that was to be let in? The gate was now
+opened, but many words were not exchanged. I heard a woman scream at
+the top of her voice from terror. There was now a great bustling
+about; they ran across the yard in wooden shoes; the bellowing of
+cattle and the rough voices of men were mingled together. I sat on the
+edge of the bed. Out or in! what was to be done? I looked from the
+window; in the road there was nothing to be seen, and it still rained.
+All at once some one came up stairs with heavy footsteps: he opened
+the door of the room adjoining mine--now he stood still! I listened--a
+large iron bolt fastened my door. The stranger now walked across the
+floor, now he shook my door, and then kicked against it with a heavy
+foot, and whilst all this was passing, the rain beat against the
+windows, and the blast made them rattle.
+
+"Are there any travellers here?" shouted a voice; "the house is on
+fire!"
+
+I now dressed myself and hastened out of the room and down the stairs.
+There was no smoke to be seen, but when I reached the yard, I saw that
+the whole building--a long and extensive one of wood--was enveloped in
+flames and clouds of smoke. The fire had originated in the baking
+oven, which no one had looked to; a traveller, who accidently came
+past, saw it, called out and hammered at the door: and the women
+screamed, and the cattle bellowed, when the fire stuck its red tongue
+into them.
+
+Now came the fire-engine and the flames were extinguished. By this
+time it was morning. I stood in the road, scarcely a hundred steps
+from the far-famed dale. "One may as well spring into it as walk into
+it!" and I sprang into it; and the rain poured down, and the water
+flowed--the whole dale was a well.
+
+The trees turned their leaves the wrong side out, purely because of
+the pouring rain, and they said, as the rushes did the day before: "We
+drink with our heads, we drink with our feet, and we drink with the
+whole body, and yet stand on our legs, hurra! it rains, and it pours;
+we whistle and we sing; it is our own song--and it is quite new!"
+
+Yes, that the rushes also sang yesterday--but it was the same, ever
+the same. I looked and looked, and all I know of the beauty of Zäther
+Dale is, that she had washed herself!
+
+
+
+
+THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lacksand lay on the other side of the dal-elv which the road now led
+us over for the third or fourth time. The picturesque bell-tower of
+red painted beams, erected at a distance from the church, rose above
+the tall trees on the clayey declivity: old willows hung gracefully
+over the rapid stream. The floating bridge rocked under us--nay, it
+even sank a little, so that the water splashed under the horse's
+hoofs; but these bridges have such qualities! The iron chains that
+held it rattled, the planks creaked, the boards splashed, the water
+rose, and murmured and roared, and so we got over where the road
+slants upwards towards the town. Close opposite here the last year's
+May-pole still stood with withered flowers. How many hands that bound
+these flowers are now withered in the grave?
+
+It is far prettier to go up on the sloping bank along the elv, than to
+follow the straight high-road into the town. The path conducts us,
+between pasture fields and leaf trees, up to the parsonage, where we
+passed the evening with the friendly family. The clergyman himself was
+but lately dead, and his relatives were all in mourning. There was
+something about the young daughter--I knew not myself what it was--but
+I was led to think of the delicate flax flower, too delicate for the
+short northern summer.
+
+They spoke about the Midsummer festival the next day, and of the
+winter season here, when the swans, often more than thirty at a time,
+sit (motionless themselves) on the elv, and utter strange, mournful
+tones. They always come in pairs, they said, two and two, and thus
+they also fly away again. If one of them dies, its partner always
+remains a long time after all the others are gone; lingers, laments,
+and then flies away alone and solitary.
+
+When I left the parsonage in the evening, the moon, in its first
+quarter, was up. The May-pole was raised; the little steamer, 'Prince
+Augustus,' with several small vessels in tow, came over the Siljan
+lake and into the elv; a musician sprang on shore, and began to play
+dances under the tall wreathed May-pole. And there was soon a merry
+circle around it--all so happy, as if the whole of life were but a
+delightful summer night.
+
+Next morning was the Midsummer Festival. It was Sunday, the 24th of
+June, and a beautiful sunshiny day it was. The most picturesque sight
+at the festival is to see the people from the different parishes
+coming in crowds, in large boats over Siljan's lake, and landing on
+its shores. We drove out to the landing-place, Barkedale, and before
+we got out of the town, we met whole troops coming from there, as well
+as from the mountains.
+
+Close by the town of Lacksand, there is a row of low wooden shops on
+both sides of the way, which only get their interior light through the
+doorway. They form a whole street, and serve as stables for the
+parishioners, but also--and it was particularly the case that
+morning--to go into and arrange their finery. Almost all the shops or
+sheds were filled with peasant women, who were anxiously busy about
+their dresses, careful to get them into the right folds, and in the
+mean time peeped continually out of the door to see who came past. The
+number of arriving church-goers increased; men, women, and children,
+old and young, even infants; for at the Midsummer festival no one
+stays at home to take care of them, and so of course they must come
+too--all must go to church.
+
+What a dazzling army of colours! Fiery red and grass green aprons meet
+our gaze. The dress of the women is a black skirt, red bodice, and
+white sleeves: all of them had a psalm-book wrapped in the folded silk
+pocket-handkerchief. The little girls were entirely in yellow, and
+with red aprons; the very least were in Turkish-yellow clothes. The
+men were dressed in black coats, like our paletôts, embroidered with
+red woollen cord; a red band with a tassel hung down from the large
+black hat; with dark knee breeches, and blue stockings, with red
+leather gaiters--in short, there was a dazzling richness of colour,
+and that, too, on a bright sunny morning in the forest road.
+
+This road led down a steep to the lake, which was smooth and blue.
+Twelve or fourteen long boats, in form like gondolas, were already
+drawn up on the flat strand, which here is covered with large stones.
+These stones served the persons who landed, as bridges; the boats were
+laid alongside them, and the people clambered up, and went and bore
+each other on land. There certainly were at least a thousand persons
+on the strand; and far out on the lake, one could see ten or twelve
+boats more coming, some with sixteen oars, others with twenty, nay,
+even with four-and-twenty, rowed by men and women, and every boat
+decked out with green branches. These, and the varied clothes, gave to
+the whole an appearance of something so festal, so fantastically rich,
+as one would hardly think the north possessed. The boats came nearer,
+all crammed full of living freight; but they came silently, without
+noise or talking, and rowed up to the declivity of the forest.
+
+The boats were drawn up on the sand: it was a fine subject for a
+painter, particularly one point--the way up the slope, where the whole
+mass moved on between the trees and bushes. The most prominent figures
+there, were two ragged urchins, clothed entirely in bright yellow,
+each with a skin bundle on his shoulders. They were from Gagne, the
+poorest parish in Dalecarlia. There was also a lame man with his blind
+wife: I thought of the fable of my childhood, of the lame and the
+blind man: the lame man lent his eyes, and the blind his legs, and so
+they reached the town.
+
+And we also reached the town and the church, and thither they all
+thronged: they said there were above five thousand persons assembled
+there. The church-service began at five o'clock. The pulpit and organ
+were ornamented with flowering lilacs; children sat with lilac-flowers
+and branches of birch; the little ones had each a piece of oat-cake,
+which they enjoyed. There was the sacrament for the young persons who
+had been confirmed; there was organ-playing and psalm-singing; but
+there was a terrible screaming of children, and the sound of heavy
+footsteps; the clumsy, iron-shod Dal shoes tramped loudly upon the
+stone floor. All the church pews, the gallery pews, and the centre
+aisle were quite filled with people. In the side aisle one saw various
+groups--playing children, and pious old folks: by the sacristy there
+sat a young mother giving suck to her child--she was a living image of
+the Madonna herself.
+
+The first impression of the whole was striking, but only the
+first--there was too much that disturbed. The screaming of children,
+and the noise of persons walking were heard above the singing, and
+besides that, there was an insupportable smell of garlic: almost all
+the congregation had small bunches of garlic with them, of which they
+ate as they sat. I could not bear it, and went out into the
+churchyard: here--as it always is in nature--it was affecting, it was
+holy. The church door stood open; the tones of the organ, and the
+voices of the psalm-singers were wafted out here in the bright
+sunlight, by the open lake: the many who could not find a place in the
+church, stood outside, and sang with the congregation from the
+psalm-book: round about on the monuments, which are almost all of
+cast-iron, there sat mothers suckling their infants--the fountain of
+life flowed over death and the grave. A young peasant stood and read
+the inscription on a grave:
+
+    "Ach hur södt al hafve lefvet,
+     Ach hur skjöut al kunne döe!"[S]
+
+[Footnote S: "How sweet to live--how beautiful to die!"]
+
+Beautiful Christian, scriptural language, verses certainly taken from
+the psalm-book, were read on the graves; they were all read, for the
+service lasted several hours. This, however, can never be good for
+devotion.
+
+The crowd at length streamed from the church; the fiery-red and
+grass-green aprons glittered; but the mass of human beings became
+thicker, and closer, and pressed forward. The white head-dresses, the
+white band over the forehead, and the white sleeves, were the
+prevailing colours--it looked like a long procession in Catholic
+countries. There was again life and motion on the road; the
+over-filled boats again rowed away; one waggon drove off after the
+other; but yet there were people left behind. Married and unmarried
+men stood in groups in the broad street of Lacksand, from the church
+up to the inn. I was staying there, and I must acknowledge that my
+Danish tongue sounded quite foreign to them all. I then tried the
+Swedish, and the girl at the inn assured me that she understood me
+better than she had understood the Frenchman, who the year before had
+spoken French to her.
+
+As I sit in my room, my hostess's grand-daughter, a nice little child,
+comes in, and is pleased to see my parti-coloured carpet-bag, my
+Scotch plaid, and the red leather lining of the portmanteau. I
+directly cut out for her, from a sheet of white paper, a Turkish
+mosque, with minarets and open windows, and away she runs with it--so
+happy, so happy!
+
+Shortly after, I heard much loud talking in the yard, and I had a
+presentiment that it was concerning what I had cut out; I therefore
+stepped softly out into the balcony, and saw the grandmother standing
+below, and with beaming face, holding my clipped-out paper at arm's
+length. A whole crowd of Dalecarlians, men and women, stood around,
+all in artistic ecstacy over my work; but the little girl--the sweet
+little child--screamed, and stretched out her hands after her lawful
+property, which she was not permitted to keep, as it was too fine.
+
+I sneaked in again, yet, of course, highly flattered and cheered; but
+a moment after there was a knocking at my door: it was the
+grandmother, my hostess, who came with a whole plate full of
+spice-nuts.
+
+"I bake the best in all Dalecarlia," said she; "but they are of the
+old fashion, from my grandmother's time. You cut out so well, Sir,
+should you not be able to cut me out some new fashions?"
+
+And I sat the whole of Midsummer night, and clipped fashions for
+spice-nuts. Nutcrackers with knights' boots, windmills which were both
+mill and miller--but in slippers, and with the door in the
+stomach--and ballet-dancers that pointed with one leg towards the
+seven stars. Grandmother got them, but she turned the ballet-dancers
+up and down; the legs went too high for her; she thought that they had
+one leg and three arms.
+
+"They will be new fashions," said she; "but they are difficult."
+
+
+
+
+FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Truth can never be at variance with truth, science can never militate
+against faith: we naturally speak of them both in their purity: they
+respond to and they strengthen man's most glorious thought:
+_immortality_. And yet you may say, "I was more peaceful, I was safer
+when, as a child, I closed my eyes on my mother's breast and slept
+without thought or care, wrapping myself up simply in faith." This
+prescience, this compound of understanding in everything, this
+entering of the one link into the other from eternity to eternity,
+tears away from me a support--my confidence in prayer; that which is,
+as it were, the wings wherewith to fly to my God! If it be loosened,
+then I fall powerless in the dust, without consolation or hope.
+
+I bend my energies, it is true, towards attaining the great and
+glorious light of knowledge, but it appears to me that therein is
+human arrogance: it is, as one should say, "I will be as wise as God."
+"That you shall be!" said the serpent to our first parents when it
+would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my
+understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer
+teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in
+the whole creation of the world--in the great and in the small, where
+the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an
+endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and
+sorrow. What can my prayer change, where everything is law, from
+eternity to eternity?
+
+You tremble as you see the Almighty, who reveals Himself in all
+loving-kindness--that Creator, according to man's expression, whose
+understanding and heart are one--you tremble when you know that he has
+elected you to immortality.
+
+I know it in the faith, in the holy, eternal words of the Bible.
+Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that
+which breaks it.
+
+Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in
+the name of knowledge--_immortality_. Hear it! the beautiful also
+bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and
+knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the
+wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws
+of love, as you believe in the laws of sense.
+
+When the child gathers flowers in the fields and brings us the whole
+handful, where one is erect and the other hangs the head, thrown as it
+were among one another, then it is that we see the beauty in every one
+by itself--that harmony in colour and in form, which pleases our eye
+so well. We arrange them instinctively, and every single beauty is
+blended together in one entire beauteous group. We do not look at the
+flower, but on the whole bouquet. The beauty of harmony is an instinct
+in us; it lies in our eyes and in our ears, those bridges between our
+soul and the creation around us--in all our senses there is such a
+divine, such an entire and perfect stream in our whole being, a
+striving after the harmonious, as it shows itself in all created
+things, even in the pulsations of the air, made visible in Chladni's
+figures.
+
+In the Bible we find the expression: "God in spirit and in
+truth,"--and hence we most significantly find an expression for the
+admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is
+this revelation of God but spirit and truth? And just as our own soul
+shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does
+the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth. There is
+harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large,
+swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in
+the firmamental space--as far as the eye sees, as far as science
+ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.
+
+But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest
+expression; "created in God's image," man, who is able to comprehend
+and admit in himself all God's creation, the harmony in the harmony
+then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as
+creatures we have equally "no right to demand;" yet how differently
+God has granted us abilities! some few so immensely great, others so
+mean! At our birth God places us in our homes and positions; and to
+how many of us are allotted the hardest struggles! We are placed
+_there_, introduced _there_--how many may not say justly: "It were
+better for me that I had never been born!"
+
+Human life, consequently--the highest here on the earth--does not come
+under the laws of harmonious beauty: it is inconceivable, it is an
+injustice, and thus cannot take place.
+
+The defect of harmony in life lies in this:--that we only see a small
+part thereof, namely, existence here on the earth: there must be a
+life to come--an immortality.
+
+That, the smallest flower preaches to us, as does all that is created
+in beauty and harmony.
+
+If our existence ceased with death here, then the most perfect work of
+God was not perfect; God was not justice and love, as everything in
+nature and revelation affirms; and if we be referred to the whole of
+mankind, as that wherein harmony will reveal itself, then our whole
+actions and endeavours are but as the labours of the coral-insect:
+mankind becomes but a monument of greatness to the Creator: he would
+then only have raised His _glory_, not shown His greatest _love_.
+Loving-kindness is not self-love.
+
+We are immortal! In this rich consciousness we are raised towards God,
+fundamentally sure, that whatever happens to us, is for our good. Our
+earthly eye is only able to reach to a certain boundary in space; our
+soul's eye also has but a limited scope; but beyond _that,_ the same
+laws of loving-kindness must reign, as here. The prescience of eternal
+omniscience cannot alarm us; we human beings can apprehend the notion
+thereof in ourselves. We know perfectly what development must take
+place in the different seasons of the year; the time for flowers and
+for fruits; what kinds will come forth and thrive; the time of
+maturity, when the storms must prevail, and when it is the rainy
+season. Thus must God, in an infinitely greater degree, have the same
+knowledge of the whole created globes of His universe, as of our earth
+and the human race here. He must know when that development, that
+flowering in the human race ordained by Himself, shall come to pass;
+when the powers of intellect, of full development, are to reign; and
+under these characters, come to a maturity of development, men will
+become mighty, driving wheels--every one be the eternal God's likeness
+indeed.
+
+History shows us these things: joint enters into joint, in the world
+of spirits, as well as in the materially created world; the eye of
+wisdom--the all-seeing eye--encompasses the whole! And should we then
+not be able, in our heart's distress, to pray to this Father with
+confidence--to pray as the Saviour prayed: "If it be possible, let
+this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."
+
+These last words we do not forget! and our prayer will be granted, if
+it be for our good; or if it be not, then let us, as the child here,
+that in its trouble comes to its earthly Father, and does not get its
+wish fulfilled, but is refreshed by mild words, and the affectionate
+language of reason, so that the eye weeps, which thereby mitigates
+sorrow, and the child's pain is soothed. This, will prayer also grant
+us: the eye will be filled with tears, but the heart will be full of
+consolation! And who has penetrated so deeply into the ways of the
+soul, that he dare deny that prayer is the wings that bear thee to
+that sphere of inspiration whence God will extend to thee the
+olive-branch of help and grace?
+
+By walking with open eyes in the path of knowledge, we see the glory
+of the Annunciation. The wisdom of generations is but a span on the
+high pillar of revelation, above which sits the Almighty; but this
+short span will grow through eternity, in faith and with faith.
+Knowledge is like a chemical test that pronounces the gold pure!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE FOREST
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind,
+and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn,
+which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for
+the Midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches
+of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on
+long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head
+of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.
+
+The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely
+hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere,
+yet it is most flush in the forest--it extends for miles around. Our
+road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or
+the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking.
+Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into
+the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the
+air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and
+lime. It is an up and down hill road, always bending, and so, ever
+changing, but yet always forest scenery--the close, thick forest. We
+pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed
+night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.
+
+We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are
+to be seen: this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted--not a bird
+flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel
+springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our
+eye searchingly over the wood-grown mountain-side, which slopes so
+far, far forward; but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere
+does that blueish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are
+fellow-men.
+
+The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on
+them, fly off again, and dance, as though it were to qualify
+themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think: "Nothing
+is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing."
+They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that Time's
+horses always fly onward with us!
+
+How solitary it is here!--so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely
+alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the
+earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit
+stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold
+themselves--endless, inexhaustible, as he is--as the magnet which
+apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby.
+As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended
+solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas
+pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works
+of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel--for capricious
+fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of
+pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing
+Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the
+open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here
+to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade
+where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this
+stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a
+pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the
+North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?
+
+In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South,
+are _sagas_ of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards
+the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind;
+up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and
+acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we
+see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on
+the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further
+towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the
+carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the
+outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.
+
+The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses
+itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and
+transformed cultivated fields and towns--nay, whole parishes, into
+barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with
+moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest;
+no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman
+lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss
+of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled
+the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it
+gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the
+time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright
+through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra
+and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came,
+sat there, and sang: "Many, many years shalt thou live!"
+
+Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts!
+Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the
+summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go
+to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song
+springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the
+procession?--paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high
+with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright
+copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother
+sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which
+completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries
+the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession
+moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
+children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows'
+horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the
+same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her
+tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is
+fuel enough here--the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and
+rots.
+
+But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest
+desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile--he comes from the
+thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the
+thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames
+run from tree to tree--it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame
+leaps to the tops of the trees--what a crackling and roaring, as if it
+were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall
+down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the
+fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The
+howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm,
+rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine
+the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
+and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the
+broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes
+worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is
+about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past
+them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore
+we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
+peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and
+opened paths.
+
+The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a
+steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a
+distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh
+green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the
+blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at
+work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now
+laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and
+faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is
+delightful in the forest.
+
+
+
+
+FAHLUN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We made our way at length out of the forest, and saw a town before us
+enveloped in thick smoke, having a similar appearance to most of the
+English manufacturing towns, save that the smoke was greenish--it was
+the town Fahlun.
+
+The road now went downwards between large banks, formed by the dross
+deposited here from the smelting furnaces, and which looks like
+burnt-out hardened lava. No sprout or shrub was to be seen, not a
+blade of grass peeped forth by the way-side, not a bird flew past, but
+a strong sulphurous smell, as from among the craters in Solfatara,
+filled the air. The copper roof of the church shone with corrosive
+green.
+
+Long straight streets now appeared in view. It was as deathly still
+here as if sickness and disease had lain within these dark wooden
+houses, and frightened the inhabitants from coming abroad; yet
+sickness and disease come but to few here, for when the plague raged
+in Sweden, the rich and powerful of the land hastened to Fahlun, whose
+sulphureous air was the most healthy. An ochre-yellow water runs
+through the brook, between the houses; the smoke from the mines and
+smelting furnaces has imparted its tinge to them; it has even
+penetrated into the church, whose slender pillars are dark from the
+fumes of the copper. There chanced to come on a thunder-storm when we
+arrived, but its roaring and the lightning's flashes harmonized well
+with this town, which appears as if it were built on the edge of a
+crater.
+
+We went to see the copper mine which gives the whole district the name
+of "Stora Kopparberget," (the great copper mountain). According to the
+legend, its riches were discovered by two goats which were
+fighting--they struck the ground with their horns and some copper ore
+adhered to them.
+
+From the solitary red-ochre street we wandered over the great heaps of
+burnt-out dross and fragments of stone, accumulated to whole ramparts
+and hills. The fire shone from the smelting furnaces with green,
+yellow and red tongues of flame under a blue-green smoke; half-naked,
+black-smeared fellows threw out large glowing masses of fire, so that
+the sparks flew around and about:--one was reminded of Schiller's
+"Fridolin."
+
+The thick sulphureous smoke poured forth from the heaps of cleansed
+ore, under which the fire was in full activity, and the wind drove it
+across the road which we must pass. In smoke, and impregnated with
+smoke, stood building after building: three buildings had been
+strangely thrown, as it were, by one another: earth and stone-heaps,
+as if they were unfinished works of defence, extended around.
+Scaffolding, and long wooden bridges, had been erected there; large
+wheels turned round; long and heavy iron chains were in continual
+motion.
+
+We stood before an immense gulf, called "Stora Stöten," (the great
+mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there
+is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley:
+the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above,
+like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the
+shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in
+miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch,
+appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark
+holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels
+turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying
+gulf--from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two
+and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is
+hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up
+merry enough. Habit makes one daring.
+
+They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that
+one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun,
+and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of
+rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook
+again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate
+with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual
+witticism here: "I have never before killed myself."
+
+One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which
+looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each
+having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step
+on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one
+gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step one gets
+by degrees to the bottom. They said it was very easy, only one must
+step boldly, so that the foot should not come between and get crushed;
+and then one must remember that there is no railing or balustrade
+here, and directly outside these stairs there is the deep abyss into
+which one may fall headlong. The deepest shaft has a perpendicular
+depth of more than a hundred and ninety fathoms, but for this there is
+no danger, they say, only one must not be dizzy, nor get alarmed. One
+of the workmen, who had come up, descended with a lighted pine-branch
+as a torch: the flame illumined the dark rocky wall, and by degrees
+became only a faint streak of light which soon vanished.
+
+We were told that a few days before, five or six schoolboys had
+unobserved stolen in here, and amused themselves by going from step to
+step on these machine-like rocking stairs, in pitchy darkness, but at
+last they knew not rightly which way to go, up or down, and had then
+begun to shout and scream lustily. They escaped luckily that bout.
+
+By one of the large openings, called "Fat Mads," there are rich copper
+mines, but which have not yet been worked. A building stands above it:
+it was at the bottom of this that they found, in the year 1719, the
+corpse of a young miner. It appeared as if he had fallen down that
+very day, so unchanged did the body seem--but no one knew him. An old
+woman then stepped forward and burst into tears: the deceased was her
+bridegroom, who had disappeared forty nine years ago. She stood there
+old and wrinkled; he was young as when they had met for the last time
+nearly half a century before.[T]
+
+[Footnote T: In another mine they found, in the year 1635, a corpse
+perfectly fresh, and almost with the appearance of one asleep; but
+his clothes, and the ancient copper coins found on him, bore witness
+that it was two hundred years since he had perished there.]
+
+We went to "The Plant House," as it is called, where the vitriolated
+liquid is crystallized to sulphate of copper. It grew up long sticks
+placed upright in the boiling water, resembling long pieces of
+grass-green sugar. The steam was pungent, and the air in here
+penetrated our tongues--it was just as if one had a corroded spoon in
+one's mouth. It was really a luxury to come out again, even into the
+rarefied copper smoke, under the open sky.
+
+Steaming, burnt-out, and herbless as the district is on this side of
+the town, it is just as refreshing, green, and fertile on the opposite
+side of Fahlun. Tall leafy trees grow close to the farthest houses.
+One is directly in the fresh pine and birch forests, thence to the
+lake and to the distant blueish mountain sides near Zäther.
+
+The people here can tell you and show you memorials of Engelbrekt and
+his Dalecarlians' deeds, and of Gustavus Vasa's adventurous
+wanderings. But we will remain here in this smoke-enveloped town, with
+the silent street's dark houses. It was almost midnight when we went
+out and came to the market-place. There was a wedding in one of the
+houses, and a great crowd of persons stood outside, the women nearest
+the house, the men a little further back. According to an old Swedish
+custom, they called for the bride and bridegroom to come forward, and
+they did so--they durst not do otherwise. Peasant girls, with candles
+in their hands, stood on each side; it was a perfect tableau: the
+bride with downcast eyes, the bridegroom smiling, and the young
+bridesmaids each with a laughing face. And the people shouted: "Now
+turn yourselves a little! now the back! now the face! the bridegroom
+quite round, the bride a little nearer!" And the bridal pair turned
+and turned--nor was criticism wanting. In this instance, however, it
+was to their praise and honour, but that is not always the case. It
+may be a painful and terrible hour for a newly-wedded pair: if they do
+not please the public, or if they have something to say against the
+match, or the persons themselves, they are then soon made to know what
+is thought of them. There is perhaps also heard some rude jest or
+another, accompanied by the laughter of the crowd. We were told, that
+even in Stockholm the same custom was observed among the lower classes
+until a few years ago, so that a bridal pair, who, in order to avoid
+this exposure, wanted to drive off, were stopped by the crowd, the
+carriage-door was opened on each side, and the whole public marched
+through the carriage. They would see the bride and bridegroom--that
+was their right.
+
+Here, in Fahlun, the exhibition was friendly; the bridal pair smiled,
+the bridesmaids also, and the assembled crowd laughed and shouted,
+hurra! In the rest of the market-place and the streets around, there
+was dead silence and solitude.
+
+The roseate hue of eve still shone: it passed, changed into that of
+morn--it was the Midsummer time.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE STRAWS SAID.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lake there glided a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish
+and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch,
+sat four young girls--so pretty--so sylph-like! and they each plucked
+up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two
+together, at the top and the bottom.
+
+"We shall now see if they will come together in a square," said the
+girls: "if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled,"
+and they bound them, and they thought.
+
+No one got to know the secret thought, the heart's silent wish of the
+others. But yet a little bird sings about it.
+
+The thoughts of one flew over sea and land, over the high mountains,
+where the mule finds its way in the mists, down to Mignon's beautiful
+land, where the old gods live in marble and painting. "Thither,
+thither! shall I ever get there?" That was the wish, that was the
+thought, and she opened her hand, looked at the bound straws, and they
+appeared only two and two bound together.
+
+And where were the second one's thoughts? also in foreign lands, in
+the gunpowder's smoke, amongst the glitter of arms and cannons, with
+him, the friend of her childhood, fighting for imperial power, against
+the Hungarian people. Will he return joyful and unharmed--return to
+Sweden's peaceful, well-constituted, happy land? The straws showed no
+square: a tear dwelt in the girl's eye.
+
+The third smiled: there was a sort of mischief in the smile. Will our
+aged bachelor and that old maiden-lady yonder, who now wander along so
+young, smile so young, and speak so youthfully to each other, not be a
+married couple before the cuckoo sings again next year? See--that is
+what I should like to know! and the smile played around the thinker's
+mouth, but she did not speak her thoughts. The straws were
+separated--consequently the bachelor and the old maid also. "It may,
+however, happen nevertheless," she certainly thought: it was apparent
+in the smile; it was obvious in the manner in which she threw the
+straws away.
+
+"There is nothing I would know--nothing that I am curious to know!"
+said the fourth; but yet she bound the straws together; for within her
+also there was a wish alive; but no bird has sung about it; no one
+guesses it.
+
+Rock thyself securely in the heart's lotus flower, thou shining
+humming-bird, thy' name shall not be pronounced: and besides the
+straws said as before--"without hope!"
+
+"Now you! now you!" cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the
+neighbouring land, from the green isle, that Gylfe ploughed from
+Sweden. "What dear thing do you wish shall happen, or not
+happen!--tell us the wish!"--"If the oracle speaks well for me," said
+he, "then I will tell you the silent wish and prayer, with which I
+bind these knots on the grass straw; but if I have no better success
+than you have had, I will then be silent!" and he bound straw to
+straw, and as he bound, he repeated: "it signifies nothing!" He now
+opened his hand, his eyes shone brighter, his heart beat faster. The
+straws formed a square! "It will happen, it will happen!" cried the
+young girls. "What did you wish for?" "That Denmark may soon gain an
+honourable peace!"
+
+"It will happen! it will happen!" said the young girls; "and when it
+happens, we will remember that the straws have told it before-hand."
+
+"I will keep these four straws, bound in a prophetic wreath for
+victory and peace!" said the stranger; "and if the oracle speaks
+truth, then I will draw the whole picture for you, as we sit here
+under the hanging birch by the lake, and look on Zäther's blue
+mountains, each of us binding straw to straw."
+
+A red mark was made in the almanack; it was the 6th of July, 1849. The
+same day a red page was written in Denmark's history. The Danish
+soldier made a red, victorious mark with his blood, at the battle of
+Fredericia.
+
+
+
+
+THE POET'S SYMBOL.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If a man would seek for the symbol of the poet, he need not look
+farther than "The Arabian Nights' Tales." Scherezade who interprets
+the stories for the Sultan--Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is
+the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will
+decapitate Scherezade.
+
+Powerful Sultan! Poor Scherezade!
+
+The Sultan-public sits in more than a thousand and one forms, and
+listens. Let us regard a few of these forms.
+
+There sits a sallow, peevish, scholar; the tree of his life bears
+leaves impressed with long and learned words: diligence and
+perseverance crawl like snails on the hog's leather bark: the moths
+have got into the inside--and that is bad, very bad! Pardon the rich
+fulness of the song, the inconsiderate enthusiasm, the fresh young,
+intellect. Do not behead Scherezade! But he beheads her out of hand,
+_sans_ remorse.
+
+There sits a dress-maker, a sempstress who has had some experience of
+the world. She comes from strange families, from a solitary chamber
+where she sat and gained a knowledge of mankind--she knows and loves
+the romantic. Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for
+you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so
+much of life's prose, gasp after romance.
+
+"Behead her!" says the dress-maker.
+
+There sits a figure in a dressing gown--this oriental dress of the
+North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer's son,
+&c., &c., &c. It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from
+that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he
+belongs: his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the
+dress-maker's: he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all
+down the vertebrae, through the very spine: he must be crammed with
+mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.
+
+Scherezade is beheaded!
+
+Wise, enlightened Sultan! Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou
+bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as
+Atlas sustained the world. Do not cast an evil eye upon poor
+Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and
+art a child again,--do not behead Scherezade!
+
+Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the
+badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely
+master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French,
+that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one
+strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the
+brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet,
+absolving _charmant_!
+
+Mighty annihilator and elevator!--the newspapers' Zeus--thou weekly,
+monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger!
+Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou
+art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a _suite_ of
+thine own clique. Do not behead her!
+
+We will see one figure more--the most dangerous of them all; he with
+the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river's swell--the
+blind enthusiast. The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is
+for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis
+becomes her scaffold.
+
+This is the poet's symbol--paint it:
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+But why none of the worthier figures--the candid, the honest, and the
+beautiful? They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye.
+Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the
+stars, and sings of the harmony there above, and here beneath, in
+man's heart.
+
+_That_ will not clearly show the symbol:
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+The sword of death hangs over her head whilst she relates--and the
+Sultan-figure bids us expect that it will fall. Scherezade is the
+victor: the poet is, like her, also a victor. He is rich,
+victorious--even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours.
+There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after
+bubble sparkles on the magic stream. The heavens shine with shooting
+stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away.
+The world does not know it, for it is the poet's own creation, richer
+than the king's costly illuminations. He is happy, as Scherezade is;
+he is victorious, he is mighty. _Imagination_ adorns his walls with
+tapestry, such as no land's ruler owns; _feeling_ makes the beauteous
+chords sound to him from the human breast; _understanding_ raises him,
+through the magnificence of creation, up to God, without his
+forgetting that he stands fast on the firm earth. He is mighty, he is
+happy, as few are. We will not place him in the stocks of
+misconstruction, for pity and lamentation; we merely paint his symbol,
+dip into the colours on the world's least attractive side, and obtain
+it most comprehensibly from
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+See--that is it! Do not behead Scherezade!
+
+
+
+
+THE DAL-ELV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Homer sang there were heroes; but they are not known; no poet
+celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature, they
+must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought
+before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for
+what they are, and then they may be said first to exist. The elvs of
+the north have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in
+unknown beauty. The world's great highroad does take this direction;
+no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of
+the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable.
+Schubert is as yet the only stranger who has written about the wild
+magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its
+greatness.
+
+Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless
+windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes
+extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending
+trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and
+sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.
+
+Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between
+Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become
+confluent and have one bed above BÃ¥lstad. They have taken up rivers
+and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial
+riches to be found; the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand,
+smilingly pastoral--idyllic: one is drawn onward up to the very source
+of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut: one feels a desire
+to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.
+
+The first mighty fall, Njupeskoers cataract, is seen by the Norwegian
+frontier in Sernasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from
+the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.
+
+We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within
+itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters
+over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic
+porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.
+
+We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees
+the water-sprite swim, like the sea-horse with a mane of green
+sea-weed, and where the aërial images present visions of witchcraft in
+the warm summer days.
+
+We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake, under the weeping willows of
+the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along
+slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over
+the rapid current under BÃ¥lstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv
+widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as
+large and extended as if it were in North America.
+
+We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay
+declivities: the yellow water falls like fluid amber in picturesque
+cataracts before the copper-works, where rainbow-coloured tongues of
+fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blows on the copper
+plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall.
+
+And now, as a concluding passage of splendour in the life of the
+Dal-elvs, before they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic, is
+the view of Elvkarleby Fall. Schubert compares it with the fall of
+Schafhausen; but we must remember, that the Rhine there has not such a
+mass of water as that which rushes down Elvkarleby.
+
+Two and a half Swedish miles from Gefle, where the high road to Upsala
+goes over the Dal-elv, we see from the walled bridge, which we pass
+over, the whole of that immense fall. Close up to the bridge, there is
+a house where the bridge toll is paid. There the stranger can pass the
+night, and from his little window look over the falling waters, see
+them in the clear moonlight, when darkness has laid itself to rest
+within the thicket of oaks and firs, and all the effect of light is in
+those foaming, flowing waters, and see them when the morning sun
+stretches his rainbow in the trembling spray, like an airy bridge of
+colours, from the shore to the wood-grown rock in the centre of the
+cataract.
+
+We came hither from Gefle, and saw at a great distance on the way, the
+blue clouds from the broken, rising spray, ascend above the dark-green
+tops of the trees. The carriage stopped near the bridge; we stepped
+out, and close before us fell the whole redundant elv.
+
+The painter cannot give us the true, living image of a waterfall on
+canvas--the movement is wanting; how can one describe it in words,
+delineate this majestic grandeur, brilliancy of colour, and arrowy
+flight? One cannot do it; one may however attempt it; get together, by
+little and little, with words, an outline of that mirrored image which
+our eye gave us, and which even the strongest remembrance can only
+retain--if not vaguely, dubiously.
+
+The Dal-elv divides itself into three branches above the fall: the two
+enclose a wood-grown rocky island, and rush down round its smooth-worn
+stony wall. The one to the right of these two falls is the finer; the
+third branch makes a circuit, and comes again to the main stream,
+close outside the united fall; here it dashes out as if to meet or
+stop the others, and is now hurried along in boiling eddies with the
+arrowy stream, which rushes on foaming against the walled pillars that
+bear the bridge, as if it would tear them away along with it.
+
+The landscape to the left was enlivened by a herd of goats, that were
+browsing amongst the hazel bushes. They ventured quite out to the very
+edge of the declivity, as they were bred here and accustomed to the
+hollow, thundering rumble of the water. To the right, a flock of
+screaming birds flew over the magnificent oaks. Cars, each with one
+horse, and with the driver standing upright in it, the reins in his
+hand, came on the broad forest road from Oens Brück.
+
+Thither we will go in order to take leave of the Dal-elv at one of the
+most delightful of places, which vividly removes the stranger, as it
+were, into a far more southern land, into a far richer nature, than he
+supposed was to be found here. The road is so pretty--the oak grows
+here so strong and vigorously with mighty crowns of rich foliage.
+
+Oens Brück lies in a delightfully pastoral situation. We came thither;
+here was life and bustle indeed! The mill-wheels went round; large
+beams were sawn through; the iron forged on the anvil, and all by
+water-power. The houses of the workmen form a whole town: it is a long
+street with red-painted wooden houses, under picturesque oaks, and
+birch trees. The greensward was as soft as velvet to look at, and up
+at the manor-house, which rises in front of the garden like a little
+palace, there was, in the rooms and saloon, everything that the
+English call comfort.
+
+We did not find the host at home; but hospitality is always the
+house-fairy here. We had everything good and homely. Fish and wild
+fowl were placed before us, steaming and fragrant, and almost as
+quickly as in beautiful enchanted palaces. The garden itself was a
+piece of enchantment. Here stood three transplanted beech-trees, and
+they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the
+wild chesnut-trees of the avenue in a singular manner: they looked as
+if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden-yellow oranges
+hung in the conservatory; the splendid southern exotics had to-day got
+the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh,
+warm, sunny air of the northern summer.
+
+That branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with
+small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in
+Scandinavian splendour. There are small islands with green, silent
+groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brackens,
+variegated bell-flowers, and cowslips--no Turkey carpet has fresher
+colours. The stream between these islands and holms is sometimes
+rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with
+silky-green rushes, water-lilies, and brown-feathered reeds; sometimes
+it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a
+large, still mill-dam.
+
+Here is a landscape in Midsummer for the games of the river-sprites,
+and the dancers of the elves and fairies! Here, in the lustre of the
+full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprite seize the
+golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one
+single night like this.
+
+On the other side of Oens Brück is the main stream--the full Dal-elv.
+Do you hear the monotonous rumble? it is not from Elvkarleby Fall that
+it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa-Foss, in which lies
+Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.
+
+Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the
+red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the
+Dal-elv.
+
+Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills
+yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into
+the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic--thy
+eternity.
+
+
+
+
+DANEMORA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reader, do you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize
+you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the
+land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into
+the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep
+declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must
+creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She
+sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his
+swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the
+nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and
+it sways under him--the walls vanish from him.
+
+Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the
+air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.
+
+We met with her at Danemora's immense gulf, whither we came on broad,
+smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest. She sat on the
+extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun
+with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large
+beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.
+
+The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun,
+into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the
+chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering
+through the air. But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones
+and marrow; through all the nerves. Her icy breath blew in his neck,
+and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder. It
+seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and
+higher: the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall--a
+fall in sleep, that shock in the blood. Did it go quicker downwards,
+or was it going up again? He could not distinguish by the sensation.
+
+The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow--the dirty trodden,
+eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth
+from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark,
+yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The
+stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above
+him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers
+sounded; the watery damps dripped down--and he again entered the tun,
+which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness
+breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye
+measured the giddy depth through the tun: "It is appalling," said he.
+
+"Appalling!" echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at
+Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the
+same street as the Sealander--if the Sound be called a street
+(strait). "But, however, one can say one has been down there," said
+he, and he pointed to the gulf; "right down, and up again; but it is
+no pleasure at all."
+
+"But why descend at all?" said I. "Why will men do these things?"
+
+"One must, you know, when one comes here," said he. "The plague of
+travelling is, that one must see everything: one would not have it
+supposed otherwise. It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again,
+not to have seen everything, that others ask him about."
+
+"If you have no desire, then let it alone. See what pleases you on
+your travels. Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become
+quite giddy: you will then have formed some conception of the passage
+downward. I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you."
+And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.
+
+"Yes, so it is: I apprehend it all," said he: "I am clearly sensible
+of it."
+
+I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun's warmth never
+thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the
+workmen, &c.
+
+"Yes; one should be able to tell all about it," said he. "That _you_
+can, for you have seen it."
+
+"No more than you," said I. "I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the
+snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was
+time I should get into the tun--no, thank you. Giddiness tickled me
+with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt
+the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as
+well as any one: the descent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz,
+under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein,
+through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered
+about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the
+deep passages? Gloom--darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense
+of oppression--a longing for air and light, which is by far the best;
+and that we have now."
+
+"But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!" said the man; and he
+drew forth his "Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden," from which he
+read: "Danemora's iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in
+Sweden; the best in Europe. They have seventy-nine openings, of which
+seventeen only are being worked. The machine mine is ninety-three
+fathoms deep."
+
+Just then the bells sounded from below: it was the signal that the
+time of labour for that day was ended. The hue of eve still shone on
+the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf,
+it was a perfect twilight. Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the
+workmen swarmed forth. They looked like flies, quite small in the
+space below: they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the
+steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places: they climbed
+higher and higher--upwards, upwards--and at every step they became
+larger. The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three
+or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the
+tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against
+the side of the rock, so that they swung from it: and it became darker
+and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!
+
+"It is appalling!" said the man from Scania. "One ought, however, to
+have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one _had_ been.
+You, however, have certainly been down there," said he again to me.
+
+"Believe what you will," I replied; and I say the same to the reader.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWINE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and
+since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the
+grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if
+we think of the "prodigal son," we are at once in the midst of the
+sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in
+Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had
+his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like in
+the world. It was an old state-carriage, the seats were taken out of
+it, the wheels taken off, and thus it stood, without further ceremony,
+on its own bottom, and four swine were shut in there. If these were
+the first that had been in it one could not determine; but that it was
+once a state-carriage everything about it bore witness, even to the
+strip of morocco that hung from the roof inside, all bore witness of
+better days. It is true, every word of it.
+
+"Uff," said the occupiers within, and the carriage creaked and
+complained--it was a sorrowful end it had come to.
+
+"The beautiful is past!" so it sighed; so it said, or it might have
+said so.
+
+We returned here in the autumn. The carriage, or rather the body of
+the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they
+were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind
+tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor
+quiet: the birds of passage were gone.
+
+"The beautiful is past!" said the carriage, and the same sigh passed
+through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: "The
+beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm
+sunshine, and the song of birds--past! past!" So it said, and so it
+creaked in the trunks of the tall trees, and there was heard a sigh,
+so inwardly deep, a sigh direct from the heart of the wild rose-bush,
+and he who sat there was the rose-king. Do you know him! he is of a
+pure breed, the finest red-green breed: he is easily known. Go to the
+wild rose hedges, and in autumn, when all the flowers are gone, and
+the red hips alone remain, one often sees amongst these a large
+red-green moss-flower: that is the rose-king. A little green leaf
+grows out of his head--that is his feather: he is the only male person
+of his kind on the rose-bush, and he it was who sighed.
+
+"Past! past! the beautiful is past! The roses are gone; the leaves of
+the trees fall off!--it is wet here, and it is cold and raw!--The
+birds that sang here are now silent; the swine live on acorns; the
+swine are lords in the forest!"
+
+They were cold nights, they were gloomy days; but the raven sat on the
+bough and croaked nevertheless: "brah, brah!" The raven and the crow
+sat on the topmost bough: they have a large family, and they all said:
+"brah, brah! caw, caw!" and the majority is always right.
+
+There was a great miry pool under the tall trees in the hollow, and
+here lay the whole herd of swine, great and small--they found the
+place so excellent. "Oui! oui!" said they, for they knew no more
+French, but that, however, was something. They were so wise, and so
+fat, and altogether lords in the forest.
+
+The old ones lay still, for they thought; the young ones, on the
+contrary, were so brisk--busy, but apparently uneasy. One little pig
+had a curly tail--that curl was the mother's delight. She thought that
+they all looked at the curl, and thought only of the curl; but that
+they did not. They thought of themselves, and of what was useful, and
+of what the forest was for. They had always heard that the acorns they
+ate grew on the roots of the trees, and therefore they had always
+rooted there; but now there came a little one--for it is always the
+young ones that come with news--and he asserted that the acorns fell
+down from the branches: he himself had felt one fall right on his
+head, and that had given him the idea, so he had made observations,
+and now he was quite sure of what he asserted. The old ones laid their
+heads together. "Uff," said the swine, "uff! the finery is past! the
+twittering of the birds is past! we will have fruit! whatever can be
+eaten is good, and we eat everything!"
+
+"Oui! oui!" said they altogether.
+
+But the mother sow looked at her little pig with the curly tail.
+
+"One must not, however, forget the beautiful!" said she.
+
+"Caw! caw!" screamed the crow, and flew down, in order to be appointed
+nightingale: one there should be--and so the crow was directly
+appointed.
+
+"Past! past!" sighed the Rose King, "all the beautiful is past!"
+
+It was wet; it was gloomy; there was cold and wind, and the rain
+pelted down over the fields, and through the forest, like long water
+jets. Where are the birds that sang? where are the flowers in the
+meadows, and the sweet berries in the wood?--past! past!
+
+A light shone from the forester's house: it twinkled like a star, and
+shed its long rays out between the trees. A song was heard from
+within; pretty children played around their old grandfather, who sat
+with the Bible on his lap and read about God, and eternal life, and
+spoke of the spring that would come again: he spoke of the forest that
+would renew its green leaves, of the roses that would flower, of the
+nightingales that would sing, and of the beautiful that would again be
+paramount.
+
+But the Rose King did not hear it; he sat in the raw, cold weather,
+and sighed:
+
+"Past! past!"
+
+And the swine were lords in the forest, and the mother sow looked at
+her little pig, and his curly tail.
+
+"There will always be some, who have a sense for the beautiful!" said
+the mother sow.
+
+
+
+
+POETRY'S CALIFORNIA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nature's treasures are most often unveiled to us by accident. A dog's
+nose was dyed by the bruised purple fish, and the genuine purple dye
+was discovered; a pair of wild buffalos were fighting on America's
+auriferous soil, and their horns tore up the green sward that covered
+the rich gold vein.
+
+"In former days," as it is said by most, "everything came
+spontaneously. Our age has not such revelations; now one must slave
+and drudge if one would get anything; one must dig down into the deep
+shafts after the metals, which decrease more and more;--when the earth
+suddenly stretches forth her golden finger from California's
+peninsula, and we there see Monte Christo's foolishly invented riches
+realized; we see Aladdin's cave with its inestimable treasures. The
+world's treasury is so endlessly rich that we have, to speak plain and
+straightforward, scraped a little off the up-heaped measure; but the
+bushel is still full, the whole of the real measure is now refilled.
+In science also, such a world lies open for the discoveries of the
+human mind!
+
+"But in poetry, the greatest and most glorious is already found, and
+gained!" says the poet. "Happy he who was born in former times; there
+was then many a land still undiscovered, on which poetry's rich gold
+lay like the ore that shines forth from the earth's surface."
+
+Do not speak so! happy poet thou, who art born in our time! thou dost
+inherit all the glorious treasures which thy predecessors gave to the
+world; thou dost learn from them, that truth only is eternal,--the
+true in nature and mankind.
+
+Our time is the time of discoveries--poetry also has its new
+California.
+
+"Where does it exist?" you ask.
+
+The coast is so near, that you do not think that _there_ is the new
+world. Like a bold Leander, swim with me across the stream: the black
+words on the white paper will waft you--every period is a heave of the
+waves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in the library's saloon. Book-shelves with many books, old and
+new, were ranged around for every one; manuscripts lay there in heaps;
+there were also maps and globes. There sat industrious men at little
+tables, and wrote out and wrote in, and that was no easy work. But
+suddenly, a great transformation took place; the shelves became
+terraces for the noblest trees, with flowers and fruit; heavy clusters
+of grapes hung amongst leafy vines, and there was life and movement
+all around.
+
+The old folios and dusty manuscripts rose into flower-covered tumuli,
+and there sprang forth knights in mail, and kings with golden crowns
+on, and there was the clang of harp and shield; history acquired the
+life and fullness of poetry--for a poet had entered there. He saw the
+living visions; breathed the flowers' fragrance; crushed the grapes,
+and drank the sacred juice. But he himself knew not yet that he was a
+poet--the bearer of-light for times and generations yet to come.
+
+It was in the fresh, fragrant forest, in the last hour of
+leave-taking. Love's kiss, as the farewell, was the initiatory baptism
+for the future poetic life; and the fresh fragrance of the forest
+became sweeter, the chirping of the birds more melodious: there came
+sunlight and cooling breezes. Nature becomes doubly delightful where a
+poet walks.
+
+And as there were two roads before Hercules, so there were before him
+two roads, shown by two figures, in order to serve him; the one an old
+crone, the other a youth, beautiful as the angel that led the young
+Tobias.
+
+The old crone had on a mantle, on which were wrought flowers, animals,
+and human beings, entwined in an arabesque manner. She had large
+spectacles on, and beside her lantern she held a bag filled with old
+gilt cards--apparatus for witchcraft, and all the amulets of
+superstition: leaning on her crutch, wrinkled and shivering, she was,
+however, soaring, like the mist over the meadow.
+
+"Come with me, and you shall see the world, so that a poet can have
+benefit from it," said she. "I will light my lantern; it is better
+than that which Diogenes bore; I shall lighten your path."
+
+And the light shone; the old crone lifted her head, and stood there
+strong and tall, a powerful female figure. She was Superstition.
+
+"I am the strongest in the region of romance," said she,--and she
+herself believed it.
+
+And the lantern's light gave the lustre of the full moon over the
+whole earth; yes, the earth itself became transparent, as the still
+waters of the deep sea, or the glass mountains, in the fairy tale.
+
+"My kingdom is thine! sing what thou see'st; sing as if no bard before
+thee had sung thereof."
+
+And it was as if the scene continually changed. Splendid Gothic
+churches, with painted images in the panes, glided past, and the
+midnight-bell struck, and the dead arose from the graves. There, under
+the bending elder tree, sat the mother, and swathed her newly-born
+child; old, sunken knights' castles rose again from the marshy ground;
+the drawbridge fell, and they saw into the empty halls, adorned with
+images, where, under the gloomy stairs of the gallery, the
+death-proclaiming white woman came with a rattling bunch of keys. The
+basilisk brooded in the deep cellar; the monster bred from a cock's
+egg, invulnerable by every weapon, but not from the sight of its own
+horrible form: at the sight of its own image, it bursts like the steel
+that one breaks with the blow of a stout staff. And to everything that
+appeared, from the golden chalice of the altar-table, once the
+drinking-cup of evil spirits, to the nodding head on the gallows-hill,
+the old crone hummed her songs; and the crickets chirped, and the
+raven croaked from the opposite neighbour's house, and the
+winding-sheet rolled from the candle. Through the whole spectral world
+sounded, "death! death!"
+
+"Go with me to life and truth," cried the second form, the youth who
+was beautiful as a cherub. A flame shone from his brow--a cherub's
+sword glittered in his hand. "I am _Knowledge_," said he: "my world is
+greater--its aim is truth."
+
+And there was a brightness all around; the spectral images paled; it
+did not extend over the world they had seen. Superstition's lantern
+had only exhibited _magic-lantern_ images on the old ruined wall, and
+the wind had driven wet misty vapours past in figures.
+
+"I will give thee a rich recompense. Truth in the created--truth in
+God!"
+
+And through the stagnant lake, where before the misty spectral figures
+rose, whilst the bells sounded from the sunken castle, the light fell
+down on a swaying vegetable world. One drop of the marsh water, raised
+against the rays of light, became a living world, with creatures in
+strange forms, fighting and revelling--a world in a drop of water. And
+the sharp sword of Knowledge cleft the deep vault, and shone therein,
+where the basilisk killed, and the animal's body was dissolved in a
+death-bringing vapour: its claw extended from the fermenting
+wine-cask; its eyes were air, that burnt when the fresh wind touched
+it.
+
+And there resided a powerful force in the sword; _so_ powerful, that
+the grain of gold was beaten to a flat surface, thin as the covering
+of mist that we breathe on the glass-pane; and it shone at the sword's
+point, so that the thin threads of the cobweb seemed to swell to
+cables, for one saw the strong twistings of numberless small threads.
+And the voice of Knowledge seemed over the whole world, so that the
+age of miracles appeared to have returned. Thin iron ties were laid
+over the earth, and along these the heavily-laden waggons flew on the
+wings of steam, with the swallow's flight; mountains were compelled to
+open themselves to the inquiring spirit of the age; the plains were
+obliged to raise themselves; and then thought was borne in words,
+through metal wires, with the lightning's speed, to distant towns.
+"Life! life!" it sounded through the whole of nature. "It is our time!
+Poet, thou dost possess it! Sing of it in spirit and in truth!"
+
+And the genius of Knowledge raised the shining sword; he raised it far
+out into space, and then--what a sight! It was as when the sunbeams
+shine through a crevice in the wall in a dark space, and appear to us
+a revolving column of myriads of grains of dust; but every grain of
+dust here was a world! The sight he saw was our starry firmament!
+
+Thy earth is a grain of dust here, but a speck whose wonders astonish
+thee; only a grain of dust, and yet a star under stars. That long
+column of worlds thou callest thy starry firmament, revolves like the
+myriads of grains of dust, visibly hovering in the sunbeam's revolving
+column, from the crevice in the wall into that dark space. But still
+more distant stands the milky way's whitish mist, a new starry heaven,
+each column but a radius in the wheel! But how great is this itself!
+how many radii thus go out from the central point--God!
+
+So far does thine eye reach, so clear is thine age's horizon! Son of
+time, choose, who shall be thy companion? Here is thy new career! with
+the greatest of thy time, fly thou before thy time's generation! Like
+twinkling Lucifer, shine thou in time's roseate morn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yes, in knowledge lies Poetry's California! Every one who only looks
+backward, and not clearly forward, will, however high and honourably
+he stands, say, that if such riches lie in knowledge, they would long
+since have been made available by great and immortal bards, who had a
+clear and sagacious eye for the discovery of truth. But let us
+remember that when Thespis spoke from his car, the world had also wise
+men. Homer had sung his immortal songs, and yet a new form of genius
+appeared, to which a Sophocles and Aristophanes gave birth; the Sagas
+and mythology of the North were as an unknown treasure to the stage,
+until Oehlenschläger showed what mighty forms from thence might be
+made to glide past us.
+
+It is not our intention that the poet shall versify scientific
+discoveries. The didactic poem is and will be, in its best form,
+always but a piece of mechanism, or wooden figure, which has not the
+true life. The sunlight of science must penetrate the poet; he must
+perceive truth and harmony in the minute and in the immensely great
+with a clear eye: it must purify and enrich the understanding and
+imagination, and show him new forms which will supply to him more
+animated words. Even single discoveries will furnish a new flight.
+What fairy tales cannot the world unfold under the microscope, if we
+transfer our human world thereto? Electro-magnetism can present or
+suggest new plots in new comedies and romances; and how many humorous
+compositions will not spring forth, as we from our grain of dust, our
+little earth, with its little haughty beings look out into that
+endless world's universe, from milky way to milky way? An instance of
+what we here mean is discoverable in that old noble lady's words: "If
+every star be a globe like our earth, and have its kingdoms and
+courts--what an endless number of courts--the contemplation is enough
+to make mankind giddy!"
+
+We will not say, like that French authoress: "Now, then, let me die:
+the world has no more discoveries to make!" O, there is so endlessly
+much in the sea, in the air, and on the earth--wonders, which science
+will bring forth!--wonders, greater than the poet's philosophy can
+create! A bard will come, who, with a child's mind, like a new
+Aladdin, will enter into the cavern of science,--with a child's mind,
+we say, or else the puissant spirits of natural strength would seize
+him, and make him their servant; whilst he, with the lamp of poetry,
+which is, and always will be, the human heart, stands as a ruler, and
+brings forth wonderful fruits from the gloomy passages, and has
+strength to build poetry's new palace, created in one night by
+attendant spirits.
+
+In the world itself events repeat themselves; the human character was
+and will be the same during long ages and all ages; and as they were
+in the old writings, they must be in the new. But science always
+unfolds something new; light and truth are everything that is
+created--beam out from hence with eternally divine clearness. Mighty
+image of God, do thou illumine and enlighten mankind; and when its
+intellectual eye is accustomed to the lustre, the new Aladdin will
+come, and thou, man, shalt with him, who concisely dear, and richly
+sings the beauty of truth, wander through Poetry's California.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pictures of Sweden, by Hans Christian Andersen
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12313 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12313 ***</div>
+
+<h1>PICTURES OF SWEDEN</h1>
+
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN</h2>
+
+<h4>Author of</h4>
+
+<h4>&quot;The Improvisatore,&quot; &amp;c.</h4>
+<br />
+
+<h5>LONDON:</h5>
+
+<h5>RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.</h5>
+
+<h5>1851.</h5>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+ <a href="#INTRODUCTION"><b>INTRODUCTION</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#TROLLHTTA"><b>TROLLH&Auml;TTA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEBIRDPHOENIX"><b>THE BIRD PHOENIX</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#KINNAKULLA"><b>KINNAKULLA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#GRANDMOTHER"><b>GRANDMOTHER</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEPRISONCELLS"><b>THE PRISON-CELLS</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#BEGGARBOYS"><b>BEGGAR-BOYS</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#VADSTENE"><b>VADSTENE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEPUPPETSHOWMAN"><b>THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THESKJRGAARDS"><b>THE &quot;SKJ&Auml;RGAARDS&quot;</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#STOCKHOLM"><b>STOCKHOLM</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#DIURGAERDEN"><b>DIURGAERDEN</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#ASTORY"><b>A STORY</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#UPSALA"><b>UPSALA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#SALA"><b>SALA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEMUTEBOOK"><b>THE MUTE BOOK</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEZTHERDALE"><b>THE Z&Auml;THER DALE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEMIDSUMMERFESTIVALINLACKSAND"><b>THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#FAITHANDKNOWLEDGE"><b>FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#INTHEFOREST"><b>IN THE FOREST</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#FAHLUN"><b>FAHLUN</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#WHATTHESTRAWSSAID"><b>WHAT THE STRAWS SAID</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEPOETSSYMBOL"><b>THE POET'S SYMBOL</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEDALELV"><b>THE DAL-ELV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#DANEMORA"><b>DANEMORA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THESWINE"><b>THE SWINE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#POETRYSCALIFORNIA"><b>POETRY'S CALIFORNIA</b></a><br />
+
+
+
+
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="INTRODUCTION"></a><h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<br />
+
+<h4>We Travel.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand
+their song? Well, hear it in a free translation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get on my back,&quot; says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, &quot;and
+I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant
+beech woods, green meadows and corn-fields. In Scania, with the
+flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that
+you are still in Denmark.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fly with me,&quot; says the swallow; &quot;I fly over Holland's mountain ridge,
+where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north
+than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky
+ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is
+good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the
+table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a
+prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I
+have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come with me! come with me!&quot; screams the restless sea-gull, and flies
+in an expecting circle. &quot;Come with me to the Skj&auml;rgaards, where rocky
+isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower-beds along the
+coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rest thee between our extended wings,&quot; sing the wild swans. &quot;Let us
+bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs
+(rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has
+long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our
+extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the
+mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the
+snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North
+Sea, on yonder side of Norway.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We fly to Jemteland, where the rocky mountains are high and blue;
+where the Foss roars and rushes; where the torches are lighted as
+<i>budstikke</i><a name="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1"><sup>[A]</sup></a> to announce that the ferryman is expected. Up to the
+deep, cold-running waters, where the midsummer sun does not set; where
+the rosy hue of eve is that of morn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That is the birds' song. Shall we lay it to heart? Shall we accompany
+them?&mdash;at least a part of the way. We will not sit upon the stork's
+back, or between the swans' wings. We will go forward with steam, and
+with horses&mdash;yes, also on our own legs, and glance now and then from
+reality, over the fence into the region of thought, which is always
+our near neighbour-land; pluck a flower or a leaf, to be placed in the
+note-book&mdash;for it sprung out during our journey's flight: we fly and
+we sing. Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, where, in ancient times,
+the sacred gods came from Asia's mountains! land that still retains
+rays of their lustre, which streams from the flowers in the name of
+&quot;Linnaeus;&quot; which beams for thy chivalrous men from Charles the
+Twelfth's banner; which sounds from the obelisk on the field of
+Lutzen! Sweden, thou land of deep feeling, of heart-felt songs! home
+of the limpid elvs, where the wild swans sing in the gleam of the
+Northern Lights! Thou land, on whose deep, still lakes Scandinavia's
+fairy builds her colonnades, and leads her battling, shadowy host over
+the icy mirror! Glorious Sweden! with thy fragrant Linnaeus, with
+Jenny's soul-enlivening songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and
+the swallow, with the restless sea-gull and the wild swans. Thy
+birch-woods exhale refreshing fragrance under their sober, bending
+branches; on the tree's white stem the harp shall hang: the North's
+summer wind shall whistle therein!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="TROLLHTTA"></a><h2>TROLLH&Auml;TTA</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Who did we meet at Trollh&auml;tta? It is a strange story, and we will
+relate it.</p>
+
+<p>We landed at the first sluice, and stood as it were in a garden laid
+out in the English style. The broad walks are covered with gravel, and
+rise in short terraces between the sunlit greensward: it is charming,
+delightful here, but by no means imposing. If one desires to be
+excited in this manner, one must go a little higher up to the older
+sluices, which deep and narrow have burst through the hard rock. It
+looks magnificent, and the water in its dark bed far below is lashed
+into foam. Up here one overlooks both elv and valley; the bank of the
+river on the other side, rises in green undulating hills, grouped with
+leafy trees and red-painted wooden houses, which are bounded by rocks
+and pine forests. Steam-boats and sailing vessels ascend through the
+sluices; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them
+up above the rock, and from the forest itself it buzzes, roars and
+rattles. The din of Trollh&auml;tta Falls mingles with the noise from the
+saw-mills and smithies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In three hours we shall be through the sluices,&quot; said the Captain:
+&quot;in that time you will see the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn
+up here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went from the path through the forest: a whole flock of bare-headed
+boys surrounded us. They would all be our guides; the one screamed
+longer than the other, and every one gave his contradictory
+explanation, how high the water stood, and how high it did not stand,
+or could stand. There was also a great difference of opinion amongst
+the learned.</p>
+
+<p>We soon stopped on a ling-covered rock, a dizzying terrace. Before us,
+but far below, was the roaring water, the Hell Fall, and over this
+again, fall after fall, the rich, rapid, rushing elv&mdash;the outlet of
+the largest lake in Sweden. What a sight! what a foaming and roaring,
+above&mdash;below! It is like the waves of the sea, but of effervescing
+champagne&mdash;of boiling milk. The water rushes round two rocky islands
+at the top so that the spray rises like meadow dew. Below, the water
+is more compressed, then hurries down again, shoots forward and
+returns in circles like smooth water, and then rolls darting its long
+sea-like fall into the Hell Fall. What a tempest rages in the
+deep&mdash;what a sight! Words cannot express it!</p>
+
+<p>Nor could our screaming little guides. They stood mute; and when they
+again began with their explanations and stories, they did not come
+far, for an old gentleman whom none of us had noticed (but he was now
+amongst us), made himself heard above the noise, with his singularly
+sounding voice. He knew all the particulars about the place, and about
+former days, as if they had been of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here, on the rocky holms,&quot; said he, &quot;it was that the warriors in the
+heathen times, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior
+St&auml;rkodder dwelt in this district, and liked the pretty girl Ogn right
+well; but she was fonder of Hergrimmer, and therefore he was
+challenged by St&auml;rkodder to combat here by the falls, and met his
+death; but Ogn sprung towards them, took her bridegroom's bloody
+sword, and thrust it into her own heart. Thus St&auml;rkodder did not gain
+her. Then there passed a hundred years, and again a hundred years: the
+forests were then thick and closely grown; wolves and bears prowled
+here summer and winter; the place was infested with malignant robbers,
+whose hiding-place no one could find. It was yonder, by the fall
+before Top Island, on the Norwegian side&mdash;there was their cave: now it
+has fallen in! The cliff there overhangs it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the Tailor's Cliff!&quot; shouted all the boys. &quot;It fell in the year
+1755!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fell!&quot; said the old man, as if in astonishment that any one but
+himself could know it. &quot;Everything will fall once, and the tailor
+directly.&quot; The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that
+if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he
+should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the
+first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down
+into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The
+Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she
+betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was
+seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed.
+That outside there is called 'The Thieves' Fall,' and down there under
+the water is another cave, the elv rushes in there and returns
+boiling; one can see it well up here, one hears it too, but it can be
+heard better under the bergman's loft.</p>
+
+<p>And we went on and on, along the Fall, towards Top Island,
+continuously on smooth paths covered with saw-dust, to Polham's
+Sluice. A cleft had been made in the rock for the first intended
+sluice-work, which was not finished, but whereby art has created the
+most imposing of all Trollh&auml;tta's Falls; the hurrying water falling
+here perpendicularly into the black deep. The side of the rock is here
+placed in connection with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge,
+which appears as if thrown over the abyss. We venture on to the
+rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on
+the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from
+the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the
+rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the
+fine spray. The torrent flows on each side, as if shot out from a
+gigantic cannon, fall after fall: we look out over them all, and are
+filled with the harmonic sound, which since time began, has ever been
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one can ever get to the island there,&quot; said one of our party,
+pointing to the large island above the topmost fall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I however know one!&quot; said the old man, and nodded with a peculiar
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, my grandfather could!&quot; said one of the boys, &quot;scarcely any one
+besides has crossed during a hundred years. The cross that is set up
+over there was placed there by my grandfather. It had been a severe
+winter, the whole of Lake Venern was frozen; the ice dammed up the
+outlet, and for many hours there was a dry bottom. Grandfather has
+told about it: he went over with two others, placed the cross up, and
+returned. But then there was such a thundering and cracking noise,
+just as if it were cannons. The ice broke up and the elv came over the
+fields and forest. It is true, every word I say!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One of the travellers cited Tegner:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Vildt G&ouml;ta stortade fr&aring;n Fjallen,<br /></span>
+<span> Hemsk Trollet fr&aring;n sat Toppfall r&ouml;t!<br /></span>
+<span> Men Snillet kom och spr&auml;ngt stod Hallen,<br /></span>
+<span> Med Skeppen i sitt sk&ouml;t!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor mountain sprite,&quot; he continued, &quot;thy power and glory recede! Man
+flies over thee&mdash;thou mayst go and learn of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to
+himself&mdash;but we were just by the bridge before the inn. The steam-boat
+glided through the opened way, every one hastened to get on board, and
+it directly shot away above the Fall, just as if no Fall existed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that can be done!&quot; said the old man. He knew nothing at all about
+steam-boats, had never before that day seen such a thing, and
+accordingly he was sometimes up and sometimes down, and stood by the
+machinery and stared at the whole construction, as if he were counting
+all the pins and screws. The course of the canal appeared to him to be
+something quite new; the plan of it and the guide-books were quite
+foreign objects to him: he turned them and turned them&mdash;for read I do
+not think he could. But he knew all the particulars about the
+country&mdash;that is to say, from olden times.</p>
+
+<p>I heard that he did not sleep at all the whole night. He studied the
+passage of the steam-boat; and when we in the morning ascended the
+sluice terraces from Lake Venern, higher and higher from lake to lake,
+away over the high-plain&mdash;higher, continually higher&mdash;he was in such
+activity that it appeared as if it could not be greater&mdash;and then we
+reached Motala.</p>
+
+<p>The Swedish author Tj&ouml;rner&ouml;s relates of himself, that when a child he
+once asked what it was that ticked in the clock, and they answered him
+that it was one named &quot;<i>Bloodless</i>.&quot; What brought the child's pulse to
+beat with feverish throbs and the hair on his head to rise, also
+exercised its power in Motala, over the old man from Trollh&auml;tta.</p>
+
+<p>We now went through the great manufactory in Motala. What ticks in the
+clock, beats here with strong strokes of the hammer. It is
+<i>Bloodless</i>, who drank life from human thought and thereby got limbs
+of metals, stone and wood; it is <i>Bloodless</i>, who by human thought
+gained strength, which man himself does not physically possess.
+<i>Bloodless</i> reigns in Motala, and through the large foundries and
+factories he extends his hard limbs, whose joints and parts consist of
+wheel within wheel, chains, bars, and thick iron wires. Enter, and see
+how the glowing iron masses are formed into long bars. <i>Bloodless</i>
+spins the glowing bar! see how the shears cut into the heavy metal
+plates; they cut as quietly and as softly as if the plates were paper.
+Here where he hammers, the sparks fly from the anvil. See how he
+breaks the thick iron bars; he breaks them into lengths; it is as if
+it were a stick of sealing-wax that is broken. The long iron bars
+rattle before your feet; iron plates are planed into shavings; before
+you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire&mdash;long
+heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around
+in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for
+steam-boats and locomotives, <i>Bloodless</i> also here stretches out one
+of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man
+alone stands and is silenced by&mdash;<i>stop!</i></p>
+
+<p>The perspiration oozes out of one's fingers'-ends: one turns and
+turns, bows, and knows not one's self, from pure respect for the human
+thought which here has iron limbs. And yet the large iron hammer goes
+on continually with its heavy strokes: it is as if it said: &quot;Banco,
+Banco! many thousand dollars; Banco, pure gain! Banco! Banco!&quot;&mdash;Hear
+it, as I heard it; see, as I saw!</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman from Trollh&auml;tta walked up and down in full
+contemplation; bent and swung himself about; crept on his knees, and
+stuck his head into corners and between the machines, for he would
+know everything so exactly; he would see the screw in the propelling
+vessels, understand their mechanism and effect under water&mdash;and the
+water itself poured like hail-drops down his forehead. He fell
+unconscious, backwards into my arms, or else he would have been drawn
+into the machinery, and been crushed: he looked at me, and pressed my
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all this goes on naturally,&quot; said he; &quot;simply and comprehensibly.
+Ships go against the wind, and against the stream, sail higher than
+forests and mountains. The water must raise, steam must drive them!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said he, and again <i>yes</i>, with a sigh which I did not then
+understand; but, months after, I understood it, and I will at once
+make a spring to that time, and we are again at Trollh&auml;tta.</p>
+
+<p>I came here in the autumn, on my return home; stayed some days in this
+mighty piece of nature, where busy human life forces its way more and
+more in, and, by degrees, transforms the picturesque to the useful
+manufactory. Trollh&auml;tta must do her work; saw beams, drive mills,
+hammer and break to pieces: one building grows up by the side of the
+other, and in half a century hence here will be a city. But that was
+not the story.</p>
+
+<p>I came, as I have said, here again in the autumn. I found the same
+rushing and roaring, the same din, the same rising and sinking in the
+sluices, the same chattering boys who conducted fresh travellers to
+the Hell Fall, to the iron-bridge island, and to the inn. I sat here,
+and turned over the leaves of books, collected here through a series
+of years, in which travellers have inscribed their names, feelings and
+thoughts at Trollh&auml;tta&mdash;almost always the same astonishment, expressed
+in different languages, though generally in Latin: <i>veni, vidi,
+obstupui</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One has written: &quot;I have seen nature's master-piece pervade that of
+art;&quot; another cannot say what he saw, and what he saw he cannot say. A
+mine owner and manufacturer, full of the doctrine of utility, has
+written: &quot;Seen with the greatest pleasure this useful work for us in
+V&auml;rmeland, Trollh&auml;tta.&quot; The wife of a dean from Scania expresses
+herself thus. She has kept to the family, and only signed in the
+remembrance book, as to the effect of her feelings at Trollh&auml;tta. &quot;God
+grant my brother-in-law fortune, for he has understanding!&quot; Some few
+have added witticisms to the others' feelings; yet as a pearl on this
+heap of writing shines Tegner's poem, written by himself in the book
+on the 28th of June, 1804:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Gotha kom i dans fr&aring;n Seves fjallar, &amp;c.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I looked up from the book and who should stand before me, just about
+to depart again, but the old man from Trollh&auml;tta! Whilst I had
+wandered about, right up to the shores of Siljan, he had continually
+made voyages on the canal; seen the sluices and manufactories, studied
+steam in all its possible powers of service, and spoke about a
+projected railway in Sweden, between the Hjalmar and Venern. He had,
+however, never yet seen a railway, and I described to him these
+extended roads, which sometimes rise like ramparts, sometimes like
+towering bridges, and at times like halls of miles in length, cut
+through rocks. I also spoke of America and England.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One takes breakfast in London, and the same day one drinks tea in
+Edinburgh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I can do!&quot; said the man, and in as cool a tone as if no one but
+himself could do it, &quot;I can also,&quot; said I; &quot;and I have done it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who are you, then?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A common traveller,&quot; I replied; &quot;a traveller who pays for his
+conveyance. And who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not know me: my time is past; my power is nothing! <i>Bloodless</i>
+is stronger than I!&quot; and he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>I then understood who he was. Well, in what humour must a poor
+mountain sprite be, who only comes up every hundred years to see how
+things go forward here on the earth!</p>
+
+<p>It was the mountain sprite and no other, for in our time every
+intelligent person is considerably wiser; and I looked with a sort of
+proud feeling on the present generation, on the gushing, rushing,
+whirling wheel, the heavy blows of the hammer, the shears that cut so
+softly through the metal plates, the thick iron bars that were broken
+like sticks of sealing-wax, and the music to which the heart's
+pulsations vibrate: &quot;Banco, Banco, a hundred thousand Banco!&quot; and all
+by steam&mdash;by mind and spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It was evening. I stood on the heights of Trollh&auml;tta's old sluices,
+and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows
+like spectres, large and white. The sluice gates were opened with a
+ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of
+the secret council in Germany. The evening was so still that
+Trollh&auml;tta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were
+a chorus from a hundred water-mills&mdash;ever one and the same tone. In
+one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer
+through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature
+was felt. Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the
+forest, down towards the Falls. Was it the mountain sprite?&mdash;We will
+imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="THEBIRDPHOENIX"></a><h2>THE BIRD PHOENIX</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In the garden of Paradise, under the tree of knowledge, stood a hedge
+of roses. In the first rose a bird was hatched; its flight was like
+that of light, its colours beautiful, its song magnificent.</p>
+
+<p>But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were
+driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's
+flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died
+in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one&mdash;the only
+one&mdash;the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up
+its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself up in
+its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out
+from the red egg.</p>
+
+<p>The bird hovers around us, rapid as the light, beautiful in colour,
+glorious in song. When the mother sits by the child's cradle, it is by
+the pillow, and with its wings flutters a glory around the child's
+head. It flies through the chamber of contentment, and there is the
+sun's radiance within:&mdash;the poor chest of drawers is odoriferous with
+violets.</p>
+
+<p>But the bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia's bird: it flutters in the
+rays of the Northern Lights on Lapland's icy plains; it hops amongst
+the yellow flowers in Greenland's short summer. Under Fahlun's copper
+rocks, in England's coal mines, it flies like a powdered moth over the
+hymn-book in the pious workman's hands. It sails on the lotus-leaf
+down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the Hindoo girl
+glisten on seeing it.</p>
+
+<p>The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? The bird of Paradise, song's
+sacred swan! It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and
+flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland's minstrel-harp
+glided the swan's red, sounding bill. It sat on Shakspeare's shoulder
+like Odin's raven, and whispered in his ear: &quot;Immortality!&quot; It flew at
+the minstrel competition, through Wartzburg's knightly halls.</p>
+
+<p>The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? It sang the Marseillaise for
+thee, and thou didst kiss the plume that fell from its wing: it came
+in the lustre of Paradise, and thou perhaps didst turn thyself away to
+some poor sparrow that sat with merest tinsel on its wings.</p>
+
+<p>The bird of Paradise! regenerated every century, bred in flames, dead
+in flames; thy image set in gold hangs in the saloons of the rich,
+even though thou fliest often astray and alone. &quot;The bird Phoenix in
+Arabia&quot;&mdash;is but a legend.</p>
+
+<p>In the garden of Paradise, when thou wast bred under the tree of
+knowledge, in the first rose, our Lord kissed thee and gave thee thy
+proper name&mdash;Poetry.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="KINNAKULLA"></a><h2>KINNAKULLA</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens! Thee will we visit. We stand by
+the lowest terrace in a plenitude of flowers and verdure; the ancient
+village church leans its grey pointed wooden tower, as if it would
+fall; it produces an effect in the landscape: we would not even be
+without that large flock of birds, which just now chance to fly away
+over the mountain forest.</p>
+
+<p>The high road leads up the mountain with short palings on either side,
+between which we see extensive plains with hops, wild roses,
+corn-fields, and delightful beech woods, such as are not to be found
+in any other place in Sweden. The ivy winds itself around old trees
+and stones&mdash;even to the withered trunk green leaves are lent. We look
+out over the flat, extended woody plain, to the sunlit church-tower of
+Maristad, which shines like a white sail on the dark green sea: we
+look out over the Venern Lake, but cannot see its further shore.
+Skj&auml;rgaardens' wood-crowned rocks lie like a wreath down in the lake;
+the steam-boat comes&mdash;see! down by the cliff under the red-roofed
+mansions, where the beech and walnut trees grow in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>The travellers land; they wander under shady trees away over that
+pretty light green meadow, which is enwreathed by gardens and woods:
+no English park has a finer verdure than the meadows near Hellekis.
+They go up to &quot;the grottos,&quot; as they call the projecting masses of red
+stone higher up, which, being thoroughly kneaded with petrifactions,
+project from the declivity of the earth, and remind one of the
+mouldering colossal tombs in the Campagna of Rome. Some are smooth and
+rounded off by the streaming of the water, others bear the moss of
+ages, grass and flowers, nay, even tall trees.</p>
+
+<p>The travellers go from the forest road up to the top of Kinnakulla,
+where a stone is raised as the goal of their wanderings. The traveller
+reads in his guide-book about the rocky strata of Kinnakulla: &quot;At the
+bottom is found sandstone, then alum-stone, then limestone, and above
+this red-stone, higher still slate, and lastly, trap.&quot; And, now that
+he has seen this, he descends again, and goes on board. He has seen
+Kinnakulla:&mdash;yes, the stony rock here, amidst the swelling verdure,
+showed him one heavy, thick stone finger, and most of the travellers
+think that they are like the devil, if they lay hold upon one finger,
+they have the body&mdash;but it is not always so. The least visited side of
+Kinnakulla is just the most characteristic, and thither will we go.</p>
+
+<p>The road still leads us a long way on this side of the mountain, step
+by step downwards, in long terraces of rich fields: further down, the
+slate-stone peers forth in flat layers, a green moss upon it, and it
+looks like threadbare patches in the green velvet carpet. The high
+road leads over an extent of ground where the slate-stone lies like a
+firm floor. In the Campagna of Rome, one would say it is a piece of
+<i>via appia</i>, or antique road; but it is Kinnakulla's naked skin and
+bones that we pass over. The peasant's house is composed of large
+slate-stones, and the roof is covered with them; one sees nothing of
+wood except that of the door, and above it, of the large painted
+shield, which states to what regiment the soldier belongs who got this
+house and plot of ground in lieu of pay.</p>
+
+<p>We cast another glance over Venern, to Lock&ouml;'s old palace, to the town
+of Lendkjobing, and are again near verdant fields and noble trees,
+that cast their shadows over Blomberg, where, in the garden, the poet
+Geier's spirit seeks the flower of Kinnakulla in his grand-daughter,
+little Anna.</p>
+
+<p>The plain expands here behind Kinnakulla; it extends for miles around,
+towards the horizon. A shower stands in the heavens; the wind has
+increased: see how the rain falls to the ground like a darkening veil.
+The branches of the trees lash one another like penitential dryades.
+Old Husaby church lies near us, yonder; though the shower lashes the
+high walls, which alone stand, of the old Catholic Bishop's palace.
+Crows and ravens fly through the long glass-less windows, which time
+has made larger; the rain pours down the crevices in the old grey
+walls, as if they were now to be loosened stone from stone: but the
+church stands&mdash;old Husaby church&mdash;so grey and venerable, with its
+thick walls, its small windows, and its three spires stuck against
+each other, and standing, like nuts, in a cluster.</p>
+
+<p>The old trees in the churchyard cast their shade over ancient graves.
+Where is the district's &quot;Old Mortality,&quot; who weeds the grass, and
+explains the ancient memorials? Large granite stones are laid here in
+the form of coffins, ornamented with rude carvings from the times of
+Catholicism. The old church-door creaks in the hinges. We stand within
+its walls, where the vaulted roof was filled for centuries with the
+fragrance of incense, with monks, and with the song of the choristers.
+Now it is still and mute here: the old men in their monastic dresses
+have passed into their graves; the blooming boys that swung the censer
+are in their graves; the congregation&mdash;many generations&mdash;all in their
+graves; but the church still stands the same. The moth-eaten, dusty
+cowls, and the bishops' mantle, from the days of the cloister, hang in
+the old oak presses; and old manuscripts, half eaten up by the rats,
+lie strewed about on the shelves in the sacristy.</p>
+
+<p>In the left aisle of the church there still stands, and has stood time
+out of mind, a carved image of wood, painted in various colours which
+are still strong: it is the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus. Fresh
+flower wreaths are hung around hers and the child's head; fragrant
+garlands are twined around the pedestal, as festive as on Madonna's
+birthday feast in the times of Popery. The young folks who have been
+confirmed, have this day, on receiving the sacrament for the first
+time, ornamented this old image&mdash;nay, even set the priest's name in
+flowers upon the altar; and he has, to our astonishment, let it remain
+there.</p>
+
+<p>The image of Madonna seems to have become young by the fresh wreaths:
+the fragrant flowers here have a power like that of poetry&mdash;they bring
+back the days of past centuries to our own times. It is as if the
+extinguished glory around the head shone again; the flowers exhale
+perfume: it is as if incense again streamed through the aisles of the
+church&mdash;it shines around the altar as if the consecrated tapers were
+lighted&mdash;it is a sunbeam through the window.</p>
+
+<p>The sky without has become clear: we drive again in under Cleven, the
+barren side of Kinnakulla: it is a rocky wall, different from almost
+all the others. The red stone blocks lie, strata on strata, forming
+fortifications with embrasures, projecting wings and round towers; but
+shaken, split and fallen in ruins&mdash;it is an architectural fantastic
+freak of nature. A brook falls gushing down from one of the highest
+points of the Cleven, and drives a little mill. It looks like a
+plaything which the mountain sprite had placed there and forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Large masses of fallen stone blocks lie dispersed round about; nature
+has spread them in the forms of carved cornices. The most significant
+way of describing Kinnakulla's rocky wall is to call it the ruins of a
+mile-long Hindostanee temple: these rocks might be easily transformed
+by the hammer into sacred places like the Ghaut mountains at Ellara.
+If a Brahmin were to come to Kinnakulla's rocky wall, he would
+recognise the temple of Cailasa, and find in the clefts and crevices
+whole representations from Ramagena and Mahabharata. If one should
+then speak to him in a sort of gibberish&mdash;no matter what, only that,
+by the help of Brockhaus's &quot;Conversation-Lexicon&quot; one might mingle
+therein the names of some of the Indian spectacles:&mdash;Sakantala,
+Vikramerivati, Uttaram Ramatscheritram, &amp;c.&mdash;the Brahmin would be
+completely mystified, and write in his note-book: &quot;Kinnakulla is the
+remains of a temple, like those we have in Ellara; and the inhabitants
+themselves know the most considerable works in our oldest Sanscrit
+literature, and speak in an extremely spiritual manner about them.&quot;
+But no Brahmin comes to the high rocky walls&mdash;not to speak of the
+company from the steam-boat, who are already far over the lake Venern.
+They have seen wood-crowned Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens&mdash;and
+we also have now seen them.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="GRANDMOTHER"></a><h2>GRANDMOTHER</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Grandmother is so old, she has so many wrinkles, and her hair is quite
+white; but her eyes! they shine like two stars, nay, they are much
+finer&mdash;they are so mild, so blissful to look into. And then she knows
+the most amusing stories, and she has a gown with large, large flowers
+on it, and it is of such thick silk that it actually rustles.
+Grandmother knows so much, for she has lived long before father and
+mother&mdash;that is quite sure.</p>
+
+<p>Grandmother has a psalm-book with thick silver clasps, and in that
+book she often reads. In the middle of it lies a rose, which is quite
+flat and dry; but it is not so pretty as the roses she has in the
+glass, yet she smiles the kindliest to it, nay, even tears come into
+her eyes!</p>
+
+<p>Why does Grandmother look thus on the withered flower in the old book?
+Do you know why?</p>
+
+<p>Every time that Grandmother's tears fall on the withered flower the
+colours become fresher; the rose then swells and the whole room is
+filled with fragrance; the walls sink as if they were but mists; and
+round about, it is the green, the delightful grove, where the sun
+shines between the leaves. And Grandmother&mdash;yes, she is quite young;
+she is a beautiful girl, with yellow hair, with round red cheeks,
+pretty and charming&mdash;no rose is fresher. Yet the eyes, the mild,
+blissful eyes,&mdash;yes, they are still Grandmother's! By her side sits a
+
+
+man, young and strong: he presents the rose to her and she smiles. Yet
+grandmother does not smile so,&mdash;yes; the smile comes,&mdash;he is
+gone.&mdash;Many thoughts and many forms go past! That handsome man is
+gone; the rose lies in the psalm-book, and grandmother,&mdash;yes, she
+again sits like an old woman, and looks on the withered rose that lies
+in the book.</p>
+
+<p>Now grandmother is dead!</p>
+
+<p>She sat in the arm-chair, and told a long, long, sweet story. &quot;And now
+it is ended!&quot; said she, &quot;and I am quite tired: let me now sleep a
+little!&quot; And so she laid her head back to rest. She drew her breath,
+she slept, but it became more and more still; and her face was so full
+of peace and happiness&mdash;it was as if the sun's rays passed over it.
+She smiled, and then they said that she was dead.</p>
+
+<p>She was laid in the black coffin; she lay swathed in the white linen:
+she was so pretty, and yet the eyes were closed&mdash;but all the wrinkles
+were gone. She lay with a smile around her mouth: her hair was so
+silvery white, so venerable, one was not at all afraid to look on the
+dead, for it was the sweet, benign grandmother. And the psalm-book was
+laid in the coffin under her head (she herself had requested it), and
+the rose lay in the old book&mdash;and then they buried grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>On the grave, close under the church-wall, they planted a rose-tree,
+and it became full of roses, and the nightingale sang over it, and the
+organ in the church played the finest psalms that were in the book
+under the dead one's head. And the moon shone straight down on the
+grave&mdash;but the dead was not there: every child could go quietly in the
+night-time and pluck a rose there by the churchyard-wall. The dead
+know more than all we living know&mdash;the dead know the awe we should
+feel at something so strange as their coming to us. The dead are
+better than us all, and therefore they do not come.</p>
+
+<p>There is earth over the coffin, there is earth within it; the
+psalm-book with its leaves is dust the rose with all its recollections
+has gone to dust. But above it bloom new roses, above is sings the
+nightingale, and the organ plays:&mdash;we think of the old grandmother
+with the mild, eternally young eyes. Eyes can never die! Ours shall
+once again see her young, and beautiful, as when she for the first
+time kissed the fresh red rose which is now dust in the grave.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="THEPRISONCELLS"></a><h2>THE PRISON-CELLS</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>By separation from other men, by solitary confinement, in continual
+silence, the criminal is to be punished and amended; therefore were
+prison-cells contrived. In Sweden there were several, and new ones
+have been built. I visited one for the first time in Mariestad. This
+building lies close outside the town, by a running water, and in a
+beautiful landscape. It resembles a large white-washed summer
+residence, window above window.</p>
+
+<p>But we soon discover that the stillness of the grave rests over it. It
+is as if no one dwelt here, or like a deserted mansion in the time of
+the plague. The gates in the walls are locked: one of them is opened
+for us: the gaoler stands with his bunch of keys: the yard is empty,
+but clean&mdash;even the grass weeded away between the stone paving. We
+enter the waiting-room, where the prisoner is received: we are shown
+the bathing-room, into which he is first led. We now ascend a flight
+of stairs, and are in a large hall, extending the whole length and
+breadth of the building. Galleries run along the floors, and between
+these the priest has his pulpit, where he preaches on Sundays to an
+invisible congregation. All the doors facing the gallery are half
+opened: the prisoners hear the priest, but cannot see him, nor he
+them. The whole is a well-built machine&mdash;a nightmare for the spirit.
+In the door of every cell there is fixed a glass, about the size of
+the eye: a slide covers it, and the gaoler can, unobserved by the
+prisoner, see everything he does; but he must come gently,
+noiselessly, for the prisoner's ear is wonderfully quickened by
+solitude. I turned the slide quite softly, and looked into the closed
+space, when the prisoner's eye immediately met mine. It is airy,
+clean, and light within the cell, but the window is placed so high
+that it is impossible to look out of it. A high stool, made fast to a
+sort of table, and a hammock, which can be hung upon hooks under the
+ceiling, and covered with a quilt, compose the whole furniture.</p>
+
+<p>Several cells were opened for us. In one of these was a young, and
+extremely pretty girl. She had lain down in her hammock, but sprang
+out directly the door was opened, and her first employment was to lift
+her hammock down, and roll it together. On the little table stood a
+pitcher with water, and by it lay the remains of some oatmeal cakes,
+besides the Bible and some psalms.</p>
+
+<p>In the cell close by sat a child's murderess. I saw her only through
+the little glass in the door. She had had heard our footsteps; heard
+us speak; but she sat still, squeezed up into the corner by the door,
+as if she would hide herself as much as possible: her back was bent,
+her head almost on a level with her lap, and her hands folded over it.
+They said this unfortunate creature was very young. Two brothers sat
+here in two different cells: they were punished for horse stealing;
+the one was still quite a boy.</p>
+
+<p>In one cell was a poor servant girl. They said: &quot;She has no place of
+resort, and without a situation, and therefore she is placed here.&quot; I
+thought I had not heard rightly, and repeated my question, &quot;why she
+was here,&quot; but got the same answer. Still I would rather believe that
+I had misunderstood what was said&mdash;it would otherwise be abominable.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, in the free sunshine, it is the busy day; in here it is
+always midnight's stillness. The spider that weaves its web down the
+wall, the swallow which perhaps flies a single time close under the
+panes there high up in the wall&mdash;even the stranger's footstep in the
+gallery, as he passes the cell-doors, is an event in that mute,
+solitary life, where the prisoners' thoughts are wrapped up in
+themselves. One must read of the martyr-filled prisons of the
+Inquisition, of the crowds chained together in the Bagnes, of the hot,
+lead chambers of Venice, and the black, wet gulf of the wells&mdash;be
+thoroughly shaken by these pictures of misery, that we may with a
+quieter pulsation of the heart wander through the gallery of the
+prison-cells. Here is light, here is air;&mdash;here it is more humane.
+Where the sunbeam shines mildly in on the prisoner, there also will
+the radiance of God shine into the heart.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="BEGGARBOYS"></a><h2>BEGGAR-BOYS</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The painter Callot&mdash;who does not know the name, at least from
+Hoffmann's &quot;in Callot's manner?&quot;&mdash;has given a few excellent pictures
+of Italian beggars. One of these is a fellow, on whom the one rag
+lashes the other: he carries his huge bundle and a large flag with the
+inscription, &quot;Capitano de Baroni.&quot; One does not think that there can
+in reality be found such a wandering rag-shop, and we confess that in
+Italy itself we have not seen any such; for the beggar-boy there,
+whose whole clothing often consists only of a waistcoat, has in it not
+sufficient costume for such rags.</p>
+
+<p>But we see it in the North. By the canal road between the Venern and
+Vigen, on the bare, dry rocky plain there stood, like beauty's
+thistles in that poor landscape, a couple of beggar-boys, so ragged,
+so tattered, so picturesquely dirty, that we thought we had Callot's
+originals before us, or that it was an arrangement of some industrious
+parents, who would awaken the traveller's attention and benevolence.
+Nature does not form such things: there was something so bold in the
+hanging on of the rags, that each boy instantly became a Capitano de
+Baroni.</p>
+
+<p>The younger of the two had something round him that had certainly once
+been the jacket of a very corpulent man, for it reached almost to the
+boy's ancles; the whole hung fast by a piece of the sleeve and a
+single brace, made from the seam of what was now the rest of the
+lining. It was very difficult to see the transition from jacket to
+trowsers, the rags glided so into one another. The whole clothing was
+arranged so as to give him an air-bath: there were draught holes on
+all sides and ends; a yellow linen clout fastened to the nethermost
+regions seemed as if it were to signify a shirt. A very large straw
+hat, that had certainly been driven over several times, was stuck
+sideways on his head, and allowed the boy's wiry, flaxen hair to grow
+freely through the opening where the crown should have been: the naked
+brown shoulder and upper part of the arm, which was just as brown,
+were the prettiest of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>The other boy had only a pair of trowsers on. They were also ragged,
+but the rags were bound fast into the pockets with packthread; one
+string round the ancles, one under the knee, and another round about
+the waist. He, however, kept together what he had, and that is always
+respectable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be off!&quot; shouted the Captain, from the vessel; and the boy with the
+tied-up rags turned round, and we&mdash;yes, we saw nothing but packthread,
+in bows, genteel bows. The front part of the boy only was covered: he
+had only the foreparts of trowsers&mdash;the rest was packthread, the bare,
+naked packthread.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="VADSTENE"></a><h2>VADSTENE</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In Sweden, it is not only in the country, but even in several of the
+provincial towns, that one sees whole houses of grass turf or with
+roofs of grass turf; and some are so low that one might easily spring
+up to the roof, and sit on the fresh greensward. In the early spring,
+whilst the fields are still covered with snow, but which is melted on
+the roof, the latter affords the first announcement of spring, with
+the young sprouting grass where the sparrow twitters: &quot;Spring comes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Between Motala and Vadstene, close by the high road, stands a
+grass-turf house&mdash;one of the most picturesque. It has but one window,
+broader than it is high, and a wild rose branch forms the curtain
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>We see it in the spring. The roof is so delightfully fresh with grass,
+it has quite the tint of velvet; and close to it is the chimney, nay,
+even a cherry-tree grows out of its side, now full of flowers: the
+wind shakes the leaves down on a little lamb that is tethered to the
+chimney. It is the only lamb of the family. The old dame who lives
+here, lifts it up to its place herself in the morning and lifts it
+down again in the evening, to give it a place in the room. The roof
+can just bear the little lamb, but not more&mdash;this is an experience and
+a certainty. Last autumn&mdash;and at that time the grass turf roofs are
+covered with flowers, mostly blue and yellow, the Swedish
+colours&mdash;there grew here a flower of a rare kind. It shone in the eyes
+of the old Professor, who on his botanical tour came past here. The
+Professor was quickly up on the roof, and just as quick was one of his
+booted legs through it, and so was the other leg, and then half of the
+Professor himself&mdash;that part where the head does not sit; and as the
+house had no ceiling, his legs hovered right over the old dame's head,
+and that in very close contact. But now the roof is again whole; the
+fresh grass grows where learning sank; the little lamb bleats up
+there, and the old dame stands beneath, in the low doorway, with
+folded hands, with a smile on her mouth, rich in remembrances, legends
+and songs, rich in her only lamb on which the cherry-tree strews its
+flower-blossoms in the warm spring sun.</p>
+
+<p>As a background to this picture lies the Vettern&mdash;the bottomless lake
+as the commonalty believe&mdash;with its transparent water, its sea-like
+waves, and in calm, with &quot;Hegring,&quot; or fata morgana on its steel-like
+surface. We see Vadstene palace and town, &quot;the city of the dead,&quot; as a
+Swedish author has called it&mdash;Sweden's Herculaneum, reminiscence's
+city. The grass-turf house must be our box, whence we see the rich
+mementos pass before us&mdash;memorials from the chronicle of saints, the
+chronicle of kings and the love songs that still live with the old
+dame, who stands in her low house there, where the lamb crops the
+grass on the roof. We hear her, and we see with her eyes; we go from
+the grass-turf house up to the town, to the other grass-turf houses,
+where poor women sit and make lace, once the celebrated work of the
+rich nuns here in the cloister's wealthy time.</p>
+
+<p>How still, solitary and grass-grown are these streets! We stop by an
+old wall, mouldy-green for centuries already. Within it stood the
+cloister; now there is but one of its wings remaining. There, within
+that now poor garden still bloom Saint Bridget's leek, and once ran
+flowers. King John and the Abbess, Ana Gylte, wandered one evening
+there, and the King cunningly asked: &quot;If the maidens in the cloister
+were never tempted by love?&quot; and the Abbess answered, as she pointed
+to a bird that just then flew over them: &quot;It may happen! One cannot
+prevent the bird from flying over the garden; but one may surely
+prevent it from building its nest there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus thought the pious Abbess, and there have been sisters who thought
+and acted like her. But it is quite as sure that in the same garden
+there stood a pear-tree, called the tree of death; and the legend says
+of it, that whoever approached and plucked its fruit would soon die.
+Red and yellow pears weighed down its branches to the ground. The
+trunk was unusually large; the grass grew high around it, and many a
+morning hour was it seen trodden down. Who had been here during the
+night?</p>
+
+<p>A storm arose one evening from the lake, and the next morning the
+large tree was found thrown down; the trunk was broken, and out from
+it there rolled infants' bones&mdash;the white bones of murdered children
+lay shining in the grass.</p>
+
+<p>The pious but love-sick sister Ingrid, this Vadstene's Heloise, writes
+to her heart's beloved, Axel Nilsun&mdash;for the chronicles have preserved
+it for us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Broderne og Systarne leka paa Spil, drikke Vin och dansa med
+hvarandra i Tradg&aring;rden!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(The brothers and sisters amuse themselves in play, drink wine and
+dance with one another in the garden).</p>
+
+<p>These words may explain to us the history of the pear-tree: one is led
+to think of the orgies of the nun-phantoms in &quot;Robert le Diable,&quot; the
+daughters of sin on consecrated ground. But &quot;judge not, lest ye be
+judged,&quot; said the purest and best of men that was born of woman. We
+will read Sister Ingrid's letter, sent secretly to him she truly
+loved. In it lies the history of many, clear and human to us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jag djerfues for ingen utan for dig allena bek&auml;nna, att jag form&aring;r
+ilia &aring;nda mit Ave Maria eller l&auml;sa mit Paternoster, utan du kommer mig
+ich&aring;gen. Ja i sjelfa messen kommer mig fore dit t&auml;ckleliga Ansigte och
+vart k&aring;rliga omgange. Jag tycker jag kan icke skifta mig for n genann
+an Menniska, jungfru Maria, St. Birgitta och himmelens H&auml;rskaror
+skalla kanske straffe mig h&aring;rfar? Men du vet det val, hjertans k&auml;raste
+att jag med fri vilja och upps&auml;t aldrig dissa reglar samtykt. Mine
+for&auml;ldrer hafva v&auml;l min kropp i dette fangelset insatt, men hjert&auml;t
+kan intet s&aring; snart fr&aring;n verlden ater kalles!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(I dare not confess to any other than to thee, that I am not able to
+repeat my Ave Maria or read my Paternoster, without calling thee to
+mind. Nay, even in the mass itself thy comely face appears, and our
+affectionate intercourse recurs to me. It seems to me that I cannot
+confess to any other human being&mdash;the Virgin Mary, St. Bridget, and
+
+the whole host of heaven will perhaps punish me for it. But thou
+knowest well, my heart's beloved, that I have never consented with my
+free-will to these rules. My parents, it is true, have placed my body
+in this prison, but the heart cannot so soon be weaned from the
+world).</p>
+
+<p>How touching is the distress of young hearts! It offers itself to us
+from the mouldy parchment, it resounds in old songs. Beg the
+grey-haired old dame in the grass turf-house to sing to thee of the
+young, heavy sorrow, of the saving angel&mdash;and the angel came in many
+shapes. You will hear the song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl
+who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber,
+sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him,
+and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and
+pleasure in Copenhagen. And all the nuns of the cloister sang: &quot;Christ
+grant that such an angel were to come, and take both me and thee!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old dame will also sing for thee of the beautiful Ogda and Oluf
+Tyste; and at once the cloister is revived in its splendour, the bells
+ring, stone houses arise&mdash;they even rise from the waters of the
+Vettern: the little town becomes churches and towers. The streets are
+crowded with great, with sober, well-dressed persons. Down the stairs
+of the town hall descends with a sword by his side and in fur-lined
+cloak, the most wealthy citizen of Vadstene, the merchant Michael. By
+his side is his young, beautiful daughter Agda, richly-dressed and
+happy; youth in beauty, youth in mind. All eyes are turned on the rich
+man&mdash;and yet forget him for her, the beautiful. Life's best blessings
+await her; her thoughts soar upwards, her mind aspires; her future is
+happiness! These were the thoughts of the many&mdash;and amongst the many
+there was one who saw her as Romeo saw Juliet, as Adam saw Eve in the
+garden of Paradise. That one was Oluf, the handsomest young man, but
+poor as Agda was rich. And he must conceal his love; but as only he
+lived in it, only he knew of it; so he became mute and still, and
+after months had passed away, the town's folk called him Oluf Tyste
+(Oluf the silent).</p>
+
+<p>Nights and days he combated his love; nights and days he suffered
+inexpressible torment; but at last&mdash;one dew-drop or one sunbeam alone
+is necessary for the ripe rose to open its leaves&mdash;he must tell it to
+Agda. And she listened to his words, was terrified, and sprang away;
+but the thought remained with him, and the heart went after the
+thought and stayed there; she returned his love strongly and truly,
+but in modesty and honour; and therefore poor Oluf came to the rich
+merchant and sought his daughter's hand. But Michael shut the bolts of
+his door and his heart too. He would neither listen to tears nor
+supplications, but only to his own will; and as little Agda also kept
+firm to her will, her father placed her in Vadstene cloister. And Oluf
+was obliged to submit, as it is recorded in the old song, that they
+cast</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;&mdash;&mdash; den svarta Muld<br /></span>
+<span> Alt &ouml;fver sk&ouml;n Agdas arm.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2"><sup>[B]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was dead to him and the world. But one night, in tempestuous
+weather, whilst the rain streamed down, Oluf Tyste came to the
+cloister wall, threw his rope-ladder over it, and however high the
+Vettern lifted its waves, Oluf and little Agda flew away over its
+fathomless depths that autumn night.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning the nuns missed little Agda. What a screaming and
+shouting&mdash;the cloister is disgraced! The Abbess and Michael the
+merchant swore that vengeance and death should reach the fugitives.
+Lindkj&ouml;ping's severe bishop, Hans Brask, fulminated his ban over them,
+but they were already across the waters of the Vettern; they had
+reached the shores of the Venern, they were on Kinnakulla, with one of
+Oluf's friends, who owned the delightful Hellekis.</p>
+
+<p>Here their marriage was to be celebrated. The guests were invited, and
+a monk from the neighbouring cloister of Husaby, was fetched to marry
+them. Then came the messenger with the bishop's excommunication, and
+this&mdash;but not the marriage ceremony&mdash;was read to them.</p>
+
+<p>All turned away from them terrified. The owner of the house, the
+friend of Oluf's youth, pointed to the open door and bade them depart
+instantly. Oluf only requested a car and horse wherewith to convey
+away his exhausted Agda; but they threw sticks and stones after them,
+and Oluf was obliged to bear his poor bride in his arms far into the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>Heavy and bitter was their wandering. At last, however, they found a
+home: it was in Guldkroken, in West Gothland. An honest old couple
+gave them shelter and a place by the hearth: they stayed there till
+Christmas, and on that holy eve there was to be a real Christmas
+festival. The guests were invited, the furmenty set forth; and now
+came the clergyman of the parish to say prayers; but whilst he spoke
+he recognised Oluf and Agda, and the prayer became a curse upon the
+two. Anxiety and terror came over all; they drove the excommunicated
+pair out of the house, out into the biting frost, where the wolves
+went in flocks, and the bear was no stranger. And Oluf felled wood in
+the forest, and kindled a fire to frighten away the noxious animals
+and keep life in Agda&mdash;he thought that she must die. But just then she
+was stronger of the two.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Our Lord is almighty and gracious; He will not leave us!&quot; said she.
+&quot;He has one here on the earth, one who can save us, one, who has
+proved like us, what it is to wander amongst enemies and wild animals.
+It is the King&mdash;Gustavus Vasa! He has languished like us!&mdash;gone astray
+in Dalecarlia in the deep snow! he has suffered, tried, knows it&mdash;he
+can and he will help us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The King was in Vadstene. He had called together the representatives
+of the kingdom there. He dwelt in the cloister itself, even there
+where little Agda, if the King did not grant her pardon, must suffer
+what the angry Abbess dared to advise: penance and a painful death
+awaited her.</p>
+
+<p>Through forests and by untrodden paths, in storm and snow, Oluf and
+Agda came to Vadstene. They were seen: some showed fear, others
+insulted and threatened them. The guard of the cloister made the sign
+of the cross on seeing the two sinners, who dared to ask admission to
+the King.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will receive and hear all,&quot; was his royal message, and the two
+lovers fell trembling at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>And the King looked mildly on them; and as he long had had the
+intention to humiliate the proud Bishop of Lindkj&ouml;ping, the moment was
+not unfavourable to them; the King listened to the relation of their
+lives and sufferings, and gave them his word, that the excommunication
+should be annulled. He then placed their hands one in the other, and
+said that the priest should also do the same soon; and he promised
+them his royal protection and favour.</p>
+
+<p>And old Michael, the merchant, who feared the King's anger, with which
+he was threatened, became so mild and gentle, that he, as the King
+commanded, not only opened his house and his arms to Oluf and Agda,
+but displayed all his riches on the wedding-day of the young couple.
+The marriage ceremony took place in the cloister church, whither the
+King himself led the bride, and where, by his command, all the nuns
+were obliged to be present, in order to give still more ecclesiastical
+pomp to the festival. And many a heart there silently recalled the old
+song about the cloister robbery and looked at Oluf Tyste:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Krist gif en sadan Angel<br /></span>
+<span> Kom, tog b&aring;d mig och dig!&quot;<a name="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3"><sup>[C]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sun now shines through the open cloister-gate. Let truth shine
+into our hearts; let us likewise acknowledge the cloister's share of
+God's influence. Every cell was not quite a prison, where the
+imprisoned bird flew in despair against the window-pane; here
+sometimes was sunshine from God in the heart and mind, from hence also
+went out comfort and blessings. If the dead could rise from their
+graves they would bear witness thereof: if we saw them in the
+moonlight lift the tombstone and step forth towards the cloister, they
+would say: &quot;Blessed be these walls!&quot; if we saw them in the sunlight
+hovering in the rainbow's gleam, they would say: &quot;Blessed be these
+walls!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How changed the rich, mighty Vadstene cloister, where the first
+daughters of the land were nuns, where the young nobles of the land
+wore the monk's cowl. Hither they made pilgrimages from Italy, from
+Spain: from far distant lands, in snow and cold, the pilgrim came
+barefooted to the cloister door. Pious men and women bore the corpse
+of St. Bridget hither in their hands from Rome, and all the
+church-bells in all the lands and towns they passed through, tolled
+when they came.</p>
+
+<p>We go towards the cloister&mdash;the remains of the old ruin. We enter St.
+Bridget's cell&mdash;it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and
+narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look
+from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We
+see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame
+around her God, whilst she read her morning and evening prayers. In
+the tile-stone of the floor there is engraved a rosary: before it, on
+her bare knees, she said a pater-noster at every pearl there pointed
+out. Here is no chimney&mdash;no hearth, no place for it. Cold and solitary
+it is, and was, here where the world's most far-famed woman dwelt, she
+who by her own sagacity, and by her contemporaries was raised to the
+throne of female saints.</p>
+
+<p>From this poor cell we enter one still meaner, one still more narrow
+and cold, where the faint light of day struggles in through a long
+crevice in the wall. Glass there never was here: the wind blows in
+here. Who was she who once dwelt in this cell?</p>
+
+<p>In our times they have arranged light, warm chambers close by: a whole
+range opens into the broad passage. We hear merry songs; laughter we
+hear, and weeping: strange figures nod to us from these chambers. Who
+are these? The rich cloister of St. Bridget's, whence kings made
+pilgrimages, is now Sweden's mad-house. And here the numerous
+travellers write their names on the wall. We hasten from the hideous
+scene into the splendid cloister church,&mdash;the blue church, as it is
+called, from the blue stones of which the walls are built&mdash;and here,
+where the large stones of the floor cover great men, abbesses and
+queens, only one monument is noticeable, that of a knightly figure
+carved in stone, which stands aloft before the altar. It is that of
+the insane Duke Magnus. Is it not as if he stepped forth from amongst
+the dead, and announced that such afflicted creatures were to be where
+St. Bridget once ruled?</p>
+
+<p>Pace lightly over the floor! Thy foot treads on the graves of the
+pious: the flat, modest stone here in the corner covers the dust of
+the noble Queen Philippa. She, that mighty England's daughter, the
+great-hearted, the immortal woman, who with wisdom and courage
+defended her consort's throne, that consort who rudely and barbarously
+cast her off! Vadstene's cloister gave her shelter&mdash;the grave here
+gave her rest.</p>
+
+<p>We seek one grave. It is not known&mdash;it is forgotten, as she was in her
+lifetime. Who was she? The cloistered sister Elizabeth, daughter of
+the Holstein Count, and once the bride of King Hakon of Norway. Sweet
+creature! she proudly&mdash;but not with unbecoming pride&mdash;advanced in her
+bridal dress, and with her court ladies, up to her royal consort. Then
+came King Valdemar, who by force and fraud stopped the voyage, and
+induced Hakon to marry Margaret, then eleven years of age, who thereby
+got the crown of Norway. Elizabeth was sent to Vadstene cloister,
+where her will was not asked. Afterwards when Margaret&mdash;who justly
+occupies a great place in the history of Scandinavia, but only
+comparatively a small one in the hearts&mdash;sat on the throne, powerful
+and respected, visited the then flourishing Vadstene, where the Abbess
+of the cloister was St. Bridget's grand-daughter, her childhood's
+friend, Margaret kissed every monk on the cheek. The legend is well
+known about him, the handsomest, who thereupon blushed. She kissed
+every nun on the hand, and also Elizabeth, her, whom she would only
+see here. Whose heart throbbed loudest at that kiss? Poor Elizabeth,
+thy grave is forgotten, but not the wrong thou didst suffer.</p>
+
+<p>We now enter the sacristy. Here, under a double coffin lid, rests an
+age's holiest saint in the North, Vadstene cloister's diadem and
+lustre&mdash;St. Bridget.</p>
+
+<p>On the night she was born, says the legend, there appeared a beaming
+cloud in the heavens, and on it stood a majestic virgin, who said: &quot;Of
+Birger is born a daughter whose admirable voice shall be heard over
+the whole world.&quot; This delicate and singular child grew up in the
+castle of her father, Knight Brake. Visions and revelations appeared
+to her, and these increased when she, only thirteen years of age, was
+married to the rich Ulf Gudmundsen, and became the mother of many
+children. &quot;Thou shalt be my bride and my agent,&quot; she heard Christ say,
+and every one of her actions was, as she averred, according to his
+announcement. After this she went to Niddaros, to St. Oluf's holy
+shrine: she then went to Germany, France, Spain and Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes honoured and sometimes mocked, she travelled, even to Cyprus
+and Palestine. Conscious of approaching death, she again reached Rome,
+where her last revelation was, that she should rest in Vadstene, and
+that this cloister especially should be sanctified by God's love. The
+splendour of the Northern lights does not extend so far around the
+earth as the glory of this fair saint, who now is but a legend. We
+bend with silent, serious thoughts before the mouldering remains in
+the coffin here&mdash;those of St. Bridget and her daughter St. Catherine;
+but even of these the remembrance will be extinguished. There is a
+tradition amongst the people, that in the time of the Reformation the
+real remains were carried off to a cloister in Poland, but this is not
+certainly known. Vadstene, at least, is not the repository of St.
+Bridget and her daughter's dust.</p>
+
+<p>Vadstene was once great and glorious. Great was the cloister's power,
+as St. Bridget saw it in the prospect of death. Where is now the
+cloister's might? It reposes under the tomb-stones&mdash;the graves alone
+speak of it. Here, under our feet, only a few steps from the church
+door, is a stone in which are carved fourteen rings: they announce
+that fourteen farms were given to the cloister, in order that he who
+moulders here might have this place, fourteen feet within the church
+door. It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister's
+power was greater than that of all sinners: the stone on his grave
+records it with no ordinary significance of language.</p>
+
+<p>Gustavus, the first Vasa, was the sun&mdash;the ruling power: the
+brightness of the cloister star must needs pale before him.</p>
+
+<p>There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene's rich palace which he
+erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister. At a far
+distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its
+splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged
+edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the
+windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round
+about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage
+road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored
+image.</p>
+
+<p>We now stand before it in daylight. Not a pane of glass is to be found
+in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the
+balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and
+resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers
+aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a
+sun-dial it shows the time&mdash;the time that is gone. The other two balls
+are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the
+space below is used as a cow-stall.</p>
+
+<p>The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish: they seem as
+if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new.
+In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was
+opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome
+greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down: we go through
+the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene
+palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space: even
+the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of
+timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the
+dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark grey dropping
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>We walk from hall to hall, and the wooden shutters are opened to admit
+daylight. All is vast, lofty, spacious, and adorned with antique
+chimney-pieces, and from every window there is a charming prospect
+over the clear, deep Vettern. In one of the chambers in the ground
+floor sat the insane Duke Magnus, (whose stone image we lately saw
+conspicuous in the church) horrified at having signed his own
+brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of
+Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to
+see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she
+came&mdash;he thought she came&mdash;in the form of a mermaid, raising herself
+aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate
+Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this
+window, and below it we saw the deep moat in which he sank.</p>
+
+<p>We enter the yeoman's hall, and the council hall, where, in the
+recesses of the windows, on each side, are painted yeomen in strange
+dresses, half Dalecarlians and half Roman warriors.</p>
+
+<p>In this once rich saloon, Svanta Steenson Sture knelt to Sweden's
+Queen, Catherine L&eacute;jonhufved: she was Svanta Sture's love, before
+Gustavus Vasa's will made her his Queen. The lovers met here: the
+walls are silent as to what they said, when the door was opened and
+the King entered, and saw the kneeling Sture, and asked what it meant.
+Margaret answered craftily and hastily: &quot;He demands my sister Martha's
+hand in marriage!&quot; and the King gave Svanta Sture the bride the Queen
+had asked for him.</p>
+
+<p>We are now in the royal bridal chamber, whither King Gustavus led his
+third consort. Catherine Steenbock, also another's bride, the bride of
+the Knight Gustavus. It is a sad story.</p>
+
+<p>Gustavus of the three roses, was in his youth honoured by the King,
+who sent him on a mission to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. He
+returned adorned with the Emperor's costly golden chain&mdash;young,
+handsome, joyous and richly clad, he returned home, and knew well how
+to relate the magnificence and charms of foreign lands: young and old
+listened to him with admiration, but young Catherine most of all.
+Through him the world in her eyes became twice as large, rich, and
+beautiful; they became dear to each other, and their parents blessed
+their love. The love-pledge was to be drunk,&mdash;when there came a
+message from the King, that the young Knight must, without delay,
+again bear a letter and greeting to the Emperor Charles. The betrothed
+pair separated with heavy hearts, but with a promise of mutual
+inviolable troth. The King then invited Catherine's parents to come to
+Vadstene palace. Catherine was obliged to accompany them; here King
+Gustavus saw her for the first time, and the old man fell in love with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas was kept with great hilarity; there were song and harp in
+these halls, and the King himself played the lute. When the time came
+for departure, the King said to Catherine's mother, that he would
+marry the young girl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she is the bride of the Knight Gustavus!&quot; stammered the mother.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young hearts soon forget their sorrows,&quot; thought the King. The mother
+thought so likewise, and as there chanced to come a letter the same
+day and hour from the young Knight Gustavus, Fra Steenbock committed
+it to the flames. All the letters that came afterwards and all the
+letters that Catherine wrote, were burnt by her mother, and doubts and
+evil reports were whispered to Catherine, that she was forgotten
+abroad by her young lover. But Catherine was secure and firm in her
+belief of him. In the spring her parents made known to her the King's
+proposal, and praised her good fortune. She answered seriously and
+determinedly, &quot;No!&quot; and when they repeated to her that it should and
+must happen, she repeatedly screamed in the greatest anguish, &quot;No no!&quot;
+and sank exhausted at her father and mother's feet, and humbly prayed
+them not to force her.</p>
+
+<p>And the mother wrote to the King that all was going on well, but that
+her child was bashful. The King now announced his visit to Torpe,
+where her parents, the Steenbocks, dwelt. The King was received with
+rejoicing and feasting, but Catherine had disappeared and the King
+himself was the successful one who found her. She sat dissolved in
+tears under the wild rose tree, where she had bidden farewell to her
+heart's beloved.</p>
+
+<p>There was merry song and joyous life in the old mansion; Catherine
+alone was sorrowful and silent. Her mother had brought her all her
+jewels and ornaments, but she wore none of them: she had put on her
+simplest dress, but in this she only fascinated the old King the more,
+and he would have that their betrothal should take place before he
+departed. Fra Steenbock wrested the Knight Gustavus's ring from
+Catherine's finger, and whispered in her ear: &quot;It will cost the friend
+of thy youth his life and fortune; the King can do everything!&quot; And
+the parents led her to King Gustavus, showed him that the ring was
+from the maiden's hand; and the King placed his own golden ring on her
+finger in the other's stead. In the month of August the flag waved
+from the mast of the royal yacht which bore the young Queen over the
+Vettern. Princes and knights, in costly robes, stood by the shore,
+music played, and the people shouted. Catherine made her entry into
+Vadstene Palace. The nuptials were celebrated the following day, and
+the walls were hung with silk and velvet, with cloth of gold and
+silver! It was a festival and rejoicing. Poor Catherine!</p>
+
+<p>In November, the Knight Gustavus of the three roses, returned home.
+His prudent, noble mother, Christina Gyldenstjerne, met him at the
+frontiers of the kingdom, prepared him, consoled him, and soothed his
+mind: she accompanied him by slow stages to Vadstene, where they were
+both invited by the King to remain during the Christmas festival. They
+accepted the invitation, but the Knight Gustavus was not to be moved
+to come to the King's table or any other place where the Queen was to
+be found. The Christmas approached. One Sunday evening, Gustavus was
+disconsolate; the Knight was long sleepless, and at daybreak he went
+into the church, to the tomb of his ancestress, St. Bridget. There he
+saw, at a few paces from him, a female kneeling before Philippa's
+tomb. It was the Queen he saw; their eyes met, and Gustavus hastened
+away. She then mentioned his name, begged him to stay, and commanded
+him to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I command it, Gustavus!&quot; said she; &quot;the Queen commands it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And she spoke to him; they conversed together, and it became clear to
+them both what had been done against them and with them; and she
+showed him a withered rose which she kept in her bosom, and she bent
+towards him and gave him a kiss, the last&mdash;their eternal
+leave-taking&mdash;and then they separated. He died shortly afterwards, but
+Catherine was stronger, yet not strong enough for her heart's deep
+sorrow. Here, in the bed-chamber, in uneasy dreams, says the story,
+she betrayed in sleep the constant thought of her heart, her youth's
+love, to the King, saying: &quot;Gustavus I love dearly; but the rose&mdash;I
+shall never forget.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From a secret door we walk out on to the open rampart, where the sheep
+now graze; the cattle are driven into one of the ruined towers. We see
+the palace-yard, and look from it up to a window. Come, thou
+birch-wood's thrush, and warble thy lays; sing, whilst we recal the
+bitterness of love in the rude&mdash;the chivalrous ages.</p>
+
+<p>Under that window there stood, one cold winter's night, wrapped in his
+white cloak, the young Count John of East Friesland. His brother had
+married Gustavus Vasa's eldest daughter, and departed with her to his
+home: wherever they came on their journey, there was mirth and
+feasting, but the most splendid was at Vadstene Palace. Cecilia, the
+King's younger daughter, had accompanied her sister hither, and was
+here, as everywhere, the first, the most beautiful in the chase as
+well as at the tournament. The winter began directly on their arrival
+at Vadstene; the cold was severe, and the Vettern frozen over. One
+day, Cecilia rode out on the ice and it broke; her brother, Prince
+Erik, came galloping to her aid. John, of East Friesland, was already
+there, and begged Erik to dismount, as he would, being on horseback,
+break the ice still more. Erik would not listen to him, and as John
+saw that there was no time for dispute, he dragged Erik from the
+horse, sprang into the water himself, and saved Cecilia. Prince Erik
+was furious with wrath, and no one could appease him. Cecilia lay long
+in a fever, and during its continuance, her love for him who had saved
+her life increased. She recovered, and they understood each other, but
+the day of separation approached. It was on the night previous that
+John, in his white cloak, ascended from stone to stone, holding by his
+silk ladder, until he at length entered the window; here they would
+converse for hours in all modesty and honour, speak about his return
+and their nuptials the following year; and whilst they sat there the
+door was hewn down with axes. Prince Erik entered, and raised the
+murderous weapon to slay the young Lord of East Friesland, when
+Cecilia threw herself between them. But Erik commanded his menials to
+seize the lover, whom they put in irons and cast into a low, dark
+hole, that cold frosty night, and the next day, without even giving
+him a morsel of bread or a drop of water, he was thrown on to a
+peasant's sledge, and dragged before the King to receive judgment.
+Erik himself cast his sister's fair name and fame into slander's
+babbling pool, and high dames and citizens' wives washed unspotted
+innocence in calumny's impure waters.</p>
+
+<p>It is only when the large wooden shutters of the saloons are opened,
+that the sunbeams stray in here; the dust accumulates in their twisted
+pillars, and is only just disturbed by the draught of air. In here is
+a warehouse for corn. Great fat rats make their nests in these halls.
+The spider spins mourning banners under the beams. This is Vadstene
+Palace!</p>
+
+<p>We are filled with sad thoughts. We turn our eyes from this place
+towards the lowly house with the grass-turf roof, where the little
+lamb crops the grass under the cherry-tree, which strews its fragrant
+leaves over it. Our thoughts descend from the rich cloister, from the
+proud palace, to the grassy turf, and the sun fades away over the
+grassy turf, and the old dame goes to sleep under the grassy turf,
+below which lie the mighty memorials of Vadstene.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEPUPPETSHOWMAN"></a><h2>THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There was an elderly man on the steam-boat, with such a contented face
+that, if it did not lie, he must be the happiest man on earth. That he
+indeed said he was: I heard it from his own mouth. He was a Dane,
+consequently my countryman, and was a travelling theatrical manager.
+He had the whole <i>corps dramatique</i> with him; they lay in a large
+chest&mdash;he was a puppet showman. His innate good-humour, said he, had
+been tried by a polytechnic candidate,<a name="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4"><sup>[D]</sup></a> and from this experiment on
+his patience he had become completely happy. I did not understand him
+at the moment, but he soon laid the whole case clearly before me; and
+here it is.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was in Slagelse,&quot; said he, &quot;that I gave a representation at the
+parsonage, and had a brilliant house and a brilliant company of
+spectators, all young persons, unconfirmed, except a few old ladies.
+Then there came a person dressed in black, having the appearance of a
+student: he sat down amongst the others, laughed quite at the proper
+time, and applauded quite correctly; that was an unusual spectator!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was bent on ascertaining who he was, and then I heard that he was a
+candidate from the polytechnic school, who had been sent out to
+instruct people in the provinces. At eight o'clock my representation
+was over; the children were to go early to bed, and one must think of
+the convenience of the public.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At nine o'clock the candidate began his lectures and experiments, and
+now <i>I</i> was one of <i>his</i> auditory.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was remarkable to hear and look at! The chief part of it went over
+my head and into the parson's, as one says. Can it be possible,
+thought I, that we human beings can find out such things? in that
+case, we must also be able to hold out longer, before we are put into
+the earth. It was merely small miracles that he performed, and yet all
+as easy as an old stocking&mdash;quite from nature. In the time of Moses
+and the prophets, such a polytechnic candidate would have been one of
+the wise men of the land, and in the Middle Ages he would have been
+burnt. I could not sleep the whole night, and as I gave a
+representation the next evening, and the candidate was there again, I
+got into a real merry humour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard of an actor, who when playing the lovers' parts, only
+thought of one of the spectators; he played for <i>her</i> alone, and
+forgot all the rest of the house; the polytechnic candidate was my
+<i>her</i>, my only spectator, for whom I played. And when the performance
+was over, all the puppets were called forward, and I was invited by
+the polytechnic candidate to take a glass of wine with him; and he
+spoke about my comedy, and I of his science; and I believe we each
+derived equal pleasure from the other. But yet I had the advantage,
+for there was so much in his performance that he could not account
+for: as for instance, that a piece of iron which falls through a
+spiral line, becomes magnetic,&mdash;well, how is that? The spirit comes
+over it, but whence does it come from? it is just as with the human
+beings of this world, I think; our Lord lets them fall through the
+spiral line of time, and the spirit comes over them&mdash;and there stands
+a Napoleon, a Luther, or a similar person.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are
+so accustomed to them that we call them things of every-day life.' And
+he spoke and he explained, so that it seemed at last as if he lifted
+my scull, and I honestly confessed, that if I were not an old fellow,
+I would go directly to the polytechnic school, and learn to examine
+the world in the summer, although I was one of the happiest of men.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'One of the happiest!' said he, and it was just as if he tasted it.
+'Are you happy?' 'Yes!' said I, 'I am happy, and I am welcome in all
+the towns I come to with my company! There is certainly one wish, that
+comes now and then like a night-mare, which rides on my good-humour,
+and that is to be a theatrical manager for a living company&mdash;a company
+of real men and women.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'You wish to have your puppets animated; you would have them become
+real actors and actresses,' said he, 'and yourself be the manager? you
+then think that you would be perfectly happy?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now he did not think so, but I thought so; and we talked for and
+against; and we were just as near in our opinions as before. But we
+clinked our glasses together, and the wine was very good; but there
+was witchcraft in it, or else the short and the long of the story
+would be&mdash;that I was intoxicated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I was not; my eyes were quite clear; it was as if there was
+sunshine in the room, and it shone out of the face of the polytechnic
+candidate, so that I began to think of the old gods in my youth, and
+when they went about in the world. And I told him so, and then he
+smiled, and I durst have sworn that he was a disguised god, or one of
+the family!&mdash;And he was so&mdash;my first wish was to be fulfilled: the
+puppets become living beings and I the manager of men and women. We
+drank that it should be so! he put all my puppets in the wooden chest,
+fastened it on my back, and then let me fall through a spiral line. I
+can still hear how I came down, slap! I lay on the floor, that is
+quite sure and certain, and the whole company sprang out of the chest.
+The spirit had come over us all together; all the puppets had become
+excellent artists&mdash;they said so themselves&mdash;and I was the manager.
+Everything was in order for the first representation; the whole
+company must speak with me, and the public also. The female dancer
+said, that if she did not stand on one leg, the house would be in an
+uproar: she was master of the whole and would be treated as such.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She who played the queen, would also be treated as a queen when off
+the stage, or else she should get out of practice, and he who was
+employed to come in with a letter made himself as important as the
+first lover. 'For,' said he, 'the small are of just as much importance
+as the great, in an artistic whole.' Then the hero demanded that the
+whole of his part should only be retorts on making his exit, for these
+the public applauded; the prima donna would only play in a red light,
+for that suited her best&mdash;she would not be blue: they were all like
+flies in a bottle, and I was also in the bottle&mdash;for I was the
+manager. I lost my breath, my head was quite dizzy! I was as miserable
+as a man can be; it was a new race of beings I had come amongst; I
+wished that I had them altogether again in the chest, that I had never
+been a manager: I told them that they were in fact only puppets, and
+so they beat me to death. That was my feeling!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I lay on the bed in my chamber; but how I had come there from the
+polytechnic candidate, he must know best&mdash;for I do not. The moon shone
+in on the floor where the puppet-chest lay upset, and all the puppets
+spread about&mdash;great and small, the whole lot. But I was not floored! I
+sprang out of bed, and threw them all into the chest; some on their
+heads, and some on their legs; I smacked the lid down and sat myself
+upon it: it was worth painting, can't you conceive it? I can! 'Now you
+shall be there!' said I, 'and I will never more wish that you may
+become flesh and blood!' I was so glad; I was the happiest man
+alive&mdash;the polytechnic candidate had tried me! I sat in perfect bliss,
+and fell asleep on the chest; and in the morning&mdash;it was, properly
+speaking, at noon, for I slept so very long that morning&mdash;I sat there
+still, happy and edified&mdash;I saw that my previous and only wish had
+been stupid. I inquired for the polytechnic candidate, but he was
+gone, like the Greek and Roman gods.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And from that time I have been the happiest man alive. I am a
+fortunate manager; my company does not argue with me, neither does the
+public; they are amused to their heart's content, and I can myself put
+all my pieces nicely together. I take the best parts out of all sorts
+of comedies that I choose, and no one troubles himself about it.
+Pieces that are now despised at the large theatres, but which thirty
+years ago the public ran to see, and cried over&mdash;those pieces I now
+make use of. I now present them before the young folks; and the young
+folks&mdash;they cry just as their fathers and mothers used to do. I give
+'Johanna Montfakon' and 'Dyveke,' but abbreviated; for the little
+folks do not like long, twaddling love-stories. They must have it
+unfortunate&mdash;but it must be brief. Now that I have travelled through
+Denmark, both to the right and left, I know everybody and am known
+again. Now I have come to Sweden, and if I am successful and gain much
+money, I will be a Scandinavian, if the humour hold; and this I tell
+you, as you are my countryman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I, as his countryman, naturally tell it again&mdash;only for the sake
+of telling it.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THESKJRGAARDS"></a><h2>THE &quot;SKJ&Auml;RGAARDS&quot;.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The canal voyage through Sweden goes at first constantly upwards,
+through elvs and lakes, forests and rocky land. From the heights we
+look down on vast extents of forest-land and large waters, and by
+degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents. At Mem
+we are again down by the salt fiord: a solitary tower raises its head
+between the remains of low, thick walls&mdash;it is the ruins of Stegeberg.
+The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests,
+which enclose small grass-grown valleys. The screaming sea-gulls fly
+around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze:
+it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings,
+sons of high-born fathers, exercised their deeds here. The same sea's
+surface then appeared to them as now to us, with its numberless isles,
+which lie strewed about here in the water by thousands along the whole
+coast. The depth of water between the rocky isles and the solid land
+is that we call &quot;The Skj&auml;rgaards:&quot; their waters flow into each other
+with varying splendour. We see it in the sunshine, and it is like a
+large English landscape garden; but the greensward plain is here the
+deep sea, the flower-beds in it are rocks and reefs, rich in firs and
+pines, oaks and bushes. Mark how, when the wind blows from the east,
+and the sea breaks over sunken rocks and is dashed back again in spray
+from the cliffs, your limbs feel&mdash;even through the ship on which you
+stand&mdash;the power of the sea: you are lifted as if by supernatural
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>We rush on against wind and sea, as if it were the sea-god's snorting
+horse that bore us; from Skj&auml;rgaard to Skj&auml;rgaard. The signal-gun is
+fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house. Sometimes
+we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark,
+stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water: one has
+the form of the tortoise's arched shell, another has the elephant's
+back and rough grey colour. Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that
+the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.</p>
+
+<p>We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks
+of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat
+with the blast; the Skj&auml;rgaards sometimes become only a narrow canal,
+sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone,
+and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little
+fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the
+land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose
+red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background. A group of
+cows lies basking in the sun on the stony surface, near a little
+smiling pasture, which appears to have been cultivated here or cut out
+of a meadow in Scania. How solitary must it not be to live on that
+little island! Ask the boy who sits there by the cattle, he will be
+able to tell us. &quot;It is lively and merry here,&quot; says he. &quot;The day is
+so long and light, the seal sits out there on the stone and barks in
+the early morning hour, and all the steamers from the canal must pass
+here. I know them all; and when the sun goes down in the evening, it
+is a whole history to look into the clouds over the land: there stand
+mountains with palaces, in silver and in gold, in red and in blue;
+sailing dragons with golden crowns, or an old giant with a beard down
+to his waist&mdash;altogether of clouds, and they are always changing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The storms come on in the autumn, and then there is often much
+anxiety when father is out to help ships in distress; but one becomes,
+as it were, a new being.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In winter the ice is locked fast and firm, and we drive from island
+to island and to the main land; and if the bear or the wolf pays us a
+visit we take his skin for a winter covering: it is warm in the room
+there, and they read and tell stories about old times!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, old Time, how thou dost unfold thyself with remembrances of these
+very Skj&auml;rgaards&mdash;old Time which belonged to the brave. These waters,
+these rocky isles and strands, saw heroes more greatly active than
+actively good: they swung the axe to give the mortal blow, or as they
+called it, &quot;the whining Jetteqvinde.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5"><sup>[E]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Here came the Vikings with their ships: on the headland yonder they
+levied provisions; the grazing cattle were slaughtered and borne away.
+Ye mouldering cliffs, had ye but a tongue, ye might tell us about the
+duels with the two-handed sword&mdash;about the deeds of the giants. Ye saw
+the hero hew with the sword, and cast the javelin: his left hand was
+as cunning as his right The sword moved so quickly in the air that
+there seemed to be three. Ye saw him, when he in all his martial array
+sprang forwards and backwards, higher than he himself was tall, and if
+he sprang into the sea he swam like a whale. Ye saw the two
+combatants: the one darted his javelin, the other caught it in the
+air, and cast it back again, so that it pierced through shield and man
+down into the earth. Ye saw warriors with sharp swords and angry
+hearts; the sword was struck downwards so as to cut the knee, out the
+combatant sprang into the air, and the sword whizzed under his feet.
+Mighty Sagas from the olden times! Mouldering rocks, could ye but tell
+us of these things!</p>
+
+<p>Ye, deep waters, bore the Vikings' ships, and when the strong in
+battle lifted the iron anchor and cast it against the enemy's vessel,
+so that the planks were rent asunder, ye poured your dark heavy seas
+into the hold, so that the bark sank. The wild <i>Berserk</i> who with
+naked breast stood against his enemy's blows, mad as a dog, howling
+like a bear, tearing his shield asunder, rushing to the bottom of the
+sea here, and fetching up stones, which ordinary men could not
+raise&mdash;history peoples these waters, these cliffs for us! A future
+poet will conjure them to this Scandinavian Archipelago, chisel the
+true forms out of the old Sagas, the bold, the rude, the greatness and
+imperfections of the time, in their habits as they lived.</p>
+
+<p>They rise again for us on yonder island, where the wind is whistling
+through the young fir wood. The house is of beams, roofed with bark;
+the smoke from the fire on the broad stone in the hall, whirls through
+the air-hole, near which stands the cask of mead; the cushions lie on
+the bench before the closed bedsteads; deer-skins hang over the balk
+walls, ornamented with shields, helmets, and armour. Effigies of gods,
+carved, on wooden poles, stand before the high seat where the noble
+Viking sits, a high-born father's youngest son, great in fame, but
+still greater in deeds; the skjalds (bards) and foster-brothers sit
+nearest to him. They defended the coasts of their countrymen, and the
+pious women; they fetched wheat and honey from England, they went to
+the White Sea for sables and furs&mdash;their adventures are related in
+song. We see the old man ride in rich clothing, with gloves sewn with
+golden thread, and with a hat brought from Garderige; we see the youth
+with a golden fillet around his brow; we see him at the <i>Thing</i>; we
+see him in battle and in play, where the best is he that can cut off
+the other's eyebrows without scratching the skin, or causing a wink
+with the eyes, on pain of losing his station. The woman sits in the
+log-house at her loom, and in the late moonlight nights the spirits of
+the fallen come and sit down around the fire, where they shake the
+wet, dripping clothes; but the serf sleeps in the ashes, and on the
+kitchen bench, and dreams that he dips his bread in the fat soup, and
+licks his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Thou future poet, thou wilt call forth the vanished forms from the
+Sagas, thou wilt people these islands, and let us glide past these
+reminiscences of the olden time with the mind full of them; clearly
+and truly wilt thou let us glide, as we now with the power of steam
+fly past that firmly standing scenery, the swelling sea, rocks and
+reefs, the main land, and wood-grown islands.</p>
+
+<p>We are already past Braavigen, where numberless ships from the
+northern kingdoms lay, when Upsala's King, Sigurd Ring, came,
+challenged by Harald Hildetand, who, old and grey, feared to die on a
+sick bed, and would fall in battle; and the mainland thundered like
+the plains of Marathon beneath the tramp of horses' hoofs during the
+battle:<a name="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6"><sup>[F]</sup></a> bards and female warriors surrounded the Danish King. The
+blind old man raised himself high in his chariot, gave his horse free
+rein, and hewed his way. Odin himself had due reverence paid to
+Hildetand's bones; and the pile was kindled, and the King laid on it,
+and Sigurd conjured all to cast gold and weapons, the most valuable
+they possessed, into the fire; and the bards sang to it, and the
+female warriors struck the spears on the bright shields. Upsala's
+Lord, Sigurd Ring, became King of Sweden and Denmark: so says the
+Saga, which sounded over the land and water from these coasts.</p>
+
+<p>The memorials of olden times pass swiftly through our thoughts; we fly
+past the scene of manly exercises and great deeds in the olden
+times&mdash;the ship cleaves the mighty waters with its iron paddles, from
+Skj&auml;rgaard to Skj&auml;rgaard.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="STOCKHOLM"></a><h2>STOCKHOLM.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We cast runes<a name="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7"><sup>[G]</sup></a> here on the paper, and from the white ground the
+picture of Birger Jarl's six hundred years old city rises before thee.</p>
+
+<p>The runes roll, you see! Wood-grown rocky isles appear in the light,
+grey morning mist; numberless flocks of wild birds build their nests
+in safety here, where the fresh waters of the M&auml;laren rush into the
+salt sea. The Viking's ship comes; King Agna stands by the prow&mdash;he
+brings as booty the King of Finland's daughter. The oak-tree spreads
+its branches over their bridal chamber; at daybreak the oak-tree bears
+King Agna, hanged in his long golden chain: that is the bride's work,
+and the ship sails away again with her and the rescued Fins.</p>
+
+<p>The clouds drive past&mdash;the years too.</p>
+
+<p>Hunters and fishermen erect themselves huts;&mdash;it is again deserted
+here, where the sea-birds alone have their homes. What is it that so
+frightens these numberless flocks? the wild duck and sea-gull fly
+screaming about, there is a hammering and driving of piles. Oluf
+Sk&ouml;tkonge has large beams bored down into the ground, and strong iron
+chains fastened across the stream: &quot;Thou art caught, Oluf
+Haraldson,<a name="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8"><sup>[H]</sup></a> caught with the ships and crews, with which thou didst
+devastate the royal city Sigtuna; thou canst not escape from the
+closed M&auml;lar lake!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is but the work of one night; the same night when Oluf Hakonson,
+with iron and with fire, burst his onward way through the stubborn
+ground; before the day breaks the waters of the M&auml;lar roll there; the
+Norwegian prince, Oluf sailed through the royal channel he had cut in
+the east. The stockades, where the iron chains hang, must bear the
+defences; the citizens from the burnt-down Sigtuna erect themselves a
+bulwark here, and build their new, little town on stock-holms.<a name="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9"><sup>[I]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The clouds go, and the years go! Do you see how the gables grow? there
+rise towers and forts. Birger Jarl makes the town of Stockholm a
+fortress; the warders stand with bow and arrow on the walls,
+reconnoitring over lake and fjord, over Brunkaberg sand-ridge. There
+were the sand-ridge slopes upwards from R&ouml;rstrand's Lake they build
+Clara cloister, and between it and the town a street springs up:
+several more appear; they form an extensive city, which soon becomes
+the place of contest for different partisans, where Ladelaas's sons
+plant the banner, and where the German Albrecht's retainers burn the
+Swedes alive within its walls. Stockholm is, however, the heart of the
+kingdom: that the Danes know well; that the Swedes know too, and there
+is strife and bloody combating. Blood flows by the executioner's hand,
+Denmark's Christian the Second, Sweden's executioner, stands in the
+market-place.</p>
+
+<p>Roll, ye runes! see over Brunkaberg sand-ridge, where the Swedish
+people conquered the Danish host, there they raise the May-pole: it is
+midsummer-eve&mdash;Gustavus Vasa makes his entry into Stockholm.</p>
+
+<p>Around the May-pole there grow fruit and kitchen-gardens, houses and
+streets; they vanish in flames, they rise again; that gloomy fortress
+towards the tower is transformed into a palace, and the city stands
+magnificently with towers and draw-bridges. There grows a town by
+itself on the sand-ridge, a third springs up on the rock towards the
+south; the old walls fall at Gustavus Adolphus's command; the three
+towns are one, large and extensive, picturesquely varied with old
+stone houses, wooden shops, and grass-roofed huts; the sun shines on
+the brass balls of the towers, and a forest of masts stands in that
+secure harbour.</p>
+
+<p>Rays of beauty shoot forth into the world from Versailles' painted
+divinity; they reach the M&auml;lar's strand into Tessin's<a name="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10"><sup>[J]</sup></a> palace, where
+art and science are invited as guests with the King, Gustavus the
+Third, whose effigy cast in bronze is raised on the strand before the
+splendid palace&mdash;it is in our times. The acacia shades the palace's
+high terrace on whose broad balustrades flowers send forth their
+perfume from Saxon porcelain; variegated silk curtains hang half-way
+down before the large glass windows; the floors are polished smooth as
+a mirror, and under the arch yonder, where the roses grow by the wall,
+the Endymion of Greece lives eternally in marble. As a guard of honour
+here, stand Fogelberg's Odin, and Sergei's Amor and Psyche.</p>
+
+<p>We now descend the broad, royal staircase, and before it, where, in
+by-gone times, Oluf Sk&ouml;tkonge stretched the iron chains across the
+mouth of the M&auml;lar Lake, there is now a splendid bridge with shops
+above and the Streamparterre below: there we see the little steamer
+'Nocken,'<a name="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11"><sup>[K]</sup></a> steering its way, filled with passengers from Diurgarden
+to the Streamparterre. And what is the Streamparterre? The Neapolitans
+would tell us: It is in miniature&mdash;quite in miniature&mdash;the
+Stockholmers' &quot;Villa Reale.&quot; The Hamburgers would say: It is in
+miniature&mdash;quite in miniature&mdash;the Stockholmers' &quot;Jungfernstieg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is a very little semi-circular island, on which the arches of the
+bridge rest; a garden full of flowers and trees, which we overlook
+from the high parapet of the bridge. Ladies and gentlemen promenade
+there; musicians play, families sit there in groups, and take
+refreshments in the vaulted halls under the bridge, and look out
+between the green trees over the open water, to the houses and
+mansions, and also to the woods and rocks: we forget that we are in
+the midst of the city.</p>
+
+<p>It is the bridge here that unites Stockholm with Nordmalen, where the
+greatest part of the fashionable world live, in two long Berlin-like
+streets; yet amongst all the great houses we will only visit one, and
+that is the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>We will go on the stage itself&mdash;it has an historical signification.
+Here, by the third side-scene from the stage-lights, to the right, as
+we look down towards the audience, Gustavus the Third was assassinated
+at a masquerade; and he was borne into that little chamber there,
+close by the scene, whilst all the outlets were closed, and the motley
+group of harlequins, polichinellos, wild men, gods and goddesses with
+unmasked faces, pale and terrified crept together; the dancing
+ballet-farce had become a real tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>This theatre is Jenny Lind's childhood's home. Here she has sung in
+the choruses when a little girl; here she first made her appearance in
+public, and was cheeringly encouraged when a child; here, poor and
+sorrowful, she has shed tears, when her voice left her, and sent up
+pious prayers to her Maker. From hence the world's nightingale flew
+out over distant lands, and proclaimed the purity and holiness of art.</p>
+
+<p>How beautiful it is to look out from the window up here, to look over
+the water and the Streamparterre to that great, magnificent palace, to
+Ladegaards land, with the large barracks, to Skipholmen and the rocks
+that rise straight up from the water, with S&ouml;dermalm's gardens,
+villas, streets, and church cupolas between the green trees: the ships
+lie there together, so many and so close, with their waving flags. The
+beautiful, that a poet's eye sees, the world may also see! Roll, ye
+runes!</p>
+
+<p>There sketches the whole varied prospect; a rainbow extends its arch
+like a frame around it. Only see! it is sunset, the sky becomes cloudy
+over S&ouml;dermalm, the grey sky becomes darker and darker&mdash;a pitch-dark
+ground&mdash;and on it rests a double rainbow. The houses are illumined by
+so strong a sunlight that the walls seem transparent; the linden-trees
+in the gardens, which have lately put forth their leaves, appear like
+fresh, young woods; the long, narrow windows in the Gothic buildings
+on the island shine as if it were a festal illumination, and between
+the dark firs there falls a lustre from the panes behind them as of a
+thousand flames, as if the trees were covered with
+flickering&mdash;Christmas lights; the colours of the rainbow become
+stronger and stronger, the background darker and darker, and the white
+sun-lit sea-gulls fly past.</p>
+
+<p>The rainbow has placed one foot high up on S&ouml;dermalm's churchyard.
+Where the rainbow touches the earth, there lie treasures buried, is a
+popular belief here. The rainbow rests on a grave up there: Stagnalius
+rests here, Sweden's most gifted singer, so young and so unhappy; and
+in the same grave lies Nicander, he who sang about King Enzio, and of
+&quot;Lejonet i Oken;&quot;<a name="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12"><sup>[L]</sup></a> who sang with a bleeding heart: the fresh
+vine-leaf cooled the wound and killed the singer. Peace be with his
+dust&mdash;may his songs live for ever! We go to your grave where the
+rainbow points. The view from here is splendid. The houses rise
+terrace-like in the steep, paved streets; the foot-passengers can,
+however, shorten the way by going through narrow lanes, and up steps
+made of thick beams, and always with a prospect downwards of the
+water, of the rocks and green trees! It is delightful to dwell here,
+it is healthy to dwell here, but it is not genteel, as it is by
+Brunkaberg's sand-ridge, yet it will become so: Stockholm's &quot;Strada
+Balbi&quot; will one day arise on S&ouml;dermalm's rocky ground.</p>
+
+<p>We stand up here. What other city in the world has a better prospect
+over the salt fjord, over the fresh lake, over towers, cupolas,
+heaped-up houses, and a palace, which King Enzio himself might have
+built, and round about the dark, gloomy forests with oaks, pines and
+firs, so Scandinavian, dreaming in the declining sun? It is twilight;
+the night comes on, the lamps are lighted in the city below, the stars
+are kindled in the firmament above, and the tower of Redderholm's
+church rises aloft towards the starry space. The stars shine through
+there; it is as if cut in lace, but every thread is of cast-iron and
+of the thickness of beams.</p>
+
+<p>We go down there, and in there, in the stilly eve.&mdash;A world of spirits
+reigns within. See, in the vaulted isles, on carved wooden horses,
+sits armour, that was once borne by Magnus Ladelaas, Christian the
+Second, and Charles the Ninth. A thousand flags that once waved to the
+peal of music and the clang of arms, to the darted javelin and the
+cannon's roar, moulder away here: they hang in long rags from the
+staff, and the staves lie cast aside, where the flag has long since
+become dust. Almost all the Kings of Sweden slumber in silver and
+copper coffins within these walls. From the altar aisle we look
+through the open-grated door, in between piled-up drums and hanging
+flags: here is preserved a bloody tunic, and in the coffin are the
+remains of Gustavus Adolphus. Who is that dead opposite neighbour in
+the chapel, across there in the other side-aisle of the church? There,
+below a glass lid, lies a dress shot through, and on the floor stands
+a pair of long, thick boots&mdash;they belonged to the hero-King, the
+wanderer, Charles XII., whose realm is now this narrow coffin.</p>
+
+<p>How sacred it is here under this vaulted roof! The mightiest men of
+centuries are gathered together here, perishable as these moth-eaten
+flags&mdash;mute and yet so eloquent. And without there is life and
+activity: the world goes on in its old course; generations change in
+the old houses; the houses change&mdash;yet Stockholm is always the heart
+of Sweden, Birger's city, whose features are continually renewed,
+continually beautified.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="DIURGAERDEN"></a><h2>DIURGAERDEN.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Diurgaerden is a large piece of land made into a garden by our Lord
+himself. Come with us over there. We are still in the city, but before
+the palace lie the broad hewn stone stairs, leading down to the water,
+where the Dalkulls&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, the Dalecarlian women&mdash;stand and ring with
+metal bells. On board! here are boats enough to choose amongst, all
+with wheels, which the Dalkulls turn. In coarse white linen, red
+stockings, with green heels, and singularly thick-soled shoes, with
+the upper-leather right up the shin-bone, stands the Dalkull; she has
+ornamented the boat, that now shoots away, with green branches. Houses
+and streets rise and unfold themselves; churches and gardens start
+forth; they stand on S&ouml;dermalm high above the tops of the ships'
+masts. The scenery reminds one of the Bhosphorus and Pera; the motley
+dress of the Dalkulls is quite Oriental&mdash;and listen! the wind bears
+melancholy Skalmeie tones out to us. Two poor Dalecarlians are playing
+music on the quay; they are the same drawn-out, melancholy tones that
+are played by the Bulgarian musicians in the streets of Pera. We stept
+out, and are in the Diurgarden.</p>
+
+<p>What a crowd of equipages pass in rows through the broad avenue! and
+what a throng of well-dressed pedestrians of all classes! One thinks
+of the garden of the Villa Borghese, when, at the time of the wine
+feast, the Roman people and strangers take the air there. We are in
+the Borghese garden; we are by the Bosphorus, and yet far in the
+North. The pine-tree rises large and free; the birch droops its
+branches, as the weeping willow alone has power to do&mdash;and what
+magnificently grand oaks! The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees,
+beautiful to the painter's eye; splendid green grass plains lie
+stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close
+past, as if it were a river. Large ships with swelling sails, the one
+high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied
+numbers.</p>
+
+<p>Come! let us up to Bystr&ouml;m's villa; it lies on the stony cliff up
+there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur: we
+see from here the whole tripartite city, S&ouml;dermalm, Nordmalm and the
+island with that huge palace. It is delightful, the building here on
+this rock, and the building stands, and that almost entirely of
+marble, a &quot;Casa santa d'Italia,&quot; as if borne through the air here in
+the North. The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but
+heavy: there is nothing genial. Round about stand large marble figures
+by Bystr&ouml;m, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity. Madonna is
+encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the
+flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the
+weeping Cupid, one thinks of a <i>pose</i> arranged by a ballet-master.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, however, see what is pretty. The little Cupid-seller is
+pretty, and the stone is made as flexible as life in the waists of the
+bathing-women. One of them, as she steps out, feels the water with her
+feet, and we feel, with her, a sensation that the water is cold. The
+coolness of the marble-hall realizes this feeling. Let us go out into
+the sunshine, and up to the neighbouring cliff, which rises above the
+mansions and houses. Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices
+in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and
+the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze
+bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that
+Scandinavian improvisatore. Here he lay in the grass, composed and
+sang his anacreontic songs, and here, in the summer-time, his annual
+festival is held. We will raise his altar here in the red evening
+sunlight. It is a flaming bowl, raised high on the jolly tun, and it
+is wreathed with roses. Morits tries his hunting-horn, that which was
+Oberon's horn in the inn-parlour, and everything danced, from Ulla to
+&quot;Mutter paa Toppen:&quot;<a name="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13"><sup>[M]</sup></a> they stamped with their feet and clapped their
+hands, and clinked the pewter lid of the ale-tankard; &quot;hej kara Sj&aelig;l!
+fukta din aske!&quot; (Hey! dear soul! moisten your clay).</p>
+
+<p>A Teniers' picture became animated, and still lives in song. Morits
+blows the horn on Bellmann's place around the flowing bowl, and whole
+crowds dance in a circle, young and old; the carriages too, horses and
+waggons, filled bottles and clattering tankards: the Bellmann
+dithyrambic clangs melodiously; humour and low life, sadness&mdash;and
+amongst others, about</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;&mdash;&mdash; hur &ouml;gat gret<br /></span>
+<span> Ved de Cypresser, som str&ouml;ddes.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14"><sup>[N]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Painter, seize thy brush and palette and paint the Maenade&mdash;but not
+her who treads the winebag, whilst her hair flutters in the wind, and
+she sings ecstatic songs. No, but the Maenade that ascends from
+Bellmann's steaming bowl is the Punch's Anadyomene&mdash;she, with the high
+heels to the red shoes, with rosettes on her gown and with fluttering
+veil and mantilla&mdash;fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose
+of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks
+with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about
+breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible
+that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce
+to us the human heart's sadness and hope.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="ASTORY"></a><h2>A STORY.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>All the apple-trees in the garden had sprung out. They had made haste
+to get blossoms before they got green leaves; and all the ducklings
+were out in the yard&mdash;and the cat too! He was, so to speak, permeated
+by the sunshine; he licked it from his own paws; and if one looked
+towards the fields, one saw the corn standing so charmingly green! And
+there was such a twittering and chirping amongst all the small birds,
+just as if it were a great feast. And that one might indeed say it
+was, for it was Sunday. The bells rang, and people in their best
+clothes went to church, and looked so pleased. Yes, there was
+something so pleasant in everything: it was indeed so fine and warm a
+day, that one might well say: &quot;Our Lord is certainly unspeakably good
+towards us poor mortals!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the clergyman stood in the pulpit in the church, and spoke so loud
+and so angrily! He said that mankind was so wicked, and that God would
+punish them for it, and that when they died, the wicked went down into
+hell, where they would burn for ever; and he said that their worm
+would never die, and their fire never be extinguished, nor would they
+ever get rest and peace!</p>
+
+<p>It was terrible to hear, and he said it so determinedly. He described
+hell to them as a pestilential hole, where all the filthiness of the
+world flowed together. There was no air except the hot, sulphurous
+flames; there was no bottom; they sank and sank into everlasting
+silence! It was terrible, only to hear about it; but the clergyman
+said it right honestly out of his heart, and all the people in the
+church were quite terrified. But all the little birds outside the
+church sang so pleasantly, and so pleased, and the sun shone so
+warm:&mdash;it was as if every little flower said: &quot;God is so wondrous good
+to us altogether!&quot; Yes, outside it was not at all as the clergyman
+preached.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, when it was bed-time, the clergyman saw his wife sit
+so still and thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What ails you?&quot; said he to her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What ails me?&quot; she replied; &quot;what ails me is, that I cannot collect
+my thoughts rightly&mdash;that I cannot rightly understand what you said;
+that there were so many wicked, and that they should burn
+eternally!&mdash;eternally, alas, how long! I am but a sinful being; but I
+could not bear the thought in my heart to allow even the worst sinner
+to burn for ever. And how then should our Lord permit it? he who is so
+wondrously good, and who knows how evil comes both from without and
+within. No, I cannot believe it, though you say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was autumn. The leaves fell from the trees; the grave, severe
+clergyman sat by the bedside of a dying person; a pious believer
+closed her eyes&mdash;it was the clergyman's own wife.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If any one find peace in the grave, and grace from God, then it is
+thou,&quot; said the clergyman, and he folded her hands, and read a psalm
+over the dead body.</p>
+
+<p>And she was borne to the grave: two heavy tears trickled down that
+stern man's cheeks; and it was still and vacant in the parsonage; the
+sunshine within was extinguished:&mdash;she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>It was night. A cold wind blew over the clergyman's head; he opened
+his eyes, and it was just as if the moon shone into his room. But the
+moon did not shine. It was a figure which stood before his bed&mdash;he saw
+the spirit of his deceased wife. She looked on him so singularly
+afflicted; it seemed as though she would say something.</p>
+
+<p>The man raised himself half erect in bed, and stretched his arms out
+towards her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not even to thee is granted everlasting peace. Thou dost suffer;
+thou, the best, the most pious!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the dead bent her head in confirmation of his words, and laid her
+hand on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And can I procure you peace in the grave?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes!&quot; it sounded in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me a hair, but a single hair of the head of that sinner, whose
+fire will never be quenched; that sinner whom God will cast down into
+hell, to everlasting torment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; so easily thou canst be liberated, thou pure, thou pious one!&quot;
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then follow me,&quot; said the dead; &quot;it is so granted us. Thou canst be
+by my side, wheresoever thy thoughts will. Invisible to mankind, we
+stand in their most secret places; but thou must point with a sure
+hand to the one destined to eternal punishment, and ere the cock crow
+he must be found.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And swift, as if borne on the wings of thought, they were in the great
+city, and the names of the dying sinners shone from the walls of the
+houses in letters of fire: &quot;Arrogance, Avarice, Drunkenness,
+Voluptuousness;&quot; in short, sin's whole seven-coloured arch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, in there, as I thought it, as I knew it,&quot; said the clergyman,
+&quot;are housed those condemned to eternal fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And they stood before the splendidly-illumined portico, where the
+broad stairs were covered with carpets and flowers, and the music of
+the dance sounded through the festal saloons. The porter stood there
+in silk and velvet, with a large silver-headed stick.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Our</i> ball can match with the King's,&quot; said he, and turned towards
+the crowd in the street&mdash;his magnificent thoughts were visible in his
+whole person. &quot;Poor devils! who stare in at the portico, you are
+altogether ragamuffins, compared to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Arrogance,&quot; said the dead; &quot;dost thou see him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Him!&quot; repeated the clergyman; &quot;he is a simpleton&mdash;a fool only, and
+will not be condemned to eternal fire and torment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A fool only,&quot; sounded through the whole house of Arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>And they flew into the four bare walls of Avarice, where skinny,
+meagre, shivering with cold, hungry and thirsty, the old man clung
+fast with all his thoughts to his gold. They saw how he, as in a
+fever, sprang from his wretched pallet, and took a loose stone out of
+the wall. There lay gold coins in a stocking-foot; he fumbled at his
+ragged tunic, in which gold coins were sewed fast, and his moist
+fingers trembled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is ill: it is insanity; encircled by fear and evil dreams.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And they flew away in haste, and stood by the criminals' wooden couch,
+where they slept side by side in long rows. One of them started up
+from his sleep like a wild animal, and uttered a hideous scream: he
+struck his companion with his sharp elbow, and the latter turned
+sleepily round.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold your tongue, you beast, and sleep! this is your way every night!
+Every night!&quot; he repeated; &quot;yes, you come every night, howling and
+choking me! I have done one thing or another in a passion; I was born
+with a passionate temper, and it has brought me in here a second time;
+but if I have done wrong, so have I also got my punishment. But one
+thing I have not confessed. When I last went out from here, and passed
+by my master's farm, one thing and another boiled up in me, and I
+directly stroked a lucifer against the wall: it came a little too near
+the thatch, and everything was burnt&mdash;hot-headedness came over it,
+just as it comes over me, I helped to save the cattle and furniture.
+Nothing living was burnt, except a flock of pigeons: they flew into
+the flames, and the yard dog. I had not thought of the dog. I could
+hear it howl, and that howl I always hear yet, when I would sleep; and
+if I do get to sleep, the dog comes also&mdash;so large and hairy! He lies
+down on me, howls, and strangles me! Do but hear what I am telling
+you. Snore&mdash;yes, that you can&mdash;snore the whole night through, and I
+not even a quarter of an hour!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the blood shone from the eyes of the fiery one; he fell on his
+companion, and struck him in the face with his clenched fist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Angry Mads has become mad again!&quot; resounded on all sides, and the
+other rascals seized hold of him, wrestled with him, and bent him
+double, so that his head was forced between his legs, where they bound
+it fast, so that the blood was nearly springing out of his eyes, and
+all the pores.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will kill him!&quot; said the clergyman,&mdash;&quot;poor unfortunate!&quot; and as
+he stretched his hands out over him, who had already suffered too
+severely, in order to prevent further mischief, the scene changed.</p>
+
+<p>They flew through rich halls, and through poor chambers;
+voluptuousness and envy, all mortal sins strode past them. A recording
+angel read their sin and their defence; this was assuredly little for
+God, for God reads the heart; He knows perfectly the evil that comes
+within it and from without, He, grace, all-loving kindness. The hand
+of the clergyman trembled: he did not venture to stretch it out, to
+pluck a hair from the sinner's head. And the tears streamed down from
+his eyes, like the waters of <i>grace</i> and love, which quenched the
+eternal fire of hell.</p>
+
+<p>The cock then crowed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Merciful God! Thou wilt grant her that peace in the grave which I
+have not been able to redeem.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I now have!&quot; said the dead; &quot;it was thy hard words, thy dark,
+human belief of God and his creatures, which drove me to thee! Learn
+to know mankind; even in the bad there is a part of God&mdash;a part that
+will conquer and quench the fire of hell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And a kiss was pressed on the clergyman's lips:&mdash;it shone around him.
+God's clear, bright sun shone into the chamber, where his wife,
+living, mild, and affectionate, awoke him from a dream, sent from God!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="UPSALA"></a><h2>UPSALA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It is commonly said, that Memory is a young girl with light blue eyes.
+Most poets say so; but we cannot always agree with most poets. To us
+memory comes in quite different forms, all according to that land, or
+that town to which she belongs. Italy sends her as a charming Mignon,
+with black eyes and a melancholy smile, singing Bellini's soft,
+touching songs. From Scotland Memory's sprite appears as a powerful
+lad with bare knees; the plaid hangs over his shoulder, the
+thistle-flower is fixed on his cap; Burns's songs then fill the air
+like the heath-lark's song, and Scotland's wild thistle flowers
+beautifully fragrant as the fresh rose. But now for Memory's sprite
+from Sweden, from Upsala. He comes thence in the form of a student&mdash;at
+least, he wears the Upsala student's white cap with the black rim. To
+us it points out its home, as the Phrygian cap denotes Ganymede.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the year 1843, that the Danish students travelled to Upsala.
+Young hearts met together; eyes sparkled: they laughed, they sang.
+Young hearts are the future&mdash;the conquering future&mdash;in the beautiful,
+true and good; it is so good that brothers should know and love each
+other. Friendship's meeting is still annually remembered in the
+palace-yard of Upsala, before the monument of Gustavus Vasa&mdash;by the
+hurra! for Denmark, in warm-hearted compliment to me.</p>
+
+<p>Two summers afterwards, the visit was returned. The Swedish students
+came to Copenhagen, and that they might there be known amongst the
+multitude, the Upsala students wore a white cap with a black rim: this
+cap is accordingly a memorial,&mdash;the sign of friendship's bridge over
+that river of blood which once flowed between kindred nations. When
+one meets in heart and spirit, a blissful seed is then sown. Memory's
+sprite, come to us! we know thee by the cap from Upsala: be thou our
+guide, and from our more southern home, after years and days, we will
+make the voyage over again, quicker than if we flew in Doctor Faustus'
+magic cloak. We are in Stockholm: we stand on the Ridderholm where the
+steamers lie alongside the bulwarks: one of them sends forth clouds of
+thick smoke from its chimney; the deck is crowded with passengers, and
+the white cap with the black rim is not wanting.</p>
+
+<p>We are off to Upsala; the paddles strike the waters of the M&auml;lar, and
+we shoot away from the picturesque city of Stockholm. The whole
+voyage, direct to Upsala, is a kaleidescope on a large scale. It is
+true, there is nothing of the magical in the scenery, but landscape
+gives place to landscape, and clouds and sunshine refresh their
+variegated beauty. The M&auml;lar lake curves, is compressed, and widens
+again: it is as if one passed from lake to lake through narrow canals
+and broad rivers. Sometimes it appears as if the lake ended in small
+rivulets between dark pines and rocks, when suddenly another large
+lake, surrounded by corn fields and meadows, opens itself to view: the
+light-green linden trees, which have just unfolded their leaves, shine
+forth before the dark grey rocks. Again a new lake opens before us,
+with islets, trees and red painted houses, and during the whole voyage
+there is a lively arrival and departure of passengers, in flat
+bottomed boats, which are nearly upset in the billowy wake of the
+vessel.</p>
+
+<p>It appears most dangerous opposite to Sigtuna, Sweden's old royal
+city: the lake is broad here; the waves rise as if they were the
+waters of the ocean; the boats rock&mdash;it is fearful to look at! But
+here there must be a calm; and Sigtuna, that little interesting town
+where the old towers stand in ruins, like outposts along the rocks,
+reflects itself in the water.</p>
+
+<p>We fly past! and now we are in Tyris rivulet! Part of a meadow is
+flooded; a herd of horses become shy from the snorting of the
+steamer's engine; they dash through the water in the meadow, and it
+spurts up all over them. It glitters there between the trees on the
+declivity: the Upsala students lie encamped there, and exercise
+themselves in the use of arms.</p>
+
+<p>The rivulet forms a bay, and the high plain extends itself. We see old
+Upsala's hills; we see Upsala's city with its church, which, like
+Notre Dame, raises its stony arms towards heaven. The university rises
+to the view, in appearance half palace and half barracks, and there
+aloft, on the greensward-clothed bank, stands the old red-painted huge
+palace with its towers.</p>
+
+<p>We stop at the bulwark near the arched bridge, and so go on shore.
+Whither wilt thou conduct us first, thou our guide with the
+white-and-black student's cap? Shall we go up to the palace, or to
+Linnaeus's garden! or shall we go to the church-yard where the nettles
+grow over Geier's and T&ouml;rnro's graves? No, but to the young and the
+living Upsala's life&mdash;the students. Thou tellest us about them; we
+hear the heart's pulsations, and our hearts beat in sympathy!</p>
+
+<p>In the first year of the war between Denmark and the insurgents, many
+a brave Upsala student left his quiet, comfortable home, and entered
+the ranks with his Danish brothers. The Upsala students gave up their
+most joyous festival&mdash;the May-day festival&mdash;and the money they at
+other times used to contribute annually towards the celebration
+thereof, they sent to the Danes, after the sum had been increased by
+concerts which were given in Stockholm and Vesteraas. That
+circumstance will not be forgotten in Denmark.</p>
+
+<p>Upsala student, thou art dear to us by thy disposition! thou art dear
+to us from thy lively jests! We will mention a trait thereof. In
+Upsala, it had become the fashion to be Hegelianers&mdash;that is to say,
+always to interweave Hegel's philosophical terms in conversation. In
+order to put down this practice, a few clever fellows took upon
+themselves the task of hammering some of the most difficult technical
+words into the memory of a humorous and commonly drunken country
+innkeeper, at whose house many a <i>Sexa</i> was often held; and the man
+spoke Hegelianic in his mellow hours, and the effect was so absurd,
+that the employment of philosophical scraps in his speech was
+ridiculed, understood, and the nuisance abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful songs resound as we approach: we hear Swedish, Norwegian and
+Danish. The melody's varied beacon makes known to us where Upsala's
+students are assembled. The song proceeds from the assembly-room&mdash;from
+the tavern saloon, and like serenades in the silent evening, when a
+young friend departs, or a dear guest is honoured. Glorious melodies!
+ye enthral, so that we forget that the sun goes down, and the moon
+rises.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Herre min Gud hvad din M&aring;nen lyser<br /></span>
+<span> Se, hvilken Glands ut ofver Land och Stad!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is now sung, and we see:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;H&ouml;gt opp i Slottet hvarenda ruta<br /></span>
+<span> Blixtrar some vore den en &auml;delsten.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15"><sup>[O]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Up thither then is our way! lead us, memory's sprite, into the palace,
+the courteous governor of Upland's dwelling; mild glances greet us; we
+see dear beings in a happy circle, and all the leading characters of
+Upsala. We again see him whose cunning quickened our perceptions as to
+the mysteries of vegetable life, so that even the toad-stool is
+unveiled to us as a building more artfully constructed than the
+labyrinths of the olden time. We see &quot;The Flowers'&quot; singer, he who led
+us to &quot;The Island of Bliss;&quot; we meet with him whose popular lays are
+borne on melodies into the world; his wife by his side. That quiet,
+gentle woman with those faithful eyes is the daughter of Frithiof's
+bard; we see noble men and women, ladies of the high nobility, with
+sounding and significant family names with <i>silver</i> and
+<i>lilies</i>,&mdash;<i>stars</i> and <i>swords</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Hark! listen to that lively song. Gunnar Wennerberg, Gluntarra's poet
+and composer, sings his songs with Boronees,<a name="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16"><sup>[P]</sup></a> and they acquire a
+dramatic life and reality.</p>
+
+<p>How spiritual and enjoyable! one becomes happy here, one feels proud
+of the age one lives in, happy in being distant from the horrible
+tragedies that history speaks of within these walls.</p>
+
+<p>We can hear about them when the song is silent, when those friendly
+forms disappear, and the festal lights are extinguished: from the
+pages of history that tale resounds with a clang of horror. It was in
+those times, which the many still call poetic&mdash;the romantic middle
+ages&mdash;that bards sang of its most brilliant periods, and covered with
+the radiance of their genius the sanguinary gulf of brutality and
+superstition. Terror seizes us in Upsala's palace: we stand in the
+vaulted hall, the wax tapers burn from the walls, and King Erik the
+Fourteenth sits with Saul's dark despondency, with Cain's wild looks.
+Niels Sture occupies his thoughts, the recollection of injustice
+exercised against him lashes his conscience with scourges and
+scorpions, as deadly terrible as they are revealed to us in the page
+of history.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik the Fourteenth, whose gloomy distrust often amounted to
+insanity, thought that the nobility aimed at his life. His favourite,
+Goran Persson, found it to his advantage to strengthen him in this
+belief. He hated most the popularly favoured race of the Stures, and
+of them, the light-haired Niels Sture in particular; for Erik thought
+that he had read in the stars that a man with light hair should hurl
+him from the throne; and as the Swedish General after the lost battle
+of Svarteaa, laid the blame on Niels Sture, Erik directly believed it,
+yet dared not to act as he desired, but even gave Niels Sture royal
+presents. Yet because he was again accused by one single person of
+having checked the advance of the Swedish army at B&auml;h&uuml;s, Erik invited
+him to his palace at Svartsj&ouml;, gave him an honourable place at his
+royal table, and let him depart in apparent good faith for Stockholm,
+where, on his arrival, the heralds were ordered to proclaim in the
+streets: &quot;Niels Sture is a traitor to his country!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There Goran Persson and the German retainers seized him, and sat him
+by force on the executioner's most miserable hack; struck him in the
+face so that the blood streamed down, placed a tarred straw crown on
+his head, and fastened a paper with derisive words, on the saddle
+before him. They then let a row of hired beggar-boys and old
+fish-wives go in couples before, and to the tail of the horse they
+bound two fir-trees, the roots of which dragged on the ground and
+swept the street after the traitor. Niels Sture exclaimed that he had
+not deserved this treatment from his King and he begged the groom, who
+went by his side, and had served him in the field of battle, to attest
+the truth like an honest man; when they all shouted aloud, that he
+suffered innocently, and had acted like a true Swede. But the
+procession was driven forward through the streets without stopping,
+and at night Niels Sture was conducted to prison.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik sits in his royal palace: he orders the torches and candles
+to be lighted, but they are of no avail&mdash;his thoughts' scorpions sting
+his soul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have again liberated Niels Sture,&quot; he mutters; &quot;I have had placards
+put up at every street-corner, and let the heralds proclaim that no
+one shall dare to speak otherwise than well of Niels Sture! I have
+sent him on an honourable mission to a foreign court, in order to sue
+for me in marriage! He has had reparation enough made to him; but
+never will he, nor his mighty race, forget the derision and shame I
+have made him suffer. They will all betray me&mdash;kill me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And King Erik commands that all Sture's kindred shall be made
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik sits in his royal palace: the sun shines, but not into the
+King's heart. Niels Sture enters the chamber with an answer of consent
+from the royal bride, and the King shakes him by the hand, making fair
+promises&mdash;and the following evening Niels Sture is a prisoner in
+Upsala Palace.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik's gloomy mind is disturbed; he has no rest; he has no peace,
+between fear and distrust. He hurries away to Upsala Palace; he will
+make all straight and just again by marrying Niels Sture's sister.
+Kneeling, he begs her imprisoned father's consent, and obtains it; but
+in the very moment, the spirit of distrust is again upon him, and he
+cries in his insanity:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you will not forgive me the shame I brought on Niels!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Goran Persson announced that King Erik's brother,
+John, had escaped from his prison, and that a revolt was breaking out.
+And Erik ran, with a sharp dagger into Niels Sture's prison.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Art thou there, traitor to thy country!&quot; he shouted, and thrust the
+dagger into Shire's arm; and Sture drew it out again, wiped off the
+blood, kissed the hilt, and returned the weapon to the King, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be lenient with me, Sire; I have not deserved your disfavour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Erik laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! ho! do but hear the villain! how he can pray for himself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the King's halberdier stuck his lance through Niels Sture's eye,
+and thus gave him his death. Sture's blood cleaves to Upsala
+Palace&mdash;to King Erik always and everlastingly. No church masses can
+absolve his soul from that base crime.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now go to the church.</p>
+
+<p>A little flight of stairs in the side aisle leads us up to a vaulted
+chamber, where kings' crowns and sceptres, taken from the coffins of
+the dead, are deposited in wooden closets. Here, in the corner, hangs
+Niels Sture's blood-covered clothes and knight's hat, on the outside
+of which a small silk glove is fastened. It was his betrothed one's
+dainty glove&mdash;that which he, knight-like, always bore.</p>
+
+<p>O, barbarous era! highly vaunted as you are in song, retreat, like the
+storm-cloud, and be poetically beautiful to all who do not see thee in
+thy true light.</p>
+
+<p>We descend from the little chamber, from the gold and silver of the
+dead, and wander in the church's aisles. The cold marble tombs, with
+shields of arms and names, awaken other, milder thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The walls shine brightly, and with varied hues, in the great chapel
+behind the high altar. The fresco paintings present to us the most
+eventful circumstances of Gustavus Vasa's life. Here his clay
+moulders, with that of his three consorts. Yonder, a work in marble,
+by Sargel, solicits our attention: it adorns the burial-chapel of the
+De Geers; and here, in the centre aisle, under that flat stone, rests
+Linnaeus. In the side chapel, is his monument, erected by <i>amici</i> and
+<i>discipuli</i>: a sufficient sum was quickly raised for its erection, and
+the King, Gustavus the Third, himself brought his royal gift. The
+projector of the subscription then explained to him, that the purposed
+inscription was, that the monument was erected only by friends and
+disciples, and King Gustavus answered: &quot;And am not I also one of
+Linnaeus's disciples?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The monument was raised, and a hall built in the botanical garden,
+under splendid trees. There stands his bust; but the remembrance of
+himself, his home, his own little garden&mdash;where is it most vivid? Lead
+us thither.</p>
+
+<p>On yonder side of Fyri's rivulet, where the street forms a declivity,
+where red-painted, wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as
+fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnaeus's garden. We
+stand within it. How solitary! how overgrown! Tall nettles shoot up
+between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges. No water-plants appear more
+in that little, dried-up basin; the hedges that were formerly clipped,
+put forth fresh leaves without being checked by the gardener's shears.</p>
+
+<p>It was between these hedges that Linnaeus at times saw his own
+double&mdash;that optical illusion which presents the express image of a
+second self&mdash;from the hat to the boots.</p>
+
+<p>Where a great man has lived and worked, the place itself becomes, as
+it were, a part and parcel of him: the whole, as well as a part, has
+mirrored itself in his eye; it has entered into his soul, and become
+linked with it and the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>We enter the orangeries: they are now transformed into assembly-rooms;
+the blooming winter-garden has disappeared; but the walls yet show a
+sort of herbarium. They are hung round with the portraits of learned
+Swedes&mdash;herbarium from the garden of science and knowledge. Unknown
+faces&mdash;and, to the stranger, the greatest part are unknown names&mdash;meet
+us here.</p>
+
+<p>One portrait amongst the many attracts our attention: it looks
+singular; it is the half-length figure of an old man in a shirt, lying
+in his bed. It is that of the learned theologian, Oedmann, who after
+he had been compelled to keep his bed by a fever, found himself so
+comfortable in it, that he continued to lie there during the remainder
+of his long life, and was not to be induced to get up. Even when the
+next house was burning, they were obliged to carry him out in his bed
+into the street. Death and cold were his two bugbears. The cold would
+kill him, was his opinion; and so, when the students came with their
+essays and treatises, the manuscripts were warmed at the stove before
+he read them. The windows of his room were never opened, so that there
+was a suffocating and impure air in his dwelling. He had a
+writing-desk on the bed; books and manuscripts lay in confusion round
+about; dishes, plates, and pots stood here or there, as the
+convenience of the moment dictated, and his only companion was a deaf
+and dumb laughter.</p>
+
+<p>She sat still in a corner by the window, wrapped up in herself, and
+staring before her, as if she were a figure that had flown out of the
+frame around the dark, mouldy canvas, which had once shown a picture
+on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the room, in this impure atmosphere, the old man lived
+happily, and reached his seventieth year, occupied with the
+translation of travels in Africa. This tainted atmosphere, in which he
+lay, became, to his conceit, the dromedary's high back, which lifted
+him aloft in the burning sun; the long, hanging-down cobwebs were the
+palm-trees' waving banners, and the caravan went over rivers to the
+wild bushmen. Old Oedmann was with the hunters, chasing the elephants
+in the midst of the thick reeds; the agile tiger-cat sprang past, and
+the serpents shone like garlands around the boughs of the trees: there
+was excitement, there was danger&mdash;and yet he lay so comfortably in his
+good and beloved bed in Upsala.</p>
+
+<p>One winter's day, it happened that a Dalecarlian peasant mistook the
+house, and came into Oedmann's chamber in his snow-covered skin cloak,
+and with his beard full of ice. Oedmann shouted to him to go his way,
+but the peasant was deaf, and therefore stepped quite close up to the
+bed. He was the personification of Winter himself, and Oedmann fell
+ill from this visit: it was his only sickness during the many years he
+lay here as a polypus, grown fast, and where he was painted, as we see
+his portrait in the assembly-room.</p>
+
+<p>From the hall of learning we will go to its burial-place&mdash;that is to
+say, its open burial-place&mdash;the great library. We wander from hall to
+hall, up stairs and down stairs. Along the shelves, behind them and
+round about, stand books, those petrifactions of the mind, which might
+again be vivified by spirit. Here lives a kind-hearted and mild old
+man, the librarian, Professor Schr&ouml;der. He smiles and nods as he hears
+how memory's sprite takes his place here as guide, and tells of and
+shows, as we see, Tegner's copy and translation of Ochlenschloeger's
+&quot;Hakon Jarl and Palnatoke.&quot; We see Vadstene cloister's library, in
+thick hog's leather bindings, and think of the fair hands of the nuns
+that have borne them, the pious, mild eyes that conjured the spirit
+out of the dead letters. Here is the celebrated Codex Argentius, the
+translation of the &quot;Four Evangelists.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_Q_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q_17"><sup>[Q]</sup></a> Gold and silver letters
+glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic
+manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's
+Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings
+and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in
+spirit, and longs to be out in the free air&mdash;and we are there; by
+Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf,
+out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church
+stands&mdash;the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes
+gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it
+leads us close past Upsala's old hills&mdash;Odin's, Thor's and Freia's
+graves, as they are called.</p>
+
+<p>There once stood ancient Upsala, here now are but a few peasants'
+farms. The low church, built of granite blocks, dates from a very
+remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple. Each of
+the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands.
+Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin
+greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old
+housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the
+silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The
+wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden,
+and for the heart's constant thoughts&mdash;young love!</p>
+
+<p>Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been
+remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! and years after, when the same
+wanderer again stood here, she, the blooming rose, had been laid in
+the earth; the spring roses had strown their leaves over her coffined
+clay; the sweet music of her lips sounded but in memory; the smile in
+her eyes and around her mouth, was gone like the sunbeams, which then
+shone on Upsala's hills. Her name in the greensward is grown over; she
+herself is in the earth, and it is closed above her; but the hill
+here, closed for a thousand years, is open.</p>
+
+<p>Through the passage which is dug deep into the hills, we come to the
+funereal urns which contain the bones of youthful kindred; the dust of
+kings, the gods of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The old housewife, from the peasant's cot, has lighted half a hundred
+wax candles and placed them in rows in the otherwise pitchy-dark,
+stone-paved passage. It shines so festally in here over the bones of
+the olden time's mighty ones, bones that are now charred and burnt to
+ashes. And whose were they? Thou world's power and glory, thou world's
+posthumous fame&mdash;dust, dust like beauty's rose, laid in the dark
+earth, where no light shines; thy memorials are but a name, the name
+but a sound. Away hence, and up on the hill where the wind blows, the
+sun shines, and the eye looks over the green plain, to the sunlit,
+dear Upsala, the student's city.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="SALA"></a><h2>SALA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Sweden's great King, Germany's preserver, Gustavus Adolphus, founded
+Sala. The little wood, close by, still preserves legends of the heroic
+King's youthful love&mdash;of his meeting here with Ebba Brahe.</p>
+
+<p>Sala's silver mines are the largest, the deepest, and oldest in
+Sweden: they reach to the depth of one hundred and seventy fathoms,
+consequently they are almost as deep as the Baltic. This of itself is
+enough to awaken an interest for a little town; but what is its
+appearance? &quot;Sala,&quot; says the guide-book, &quot;lies in a valley, in a flat,
+and not very pleasant district.&quot; And so truly it is: it was not very
+attractive approaching it our way, and the high road led directly into
+the town, which is without any distinctive character. It consists of a
+long street with what we may term a nucleus and a few fibres. The
+nucleus is the market-place, and the fibres are the few lanes
+diverging from it. The long street&mdash;that is to say, long in a little
+town&mdash;is quite without passengers; no one comes out from the doors, no
+one is to be seen at the windows.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore with pleased surprise that I at length descried a
+human being: it was at an ironmonger's, where there hung a paper of
+pins, a handkerchief and two tea-pots in the window. There I saw a
+solitary shop-boy, standing quite still, but leaning over the counter
+and looking out of the open door. He certainly wrote in his journal,
+if he had one, in the evening: &quot;To-day a traveller drove through the
+town; who he was, God knows, for I don't!&quot;&mdash;yes, that was what the
+shop-boy's face said, and an honest face it was.</p>
+
+<p>In the inn at which I arrived, there was the same grave-like stillness
+as in the street. The gate was certainly closed, but all the inner
+doors were wide open; the farm-yard cock stood uplifted in the middle
+of the traveller's room and crowed, in order to show that there was
+somebody at home. The house, however, was quite picturesque: it had an
+open balcony, from which one might look out upon the yard, for it
+would have been far too lively had it been facing the street. There
+hung the old sign and creaked in the wind, as if to show that it at
+least was alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass in
+the street had got the mastery over the pavement. The sun shone
+brightly, but shone as into the bachelor's solitary room, and on the
+old maid's balsams in the flower-pots. It was as still as a Scotch
+Sunday&mdash;and yet it was a Tuesday. One was disposed for Young's &quot;Night
+Thoughts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked out from the balcony into the neighbouring yard: there was
+not a soul to be seen, but children had been playing there. There was
+a little garden made of dry sticks: they were stuck down in the soft
+soil and had been watered; a broken pan, which had certainly served by
+way of watering-pot, lay there still. The sticks signified roses and
+geraniums.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a delightful garden&mdash;alas, yes! We great, grown-up men&mdash;we
+play just so: we make ourselves a garden with what we call love's
+roses and friendship's geraniums; we water them with our tears and
+with our heart's blood; and yet they are, and remain, dry sticks
+without root. It was a gloomy thought; I felt it, and in order to get
+the dry sticks in my thoughts to blossom, I went out. I wandered in
+the fibres and in the long threads&mdash;that is to say, in the small
+lanes&mdash;and in the great street; and here was more life than I dared to
+expect. I met a herd of cattle returning or going&mdash;which I know
+not&mdash;for they were without a herdsman. The shop-boy still stood behind
+the counter, leaned over it and greeted me; the stranger took his hat
+off again&mdash;that was my day's employment in Sala.</p>
+
+<p>Pardon me, thou silent town, which Gustavus Adolphus built, where his
+young heart felt the first emotions of love, and where the silver lies
+in the deep shafts&mdash;that is to say, outside the town, &quot;in a flat, and
+not very pleasant district.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew no one in the town; I had no one to be my guide, so I
+accompanied the cows, and came to the churchyard. The cows went past,
+but I stepped over the stile, and stood amongst the graves, where the
+grass grew high, and almost all the tombstones lay with worn-out
+inscriptions. On a few only the date of the year was legible.
+&quot;Anno&quot;&mdash;yes, what then? And who rested here? Everything on the stone
+was erased&mdash;blotted out like the earthly life of those mortals that
+here were earth in earth. What life's dream have ye dead played here
+in silent Sala?</p>
+
+<p>The setting sun shone over the graves; not a leaf moved on the trees;
+all was still&mdash;still as death&mdash;in the city of the silver-mines, of
+which this traveller's reminiscence is but a frame around the shop-boy
+who leaned over the counter.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEMUTEBOOK"></a><h2>THE MUTE BOOK.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>By the high road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house.
+Our way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the
+windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard,
+in an arbour of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The
+corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that
+forenoon. No one stood by and wept over that dead man; no one hung
+sorrowfully over him; his face was covered with a white cloth, and
+under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was
+a whole sheet of grey paper, and between each lay withered flowers,
+deposited and forgotten&mdash;a whole herbarium, gathered in different
+places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave
+with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is that dead man?&quot; we asked, and the answer was: &quot;The old student
+from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned
+languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was
+something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and
+himself up to drinking spirits, and as his health suffered by it, he
+came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and
+lodging.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was as gentle as a child, when the dark humour did not come over
+him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted
+deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book
+with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day and look at one
+plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his
+cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might
+have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the
+lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful
+rest in the grave!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They raised the winding-sheet. There was peace in the face of the
+dead: a sunbeam fell on it; a swallow in its arrowy flight, darted
+into the new-made arbour, and in its flight circled twittering over
+the dead man's head.</p>
+
+<p>How strange it is!&mdash;we all assuredly know it&mdash;to take out old letters
+from the days of our youth and read them: a whole life, as it were,
+then rises up with all its hopes, and all its troubles. How many of
+those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as
+the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of
+them for many years&mdash;them whom we once thought we should always cling
+to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with.</p>
+
+<p>The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the
+friend&mdash;the friend of his school-days&mdash;the friend for life. He fixed
+this leaf on the student's cap in the green wood, when the vow of
+friendship was concluded for the whole of life. Where does he now
+live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign
+conservatory-plant, too fine for the gardens of the North&mdash;it looks as
+if there still were fragrance in these leaves!&mdash;<i>she</i> gave it to
+him&mdash;she, the young lady of that noble garden.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the marsh-lotus which he himself has plucked and watered with
+salt tears&mdash;the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters. And here is a
+nettle: what does its leaf say? What did he think on plucking it&mdash;on
+preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley from the woodland
+solitudes; here are honeysuckle leaves from the village ale-house
+flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass.</p>
+
+<p>The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead
+man's head; the swallow again flies past; &quot;quivit! quivit!&quot; Now the
+men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse,
+whose head rests on the Mute-Book&mdash;preserved&mdash;forgotten!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEZTHERDALE"></a><h2>THE Z&Auml;THER DALE.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Everything was in order, the carriage examined, even a whip with a
+good lash was not forgotten. &quot;Two whips would be best,&quot; said the
+ironmonger, who sold it, and the ironmonger was a man of experience,
+which travellers often are not. A whole bag full of &quot;slanter&quot;&mdash;that
+is, copper coins of small value&mdash;stood before us for bridge-money, for
+beggars, for shepherd's boys, or whoever might open the many
+field-gates for us that obstructed our progress. But we had to do this
+ourselves, for the rain pattered down and lashed the ground; no one
+had any desire to come out in such weather. The rushes in the marsh
+bent and waved; it was a real rain feast for them, and it whistled
+from the tops of the rushes: &quot;We drink with our feet, we drink with
+our heads, we drink with the whole body, and yet we stand on one leg,
+hurra! We drink with the bending willow, with the dripping flowers on
+the bank; their cups run over&mdash;the marsh marigold, that fine lady, can
+bear it better! Hurra! it is a feast! it pours, it pours; we whistle
+and we sing; it is our own song. Tomorrow the frogs will croak the
+same after us and say, 'it is quite new!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the rushes waved, and the rain pattered down with a splashing
+noise&mdash;it was fine weather to travel in to Z&auml;ther Dale, and to see its
+far-famed beauties. The whip-lash now came off the whip; it was
+fastened on again, and again, and every time it was shorter, so that
+at last there was not a lash, nor was there any handle, for the handle
+went after the lash&mdash;or sailed after it&mdash;as the road was quite
+navigable, and gave one a vivid idea of the beginning of the deluge.</p>
+
+<p>One poor jade now drew too much, the other drew too little, and one of
+the splinter bars broke; well, by all that is vexatious, that was a
+fine drive! The leather apron in front had a deep pond in its folds
+with an outlet into one's lap. Now one of the linch-pins came out; now
+the twisting of the rope harness became loose, and the cross-strap was
+tired of holding any longer. Glorious inn in Z&auml;ther, how I now long
+more for thee than thy far-famed dale. And the horses went slower, and
+the rain fell faster, and so&mdash;yes, so we were not yet in Z&auml;ther.</p>
+
+<p>Patience, thou lank spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin
+thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as
+still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the
+carriage to Z&auml;ther. But to the inn, by the road side, close to the
+far-famed valley, I got at length, towards evening.</p>
+
+<p>And everything was flowing in the yard, chaotically mingled; manure
+and farming implements, staves and straw. The poultry sat there washed
+to shadows, or at least like stuck-up hens' skins with feathers on,
+and even the ducks crept close up to the wet wall, sated with the wet.
+The stable-man was cross, the girl still more so; it was difficult to
+get them to bestir themselves: the steps were crooked, the floor
+sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air
+was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on
+the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made
+by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells
+and purling brooks.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long hollow; I saw the tops of the trees looming up, and the
+rain drew its thick veil over it. The whole of that long evening did I
+sit and look upon it during that shower of showers. It was as if the
+Venern, the Vettern and a few more lakes ran through an immense sieve
+from the clouds. I had ordered something to eat and drink, but I got
+nothing. They ran up and they ran down; there was a hissing sound of
+roasting by the hearth; the girls chattered, the men drank &quot;sup,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_R_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_R_18"><sup>[R]</sup></a>
+strangers came, were shown into their rooms, and got both roast and
+boiled. Several hours had passed, when I made a forcible appeal to the
+girl, and she answered phlegmatically: &quot;Why, Sir, you sit there and
+write without stopping, so you cannot have time to eat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a long evening, &quot;but the evening passed!&quot; It had become quite
+still in the inn; all the travellers, except myself, had again
+departed, certainly in order to find better quarters for the night at
+Hedemore or Brunbeck. I had seen, through the half-open door into the
+dirty tap-room, a couple of fellows playing with greasy cards; a huge
+dog lay under the table and glared with its large red eyes; the
+kitchen was deserted; the rooms too; the floor was wet, the storm
+rattled, the rain beat against the windows&mdash;&quot;and now to bed! said I.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>I slept an hour, perhaps two, and was awakened by a loud bawling from
+the high road. I started up: it was twilight, the night at that period
+is not darker&mdash;it was about one o'clock. I heard the door shaken
+roughly; a deep manly voice shouted aloud, and there was a hammering
+with a cudgel against the planks of the yard-gate. Was it an
+intoxicated or a mad man that was to be let in? The gate was now
+opened, but many words were not exchanged. I heard a woman scream at
+the top of her voice from terror. There was now a great bustling
+about; they ran across the yard in wooden shoes; the bellowing of
+cattle and the rough voices of men were mingled together. I sat on the
+edge of the bed. Out or in! what was to be done? I looked from the
+window; in the road there was nothing to be seen, and it still rained.
+All at once some one came up stairs with heavy footsteps: he opened
+the door of the room adjoining mine&mdash;now he stood still! I listened&mdash;a
+large iron bolt fastened my door. The stranger now walked across the
+floor, now he shook my door, and then kicked against it with a heavy
+foot, and whilst all this was passing, the rain beat against the
+windows, and the blast made them rattle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are there any travellers here?&quot; shouted a voice; &quot;the house is on
+fire!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I now dressed myself and hastened out of the room and down the stairs.
+There was no smoke to be seen, but when I reached the yard, I saw that
+the whole building&mdash;a long and extensive one of wood&mdash;was enveloped in
+flames and clouds of smoke. The fire had originated in the baking
+oven, which no one had looked to; a traveller, who accidently came
+past, saw it, called out and hammered at the door: and the women
+screamed, and the cattle bellowed, when the fire stuck its red tongue
+into them.</p>
+
+<p>Now came the fire-engine and the flames were extinguished. By this
+time it was morning. I stood in the road, scarcely a hundred steps
+from the far-famed dale. &quot;One may as well spring into it as walk into
+it!&quot; and I sprang into it; and the rain poured down, and the water
+flowed&mdash;the whole dale was a well.</p>
+
+<p>The trees turned their leaves the wrong side out, purely because of
+the pouring rain, and they said, as the rushes did the day before: &quot;We
+drink with our heads, we drink with our feet, and we drink with the
+whole body, and yet stand on our legs, hurra! it rains, and it pours;
+we whistle and we sing; it is our own song&mdash;and it is quite new!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, that the rushes also sang yesterday&mdash;but it was the same, ever
+the same. I looked and looked, and all I know of the beauty of Z&auml;ther
+Dale is, that she had washed herself!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEMIDSUMMERFESTIVALINLACKSAND"></a><h2>THE<br />MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL<br />IN LACKSAND.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Lacksand lay on the other side of the dal-elv which the road now led
+us over for the third or fourth time. The picturesque bell-tower of
+red painted beams, erected at a distance from the church, rose above
+the tall trees on the clayey declivity: old willows hung gracefully
+over the rapid stream. The floating bridge rocked under us&mdash;nay, it
+even sank a little, so that the water splashed under the horse's
+hoofs; but these bridges have such qualities! The iron chains that
+held it rattled, the planks creaked, the boards splashed, the water
+rose, and murmured and roared, and so we got over where the road
+slants upwards towards the town. Close opposite here the last year's
+May-pole still stood with withered flowers. How many hands that bound
+these flowers are now withered in the grave?</p>
+
+<p>It is far prettier to go up on the sloping bank along the elv, than to
+follow the straight high-road into the town. The path conducts us,
+between pasture fields and leaf trees, up to the parsonage, where we
+passed the evening with the friendly family. The clergyman himself was
+but lately dead, and his relatives were all in mourning. There was
+something about the young daughter&mdash;I knew not myself what it was&mdash;but
+I was led to think of the delicate flax flower, too delicate for the
+short northern summer.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke about the Midsummer festival the next day, and of the
+winter season here, when the swans, often more than thirty at a time,
+sit (motionless themselves) on the elv, and utter strange, mournful
+tones. They always come in pairs, they said, two and two, and thus
+they also fly away again. If one of them dies, its partner always
+remains a long time after all the others are gone; lingers, laments,
+and then flies away alone and solitary.</p>
+
+<p>When I left the parsonage in the evening, the moon, in its first
+quarter, was up. The May-pole was raised; the little steamer, 'Prince
+Augustus,' with several small vessels in tow, came over the Siljan
+lake and into the elv; a musician sprang on shore, and began to play
+dances under the tall wreathed May-pole. And there was soon a merry
+circle around it&mdash;all so happy, as if the whole of life were but a
+delightful summer night.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning was the Midsummer Festival. It was Sunday, the 24th of
+June, and a beautiful sunshiny day it was. The most picturesque sight
+at the festival is to see the people from the different parishes
+coming in crowds, in large boats over Siljan's lake, and landing on
+its shores. We drove out to the landing-place, Barkedale, and before
+we got out of the town, we met whole troops coming from there, as well
+as from the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Close by the town of Lacksand, there is a row of low wooden shops on
+both sides of the way, which only get their interior light through the
+doorway. They form a whole street, and serve as stables for the
+parishioners, but also&mdash;and it was particularly the case that
+morning&mdash;to go into and arrange their finery. Almost all the shops or
+sheds were filled with peasant women, who were anxiously busy about
+their dresses, careful to get them into the right folds, and in the
+mean time peeped continually out of the door to see who came past. The
+number of arriving church-goers increased; men, women, and children,
+old and young, even infants; for at the Midsummer festival no one
+stays at home to take care of them, and so of course they must come
+too&mdash;all must go to church.</p>
+
+<p>What a dazzling army of colours! Fiery red and grass green aprons meet
+our gaze. The dress of the women is a black skirt, red bodice, and
+white sleeves: all of them had a psalm-book wrapped in the folded silk
+pocket-handkerchief. The little girls were entirely in yellow, and
+with red aprons; the very least were in Turkish-yellow clothes. The
+men were dressed in black coats, like our palet&ocirc;ts, embroidered with
+red woollen cord; a red band with a tassel hung down from the large
+black hat; with dark knee breeches, and blue stockings, with red
+leather gaiters&mdash;in short, there was a dazzling richness of colour,
+and that, too, on a bright sunny morning in the forest road.</p>
+
+<p>This road led down a steep to the lake, which was smooth and blue.
+Twelve or fourteen long boats, in form like gondolas, were already
+drawn up on the flat strand, which here is covered with large stones.
+These stones served the persons who landed, as bridges; the boats were
+laid alongside them, and the people clambered up, and went and bore
+each other on land. There certainly were at least a thousand persons
+on the strand; and far out on the lake, one could see ten or twelve
+boats more coming, some with sixteen oars, others with twenty, nay,
+even with four-and-twenty, rowed by men and women, and every boat
+decked out with green branches. These, and the varied clothes, gave to
+the whole an appearance of something so festal, so fantastically rich,
+as one would hardly think the north possessed. The boats came nearer,
+all crammed full of living freight; but they came silently, without
+noise or talking, and rowed up to the declivity of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>The boats were drawn up on the sand: it was a fine subject for a
+painter, particularly one point&mdash;the way up the slope, where the whole
+mass moved on between the trees and bushes. The most prominent figures
+there, were two ragged urchins, clothed entirely in bright yellow,
+each with a skin bundle on his shoulders. They were from Gagne, the
+poorest parish in Dalecarlia. There was also a lame man with his blind
+wife: I thought of the fable of my childhood, of the lame and the
+blind man: the lame man lent his eyes, and the blind his legs, and so
+they reached the town.</p>
+
+<p>And we also reached the town and the church, and thither they all
+thronged: they said there were above five thousand persons assembled
+there. The church-service began at five o'clock. The pulpit and organ
+were ornamented with flowering lilacs; children sat with lilac-flowers
+and branches of birch; the little ones had each a piece of oat-cake,
+which they enjoyed. There was the sacrament for the young persons who
+had been confirmed; there was organ-playing and psalm-singing; but
+there was a terrible screaming of children, and the sound of heavy
+footsteps; the clumsy, iron-shod Dal shoes tramped loudly upon the
+stone floor. All the church pews, the gallery pews, and the centre
+aisle were quite filled with people. In the side aisle one saw various
+groups&mdash;playing children, and pious old folks: by the sacristy there
+sat a young mother giving suck to her child&mdash;she was a living image of
+the Madonna herself.</p>
+
+<p>The first impression of the whole was striking, but only the
+first&mdash;there was too much that disturbed. The screaming of children,
+and the noise of persons walking were heard above the singing, and
+besides that, there was an insupportable smell of garlic: almost all
+the congregation had small bunches of garlic with them, of which they
+ate as they sat. I could not bear it, and went out into the
+churchyard: here&mdash;as it always is in nature&mdash;it was affecting, it was
+holy. The church door stood open; the tones of the organ, and the
+voices of the psalm-singers were wafted out here in the bright
+sunlight, by the open lake: the many who could not find a place in the
+church, stood outside, and sang with the congregation from the
+psalm-book: round about on the monuments, which are almost all of
+cast-iron, there sat mothers suckling their infants&mdash;the fountain of
+life flowed over death and the grave. A young peasant stood and read
+the inscription on a grave:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Ach hur s&ouml;dt al hafve lefvet,<br /></span>
+<span> Ach hur skj&ouml;ut al kunne d&ouml;e!&quot;<a name="FNanchor_S_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_S_19"><sup>[S]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Beautiful Christian, scriptural language, verses certainly taken from
+the psalm-book, were read on the graves; they were all read, for the
+service lasted several hours. This, however, can never be good for
+devotion.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd at length streamed from the church; the fiery-red and
+grass-green aprons glittered; but the mass of human beings became
+thicker, and closer, and pressed forward. The white head-dresses, the
+white band over the forehead, and the white sleeves, were the
+prevailing colours&mdash;it looked like a long procession in Catholic
+countries. There was again life and motion on the road; the
+over-filled boats again rowed away; one waggon drove off after the
+other; but yet there were people left behind. Married and unmarried
+men stood in groups in the broad street of Lacksand, from the church
+up to the inn. I was staying there, and I must acknowledge that my
+Danish tongue sounded quite foreign to them all. I then tried the
+Swedish, and the girl at the inn assured me that she understood me
+better than she had understood the Frenchman, who the year before had
+spoken French to her.</p>
+
+<p>As I sit in my room, my hostess's grand-daughter, a nice little child,
+comes in, and is pleased to see my parti-coloured carpet-bag, my
+Scotch plaid, and the red leather lining of the portmanteau. I
+directly cut out for her, from a sheet of white paper, a Turkish
+mosque, with minarets and open windows, and away she runs with it&mdash;so
+happy, so happy!</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after, I heard much loud talking in the yard, and I had a
+presentiment that it was concerning what I had cut out; I therefore
+stepped softly out into the balcony, and saw the grandmother standing
+below, and with beaming face, holding my clipped-out paper at arm's
+length. A whole crowd of Dalecarlians, men and women, stood around,
+all in artistic ecstacy over my work; but the little girl&mdash;the sweet
+little child&mdash;screamed, and stretched out her hands after her lawful
+property, which she was not permitted to keep, as it was too fine.</p>
+
+<p>I sneaked in again, yet, of course, highly flattered and cheered; but
+a moment after there was a knocking at my door: it was the
+grandmother, my hostess, who came with a whole plate full of
+spice-nuts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I bake the best in all Dalecarlia,&quot; said she; &quot;but they are of the
+old fashion, from my grandmother's time. You cut out so well, Sir,
+should you not be able to cut me out some new fashions?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I sat the whole of Midsummer night, and clipped fashions for
+spice-nuts. Nutcrackers with knights' boots, windmills which were both
+mill and miller&mdash;but in slippers, and with the door in the
+stomach&mdash;and ballet-dancers that pointed with one leg towards the
+seven stars. Grandmother got them, but she turned the ballet-dancers
+up and down; the legs went too high for her; she thought that they had
+one leg and three arms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They will be new fashions,&quot; said she; &quot;but they are difficult.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="FAITHANDKNOWLEDGE"></a><h2>FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Truth can never be at variance with truth, science can never militate
+against faith: we naturally speak of them both in their purity: they
+respond to and they strengthen man's most glorious thought:
+<i>immortality</i>. And yet you may say, &quot;I was more peaceful, I was safer
+when, as a child, I closed my eyes on my mother's breast and slept
+without thought or care, wrapping myself up simply in faith.&quot; This
+prescience, this compound of understanding in everything, this
+entering of the one link into the other from eternity to eternity,
+tears away from me a support&mdash;my confidence in prayer; that which is,
+as it were, the wings wherewith to fly to my God! If it be loosened,
+then I fall powerless in the dust, without consolation or hope.</p>
+
+<p>I bend my energies, it is true, towards attaining the great and
+glorious light of knowledge, but it appears to me that therein is
+human arrogance: it is, as one should say, &quot;I will be as wise as God.&quot;
+&quot;That you shall be!&quot; said the serpent to our first parents when it
+would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my
+understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer
+teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in
+the whole creation of the world&mdash;in the great and in the small, where
+the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an
+endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and
+sorrow. What can my prayer change, where everything is law, from
+eternity to eternity?</p>
+
+<p>You tremble as you see the Almighty, who reveals Himself in all
+loving-kindness&mdash;that Creator, according to man's expression, whose
+understanding and heart are one&mdash;you tremble when you know that he has
+elected you to immortality.</p>
+
+<p>I know it in the faith, in the holy, eternal words of the Bible.
+Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that
+which breaks it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in
+the name of knowledge&mdash;<i>immortality</i>. Hear it! the beautiful also
+bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and
+knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the
+wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws
+of love, as you believe in the laws of sense.</p>
+
+<p>When the child gathers flowers in the fields and brings us the whole
+handful, where one is erect and the other hangs the head, thrown as it
+were among one another, then it is that we see the beauty in every one
+by itself&mdash;that harmony in colour and in form, which pleases our eye
+so well. We arrange them instinctively, and every single beauty is
+blended together in one entire beauteous group. We do not look at the
+flower, but on the whole bouquet. The beauty of harmony is an instinct
+in us; it lies in our eyes and in our ears, those bridges between our
+soul and the creation around us&mdash;in all our senses there is such a
+divine, such an entire and perfect stream in our whole being, a
+striving after the harmonious, as it shows itself in all created
+things, even in the pulsations of the air, made visible in Chladni's
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>In the Bible we find the expression: &quot;God in spirit and in
+truth,&quot;&mdash;and hence we most significantly find an expression for the
+admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is
+this revelation of God but spirit and truth? And just as our own soul
+shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does
+the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth. There is
+harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large,
+swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in
+the firmamental space&mdash;as far as the eye sees, as far as science
+ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.</p>
+
+<p>But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest
+expression; &quot;created in God's image,&quot; man, who is able to comprehend
+and admit in himself all God's creation, the harmony in the harmony
+then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as
+creatures we have equally &quot;no right to demand;&quot; yet how differently
+God has granted us abilities! some few so immensely great, others so
+mean! At our birth God places us in our homes and positions; and to
+how many of us are allotted the hardest struggles! We are placed
+<i>there</i>, introduced <i>there</i>&mdash;how many may not say justly: &quot;It were
+better for me that I had never been born!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Human life, consequently&mdash;the highest here on the earth&mdash;does not come
+under the laws of harmonious beauty: it is inconceivable, it is an
+injustice, and thus cannot take place.</p>
+
+<p>The defect of harmony in life lies in this:&mdash;that we only see a small
+part thereof, namely, existence here on the earth: there must be a
+life to come&mdash;an immortality.</p>
+
+<p>That, the smallest flower preaches to us, as does all that is created
+in beauty and harmony.</p>
+
+<p>If our existence ceased with death here, then the most perfect work of
+God was not perfect; God was not justice and love, as everything in
+nature and revelation affirms; and if we be referred to the whole of
+mankind, as that wherein harmony will reveal itself, then our whole
+actions and endeavours are but as the labours of the coral-insect:
+mankind becomes but a monument of greatness to the Creator: he would
+then only have raised His <i>glory</i>, not shown His greatest <i>love</i>.
+Loving-kindness is not self-love.</p>
+
+<p>We are immortal! In this rich consciousness we are raised towards God,
+fundamentally sure, that whatever happens to us, is for our good. Our
+earthly eye is only able to reach to a certain boundary in space; our
+soul's eye also has but a limited scope; but beyond <i>that,</i> the same
+laws of loving-kindness must reign, as here. The prescience of eternal
+omniscience cannot alarm us; we human beings can apprehend the notion
+thereof in ourselves. We know perfectly what development must take
+place in the different seasons of the year; the time for flowers and
+for fruits; what kinds will come forth and thrive; the time of
+maturity, when the storms must prevail, and when it is the rainy
+season. Thus must God, in an infinitely greater degree, have the same
+knowledge of the whole created globes of His universe, as of our earth
+and the human race here. He must know when that development, that
+flowering in the human race ordained by Himself, shall come to pass;
+when the powers of intellect, of full development, are to reign; and
+under these characters, come to a maturity of development, men will
+become mighty, driving wheels&mdash;every one be the eternal God's likeness
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p>History shows us these things: joint enters into joint, in the world
+of spirits, as well as in the materially created world; the eye of
+wisdom&mdash;the all-seeing eye&mdash;encompasses the whole! And should we then
+not be able, in our heart's distress, to pray to this Father with
+confidence&mdash;to pray as the Saviour prayed: &quot;If it be possible, let
+this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These last words we do not forget! and our prayer will be granted, if
+it be for our good; or if it be not, then let us, as the child here,
+that in its trouble comes to its earthly Father, and does not get its
+wish fulfilled, but is refreshed by mild words, and the affectionate
+language of reason, so that the eye weeps, which thereby mitigates
+sorrow, and the child's pain is soothed. This, will prayer also grant
+us: the eye will be filled with tears, but the heart will be full of
+consolation! And who has penetrated so deeply into the ways of the
+soul, that he dare deny that prayer is the wings that bear thee to
+that sphere of inspiration whence God will extend to thee the
+olive-branch of help and grace?</p>
+
+<p>By walking with open eyes in the path of knowledge, we see the glory
+of the Annunciation. The wisdom of generations is but a span on the
+high pillar of revelation, above which sits the Almighty; but this
+short span will grow through eternity, in faith and with faith.
+Knowledge is like a chemical test that pronounces the gold pure!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="INTHEFOREST"></a><h2>IN THE FOREST.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind,
+and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn,
+which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for
+the Midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches
+of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on
+long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head
+of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.</p>
+
+<p>The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely
+hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere,
+yet it is most flush in the forest&mdash;it extends for miles around. Our
+road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or
+the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking.
+Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into
+the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the
+air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and
+lime. It is an up and down hill road, always bending, and so, ever
+changing, but yet always forest scenery&mdash;the close, thick forest. We
+pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed
+night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.</p>
+
+<p>We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are
+to be seen: this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted&mdash;not a bird
+flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel
+springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our
+eye searchingly over the wood-grown mountain-side, which slopes so
+far, far forward; but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere
+does that blueish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are
+fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p>The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on
+them, fly off again, and dance, as though it were to qualify
+themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think: &quot;Nothing
+is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing.&quot;
+They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that Time's
+horses always fly onward with us!</p>
+
+<p>How solitary it is here!&mdash;so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely
+alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the
+earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit
+stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold
+themselves&mdash;endless, inexhaustible, as he is&mdash;as the magnet which
+apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby.
+As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended
+solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas
+pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works
+of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel&mdash;for capricious
+fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of
+pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing
+Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the
+open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here
+to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade
+where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this
+stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a
+pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the
+North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?</p>
+
+<p>In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South,
+are <i>sagas</i> of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards
+the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind;
+up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and
+acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we
+see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on
+the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further
+towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the
+carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the
+outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.</p>
+
+<p>The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses
+itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and
+transformed cultivated fields and towns&mdash;nay, whole parishes, into
+barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with
+moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest;
+no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman
+lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss
+of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled
+the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it
+gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the
+time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright
+through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra
+and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came,
+sat there, and sang: &quot;Many, many years shalt thou live!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts!
+Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the
+summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go
+to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song
+springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the
+procession?&mdash;paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high
+with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright
+copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother
+sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which
+completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries
+the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession
+moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
+children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows'
+horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the
+same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her
+tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is
+fuel enough here&mdash;the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and
+rots.</p>
+
+<p>But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest
+desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile&mdash;he comes from the
+thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the
+thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames
+run from tree to tree&mdash;it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame
+leaps to the tops of the trees&mdash;what a crackling and roaring, as if it
+were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall
+down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the
+fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The
+howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm,
+rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine
+the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
+and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the
+broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes
+worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is
+about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past
+them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore
+we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
+peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and
+opened paths.</p>
+
+<p>The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a
+steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a
+distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh
+green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the
+blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at
+work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now
+laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and
+faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is
+delightful in the forest.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="FAHLUN"></a><h2>FAHLUN.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We made our way at length out of the forest, and saw a town before us
+enveloped in thick smoke, having a similar appearance to most of the
+English manufacturing towns, save that the smoke was greenish&mdash;it was
+the town Fahlun.</p>
+
+<p>The road now went downwards between large banks, formed by the dross
+deposited here from the smelting furnaces, and which looks like
+burnt-out hardened lava. No sprout or shrub was to be seen, not a
+blade of grass peeped forth by the way-side, not a bird flew past, but
+a strong sulphurous smell, as from among the craters in Solfatara,
+filled the air. The copper roof of the church shone with corrosive
+green.</p>
+
+<p>Long straight streets now appeared in view. It was as deathly still
+here as if sickness and disease had lain within these dark wooden
+houses, and frightened the inhabitants from coming abroad; yet
+sickness and disease come but to few here, for when the plague raged
+in Sweden, the rich and powerful of the land hastened to Fahlun, whose
+sulphureous air was the most healthy. An ochre-yellow water runs
+through the brook, between the houses; the smoke from the mines and
+smelting furnaces has imparted its tinge to them; it has even
+penetrated into the church, whose slender pillars are dark from the
+fumes of the copper. There chanced to come on a thunder-storm when we
+arrived, but its roaring and the lightning's flashes harmonized well
+with this town, which appears as if it were built on the edge of a
+crater.</p>
+
+<p>We went to see the copper mine which gives the whole district the name
+of &quot;Stora Kopparberget,&quot; (the great copper mountain). According to the
+legend, its riches were discovered by two goats which were
+fighting&mdash;they struck the ground with their horns and some copper ore
+adhered to them.</p>
+
+<p>From the solitary red-ochre street we wandered over the great heaps of
+burnt-out dross and fragments of stone, accumulated to whole ramparts
+and hills. The fire shone from the smelting furnaces with green,
+yellow and red tongues of flame under a blue-green smoke; half-naked,
+black-smeared fellows threw out large glowing masses of fire, so that
+the sparks flew around and about:&mdash;one was reminded of Schiller's
+&quot;Fridolin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thick sulphureous smoke poured forth from the heaps of cleansed
+ore, under which the fire was in full activity, and the wind drove it
+across the road which we must pass. In smoke, and impregnated with
+smoke, stood building after building: three buildings had been
+strangely thrown, as it were, by one another: earth and stone-heaps,
+as if they were unfinished works of defence, extended around.
+Scaffolding, and long wooden bridges, had been erected there; large
+wheels turned round; long and heavy iron chains were in continual
+motion.</p>
+
+<p>We stood before an immense gulf, called &quot;Stora St&ouml;ten,&quot; (the great
+mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there
+is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley:
+the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above,
+like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the
+shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in
+miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch,
+appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark
+holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels
+turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying
+gulf&mdash;from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two
+and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is
+hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up
+merry enough. Habit makes one daring.</p>
+
+<p>They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that
+one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun,
+and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of
+rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook
+again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate
+with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual
+witticism here: &quot;I have never before killed myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which
+looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each
+having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step
+on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one
+gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step one gets
+by degrees to the bottom. They said it was very easy, only one must
+step boldly, so that the foot should not come between and get crushed;
+and then one must remember that there is no railing or balustrade
+here, and directly outside these stairs there is the deep abyss into
+which one may fall headlong. The deepest shaft has a perpendicular
+depth of more than a hundred and ninety fathoms, but for this there is
+no danger, they say, only one must not be dizzy, nor get alarmed. One
+of the workmen, who had come up, descended with a lighted pine-branch
+as a torch: the flame illumined the dark rocky wall, and by degrees
+became only a faint streak of light which soon vanished.</p>
+
+<p>We were told that a few days before, five or six schoolboys had
+unobserved stolen in here, and amused themselves by going from step to
+step on these machine-like rocking stairs, in pitchy darkness, but at
+last they knew not rightly which way to go, up or down, and had then
+begun to shout and scream lustily. They escaped luckily that bout.</p>
+
+<p>By one of the large openings, called &quot;Fat Mads,&quot; there are rich copper
+mines, but which have not yet been worked. A building stands above it:
+it was at the bottom of this that they found, in the year 1719, the
+corpse of a young miner. It appeared as if he had fallen down that
+very day, so unchanged did the body seem&mdash;but no one knew him. An old
+woman then stepped forward and burst into tears: the deceased was her
+bridegroom, who had disappeared forty nine years ago. She stood there
+old and wrinkled; he was young as when they had met for the last time
+nearly half a century before.<a name="FNanchor_T_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_T_20"><sup>[T]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>We went to &quot;The Plant House,&quot; as it is called, where the vitriolated
+liquid is crystallized to sulphate of copper. It grew up long sticks
+placed upright in the boiling water, resembling long pieces of
+grass-green sugar. The steam was pungent, and the air in here
+penetrated our tongues&mdash;it was just as if one had a corroded spoon in
+one's mouth. It was really a luxury to come out again, even into the
+rarefied copper smoke, under the open sky.</p>
+
+<p>Steaming, burnt-out, and herbless as the district is on this side of
+the town, it is just as refreshing, green, and fertile on the opposite
+side of Fahlun. Tall leafy trees grow close to the farthest houses.
+One is directly in the fresh pine and birch forests, thence to the
+lake and to the distant blueish mountain sides near Z&auml;ther.</p>
+
+<p>The people here can tell you and show you memorials of Engelbrekt and
+his Dalecarlians' deeds, and of Gustavus Vasa's adventurous
+
+wanderings. But we will remain here in this smoke-enveloped town, with
+the silent street's dark houses. It was almost midnight when we went
+out and came to the market-place. There was a wedding in one of the
+houses, and a great crowd of persons stood outside, the women nearest
+the house, the men a little further back. According to an old Swedish
+custom, they called for the bride and bridegroom to come forward, and
+they did so&mdash;they durst not do otherwise. Peasant girls, with candles
+in their hands, stood on each side; it was a perfect tableau: the
+bride with downcast eyes, the bridegroom smiling, and the young
+bridesmaids each with a laughing face. And the people shouted: &quot;Now
+turn yourselves a little! now the back! now the face! the bridegroom
+quite round, the bride a little nearer!&quot; And the bridal pair turned
+and turned&mdash;nor was criticism wanting. In this instance, however, it
+was to their praise and honour, but that is not always the case. It
+may be a painful and terrible hour for a newly-wedded pair: if they do
+not please the public, or if they have something to say against the
+match, or the persons themselves, they are then soon made to know what
+is thought of them. There is perhaps also heard some rude jest or
+another, accompanied by the laughter of the crowd. We were told, that
+even in Stockholm the same custom was observed among the lower classes
+until a few years ago, so that a bridal pair, who, in order to avoid
+this exposure, wanted to drive off, were stopped by the crowd, the
+carriage-door was opened on each side, and the whole public marched
+through the carriage. They would see the bride and bridegroom&mdash;that
+was their right.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in Fahlun, the exhibition was friendly; the bridal pair smiled,
+the bridesmaids also, and the assembled crowd laughed and shouted,
+hurra! In the rest of the market-place and the streets around, there
+was dead silence and solitude.</p>
+
+<p>The roseate hue of eve still shone: it passed, changed into that of
+morn&mdash;it was the Midsummer time.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="WHATTHESTRAWSSAID"></a><h2>WHAT THE STRAWS SAID.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On the lake there glided a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish
+and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch,
+sat four young girls&mdash;so pretty&mdash;so sylph-like! and they each plucked
+up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two
+together, at the top and the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall now see if they will come together in a square,&quot; said the
+girls: &quot;if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled,&quot;
+and they bound them, and they thought.</p>
+
+<p>No one got to know the secret thought, the heart's silent wish of the
+others. But yet a little bird sings about it.</p>
+
+<p>The thoughts of one flew over sea and land, over the high mountains,
+where the mule finds its way in the mists, down to Mignon's beautiful
+land, where the old gods live in marble and painting. &quot;Thither,
+thither! shall I ever get there?&quot; That was the wish, that was the
+thought, and she opened her hand, looked at the bound straws, and they
+appeared only two and two bound together.</p>
+
+<p>And where were the second one's thoughts? also in foreign lands, in
+the gunpowder's smoke, amongst the glitter of arms and cannons, with
+him, the friend of her childhood, fighting for imperial power, against
+the Hungarian people. Will he return joyful and unharmed&mdash;return to
+Sweden's peaceful, well-constituted, happy land? The straws showed no
+square: a tear dwelt in the girl's eye.</p>
+
+<p>The third smiled: there was a sort of mischief in the smile. Will our
+aged bachelor and that old maiden-lady yonder, who now wander along so
+young, smile so young, and speak so youthfully to each other, not be a
+married couple before the cuckoo sings again next year? See&mdash;that is
+what I should like to know! and the smile played around the thinker's
+mouth, but she did not speak her thoughts. The straws were
+separated&mdash;consequently the bachelor and the old maid also. &quot;It may,
+however, happen nevertheless,&quot; she certainly thought: it was apparent
+in the smile; it was obvious in the manner in which she threw the
+straws away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is nothing I would know&mdash;nothing that I am curious to know!&quot;
+said the fourth; but yet she bound the straws together; for within her
+also there was a wish alive; but no bird has sung about it; no one
+guesses it.</p>
+
+<p>Rock thyself securely in the heart's lotus flower, thou shining
+humming-bird, thy' name shall not be pronounced: and besides the
+straws said as before&mdash;&quot;without hope!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now you! now you!&quot; cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the
+neighbouring land, from the green isle, that Gylfe ploughed from
+Sweden. &quot;What dear thing do you wish shall happen, or not
+happen!&mdash;tell us the wish!&quot;&mdash;&quot;If the oracle speaks well for me,&quot; said
+he, &quot;then I will tell you the silent wish and prayer, with which I
+bind these knots on the grass straw; but if I have no better success
+than you have had, I will then be silent!&quot; and he bound straw to
+straw, and as he bound, he repeated: &quot;it signifies nothing!&quot; He now
+opened his hand, his eyes shone brighter, his heart beat faster. The
+straws formed a square! &quot;It will happen, it will happen!&quot; cried the
+young girls. &quot;What did you wish for?&quot; &quot;That Denmark may soon gain an
+honourable peace!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It will happen! it will happen!&quot; said the young girls; &quot;and when it
+happens, we will remember that the straws have told it before-hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will keep these four straws, bound in a prophetic wreath for
+victory and peace!&quot; said the stranger; &quot;and if the oracle speaks
+truth, then I will draw the whole picture for you, as we sit here
+under the hanging birch by the lake, and look on Z&auml;ther's blue
+mountains, each of us binding straw to straw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A red mark was made in the almanack; it was the 6th of July, 1849. The
+same day a red page was written in Denmark's history. The Danish
+soldier made a red, victorious mark with his blood, at the battle of
+Fredericia.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEPOETSSYMBOL"></a><h2>THE POET'S SYMBOL.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>If a man would seek for the symbol of the poet, he need not look
+farther than &quot;The Arabian Nights' Tales.&quot; Scherezade who interprets
+the stories for the Sultan&mdash;Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is
+the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will
+decapitate Scherezade.</p>
+
+<p>Powerful Sultan! Poor Scherezade!</p>
+
+<p>The Sultan-public sits in more than a thousand and one forms, and
+listens. Let us regard a few of these forms.</p>
+
+<p>There sits a sallow, peevish, scholar; the tree of his life bears
+leaves impressed with long and learned words: diligence and
+perseverance crawl like snails on the hog's leather bark: the moths
+have got into the inside&mdash;and that is bad, very bad! Pardon the rich
+fulness of the song, the inconsiderate enthusiasm, the fresh young,
+intellect. Do not behead Scherezade! But he beheads her out of hand,
+<i>sans</i> remorse.</p>
+
+<p>There sits a dress-maker, a sempstress who has had some experience of
+the world. She comes from strange families, from a solitary chamber
+where she sat and gained a knowledge of mankind&mdash;she knows and loves
+the romantic. Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for
+you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so
+much of life's prose, gasp after romance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Behead her!&quot; says the dress-maker.</p>
+
+<p>There sits a figure in a dressing gown&mdash;this oriental dress of the
+North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer's son,
+&amp;c., &amp;c., &amp;c. It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from
+that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he
+belongs: his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the
+dress-maker's: he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all
+down the vertebrae, through the very spine: he must be crammed with
+mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.</p>
+
+<p>Scherezade is beheaded!</p>
+
+<p>Wise, enlightened Sultan! Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou
+bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as
+Atlas sustained the world. Do not cast an evil eye upon poor
+Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and
+art a child again,&mdash;do not behead Scherezade!</p>
+
+<p>Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the
+badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely
+master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French,
+that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one
+strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the
+brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet,
+absolving <i>charmant</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Mighty annihilator and elevator!&mdash;the newspapers' Zeus&mdash;thou weekly,
+monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger!
+Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou
+art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a <i>suite</i> of
+thine own clique. Do not behead her!</p>
+
+<p>We will see one figure more&mdash;the most dangerous of them all; he with
+the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river's swell&mdash;the
+blind enthusiast. The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is
+for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis
+becomes her scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>This is the poet's symbol&mdash;paint it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But why none of the worthier figures&mdash;the candid, the honest, and the
+beautiful? They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye.
+Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the
+stars, and sings of the harmony there above, and here beneath, in
+man's heart.</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> will not clearly show the symbol:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sword of death hangs over her head whilst she relates&mdash;and the
+Sultan-figure bids us expect that it will fall. Scherezade is the
+victor: the poet is, like her, also a victor. He is rich,
+victorious&mdash;even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours.
+There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after
+bubble sparkles on the magic stream. The heavens shine with shooting
+stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away.
+The world does not know it, for it is the poet's own creation, richer
+than the king's costly illuminations. He is happy, as Scherezade is;
+he is victorious, he is mighty. <i>Imagination</i> adorns his walls with
+tapestry, such as no land's ruler owns; <i>feeling</i> makes the beauteous
+chords sound to him from the human breast; <i>understanding</i> raises him,
+through the magnificence of creation, up to God, without his
+forgetting that he stands fast on the firm earth. He is mighty, he is
+happy, as few are. We will not place him in the stocks of
+misconstruction, for pity and lamentation; we merely paint his symbol,
+dip into the colours on the world's least attractive side, and obtain
+it most comprehensibly from</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>See&mdash;that is it! Do not behead Scherezade!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEDALELV"></a><h2>THE DAL-ELV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Before Homer sang there were heroes; but they are not known; no poet
+celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature, they
+must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought
+before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for
+what they are, and then they may be said first to exist. The elvs of
+the north have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in
+unknown beauty. The world's great highroad does take this direction;
+no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of
+the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable.
+Schubert is as yet the only stranger who has written about the wild
+magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its
+greatness.</p>
+
+<p>Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless
+windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes
+extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending
+trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and
+sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.</p>
+
+<p>Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between
+Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become
+confluent and have one bed above B&aring;lstad. They have taken up rivers
+and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial
+riches to be found; the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand,
+smilingly pastoral&mdash;idyllic: one is drawn onward up to the very source
+of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut: one feels a desire
+to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.</p>
+
+<p>The first mighty fall, Njupeskoers cataract, is seen by the Norwegian
+frontier in Sernasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from
+the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.</p>
+
+<p>We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within
+itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters
+over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic
+porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.</p>
+
+<p>We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees
+the water-sprite swim, like the sea-horse with a mane of green
+sea-weed, and where the a&euml;rial images present visions of witchcraft in
+the warm summer days.</p>
+
+<p>We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake, under the weeping willows of
+the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along
+slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over
+the rapid current under B&aring;lstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv
+widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as
+large and extended as if it were in North America.</p>
+
+<p>We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay
+declivities: the yellow water falls like fluid amber in picturesque
+cataracts before the copper-works, where rainbow-coloured tongues of
+fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blows on the copper
+plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall.</p>
+
+<p>And now, as a concluding passage of splendour in the life of the
+Dal-elvs, before they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic, is
+the view of Elvkarleby Fall. Schubert compares it with the fall of
+Schafhausen; but we must remember, that the Rhine there has not such a
+mass of water as that which rushes down Elvkarleby.</p>
+
+<p>Two and a half Swedish miles from Gefle, where the high road to Upsala
+goes over the Dal-elv, we see from the walled bridge, which we pass
+over, the whole of that immense fall. Close up to the bridge, there is
+a house where the bridge toll is paid. There the stranger can pass the
+night, and from his little window look over the falling waters, see
+them in the clear moonlight, when darkness has laid itself to rest
+within the thicket of oaks and firs, and all the effect of light is in
+those foaming, flowing waters, and see them when the morning sun
+stretches his rainbow in the trembling spray, like an airy bridge of
+colours, from the shore to the wood-grown rock in the centre of the
+cataract.</p>
+
+<p>We came hither from Gefle, and saw at a great distance on the way, the
+blue clouds from the broken, rising spray, ascend above the dark-green
+tops of the trees. The carriage stopped near the bridge; we stepped
+out, and close before us fell the whole redundant elv.</p>
+
+<p>The painter cannot give us the true, living image of a waterfall on
+canvas&mdash;the movement is wanting; how can one describe it in words,
+delineate this majestic grandeur, brilliancy of colour, and arrowy
+flight? One cannot do it; one may however attempt it; get together, by
+little and little, with words, an outline of that mirrored image which
+our eye gave us, and which even the strongest remembrance can only
+retain&mdash;if not vaguely, dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>The Dal-elv divides itself into three branches above the fall: the two
+enclose a wood-grown rocky island, and rush down round its smooth-worn
+stony wall. The one to the right of these two falls is the finer; the
+third branch makes a circuit, and comes again to the main stream,
+close outside the united fall; here it dashes out as if to meet or
+stop the others, and is now hurried along in boiling eddies with the
+arrowy stream, which rushes on foaming against the walled pillars that
+bear the bridge, as if it would tear them away along with it.</p>
+
+<p>The landscape to the left was enlivened by a herd of goats, that were
+browsing amongst the hazel bushes. They ventured quite out to the very
+edge of the declivity, as they were bred here and accustomed to the
+hollow, thundering rumble of the water. To the right, a flock of
+screaming birds flew over the magnificent oaks. Cars, each with one
+horse, and with the driver standing upright in it, the reins in his
+hand, came on the broad forest road from Oens Br&uuml;ck.</p>
+
+<p>Thither we will go in order to take leave of the Dal-elv at one of the
+most delightful of places, which vividly removes the stranger, as it
+were, into a far more southern land, into a far richer nature, than he
+supposed was to be found here. The road is so pretty&mdash;the oak grows
+here so strong and vigorously with mighty crowns of rich foliage.</p>
+
+<p>Oens Br&uuml;ck lies in a delightfully pastoral situation. We came thither;
+here was life and bustle indeed! The mill-wheels went round; large
+beams were sawn through; the iron forged on the anvil, and all by
+water-power. The houses of the workmen form a whole town: it is a long
+street with red-painted wooden houses, under picturesque oaks, and
+birch trees. The greensward was as soft as velvet to look at, and up
+at the manor-house, which rises in front of the garden like a little
+palace, there was, in the rooms and saloon, everything that the
+English call comfort.</p>
+
+<p>We did not find the host at home; but hospitality is always the
+house-fairy here. We had everything good and homely. Fish and wild
+fowl were placed before us, steaming and fragrant, and almost as
+quickly as in beautiful enchanted palaces. The garden itself was a
+piece of enchantment. Here stood three transplanted beech-trees, and
+they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the
+wild chesnut-trees of the avenue in a singular manner: they looked as
+if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden-yellow oranges
+hung in the conservatory; the splendid southern exotics had to-day got
+the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh,
+warm, sunny air of the northern summer.</p>
+
+<p>That branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with
+small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in
+Scandinavian splendour. There are small islands with green, silent
+groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brackens,
+variegated bell-flowers, and cowslips&mdash;no Turkey carpet has fresher
+colours. The stream between these islands and holms is sometimes
+rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with
+silky-green rushes, water-lilies, and brown-feathered reeds; sometimes
+it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a
+large, still mill-dam.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a landscape in Midsummer for the games of the river-sprites,
+and the dancers of the elves and fairies! Here, in the lustre of the
+full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprite seize the
+golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one
+single night like this.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of Oens Br&uuml;ck is the main stream&mdash;the full Dal-elv.
+Do you hear the monotonous rumble? it is not from Elvkarleby Fall that
+it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa-Foss, in which lies
+Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.</p>
+
+<p>Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the
+red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the
+Dal-elv.</p>
+
+<p>Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills
+yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into
+the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic&mdash;thy
+eternity.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="DANEMORA"></a><h2>DANEMORA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Reader, do you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize
+you, this mighty &quot;Loreley&quot; of the heights, this evil-genius from the
+land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into
+the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep
+declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must
+creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She
+sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his
+swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the
+nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and
+it sways under him&mdash;the walls vanish from him.</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the
+air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.</p>
+
+<p>We met with her at Danemora's immense gulf, whither we came on broad,
+smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest. She sat on the
+extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun
+with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large
+beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.</p>
+
+<p>The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun,
+into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the
+chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering
+through the air. But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones
+and marrow; through all the nerves. Her icy breath blew in his neck,
+and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder. It
+seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and
+higher: the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall&mdash;a
+fall in sleep, that shock in the blood. Did it go quicker downwards,
+or was it going up again? He could not distinguish by the sensation.</p>
+
+<p>The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow&mdash;the dirty trodden,
+eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth
+from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark,
+yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The
+stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above
+him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers
+sounded; the watery damps dripped down&mdash;and he again entered the tun,
+which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness
+breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye
+measured the giddy depth through the tun: &quot;It is appalling,&quot; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Appalling!&quot; echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at
+Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the
+same street as the Sealander&mdash;if the Sound be called a street
+(strait). &quot;But, however, one can say one has been down there,&quot; said
+he, and he pointed to the gulf; &quot;right down, and up again; but it is
+no pleasure at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why descend at all?&quot; said I. &quot;Why will men do these things?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One must, you know, when one comes here,&quot; said he. &quot;The plague of
+travelling is, that one must see everything: one would not have it
+supposed otherwise. It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again,
+not to have seen everything, that others ask him about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you have no desire, then let it alone. See what pleases you on
+your travels. Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become
+quite giddy: you will then have formed some conception of the passage
+downward. I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you.&quot;
+And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, so it is: I apprehend it all,&quot; said he: &quot;I am clearly sensible
+of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun's warmth never
+thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the
+workmen, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; one should be able to tell all about it,&quot; said he. &quot;That <i>you</i>
+can, for you have seen it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No more than you,&quot; said I. &quot;I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the
+snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was
+time I should get into the tun&mdash;no, thank you. Giddiness tickled me
+with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt
+the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as
+well as any one: the descent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz,
+under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein,
+through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered
+about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the
+deep passages? Gloom&mdash;darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense
+of oppression&mdash;a longing for air and light, which is by far the best;
+and that we have now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!&quot; said the man; and he
+drew forth his &quot;Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden,&quot; from which he
+read: &quot;Danemora's iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in
+Sweden; the best in Europe. They have seventy-nine openings, of which
+seventeen only are being worked. The machine mine is ninety-three
+fathoms deep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Just then the bells sounded from below: it was the signal that the
+time of labour for that day was ended. The hue of eve still shone on
+the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf,
+it was a perfect twilight. Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the
+workmen swarmed forth. They looked like flies, quite small in the
+space below: they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the
+steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places: they climbed
+higher and higher&mdash;upwards, upwards&mdash;and at every step they became
+larger. The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three
+or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the
+tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against
+the side of the rock, so that they swung from it: and it became darker
+and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is appalling!&quot; said the man from Scania. &quot;One ought, however, to
+have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one <i>had</i> been.
+You, however, have certainly been down there,&quot; said he again to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Believe what you will,&quot; I replied; and I say the same to the reader.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THESWINE"></a><h2>THE SWINE.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and
+since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the
+grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if
+we think of the &quot;prodigal son,&quot; we are at once in the midst of the
+sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in
+Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had
+his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like in
+the world. It was an old state-carriage, the seats were taken out of
+it, the wheels taken off, and thus it stood, without further ceremony,
+on its own bottom, and four swine were shut in there. If these were
+the first that had been in it one could not determine; but that it was
+once a state-carriage everything about it bore witness, even to the
+strip of morocco that hung from the roof inside, all bore witness of
+better days. It is true, every word of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Uff,&quot; said the occupiers within, and the carriage creaked and
+complained&mdash;it was a sorrowful end it had come to.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The beautiful is past!&quot; so it sighed; so it said, or it might have
+said so.</p>
+
+<p>We returned here in the autumn. The carriage, or rather the body of
+the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they
+were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind
+tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor
+quiet: the birds of passage were gone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The beautiful is past!&quot; said the carriage, and the same sigh passed
+through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: &quot;The
+beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm
+sunshine, and the song of birds&mdash;past! past!&quot; So it said, and so it
+creaked in the trunks of the tall trees, and there was heard a sigh,
+so inwardly deep, a sigh direct from the heart of the wild rose-bush,
+and he who sat there was the rose-king. Do you know him! he is of a
+pure breed, the finest red-green breed: he is easily known. Go to the
+wild rose hedges, and in autumn, when all the flowers are gone, and
+the red hips alone remain, one often sees amongst these a large
+red-green moss-flower: that is the rose-king. A little green leaf
+grows out of his head&mdash;that is his feather: he is the only male person
+of his kind on the rose-bush, and he it was who sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Past! past! the beautiful is past! The roses are gone; the leaves of
+the trees fall off!&mdash;it is wet here, and it is cold and raw!&mdash;The
+birds that sang here are now silent; the swine live on acorns; the
+swine are lords in the forest!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They were cold nights, they were gloomy days; but the raven sat on the
+bough and croaked nevertheless: &quot;brah, brah!&quot; The raven and the crow
+sat on the topmost bough: they have a large family, and they all said:
+&quot;brah, brah! caw, caw!&quot; and the majority is always right.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great miry pool under the tall trees in the hollow, and
+here lay the whole herd of swine, great and small&mdash;they found the
+place so excellent. &quot;Oui! oui!&quot; said they, for they knew no more
+French, but that, however, was something. They were so wise, and so
+fat, and altogether lords in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>The old ones lay still, for they thought; the young ones, on the
+contrary, were so brisk&mdash;busy, but apparently uneasy. One little pig
+had a curly tail&mdash;that curl was the mother's delight. She thought that
+they all looked at the curl, and thought only of the curl; but that
+they did not. They thought of themselves, and of what was useful, and
+of what the forest was for. They had always heard that the acorns they
+ate grew on the roots of the trees, and therefore they had always
+rooted there; but now there came a little one&mdash;for it is always the
+young ones that come with news&mdash;and he asserted that the acorns fell
+down from the branches: he himself had felt one fall right on his
+head, and that had given him the idea, so he had made observations,
+and now he was quite sure of what he asserted. The old ones laid their
+heads together. &quot;Uff,&quot; said the swine, &quot;uff! the finery is past! the
+twittering of the birds is past! we will have fruit! whatever can be
+eaten is good, and we eat everything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oui! oui!&quot; said they altogether.</p>
+
+<p>But the mother sow looked at her little pig with the curly tail.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One must not, however, forget the beautiful!&quot; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Caw! caw!&quot; screamed the crow, and flew down, in order to be appointed
+nightingale: one there should be&mdash;and so the crow was directly
+appointed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Past! past!&quot; sighed the Rose King, &quot;all the beautiful is past!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was wet; it was gloomy; there was cold and wind, and the rain
+pelted down over the fields, and through the forest, like long water
+jets. Where are the birds that sang? where are the flowers in the
+meadows, and the sweet berries in the wood?&mdash;past! past!</p>
+
+<p>A light shone from the forester's house: it twinkled like a star, and
+shed its long rays out between the trees. A song was heard from
+within; pretty children played around their old grandfather, who sat
+with the Bible on his lap and read about God, and eternal life, and
+spoke of the spring that would come again: he spoke of the forest that
+would renew its green leaves, of the roses that would flower, of the
+nightingales that would sing, and of the beautiful that would again be
+paramount.</p>
+
+<p>But the Rose King did not hear it; he sat in the raw, cold weather,
+and sighed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Past! past!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the swine were lords in the forest, and the mother sow looked at
+her little pig, and his curly tail.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There will always be some, who have a sense for the beautiful!&quot; said
+the mother sow.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="POETRYSCALIFORNIA"></a><h2>POETRY'S CALIFORNIA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Nature's treasures are most often unveiled to us by accident. A dog's
+nose was dyed by the bruised purple fish, and the genuine purple dye
+was discovered; a pair of wild buffalos were fighting on America's
+auriferous soil, and their horns tore up the green sward that covered
+the rich gold vein.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In former days,&quot; as it is said by most, &quot;everything came
+spontaneously. Our age has not such revelations; now one must slave
+and drudge if one would get anything; one must dig down into the deep
+shafts after the metals, which decrease more and more;&mdash;when the earth
+suddenly stretches forth her golden finger from California's
+peninsula, and we there see Monte Christo's foolishly invented riches
+realized; we see Aladdin's cave with its inestimable treasures. The
+world's treasury is so endlessly rich that we have, to speak plain and
+straightforward, scraped a little off the up-heaped measure; but the
+bushel is still full, the whole of the real measure is now refilled.
+In science also, such a world lies open for the discoveries of the
+human mind!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But in poetry, the greatest and most glorious is already found, and
+gained!&quot; says the poet. &quot;Happy he who was born in former times; there
+was then many a land still undiscovered, on which poetry's rich gold
+lay like the ore that shines forth from the earth's surface.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Do not speak so! happy poet thou, who art born in our time! thou dost
+inherit all the glorious treasures which thy predecessors gave to the
+world; thou dost learn from them, that truth only is eternal,&mdash;the
+true in nature and mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Our time is the time of discoveries&mdash;poetry also has its new
+California.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where does it exist?&quot; you ask.</p>
+
+<p>The coast is so near, that you do not think that <i>there</i> is the new
+world. Like a bold Leander, swim with me across the stream: the black
+words on the white paper will waft you&mdash;every period is a heave of the
+waves.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was in the library's saloon. Book-shelves with many books, old and
+new, were ranged around for every one; manuscripts lay there in heaps;
+there were also maps and globes. There sat industrious men at little
+tables, and wrote out and wrote in, and that was no easy work. But
+suddenly, a great transformation took place; the shelves became
+terraces for the noblest trees, with flowers and fruit; heavy clusters
+of grapes hung amongst leafy vines, and there was life and movement
+all around.</p>
+
+<p>The old folios and dusty manuscripts rose into flower-covered tumuli,
+and there sprang forth knights in mail, and kings with golden crowns
+on, and there was the clang of harp and shield; history acquired the
+life and fullness of poetry&mdash;for a poet had entered there. He saw the
+living visions; breathed the flowers' fragrance; crushed the grapes,
+and drank the sacred juice. But he himself knew not yet that he was a
+poet&mdash;the bearer of-light for times and generations yet to come.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the fresh, fragrant forest, in the last hour of
+leave-taking. Love's kiss, as the farewell, was the initiatory baptism
+for the future poetic life; and the fresh fragrance of the forest
+became sweeter, the chirping of the birds more melodious: there came
+sunlight and cooling breezes. Nature becomes doubly delightful where a
+poet walks.</p>
+
+<p>And as there were two roads before Hercules, so there were before him
+two roads, shown by two figures, in order to serve him; the one an old
+crone, the other a youth, beautiful as the angel that led the young
+Tobias.</p>
+
+<p>The old crone had on a mantle, on which were wrought flowers, animals,
+and human beings, entwined in an arabesque manner. She had large
+spectacles on, and beside her lantern she held a bag filled with old
+gilt cards&mdash;apparatus for witchcraft, and all the amulets of
+superstition: leaning on her crutch, wrinkled and shivering, she was,
+however, soaring, like the mist over the meadow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come with me, and you shall see the world, so that a poet can have
+benefit from it,&quot; said she. &quot;I will light my lantern; it is better
+than that which Diogenes bore; I shall lighten your path.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the light shone; the old crone lifted her head, and stood there
+strong and tall, a powerful female figure. She was Superstition.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am the strongest in the region of romance,&quot; said she,&mdash;and she
+herself believed it.</p>
+
+<p>And the lantern's light gave the lustre of the full moon over the
+whole earth; yes, the earth itself became transparent, as the still
+waters of the deep sea, or the glass mountains, in the fairy tale.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My kingdom is thine! sing what thou see'st; sing as if no bard before
+thee had sung thereof.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And it was as if the scene continually changed. Splendid Gothic
+churches, with painted images in the panes, glided past, and the
+midnight-bell struck, and the dead arose from the graves. There, under
+the bending elder tree, sat the mother, and swathed her newly-born
+child; old, sunken knights' castles rose again from the marshy ground;
+the drawbridge fell, and they saw into the empty halls, adorned with
+images, where, under the gloomy stairs of the gallery, the
+death-proclaiming white woman came with a rattling bunch of keys. The
+basilisk brooded in the deep cellar; the monster bred from a cock's
+egg, invulnerable by every weapon, but not from the sight of its own
+horrible form: at the sight of its own image, it bursts like the steel
+that one breaks with the blow of a stout staff. And to everything that
+appeared, from the golden chalice of the altar-table, once the
+drinking-cup of evil spirits, to the nodding head on the gallows-hill,
+the old crone hummed her songs; and the crickets chirped, and the
+raven croaked from the opposite neighbour's house, and the
+winding-sheet rolled from the candle. Through the whole spectral world
+sounded, &quot;death! death!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go with me to life and truth,&quot; cried the second form, the youth who
+was beautiful as a cherub. A flame shone from his brow&mdash;a cherub's
+sword glittered in his hand. &quot;I am <i>Knowledge</i>,&quot; said he: &quot;my world is
+greater&mdash;its aim is truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And there was a brightness all around; the spectral images paled; it
+did not extend over the world they had seen. Superstition's lantern
+had only exhibited <i>magic-lantern</i> images on the old ruined wall, and
+the wind had driven wet misty vapours past in figures.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will give thee a rich recompense. Truth in the created&mdash;truth in
+God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And through the stagnant lake, where before the misty spectral figures
+rose, whilst the bells sounded from the sunken castle, the light fell
+down on a swaying vegetable world. One drop of the marsh water, raised
+against the rays of light, became a living world, with creatures in
+strange forms, fighting and revelling&mdash;a world in a drop of water. And
+the sharp sword of Knowledge cleft the deep vault, and shone therein,
+where the basilisk killed, and the animal's body was dissolved in a
+death-bringing vapour: its claw extended from the fermenting
+wine-cask; its eyes were air, that burnt when the fresh wind touched
+it.</p>
+
+<p>And there resided a powerful force in the sword; <i>so</i> powerful, that
+the grain of gold was beaten to a flat surface, thin as the covering
+of mist that we breathe on the glass-pane; and it shone at the sword's
+point, so that the thin threads of the cobweb seemed to swell to
+cables, for one saw the strong twistings of numberless small threads.
+And the voice of Knowledge seemed over the whole world, so that the
+age of miracles appeared to have returned. Thin iron ties were laid
+over the earth, and along these the heavily-laden waggons flew on the
+wings of steam, with the swallow's flight; mountains were compelled to
+open themselves to the inquiring spirit of the age; the plains were
+obliged to raise themselves; and then thought was borne in words,
+through metal wires, with the lightning's speed, to distant towns.
+&quot;Life! life!&quot; it sounded through the whole of nature. &quot;It is our time!
+Poet, thou dost possess it! Sing of it in spirit and in truth!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the genius of Knowledge raised the shining sword; he raised it far
+out into space, and then&mdash;what a sight! It was as when the sunbeams
+shine through a crevice in the wall in a dark space, and appear to us
+a revolving column of myriads of grains of dust; but every grain of
+dust here was a world! The sight he saw was our starry firmament!</p>
+
+<p>Thy earth is a grain of dust here, but a speck whose wonders astonish
+thee; only a grain of dust, and yet a star under stars. That long
+column of worlds thou callest thy starry firmament, revolves like the
+myriads of grains of dust, visibly hovering in the sunbeam's revolving
+column, from the crevice in the wall into that dark space. But still
+more distant stands the milky way's whitish mist, a new starry heaven,
+each column but a radius in the wheel! But how great is this itself!
+how many radii thus go out from the central point&mdash;God!</p>
+
+<p>So far does thine eye reach, so clear is thine age's horizon! Son of
+time, choose, who shall be thy companion? Here is thy new career! with
+the greatest of thy time, fly thou before thy time's generation! Like
+twinkling Lucifer, shine thou in time's roseate morn.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Yes, in knowledge lies Poetry's California! Every one who only looks
+backward, and not clearly forward, will, however high and honourably
+he stands, say, that if such riches lie in knowledge, they would long
+since have been made available by great and immortal bards, who had a
+clear and sagacious eye for the discovery of truth. But let us
+remember that when Thespis spoke from his car, the world had also wise
+men. Homer had sung his immortal songs, and yet a new form of genius
+appeared, to which a Sophocles and Aristophanes gave birth; the Sagas
+and mythology of the North were as an unknown treasure to the stage,
+until Oehlenschl&auml;ger showed what mighty forms from thence might be
+made to glide past us.</p>
+
+<p>It is not our intention that the poet shall versify scientific
+discoveries. The didactic poem is and will be, in its best form,
+always but a piece of mechanism, or wooden figure, which has not the
+true life. The sunlight of science must penetrate the poet; he must
+perceive truth and harmony in the minute and in the immensely great
+with a clear eye: it must purify and enrich the understanding and
+imagination, and show him new forms which will supply to him more
+animated words. Even single discoveries will furnish a new flight.
+What fairy tales cannot the world unfold under the microscope, if we
+transfer our human world thereto? Electro-magnetism can present or
+suggest new plots in new comedies and romances; and how many humorous
+compositions will not spring forth, as we from our grain of dust, our
+little earth, with its little haughty beings look out into that
+endless world's universe, from milky way to milky way? An instance of
+what we here mean is discoverable in that old noble lady's words: &quot;If
+every star be a globe like our earth, and have its kingdoms and
+courts&mdash;what an endless number of courts&mdash;the contemplation is enough
+to make mankind giddy!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We will not say, like that French authoress: &quot;Now, then, let me die:
+the world has no more discoveries to make!&quot; O, there is so endlessly
+much in the sea, in the air, and on the earth&mdash;wonders, which science
+will bring forth!&mdash;wonders, greater than the poet's philosophy can
+create! A bard will come, who, with a child's mind, like a new
+Aladdin, will enter into the cavern of science,&mdash;with a child's mind,
+we say, or else the puissant spirits of natural strength would seize
+him, and make him their servant; whilst he, with the lamp of poetry,
+which is, and always will be, the human heart, stands as a ruler, and
+brings forth wonderful fruits from the gloomy passages, and has
+strength to build poetry's new palace, created in one night by
+attendant spirits.</p>
+
+<p>In the world itself events repeat themselves; the human character was
+and will be the same during long ages and all ages; and as they were
+in the old writings, they must be in the new. But science always
+unfolds something new; light and truth are everything that is
+created&mdash;beam out from hence with eternally divine clearness. Mighty
+image of God, do thou illumine and enlighten mankind; and when its
+intellectual eye is accustomed to the lustre, the new Aladdin will
+come, and thou, man, shalt with him, who concisely dear, and richly
+sings the beauty of truth, wander through Poetry's California.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h5>THE END.</h5>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1">[A]</a><div class="note"><p> A chip of wood in the form of a halberd, circulated for the
+purpose of convening the inhabitants of a district in Sweden and
+Norway.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2">[B]</a><div class="note"><p> The black mould over the beautiful Agda's arm.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3">[C]</a><div class="note"><p> Christ grant that such an angel were to come, and take both me and
+thee!</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4">[D]</a><div class="note"><p> One who has passed his examination at a polytechnic school.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5">[E]</a><div class="note"><p> Giantess.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6">[F]</a><div class="note"><p> The battle of Braavalla.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7">[G]</a><div class="note"><p> &quot;To cast runes&quot; was, in the olden time, to exercise witchcraft.
+When the apple, with ciphers cut in it, rolled into the maiden's lap,
+her heart and mind were infatuated.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8">[H]</a><div class="note"><p> Afterwards called Saint Oluf.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9">[I]</a><div class="note"><p> Stock, signifies bulks, or beams; holms, <i>i.e.</i> islets, or river
+islands; hence Stockholm.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10">[J]</a><div class="note"><p> The architect Tessin.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11">[K]</a><div class="note"><p> The water-sprite.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12">[L]</a><div class="note"><p> &quot;The Lion in the desert;&quot; <i>i.e.</i> Napoleon.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13">[M]</a><div class="note"><p> The landlady of an alehouse.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14">[N]</a><div class="note"><p> How the eyes wept by the cypresses that were strewn around.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15">[O]</a><div class="note"><p> Lord, my God, how Thy moon shines! See what lustre over land and
+city! High up in the palace every pane glistens as if it were a gem.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_P_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_P_16">[P]</a><div class="note"><p> Gluntarra duets, by Gunnar Wennerberg.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_Q_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Q_17">[Q]</a><div class="note"><p> A Gothic translation of the Four Evangelists, and ascribed to the
+Moesogothic Archbishop Ulphilas.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_R_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_R_18">[R]</a><div class="note"><p> Swedish, <i>sup</i>. Danish, <i>snaps</i>. German, <i>schnaps</i>. English,
+<i>drams</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_S_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_S_19">[S]</a><div class="note"><p> &quot;How sweet to live&mdash;how beautiful to die!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_T_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_T_20">[T]</a><div class="note"><p> In another mine they found, in the year 1635, a corpse perfectly
+fresh, and almost with the appearance of one asleep; but his clothes,
+and the ancient copper coins found on him, bore witness that it was
+two hundred years since he had perished there.</p></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12313 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12313 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12313)
diff --git a/old/12313-8.txt b/old/12313-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of Sweden, by Hans Christian Andersen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pictures of Sweden
+
+Author: Hans Christian Andersen
+
+Release Date: May 10, 2004 [EBook #12313]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF SWEDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Asad Razzaki and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced
+from page images provided by the Internet Archive Children's Library.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PICTURES OF SWEDEN
+
+
+By
+
+HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
+
+Author of
+"The Improvisatore," &c.
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+
+1851.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+TROLLHÄTTA
+
+THE BIRD PHOENIX
+
+KINNAKULLA
+
+GRANDMOTHER
+
+THE PRISON-CELLS
+
+BEGGAR-BOYS
+
+VADSTENE
+
+THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN
+
+THE "SKJÄRGAARDS"
+
+STOCKHOLM
+
+DIURGAERDEN
+
+A STORY
+
+UPSALA
+
+SALA
+
+THE MUTE BOOK
+
+THE ZÄTHER DALE
+
+THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND
+
+FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE
+
+IN THE FOREST
+
+FAHLUN
+
+WHAT THE STRAWS SAID
+
+THE POET'S SYMBOL
+
+THE DAL-ELV
+
+DANEMORA
+
+THE SWINE
+
+POETRY'S CALIFORNIA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+We Travel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand
+their song? Well, hear it in a free translation.
+
+"Get on my back," says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, "and
+I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant
+beech woods, green meadows and corn-fields. In Scania, with the
+flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that
+you are still in Denmark."
+
+"Fly with me," says the swallow; "I fly over Holland's mountain ridge,
+where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north
+than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky
+ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is
+good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the
+table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a
+prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I
+have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves."
+
+"Come with me! come with me!" screams the restless sea-gull, and flies
+in an expecting circle. "Come with me to the Skjärgaards, where rocky
+isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower-beds along the
+coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!"
+
+"Rest thee between our extended wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us
+bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs
+(rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has
+long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our
+extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the
+mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the
+snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North
+Sea, on yonder side of Norway.
+
+"We fly to Jemteland, where the rocky mountains are high and blue;
+where the Foss roars and rushes; where the torches are lighted as
+_budstikke_[A] to announce that the ferryman is expected. Up to the
+deep, cold-running waters, where the midsummer sun does not set; where
+the rosy hue of eve is that of morn."
+
+[Footnote A: A chip of wood in the form of a halberd, circulated for
+the purpose of convening the inhabitants of a district in Sweden and
+Norway.]
+
+That is the birds' song. Shall we lay it to heart? Shall we accompany
+them?--at least a part of the way. We will not sit upon the stork's
+back, or between the swans' wings. We will go forward with steam, and
+with horses--yes, also on our own legs, and glance now and then from
+reality, over the fence into the region of thought, which is always
+our near neighbour-land; pluck a flower or a leaf, to be placed in the
+note-book--for it sprung out during our journey's flight: we fly and
+we sing. Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, where, in ancient times,
+the sacred gods came from Asia's mountains! land that still retains
+rays of their lustre, which streams from the flowers in the name of
+"Linnaeus;" which beams for thy chivalrous men from Charles the
+Twelfth's banner; which sounds from the obelisk on the field of
+Lutzen! Sweden, thou land of deep feeling, of heart-felt songs! home
+of the limpid elvs, where the wild swans sing in the gleam of the
+Northern Lights! Thou land, on whose deep, still lakes Scandinavia's
+fairy builds her colonnades, and leads her battling, shadowy host over
+the icy mirror! Glorious Sweden! with thy fragrant Linnaeus, with
+Jenny's soul-enlivening songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and
+the swallow, with the restless sea-gull and the wild swans. Thy
+birch-woods exhale refreshing fragrance under their sober, bending
+branches; on the tree's white stem the harp shall hang: the North's
+summer wind shall whistle therein!
+
+
+
+
+TROLLHÄTTA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Who did we meet at Trollhätta? It is a strange story, and we will
+relate it.
+
+We landed at the first sluice, and stood as it were in a garden laid
+out in the English style. The broad walks are covered with gravel, and
+rise in short terraces between the sunlit greensward: it is charming,
+delightful here, but by no means imposing. If one desires to be
+excited in this manner, one must go a little higher up to the older
+sluices, which deep and narrow have burst through the hard rock. It
+looks magnificent, and the water in its dark bed far below is lashed
+into foam. Up here one overlooks both elv and valley; the bank of the
+river on the other side, rises in green undulating hills, grouped with
+leafy trees and red-painted wooden houses, which are bounded by rocks
+and pine forests. Steam-boats and sailing vessels ascend through the
+sluices; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them
+up above the rock, and from the forest itself it buzzes, roars and
+rattles. The din of Trollhätta Falls mingles with the noise from the
+saw-mills and smithies.
+
+"In three hours we shall be through the sluices," said the Captain:
+"in that time you will see the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn
+up here."
+
+We went from the path through the forest: a whole flock of bare-headed
+boys surrounded us. They would all be our guides; the one screamed
+longer than the other, and every one gave his contradictory
+explanation, how high the water stood, and how high it did not stand,
+or could stand. There was also a great difference of opinion amongst
+the learned.
+
+We soon stopped on a ling-covered rock, a dizzying terrace. Before us,
+but far below, was the roaring water, the Hell Fall, and over this
+again, fall after fall, the rich, rapid, rushing elv--the outlet of
+the largest lake in Sweden. What a sight! what a foaming and roaring,
+above--below! It is like the waves of the sea, but of effervescing
+champagne--of boiling milk. The water rushes round two rocky islands
+at the top so that the spray rises like meadow dew. Below, the water
+is more compressed, then hurries down again, shoots forward and
+returns in circles like smooth water, and then rolls darting its long
+sea-like fall into the Hell Fall. What a tempest rages in the
+deep--what a sight! Words cannot express it!
+
+Nor could our screaming little guides. They stood mute; and when they
+again began with their explanations and stories, they did not come
+far, for an old gentleman whom none of us had noticed (but he was now
+amongst us), made himself heard above the noise, with his singularly
+sounding voice. He knew all the particulars about the place, and about
+former days, as if they had been of yesterday.
+
+"Here, on the rocky holms," said he, "it was that the warriors in the
+heathen times, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior
+Stärkodder dwelt in this district, and liked the pretty girl Ogn right
+well; but she was fonder of Hergrimmer, and therefore he was
+challenged by Stärkodder to combat here by the falls, and met his
+death; but Ogn sprung towards them, took her bridegroom's bloody
+sword, and thrust it into her own heart. Thus Stärkodder did not gain
+her. Then there passed a hundred years, and again a hundred years: the
+forests were then thick and closely grown; wolves and bears prowled
+here summer and winter; the place was infested with malignant robbers,
+whose hiding-place no one could find. It was yonder, by the fall
+before Top Island, on the Norwegian side--there was their cave: now it
+has fallen in! The cliff there overhangs it!"
+
+"Yes, the Tailor's Cliff!" shouted all the boys. "It fell in the year
+1755!"
+
+"Fell!" said the old man, as if in astonishment that any one but
+himself could know it. "Everything will fall once, and the tailor
+directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that
+if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he
+should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the
+first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down
+into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The
+Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she
+betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was
+seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed.
+That outside there is called 'The Thieves' Fall,' and down there under
+the water is another cave, the elv rushes in there and returns
+boiling; one can see it well up here, one hears it too, but it can be
+heard better under the bergman's loft.
+
+And we went on and on, along the Fall, towards Top Island,
+continuously on smooth paths covered with saw-dust, to Polham's
+Sluice. A cleft had been made in the rock for the first intended
+sluice-work, which was not finished, but whereby art has created the
+most imposing of all Trollhätta's Falls; the hurrying water falling
+here perpendicularly into the black deep. The side of the rock is here
+placed in connection with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge,
+which appears as if thrown over the abyss. We venture on to the
+rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on
+the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from
+the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the
+rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the
+fine spray. The torrent flows on each side, as if shot out from a
+gigantic cannon, fall after fall: we look out over them all, and are
+filled with the harmonic sound, which since time began, has ever been
+the same.
+
+"No one can ever get to the island there," said one of our party,
+pointing to the large island above the topmost fall.
+
+"I however know one!" said the old man, and nodded with a peculiar
+smile.
+
+"Yes, my grandfather could!" said one of the boys, "scarcely any one
+besides has crossed during a hundred years. The cross that is set up
+over there was placed there by my grandfather. It had been a severe
+winter, the whole of Lake Venern was frozen; the ice dammed up the
+outlet, and for many hours there was a dry bottom. Grandfather has
+told about it: he went over with two others, placed the cross up, and
+returned. But then there was such a thundering and cracking noise,
+just as if it were cannons. The ice broke up and the elv came over the
+fields and forest. It is true, every word I say!"
+
+One of the travellers cited Tegner:
+
+    "Vildt Göta stortade från Fjallen,
+     Hemsk Trollet från sat Toppfall röt!
+     Men Snillet kom och sprängt stod Hallen,
+     Med Skeppen i sitt sköt!"
+
+"Poor mountain sprite," he continued, "thy power and glory recede! Man
+flies over thee--thou mayst go and learn of him."
+
+The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to
+himself--but we were just by the bridge before the inn. The steam-boat
+glided through the opened way, every one hastened to get on board, and
+it directly shot away above the Fall, just as if no Fall existed.
+
+"And that can be done!" said the old man. He knew nothing at all about
+steam-boats, had never before that day seen such a thing, and
+accordingly he was sometimes up and sometimes down, and stood by the
+machinery and stared at the whole construction, as if he were counting
+all the pins and screws. The course of the canal appeared to him to be
+something quite new; the plan of it and the guide-books were quite
+foreign objects to him: he turned them and turned them--for read I do
+not think he could. But he knew all the particulars about the
+country--that is to say, from olden times.
+
+I heard that he did not sleep at all the whole night. He studied the
+passage of the steam-boat; and when we in the morning ascended the
+sluice terraces from Lake Venern, higher and higher from lake to lake,
+away over the high-plain--higher, continually higher--he was in such
+activity that it appeared as if it could not be greater--and then we
+reached Motala.
+
+The Swedish author Tjörnerös relates of himself, that when a child he
+once asked what it was that ticked in the clock, and they answered him
+that it was one named "_Bloodless_." What brought the child's pulse to
+beat with feverish throbs and the hair on his head to rise, also
+exercised its power in Motala, over the old man from Trollhätta.
+
+We now went through the great manufactory in Motala. What ticks in the
+clock, beats here with strong strokes of the hammer. It is
+_Bloodless_, who drank life from human thought and thereby got limbs
+of metals, stone and wood; it is _Bloodless_, who by human thought
+gained strength, which man himself does not physically possess.
+_Bloodless_ reigns in Motala, and through the large foundries and
+factories he extends his hard limbs, whose joints and parts consist of
+wheel within wheel, chains, bars, and thick iron wires. Enter, and see
+how the glowing iron masses are formed into long bars. _Bloodless_
+spins the glowing bar! see how the shears cut into the heavy metal
+plates; they cut as quietly and as softly as if the plates were paper.
+Here where he hammers, the sparks fly from the anvil. See how he
+breaks the thick iron bars; he breaks them into lengths; it is as if
+it were a stick of sealing-wax that is broken. The long iron bars
+rattle before your feet; iron plates are planed into shavings; before
+you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire--long
+heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around
+in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for
+steam-boats and locomotives, _Bloodless_ also here stretches out one
+of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man
+alone stands and is silenced by--_stop!_
+
+The perspiration oozes out of one's fingers'-ends: one turns and
+turns, bows, and knows not one's self, from pure respect for the human
+thought which here has iron limbs. And yet the large iron hammer goes
+on continually with its heavy strokes: it is as if it said: "Banco,
+Banco! many thousand dollars; Banco, pure gain! Banco! Banco!"--Hear
+it, as I heard it; see, as I saw!
+
+The old gentleman from Trollhätta walked up and down in full
+contemplation; bent and swung himself about; crept on his knees, and
+stuck his head into corners and between the machines, for he would
+know everything so exactly; he would see the screw in the propelling
+vessels, understand their mechanism and effect under water--and the
+water itself poured like hail-drops down his forehead. He fell
+unconscious, backwards into my arms, or else he would have been drawn
+into the machinery, and been crushed: he looked at me, and pressed my
+hand.
+
+"And all this goes on naturally," said he; "simply and comprehensibly.
+Ships go against the wind, and against the stream, sail higher than
+forests and mountains. The water must raise, steam must drive them!"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"Yes," said he, and again _yes_, with a sigh which I did not then
+understand; but, months after, I understood it, and I will at once
+make a spring to that time, and we are again at Trollhätta.
+
+I came here in the autumn, on my return home; stayed some days in this
+mighty piece of nature, where busy human life forces its way more and
+more in, and, by degrees, transforms the picturesque to the useful
+manufactory. Trollhätta must do her work; saw beams, drive mills,
+hammer and break to pieces: one building grows up by the side of the
+other, and in half a century hence here will be a city. But that was
+not the story.
+
+I came, as I have said, here again in the autumn. I found the same
+rushing and roaring, the same din, the same rising and sinking in the
+sluices, the same chattering boys who conducted fresh travellers to
+the Hell Fall, to the iron-bridge island, and to the inn. I sat here,
+and turned over the leaves of books, collected here through a series
+of years, in which travellers have inscribed their names, feelings and
+thoughts at Trollhätta--almost always the same astonishment, expressed
+in different languages, though generally in Latin: _veni, vidi,
+obstupui_.
+
+One has written: "I have seen nature's master-piece pervade that of
+art;" another cannot say what he saw, and what he saw he cannot say. A
+mine owner and manufacturer, full of the doctrine of utility, has
+written: "Seen with the greatest pleasure this useful work for us in
+Värmeland, Trollhätta." The wife of a dean from Scania expresses
+herself thus. She has kept to the family, and only signed in the
+remembrance book, as to the effect of her feelings at Trollhätta. "God
+grant my brother-in-law fortune, for he has understanding!" Some few
+have added witticisms to the others' feelings; yet as a pearl on this
+heap of writing shines Tegner's poem, written by himself in the book
+on the 28th of June, 1804:
+
+    "Gotha kom i dans från Seves fjallar, &c."
+
+I looked up from the book and who should stand before me, just about
+to depart again, but the old man from Trollhätta! Whilst I had
+wandered about, right up to the shores of Siljan, he had continually
+made voyages on the canal; seen the sluices and manufactories, studied
+steam in all its possible powers of service, and spoke about a
+projected railway in Sweden, between the Hjalmar and Venern. He had,
+however, never yet seen a railway, and I described to him these
+extended roads, which sometimes rise like ramparts, sometimes like
+towering bridges, and at times like halls of miles in length, cut
+through rocks. I also spoke of America and England.
+
+"One takes breakfast in London, and the same day one drinks tea in
+Edinburgh."
+
+"That I can do!" said the man, and in as cool a tone as if no one but
+himself could do it, "I can also," said I; "and I have done it."
+
+"And who are you, then?" he asked.
+
+"A common traveller," I replied; "a traveller who pays for his
+conveyance. And who are you?"
+
+The man sighed.
+
+"You do not know me: my time is past; my power is nothing! _Bloodless_
+is stronger than I!" and he was gone.
+
+I then understood who he was. Well, in what humour must a poor
+mountain sprite be, who only comes up every hundred years to see how
+things go forward here on the earth!
+
+It was the mountain sprite and no other, for in our time every
+intelligent person is considerably wiser; and I looked with a sort of
+proud feeling on the present generation, on the gushing, rushing,
+whirling wheel, the heavy blows of the hammer, the shears that cut so
+softly through the metal plates, the thick iron bars that were broken
+like sticks of sealing-wax, and the music to which the heart's
+pulsations vibrate: "Banco, Banco, a hundred thousand Banco!" and all
+by steam--by mind and spirit.
+
+It was evening. I stood on the heights of Trollhätta's old sluices,
+and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows
+like spectres, large and white. The sluice gates were opened with a
+ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of
+the secret council in Germany. The evening was so still that
+Trollhätta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were
+a chorus from a hundred water-mills--ever one and the same tone. In
+one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer
+through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature
+was felt. Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the
+forest, down towards the Falls. Was it the mountain sprite?--We will
+imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRD PHOENIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the garden of Paradise, under the tree of knowledge, stood a hedge
+of roses. In the first rose a bird was hatched; its flight was like
+that of light, its colours beautiful, its song magnificent.
+
+But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were
+driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's
+flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died
+in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one--the only
+one--the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up
+its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself up in
+its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out
+from the red egg.
+
+The bird hovers around us, rapid as the light, beautiful in colour,
+glorious in song. When the mother sits by the child's cradle, it is by
+the pillow, and with its wings flutters a glory around the child's
+head. It flies through the chamber of contentment, and there is the
+sun's radiance within:--the poor chest of drawers is odoriferous with
+violets.
+
+But the bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia's bird: it flutters in the
+rays of the Northern Lights on Lapland's icy plains; it hops amongst
+the yellow flowers in Greenland's short summer. Under Fahlun's copper
+rocks, in England's coal mines, it flies like a powdered moth over the
+hymn-book in the pious workman's hands. It sails on the lotus-leaf
+down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the Hindoo girl
+glisten on seeing it.
+
+The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? The bird of Paradise, song's
+sacred swan! It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and
+flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland's minstrel-harp
+glided the swan's red, sounding bill. It sat on Shakspeare's shoulder
+like Odin's raven, and whispered in his ear: "Immortality!" It flew at
+the minstrel competition, through Wartzburg's knightly halls.
+
+The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? It sang the Marseillaise for
+thee, and thou didst kiss the plume that fell from its wing: it came
+in the lustre of Paradise, and thou perhaps didst turn thyself away to
+some poor sparrow that sat with merest tinsel on its wings.
+
+The bird of Paradise! regenerated every century, bred in flames, dead
+in flames; thy image set in gold hangs in the saloons of the rich,
+even though thou fliest often astray and alone. "The bird Phoenix in
+Arabia"--is but a legend.
+
+In the garden of Paradise, when thou wast bred under the tree of
+knowledge, in the first rose, our Lord kissed thee and gave thee thy
+proper name--Poetry.
+
+
+
+
+KINNAKULLA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens! Thee will we visit. We stand by
+the lowest terrace in a plenitude of flowers and verdure; the ancient
+village church leans its grey pointed wooden tower, as if it would
+fall; it produces an effect in the landscape: we would not even be
+without that large flock of birds, which just now chance to fly away
+over the mountain forest.
+
+The high road leads up the mountain with short palings on either side,
+between which we see extensive plains with hops, wild roses,
+corn-fields, and delightful beech woods, such as are not to be found
+in any other place in Sweden. The ivy winds itself around old trees
+and stones--even to the withered trunk green leaves are lent. We look
+out over the flat, extended woody plain, to the sunlit church-tower of
+Maristad, which shines like a white sail on the dark green sea: we
+look out over the Venern Lake, but cannot see its further shore.
+Skjärgaardens' wood-crowned rocks lie like a wreath down in the lake;
+the steam-boat comes--see! down by the cliff under the red-roofed
+mansions, where the beech and walnut trees grow in the garden.
+
+The travellers land; they wander under shady trees away over that
+pretty light green meadow, which is enwreathed by gardens and woods:
+no English park has a finer verdure than the meadows near Hellekis.
+They go up to "the grottos," as they call the projecting masses of red
+stone higher up, which, being thoroughly kneaded with petrifactions,
+project from the declivity of the earth, and remind one of the
+mouldering colossal tombs in the Campagna of Rome. Some are smooth and
+rounded off by the streaming of the water, others bear the moss of
+ages, grass and flowers, nay, even tall trees.
+
+The travellers go from the forest road up to the top of Kinnakulla,
+where a stone is raised as the goal of their wanderings. The traveller
+reads in his guide-book about the rocky strata of Kinnakulla: "At the
+bottom is found sandstone, then alum-stone, then limestone, and above
+this red-stone, higher still slate, and lastly, trap." And, now that
+he has seen this, he descends again, and goes on board. He has seen
+Kinnakulla:--yes, the stony rock here, amidst the swelling verdure,
+showed him one heavy, thick stone finger, and most of the travellers
+think that they are like the devil, if they lay hold upon one finger,
+they have the body--but it is not always so. The least visited side of
+Kinnakulla is just the most characteristic, and thither will we go.
+
+The road still leads us a long way on this side of the mountain, step
+by step downwards, in long terraces of rich fields: further down, the
+slate-stone peers forth in flat layers, a green moss upon it, and it
+looks like threadbare patches in the green velvet carpet. The high
+road leads over an extent of ground where the slate-stone lies like a
+firm floor. In the Campagna of Rome, one would say it is a piece of
+_via appia_, or antique road; but it is Kinnakulla's naked skin and
+bones that we pass over. The peasant's house is composed of large
+slate-stones, and the roof is covered with them; one sees nothing of
+wood except that of the door, and above it, of the large painted
+shield, which states to what regiment the soldier belongs who got this
+house and plot of ground in lieu of pay.
+
+We cast another glance over Venern, to Lockö's old palace, to the town
+of Lendkjobing, and are again near verdant fields and noble trees,
+that cast their shadows over Blomberg, where, in the garden, the poet
+Geier's spirit seeks the flower of Kinnakulla in his grand-daughter,
+little Anna.
+
+The plain expands here behind Kinnakulla; it extends for miles around,
+towards the horizon. A shower stands in the heavens; the wind has
+increased: see how the rain falls to the ground like a darkening veil.
+The branches of the trees lash one another like penitential dryades.
+Old Husaby church lies near us, yonder; though the shower lashes the
+high walls, which alone stand, of the old Catholic Bishop's palace.
+Crows and ravens fly through the long glass-less windows, which time
+has made larger; the rain pours down the crevices in the old grey
+walls, as if they were now to be loosened stone from stone: but the
+church stands--old Husaby church--so grey and venerable, with its
+thick walls, its small windows, and its three spires stuck against
+each other, and standing, like nuts, in a cluster.
+
+The old trees in the churchyard cast their shade over ancient graves.
+Where is the district's "Old Mortality," who weeds the grass, and
+explains the ancient memorials? Large granite stones are laid here in
+the form of coffins, ornamented with rude carvings from the times of
+Catholicism. The old church-door creaks in the hinges. We stand within
+its walls, where the vaulted roof was filled for centuries with the
+fragrance of incense, with monks, and with the song of the choristers.
+Now it is still and mute here: the old men in their monastic dresses
+have passed into their graves; the blooming boys that swung the censer
+are in their graves; the congregation--many generations--all in their
+graves; but the church still stands the same. The moth-eaten, dusty
+cowls, and the bishops' mantle, from the days of the cloister, hang in
+the old oak presses; and old manuscripts, half eaten up by the rats,
+lie strewed about on the shelves in the sacristy.
+
+In the left aisle of the church there still stands, and has stood time
+out of mind, a carved image of wood, painted in various colours which
+are still strong: it is the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus. Fresh
+flower wreaths are hung around hers and the child's head; fragrant
+garlands are twined around the pedestal, as festive as on Madonna's
+birthday feast in the times of Popery. The young folks who have been
+confirmed, have this day, on receiving the sacrament for the first
+time, ornamented this old image--nay, even set the priest's name in
+flowers upon the altar; and he has, to our astonishment, let it remain
+there.
+
+The image of Madonna seems to have become young by the fresh wreaths:
+the fragrant flowers here have a power like that of poetry--they bring
+back the days of past centuries to our own times. It is as if the
+extinguished glory around the head shone again; the flowers exhale
+perfume: it is as if incense again streamed through the aisles of the
+church--it shines around the altar as if the consecrated tapers were
+lighted--it is a sunbeam through the window.
+
+The sky without has become clear: we drive again in under Cleven, the
+barren side of Kinnakulla: it is a rocky wall, different from almost
+all the others. The red stone blocks lie, strata on strata, forming
+fortifications with embrasures, projecting wings and round towers; but
+shaken, split and fallen in ruins--it is an architectural fantastic
+freak of nature. A brook falls gushing down from one of the highest
+points of the Cleven, and drives a little mill. It looks like a
+plaything which the mountain sprite had placed there and forgotten.
+
+Large masses of fallen stone blocks lie dispersed round about; nature
+has spread them in the forms of carved cornices. The most significant
+way of describing Kinnakulla's rocky wall is to call it the ruins of a
+mile-long Hindostanee temple: these rocks might be easily transformed
+by the hammer into sacred places like the Ghaut mountains at Ellara.
+If a Brahmin were to come to Kinnakulla's rocky wall, he would
+recognise the temple of Cailasa, and find in the clefts and crevices
+whole representations from Ramagena and Mahabharata. If one should
+then speak to him in a sort of gibberish--no matter what, only that,
+by the help of Brockhaus's "Conversation-Lexicon" one might mingle
+therein the names of some of the Indian spectacles:--Sakantala,
+Vikramerivati, Uttaram Ramatscheritram, &c.--the Brahmin would be
+completely mystified, and write in his note-book: "Kinnakulla is the
+remains of a temple, like those we have in Ellara; and the inhabitants
+themselves know the most considerable works in our oldest Sanscrit
+literature, and speak in an extremely spiritual manner about them."
+But no Brahmin comes to the high rocky walls--not to speak of the
+company from the steam-boat, who are already far over the lake Venern.
+They have seen wood-crowned Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens--and
+we also have now seen them.
+
+
+
+
+GRANDMOTHER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grandmother is so old, she has so many wrinkles, and her hair is quite
+white; but her eyes! they shine like two stars, nay, they are much
+finer--they are so mild, so blissful to look into. And then she knows
+the most amusing stories, and she has a gown with large, large flowers
+on it, and it is of such thick silk that it actually rustles.
+Grandmother knows so much, for she has lived long before father and
+mother--that is quite sure.
+
+Grandmother has a psalm-book with thick silver clasps, and in that
+book she often reads. In the middle of it lies a rose, which is quite
+flat and dry; but it is not so pretty as the roses she has in the
+glass, yet she smiles the kindliest to it, nay, even tears come into
+her eyes!
+
+Why does Grandmother look thus on the withered flower in the old book?
+Do you know why?
+
+Every time that Grandmother's tears fall on the withered flower the
+colours become fresher; the rose then swells and the whole room is
+filled with fragrance; the walls sink as if they were but mists; and
+round about, it is the green, the delightful grove, where the sun
+shines between the leaves. And Grandmother--yes, she is quite young;
+she is a beautiful girl, with yellow hair, with round red cheeks,
+pretty and charming--no rose is fresher. Yet the eyes, the mild,
+blissful eyes,--yes, they are still Grandmother's! By her side sits a
+man, young and strong: he presents the rose to her and she smiles. Yet
+grandmother does not smile so,--yes; the smile comes,--he is
+gone.--Many thoughts and many forms go past! That handsome man is
+gone; the rose lies in the psalm-book, and grandmother,--yes, she
+again sits like an old woman, and looks on the withered rose that lies
+in the book.
+
+Now grandmother is dead!
+
+She sat in the arm-chair, and told a long, long, sweet story. "And now
+it is ended!" said she, "and I am quite tired: let me now sleep a
+little!" And so she laid her head back to rest. She drew her breath,
+she slept, but it became more and more still; and her face was so full
+of peace and happiness--it was as if the sun's rays passed over it.
+She smiled, and then they said that she was dead.
+
+She was laid in the black coffin; she lay swathed in the white linen:
+she was so pretty, and yet the eyes were closed--but all the wrinkles
+were gone. She lay with a smile around her mouth: her hair was so
+silvery white, so venerable, one was not at all afraid to look on the
+dead, for it was the sweet, benign grandmother. And the psalm-book was
+laid in the coffin under her head (she herself had requested it), and
+the rose lay in the old book--and then they buried grandmother.
+
+On the grave, close under the church-wall, they planted a rose-tree,
+and it became full of roses, and the nightingale sang over it, and the
+organ in the church played the finest psalms that were in the book
+under the dead one's head. And the moon shone straight down on the
+grave--but the dead was not there: every child could go quietly in the
+night-time and pluck a rose there by the churchyard-wall. The dead
+know more than all we living know--the dead know the awe we should
+feel at something so strange as their coming to us. The dead are
+better than us all, and therefore they do not come.
+
+There is earth over the coffin, there is earth within it; the
+psalm-book with its leaves is dust the rose with all its recollections
+has gone to dust. But above it bloom new roses, above is sings the
+nightingale, and the organ plays:--we think of the old grandmother
+with the mild, eternally young eyes. Eyes can never die! Ours shall
+once again see her young, and beautiful, as when she for the first
+time kissed the fresh red rose which is now dust in the grave.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRISON-CELLS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By separation from other men, by solitary confinement, in continual
+silence, the criminal is to be punished and amended; therefore were
+prison-cells contrived. In Sweden there were several, and new ones
+have been built. I visited one for the first time in Mariestad. This
+building lies close outside the town, by a running water, and in a
+beautiful landscape. It resembles a large white-washed summer
+residence, window above window.
+
+But we soon discover that the stillness of the grave rests over it. It
+is as if no one dwelt here, or like a deserted mansion in the time of
+the plague. The gates in the walls are locked: one of them is opened
+for us: the gaoler stands with his bunch of keys: the yard is empty,
+but clean--even the grass weeded away between the stone paving. We
+enter the waiting-room, where the prisoner is received: we are shown
+the bathing-room, into which he is first led. We now ascend a flight
+of stairs, and are in a large hall, extending the whole length and
+breadth of the building. Galleries run along the floors, and between
+these the priest has his pulpit, where he preaches on Sundays to an
+invisible congregation. All the doors facing the gallery are half
+opened: the prisoners hear the priest, but cannot see him, nor he
+them. The whole is a well-built machine--a nightmare for the spirit.
+In the door of every cell there is fixed a glass, about the size of
+the eye: a slide covers it, and the gaoler can, unobserved by the
+prisoner, see everything he does; but he must come gently,
+noiselessly, for the prisoner's ear is wonderfully quickened by
+solitude. I turned the slide quite softly, and looked into the closed
+space, when the prisoner's eye immediately met mine. It is airy,
+clean, and light within the cell, but the window is placed so high
+that it is impossible to look out of it. A high stool, made fast to a
+sort of table, and a hammock, which can be hung upon hooks under the
+ceiling, and covered with a quilt, compose the whole furniture.
+
+Several cells were opened for us. In one of these was a young, and
+extremely pretty girl. She had lain down in her hammock, but sprang
+out directly the door was opened, and her first employment was to lift
+her hammock down, and roll it together. On the little table stood a
+pitcher with water, and by it lay the remains of some oatmeal cakes,
+besides the Bible and some psalms.
+
+In the cell close by sat a child's murderess. I saw her only through
+the little glass in the door. She had had heard our footsteps; heard
+us speak; but she sat still, squeezed up into the corner by the door,
+as if she would hide herself as much as possible: her back was bent,
+her head almost on a level with her lap, and her hands folded over it.
+They said this unfortunate creature was very young. Two brothers sat
+here in two different cells: they were punished for horse stealing;
+the one was still quite a boy.
+
+In one cell was a poor servant girl. They said: "She has no place of
+resort, and without a situation, and therefore she is placed here." I
+thought I had not heard rightly, and repeated my question, "why she
+was here," but got the same answer. Still I would rather believe that
+I had misunderstood what was said--it would otherwise be abominable.
+
+Outside, in the free sunshine, it is the busy day; in here it is
+always midnight's stillness. The spider that weaves its web down the
+wall, the swallow which perhaps flies a single time close under the
+panes there high up in the wall--even the stranger's footstep in the
+gallery, as he passes the cell-doors, is an event in that mute,
+solitary life, where the prisoners' thoughts are wrapped up in
+themselves. One must read of the martyr-filled prisons of the
+Inquisition, of the crowds chained together in the Bagnes, of the hot,
+lead chambers of Venice, and the black, wet gulf of the wells--be
+thoroughly shaken by these pictures of misery, that we may with a
+quieter pulsation of the heart wander through the gallery of the
+prison-cells. Here is light, here is air;--here it is more humane.
+Where the sunbeam shines mildly in on the prisoner, there also will
+the radiance of God shine into the heart.
+
+
+
+
+BEGGAR-BOYS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The painter Callot--who does not know the name, at least from
+Hoffmann's "in Callot's manner?"--has given a few excellent pictures
+of Italian beggars. One of these is a fellow, on whom the one rag
+lashes the other: he carries his huge bundle and a large flag with the
+inscription, "Capitano de Baroni." One does not think that there can
+in reality be found such a wandering rag-shop, and we confess that in
+Italy itself we have not seen any such; for the beggar-boy there,
+whose whole clothing often consists only of a waistcoat, has in it not
+sufficient costume for such rags.
+
+But we see it in the North. By the canal road between the Venern and
+Vigen, on the bare, dry rocky plain there stood, like beauty's
+thistles in that poor landscape, a couple of beggar-boys, so ragged,
+so tattered, so picturesquely dirty, that we thought we had Callot's
+originals before us, or that it was an arrangement of some industrious
+parents, who would awaken the traveller's attention and benevolence.
+Nature does not form such things: there was something so bold in the
+hanging on of the rags, that each boy instantly became a Capitano de
+Baroni.
+
+The younger of the two had something round him that had certainly once
+been the jacket of a very corpulent man, for it reached almost to the
+boy's ancles; the whole hung fast by a piece of the sleeve and a
+single brace, made from the seam of what was now the rest of the
+lining. It was very difficult to see the transition from jacket to
+trowsers, the rags glided so into one another. The whole clothing was
+arranged so as to give him an air-bath: there were draught holes on
+all sides and ends; a yellow linen clout fastened to the nethermost
+regions seemed as if it were to signify a shirt. A very large straw
+hat, that had certainly been driven over several times, was stuck
+sideways on his head, and allowed the boy's wiry, flaxen hair to grow
+freely through the opening where the crown should have been: the naked
+brown shoulder and upper part of the arm, which was just as brown,
+were the prettiest of the whole.
+
+The other boy had only a pair of trowsers on. They were also ragged,
+but the rags were bound fast into the pockets with packthread; one
+string round the ancles, one under the knee, and another round about
+the waist. He, however, kept together what he had, and that is always
+respectable.
+
+"Be off!" shouted the Captain, from the vessel; and the boy with the
+tied-up rags turned round, and we--yes, we saw nothing but packthread,
+in bows, genteel bows. The front part of the boy only was covered: he
+had only the foreparts of trowsers--the rest was packthread, the bare,
+naked packthread.
+
+
+
+
+VADSTENE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Sweden, it is not only in the country, but even in several of the
+provincial towns, that one sees whole houses of grass turf or with
+roofs of grass turf; and some are so low that one might easily spring
+up to the roof, and sit on the fresh greensward. In the early spring,
+whilst the fields are still covered with snow, but which is melted on
+the roof, the latter affords the first announcement of spring, with
+the young sprouting grass where the sparrow twitters: "Spring comes!"
+
+Between Motala and Vadstene, close by the high road, stands a
+grass-turf house--one of the most picturesque. It has but one window,
+broader than it is high, and a wild rose branch forms the curtain
+outside.
+
+We see it in the spring. The roof is so delightfully fresh with grass,
+it has quite the tint of velvet; and close to it is the chimney, nay,
+even a cherry-tree grows out of its side, now full of flowers: the
+wind shakes the leaves down on a little lamb that is tethered to the
+chimney. It is the only lamb of the family. The old dame who lives
+here, lifts it up to its place herself in the morning and lifts it
+down again in the evening, to give it a place in the room. The roof
+can just bear the little lamb, but not more--this is an experience and
+a certainty. Last autumn--and at that time the grass turf roofs are
+covered with flowers, mostly blue and yellow, the Swedish
+colours--there grew here a flower of a rare kind. It shone in the eyes
+of the old Professor, who on his botanical tour came past here. The
+Professor was quickly up on the roof, and just as quick was one of his
+booted legs through it, and so was the other leg, and then half of the
+Professor himself--that part where the head does not sit; and as the
+house had no ceiling, his legs hovered right over the old dame's head,
+and that in very close contact. But now the roof is again whole; the
+fresh grass grows where learning sank; the little lamb bleats up
+there, and the old dame stands beneath, in the low doorway, with
+folded hands, with a smile on her mouth, rich in remembrances, legends
+and songs, rich in her only lamb on which the cherry-tree strews its
+flower-blossoms in the warm spring sun.
+
+As a background to this picture lies the Vettern--the bottomless lake
+as the commonalty believe--with its transparent water, its sea-like
+waves, and in calm, with "Hegring," or fata morgana on its steel-like
+surface. We see Vadstene palace and town, "the city of the dead," as a
+Swedish author has called it--Sweden's Herculaneum, reminiscence's
+city. The grass-turf house must be our box, whence we see the rich
+mementos pass before us--memorials from the chronicle of saints, the
+chronicle of kings and the love songs that still live with the old
+dame, who stands in her low house there, where the lamb crops the
+grass on the roof. We hear her, and we see with her eyes; we go from
+the grass-turf house up to the town, to the other grass-turf houses,
+where poor women sit and make lace, once the celebrated work of the
+rich nuns here in the cloister's wealthy time.
+
+How still, solitary and grass-grown are these streets! We stop by an
+old wall, mouldy-green for centuries already. Within it stood the
+cloister; now there is but one of its wings remaining. There, within
+that now poor garden still bloom Saint Bridget's leek, and once ran
+flowers. King John and the Abbess, Ana Gylte, wandered one evening
+there, and the King cunningly asked: "If the maidens in the cloister
+were never tempted by love?" and the Abbess answered, as she pointed
+to a bird that just then flew over them: "It may happen! One cannot
+prevent the bird from flying over the garden; but one may surely
+prevent it from building its nest there!"
+
+Thus thought the pious Abbess, and there have been sisters who thought
+and acted like her. But it is quite as sure that in the same garden
+there stood a pear-tree, called the tree of death; and the legend says
+of it, that whoever approached and plucked its fruit would soon die.
+Red and yellow pears weighed down its branches to the ground. The
+trunk was unusually large; the grass grew high around it, and many a
+morning hour was it seen trodden down. Who had been here during the
+night?
+
+A storm arose one evening from the lake, and the next morning the
+large tree was found thrown down; the trunk was broken, and out from
+it there rolled infants' bones--the white bones of murdered children
+lay shining in the grass.
+
+The pious but love-sick sister Ingrid, this Vadstene's Heloise, writes
+to her heart's beloved, Axel Nilsun--for the chronicles have preserved
+it for us:--
+
+"Broderne og Systarne leka paa Spil, drikke Vin och dansa med
+hvarandra i Tradgården!"
+
+(The brothers and sisters amuse themselves in play, drink wine and
+dance with one another in the garden).
+
+These words may explain to us the history of the pear-tree: one is led
+to think of the orgies of the nun-phantoms in "Robert le Diable," the
+daughters of sin on consecrated ground. But "judge not, lest ye be
+judged," said the purest and best of men that was born of woman. We
+will read Sister Ingrid's letter, sent secretly to him she truly
+loved. In it lies the history of many, clear and human to us:--
+
+"Jag djerfues for ingen utan for dig allena bekänna, att jag formår
+ilia ånda mit Ave Maria eller läsa mit Paternoster, utan du kommer mig
+ichågen. Ja i sjelfa messen kommer mig fore dit täckleliga Ansigte och
+vart kårliga omgange. Jag tycker jag kan icke skifta mig for n genann
+an Menniska, jungfru Maria, St. Birgitta och himmelens Härskaror
+skalla kanske straffe mig hårfar? Men du vet det val, hjertans käraste
+att jag med fri vilja och uppsät aldrig dissa reglar samtykt. Mine
+foräldrer hafva väl min kropp i dette fangelset insatt, men hjertät
+kan intet så snart från verlden ater kalles!"
+
+(I dare not confess to any other than to thee, that I am not able to
+repeat my Ave Maria or read my Paternoster, without calling thee to
+mind. Nay, even in the mass itself thy comely face appears, and our
+affectionate intercourse recurs to me. It seems to me that I cannot
+confess to any other human being--the Virgin Mary, St. Bridget, and
+the whole host of heaven will perhaps punish me for it. But thou
+knowest well, my heart's beloved, that I have never consented with my
+free-will to these rules. My parents, it is true, have placed my body
+in this prison, but the heart cannot so soon be weaned from the
+world).
+
+How touching is the distress of young hearts! It offers itself to us
+from the mouldy parchment, it resounds in old songs. Beg the
+grey-haired old dame in the grass turf-house to sing to thee of the
+young, heavy sorrow, of the saving angel--and the angel came in many
+shapes. You will hear the song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl
+who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber,
+sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him,
+and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and
+pleasure in Copenhagen. And all the nuns of the cloister sang: "Christ
+grant that such an angel were to come, and take both me and thee!"
+
+The old dame will also sing for thee of the beautiful Ogda and Oluf
+Tyste; and at once the cloister is revived in its splendour, the bells
+ring, stone houses arise--they even rise from the waters of the
+Vettern: the little town becomes churches and towers. The streets are
+crowded with great, with sober, well-dressed persons. Down the stairs
+of the town hall descends with a sword by his side and in fur-lined
+cloak, the most wealthy citizen of Vadstene, the merchant Michael. By
+his side is his young, beautiful daughter Agda, richly-dressed and
+happy; youth in beauty, youth in mind. All eyes are turned on the rich
+man--and yet forget him for her, the beautiful. Life's best blessings
+await her; her thoughts soar upwards, her mind aspires; her future is
+happiness! These were the thoughts of the many--and amongst the many
+there was one who saw her as Romeo saw Juliet, as Adam saw Eve in the
+garden of Paradise. That one was Oluf, the handsomest young man, but
+poor as Agda was rich. And he must conceal his love; but as only he
+lived in it, only he knew of it; so he became mute and still, and
+after months had passed away, the town's folk called him Oluf Tyste
+(Oluf the silent).
+
+Nights and days he combated his love; nights and days he suffered
+inexpressible torment; but at last--one dew-drop or one sunbeam alone
+is necessary for the ripe rose to open its leaves--he must tell it to
+Agda. And she listened to his words, was terrified, and sprang away;
+but the thought remained with him, and the heart went after the
+thought and stayed there; she returned his love strongly and truly,
+but in modesty and honour; and therefore poor Oluf came to the rich
+merchant and sought his daughter's hand. But Michael shut the bolts of
+his door and his heart too. He would neither listen to tears nor
+supplications, but only to his own will; and as little Agda also kept
+firm to her will, her father placed her in Vadstene cloister. And Oluf
+was obliged to submit, as it is recorded in the old song, that they
+cast
+
+    "----den svarta Muld
+     Alt öfver skön Agdas arm."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: The black mould over the beautiful Agda's arm.]
+
+She was dead to him and the world. But one night, in tempestuous
+weather, whilst the rain streamed down, Oluf Tyste came to the
+cloister wall, threw his rope-ladder over it, and however high the
+Vettern lifted its waves, Oluf and little Agda flew away over its
+fathomless depths that autumn night.
+
+Early in the morning the nuns missed little Agda. What a screaming and
+shouting--the cloister is disgraced! The Abbess and Michael the
+merchant swore that vengeance and death should reach the fugitives.
+Lindkjöping's severe bishop, Hans Brask, fulminated his ban over them,
+but they were already across the waters of the Vettern; they had
+reached the shores of the Venern, they were on Kinnakulla, with one of
+Oluf's friends, who owned the delightful Hellekis.
+
+Here their marriage was to be celebrated. The guests were invited, and
+a monk from the neighbouring cloister of Husaby, was fetched to marry
+them. Then came the messenger with the bishop's excommunication, and
+this--but not the marriage ceremony--was read to them.
+
+All turned away from them terrified. The owner of the house, the
+friend of Oluf's youth, pointed to the open door and bade them depart
+instantly. Oluf only requested a car and horse wherewith to convey
+away his exhausted Agda; but they threw sticks and stones after them,
+and Oluf was obliged to bear his poor bride in his arms far into the
+forest.
+
+Heavy and bitter was their wandering. At last, however, they found a
+home: it was in Guldkroken, in West Gothland. An honest old couple
+gave them shelter and a place by the hearth: they stayed there till
+Christmas, and on that holy eve there was to be a real Christmas
+festival. The guests were invited, the furmenty set forth; and now
+came the clergyman of the parish to say prayers; but whilst he spoke
+he recognised Oluf and Agda, and the prayer became a curse upon the
+two. Anxiety and terror came over all; they drove the excommunicated
+pair out of the house, out into the biting frost, where the wolves
+went in flocks, and the bear was no stranger. And Oluf felled wood in
+the forest, and kindled a fire to frighten away the noxious animals
+and keep life in Agda--he thought that she must die. But just then she
+was stronger of the two.
+
+"Our Lord is almighty and gracious; He will not leave us!" said she.
+"He has one here on the earth, one who can save us, one, who has
+proved like us, what it is to wander amongst enemies and wild animals.
+It is the King--Gustavus Vasa! He has languished like us!--gone astray
+in Dalecarlia in the deep snow! he has suffered, tried, knows it--he
+can and he will help us!"
+
+The King was in Vadstene. He had called together the representatives
+of the kingdom there. He dwelt in the cloister itself, even there
+where little Agda, if the King did not grant her pardon, must suffer
+what the angry Abbess dared to advise: penance and a painful death
+awaited her.
+
+Through forests and by untrodden paths, in storm and snow, Oluf and
+Agda came to Vadstene. They were seen: some showed fear, others
+insulted and threatened them. The guard of the cloister made the sign
+of the cross on seeing the two sinners, who dared to ask admission to
+the King.
+
+"I will receive and hear all," was his royal message, and the two
+lovers fell trembling at his feet.
+
+And the King looked mildly on them; and as he long had had the
+intention to humiliate the proud Bishop of Lindkjöping, the moment was
+not unfavourable to them; the King listened to the relation of their
+lives and sufferings, and gave them his word, that the excommunication
+should be annulled. He then placed their hands one in the other, and
+said that the priest should also do the same soon; and he promised
+them his royal protection and favour.
+
+And old Michael, the merchant, who feared the King's anger, with which
+he was threatened, became so mild and gentle, that he, as the King
+commanded, not only opened his house and his arms to Oluf and Agda,
+but displayed all his riches on the wedding-day of the young couple.
+The marriage ceremony took place in the cloister church, whither the
+King himself led the bride, and where, by his command, all the nuns
+were obliged to be present, in order to give still more ecclesiastical
+pomp to the festival. And many a heart there silently recalled the old
+song about the cloister robbery and looked at Oluf Tyste:
+
+    "Krist gif en sadan Angel
+    Kom, tog båd mig och dig!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: Christ grant that such an angel were to come, and take
+both me and thee!]
+
+The sun now shines through the open cloister-gate. Let truth shine
+into our hearts; let us likewise acknowledge the cloister's share of
+God's influence. Every cell was not quite a prison, where the
+imprisoned bird flew in despair against the window-pane; here
+sometimes was sunshine from God in the heart and mind, from hence also
+went out comfort and blessings. If the dead could rise from their
+graves they would bear witness thereof: if we saw them in the
+moonlight lift the tombstone and step forth towards the cloister, they
+would say: "Blessed be these walls!" if we saw them in the sunlight
+hovering in the rainbow's gleam, they would say: "Blessed be these
+walls!"
+
+How changed the rich, mighty Vadstene cloister, where the first
+daughters of the land were nuns, where the young nobles of the land
+wore the monk's cowl. Hither they made pilgrimages from Italy, from
+Spain: from far distant lands, in snow and cold, the pilgrim came
+barefooted to the cloister door. Pious men and women bore the corpse
+of St. Bridget hither in their hands from Rome, and all the
+church-bells in all the lands and towns they passed through, tolled
+when they came.
+
+We go towards the cloister--the remains of the old ruin. We enter St.
+Bridget's cell--it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and
+narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look
+from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We
+see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame
+around her God, whilst she read her morning and evening prayers. In
+the tile-stone of the floor there is engraved a rosary: before it, on
+her bare knees, she said a pater-noster at every pearl there pointed
+out. Here is no chimney--no hearth, no place for it. Cold and solitary
+it is, and was, here where the world's most far-famed woman dwelt, she
+who by her own sagacity, and by her contemporaries was raised to the
+throne of female saints.
+
+From this poor cell we enter one still meaner, one still more narrow
+and cold, where the faint light of day struggles in through a long
+crevice in the wall. Glass there never was here: the wind blows in
+here. Who was she who once dwelt in this cell?
+
+In our times they have arranged light, warm chambers close by: a whole
+range opens into the broad passage. We hear merry songs; laughter we
+hear, and weeping: strange figures nod to us from these chambers. Who
+are these? The rich cloister of St. Bridget's, whence kings made
+pilgrimages, is now Sweden's mad-house. And here the numerous
+travellers write their names on the wall. We hasten from the hideous
+scene into the splendid cloister church,--the blue church, as it is
+called, from the blue stones of which the walls are built--and here,
+where the large stones of the floor cover great men, abbesses and
+queens, only one monument is noticeable, that of a knightly figure
+carved in stone, which stands aloft before the altar. It is that of
+the insane Duke Magnus. Is it not as if he stepped forth from amongst
+the dead, and announced that such afflicted creatures were to be where
+St. Bridget once ruled?
+
+Pace lightly over the floor! Thy foot treads on the graves of the
+pious: the flat, modest stone here in the corner covers the dust of
+the noble Queen Philippa. She, that mighty England's daughter, the
+great-hearted, the immortal woman, who with wisdom and courage
+defended her consort's throne, that consort who rudely and barbarously
+cast her off! Vadstene's cloister gave her shelter--the grave here
+gave her rest.
+
+We seek one grave. It is not known--it is forgotten, as she was in her
+lifetime. Who was she? The cloistered sister Elizabeth, daughter of
+the Holstein Count, and once the bride of King Hakon of Norway. Sweet
+creature! she proudly--but not with unbecoming pride--advanced in her
+bridal dress, and with her court ladies, up to her royal consort. Then
+came King Valdemar, who by force and fraud stopped the voyage, and
+induced Hakon to marry Margaret, then eleven years of age, who thereby
+got the crown of Norway. Elizabeth was sent to Vadstene cloister,
+where her will was not asked. Afterwards when Margaret--who justly
+occupies a great place in the history of Scandinavia, but only
+comparatively a small one in the hearts--sat on the throne, powerful
+and respected, visited the then flourishing Vadstene, where the Abbess
+of the cloister was St. Bridget's grand-daughter, her childhood's
+friend, Margaret kissed every monk on the cheek. The legend is well
+known about him, the handsomest, who thereupon blushed. She kissed
+every nun on the hand, and also Elizabeth, her, whom she would only
+see here. Whose heart throbbed loudest at that kiss? Poor Elizabeth,
+thy grave is forgotten, but not the wrong thou didst suffer.
+
+We now enter the sacristy. Here, under a double coffin lid, rests an
+age's holiest saint in the North, Vadstene cloister's diadem and
+lustre--St. Bridget.
+
+On the night she was born, says the legend, there appeared a beaming
+cloud in the heavens, and on it stood a majestic virgin, who said: "Of
+Birger is born a daughter whose admirable voice shall be heard over
+the whole world." This delicate and singular child grew up in the
+castle of her father, Knight Brake. Visions and revelations appeared
+to her, and these increased when she, only thirteen years of age, was
+married to the rich Ulf Gudmundsen, and became the mother of many
+children. "Thou shalt be my bride and my agent," she heard Christ say,
+and every one of her actions was, as she averred, according to his
+announcement. After this she went to Niddaros, to St. Oluf's holy
+shrine: she then went to Germany, France, Spain and Rome.
+
+Sometimes honoured and sometimes mocked, she travelled, even to Cyprus
+and Palestine. Conscious of approaching death, she again reached Rome,
+where her last revelation was, that she should rest in Vadstene, and
+that this cloister especially should be sanctified by God's love. The
+splendour of the Northern lights does not extend so far around the
+earth as the glory of this fair saint, who now is but a legend. We
+bend with silent, serious thoughts before the mouldering remains in
+the coffin here--those of St. Bridget and her daughter St. Catherine;
+but even of these the remembrance will be extinguished. There is a
+tradition amongst the people, that in the time of the Reformation the
+real remains were carried off to a cloister in Poland, but this is not
+certainly known. Vadstene, at least, is not the repository of St.
+Bridget and her daughter's dust.
+
+Vadstene was once great and glorious. Great was the cloister's power,
+as St. Bridget saw it in the prospect of death. Where is now the
+cloister's might? It reposes under the tomb-stones--the graves alone
+speak of it. Here, under our feet, only a few steps from the church
+door, is a stone in which are carved fourteen rings: they announce
+that fourteen farms were given to the cloister, in order that he who
+moulders here might have this place, fourteen feet within the church
+door. It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister's
+power was greater than that of all sinners: the stone on his grave
+records it with no ordinary significance of language.
+
+Gustavus, the first Vasa, was the sun--the ruling power: the
+brightness of the cloister star must needs pale before him.
+
+There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene's rich palace which he
+erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister. At a far
+distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its
+splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged
+edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the
+windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round
+about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage
+road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored
+image.
+
+We now stand before it in daylight. Not a pane of glass is to be found
+in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the
+balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and
+resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers
+aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a
+sun-dial it shows the time--the time that is gone. The other two balls
+are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the
+space below is used as a cow-stall.
+
+The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish: they seem as
+if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new.
+In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was
+opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome
+greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down: we go through
+the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene
+palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the
+eye.
+
+Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space: even
+the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of
+timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the
+dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark grey dropping
+stones.
+
+We walk from hall to hall, and the wooden shutters are opened to admit
+daylight. All is vast, lofty, spacious, and adorned with antique
+chimney-pieces, and from every window there is a charming prospect
+over the clear, deep Vettern. In one of the chambers in the ground
+floor sat the insane Duke Magnus, (whose stone image we lately saw
+conspicuous in the church) horrified at having signed his own
+brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of
+Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to
+see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she
+came--he thought she came--in the form of a mermaid, raising herself
+aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate
+Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this
+window, and below it we saw the deep moat in which he sank.
+
+We enter the yeoman's hall, and the council hall, where, in the
+recesses of the windows, on each side, are painted yeomen in strange
+dresses, half Dalecarlians and half Roman warriors.
+
+In this once rich saloon, Svanta Steenson Sture knelt to Sweden's
+Queen, Catherine Léjonhufved: she was Svanta Sture's love, before
+Gustavus Vasa's will made her his Queen. The lovers met here: the
+walls are silent as to what they said, when the door was opened and
+the King entered, and saw the kneeling Sture, and asked what it meant.
+Margaret answered craftily and hastily: "He demands my sister Martha's
+hand in marriage!" and the King gave Svanta Sture the bride the Queen
+had asked for him.
+
+We are now in the royal bridal chamber, whither King Gustavus led his
+third consort. Catherine Steenbock, also another's bride, the bride of
+the Knight Gustavus. It is a sad story.
+
+Gustavus of the three roses, was in his youth honoured by the King,
+who sent him on a mission to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. He
+returned adorned with the Emperor's costly golden chain--young,
+handsome, joyous and richly clad, he returned home, and knew well how
+to relate the magnificence and charms of foreign lands: young and old
+listened to him with admiration, but young Catherine most of all.
+Through him the world in her eyes became twice as large, rich, and
+beautiful; they became dear to each other, and their parents blessed
+their love. The love-pledge was to be drunk,--when there came a
+message from the King, that the young Knight must, without delay,
+again bear a letter and greeting to the Emperor Charles. The betrothed
+pair separated with heavy hearts, but with a promise of mutual
+inviolable troth. The King then invited Catherine's parents to come to
+Vadstene palace. Catherine was obliged to accompany them; here King
+Gustavus saw her for the first time, and the old man fell in love with
+her.
+
+Christmas was kept with great hilarity; there were song and harp in
+these halls, and the King himself played the lute. When the time came
+for departure, the King said to Catherine's mother, that he would
+marry the young girl.
+
+"But she is the bride of the Knight Gustavus!" stammered the mother.
+
+"Young hearts soon forget their sorrows," thought the King. The mother
+thought so likewise, and as there chanced to come a letter the same
+day and hour from the young Knight Gustavus, Fra Steenbock committed
+it to the flames. All the letters that came afterwards and all the
+letters that Catherine wrote, were burnt by her mother, and doubts and
+evil reports were whispered to Catherine, that she was forgotten
+abroad by her young lover. But Catherine was secure and firm in her
+belief of him. In the spring her parents made known to her the King's
+proposal, and praised her good fortune. She answered seriously and
+determinedly, "No!" and when they repeated to her that it should and
+must happen, she repeatedly screamed in the greatest anguish, "No no!"
+and sank exhausted at her father and mother's feet, and humbly prayed
+them not to force her.
+
+And the mother wrote to the King that all was going on well, but that
+her child was bashful. The King now announced his visit to Torpe,
+where her parents, the Steenbocks, dwelt. The King was received with
+rejoicing and feasting, but Catherine had disappeared and the King
+himself was the successful one who found her. She sat dissolved in
+tears under the wild rose tree, where she had bidden farewell to her
+heart's beloved.
+
+There was merry song and joyous life in the old mansion; Catherine
+alone was sorrowful and silent. Her mother had brought her all her
+jewels and ornaments, but she wore none of them: she had put on her
+simplest dress, but in this she only fascinated the old King the more,
+and he would have that their betrothal should take place before he
+departed. Fra Steenbock wrested the Knight Gustavus's ring from
+Catherine's finger, and whispered in her ear: "It will cost the friend
+of thy youth his life and fortune; the King can do everything!" And
+the parents led her to King Gustavus, showed him that the ring was
+from the maiden's hand; and the King placed his own golden ring on her
+finger in the other's stead. In the month of August the flag waved
+from the mast of the royal yacht which bore the young Queen over the
+Vettern. Princes and knights, in costly robes, stood by the shore,
+music played, and the people shouted. Catherine made her entry into
+Vadstene Palace. The nuptials were celebrated the following day, and
+the walls were hung with silk and velvet, with cloth of gold and
+silver! It was a festival and rejoicing. Poor Catherine!
+
+In November, the Knight Gustavus of the three roses, returned home.
+His prudent, noble mother, Christina Gyldenstjerne, met him at the
+frontiers of the kingdom, prepared him, consoled him, and soothed his
+mind: she accompanied him by slow stages to Vadstene, where they were
+both invited by the King to remain during the Christmas festival. They
+accepted the invitation, but the Knight Gustavus was not to be moved
+to come to the King's table or any other place where the Queen was to
+be found. The Christmas approached. One Sunday evening, Gustavus was
+disconsolate; the Knight was long sleepless, and at daybreak he went
+into the church, to the tomb of his ancestress, St. Bridget. There he
+saw, at a few paces from him, a female kneeling before Philippa's
+tomb. It was the Queen he saw; their eyes met, and Gustavus hastened
+away. She then mentioned his name, begged him to stay, and commanded
+him to do so.
+
+"I command it, Gustavus!" said she; "the Queen commands it."
+
+And she spoke to him; they conversed together, and it became clear to
+them both what had been done against them and with them; and she
+showed him a withered rose which she kept in her bosom, and she bent
+towards him and gave him a kiss, the last--their eternal
+leave-taking--and then they separated. He died shortly afterwards, but
+Catherine was stronger, yet not strong enough for her heart's deep
+sorrow. Here, in the bed-chamber, in uneasy dreams, says the story,
+she betrayed in sleep the constant thought of her heart, her youth's
+love, to the King, saying: "Gustavus I love dearly; but the rose--I
+shall never forget."
+
+From a secret door we walk out on to the open rampart, where the sheep
+now graze; the cattle are driven into one of the ruined towers. We see
+the palace-yard, and look from it up to a window. Come, thou
+birch-wood's thrush, and warble thy lays; sing, whilst we recal the
+bitterness of love in the rude--the chivalrous ages.
+
+Under that window there stood, one cold winter's night, wrapped in his
+white cloak, the young Count John of East Friesland. His brother had
+married Gustavus Vasa's eldest daughter, and departed with her to his
+home: wherever they came on their journey, there was mirth and
+feasting, but the most splendid was at Vadstene Palace. Cecilia, the
+King's younger daughter, had accompanied her sister hither, and was
+here, as everywhere, the first, the most beautiful in the chase as
+well as at the tournament. The winter began directly on their arrival
+at Vadstene; the cold was severe, and the Vettern frozen over. One
+day, Cecilia rode out on the ice and it broke; her brother, Prince
+Erik, came galloping to her aid. John, of East Friesland, was already
+there, and begged Erik to dismount, as he would, being on horseback,
+break the ice still more. Erik would not listen to him, and as John
+saw that there was no time for dispute, he dragged Erik from the
+horse, sprang into the water himself, and saved Cecilia. Prince Erik
+was furious with wrath, and no one could appease him. Cecilia lay long
+in a fever, and during its continuance, her love for him who had saved
+her life increased. She recovered, and they understood each other, but
+the day of separation approached. It was on the night previous that
+John, in his white cloak, ascended from stone to stone, holding by his
+silk ladder, until he at length entered the window; here they would
+converse for hours in all modesty and honour, speak about his return
+and their nuptials the following year; and whilst they sat there the
+door was hewn down with axes. Prince Erik entered, and raised the
+murderous weapon to slay the young Lord of East Friesland, when
+Cecilia threw herself between them. But Erik commanded his menials to
+seize the lover, whom they put in irons and cast into a low, dark
+hole, that cold frosty night, and the next day, without even giving
+him a morsel of bread or a drop of water, he was thrown on to a
+peasant's sledge, and dragged before the King to receive judgment.
+Erik himself cast his sister's fair name and fame into slander's
+babbling pool, and high dames and citizens' wives washed unspotted
+innocence in calumny's impure waters.
+
+It is only when the large wooden shutters of the saloons are opened,
+that the sunbeams stray in here; the dust accumulates in their twisted
+pillars, and is only just disturbed by the draught of air. In here is
+a warehouse for corn. Great fat rats make their nests in these halls.
+The spider spins mourning banners under the beams. This is Vadstene
+Palace!
+
+We are filled with sad thoughts. We turn our eyes from this place
+towards the lowly house with the grass-turf roof, where the little
+lamb crops the grass under the cherry-tree, which strews its fragrant
+leaves over it. Our thoughts descend from the rich cloister, from the
+proud palace, to the grassy turf, and the sun fades away over the
+grassy turf, and the old dame goes to sleep under the grassy turf,
+below which lie the mighty memorials of Vadstene.
+
+
+
+
+THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an elderly man on the steam-boat, with such a contented face
+that, if it did not lie, he must be the happiest man on earth. That he
+indeed said he was: I heard it from his own mouth. He was a Dane,
+consequently my countryman, and was a travelling theatrical manager.
+He had the whole _corps dramatique_ with him; they lay in a large
+chest--he was a puppet showman. His innate good-humour, said he, had
+been tried by a polytechnic candidate,[D] and from this experiment on
+his patience he had become completely happy. I did not understand him
+at the moment, but he soon laid the whole case clearly before me; and
+here it is.
+
+[Footnote D: One who has passed his examination at a polytechnic
+school.]
+
+"It was in Slagelse," said he, "that I gave a representation at the
+parsonage, and had a brilliant house and a brilliant company of
+spectators, all young persons, unconfirmed, except a few old ladies.
+Then there came a person dressed in black, having the appearance of a
+student: he sat down amongst the others, laughed quite at the proper
+time, and applauded quite correctly; that was an unusual spectator!
+
+"I was bent on ascertaining who he was, and then I heard that he was a
+candidate from the polytechnic school, who had been sent out to
+instruct people in the provinces. At eight o'clock my representation
+was over; the children were to go early to bed, and one must think of
+the convenience of the public.
+
+"At nine o'clock the candidate began his lectures and experiments, and
+now _I_ was one of _his_ auditory.
+
+"It was remarkable to hear and look at! The chief part of it went over
+my head and into the parson's, as one says. Can it be possible,
+thought I, that we human beings can find out such things? in that
+case, we must also be able to hold out longer, before we are put into
+the earth. It was merely small miracles that he performed, and yet all
+as easy as an old stocking--quite from nature. In the time of Moses
+and the prophets, such a polytechnic candidate would have been one of
+the wise men of the land, and in the Middle Ages he would have been
+burnt. I could not sleep the whole night, and as I gave a
+representation the next evening, and the candidate was there again, I
+got into a real merry humour.
+
+"I have heard of an actor, who when playing the lovers' parts, only
+thought of one of the spectators; he played for _her_ alone, and
+forgot all the rest of the house; the polytechnic candidate was my
+_her_, my only spectator, for whom I played. And when the performance
+was over, all the puppets were called forward, and I was invited by
+the polytechnic candidate to take a glass of wine with him; and he
+spoke about my comedy, and I of his science; and I believe we each
+derived equal pleasure from the other. But yet I had the advantage,
+for there was so much in his performance that he could not account
+for: as for instance, that a piece of iron which falls through a
+spiral line, becomes magnetic,--well, how is that? The spirit comes
+over it, but whence does it come from? it is just as with the human
+beings of this world, I think; our Lord lets them fall through the
+spiral line of time, and the spirit comes over them--and there stands
+a Napoleon, a Luther, or a similar person.
+
+"'All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are
+so accustomed to them that we call them things of every-day life.' And
+he spoke and he explained, so that it seemed at last as if he lifted
+my scull, and I honestly confessed, that if I were not an old fellow,
+I would go directly to the polytechnic school, and learn to examine
+the world in the summer, although I was one of the happiest of men.
+
+"'One of the happiest!' said he, and it was just as if he tasted it.
+'Are you happy?' 'Yes!' said I, 'I am happy, and I am welcome in all
+the towns I come to with my company! There is certainly one wish, that
+comes now and then like a night-mare, which rides on my good-humour,
+and that is to be a theatrical manager for a living company--a company
+of real men and women.'
+
+"'You wish to have your puppets animated; you would have them become
+real actors and actresses,' said he, 'and yourself be the manager? you
+then think that you would be perfectly happy?'
+
+"Now he did not think so, but I thought so; and we talked for and
+against; and we were just as near in our opinions as before. But we
+clinked our glasses together, and the wine was very good; but there
+was witchcraft in it, or else the short and the long of the story
+would be--that I was intoxicated.
+
+"That I was not; my eyes were quite clear; it was as if there was
+sunshine in the room, and it shone out of the face of the polytechnic
+candidate, so that I began to think of the old gods in my youth, and
+when they went about in the world. And I told him so, and then he
+smiled, and I durst have sworn that he was a disguised god, or one of
+the family!--And he was so--my first wish was to be fulfilled: the
+puppets become living beings and I the manager of men and women. We
+drank that it should be so! he put all my puppets in the wooden chest,
+fastened it on my back, and then let me fall through a spiral line. I
+can still hear how I came down, slap! I lay on the floor, that is
+quite sure and certain, and the whole company sprang out of the chest.
+The spirit had come over us all together; all the puppets had become
+excellent artists--they said so themselves--and I was the manager.
+Everything was in order for the first representation; the whole
+company must speak with me, and the public also. The female dancer
+said, that if she did not stand on one leg, the house would be in an
+uproar: she was master of the whole and would be treated as such.
+
+"She who played the queen, would also be treated as a queen when off
+the stage, or else she should get out of practice, and he who was
+employed to come in with a letter made himself as important as the
+first lover. 'For,' said he, 'the small are of just as much importance
+as the great, in an artistic whole.' Then the hero demanded that the
+whole of his part should only be retorts on making his exit, for these
+the public applauded; the prima donna would only play in a red light,
+for that suited her best--she would not be blue: they were all like
+flies in a bottle, and I was also in the bottle--for I was the
+manager. I lost my breath, my head was quite dizzy! I was as miserable
+as a man can be; it was a new race of beings I had come amongst; I
+wished that I had them altogether again in the chest, that I had never
+been a manager: I told them that they were in fact only puppets, and
+so they beat me to death. That was my feeling!
+
+"I lay on the bed in my chamber; but how I had come there from the
+polytechnic candidate, he must know best--for I do not. The moon shone
+in on the floor where the puppet-chest lay upset, and all the puppets
+spread about--great and small, the whole lot. But I was not floored! I
+sprang out of bed, and threw them all into the chest; some on their
+heads, and some on their legs; I smacked the lid down and sat myself
+upon it: it was worth painting, can't you conceive it? I can! 'Now you
+shall be there!' said I, 'and I will never more wish that you may
+become flesh and blood!' I was so glad; I was the happiest man
+alive--the polytechnic candidate had tried me! I sat in perfect bliss,
+and fell asleep on the chest; and in the morning--it was, properly
+speaking, at noon, for I slept so very long that morning--I sat there
+still, happy and edified--I saw that my previous and only wish had
+been stupid. I inquired for the polytechnic candidate, but he was
+gone, like the Greek and Roman gods.
+
+"And from that time I have been the happiest man alive. I am a
+fortunate manager; my company does not argue with me, neither does the
+public; they are amused to their heart's content, and I can myself put
+all my pieces nicely together. I take the best parts out of all sorts
+of comedies that I choose, and no one troubles himself about it.
+Pieces that are now despised at the large theatres, but which thirty
+years ago the public ran to see, and cried over--those pieces I now
+make use of. I now present them before the young folks; and the young
+folks--they cry just as their fathers and mothers used to do. I give
+'Johanna Montfakon' and 'Dyveke,' but abbreviated; for the little
+folks do not like long, twaddling love-stories. They must have it
+unfortunate--but it must be brief. Now that I have travelled through
+Denmark, both to the right and left, I know everybody and am known
+again. Now I have come to Sweden, and if I am successful and gain much
+money, I will be a Scandinavian, if the humour hold; and this I tell
+you, as you are my countryman."
+
+And I, as his countryman, naturally tell it again--only for the sake
+of telling it.
+
+
+
+
+THE "SKJÄRGAARDS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The canal voyage through Sweden goes at first constantly upwards,
+through elvs and lakes, forests and rocky land. From the heights we
+look down on vast extents of forest-land and large waters, and by
+degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents. At Mem
+we are again down by the salt fiord: a solitary tower raises its head
+between the remains of low, thick walls--it is the ruins of Stegeberg.
+The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests,
+which enclose small grass-grown valleys. The screaming sea-gulls fly
+around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze:
+it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings,
+sons of high-born fathers, exercised their deeds here. The same sea's
+surface then appeared to them as now to us, with its numberless isles,
+which lie strewed about here in the water by thousands along the whole
+coast. The depth of water between the rocky isles and the solid land
+is that we call "The Skjärgaards:" their waters flow into each other
+with varying splendour. We see it in the sunshine, and it is like a
+large English landscape garden; but the greensward plain is here the
+deep sea, the flower-beds in it are rocks and reefs, rich in firs and
+pines, oaks and bushes. Mark how, when the wind blows from the east,
+and the sea breaks over sunken rocks and is dashed back again in spray
+from the cliffs, your limbs feel--even through the ship on which you
+stand--the power of the sea: you are lifted as if by supernatural
+hands.
+
+We rush on against wind and sea, as if it were the sea-god's snorting
+horse that bore us; from Skjärgaard to Skjärgaard. The signal-gun is
+fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house. Sometimes
+we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark,
+stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water: one has
+the form of the tortoise's arched shell, another has the elephant's
+back and rough grey colour. Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that
+the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.
+
+We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks
+of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat
+with the blast; the Skjärgaards sometimes become only a narrow canal,
+sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone,
+and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little
+fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the
+land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose
+red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background. A group of
+cows lies basking in the sun on the stony surface, near a little
+smiling pasture, which appears to have been cultivated here or cut out
+of a meadow in Scania. How solitary must it not be to live on that
+little island! Ask the boy who sits there by the cattle, he will be
+able to tell us. "It is lively and merry here," says he. "The day is
+so long and light, the seal sits out there on the stone and barks in
+the early morning hour, and all the steamers from the canal must pass
+here. I know them all; and when the sun goes down in the evening, it
+is a whole history to look into the clouds over the land: there stand
+mountains with palaces, in silver and in gold, in red and in blue;
+sailing dragons with golden crowns, or an old giant with a beard down
+to his waist--altogether of clouds, and they are always changing.
+
+"The storms come on in the autumn, and then there is often much
+anxiety when father is out to help ships in distress; but one becomes,
+as it were, a new being.
+
+"In winter the ice is locked fast and firm, and we drive from island
+to island and to the main land; and if the bear or the wolf pays us a
+visit we take his skin for a winter covering: it is warm in the room
+there, and they read and tell stories about old times!"
+
+Yes, old Time, how thou dost unfold thyself with remembrances of these
+very Skjärgaards--old Time which belonged to the brave. These waters,
+these rocky isles and strands, saw heroes more greatly active than
+actively good: they swung the axe to give the mortal blow, or as they
+called it, "the whining Jetteqvinde."[E]
+
+[Footnote E: Giantess.]
+
+Here came the Vikings with their ships: on the headland yonder they
+levied provisions; the grazing cattle were slaughtered and borne away.
+Ye mouldering cliffs, had ye but a tongue, ye might tell us about the
+duels with the two-handed sword--about the deeds of the giants. Ye saw
+the hero hew with the sword, and cast the javelin: his left hand was
+as cunning as his right The sword moved so quickly in the air that
+there seemed to be three. Ye saw him, when he in all his martial array
+sprang forwards and backwards, higher than he himself was tall, and if
+he sprang into the sea he swam like a whale. Ye saw the two
+combatants: the one darted his javelin, the other caught it in the
+air, and cast it back again, so that it pierced through shield and man
+down into the earth. Ye saw warriors with sharp swords and angry
+hearts; the sword was struck downwards so as to cut the knee, out the
+combatant sprang into the air, and the sword whizzed under his feet.
+Mighty Sagas from the olden times! Mouldering rocks, could ye but tell
+us of these things!
+
+Ye, deep waters, bore the Vikings' ships, and when the strong in
+battle lifted the iron anchor and cast it against the enemy's vessel,
+so that the planks were rent asunder, ye poured your dark heavy seas
+into the hold, so that the bark sank. The wild _Berserk_ who with
+naked breast stood against his enemy's blows, mad as a dog, howling
+like a bear, tearing his shield asunder, rushing to the bottom of the
+sea here, and fetching up stones, which ordinary men could not
+raise--history peoples these waters, these cliffs for us! A future
+poet will conjure them to this Scandinavian Archipelago, chisel the
+true forms out of the old Sagas, the bold, the rude, the greatness and
+imperfections of the time, in their habits as they lived.
+
+They rise again for us on yonder island, where the wind is whistling
+through the young fir wood. The house is of beams, roofed with bark;
+the smoke from the fire on the broad stone in the hall, whirls through
+the air-hole, near which stands the cask of mead; the cushions lie on
+the bench before the closed bedsteads; deer-skins hang over the balk
+walls, ornamented with shields, helmets, and armour. Effigies of gods,
+carved, on wooden poles, stand before the high seat where the noble
+Viking sits, a high-born father's youngest son, great in fame, but
+still greater in deeds; the skjalds (bards) and foster-brothers sit
+nearest to him. They defended the coasts of their countrymen, and the
+pious women; they fetched wheat and honey from England, they went to
+the White Sea for sables and furs--their adventures are related in
+song. We see the old man ride in rich clothing, with gloves sewn with
+golden thread, and with a hat brought from Garderige; we see the youth
+with a golden fillet around his brow; we see him at the _Thing_; we
+see him in battle and in play, where the best is he that can cut off
+the other's eyebrows without scratching the skin, or causing a wink
+with the eyes, on pain of losing his station. The woman sits in the
+log-house at her loom, and in the late moonlight nights the spirits of
+the fallen come and sit down around the fire, where they shake the
+wet, dripping clothes; but the serf sleeps in the ashes, and on the
+kitchen bench, and dreams that he dips his bread in the fat soup, and
+licks his fingers.
+
+Thou future poet, thou wilt call forth the vanished forms from the
+Sagas, thou wilt people these islands, and let us glide past these
+reminiscences of the olden time with the mind full of them; clearly
+and truly wilt thou let us glide, as we now with the power of steam
+fly past that firmly standing scenery, the swelling sea, rocks and
+reefs, the main land, and wood-grown islands.
+
+We are already past Braavigen, where numberless ships from the
+northern kingdoms lay, when Upsala's King, Sigurd Ring, came,
+challenged by Harald Hildetand, who, old and grey, feared to die on a
+sick bed, and would fall in battle; and the mainland thundered like
+the plains of Marathon beneath the tramp of horses' hoofs during the
+battle:[F] bards and female warriors surrounded the Danish King. The
+blind old man raised himself high in his chariot, gave his horse free
+rein, and hewed his way. Odin himself had due reverence paid to
+Hildetand's bones; and the pile was kindled, and the King laid on it,
+and Sigurd conjured all to cast gold and weapons, the most valuable
+they possessed, into the fire; and the bards sang to it, and the
+female warriors struck the spears on the bright shields. Upsala's
+Lord, Sigurd Ring, became King of Sweden and Denmark: so says the
+Saga, which sounded over the land and water from these coasts.
+
+[Footnote F: The battle of Braavalla.]
+
+The memorials of olden times pass swiftly through our thoughts; we fly
+past the scene of manly exercises and great deeds in the olden
+times--the ship cleaves the mighty waters with its iron paddles, from
+Skjärgaard to Skjärgaard.
+
+
+
+
+STOCKHOLM.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We cast runes[G] here on the paper, and from the white ground the
+picture of Birger Jarl's six hundred years old city rises before thee.
+
+[Footnote G: "To cast runes" was, in the olden time, to exercise
+witchcraft. When the apple, with ciphers cut in it, rolled into the
+maiden's lap, her heart and mind were infatuated.]
+
+The runes roll, you see! Wood-grown rocky isles appear in the light,
+grey morning mist; numberless flocks of wild birds build their nests
+in safety here, where the fresh waters of the Mälaren rush into the
+salt sea. The Viking's ship comes; King Agna stands by the prow--he
+brings as booty the King of Finland's daughter. The oak-tree spreads
+its branches over their bridal chamber; at daybreak the oak-tree bears
+King Agna, hanged in his long golden chain: that is the bride's work,
+and the ship sails away again with her and the rescued Fins.
+
+The clouds drive past--the years too.
+
+Hunters and fishermen erect themselves huts;--it is again deserted
+here, where the sea-birds alone have their homes. What is it that so
+frightens these numberless flocks? the wild duck and sea-gull fly
+screaming about, there is a hammering and driving of piles. Oluf
+Skötkonge has large beams bored down into the ground, and strong iron
+chains fastened across the stream: "Thou art caught, Oluf
+Haraldson,[H] caught with the ships and crews, with which thou didst
+devastate the royal city Sigtuna; thou canst not escape from the
+closed Mälar lake!"
+
+[Footnote H: Afterwards called Saint Oluf.]
+
+It is but the work of one night; the same night when Oluf Hakonson,
+with iron and with fire, burst his onward way through the stubborn
+ground; before the day breaks the waters of the Mälar roll there; the
+Norwegian prince, Oluf sailed through the royal channel he had cut in
+the east. The stockades, where the iron chains hang, must bear the
+defences; the citizens from the burnt-down Sigtuna erect themselves a
+bulwark here, and build their new, little town on stock-holms.[I]
+
+[Footnote I: Stock, signifies bulks, or beams; holms, i.e. islets,
+or river islands; hence Stockholm.]
+
+The clouds go, and the years go! Do you see how the gables grow? there
+rise towers and forts. Birger Jarl makes the town of Stockholm a
+fortress; the warders stand with bow and arrow on the walls,
+reconnoitring over lake and fjord, over Brunkaberg sand-ridge. There
+were the sand-ridge slopes upwards from Rörstrand's Lake they build
+Clara cloister, and between it and the town a street springs up:
+several more appear; they form an extensive city, which soon becomes
+the place of contest for different partisans, where Ladelaas's sons
+plant the banner, and where the German Albrecht's retainers burn the
+Swedes alive within its walls. Stockholm is, however, the heart of the
+kingdom: that the Danes know well; that the Swedes know too, and there
+is strife and bloody combating. Blood flows by the executioner's hand,
+Denmark's Christian the Second, Sweden's executioner, stands in the
+market-place.
+
+Roll, ye runes! see over Brunkaberg sand-ridge, where the Swedish
+people conquered the Danish host, there they raise the May-pole: it is
+midsummer-eve--Gustavus Vasa makes his entry into Stockholm.
+
+Around the May-pole there grow fruit and kitchen-gardens, houses and
+streets; they vanish in flames, they rise again; that gloomy fortress
+towards the tower is transformed into a palace, and the city stands
+magnificently with towers and draw-bridges. There grows a town by
+itself on the sand-ridge, a third springs up on the rock towards the
+south; the old walls fall at Gustavus Adolphus's command; the three
+towns are one, large and extensive, picturesquely varied with old
+stone houses, wooden shops, and grass-roofed huts; the sun shines on
+the brass balls of the towers, and a forest of masts stands in that
+secure harbour.
+
+Rays of beauty shoot forth into the world from Versailles' painted
+divinity; they reach the Mälar's strand into Tessin's[J] palace, where
+art and science are invited as guests with the King, Gustavus the
+Third, whose effigy cast in bronze is raised on the strand before the
+splendid palace--it is in our times. The acacia shades the palace's
+high terrace on whose broad balustrades flowers send forth their
+perfume from Saxon porcelain; variegated silk curtains hang half-way
+down before the large glass windows; the floors are polished smooth as
+a mirror, and under the arch yonder, where the roses grow by the wall,
+the Endymion of Greece lives eternally in marble. As a guard of honour
+here, stand Fogelberg's Odin, and Sergei's Amor and Psyche.
+
+[Footnote J: The architect Tessin.]
+
+We now descend the broad, royal staircase, and before it, where, in
+by-gone times, Oluf Skötkonge stretched the iron chains across the
+mouth of the Mälar Lake, there is now a splendid bridge with shops
+above and the Streamparterre below: there we see the little steamer
+'Nocken,'[K] steering its way, filled with passengers from Diurgarden
+to the Streamparterre. And what is the Streamparterre? The Neapolitans
+would tell us: It is in miniature--quite in miniature--the
+Stockholmers' "Villa Reale." The Hamburgers would say: It is in
+miniature--quite in miniature--the Stockholmers' "Jungfernstieg."
+
+[Footnote K: The water-sprite.]
+
+It is a very little semi-circular island, on which the arches of the
+bridge rest; a garden full of flowers and trees, which we overlook
+from the high parapet of the bridge. Ladies and gentlemen promenade
+there; musicians play, families sit there in groups, and take
+refreshments in the vaulted halls under the bridge, and look out
+between the green trees over the open water, to the houses and
+mansions, and also to the woods and rocks: we forget that we are in
+the midst of the city.
+
+It is the bridge here that unites Stockholm with Nordmalen, where the
+greatest part of the fashionable world live, in two long Berlin-like
+streets; yet amongst all the great houses we will only visit one, and
+that is the theatre.
+
+We will go on the stage itself--it has an historical signification.
+Here, by the third side-scene from the stage-lights, to the right, as
+we look down towards the audience, Gustavus the Third was assassinated
+at a masquerade; and he was borne into that little chamber there,
+close by the scene, whilst all the outlets were closed, and the motley
+group of harlequins, polichinellos, wild men, gods and goddesses with
+unmasked faces, pale and terrified crept together; the dancing
+ballet-farce had become a real tragedy.
+
+This theatre is Jenny Lind's childhood's home. Here she has sung in
+the choruses when a little girl; here she first made her appearance in
+public, and was cheeringly encouraged when a child; here, poor and
+sorrowful, she has shed tears, when her voice left her, and sent up
+pious prayers to her Maker. From hence the world's nightingale flew
+out over distant lands, and proclaimed the purity and holiness of art.
+
+How beautiful it is to look out from the window up here, to look over
+the water and the Streamparterre to that great, magnificent palace, to
+Ladegaards land, with the large barracks, to Skipholmen and the rocks
+that rise straight up from the water, with Södermalm's gardens,
+villas, streets, and church cupolas between the green trees: the ships
+lie there together, so many and so close, with their waving flags. The
+beautiful, that a poet's eye sees, the world may also see! Roll, ye
+runes!
+
+There sketches the whole varied prospect; a rainbow extends its arch
+like a frame around it. Only see! it is sunset, the sky becomes
+cloudy over Södermalm, the grey sky becomes darker and darker--a
+pitch-dark ground--and on it rests a double rainbow. The houses are
+illumined by so strong a sunlight that the walls seem transparent;
+the linden-trees in the gardens, which have lately put forth their
+leaves, appear like fresh, young woods; the long, narrow windows in
+the Gothic buildings on the island shine as if it were a festal
+illumination, and between the dark firs there falls a lustre from the
+panes behind them as of a thousand flames, as if the trees were
+covered with flickering--Christmas lights; the colours of the rainbow
+become stronger and stronger, the background darker and darker, and
+the white sun-lit sea-gulls fly past.
+
+The rainbow has placed one foot high up on Södermalm's churchyard.
+Where the rainbow touches the earth, there lie treasures buried, is a
+popular belief here. The rainbow rests on a grave up there: Stagnalius
+rests here, Sweden's most gifted singer, so young and so unhappy; and
+in the same grave lies Nicander, he who sang about King Enzio, and of
+"Lejonet i Oken;"[L] who sang with a bleeding heart: the fresh
+vine-leaf cooled the wound and killed the singer. Peace be with his
+dust--may his songs live for ever! We go to your grave where the
+rainbow points. The view from here is splendid. The houses rise
+terrace-like in the steep, paved streets; the foot-passengers can,
+however, shorten the way by going through narrow lanes, and up steps
+made of thick beams, and always with a prospect downwards of the
+water, of the rocks and green trees! It is delightful to dwell here,
+it is healthy to dwell here, but it is not genteel, as it is by
+Brunkaberg's sand-ridge, yet it will become so: Stockholm's "Strada
+Balbi" will one day arise on Södermalm's rocky ground.
+
+[Footnote L: "The Lion in the desert;" i.e. Napoleon.]
+
+We stand up here. What other city in the world has a better prospect
+over the salt fjord, over the fresh lake, over towers, cupolas,
+heaped-up houses, and a palace, which King Enzio himself might have
+built, and round about the dark, gloomy forests with oaks, pines and
+firs, so Scandinavian, dreaming in the declining sun? It is twilight;
+the night comes on, the lamps are lighted in the city below, the stars
+are kindled in the firmament above, and the tower of Redderholm's
+church rises aloft towards the starry space. The stars shine through
+there; it is as if cut in lace, but every thread is of cast-iron and
+of the thickness of beams.
+
+We go down there, and in there, in the stilly eve.--A world of spirits
+reigns within. See, in the vaulted isles, on carved wooden horses,
+sits armour, that was once borne by Magnus Ladelaas, Christian the
+Second, and Charles the Ninth. A thousand flags that once waved to the
+peal of music and the clang of arms, to the darted javelin and the
+cannon's roar, moulder away here: they hang in long rags from the
+staff, and the staves lie cast aside, where the flag has long since
+become dust. Almost all the Kings of Sweden slumber in silver and
+copper coffins within these walls. From the altar aisle we look
+through the open-grated door, in between piled-up drums and hanging
+flags: here is preserved a bloody tunic, and in the coffin are the
+remains of Gustavus Adolphus. Who is that dead opposite neighbour in
+the chapel, across there in the other side-aisle of the church? There,
+below a glass lid, lies a dress shot through, and on the floor stands
+a pair of long, thick boots--they belonged to the hero-King, the
+wanderer, Charles XII., whose realm is now this narrow coffin.
+
+How sacred it is here under this vaulted roof! The mightiest men of
+centuries are gathered together here, perishable as these moth-eaten
+flags--mute and yet so eloquent. And without there is life and
+activity: the world goes on in its old course; generations change in
+the old houses; the houses change--yet Stockholm is always the heart
+of Sweden, Birger's city, whose features are continually renewed,
+continually beautified.
+
+
+
+
+DIURGAERDEN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Diurgaerden is a large piece of land made into a garden by our Lord
+himself. Come with us over there. We are still in the city, but before
+the palace lie the broad hewn stone stairs, leading down to the water,
+where the Dalkulls--i.e., the Dalecarlian women--stand and ring with
+metal bells. On board! here are boats enough to choose amongst, all
+with wheels, which the Dalkulls turn. In coarse white linen, red
+stockings, with green heels, and singularly thick-soled shoes, with
+the upper-leather right up the shin-bone, stands the Dalkull; she has
+ornamented the boat, that now shoots away, with green branches. Houses
+and streets rise and unfold themselves; churches and gardens start
+forth; they stand on Södermalm high above the tops of the ships'
+masts. The scenery reminds one of the Bhosphorus and Pera; the motley
+dress of the Dalkulls is quite Oriental--and listen! the wind bears
+melancholy Skalmeie tones out to us. Two poor Dalecarlians are playing
+music on the quay; they are the same drawn-out, melancholy tones that
+are played by the Bulgarian musicians in the streets of Pera. We stept
+out, and are in the Diurgarden.
+
+What a crowd of equipages pass in rows through the broad avenue! and
+what a throng of well-dressed pedestrians of all classes! One thinks
+of the garden of the Villa Borghese, when, at the time of the wine
+feast, the Roman people and strangers take the air there. We are in
+the Borghese garden; we are by the Bosphorus, and yet far in the
+North. The pine-tree rises large and free; the birch droops its
+branches, as the weeping willow alone has power to do--and what
+magnificently grand oaks! The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees,
+beautiful to the painter's eye; splendid green grass plains lie
+stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close
+past, as if it were a river. Large ships with swelling sails, the one
+high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied
+numbers.
+
+Come! let us up to Byström's villa; it lies on the stony cliff up
+there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur: we
+see from here the whole tripartite city, Södermalm, Nordmalm and the
+island with that huge palace. It is delightful, the building here on
+this rock, and the building stands, and that almost entirely of
+marble, a "Casa santa d'Italia," as if borne through the air here in
+the North. The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but
+heavy: there is nothing genial. Round about stand large marble figures
+by Byström, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity. Madonna is
+encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the
+flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the
+weeping Cupid, one thinks of a _pose_ arranged by a ballet-master.
+
+Let us, however, see what is pretty. The little Cupid-seller is
+pretty, and the stone is made as flexible as life in the waists of the
+bathing-women. One of them, as she steps out, feels the water with her
+feet, and we feel, with her, a sensation that the water is cold. The
+coolness of the marble-hall realizes this feeling. Let us go out into
+the sunshine, and up to the neighbouring cliff, which rises above the
+mansions and houses. Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices
+in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and
+the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze
+bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that
+Scandinavian improvisatore. Here he lay in the grass, composed and
+sang his anacreontic songs, and here, in the summer-time, his annual
+festival is held. We will raise his altar here in the red evening
+sunlight. It is a flaming bowl, raised high on the jolly tun, and it
+is wreathed with roses. Morits tries his hunting-horn, that which was
+Oberon's horn in the inn-parlour, and everything danced, from Ulla to
+"Mutter paa Toppen:"[M] they stamped with their feet and clapped their
+hands, and clinked the pewter lid of the ale-tankard; "hej kara Sjæl!
+fukta din aske!" (Hey! dear soul! moisten your clay).
+
+[Footnote M: The landlady of an alehouse.]
+
+A Teniers' picture became animated, and still lives in song. Morits
+blows the horn on Bellmann's place around the flowing bowl, and whole
+crowds dance in a circle, young and old; the carriages too, horses and
+waggons, filled bottles and clattering tankards: the Bellmann
+dithyrambic clangs melodiously; humour and low life, sadness--and
+amongst others, about
+
+    "----hur ögat gret
+     Ved de Cypresser, som ströddes."[N]
+
+[Footnote N: How the eyes wept by the cypresses that were strewn
+around.]
+
+Painter, seize thy brush and palette and paint the Maenade--but not
+her who treads the winebag, whilst her hair flutters in the wind, and
+she sings ecstatic songs. No, but the Maenade that ascends from
+Bellmann's steaming bowl is the Punch's Anadyomene--she, with the high
+heels to the red shoes, with rosettes on her gown and with fluttering
+veil and mantilla--fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose
+of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks
+with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about
+breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible
+that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce
+to us the human heart's sadness and hope.
+
+
+
+
+A STORY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the apple-trees in the garden had sprung out. They had made haste
+to get blossoms before they got green leaves; and all the ducklings
+were out in the yard--and the cat too! He was, so to speak, permeated
+by the sunshine; he licked it from his own paws; and if one looked
+towards the fields, one saw the corn standing so charmingly green! And
+there was such a twittering and chirping amongst all the small birds,
+just as if it were a great feast. And that one might indeed say it
+was, for it was Sunday. The bells rang, and people in their best
+clothes went to church, and looked so pleased. Yes, there was
+something so pleasant in everything: it was indeed so fine and warm a
+day, that one might well say: "Our Lord is certainly unspeakably good
+towards us poor mortals!"
+
+But the clergyman stood in the pulpit in the church, and spoke so loud
+and so angrily! He said that mankind was so wicked, and that God would
+punish them for it, and that when they died, the wicked went down into
+hell, where they would burn for ever; and he said that their worm
+would never die, and their fire never be extinguished, nor would they
+ever get rest and peace!
+
+It was terrible to hear, and he said it so determinedly. He described
+hell to them as a pestilential hole, where all the filthiness of the
+world flowed together. There was no air except the hot, sulphurous
+flames; there was no bottom; they sank and sank into everlasting
+silence! It was terrible, only to hear about it; but the clergyman
+said it right honestly out of his heart, and all the people in the
+church were quite terrified. But all the little birds outside the
+church sang so pleasantly, and so pleased, and the sun shone so
+warm:--it was as if every little flower said: "God is so wondrous good
+to us altogether!" Yes, outside it was not at all as the clergyman
+preached.
+
+In the evening, when it was bed-time, the clergyman saw his wife sit
+so still and thoughtful.
+
+"What ails you?" said he to her.
+
+"What ails me?" she replied; "what ails me is, that I cannot collect
+my thoughts rightly--that I cannot rightly understand what you said;
+that there were so many wicked, and that they should burn
+eternally!--eternally, alas, how long! I am but a sinful being; but I
+could not bear the thought in my heart to allow even the worst sinner
+to burn for ever. And how then should our Lord permit it? he who is so
+wondrously good, and who knows how evil comes both from without and
+within. No, I cannot believe it, though you say it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was autumn. The leaves fell from the trees; the grave, severe
+clergyman sat by the bedside of a dying person; a pious believer
+closed her eyes--it was the clergyman's own wife.
+
+"If any one find peace in the grave, and grace from God, then it is
+thou," said the clergyman, and he folded her hands, and read a psalm
+over the dead body.
+
+And she was borne to the grave: two heavy tears trickled down that
+stern man's cheeks; and it was still and vacant in the parsonage; the
+sunshine within was extinguished:--she was gone.
+
+It was night. A cold wind blew over the clergyman's head; he opened
+his eyes, and it was just as if the moon shone into his room. But the
+moon did not shine. It was a figure which stood before his bed--he saw
+the spirit of his deceased wife. She looked on him so singularly
+afflicted; it seemed as though she would say something.
+
+The man raised himself half erect in bed, and stretched his arms out
+towards her.
+
+"Not even to thee is granted everlasting peace. Thou dost suffer;
+thou, the best, the most pious!"
+
+And the dead bent her head in confirmation of his words, and laid her
+hand on her breast.
+
+"And can I procure you peace in the grave?"
+
+"Yes!" it sounded in his ear.
+
+"And how?"
+
+"Give me a hair, but a single hair of the head of that sinner, whose
+fire will never be quenched; that sinner whom God will cast down into
+hell, to everlasting torment."
+
+"Yes; so easily thou canst be liberated, thou pure, thou pious one!"
+said he.
+
+"Then follow me," said the dead; "it is so granted us. Thou canst be
+by my side, wheresoever thy thoughts will. Invisible to mankind, we
+stand in their most secret places; but thou must point with a sure
+hand to the one destined to eternal punishment, and ere the cock crow
+he must be found."
+
+And swift, as if borne on the wings of thought, they were in the great
+city, and the names of the dying sinners shone from the walls of the
+houses in letters of fire: "Arrogance, Avarice, Drunkenness,
+Voluptuousness;" in short, sin's whole seven-coloured arch.
+
+"Yes, in there, as I thought it, as I knew it," said the clergyman,
+"are housed those condemned to eternal fire."
+
+And they stood before the splendidly-illumined portico, where the
+broad stairs were covered with carpets and flowers, and the music of
+the dance sounded through the festal saloons. The porter stood there
+in silk and velvet, with a large silver-headed stick.
+
+"_Our_ ball can match with the King's," said he, and turned towards
+the crowd in the street--his magnificent thoughts were visible in his
+whole person. "Poor devils! who stare in at the portico, you are
+altogether ragamuffins, compared to me!"
+
+"Arrogance," said the dead; "dost thou see him?"
+
+"Him!" repeated the clergyman; "he is a simpleton--a fool only, and
+will not be condemned to eternal fire and torment."
+
+"A fool only," sounded through the whole house of Arrogance.
+
+And they flew into the four bare walls of Avarice, where skinny,
+meagre, shivering with cold, hungry and thirsty, the old man clung
+fast with all his thoughts to his gold. They saw how he, as in a
+fever, sprang from his wretched pallet, and took a loose stone out of
+the wall. There lay gold coins in a stocking-foot; he fumbled at his
+ragged tunic, in which gold coins were sewed fast, and his moist
+fingers trembled.
+
+"He is ill: it is insanity; encircled by fear and evil dreams."
+
+And they flew away in haste, and stood by the criminals' wooden couch,
+where they slept side by side in long rows. One of them started up
+from his sleep like a wild animal, and uttered a hideous scream: he
+struck his companion with his sharp elbow, and the latter turned
+sleepily round.
+
+"Hold your tongue, you beast, and sleep! this is your way every night!
+Every night!" he repeated; "yes, you come every night, howling and
+choking me! I have done one thing or another in a passion; I was born
+with a passionate temper, and it has brought me in here a second time;
+but if I have done wrong, so have I also got my punishment. But one
+thing I have not confessed. When I last went out from here, and passed
+by my master's farm, one thing and another boiled up in me, and I
+directly stroked a lucifer against the wall: it came a little too near
+the thatch, and everything was burnt--hot-headedness came over it,
+just as it comes over me, I helped to save the cattle and furniture.
+Nothing living was burnt, except a flock of pigeons: they flew into
+the flames, and the yard dog. I had not thought of the dog. I could
+hear it howl, and that howl I always hear yet, when I would sleep; and
+if I do get to sleep, the dog comes also--so large and hairy! He lies
+down on me, howls, and strangles me! Do but hear what I am telling
+you. Snore--yes, that you can--snore the whole night through, and I
+not even a quarter of an hour!"
+
+And the blood shone from the eyes of the fiery one; he fell on his
+companion, and struck him in the face with his clenched fist.
+
+"Angry Mads has become mad again!" resounded on all sides, and the
+other rascals seized hold of him, wrestled with him, and bent him
+double, so that his head was forced between his legs, where they bound
+it fast, so that the blood was nearly springing out of his eyes, and
+all the pores.
+
+"You will kill him!" said the clergyman,--"poor unfortunate!" and as
+he stretched his hands out over him, who had already suffered too
+severely, in order to prevent further mischief, the scene changed.
+
+They flew through rich halls, and through poor chambers;
+voluptuousness and envy, all mortal sins strode past them. A recording
+angel read their sin and their defence; this was assuredly little for
+God, for God reads the heart; He knows perfectly the evil that comes
+within it and from without, He, grace, all-loving kindness. The hand
+of the clergyman trembled: he did not venture to stretch it out, to
+pluck a hair from the sinner's head. And the tears streamed down from
+his eyes, like the waters of _grace_ and love, which quenched the
+eternal fire of hell.
+
+The cock then crowed.
+
+"Merciful God! Thou wilt grant her that peace in the grave which I
+have not been able to redeem."
+
+"That I now have!" said the dead; "it was thy hard words, thy dark,
+human belief of God and his creatures, which drove me to thee! Learn
+to know mankind; even in the bad there is a part of God--a part that
+will conquer and quench the fire of hell."
+
+And a kiss was pressed on the clergyman's lips:--it shone around him.
+God's clear, bright sun shone into the chamber, where his wife,
+living, mild, and affectionate, awoke him from a dream, sent from God!
+
+
+
+
+UPSALA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is commonly said, that Memory is a young girl with light blue eyes.
+Most poets say so; but we cannot always agree with most poets. To us
+memory comes in quite different forms, all according to that land, or
+that town to which she belongs. Italy sends her as a charming Mignon,
+with black eyes and a melancholy smile, singing Bellini's soft,
+touching songs. From Scotland Memory's sprite appears as a powerful
+lad with bare knees; the plaid hangs over his shoulder, the
+thistle-flower is fixed on his cap; Burns's songs then fill the air
+like the heath-lark's song, and Scotland's wild thistle flowers
+beautifully fragrant as the fresh rose. But now for Memory's sprite
+from Sweden, from Upsala. He comes thence in the form of a student--at
+least, he wears the Upsala student's white cap with the black rim. To
+us it points out its home, as the Phrygian cap denotes Ganymede.
+
+It was in the year 1843, that the Danish students travelled to Upsala.
+Young hearts met together; eyes sparkled: they laughed, they sang.
+Young hearts are the future--the conquering future--in the beautiful,
+true and good; it is so good that brothers should know and love each
+other. Friendship's meeting is still annually remembered in the
+palace-yard of Upsala, before the monument of Gustavus Vasa--by the
+hurra! for Denmark, in warm-hearted compliment to me.
+
+Two summers afterwards, the visit was returned. The Swedish students
+came to Copenhagen, and that they might there be known amongst the
+multitude, the Upsala students wore a white cap with a black rim: this
+cap is accordingly a memorial,--the sign of friendship's bridge over
+that river of blood which once flowed between kindred nations. When
+one meets in heart and spirit, a blissful seed is then sown. Memory's
+sprite, come to us! we know thee by the cap from Upsala: be thou our
+guide, and from our more southern home, after years and days, we will
+make the voyage over again, quicker than if we flew in Doctor Faustus'
+magic cloak. We are in Stockholm: we stand on the Ridderholm where the
+steamers lie alongside the bulwarks: one of them sends forth clouds of
+thick smoke from its chimney; the deck is crowded with passengers, and
+the white cap with the black rim is not wanting.
+
+We are off to Upsala; the paddles strike the waters of the Mälar, and
+we shoot away from the picturesque city of Stockholm. The whole
+voyage, direct to Upsala, is a kaleidescope on a large scale. It is
+true, there is nothing of the magical in the scenery, but landscape
+gives place to landscape, and clouds and sunshine refresh their
+variegated beauty. The Mälar lake curves, is compressed, and widens
+again: it is as if one passed from lake to lake through narrow canals
+and broad rivers. Sometimes it appears as if the lake ended in small
+rivulets between dark pines and rocks, when suddenly another large
+lake, surrounded by corn fields and meadows, opens itself to view: the
+light-green linden trees, which have just unfolded their leaves, shine
+forth before the dark grey rocks. Again a new lake opens before us,
+with islets, trees and red painted houses, and during the whole voyage
+there is a lively arrival and departure of passengers, in flat
+bottomed boats, which are nearly upset in the billowy wake of the
+vessel.
+
+It appears most dangerous opposite to Sigtuna, Sweden's old royal
+city: the lake is broad here; the waves rise as if they were the
+waters of the ocean; the boats rock--it is fearful to look at! But
+here there must be a calm; and Sigtuna, that little interesting town
+where the old towers stand in ruins, like outposts along the rocks,
+reflects itself in the water.
+
+We fly past! and now we are in Tyris rivulet! Part of a meadow is
+flooded; a herd of horses become shy from the snorting of the
+steamer's engine; they dash through the water in the meadow, and it
+spurts up all over them. It glitters there between the trees on the
+declivity: the Upsala students lie encamped there, and exercise
+themselves in the use of arms.
+
+The rivulet forms a bay, and the high plain extends itself. We see old
+Upsala's hills; we see Upsala's city with its church, which, like
+Notre Dame, raises its stony arms towards heaven. The university rises
+to the view, in appearance half palace and half barracks, and there
+aloft, on the greensward-clothed bank, stands the old red-painted huge
+palace with its towers.
+
+We stop at the bulwark near the arched bridge, and so go on shore.
+Whither wilt thou conduct us first, thou our guide with the
+white-and-black student's cap? Shall we go up to the palace, or to
+Linnaeus's garden! or shall we go to the church-yard where the nettles
+grow over Geier's and Törnro's graves? No, but to the young and the
+living Upsala's life--the students. Thou tellest us about them; we
+hear the heart's pulsations, and our hearts beat in sympathy!
+
+In the first year of the war between Denmark and the insurgents, many
+a brave Upsala student left his quiet, comfortable home, and entered
+the ranks with his Danish brothers. The Upsala students gave up their
+most joyous festival--the May-day festival--and the money they at
+other times used to contribute annually towards the celebration
+thereof, they sent to the Danes, after the sum had been increased by
+concerts which were given in Stockholm and Vesteraas. That
+circumstance will not be forgotten in Denmark.
+
+Upsala student, thou art dear to us by thy disposition! thou art dear
+to us from thy lively jests! We will mention a trait thereof. In
+Upsala, it had become the fashion to be Hegelianers--that is to say,
+always to interweave Hegel's philosophical terms in conversation. In
+order to put down this practice, a few clever fellows took upon
+themselves the task of hammering some of the most difficult technical
+words into the memory of a humorous and commonly drunken country
+innkeeper, at whose house many a _Sexa_ was often held; and the man
+spoke Hegelianic in his mellow hours, and the effect was so absurd,
+that the employment of philosophical scraps in his speech was
+ridiculed, understood, and the nuisance abandoned.
+
+Beautiful songs resound as we approach: we hear Swedish, Norwegian and
+Danish. The melody's varied beacon makes known to us where Upsala's
+students are assembled. The song proceeds from the assembly-room--from
+the tavern saloon, and like serenades in the silent evening, when a
+young friend departs, or a dear guest is honoured. Glorious melodies!
+ye enthral, so that we forget that the sun goes down, and the moon
+rises.
+
+    "Herre min Gud hvad din Månen lyser
+     Se, hvilken Glands ut ofver Land och Stad!"
+
+is now sung, and we see:
+
+    "Högt opp i Slottet hvarenda ruta
+     Blixtrar some vore den en ädelsten."[O]
+
+[Footnote O: Lord, my God, how Thy moon shines! See what lustre over
+land and city! High up in the palace every pane glistens as if it
+were a gem.]
+
+Up thither then is our way! lead us, memory's sprite, into the palace,
+the courteous governor of Upland's dwelling; mild glances greet us; we
+see dear beings in a happy circle, and all the leading characters of
+Upsala. We again see him whose cunning quickened our perceptions as to
+the mysteries of vegetable life, so that even the toad-stool is
+unveiled to us as a building more artfully constructed than the
+labyrinths of the olden time. We see "The Flowers'" singer, he who led
+us to "The Island of Bliss;" we meet with him whose popular lays are
+borne on melodies into the world; his wife by his side. That quiet,
+gentle woman with those faithful eyes is the daughter of Frithiof's
+bard; we see noble men and women, ladies of the high nobility, with
+sounding and significant family names with _silver_ and
+_lilies_,--_stars_ and _swords_.
+
+Hark! listen to that lively song. Gunnar Wennerberg, Gluntarra's poet
+and composer, sings his songs with Boronees,[P] and they acquire a
+dramatic life and reality.
+
+[Footnote P: Gluntarra duets, by Gunnar Wennerberg.]
+
+How spiritual and enjoyable! one becomes happy here, one feels proud
+of the age one lives in, happy in being distant from the horrible
+tragedies that history speaks of within these walls.
+
+We can hear about them when the song is silent, when those friendly
+forms disappear, and the festal lights are extinguished: from the
+pages of history that tale resounds with a clang of horror. It was in
+those times, which the many still call poetic--the romantic middle
+ages--that bards sang of its most brilliant periods, and covered with
+the radiance of their genius the sanguinary gulf of brutality and
+superstition. Terror seizes us in Upsala's palace: we stand in the
+vaulted hall, the wax tapers burn from the walls, and King Erik the
+Fourteenth sits with Saul's dark despondency, with Cain's wild looks.
+Niels Sture occupies his thoughts, the recollection of injustice
+exercised against him lashes his conscience with scourges and
+scorpions, as deadly terrible as they are revealed to us in the page
+of history.
+
+King Erik the Fourteenth, whose gloomy distrust often amounted to
+insanity, thought that the nobility aimed at his life. His favourite,
+Goran Persson, found it to his advantage to strengthen him in this
+belief. He hated most the popularly favoured race of the Stures, and
+of them, the light-haired Niels Sture in particular; for Erik thought
+that he had read in the stars that a man with light hair should hurl
+him from the throne; and as the Swedish General after the lost battle
+of Svarteaa, laid the blame on Niels Sture, Erik directly believed it,
+yet dared not to act as he desired, but even gave Niels Sture royal
+presents. Yet because he was again accused by one single person of
+having checked the advance of the Swedish army at Bähüs, Erik invited
+him to his palace at Svartsjö, gave him an honourable place at his
+royal table, and let him depart in apparent good faith for Stockholm,
+where, on his arrival, the heralds were ordered to proclaim in the
+streets: "Niels Sture is a traitor to his country!"
+
+There Goran Persson and the German retainers seized him, and sat him
+by force on the executioner's most miserable hack; struck him in the
+face so that the blood streamed down, placed a tarred straw crown on
+his head, and fastened a paper with derisive words, on the saddle
+before him. They then let a row of hired beggar-boys and old
+fish-wives go in couples before, and to the tail of the horse they
+bound two fir-trees, the roots of which dragged on the ground and
+swept the street after the traitor. Niels Sture exclaimed that he had
+not deserved this treatment from his King and he begged the groom, who
+went by his side, and had served him in the field of battle, to attest
+the truth like an honest man; when they all shouted aloud, that he
+suffered innocently, and had acted like a true Swede. But the
+procession was driven forward through the streets without stopping,
+and at night Niels Sture was conducted to prison.
+
+King Erik sits in his royal palace: he orders the torches and candles
+to be lighted, but they are of no avail--his thoughts' scorpions sting
+his soul.
+
+"I have again liberated Niels Sture," he mutters; "I have had placards
+put up at every street-corner, and let the heralds proclaim that no
+one shall dare to speak otherwise than well of Niels Sture! I have
+sent him on an honourable mission to a foreign court, in order to sue
+for me in marriage! He has had reparation enough made to him; but
+never will he, nor his mighty race, forget the derision and shame I
+have made him suffer. They will all betray me--kill me!"
+
+And King Erik commands that all Sture's kindred shall be made
+prisoners.
+
+King Erik sits in his royal palace: the sun shines, but not into the
+King's heart. Niels Sture enters the chamber with an answer of consent
+from the royal bride, and the King shakes him by the hand, making fair
+promises--and the following evening Niels Sture is a prisoner in
+Upsala Palace.
+
+King Erik's gloomy mind is disturbed; he has no rest; he has no peace,
+between fear and distrust. He hurries away to Upsala Palace; he will
+make all straight and just again by marrying Niels Sture's sister.
+Kneeling, he begs her imprisoned father's consent, and obtains it; but
+in the very moment, the spirit of distrust is again upon him, and he
+cries in his insanity:
+
+"But you will not forgive me the shame I brought on Niels!"
+
+At the same time, Goran Persson announced that King Erik's brother,
+John, had escaped from his prison, and that a revolt was breaking out.
+And Erik ran, with a sharp dagger into Niels Sture's prison.
+
+"Art thou there, traitor to thy country!" he shouted, and thrust the
+dagger into Shire's arm; and Sture drew it out again, wiped off the
+blood, kissed the hilt, and returned the weapon to the King, saying:
+
+"Be lenient with me, Sire; I have not deserved your disfavour."
+
+Erik laughed aloud.
+
+"Ho! ho! do but hear the villain! how he can pray for himself!"
+
+And the King's halberdier stuck his lance through Niels Sture's eye,
+and thus gave him his death. Sture's blood cleaves to Upsala
+Palace--to King Erik always and everlastingly. No church masses can
+absolve his soul from that base crime.
+
+Let us now go to the church.
+
+A little flight of stairs in the side aisle leads us up to a vaulted
+chamber, where kings' crowns and sceptres, taken from the coffins of
+the dead, are deposited in wooden closets. Here, in the corner, hangs
+Niels Sture's blood-covered clothes and knight's hat, on the outside
+of which a small silk glove is fastened. It was his betrothed one's
+dainty glove--that which he, knight-like, always bore.
+
+O, barbarous era! highly vaunted as you are in song, retreat, like the
+storm-cloud, and be poetically beautiful to all who do not see thee in
+thy true light.
+
+We descend from the little chamber, from the gold and silver of the
+dead, and wander in the church's aisles. The cold marble tombs, with
+shields of arms and names, awaken other, milder thoughts.
+
+The walls shine brightly, and with varied hues, in the great chapel
+behind the high altar. The fresco paintings present to us the most
+eventful circumstances of Gustavus Vasa's life. Here his clay
+moulders, with that of his three consorts. Yonder, a work in marble,
+by Sargel, solicits our attention: it adorns the burial-chapel of the
+De Geers; and here, in the centre aisle, under that flat stone, rests
+Linnaeus. In the side chapel, is his monument, erected by _amici_ and
+_discipuli_: a sufficient sum was quickly raised for its erection, and
+the King, Gustavus the Third, himself brought his royal gift. The
+projector of the subscription then explained to him, that the purposed
+inscription was, that the monument was erected only by friends and
+disciples, and King Gustavus answered: "And am not I also one of
+Linnaeus's disciples?"
+
+The monument was raised, and a hall built in the botanical garden,
+under splendid trees. There stands his bust; but the remembrance of
+himself, his home, his own little garden--where is it most vivid? Lead
+us thither.
+
+On yonder side of Fyri's rivulet, where the street forms a declivity,
+where red-painted, wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as
+fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnaeus's garden. We
+stand within it. How solitary! how overgrown! Tall nettles shoot up
+between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges. No water-plants appear more
+in that little, dried-up basin; the hedges that were formerly clipped,
+put forth fresh leaves without being checked by the gardener's shears.
+
+It was between these hedges that Linnaeus at times saw his own
+double--that optical illusion which presents the express image of a
+second self--from the hat to the boots.
+
+Where a great man has lived and worked, the place itself becomes, as
+it were, a part and parcel of him: the whole, as well as a part, has
+mirrored itself in his eye; it has entered into his soul, and become
+linked with it and the whole world.
+
+We enter the orangeries: they are now transformed into assembly-rooms;
+the blooming winter-garden has disappeared; but the walls yet show a
+sort of herbarium. They are hung round with the portraits of learned
+Swedes--herbarium from the garden of science and knowledge. Unknown
+faces--and, to the stranger, the greatest part are unknown names--meet
+us here.
+
+One portrait amongst the many attracts our attention: it looks
+singular; it is the half-length figure of an old man in a shirt, lying
+in his bed. It is that of the learned theologian, Oedmann, who after
+he had been compelled to keep his bed by a fever, found himself so
+comfortable in it, that he continued to lie there during the remainder
+of his long life, and was not to be induced to get up. Even when the
+next house was burning, they were obliged to carry him out in his bed
+into the street. Death and cold were his two bugbears. The cold would
+kill him, was his opinion; and so, when the students came with their
+essays and treatises, the manuscripts were warmed at the stove before
+he read them. The windows of his room were never opened, so that there
+was a suffocating and impure air in his dwelling. He had a
+writing-desk on the bed; books and manuscripts lay in confusion round
+about; dishes, plates, and pots stood here or there, as the
+convenience of the moment dictated, and his only companion was a deaf
+and dumb laughter.
+
+She sat still in a corner by the window, wrapped up in herself, and
+staring before her, as if she were a figure that had flown out of the
+frame around the dark, mouldy canvas, which had once shown a picture
+on the wall.
+
+Here, in the room, in this impure atmosphere, the old man lived
+happily, and reached his seventieth year, occupied with the
+translation of travels in Africa. This tainted atmosphere, in which he
+lay, became, to his conceit, the dromedary's high back, which lifted
+him aloft in the burning sun; the long, hanging-down cobwebs were the
+palm-trees' waving banners, and the caravan went over rivers to the
+wild bushmen. Old Oedmann was with the hunters, chasing the elephants
+in the midst of the thick reeds; the agile tiger-cat sprang past, and
+the serpents shone like garlands around the boughs of the trees: there
+was excitement, there was danger--and yet he lay so comfortably in his
+good and beloved bed in Upsala.
+
+One winter's day, it happened that a Dalecarlian peasant mistook the
+house, and came into Oedmann's chamber in his snow-covered skin cloak,
+and with his beard full of ice. Oedmann shouted to him to go his way,
+but the peasant was deaf, and therefore stepped quite close up to the
+bed. He was the personification of Winter himself, and Oedmann fell
+ill from this visit: it was his only sickness during the many years he
+lay here as a polypus, grown fast, and where he was painted, as we see
+his portrait in the assembly-room.
+
+From the hall of learning we will go to its burial-place--that is to
+say, its open burial-place--the great library. We wander from hall to
+hall, up stairs and down stairs. Along the shelves, behind them and
+round about, stand books, those petrifactions of the mind, which might
+again be vivified by spirit. Here lives a kind-hearted and mild old
+man, the librarian, Professor Schröder. He smiles and nods as he hears
+how memory's sprite takes his place here as guide, and tells of and
+shows, as we see, Tegner's copy and translation of Ochlenschloeger's
+"Hakon Jarl and Palnatoke." We see Vadstene cloister's library, in
+thick hog's leather bindings, and think of the fair hands of the nuns
+that have borne them, the pious, mild eyes that conjured the spirit
+out of the dead letters. Here is the celebrated Codex Argentius, the
+translation of the "Four Evangelists."[Q] Gold and silver letters
+glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic
+manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's
+Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings
+and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in
+spirit, and longs to be out in the free air--and we are there; by
+Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf,
+out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church
+stands--the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes
+gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it
+leads us close past Upsala's old hills--Odin's, Thor's and Freia's
+graves, as they are called.
+
+[Footnote Q: A Gothic translation of the Four Evangelists, and
+ascribed to the Moesogothic Archbishop Ulphilas.]
+
+There once stood ancient Upsala, here now are but a few peasants'
+farms. The low church, built of granite blocks, dates from a very
+remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple. Each of
+the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands.
+Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin
+greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old
+housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the
+silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The
+wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden,
+and for the heart's constant thoughts--young love!
+
+Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been
+remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! and years after, when the same
+wanderer again stood here, she, the blooming rose, had been laid in
+the earth; the spring roses had strown their leaves over her coffined
+clay; the sweet music of her lips sounded but in memory; the smile in
+her eyes and around her mouth, was gone like the sunbeams, which then
+shone on Upsala's hills. Her name in the greensward is grown over; she
+herself is in the earth, and it is closed above her; but the hill
+here, closed for a thousand years, is open.
+
+Through the passage which is dug deep into the hills, we come to the
+funereal urns which contain the bones of youthful kindred; the dust of
+kings, the gods of the earth.
+
+The old housewife, from the peasant's cot, has lighted half a hundred
+wax candles and placed them in rows in the otherwise pitchy-dark,
+stone-paved passage. It shines so festally in here over the bones of
+the olden time's mighty ones, bones that are now charred and burnt to
+ashes. And whose were they? Thou world's power and glory, thou world's
+posthumous fame--dust, dust like beauty's rose, laid in the dark
+earth, where no light shines; thy memorials are but a name, the name
+but a sound. Away hence, and up on the hill where the wind blows, the
+sun shines, and the eye looks over the green plain, to the sunlit,
+dear Upsala, the student's city.
+
+
+
+
+SALA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sweden's great King, Germany's preserver, Gustavus Adolphus, founded
+Sala. The little wood, close by, still preserves legends of the heroic
+King's youthful love--of his meeting here with Ebba Brahe.
+
+Sala's silver mines are the largest, the deepest, and oldest in
+Sweden: they reach to the depth of one hundred and seventy fathoms,
+consequently they are almost as deep as the Baltic. This of itself is
+enough to awaken an interest for a little town; but what is its
+appearance? "Sala," says the guide-book, "lies in a valley, in a flat,
+and not very pleasant district." And so truly it is: it was not very
+attractive approaching it our way, and the high road led directly into
+the town, which is without any distinctive character. It consists of a
+long street with what we may term a nucleus and a few fibres. The
+nucleus is the market-place, and the fibres are the few lanes
+diverging from it. The long street--that is to say, long in a little
+town--is quite without passengers; no one comes out from the doors, no
+one is to be seen at the windows.
+
+It was therefore with pleased surprise that I at length descried a
+human being: it was at an ironmonger's, where there hung a paper of
+pins, a handkerchief and two tea-pots in the window. There I saw a
+solitary shop-boy, standing quite still, but leaning over the counter
+and looking out of the open door. He certainly wrote in his journal,
+if he had one, in the evening: "To-day a traveller drove through the
+town; who he was, God knows, for I don't!"--yes, that was what the
+shop-boy's face said, and an honest face it was.
+
+In the inn at which I arrived, there was the same grave-like stillness
+as in the street. The gate was certainly closed, but all the inner
+doors were wide open; the farm-yard cock stood uplifted in the middle
+of the traveller's room and crowed, in order to show that there was
+somebody at home. The house, however, was quite picturesque: it had an
+open balcony, from which one might look out upon the yard, for it
+would have been far too lively had it been facing the street. There
+hung the old sign and creaked in the wind, as if to show that it at
+least was alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass in
+the street had got the mastery over the pavement. The sun shone
+brightly, but shone as into the bachelor's solitary room, and on the
+old maid's balsams in the flower-pots. It was as still as a Scotch
+Sunday--and yet it was a Tuesday. One was disposed for Young's "Night
+Thoughts."
+
+I looked out from the balcony into the neighbouring yard: there was
+not a soul to be seen, but children had been playing there. There was
+a little garden made of dry sticks: they were stuck down in the soft
+soil and had been watered; a broken pan, which had certainly served by
+way of watering-pot, lay there still. The sticks signified roses and
+geraniums.
+
+It had been a delightful garden--alas, yes! We great, grown-up men--we
+play just so: we make ourselves a garden with what we call love's
+roses and friendship's geraniums; we water them with our tears and
+with our heart's blood; and yet they are, and remain, dry sticks
+without root. It was a gloomy thought; I felt it, and in order to get
+the dry sticks in my thoughts to blossom, I went out. I wandered in
+the fibres and in the long threads--that is to say, in the small
+lanes--and in the great street; and here was more life than I dared to
+expect. I met a herd of cattle returning or going--which I know
+not--for they were without a herdsman. The shop-boy still stood behind
+the counter, leaned over it and greeted me; the stranger took his hat
+off again--that was my day's employment in Sala.
+
+Pardon me, thou silent town, which Gustavus Adolphus built, where his
+young heart felt the first emotions of love, and where the silver lies
+in the deep shafts--that is to say, outside the town, "in a flat, and
+not very pleasant district."
+
+I knew no one in the town; I had no one to be my guide, so I
+accompanied the cows, and came to the churchyard. The cows went past,
+but I stepped over the stile, and stood amongst the graves, where the
+grass grew high, and almost all the tombstones lay with worn-out
+inscriptions. On a few only the date of the year was legible.
+"Anno"--yes, what then? And who rested here? Everything on the stone
+was erased--blotted out like the earthly life of those mortals that
+here were earth in earth. What life's dream have ye dead played here
+in silent Sala?
+
+The setting sun shone over the graves; not a leaf moved on the trees;
+all was still--still as death--in the city of the silver-mines, of
+which this traveller's reminiscence is but a frame around the shop-boy
+who leaned over the counter.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUTE BOOK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the high road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house.
+Our way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the
+windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard,
+in an arbour of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The
+corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that
+forenoon. No one stood by and wept over that dead man; no one hung
+sorrowfully over him; his face was covered with a white cloth, and
+under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was
+a whole sheet of grey paper, and between each lay withered flowers,
+deposited and forgotten--a whole herbarium, gathered in different
+places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave
+with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower.
+
+"Who is that dead man?" we asked, and the answer was: "The old student
+from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned
+languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was
+something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and
+himself up to drinking spirits, and as his health suffered by it, he
+came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and
+lodging.
+
+"He was as gentle as a child, when the dark humour did not come over
+him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted
+deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book
+with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day and look at one
+plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his
+cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might
+have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the
+lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful
+rest in the grave!"
+
+They raised the winding-sheet. There was peace in the face of the
+dead: a sunbeam fell on it; a swallow in its arrowy flight, darted
+into the new-made arbour, and in its flight circled twittering over
+the dead man's head.
+
+How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out old letters
+from the days of our youth and read them: a whole life, as it were,
+then rises up with all its hopes, and all its troubles. How many of
+those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as
+the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of
+them for many years--them whom we once thought we should always cling
+to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with.
+
+The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the
+friend--the friend of his school-days--the friend for life. He fixed
+this leaf on the student's cap in the green wood, when the vow of
+friendship was concluded for the whole of life. Where does he now
+live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign
+conservatory-plant, too fine for the gardens of the North--it looks as
+if there still were fragrance in these leaves!--_she_ gave it to
+him--she, the young lady of that noble garden.
+
+Here is the marsh-lotus which he himself has plucked and watered with
+salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters. And here is a
+nettle: what does its leaf say? What did he think on plucking it--on
+preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley from the woodland
+solitudes; here are honeysuckle leaves from the village ale-house
+flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass.
+
+The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead
+man's head; the swallow again flies past; "quivit! quivit!" Now the
+men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse,
+whose head rests on the Mute-Book--preserved--forgotten!
+
+
+
+
+THE ZÄTHER DALE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything was in order, the carriage examined, even a whip with a
+good lash was not forgotten. "Two whips would be best," said the
+ironmonger, who sold it, and the ironmonger was a man of experience,
+which travellers often are not. A whole bag full of "slanter"--that
+is, copper coins of small value--stood before us for bridge-money, for
+beggars, for shepherd's boys, or whoever might open the many
+field-gates for us that obstructed our progress. But we had to do this
+ourselves, for the rain pattered down and lashed the ground; no one
+had any desire to come out in such weather. The rushes in the marsh
+bent and waved; it was a real rain feast for them, and it whistled
+from the tops of the rushes: "We drink with our feet, we drink with
+our heads, we drink with the whole body, and yet we stand on one leg,
+hurra! We drink with the bending willow, with the dripping flowers on
+the bank; their cups run over--the marsh marigold, that fine lady, can
+bear it better! Hurra! it is a feast! it pours, it pours; we whistle
+and we sing; it is our own song. Tomorrow the frogs will croak the
+same after us and say, 'it is quite new!'"
+
+And the rushes waved, and the rain pattered down with a splashing
+noise--it was fine weather to travel in to Zäther Dale, and to see its
+far-famed beauties. The whip-lash now came off the whip; it was
+fastened on again, and again, and every time it was shorter, so that
+at last there was not a lash, nor was there any handle, for the handle
+went after the lash--or sailed after it--as the road was quite
+navigable, and gave one a vivid idea of the beginning of the deluge.
+
+One poor jade now drew too much, the other drew too little, and one of
+the splinter bars broke; well, by all that is vexatious, that was a
+fine drive! The leather apron in front had a deep pond in its folds
+with an outlet into one's lap. Now one of the linch-pins came out; now
+the twisting of the rope harness became loose, and the cross-strap was
+tired of holding any longer. Glorious inn in Zäther, how I now long
+more for thee than thy far-famed dale. And the horses went slower, and
+the rain fell faster, and so--yes, so we were not yet in Zäther.
+
+Patience, thou lank spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin
+thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as
+still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the
+carriage to Zäther. But to the inn, by the road side, close to the
+far-famed valley, I got at length, towards evening.
+
+And everything was flowing in the yard, chaotically mingled; manure
+and farming implements, staves and straw. The poultry sat there washed
+to shadows, or at least like stuck-up hens' skins with feathers on,
+and even the ducks crept close up to the wet wall, sated with the wet.
+The stable-man was cross, the girl still more so; it was difficult to
+get them to bestir themselves: the steps were crooked, the floor
+sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air
+was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on
+the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made
+by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells
+and purling brooks.
+
+It was a long hollow; I saw the tops of the trees looming up, and the
+rain drew its thick veil over it. The whole of that long evening did I
+sit and look upon it during that shower of showers. It was as if the
+Venern, the Vettern and a few more lakes ran through an immense sieve
+from the clouds. I had ordered something to eat and drink, but I got
+nothing. They ran up and they ran down; there was a hissing sound of
+roasting by the hearth; the girls chattered, the men drank "sup,"[R]
+strangers came, were shown into their rooms, and got both roast and
+boiled. Several hours had passed, when I made a forcible appeal to the
+girl, and she answered phlegmatically: "Why, Sir, you sit there and
+write without stopping, so you cannot have time to eat."
+
+[Footnote R: Swedish, _sup_. Danish, _snaps_. German, _schnaps_.
+English, _drams_.]
+
+It was a long evening, "but the evening passed!" It had become quite
+still in the inn; all the travellers, except myself, had again
+departed, certainly in order to find better quarters for the night at
+Hedemore or Brunbeck. I had seen, through the half-open door into the
+dirty tap-room, a couple of fellows playing with greasy cards; a huge
+dog lay under the table and glared with its large red eyes; the
+kitchen was deserted; the rooms too; the floor was wet, the storm
+rattled, the rain beat against the windows--"and now to bed! said I."
+
+
+
+I slept an hour, perhaps two, and was awakened by a loud bawling from
+the high road. I started up: it was twilight, the night at that period
+is not darker--it was about one o'clock. I heard the door shaken
+roughly; a deep manly voice shouted aloud, and there was a hammering
+with a cudgel against the planks of the yard-gate. Was it an
+intoxicated or a mad man that was to be let in? The gate was now
+opened, but many words were not exchanged. I heard a woman scream at
+the top of her voice from terror. There was now a great bustling
+about; they ran across the yard in wooden shoes; the bellowing of
+cattle and the rough voices of men were mingled together. I sat on the
+edge of the bed. Out or in! what was to be done? I looked from the
+window; in the road there was nothing to be seen, and it still rained.
+All at once some one came up stairs with heavy footsteps: he opened
+the door of the room adjoining mine--now he stood still! I listened--a
+large iron bolt fastened my door. The stranger now walked across the
+floor, now he shook my door, and then kicked against it with a heavy
+foot, and whilst all this was passing, the rain beat against the
+windows, and the blast made them rattle.
+
+"Are there any travellers here?" shouted a voice; "the house is on
+fire!"
+
+I now dressed myself and hastened out of the room and down the stairs.
+There was no smoke to be seen, but when I reached the yard, I saw that
+the whole building--a long and extensive one of wood--was enveloped in
+flames and clouds of smoke. The fire had originated in the baking
+oven, which no one had looked to; a traveller, who accidently came
+past, saw it, called out and hammered at the door: and the women
+screamed, and the cattle bellowed, when the fire stuck its red tongue
+into them.
+
+Now came the fire-engine and the flames were extinguished. By this
+time it was morning. I stood in the road, scarcely a hundred steps
+from the far-famed dale. "One may as well spring into it as walk into
+it!" and I sprang into it; and the rain poured down, and the water
+flowed--the whole dale was a well.
+
+The trees turned their leaves the wrong side out, purely because of
+the pouring rain, and they said, as the rushes did the day before: "We
+drink with our heads, we drink with our feet, and we drink with the
+whole body, and yet stand on our legs, hurra! it rains, and it pours;
+we whistle and we sing; it is our own song--and it is quite new!"
+
+Yes, that the rushes also sang yesterday--but it was the same, ever
+the same. I looked and looked, and all I know of the beauty of Zäther
+Dale is, that she had washed herself!
+
+
+
+
+THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lacksand lay on the other side of the dal-elv which the road now led
+us over for the third or fourth time. The picturesque bell-tower of
+red painted beams, erected at a distance from the church, rose above
+the tall trees on the clayey declivity: old willows hung gracefully
+over the rapid stream. The floating bridge rocked under us--nay, it
+even sank a little, so that the water splashed under the horse's
+hoofs; but these bridges have such qualities! The iron chains that
+held it rattled, the planks creaked, the boards splashed, the water
+rose, and murmured and roared, and so we got over where the road
+slants upwards towards the town. Close opposite here the last year's
+May-pole still stood with withered flowers. How many hands that bound
+these flowers are now withered in the grave?
+
+It is far prettier to go up on the sloping bank along the elv, than to
+follow the straight high-road into the town. The path conducts us,
+between pasture fields and leaf trees, up to the parsonage, where we
+passed the evening with the friendly family. The clergyman himself was
+but lately dead, and his relatives were all in mourning. There was
+something about the young daughter--I knew not myself what it was--but
+I was led to think of the delicate flax flower, too delicate for the
+short northern summer.
+
+They spoke about the Midsummer festival the next day, and of the
+winter season here, when the swans, often more than thirty at a time,
+sit (motionless themselves) on the elv, and utter strange, mournful
+tones. They always come in pairs, they said, two and two, and thus
+they also fly away again. If one of them dies, its partner always
+remains a long time after all the others are gone; lingers, laments,
+and then flies away alone and solitary.
+
+When I left the parsonage in the evening, the moon, in its first
+quarter, was up. The May-pole was raised; the little steamer, 'Prince
+Augustus,' with several small vessels in tow, came over the Siljan
+lake and into the elv; a musician sprang on shore, and began to play
+dances under the tall wreathed May-pole. And there was soon a merry
+circle around it--all so happy, as if the whole of life were but a
+delightful summer night.
+
+Next morning was the Midsummer Festival. It was Sunday, the 24th of
+June, and a beautiful sunshiny day it was. The most picturesque sight
+at the festival is to see the people from the different parishes
+coming in crowds, in large boats over Siljan's lake, and landing on
+its shores. We drove out to the landing-place, Barkedale, and before
+we got out of the town, we met whole troops coming from there, as well
+as from the mountains.
+
+Close by the town of Lacksand, there is a row of low wooden shops on
+both sides of the way, which only get their interior light through the
+doorway. They form a whole street, and serve as stables for the
+parishioners, but also--and it was particularly the case that
+morning--to go into and arrange their finery. Almost all the shops or
+sheds were filled with peasant women, who were anxiously busy about
+their dresses, careful to get them into the right folds, and in the
+mean time peeped continually out of the door to see who came past. The
+number of arriving church-goers increased; men, women, and children,
+old and young, even infants; for at the Midsummer festival no one
+stays at home to take care of them, and so of course they must come
+too--all must go to church.
+
+What a dazzling army of colours! Fiery red and grass green aprons meet
+our gaze. The dress of the women is a black skirt, red bodice, and
+white sleeves: all of them had a psalm-book wrapped in the folded silk
+pocket-handkerchief. The little girls were entirely in yellow, and
+with red aprons; the very least were in Turkish-yellow clothes. The
+men were dressed in black coats, like our paletôts, embroidered with
+red woollen cord; a red band with a tassel hung down from the large
+black hat; with dark knee breeches, and blue stockings, with red
+leather gaiters--in short, there was a dazzling richness of colour,
+and that, too, on a bright sunny morning in the forest road.
+
+This road led down a steep to the lake, which was smooth and blue.
+Twelve or fourteen long boats, in form like gondolas, were already
+drawn up on the flat strand, which here is covered with large stones.
+These stones served the persons who landed, as bridges; the boats were
+laid alongside them, and the people clambered up, and went and bore
+each other on land. There certainly were at least a thousand persons
+on the strand; and far out on the lake, one could see ten or twelve
+boats more coming, some with sixteen oars, others with twenty, nay,
+even with four-and-twenty, rowed by men and women, and every boat
+decked out with green branches. These, and the varied clothes, gave to
+the whole an appearance of something so festal, so fantastically rich,
+as one would hardly think the north possessed. The boats came nearer,
+all crammed full of living freight; but they came silently, without
+noise or talking, and rowed up to the declivity of the forest.
+
+The boats were drawn up on the sand: it was a fine subject for a
+painter, particularly one point--the way up the slope, where the whole
+mass moved on between the trees and bushes. The most prominent figures
+there, were two ragged urchins, clothed entirely in bright yellow,
+each with a skin bundle on his shoulders. They were from Gagne, the
+poorest parish in Dalecarlia. There was also a lame man with his blind
+wife: I thought of the fable of my childhood, of the lame and the
+blind man: the lame man lent his eyes, and the blind his legs, and so
+they reached the town.
+
+And we also reached the town and the church, and thither they all
+thronged: they said there were above five thousand persons assembled
+there. The church-service began at five o'clock. The pulpit and organ
+were ornamented with flowering lilacs; children sat with lilac-flowers
+and branches of birch; the little ones had each a piece of oat-cake,
+which they enjoyed. There was the sacrament for the young persons who
+had been confirmed; there was organ-playing and psalm-singing; but
+there was a terrible screaming of children, and the sound of heavy
+footsteps; the clumsy, iron-shod Dal shoes tramped loudly upon the
+stone floor. All the church pews, the gallery pews, and the centre
+aisle were quite filled with people. In the side aisle one saw various
+groups--playing children, and pious old folks: by the sacristy there
+sat a young mother giving suck to her child--she was a living image of
+the Madonna herself.
+
+The first impression of the whole was striking, but only the
+first--there was too much that disturbed. The screaming of children,
+and the noise of persons walking were heard above the singing, and
+besides that, there was an insupportable smell of garlic: almost all
+the congregation had small bunches of garlic with them, of which they
+ate as they sat. I could not bear it, and went out into the
+churchyard: here--as it always is in nature--it was affecting, it was
+holy. The church door stood open; the tones of the organ, and the
+voices of the psalm-singers were wafted out here in the bright
+sunlight, by the open lake: the many who could not find a place in the
+church, stood outside, and sang with the congregation from the
+psalm-book: round about on the monuments, which are almost all of
+cast-iron, there sat mothers suckling their infants--the fountain of
+life flowed over death and the grave. A young peasant stood and read
+the inscription on a grave:
+
+    "Ach hur södt al hafve lefvet,
+     Ach hur skjöut al kunne döe!"[S]
+
+[Footnote S: "How sweet to live--how beautiful to die!"]
+
+Beautiful Christian, scriptural language, verses certainly taken from
+the psalm-book, were read on the graves; they were all read, for the
+service lasted several hours. This, however, can never be good for
+devotion.
+
+The crowd at length streamed from the church; the fiery-red and
+grass-green aprons glittered; but the mass of human beings became
+thicker, and closer, and pressed forward. The white head-dresses, the
+white band over the forehead, and the white sleeves, were the
+prevailing colours--it looked like a long procession in Catholic
+countries. There was again life and motion on the road; the
+over-filled boats again rowed away; one waggon drove off after the
+other; but yet there were people left behind. Married and unmarried
+men stood in groups in the broad street of Lacksand, from the church
+up to the inn. I was staying there, and I must acknowledge that my
+Danish tongue sounded quite foreign to them all. I then tried the
+Swedish, and the girl at the inn assured me that she understood me
+better than she had understood the Frenchman, who the year before had
+spoken French to her.
+
+As I sit in my room, my hostess's grand-daughter, a nice little child,
+comes in, and is pleased to see my parti-coloured carpet-bag, my
+Scotch plaid, and the red leather lining of the portmanteau. I
+directly cut out for her, from a sheet of white paper, a Turkish
+mosque, with minarets and open windows, and away she runs with it--so
+happy, so happy!
+
+Shortly after, I heard much loud talking in the yard, and I had a
+presentiment that it was concerning what I had cut out; I therefore
+stepped softly out into the balcony, and saw the grandmother standing
+below, and with beaming face, holding my clipped-out paper at arm's
+length. A whole crowd of Dalecarlians, men and women, stood around,
+all in artistic ecstacy over my work; but the little girl--the sweet
+little child--screamed, and stretched out her hands after her lawful
+property, which she was not permitted to keep, as it was too fine.
+
+I sneaked in again, yet, of course, highly flattered and cheered; but
+a moment after there was a knocking at my door: it was the
+grandmother, my hostess, who came with a whole plate full of
+spice-nuts.
+
+"I bake the best in all Dalecarlia," said she; "but they are of the
+old fashion, from my grandmother's time. You cut out so well, Sir,
+should you not be able to cut me out some new fashions?"
+
+And I sat the whole of Midsummer night, and clipped fashions for
+spice-nuts. Nutcrackers with knights' boots, windmills which were both
+mill and miller--but in slippers, and with the door in the
+stomach--and ballet-dancers that pointed with one leg towards the
+seven stars. Grandmother got them, but she turned the ballet-dancers
+up and down; the legs went too high for her; she thought that they had
+one leg and three arms.
+
+"They will be new fashions," said she; "but they are difficult."
+
+
+
+
+FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Truth can never be at variance with truth, science can never militate
+against faith: we naturally speak of them both in their purity: they
+respond to and they strengthen man's most glorious thought:
+_immortality_. And yet you may say, "I was more peaceful, I was safer
+when, as a child, I closed my eyes on my mother's breast and slept
+without thought or care, wrapping myself up simply in faith." This
+prescience, this compound of understanding in everything, this
+entering of the one link into the other from eternity to eternity,
+tears away from me a support--my confidence in prayer; that which is,
+as it were, the wings wherewith to fly to my God! If it be loosened,
+then I fall powerless in the dust, without consolation or hope.
+
+I bend my energies, it is true, towards attaining the great and
+glorious light of knowledge, but it appears to me that therein is
+human arrogance: it is, as one should say, "I will be as wise as God."
+"That you shall be!" said the serpent to our first parents when it
+would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my
+understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer
+teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in
+the whole creation of the world--in the great and in the small, where
+the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an
+endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and
+sorrow. What can my prayer change, where everything is law, from
+eternity to eternity?
+
+You tremble as you see the Almighty, who reveals Himself in all
+loving-kindness--that Creator, according to man's expression, whose
+understanding and heart are one--you tremble when you know that he has
+elected you to immortality.
+
+I know it in the faith, in the holy, eternal words of the Bible.
+Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that
+which breaks it.
+
+Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in
+the name of knowledge--_immortality_. Hear it! the beautiful also
+bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and
+knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the
+wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws
+of love, as you believe in the laws of sense.
+
+When the child gathers flowers in the fields and brings us the whole
+handful, where one is erect and the other hangs the head, thrown as it
+were among one another, then it is that we see the beauty in every one
+by itself--that harmony in colour and in form, which pleases our eye
+so well. We arrange them instinctively, and every single beauty is
+blended together in one entire beauteous group. We do not look at the
+flower, but on the whole bouquet. The beauty of harmony is an instinct
+in us; it lies in our eyes and in our ears, those bridges between our
+soul and the creation around us--in all our senses there is such a
+divine, such an entire and perfect stream in our whole being, a
+striving after the harmonious, as it shows itself in all created
+things, even in the pulsations of the air, made visible in Chladni's
+figures.
+
+In the Bible we find the expression: "God in spirit and in
+truth,"--and hence we most significantly find an expression for the
+admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is
+this revelation of God but spirit and truth? And just as our own soul
+shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does
+the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth. There is
+harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large,
+swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in
+the firmamental space--as far as the eye sees, as far as science
+ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.
+
+But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest
+expression; "created in God's image," man, who is able to comprehend
+and admit in himself all God's creation, the harmony in the harmony
+then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as
+creatures we have equally "no right to demand;" yet how differently
+God has granted us abilities! some few so immensely great, others so
+mean! At our birth God places us in our homes and positions; and to
+how many of us are allotted the hardest struggles! We are placed
+_there_, introduced _there_--how many may not say justly: "It were
+better for me that I had never been born!"
+
+Human life, consequently--the highest here on the earth--does not come
+under the laws of harmonious beauty: it is inconceivable, it is an
+injustice, and thus cannot take place.
+
+The defect of harmony in life lies in this:--that we only see a small
+part thereof, namely, existence here on the earth: there must be a
+life to come--an immortality.
+
+That, the smallest flower preaches to us, as does all that is created
+in beauty and harmony.
+
+If our existence ceased with death here, then the most perfect work of
+God was not perfect; God was not justice and love, as everything in
+nature and revelation affirms; and if we be referred to the whole of
+mankind, as that wherein harmony will reveal itself, then our whole
+actions and endeavours are but as the labours of the coral-insect:
+mankind becomes but a monument of greatness to the Creator: he would
+then only have raised His _glory_, not shown His greatest _love_.
+Loving-kindness is not self-love.
+
+We are immortal! In this rich consciousness we are raised towards God,
+fundamentally sure, that whatever happens to us, is for our good. Our
+earthly eye is only able to reach to a certain boundary in space; our
+soul's eye also has but a limited scope; but beyond _that,_ the same
+laws of loving-kindness must reign, as here. The prescience of eternal
+omniscience cannot alarm us; we human beings can apprehend the notion
+thereof in ourselves. We know perfectly what development must take
+place in the different seasons of the year; the time for flowers and
+for fruits; what kinds will come forth and thrive; the time of
+maturity, when the storms must prevail, and when it is the rainy
+season. Thus must God, in an infinitely greater degree, have the same
+knowledge of the whole created globes of His universe, as of our earth
+and the human race here. He must know when that development, that
+flowering in the human race ordained by Himself, shall come to pass;
+when the powers of intellect, of full development, are to reign; and
+under these characters, come to a maturity of development, men will
+become mighty, driving wheels--every one be the eternal God's likeness
+indeed.
+
+History shows us these things: joint enters into joint, in the world
+of spirits, as well as in the materially created world; the eye of
+wisdom--the all-seeing eye--encompasses the whole! And should we then
+not be able, in our heart's distress, to pray to this Father with
+confidence--to pray as the Saviour prayed: "If it be possible, let
+this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."
+
+These last words we do not forget! and our prayer will be granted, if
+it be for our good; or if it be not, then let us, as the child here,
+that in its trouble comes to its earthly Father, and does not get its
+wish fulfilled, but is refreshed by mild words, and the affectionate
+language of reason, so that the eye weeps, which thereby mitigates
+sorrow, and the child's pain is soothed. This, will prayer also grant
+us: the eye will be filled with tears, but the heart will be full of
+consolation! And who has penetrated so deeply into the ways of the
+soul, that he dare deny that prayer is the wings that bear thee to
+that sphere of inspiration whence God will extend to thee the
+olive-branch of help and grace?
+
+By walking with open eyes in the path of knowledge, we see the glory
+of the Annunciation. The wisdom of generations is but a span on the
+high pillar of revelation, above which sits the Almighty; but this
+short span will grow through eternity, in faith and with faith.
+Knowledge is like a chemical test that pronounces the gold pure!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE FOREST
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind,
+and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn,
+which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for
+the Midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches
+of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on
+long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head
+of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.
+
+The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely
+hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere,
+yet it is most flush in the forest--it extends for miles around. Our
+road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or
+the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking.
+Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into
+the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the
+air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and
+lime. It is an up and down hill road, always bending, and so, ever
+changing, but yet always forest scenery--the close, thick forest. We
+pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed
+night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.
+
+We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are
+to be seen: this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted--not a bird
+flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel
+springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our
+eye searchingly over the wood-grown mountain-side, which slopes so
+far, far forward; but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere
+does that blueish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are
+fellow-men.
+
+The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on
+them, fly off again, and dance, as though it were to qualify
+themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think: "Nothing
+is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing."
+They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that Time's
+horses always fly onward with us!
+
+How solitary it is here!--so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely
+alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the
+earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit
+stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold
+themselves--endless, inexhaustible, as he is--as the magnet which
+apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby.
+As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended
+solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas
+pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works
+of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel--for capricious
+fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of
+pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing
+Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the
+open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here
+to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade
+where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this
+stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a
+pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the
+North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?
+
+In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South,
+are _sagas_ of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards
+the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind;
+up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and
+acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we
+see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on
+the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further
+towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the
+carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the
+outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.
+
+The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses
+itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and
+transformed cultivated fields and towns--nay, whole parishes, into
+barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with
+moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest;
+no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman
+lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss
+of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled
+the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it
+gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the
+time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright
+through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra
+and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came,
+sat there, and sang: "Many, many years shalt thou live!"
+
+Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts!
+Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the
+summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go
+to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song
+springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the
+procession?--paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high
+with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright
+copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother
+sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which
+completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries
+the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession
+moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
+children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows'
+horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the
+same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her
+tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is
+fuel enough here--the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and
+rots.
+
+But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest
+desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile--he comes from the
+thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the
+thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames
+run from tree to tree--it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame
+leaps to the tops of the trees--what a crackling and roaring, as if it
+were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall
+down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the
+fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The
+howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm,
+rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine
+the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
+and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the
+broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes
+worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is
+about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past
+them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore
+we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
+peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and
+opened paths.
+
+The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a
+steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a
+distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh
+green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the
+blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at
+work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now
+laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and
+faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is
+delightful in the forest.
+
+
+
+
+FAHLUN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We made our way at length out of the forest, and saw a town before us
+enveloped in thick smoke, having a similar appearance to most of the
+English manufacturing towns, save that the smoke was greenish--it was
+the town Fahlun.
+
+The road now went downwards between large banks, formed by the dross
+deposited here from the smelting furnaces, and which looks like
+burnt-out hardened lava. No sprout or shrub was to be seen, not a
+blade of grass peeped forth by the way-side, not a bird flew past, but
+a strong sulphurous smell, as from among the craters in Solfatara,
+filled the air. The copper roof of the church shone with corrosive
+green.
+
+Long straight streets now appeared in view. It was as deathly still
+here as if sickness and disease had lain within these dark wooden
+houses, and frightened the inhabitants from coming abroad; yet
+sickness and disease come but to few here, for when the plague raged
+in Sweden, the rich and powerful of the land hastened to Fahlun, whose
+sulphureous air was the most healthy. An ochre-yellow water runs
+through the brook, between the houses; the smoke from the mines and
+smelting furnaces has imparted its tinge to them; it has even
+penetrated into the church, whose slender pillars are dark from the
+fumes of the copper. There chanced to come on a thunder-storm when we
+arrived, but its roaring and the lightning's flashes harmonized well
+with this town, which appears as if it were built on the edge of a
+crater.
+
+We went to see the copper mine which gives the whole district the name
+of "Stora Kopparberget," (the great copper mountain). According to the
+legend, its riches were discovered by two goats which were
+fighting--they struck the ground with their horns and some copper ore
+adhered to them.
+
+From the solitary red-ochre street we wandered over the great heaps of
+burnt-out dross and fragments of stone, accumulated to whole ramparts
+and hills. The fire shone from the smelting furnaces with green,
+yellow and red tongues of flame under a blue-green smoke; half-naked,
+black-smeared fellows threw out large glowing masses of fire, so that
+the sparks flew around and about:--one was reminded of Schiller's
+"Fridolin."
+
+The thick sulphureous smoke poured forth from the heaps of cleansed
+ore, under which the fire was in full activity, and the wind drove it
+across the road which we must pass. In smoke, and impregnated with
+smoke, stood building after building: three buildings had been
+strangely thrown, as it were, by one another: earth and stone-heaps,
+as if they were unfinished works of defence, extended around.
+Scaffolding, and long wooden bridges, had been erected there; large
+wheels turned round; long and heavy iron chains were in continual
+motion.
+
+We stood before an immense gulf, called "Stora Stöten," (the great
+mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there
+is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley:
+the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above,
+like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the
+shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in
+miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch,
+appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark
+holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels
+turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying
+gulf--from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two
+and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is
+hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up
+merry enough. Habit makes one daring.
+
+They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that
+one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun,
+and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of
+rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook
+again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate
+with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual
+witticism here: "I have never before killed myself."
+
+One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which
+looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each
+having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step
+on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one
+gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step one gets
+by degrees to the bottom. They said it was very easy, only one must
+step boldly, so that the foot should not come between and get crushed;
+and then one must remember that there is no railing or balustrade
+here, and directly outside these stairs there is the deep abyss into
+which one may fall headlong. The deepest shaft has a perpendicular
+depth of more than a hundred and ninety fathoms, but for this there is
+no danger, they say, only one must not be dizzy, nor get alarmed. One
+of the workmen, who had come up, descended with a lighted pine-branch
+as a torch: the flame illumined the dark rocky wall, and by degrees
+became only a faint streak of light which soon vanished.
+
+We were told that a few days before, five or six schoolboys had
+unobserved stolen in here, and amused themselves by going from step to
+step on these machine-like rocking stairs, in pitchy darkness, but at
+last they knew not rightly which way to go, up or down, and had then
+begun to shout and scream lustily. They escaped luckily that bout.
+
+By one of the large openings, called "Fat Mads," there are rich copper
+mines, but which have not yet been worked. A building stands above it:
+it was at the bottom of this that they found, in the year 1719, the
+corpse of a young miner. It appeared as if he had fallen down that
+very day, so unchanged did the body seem--but no one knew him. An old
+woman then stepped forward and burst into tears: the deceased was her
+bridegroom, who had disappeared forty nine years ago. She stood there
+old and wrinkled; he was young as when they had met for the last time
+nearly half a century before.[T]
+
+[Footnote T: In another mine they found, in the year 1635, a corpse
+perfectly fresh, and almost with the appearance of one asleep; but
+his clothes, and the ancient copper coins found on him, bore witness
+that it was two hundred years since he had perished there.]
+
+We went to "The Plant House," as it is called, where the vitriolated
+liquid is crystallized to sulphate of copper. It grew up long sticks
+placed upright in the boiling water, resembling long pieces of
+grass-green sugar. The steam was pungent, and the air in here
+penetrated our tongues--it was just as if one had a corroded spoon in
+one's mouth. It was really a luxury to come out again, even into the
+rarefied copper smoke, under the open sky.
+
+Steaming, burnt-out, and herbless as the district is on this side of
+the town, it is just as refreshing, green, and fertile on the opposite
+side of Fahlun. Tall leafy trees grow close to the farthest houses.
+One is directly in the fresh pine and birch forests, thence to the
+lake and to the distant blueish mountain sides near Zäther.
+
+The people here can tell you and show you memorials of Engelbrekt and
+his Dalecarlians' deeds, and of Gustavus Vasa's adventurous
+wanderings. But we will remain here in this smoke-enveloped town, with
+the silent street's dark houses. It was almost midnight when we went
+out and came to the market-place. There was a wedding in one of the
+houses, and a great crowd of persons stood outside, the women nearest
+the house, the men a little further back. According to an old Swedish
+custom, they called for the bride and bridegroom to come forward, and
+they did so--they durst not do otherwise. Peasant girls, with candles
+in their hands, stood on each side; it was a perfect tableau: the
+bride with downcast eyes, the bridegroom smiling, and the young
+bridesmaids each with a laughing face. And the people shouted: "Now
+turn yourselves a little! now the back! now the face! the bridegroom
+quite round, the bride a little nearer!" And the bridal pair turned
+and turned--nor was criticism wanting. In this instance, however, it
+was to their praise and honour, but that is not always the case. It
+may be a painful and terrible hour for a newly-wedded pair: if they do
+not please the public, or if they have something to say against the
+match, or the persons themselves, they are then soon made to know what
+is thought of them. There is perhaps also heard some rude jest or
+another, accompanied by the laughter of the crowd. We were told, that
+even in Stockholm the same custom was observed among the lower classes
+until a few years ago, so that a bridal pair, who, in order to avoid
+this exposure, wanted to drive off, were stopped by the crowd, the
+carriage-door was opened on each side, and the whole public marched
+through the carriage. They would see the bride and bridegroom--that
+was their right.
+
+Here, in Fahlun, the exhibition was friendly; the bridal pair smiled,
+the bridesmaids also, and the assembled crowd laughed and shouted,
+hurra! In the rest of the market-place and the streets around, there
+was dead silence and solitude.
+
+The roseate hue of eve still shone: it passed, changed into that of
+morn--it was the Midsummer time.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE STRAWS SAID.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lake there glided a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish
+and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch,
+sat four young girls--so pretty--so sylph-like! and they each plucked
+up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two
+together, at the top and the bottom.
+
+"We shall now see if they will come together in a square," said the
+girls: "if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled,"
+and they bound them, and they thought.
+
+No one got to know the secret thought, the heart's silent wish of the
+others. But yet a little bird sings about it.
+
+The thoughts of one flew over sea and land, over the high mountains,
+where the mule finds its way in the mists, down to Mignon's beautiful
+land, where the old gods live in marble and painting. "Thither,
+thither! shall I ever get there?" That was the wish, that was the
+thought, and she opened her hand, looked at the bound straws, and they
+appeared only two and two bound together.
+
+And where were the second one's thoughts? also in foreign lands, in
+the gunpowder's smoke, amongst the glitter of arms and cannons, with
+him, the friend of her childhood, fighting for imperial power, against
+the Hungarian people. Will he return joyful and unharmed--return to
+Sweden's peaceful, well-constituted, happy land? The straws showed no
+square: a tear dwelt in the girl's eye.
+
+The third smiled: there was a sort of mischief in the smile. Will our
+aged bachelor and that old maiden-lady yonder, who now wander along so
+young, smile so young, and speak so youthfully to each other, not be a
+married couple before the cuckoo sings again next year? See--that is
+what I should like to know! and the smile played around the thinker's
+mouth, but she did not speak her thoughts. The straws were
+separated--consequently the bachelor and the old maid also. "It may,
+however, happen nevertheless," she certainly thought: it was apparent
+in the smile; it was obvious in the manner in which she threw the
+straws away.
+
+"There is nothing I would know--nothing that I am curious to know!"
+said the fourth; but yet she bound the straws together; for within her
+also there was a wish alive; but no bird has sung about it; no one
+guesses it.
+
+Rock thyself securely in the heart's lotus flower, thou shining
+humming-bird, thy' name shall not be pronounced: and besides the
+straws said as before--"without hope!"
+
+"Now you! now you!" cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the
+neighbouring land, from the green isle, that Gylfe ploughed from
+Sweden. "What dear thing do you wish shall happen, or not
+happen!--tell us the wish!"--"If the oracle speaks well for me," said
+he, "then I will tell you the silent wish and prayer, with which I
+bind these knots on the grass straw; but if I have no better success
+than you have had, I will then be silent!" and he bound straw to
+straw, and as he bound, he repeated: "it signifies nothing!" He now
+opened his hand, his eyes shone brighter, his heart beat faster. The
+straws formed a square! "It will happen, it will happen!" cried the
+young girls. "What did you wish for?" "That Denmark may soon gain an
+honourable peace!"
+
+"It will happen! it will happen!" said the young girls; "and when it
+happens, we will remember that the straws have told it before-hand."
+
+"I will keep these four straws, bound in a prophetic wreath for
+victory and peace!" said the stranger; "and if the oracle speaks
+truth, then I will draw the whole picture for you, as we sit here
+under the hanging birch by the lake, and look on Zäther's blue
+mountains, each of us binding straw to straw."
+
+A red mark was made in the almanack; it was the 6th of July, 1849. The
+same day a red page was written in Denmark's history. The Danish
+soldier made a red, victorious mark with his blood, at the battle of
+Fredericia.
+
+
+
+
+THE POET'S SYMBOL.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If a man would seek for the symbol of the poet, he need not look
+farther than "The Arabian Nights' Tales." Scherezade who interprets
+the stories for the Sultan--Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is
+the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will
+decapitate Scherezade.
+
+Powerful Sultan! Poor Scherezade!
+
+The Sultan-public sits in more than a thousand and one forms, and
+listens. Let us regard a few of these forms.
+
+There sits a sallow, peevish, scholar; the tree of his life bears
+leaves impressed with long and learned words: diligence and
+perseverance crawl like snails on the hog's leather bark: the moths
+have got into the inside--and that is bad, very bad! Pardon the rich
+fulness of the song, the inconsiderate enthusiasm, the fresh young,
+intellect. Do not behead Scherezade! But he beheads her out of hand,
+_sans_ remorse.
+
+There sits a dress-maker, a sempstress who has had some experience of
+the world. She comes from strange families, from a solitary chamber
+where she sat and gained a knowledge of mankind--she knows and loves
+the romantic. Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for
+you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so
+much of life's prose, gasp after romance.
+
+"Behead her!" says the dress-maker.
+
+There sits a figure in a dressing gown--this oriental dress of the
+North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer's son,
+&c., &c., &c. It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from
+that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he
+belongs: his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the
+dress-maker's: he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all
+down the vertebrae, through the very spine: he must be crammed with
+mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.
+
+Scherezade is beheaded!
+
+Wise, enlightened Sultan! Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou
+bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as
+Atlas sustained the world. Do not cast an evil eye upon poor
+Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and
+art a child again,--do not behead Scherezade!
+
+Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the
+badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely
+master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French,
+that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one
+strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the
+brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet,
+absolving _charmant_!
+
+Mighty annihilator and elevator!--the newspapers' Zeus--thou weekly,
+monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger!
+Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou
+art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a _suite_ of
+thine own clique. Do not behead her!
+
+We will see one figure more--the most dangerous of them all; he with
+the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river's swell--the
+blind enthusiast. The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is
+for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis
+becomes her scaffold.
+
+This is the poet's symbol--paint it:
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+But why none of the worthier figures--the candid, the honest, and the
+beautiful? They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye.
+Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the
+stars, and sings of the harmony there above, and here beneath, in
+man's heart.
+
+_That_ will not clearly show the symbol:
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+The sword of death hangs over her head whilst she relates--and the
+Sultan-figure bids us expect that it will fall. Scherezade is the
+victor: the poet is, like her, also a victor. He is rich,
+victorious--even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours.
+There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after
+bubble sparkles on the magic stream. The heavens shine with shooting
+stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away.
+The world does not know it, for it is the poet's own creation, richer
+than the king's costly illuminations. He is happy, as Scherezade is;
+he is victorious, he is mighty. _Imagination_ adorns his walls with
+tapestry, such as no land's ruler owns; _feeling_ makes the beauteous
+chords sound to him from the human breast; _understanding_ raises him,
+through the magnificence of creation, up to God, without his
+forgetting that he stands fast on the firm earth. He is mighty, he is
+happy, as few are. We will not place him in the stocks of
+misconstruction, for pity and lamentation; we merely paint his symbol,
+dip into the colours on the world's least attractive side, and obtain
+it most comprehensibly from
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+See--that is it! Do not behead Scherezade!
+
+
+
+
+THE DAL-ELV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Homer sang there were heroes; but they are not known; no poet
+celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature, they
+must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought
+before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for
+what they are, and then they may be said first to exist. The elvs of
+the north have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in
+unknown beauty. The world's great highroad does take this direction;
+no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of
+the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable.
+Schubert is as yet the only stranger who has written about the wild
+magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its
+greatness.
+
+Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless
+windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes
+extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending
+trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and
+sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.
+
+Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between
+Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become
+confluent and have one bed above Bålstad. They have taken up rivers
+and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial
+riches to be found; the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand,
+smilingly pastoral--idyllic: one is drawn onward up to the very source
+of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut: one feels a desire
+to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.
+
+The first mighty fall, Njupeskoers cataract, is seen by the Norwegian
+frontier in Sernasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from
+the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.
+
+We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within
+itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters
+over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic
+porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.
+
+We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees
+the water-sprite swim, like the sea-horse with a mane of green
+sea-weed, and where the aërial images present visions of witchcraft in
+the warm summer days.
+
+We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake, under the weeping willows of
+the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along
+slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over
+the rapid current under Bålstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv
+widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as
+large and extended as if it were in North America.
+
+We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay
+declivities: the yellow water falls like fluid amber in picturesque
+cataracts before the copper-works, where rainbow-coloured tongues of
+fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blows on the copper
+plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall.
+
+And now, as a concluding passage of splendour in the life of the
+Dal-elvs, before they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic, is
+the view of Elvkarleby Fall. Schubert compares it with the fall of
+Schafhausen; but we must remember, that the Rhine there has not such a
+mass of water as that which rushes down Elvkarleby.
+
+Two and a half Swedish miles from Gefle, where the high road to Upsala
+goes over the Dal-elv, we see from the walled bridge, which we pass
+over, the whole of that immense fall. Close up to the bridge, there is
+a house where the bridge toll is paid. There the stranger can pass the
+night, and from his little window look over the falling waters, see
+them in the clear moonlight, when darkness has laid itself to rest
+within the thicket of oaks and firs, and all the effect of light is in
+those foaming, flowing waters, and see them when the morning sun
+stretches his rainbow in the trembling spray, like an airy bridge of
+colours, from the shore to the wood-grown rock in the centre of the
+cataract.
+
+We came hither from Gefle, and saw at a great distance on the way, the
+blue clouds from the broken, rising spray, ascend above the dark-green
+tops of the trees. The carriage stopped near the bridge; we stepped
+out, and close before us fell the whole redundant elv.
+
+The painter cannot give us the true, living image of a waterfall on
+canvas--the movement is wanting; how can one describe it in words,
+delineate this majestic grandeur, brilliancy of colour, and arrowy
+flight? One cannot do it; one may however attempt it; get together, by
+little and little, with words, an outline of that mirrored image which
+our eye gave us, and which even the strongest remembrance can only
+retain--if not vaguely, dubiously.
+
+The Dal-elv divides itself into three branches above the fall: the two
+enclose a wood-grown rocky island, and rush down round its smooth-worn
+stony wall. The one to the right of these two falls is the finer; the
+third branch makes a circuit, and comes again to the main stream,
+close outside the united fall; here it dashes out as if to meet or
+stop the others, and is now hurried along in boiling eddies with the
+arrowy stream, which rushes on foaming against the walled pillars that
+bear the bridge, as if it would tear them away along with it.
+
+The landscape to the left was enlivened by a herd of goats, that were
+browsing amongst the hazel bushes. They ventured quite out to the very
+edge of the declivity, as they were bred here and accustomed to the
+hollow, thundering rumble of the water. To the right, a flock of
+screaming birds flew over the magnificent oaks. Cars, each with one
+horse, and with the driver standing upright in it, the reins in his
+hand, came on the broad forest road from Oens Brück.
+
+Thither we will go in order to take leave of the Dal-elv at one of the
+most delightful of places, which vividly removes the stranger, as it
+were, into a far more southern land, into a far richer nature, than he
+supposed was to be found here. The road is so pretty--the oak grows
+here so strong and vigorously with mighty crowns of rich foliage.
+
+Oens Brück lies in a delightfully pastoral situation. We came thither;
+here was life and bustle indeed! The mill-wheels went round; large
+beams were sawn through; the iron forged on the anvil, and all by
+water-power. The houses of the workmen form a whole town: it is a long
+street with red-painted wooden houses, under picturesque oaks, and
+birch trees. The greensward was as soft as velvet to look at, and up
+at the manor-house, which rises in front of the garden like a little
+palace, there was, in the rooms and saloon, everything that the
+English call comfort.
+
+We did not find the host at home; but hospitality is always the
+house-fairy here. We had everything good and homely. Fish and wild
+fowl were placed before us, steaming and fragrant, and almost as
+quickly as in beautiful enchanted palaces. The garden itself was a
+piece of enchantment. Here stood three transplanted beech-trees, and
+they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the
+wild chesnut-trees of the avenue in a singular manner: they looked as
+if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden-yellow oranges
+hung in the conservatory; the splendid southern exotics had to-day got
+the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh,
+warm, sunny air of the northern summer.
+
+That branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with
+small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in
+Scandinavian splendour. There are small islands with green, silent
+groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brackens,
+variegated bell-flowers, and cowslips--no Turkey carpet has fresher
+colours. The stream between these islands and holms is sometimes
+rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with
+silky-green rushes, water-lilies, and brown-feathered reeds; sometimes
+it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a
+large, still mill-dam.
+
+Here is a landscape in Midsummer for the games of the river-sprites,
+and the dancers of the elves and fairies! Here, in the lustre of the
+full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprite seize the
+golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one
+single night like this.
+
+On the other side of Oens Brück is the main stream--the full Dal-elv.
+Do you hear the monotonous rumble? it is not from Elvkarleby Fall that
+it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa-Foss, in which lies
+Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.
+
+Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the
+red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the
+Dal-elv.
+
+Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills
+yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into
+the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic--thy
+eternity.
+
+
+
+
+DANEMORA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reader, do you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize
+you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the
+land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into
+the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep
+declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must
+creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She
+sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his
+swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the
+nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and
+it sways under him--the walls vanish from him.
+
+Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the
+air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.
+
+We met with her at Danemora's immense gulf, whither we came on broad,
+smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest. She sat on the
+extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun
+with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large
+beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.
+
+The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun,
+into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the
+chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering
+through the air. But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones
+and marrow; through all the nerves. Her icy breath blew in his neck,
+and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder. It
+seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and
+higher: the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall--a
+fall in sleep, that shock in the blood. Did it go quicker downwards,
+or was it going up again? He could not distinguish by the sensation.
+
+The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow--the dirty trodden,
+eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth
+from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark,
+yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The
+stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above
+him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers
+sounded; the watery damps dripped down--and he again entered the tun,
+which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness
+breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye
+measured the giddy depth through the tun: "It is appalling," said he.
+
+"Appalling!" echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at
+Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the
+same street as the Sealander--if the Sound be called a street
+(strait). "But, however, one can say one has been down there," said
+he, and he pointed to the gulf; "right down, and up again; but it is
+no pleasure at all."
+
+"But why descend at all?" said I. "Why will men do these things?"
+
+"One must, you know, when one comes here," said he. "The plague of
+travelling is, that one must see everything: one would not have it
+supposed otherwise. It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again,
+not to have seen everything, that others ask him about."
+
+"If you have no desire, then let it alone. See what pleases you on
+your travels. Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become
+quite giddy: you will then have formed some conception of the passage
+downward. I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you."
+And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.
+
+"Yes, so it is: I apprehend it all," said he: "I am clearly sensible
+of it."
+
+I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun's warmth never
+thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the
+workmen, &c.
+
+"Yes; one should be able to tell all about it," said he. "That _you_
+can, for you have seen it."
+
+"No more than you," said I. "I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the
+snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was
+time I should get into the tun--no, thank you. Giddiness tickled me
+with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt
+the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as
+well as any one: the descent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz,
+under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein,
+through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered
+about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the
+deep passages? Gloom--darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense
+of oppression--a longing for air and light, which is by far the best;
+and that we have now."
+
+"But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!" said the man; and he
+drew forth his "Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden," from which he
+read: "Danemora's iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in
+Sweden; the best in Europe. They have seventy-nine openings, of which
+seventeen only are being worked. The machine mine is ninety-three
+fathoms deep."
+
+Just then the bells sounded from below: it was the signal that the
+time of labour for that day was ended. The hue of eve still shone on
+the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf,
+it was a perfect twilight. Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the
+workmen swarmed forth. They looked like flies, quite small in the
+space below: they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the
+steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places: they climbed
+higher and higher--upwards, upwards--and at every step they became
+larger. The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three
+or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the
+tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against
+the side of the rock, so that they swung from it: and it became darker
+and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!
+
+"It is appalling!" said the man from Scania. "One ought, however, to
+have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one _had_ been.
+You, however, have certainly been down there," said he again to me.
+
+"Believe what you will," I replied; and I say the same to the reader.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWINE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and
+since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the
+grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if
+we think of the "prodigal son," we are at once in the midst of the
+sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in
+Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had
+his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like in
+the world. It was an old state-carriage, the seats were taken out of
+it, the wheels taken off, and thus it stood, without further ceremony,
+on its own bottom, and four swine were shut in there. If these were
+the first that had been in it one could not determine; but that it was
+once a state-carriage everything about it bore witness, even to the
+strip of morocco that hung from the roof inside, all bore witness of
+better days. It is true, every word of it.
+
+"Uff," said the occupiers within, and the carriage creaked and
+complained--it was a sorrowful end it had come to.
+
+"The beautiful is past!" so it sighed; so it said, or it might have
+said so.
+
+We returned here in the autumn. The carriage, or rather the body of
+the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they
+were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind
+tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor
+quiet: the birds of passage were gone.
+
+"The beautiful is past!" said the carriage, and the same sigh passed
+through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: "The
+beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm
+sunshine, and the song of birds--past! past!" So it said, and so it
+creaked in the trunks of the tall trees, and there was heard a sigh,
+so inwardly deep, a sigh direct from the heart of the wild rose-bush,
+and he who sat there was the rose-king. Do you know him! he is of a
+pure breed, the finest red-green breed: he is easily known. Go to the
+wild rose hedges, and in autumn, when all the flowers are gone, and
+the red hips alone remain, one often sees amongst these a large
+red-green moss-flower: that is the rose-king. A little green leaf
+grows out of his head--that is his feather: he is the only male person
+of his kind on the rose-bush, and he it was who sighed.
+
+"Past! past! the beautiful is past! The roses are gone; the leaves of
+the trees fall off!--it is wet here, and it is cold and raw!--The
+birds that sang here are now silent; the swine live on acorns; the
+swine are lords in the forest!"
+
+They were cold nights, they were gloomy days; but the raven sat on the
+bough and croaked nevertheless: "brah, brah!" The raven and the crow
+sat on the topmost bough: they have a large family, and they all said:
+"brah, brah! caw, caw!" and the majority is always right.
+
+There was a great miry pool under the tall trees in the hollow, and
+here lay the whole herd of swine, great and small--they found the
+place so excellent. "Oui! oui!" said they, for they knew no more
+French, but that, however, was something. They were so wise, and so
+fat, and altogether lords in the forest.
+
+The old ones lay still, for they thought; the young ones, on the
+contrary, were so brisk--busy, but apparently uneasy. One little pig
+had a curly tail--that curl was the mother's delight. She thought that
+they all looked at the curl, and thought only of the curl; but that
+they did not. They thought of themselves, and of what was useful, and
+of what the forest was for. They had always heard that the acorns they
+ate grew on the roots of the trees, and therefore they had always
+rooted there; but now there came a little one--for it is always the
+young ones that come with news--and he asserted that the acorns fell
+down from the branches: he himself had felt one fall right on his
+head, and that had given him the idea, so he had made observations,
+and now he was quite sure of what he asserted. The old ones laid their
+heads together. "Uff," said the swine, "uff! the finery is past! the
+twittering of the birds is past! we will have fruit! whatever can be
+eaten is good, and we eat everything!"
+
+"Oui! oui!" said they altogether.
+
+But the mother sow looked at her little pig with the curly tail.
+
+"One must not, however, forget the beautiful!" said she.
+
+"Caw! caw!" screamed the crow, and flew down, in order to be appointed
+nightingale: one there should be--and so the crow was directly
+appointed.
+
+"Past! past!" sighed the Rose King, "all the beautiful is past!"
+
+It was wet; it was gloomy; there was cold and wind, and the rain
+pelted down over the fields, and through the forest, like long water
+jets. Where are the birds that sang? where are the flowers in the
+meadows, and the sweet berries in the wood?--past! past!
+
+A light shone from the forester's house: it twinkled like a star, and
+shed its long rays out between the trees. A song was heard from
+within; pretty children played around their old grandfather, who sat
+with the Bible on his lap and read about God, and eternal life, and
+spoke of the spring that would come again: he spoke of the forest that
+would renew its green leaves, of the roses that would flower, of the
+nightingales that would sing, and of the beautiful that would again be
+paramount.
+
+But the Rose King did not hear it; he sat in the raw, cold weather,
+and sighed:
+
+"Past! past!"
+
+And the swine were lords in the forest, and the mother sow looked at
+her little pig, and his curly tail.
+
+"There will always be some, who have a sense for the beautiful!" said
+the mother sow.
+
+
+
+
+POETRY'S CALIFORNIA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nature's treasures are most often unveiled to us by accident. A dog's
+nose was dyed by the bruised purple fish, and the genuine purple dye
+was discovered; a pair of wild buffalos were fighting on America's
+auriferous soil, and their horns tore up the green sward that covered
+the rich gold vein.
+
+"In former days," as it is said by most, "everything came
+spontaneously. Our age has not such revelations; now one must slave
+and drudge if one would get anything; one must dig down into the deep
+shafts after the metals, which decrease more and more;--when the earth
+suddenly stretches forth her golden finger from California's
+peninsula, and we there see Monte Christo's foolishly invented riches
+realized; we see Aladdin's cave with its inestimable treasures. The
+world's treasury is so endlessly rich that we have, to speak plain and
+straightforward, scraped a little off the up-heaped measure; but the
+bushel is still full, the whole of the real measure is now refilled.
+In science also, such a world lies open for the discoveries of the
+human mind!
+
+"But in poetry, the greatest and most glorious is already found, and
+gained!" says the poet. "Happy he who was born in former times; there
+was then many a land still undiscovered, on which poetry's rich gold
+lay like the ore that shines forth from the earth's surface."
+
+Do not speak so! happy poet thou, who art born in our time! thou dost
+inherit all the glorious treasures which thy predecessors gave to the
+world; thou dost learn from them, that truth only is eternal,--the
+true in nature and mankind.
+
+Our time is the time of discoveries--poetry also has its new
+California.
+
+"Where does it exist?" you ask.
+
+The coast is so near, that you do not think that _there_ is the new
+world. Like a bold Leander, swim with me across the stream: the black
+words on the white paper will waft you--every period is a heave of the
+waves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in the library's saloon. Book-shelves with many books, old and
+new, were ranged around for every one; manuscripts lay there in heaps;
+there were also maps and globes. There sat industrious men at little
+tables, and wrote out and wrote in, and that was no easy work. But
+suddenly, a great transformation took place; the shelves became
+terraces for the noblest trees, with flowers and fruit; heavy clusters
+of grapes hung amongst leafy vines, and there was life and movement
+all around.
+
+The old folios and dusty manuscripts rose into flower-covered tumuli,
+and there sprang forth knights in mail, and kings with golden crowns
+on, and there was the clang of harp and shield; history acquired the
+life and fullness of poetry--for a poet had entered there. He saw the
+living visions; breathed the flowers' fragrance; crushed the grapes,
+and drank the sacred juice. But he himself knew not yet that he was a
+poet--the bearer of-light for times and generations yet to come.
+
+It was in the fresh, fragrant forest, in the last hour of
+leave-taking. Love's kiss, as the farewell, was the initiatory baptism
+for the future poetic life; and the fresh fragrance of the forest
+became sweeter, the chirping of the birds more melodious: there came
+sunlight and cooling breezes. Nature becomes doubly delightful where a
+poet walks.
+
+And as there were two roads before Hercules, so there were before him
+two roads, shown by two figures, in order to serve him; the one an old
+crone, the other a youth, beautiful as the angel that led the young
+Tobias.
+
+The old crone had on a mantle, on which were wrought flowers, animals,
+and human beings, entwined in an arabesque manner. She had large
+spectacles on, and beside her lantern she held a bag filled with old
+gilt cards--apparatus for witchcraft, and all the amulets of
+superstition: leaning on her crutch, wrinkled and shivering, she was,
+however, soaring, like the mist over the meadow.
+
+"Come with me, and you shall see the world, so that a poet can have
+benefit from it," said she. "I will light my lantern; it is better
+than that which Diogenes bore; I shall lighten your path."
+
+And the light shone; the old crone lifted her head, and stood there
+strong and tall, a powerful female figure. She was Superstition.
+
+"I am the strongest in the region of romance," said she,--and she
+herself believed it.
+
+And the lantern's light gave the lustre of the full moon over the
+whole earth; yes, the earth itself became transparent, as the still
+waters of the deep sea, or the glass mountains, in the fairy tale.
+
+"My kingdom is thine! sing what thou see'st; sing as if no bard before
+thee had sung thereof."
+
+And it was as if the scene continually changed. Splendid Gothic
+churches, with painted images in the panes, glided past, and the
+midnight-bell struck, and the dead arose from the graves. There, under
+the bending elder tree, sat the mother, and swathed her newly-born
+child; old, sunken knights' castles rose again from the marshy ground;
+the drawbridge fell, and they saw into the empty halls, adorned with
+images, where, under the gloomy stairs of the gallery, the
+death-proclaiming white woman came with a rattling bunch of keys. The
+basilisk brooded in the deep cellar; the monster bred from a cock's
+egg, invulnerable by every weapon, but not from the sight of its own
+horrible form: at the sight of its own image, it bursts like the steel
+that one breaks with the blow of a stout staff. And to everything that
+appeared, from the golden chalice of the altar-table, once the
+drinking-cup of evil spirits, to the nodding head on the gallows-hill,
+the old crone hummed her songs; and the crickets chirped, and the
+raven croaked from the opposite neighbour's house, and the
+winding-sheet rolled from the candle. Through the whole spectral world
+sounded, "death! death!"
+
+"Go with me to life and truth," cried the second form, the youth who
+was beautiful as a cherub. A flame shone from his brow--a cherub's
+sword glittered in his hand. "I am _Knowledge_," said he: "my world is
+greater--its aim is truth."
+
+And there was a brightness all around; the spectral images paled; it
+did not extend over the world they had seen. Superstition's lantern
+had only exhibited _magic-lantern_ images on the old ruined wall, and
+the wind had driven wet misty vapours past in figures.
+
+"I will give thee a rich recompense. Truth in the created--truth in
+God!"
+
+And through the stagnant lake, where before the misty spectral figures
+rose, whilst the bells sounded from the sunken castle, the light fell
+down on a swaying vegetable world. One drop of the marsh water, raised
+against the rays of light, became a living world, with creatures in
+strange forms, fighting and revelling--a world in a drop of water. And
+the sharp sword of Knowledge cleft the deep vault, and shone therein,
+where the basilisk killed, and the animal's body was dissolved in a
+death-bringing vapour: its claw extended from the fermenting
+wine-cask; its eyes were air, that burnt when the fresh wind touched
+it.
+
+And there resided a powerful force in the sword; _so_ powerful, that
+the grain of gold was beaten to a flat surface, thin as the covering
+of mist that we breathe on the glass-pane; and it shone at the sword's
+point, so that the thin threads of the cobweb seemed to swell to
+cables, for one saw the strong twistings of numberless small threads.
+And the voice of Knowledge seemed over the whole world, so that the
+age of miracles appeared to have returned. Thin iron ties were laid
+over the earth, and along these the heavily-laden waggons flew on the
+wings of steam, with the swallow's flight; mountains were compelled to
+open themselves to the inquiring spirit of the age; the plains were
+obliged to raise themselves; and then thought was borne in words,
+through metal wires, with the lightning's speed, to distant towns.
+"Life! life!" it sounded through the whole of nature. "It is our time!
+Poet, thou dost possess it! Sing of it in spirit and in truth!"
+
+And the genius of Knowledge raised the shining sword; he raised it far
+out into space, and then--what a sight! It was as when the sunbeams
+shine through a crevice in the wall in a dark space, and appear to us
+a revolving column of myriads of grains of dust; but every grain of
+dust here was a world! The sight he saw was our starry firmament!
+
+Thy earth is a grain of dust here, but a speck whose wonders astonish
+thee; only a grain of dust, and yet a star under stars. That long
+column of worlds thou callest thy starry firmament, revolves like the
+myriads of grains of dust, visibly hovering in the sunbeam's revolving
+column, from the crevice in the wall into that dark space. But still
+more distant stands the milky way's whitish mist, a new starry heaven,
+each column but a radius in the wheel! But how great is this itself!
+how many radii thus go out from the central point--God!
+
+So far does thine eye reach, so clear is thine age's horizon! Son of
+time, choose, who shall be thy companion? Here is thy new career! with
+the greatest of thy time, fly thou before thy time's generation! Like
+twinkling Lucifer, shine thou in time's roseate morn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yes, in knowledge lies Poetry's California! Every one who only looks
+backward, and not clearly forward, will, however high and honourably
+he stands, say, that if such riches lie in knowledge, they would long
+since have been made available by great and immortal bards, who had a
+clear and sagacious eye for the discovery of truth. But let us
+remember that when Thespis spoke from his car, the world had also wise
+men. Homer had sung his immortal songs, and yet a new form of genius
+appeared, to which a Sophocles and Aristophanes gave birth; the Sagas
+and mythology of the North were as an unknown treasure to the stage,
+until Oehlenschläger showed what mighty forms from thence might be
+made to glide past us.
+
+It is not our intention that the poet shall versify scientific
+discoveries. The didactic poem is and will be, in its best form,
+always but a piece of mechanism, or wooden figure, which has not the
+true life. The sunlight of science must penetrate the poet; he must
+perceive truth and harmony in the minute and in the immensely great
+with a clear eye: it must purify and enrich the understanding and
+imagination, and show him new forms which will supply to him more
+animated words. Even single discoveries will furnish a new flight.
+What fairy tales cannot the world unfold under the microscope, if we
+transfer our human world thereto? Electro-magnetism can present or
+suggest new plots in new comedies and romances; and how many humorous
+compositions will not spring forth, as we from our grain of dust, our
+little earth, with its little haughty beings look out into that
+endless world's universe, from milky way to milky way? An instance of
+what we here mean is discoverable in that old noble lady's words: "If
+every star be a globe like our earth, and have its kingdoms and
+courts--what an endless number of courts--the contemplation is enough
+to make mankind giddy!"
+
+We will not say, like that French authoress: "Now, then, let me die:
+the world has no more discoveries to make!" O, there is so endlessly
+much in the sea, in the air, and on the earth--wonders, which science
+will bring forth!--wonders, greater than the poet's philosophy can
+create! A bard will come, who, with a child's mind, like a new
+Aladdin, will enter into the cavern of science,--with a child's mind,
+we say, or else the puissant spirits of natural strength would seize
+him, and make him their servant; whilst he, with the lamp of poetry,
+which is, and always will be, the human heart, stands as a ruler, and
+brings forth wonderful fruits from the gloomy passages, and has
+strength to build poetry's new palace, created in one night by
+attendant spirits.
+
+In the world itself events repeat themselves; the human character was
+and will be the same during long ages and all ages; and as they were
+in the old writings, they must be in the new. But science always
+unfolds something new; light and truth are everything that is
+created--beam out from hence with eternally divine clearness. Mighty
+image of God, do thou illumine and enlighten mankind; and when its
+intellectual eye is accustomed to the lustre, the new Aladdin will
+come, and thou, man, shalt with him, who concisely dear, and richly
+sings the beauty of truth, wander through Poetry's California.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pictures of Sweden, by Hans Christian Andersen
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of Sweden, by Hans Christian Andersen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pictures of Sweden
+
+Author: Hans Christian Andersen
+
+Release Date: May 10, 2004 [EBook #12313]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF SWEDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Asad Razzaki and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced
+from page images provided by the Internet Archive Children's Library.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>PICTURES OF SWEDEN</h1>
+
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN</h2>
+
+<h4>Author of</h4>
+
+<h4>&quot;The Improvisatore,&quot; &amp;c.</h4>
+<br />
+
+<h5>LONDON:</h5>
+
+<h5>RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.</h5>
+
+<h5>1851.</h5>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+ <a href="#INTRODUCTION"><b>INTRODUCTION</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#TROLLHTTA"><b>TROLLH&Auml;TTA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEBIRDPHOENIX"><b>THE BIRD PHOENIX</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#KINNAKULLA"><b>KINNAKULLA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#GRANDMOTHER"><b>GRANDMOTHER</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEPRISONCELLS"><b>THE PRISON-CELLS</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#BEGGARBOYS"><b>BEGGAR-BOYS</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#VADSTENE"><b>VADSTENE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEPUPPETSHOWMAN"><b>THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THESKJRGAARDS"><b>THE &quot;SKJ&Auml;RGAARDS&quot;</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#STOCKHOLM"><b>STOCKHOLM</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#DIURGAERDEN"><b>DIURGAERDEN</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#ASTORY"><b>A STORY</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#UPSALA"><b>UPSALA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#SALA"><b>SALA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEMUTEBOOK"><b>THE MUTE BOOK</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEZTHERDALE"><b>THE Z&Auml;THER DALE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEMIDSUMMERFESTIVALINLACKSAND"><b>THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#FAITHANDKNOWLEDGE"><b>FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#INTHEFOREST"><b>IN THE FOREST</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#FAHLUN"><b>FAHLUN</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#WHATTHESTRAWSSAID"><b>WHAT THE STRAWS SAID</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEPOETSSYMBOL"><b>THE POET'S SYMBOL</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THEDALELV"><b>THE DAL-ELV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#DANEMORA"><b>DANEMORA</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THESWINE"><b>THE SWINE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#POETRYSCALIFORNIA"><b>POETRY'S CALIFORNIA</b></a><br />
+
+
+
+
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="INTRODUCTION"></a><h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+<br />
+
+<h4>We Travel.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand
+their song? Well, hear it in a free translation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get on my back,&quot; says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, &quot;and
+I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant
+beech woods, green meadows and corn-fields. In Scania, with the
+flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that
+you are still in Denmark.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fly with me,&quot; says the swallow; &quot;I fly over Holland's mountain ridge,
+where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north
+than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky
+ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is
+good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the
+table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a
+prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I
+have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come with me! come with me!&quot; screams the restless sea-gull, and flies
+in an expecting circle. &quot;Come with me to the Skj&auml;rgaards, where rocky
+isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower-beds along the
+coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rest thee between our extended wings,&quot; sing the wild swans. &quot;Let us
+bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs
+(rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has
+long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our
+extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the
+mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the
+snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North
+Sea, on yonder side of Norway.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We fly to Jemteland, where the rocky mountains are high and blue;
+where the Foss roars and rushes; where the torches are lighted as
+<i>budstikke</i><a name="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1"><sup>[A]</sup></a> to announce that the ferryman is expected. Up to the
+deep, cold-running waters, where the midsummer sun does not set; where
+the rosy hue of eve is that of morn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That is the birds' song. Shall we lay it to heart? Shall we accompany
+them?&mdash;at least a part of the way. We will not sit upon the stork's
+back, or between the swans' wings. We will go forward with steam, and
+with horses&mdash;yes, also on our own legs, and glance now and then from
+reality, over the fence into the region of thought, which is always
+our near neighbour-land; pluck a flower or a leaf, to be placed in the
+note-book&mdash;for it sprung out during our journey's flight: we fly and
+we sing. Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, where, in ancient times,
+the sacred gods came from Asia's mountains! land that still retains
+rays of their lustre, which streams from the flowers in the name of
+&quot;Linnaeus;&quot; which beams for thy chivalrous men from Charles the
+Twelfth's banner; which sounds from the obelisk on the field of
+Lutzen! Sweden, thou land of deep feeling, of heart-felt songs! home
+of the limpid elvs, where the wild swans sing in the gleam of the
+Northern Lights! Thou land, on whose deep, still lakes Scandinavia's
+fairy builds her colonnades, and leads her battling, shadowy host over
+the icy mirror! Glorious Sweden! with thy fragrant Linnaeus, with
+Jenny's soul-enlivening songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and
+the swallow, with the restless sea-gull and the wild swans. Thy
+birch-woods exhale refreshing fragrance under their sober, bending
+branches; on the tree's white stem the harp shall hang: the North's
+summer wind shall whistle therein!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="TROLLHTTA"></a><h2>TROLLH&Auml;TTA</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Who did we meet at Trollh&auml;tta? It is a strange story, and we will
+relate it.</p>
+
+<p>We landed at the first sluice, and stood as it were in a garden laid
+out in the English style. The broad walks are covered with gravel, and
+rise in short terraces between the sunlit greensward: it is charming,
+delightful here, but by no means imposing. If one desires to be
+excited in this manner, one must go a little higher up to the older
+sluices, which deep and narrow have burst through the hard rock. It
+looks magnificent, and the water in its dark bed far below is lashed
+into foam. Up here one overlooks both elv and valley; the bank of the
+river on the other side, rises in green undulating hills, grouped with
+leafy trees and red-painted wooden houses, which are bounded by rocks
+and pine forests. Steam-boats and sailing vessels ascend through the
+sluices; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them
+up above the rock, and from the forest itself it buzzes, roars and
+rattles. The din of Trollh&auml;tta Falls mingles with the noise from the
+saw-mills and smithies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In three hours we shall be through the sluices,&quot; said the Captain:
+&quot;in that time you will see the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn
+up here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We went from the path through the forest: a whole flock of bare-headed
+boys surrounded us. They would all be our guides; the one screamed
+longer than the other, and every one gave his contradictory
+explanation, how high the water stood, and how high it did not stand,
+or could stand. There was also a great difference of opinion amongst
+the learned.</p>
+
+<p>We soon stopped on a ling-covered rock, a dizzying terrace. Before us,
+but far below, was the roaring water, the Hell Fall, and over this
+again, fall after fall, the rich, rapid, rushing elv&mdash;the outlet of
+the largest lake in Sweden. What a sight! what a foaming and roaring,
+above&mdash;below! It is like the waves of the sea, but of effervescing
+champagne&mdash;of boiling milk. The water rushes round two rocky islands
+at the top so that the spray rises like meadow dew. Below, the water
+is more compressed, then hurries down again, shoots forward and
+returns in circles like smooth water, and then rolls darting its long
+sea-like fall into the Hell Fall. What a tempest rages in the
+deep&mdash;what a sight! Words cannot express it!</p>
+
+<p>Nor could our screaming little guides. They stood mute; and when they
+again began with their explanations and stories, they did not come
+far, for an old gentleman whom none of us had noticed (but he was now
+amongst us), made himself heard above the noise, with his singularly
+sounding voice. He knew all the particulars about the place, and about
+former days, as if they had been of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here, on the rocky holms,&quot; said he, &quot;it was that the warriors in the
+heathen times, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior
+St&auml;rkodder dwelt in this district, and liked the pretty girl Ogn right
+well; but she was fonder of Hergrimmer, and therefore he was
+challenged by St&auml;rkodder to combat here by the falls, and met his
+death; but Ogn sprung towards them, took her bridegroom's bloody
+sword, and thrust it into her own heart. Thus St&auml;rkodder did not gain
+her. Then there passed a hundred years, and again a hundred years: the
+forests were then thick and closely grown; wolves and bears prowled
+here summer and winter; the place was infested with malignant robbers,
+whose hiding-place no one could find. It was yonder, by the fall
+before Top Island, on the Norwegian side&mdash;there was their cave: now it
+has fallen in! The cliff there overhangs it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the Tailor's Cliff!&quot; shouted all the boys. &quot;It fell in the year
+1755!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fell!&quot; said the old man, as if in astonishment that any one but
+himself could know it. &quot;Everything will fall once, and the tailor
+directly.&quot; The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that
+if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he
+should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the
+first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down
+into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The
+Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she
+betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was
+seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed.
+That outside there is called 'The Thieves' Fall,' and down there under
+the water is another cave, the elv rushes in there and returns
+boiling; one can see it well up here, one hears it too, but it can be
+heard better under the bergman's loft.</p>
+
+<p>And we went on and on, along the Fall, towards Top Island,
+continuously on smooth paths covered with saw-dust, to Polham's
+Sluice. A cleft had been made in the rock for the first intended
+sluice-work, which was not finished, but whereby art has created the
+most imposing of all Trollh&auml;tta's Falls; the hurrying water falling
+here perpendicularly into the black deep. The side of the rock is here
+placed in connection with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge,
+which appears as if thrown over the abyss. We venture on to the
+rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on
+the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from
+the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the
+rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the
+fine spray. The torrent flows on each side, as if shot out from a
+gigantic cannon, fall after fall: we look out over them all, and are
+filled with the harmonic sound, which since time began, has ever been
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one can ever get to the island there,&quot; said one of our party,
+pointing to the large island above the topmost fall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I however know one!&quot; said the old man, and nodded with a peculiar
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, my grandfather could!&quot; said one of the boys, &quot;scarcely any one
+besides has crossed during a hundred years. The cross that is set up
+over there was placed there by my grandfather. It had been a severe
+winter, the whole of Lake Venern was frozen; the ice dammed up the
+outlet, and for many hours there was a dry bottom. Grandfather has
+told about it: he went over with two others, placed the cross up, and
+returned. But then there was such a thundering and cracking noise,
+just as if it were cannons. The ice broke up and the elv came over the
+fields and forest. It is true, every word I say!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One of the travellers cited Tegner:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Vildt G&ouml;ta stortade fr&aring;n Fjallen,<br /></span>
+<span> Hemsk Trollet fr&aring;n sat Toppfall r&ouml;t!<br /></span>
+<span> Men Snillet kom och spr&auml;ngt stod Hallen,<br /></span>
+<span> Med Skeppen i sitt sk&ouml;t!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor mountain sprite,&quot; he continued, &quot;thy power and glory recede! Man
+flies over thee&mdash;thou mayst go and learn of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to
+himself&mdash;but we were just by the bridge before the inn. The steam-boat
+glided through the opened way, every one hastened to get on board, and
+it directly shot away above the Fall, just as if no Fall existed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And that can be done!&quot; said the old man. He knew nothing at all about
+steam-boats, had never before that day seen such a thing, and
+accordingly he was sometimes up and sometimes down, and stood by the
+machinery and stared at the whole construction, as if he were counting
+all the pins and screws. The course of the canal appeared to him to be
+something quite new; the plan of it and the guide-books were quite
+foreign objects to him: he turned them and turned them&mdash;for read I do
+not think he could. But he knew all the particulars about the
+country&mdash;that is to say, from olden times.</p>
+
+<p>I heard that he did not sleep at all the whole night. He studied the
+passage of the steam-boat; and when we in the morning ascended the
+sluice terraces from Lake Venern, higher and higher from lake to lake,
+away over the high-plain&mdash;higher, continually higher&mdash;he was in such
+activity that it appeared as if it could not be greater&mdash;and then we
+reached Motala.</p>
+
+<p>The Swedish author Tj&ouml;rner&ouml;s relates of himself, that when a child he
+once asked what it was that ticked in the clock, and they answered him
+that it was one named &quot;<i>Bloodless</i>.&quot; What brought the child's pulse to
+beat with feverish throbs and the hair on his head to rise, also
+exercised its power in Motala, over the old man from Trollh&auml;tta.</p>
+
+<p>We now went through the great manufactory in Motala. What ticks in the
+clock, beats here with strong strokes of the hammer. It is
+<i>Bloodless</i>, who drank life from human thought and thereby got limbs
+of metals, stone and wood; it is <i>Bloodless</i>, who by human thought
+gained strength, which man himself does not physically possess.
+<i>Bloodless</i> reigns in Motala, and through the large foundries and
+factories he extends his hard limbs, whose joints and parts consist of
+wheel within wheel, chains, bars, and thick iron wires. Enter, and see
+how the glowing iron masses are formed into long bars. <i>Bloodless</i>
+spins the glowing bar! see how the shears cut into the heavy metal
+plates; they cut as quietly and as softly as if the plates were paper.
+Here where he hammers, the sparks fly from the anvil. See how he
+breaks the thick iron bars; he breaks them into lengths; it is as if
+it were a stick of sealing-wax that is broken. The long iron bars
+rattle before your feet; iron plates are planed into shavings; before
+you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire&mdash;long
+heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around
+in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for
+steam-boats and locomotives, <i>Bloodless</i> also here stretches out one
+of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man
+alone stands and is silenced by&mdash;<i>stop!</i></p>
+
+<p>The perspiration oozes out of one's fingers'-ends: one turns and
+turns, bows, and knows not one's self, from pure respect for the human
+thought which here has iron limbs. And yet the large iron hammer goes
+on continually with its heavy strokes: it is as if it said: &quot;Banco,
+Banco! many thousand dollars; Banco, pure gain! Banco! Banco!&quot;&mdash;Hear
+it, as I heard it; see, as I saw!</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman from Trollh&auml;tta walked up and down in full
+contemplation; bent and swung himself about; crept on his knees, and
+stuck his head into corners and between the machines, for he would
+know everything so exactly; he would see the screw in the propelling
+vessels, understand their mechanism and effect under water&mdash;and the
+water itself poured like hail-drops down his forehead. He fell
+unconscious, backwards into my arms, or else he would have been drawn
+into the machinery, and been crushed: he looked at me, and pressed my
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all this goes on naturally,&quot; said he; &quot;simply and comprehensibly.
+Ships go against the wind, and against the stream, sail higher than
+forests and mountains. The water must raise, steam must drive them!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said he, and again <i>yes</i>, with a sigh which I did not then
+understand; but, months after, I understood it, and I will at once
+make a spring to that time, and we are again at Trollh&auml;tta.</p>
+
+<p>I came here in the autumn, on my return home; stayed some days in this
+mighty piece of nature, where busy human life forces its way more and
+more in, and, by degrees, transforms the picturesque to the useful
+manufactory. Trollh&auml;tta must do her work; saw beams, drive mills,
+hammer and break to pieces: one building grows up by the side of the
+other, and in half a century hence here will be a city. But that was
+not the story.</p>
+
+<p>I came, as I have said, here again in the autumn. I found the same
+rushing and roaring, the same din, the same rising and sinking in the
+sluices, the same chattering boys who conducted fresh travellers to
+the Hell Fall, to the iron-bridge island, and to the inn. I sat here,
+and turned over the leaves of books, collected here through a series
+of years, in which travellers have inscribed their names, feelings and
+thoughts at Trollh&auml;tta&mdash;almost always the same astonishment, expressed
+in different languages, though generally in Latin: <i>veni, vidi,
+obstupui</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One has written: &quot;I have seen nature's master-piece pervade that of
+art;&quot; another cannot say what he saw, and what he saw he cannot say. A
+mine owner and manufacturer, full of the doctrine of utility, has
+written: &quot;Seen with the greatest pleasure this useful work for us in
+V&auml;rmeland, Trollh&auml;tta.&quot; The wife of a dean from Scania expresses
+herself thus. She has kept to the family, and only signed in the
+remembrance book, as to the effect of her feelings at Trollh&auml;tta. &quot;God
+grant my brother-in-law fortune, for he has understanding!&quot; Some few
+have added witticisms to the others' feelings; yet as a pearl on this
+heap of writing shines Tegner's poem, written by himself in the book
+on the 28th of June, 1804:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Gotha kom i dans fr&aring;n Seves fjallar, &amp;c.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I looked up from the book and who should stand before me, just about
+to depart again, but the old man from Trollh&auml;tta! Whilst I had
+wandered about, right up to the shores of Siljan, he had continually
+made voyages on the canal; seen the sluices and manufactories, studied
+steam in all its possible powers of service, and spoke about a
+projected railway in Sweden, between the Hjalmar and Venern. He had,
+however, never yet seen a railway, and I described to him these
+extended roads, which sometimes rise like ramparts, sometimes like
+towering bridges, and at times like halls of miles in length, cut
+through rocks. I also spoke of America and England.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One takes breakfast in London, and the same day one drinks tea in
+Edinburgh.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I can do!&quot; said the man, and in as cool a tone as if no one but
+himself could do it, &quot;I can also,&quot; said I; &quot;and I have done it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And who are you, then?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A common traveller,&quot; I replied; &quot;a traveller who pays for his
+conveyance. And who are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do not know me: my time is past; my power is nothing! <i>Bloodless</i>
+is stronger than I!&quot; and he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>I then understood who he was. Well, in what humour must a poor
+mountain sprite be, who only comes up every hundred years to see how
+things go forward here on the earth!</p>
+
+<p>It was the mountain sprite and no other, for in our time every
+intelligent person is considerably wiser; and I looked with a sort of
+proud feeling on the present generation, on the gushing, rushing,
+whirling wheel, the heavy blows of the hammer, the shears that cut so
+softly through the metal plates, the thick iron bars that were broken
+like sticks of sealing-wax, and the music to which the heart's
+pulsations vibrate: &quot;Banco, Banco, a hundred thousand Banco!&quot; and all
+by steam&mdash;by mind and spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It was evening. I stood on the heights of Trollh&auml;tta's old sluices,
+and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows
+like spectres, large and white. The sluice gates were opened with a
+ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of
+the secret council in Germany. The evening was so still that
+Trollh&auml;tta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were
+a chorus from a hundred water-mills&mdash;ever one and the same tone. In
+one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer
+through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature
+was felt. Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the
+forest, down towards the Falls. Was it the mountain sprite?&mdash;We will
+imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="THEBIRDPHOENIX"></a><h2>THE BIRD PHOENIX</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In the garden of Paradise, under the tree of knowledge, stood a hedge
+of roses. In the first rose a bird was hatched; its flight was like
+that of light, its colours beautiful, its song magnificent.</p>
+
+<p>But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were
+driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's
+flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died
+in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one&mdash;the only
+one&mdash;the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up
+its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself up in
+its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out
+from the red egg.</p>
+
+<p>The bird hovers around us, rapid as the light, beautiful in colour,
+glorious in song. When the mother sits by the child's cradle, it is by
+the pillow, and with its wings flutters a glory around the child's
+head. It flies through the chamber of contentment, and there is the
+sun's radiance within:&mdash;the poor chest of drawers is odoriferous with
+violets.</p>
+
+<p>But the bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia's bird: it flutters in the
+rays of the Northern Lights on Lapland's icy plains; it hops amongst
+the yellow flowers in Greenland's short summer. Under Fahlun's copper
+rocks, in England's coal mines, it flies like a powdered moth over the
+hymn-book in the pious workman's hands. It sails on the lotus-leaf
+down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the Hindoo girl
+glisten on seeing it.</p>
+
+<p>The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? The bird of Paradise, song's
+sacred swan! It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and
+flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland's minstrel-harp
+glided the swan's red, sounding bill. It sat on Shakspeare's shoulder
+like Odin's raven, and whispered in his ear: &quot;Immortality!&quot; It flew at
+the minstrel competition, through Wartzburg's knightly halls.</p>
+
+<p>The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? It sang the Marseillaise for
+thee, and thou didst kiss the plume that fell from its wing: it came
+in the lustre of Paradise, and thou perhaps didst turn thyself away to
+some poor sparrow that sat with merest tinsel on its wings.</p>
+
+<p>The bird of Paradise! regenerated every century, bred in flames, dead
+in flames; thy image set in gold hangs in the saloons of the rich,
+even though thou fliest often astray and alone. &quot;The bird Phoenix in
+Arabia&quot;&mdash;is but a legend.</p>
+
+<p>In the garden of Paradise, when thou wast bred under the tree of
+knowledge, in the first rose, our Lord kissed thee and gave thee thy
+proper name&mdash;Poetry.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="KINNAKULLA"></a><h2>KINNAKULLA</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens! Thee will we visit. We stand by
+the lowest terrace in a plenitude of flowers and verdure; the ancient
+village church leans its grey pointed wooden tower, as if it would
+fall; it produces an effect in the landscape: we would not even be
+without that large flock of birds, which just now chance to fly away
+over the mountain forest.</p>
+
+<p>The high road leads up the mountain with short palings on either side,
+between which we see extensive plains with hops, wild roses,
+corn-fields, and delightful beech woods, such as are not to be found
+in any other place in Sweden. The ivy winds itself around old trees
+and stones&mdash;even to the withered trunk green leaves are lent. We look
+out over the flat, extended woody plain, to the sunlit church-tower of
+Maristad, which shines like a white sail on the dark green sea: we
+look out over the Venern Lake, but cannot see its further shore.
+Skj&auml;rgaardens' wood-crowned rocks lie like a wreath down in the lake;
+the steam-boat comes&mdash;see! down by the cliff under the red-roofed
+mansions, where the beech and walnut trees grow in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>The travellers land; they wander under shady trees away over that
+pretty light green meadow, which is enwreathed by gardens and woods:
+no English park has a finer verdure than the meadows near Hellekis.
+They go up to &quot;the grottos,&quot; as they call the projecting masses of red
+stone higher up, which, being thoroughly kneaded with petrifactions,
+project from the declivity of the earth, and remind one of the
+mouldering colossal tombs in the Campagna of Rome. Some are smooth and
+rounded off by the streaming of the water, others bear the moss of
+ages, grass and flowers, nay, even tall trees.</p>
+
+<p>The travellers go from the forest road up to the top of Kinnakulla,
+where a stone is raised as the goal of their wanderings. The traveller
+reads in his guide-book about the rocky strata of Kinnakulla: &quot;At the
+bottom is found sandstone, then alum-stone, then limestone, and above
+this red-stone, higher still slate, and lastly, trap.&quot; And, now that
+he has seen this, he descends again, and goes on board. He has seen
+Kinnakulla:&mdash;yes, the stony rock here, amidst the swelling verdure,
+showed him one heavy, thick stone finger, and most of the travellers
+think that they are like the devil, if they lay hold upon one finger,
+they have the body&mdash;but it is not always so. The least visited side of
+Kinnakulla is just the most characteristic, and thither will we go.</p>
+
+<p>The road still leads us a long way on this side of the mountain, step
+by step downwards, in long terraces of rich fields: further down, the
+slate-stone peers forth in flat layers, a green moss upon it, and it
+looks like threadbare patches in the green velvet carpet. The high
+road leads over an extent of ground where the slate-stone lies like a
+firm floor. In the Campagna of Rome, one would say it is a piece of
+<i>via appia</i>, or antique road; but it is Kinnakulla's naked skin and
+bones that we pass over. The peasant's house is composed of large
+slate-stones, and the roof is covered with them; one sees nothing of
+wood except that of the door, and above it, of the large painted
+shield, which states to what regiment the soldier belongs who got this
+house and plot of ground in lieu of pay.</p>
+
+<p>We cast another glance over Venern, to Lock&ouml;'s old palace, to the town
+of Lendkjobing, and are again near verdant fields and noble trees,
+that cast their shadows over Blomberg, where, in the garden, the poet
+Geier's spirit seeks the flower of Kinnakulla in his grand-daughter,
+little Anna.</p>
+
+<p>The plain expands here behind Kinnakulla; it extends for miles around,
+towards the horizon. A shower stands in the heavens; the wind has
+increased: see how the rain falls to the ground like a darkening veil.
+The branches of the trees lash one another like penitential dryades.
+Old Husaby church lies near us, yonder; though the shower lashes the
+high walls, which alone stand, of the old Catholic Bishop's palace.
+Crows and ravens fly through the long glass-less windows, which time
+has made larger; the rain pours down the crevices in the old grey
+walls, as if they were now to be loosened stone from stone: but the
+church stands&mdash;old Husaby church&mdash;so grey and venerable, with its
+thick walls, its small windows, and its three spires stuck against
+each other, and standing, like nuts, in a cluster.</p>
+
+<p>The old trees in the churchyard cast their shade over ancient graves.
+Where is the district's &quot;Old Mortality,&quot; who weeds the grass, and
+explains the ancient memorials? Large granite stones are laid here in
+the form of coffins, ornamented with rude carvings from the times of
+Catholicism. The old church-door creaks in the hinges. We stand within
+its walls, where the vaulted roof was filled for centuries with the
+fragrance of incense, with monks, and with the song of the choristers.
+Now it is still and mute here: the old men in their monastic dresses
+have passed into their graves; the blooming boys that swung the censer
+are in their graves; the congregation&mdash;many generations&mdash;all in their
+graves; but the church still stands the same. The moth-eaten, dusty
+cowls, and the bishops' mantle, from the days of the cloister, hang in
+the old oak presses; and old manuscripts, half eaten up by the rats,
+lie strewed about on the shelves in the sacristy.</p>
+
+<p>In the left aisle of the church there still stands, and has stood time
+out of mind, a carved image of wood, painted in various colours which
+are still strong: it is the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus. Fresh
+flower wreaths are hung around hers and the child's head; fragrant
+garlands are twined around the pedestal, as festive as on Madonna's
+birthday feast in the times of Popery. The young folks who have been
+confirmed, have this day, on receiving the sacrament for the first
+time, ornamented this old image&mdash;nay, even set the priest's name in
+flowers upon the altar; and he has, to our astonishment, let it remain
+there.</p>
+
+<p>The image of Madonna seems to have become young by the fresh wreaths:
+the fragrant flowers here have a power like that of poetry&mdash;they bring
+back the days of past centuries to our own times. It is as if the
+extinguished glory around the head shone again; the flowers exhale
+perfume: it is as if incense again streamed through the aisles of the
+church&mdash;it shines around the altar as if the consecrated tapers were
+lighted&mdash;it is a sunbeam through the window.</p>
+
+<p>The sky without has become clear: we drive again in under Cleven, the
+barren side of Kinnakulla: it is a rocky wall, different from almost
+all the others. The red stone blocks lie, strata on strata, forming
+fortifications with embrasures, projecting wings and round towers; but
+shaken, split and fallen in ruins&mdash;it is an architectural fantastic
+freak of nature. A brook falls gushing down from one of the highest
+points of the Cleven, and drives a little mill. It looks like a
+plaything which the mountain sprite had placed there and forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Large masses of fallen stone blocks lie dispersed round about; nature
+has spread them in the forms of carved cornices. The most significant
+way of describing Kinnakulla's rocky wall is to call it the ruins of a
+mile-long Hindostanee temple: these rocks might be easily transformed
+by the hammer into sacred places like the Ghaut mountains at Ellara.
+If a Brahmin were to come to Kinnakulla's rocky wall, he would
+recognise the temple of Cailasa, and find in the clefts and crevices
+whole representations from Ramagena and Mahabharata. If one should
+then speak to him in a sort of gibberish&mdash;no matter what, only that,
+by the help of Brockhaus's &quot;Conversation-Lexicon&quot; one might mingle
+therein the names of some of the Indian spectacles:&mdash;Sakantala,
+Vikramerivati, Uttaram Ramatscheritram, &amp;c.&mdash;the Brahmin would be
+completely mystified, and write in his note-book: &quot;Kinnakulla is the
+remains of a temple, like those we have in Ellara; and the inhabitants
+themselves know the most considerable works in our oldest Sanscrit
+literature, and speak in an extremely spiritual manner about them.&quot;
+But no Brahmin comes to the high rocky walls&mdash;not to speak of the
+company from the steam-boat, who are already far over the lake Venern.
+They have seen wood-crowned Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens&mdash;and
+we also have now seen them.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="GRANDMOTHER"></a><h2>GRANDMOTHER</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Grandmother is so old, she has so many wrinkles, and her hair is quite
+white; but her eyes! they shine like two stars, nay, they are much
+finer&mdash;they are so mild, so blissful to look into. And then she knows
+the most amusing stories, and she has a gown with large, large flowers
+on it, and it is of such thick silk that it actually rustles.
+Grandmother knows so much, for she has lived long before father and
+mother&mdash;that is quite sure.</p>
+
+<p>Grandmother has a psalm-book with thick silver clasps, and in that
+book she often reads. In the middle of it lies a rose, which is quite
+flat and dry; but it is not so pretty as the roses she has in the
+glass, yet she smiles the kindliest to it, nay, even tears come into
+her eyes!</p>
+
+<p>Why does Grandmother look thus on the withered flower in the old book?
+Do you know why?</p>
+
+<p>Every time that Grandmother's tears fall on the withered flower the
+colours become fresher; the rose then swells and the whole room is
+filled with fragrance; the walls sink as if they were but mists; and
+round about, it is the green, the delightful grove, where the sun
+shines between the leaves. And Grandmother&mdash;yes, she is quite young;
+she is a beautiful girl, with yellow hair, with round red cheeks,
+pretty and charming&mdash;no rose is fresher. Yet the eyes, the mild,
+blissful eyes,&mdash;yes, they are still Grandmother's! By her side sits a
+
+
+man, young and strong: he presents the rose to her and she smiles. Yet
+grandmother does not smile so,&mdash;yes; the smile comes,&mdash;he is
+gone.&mdash;Many thoughts and many forms go past! That handsome man is
+gone; the rose lies in the psalm-book, and grandmother,&mdash;yes, she
+again sits like an old woman, and looks on the withered rose that lies
+in the book.</p>
+
+<p>Now grandmother is dead!</p>
+
+<p>She sat in the arm-chair, and told a long, long, sweet story. &quot;And now
+it is ended!&quot; said she, &quot;and I am quite tired: let me now sleep a
+little!&quot; And so she laid her head back to rest. She drew her breath,
+she slept, but it became more and more still; and her face was so full
+of peace and happiness&mdash;it was as if the sun's rays passed over it.
+She smiled, and then they said that she was dead.</p>
+
+<p>She was laid in the black coffin; she lay swathed in the white linen:
+she was so pretty, and yet the eyes were closed&mdash;but all the wrinkles
+were gone. She lay with a smile around her mouth: her hair was so
+silvery white, so venerable, one was not at all afraid to look on the
+dead, for it was the sweet, benign grandmother. And the psalm-book was
+laid in the coffin under her head (she herself had requested it), and
+the rose lay in the old book&mdash;and then they buried grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>On the grave, close under the church-wall, they planted a rose-tree,
+and it became full of roses, and the nightingale sang over it, and the
+organ in the church played the finest psalms that were in the book
+under the dead one's head. And the moon shone straight down on the
+grave&mdash;but the dead was not there: every child could go quietly in the
+night-time and pluck a rose there by the churchyard-wall. The dead
+know more than all we living know&mdash;the dead know the awe we should
+feel at something so strange as their coming to us. The dead are
+better than us all, and therefore they do not come.</p>
+
+<p>There is earth over the coffin, there is earth within it; the
+psalm-book with its leaves is dust the rose with all its recollections
+has gone to dust. But above it bloom new roses, above is sings the
+nightingale, and the organ plays:&mdash;we think of the old grandmother
+with the mild, eternally young eyes. Eyes can never die! Ours shall
+once again see her young, and beautiful, as when she for the first
+time kissed the fresh red rose which is now dust in the grave.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+ <a name="THEPRISONCELLS"></a><h2>THE PRISON-CELLS</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>By separation from other men, by solitary confinement, in continual
+silence, the criminal is to be punished and amended; therefore were
+prison-cells contrived. In Sweden there were several, and new ones
+have been built. I visited one for the first time in Mariestad. This
+building lies close outside the town, by a running water, and in a
+beautiful landscape. It resembles a large white-washed summer
+residence, window above window.</p>
+
+<p>But we soon discover that the stillness of the grave rests over it. It
+is as if no one dwelt here, or like a deserted mansion in the time of
+the plague. The gates in the walls are locked: one of them is opened
+for us: the gaoler stands with his bunch of keys: the yard is empty,
+but clean&mdash;even the grass weeded away between the stone paving. We
+enter the waiting-room, where the prisoner is received: we are shown
+the bathing-room, into which he is first led. We now ascend a flight
+of stairs, and are in a large hall, extending the whole length and
+breadth of the building. Galleries run along the floors, and between
+these the priest has his pulpit, where he preaches on Sundays to an
+invisible congregation. All the doors facing the gallery are half
+opened: the prisoners hear the priest, but cannot see him, nor he
+them. The whole is a well-built machine&mdash;a nightmare for the spirit.
+In the door of every cell there is fixed a glass, about the size of
+the eye: a slide covers it, and the gaoler can, unobserved by the
+prisoner, see everything he does; but he must come gently,
+noiselessly, for the prisoner's ear is wonderfully quickened by
+solitude. I turned the slide quite softly, and looked into the closed
+space, when the prisoner's eye immediately met mine. It is airy,
+clean, and light within the cell, but the window is placed so high
+that it is impossible to look out of it. A high stool, made fast to a
+sort of table, and a hammock, which can be hung upon hooks under the
+ceiling, and covered with a quilt, compose the whole furniture.</p>
+
+<p>Several cells were opened for us. In one of these was a young, and
+extremely pretty girl. She had lain down in her hammock, but sprang
+out directly the door was opened, and her first employment was to lift
+her hammock down, and roll it together. On the little table stood a
+pitcher with water, and by it lay the remains of some oatmeal cakes,
+besides the Bible and some psalms.</p>
+
+<p>In the cell close by sat a child's murderess. I saw her only through
+the little glass in the door. She had had heard our footsteps; heard
+us speak; but she sat still, squeezed up into the corner by the door,
+as if she would hide herself as much as possible: her back was bent,
+her head almost on a level with her lap, and her hands folded over it.
+They said this unfortunate creature was very young. Two brothers sat
+here in two different cells: they were punished for horse stealing;
+the one was still quite a boy.</p>
+
+<p>In one cell was a poor servant girl. They said: &quot;She has no place of
+resort, and without a situation, and therefore she is placed here.&quot; I
+thought I had not heard rightly, and repeated my question, &quot;why she
+was here,&quot; but got the same answer. Still I would rather believe that
+I had misunderstood what was said&mdash;it would otherwise be abominable.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, in the free sunshine, it is the busy day; in here it is
+always midnight's stillness. The spider that weaves its web down the
+wall, the swallow which perhaps flies a single time close under the
+panes there high up in the wall&mdash;even the stranger's footstep in the
+gallery, as he passes the cell-doors, is an event in that mute,
+solitary life, where the prisoners' thoughts are wrapped up in
+themselves. One must read of the martyr-filled prisons of the
+Inquisition, of the crowds chained together in the Bagnes, of the hot,
+lead chambers of Venice, and the black, wet gulf of the wells&mdash;be
+thoroughly shaken by these pictures of misery, that we may with a
+quieter pulsation of the heart wander through the gallery of the
+prison-cells. Here is light, here is air;&mdash;here it is more humane.
+Where the sunbeam shines mildly in on the prisoner, there also will
+the radiance of God shine into the heart.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="BEGGARBOYS"></a><h2>BEGGAR-BOYS</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The painter Callot&mdash;who does not know the name, at least from
+Hoffmann's &quot;in Callot's manner?&quot;&mdash;has given a few excellent pictures
+of Italian beggars. One of these is a fellow, on whom the one rag
+lashes the other: he carries his huge bundle and a large flag with the
+inscription, &quot;Capitano de Baroni.&quot; One does not think that there can
+in reality be found such a wandering rag-shop, and we confess that in
+Italy itself we have not seen any such; for the beggar-boy there,
+whose whole clothing often consists only of a waistcoat, has in it not
+sufficient costume for such rags.</p>
+
+<p>But we see it in the North. By the canal road between the Venern and
+Vigen, on the bare, dry rocky plain there stood, like beauty's
+thistles in that poor landscape, a couple of beggar-boys, so ragged,
+so tattered, so picturesquely dirty, that we thought we had Callot's
+originals before us, or that it was an arrangement of some industrious
+parents, who would awaken the traveller's attention and benevolence.
+Nature does not form such things: there was something so bold in the
+hanging on of the rags, that each boy instantly became a Capitano de
+Baroni.</p>
+
+<p>The younger of the two had something round him that had certainly once
+been the jacket of a very corpulent man, for it reached almost to the
+boy's ancles; the whole hung fast by a piece of the sleeve and a
+single brace, made from the seam of what was now the rest of the
+lining. It was very difficult to see the transition from jacket to
+trowsers, the rags glided so into one another. The whole clothing was
+arranged so as to give him an air-bath: there were draught holes on
+all sides and ends; a yellow linen clout fastened to the nethermost
+regions seemed as if it were to signify a shirt. A very large straw
+hat, that had certainly been driven over several times, was stuck
+sideways on his head, and allowed the boy's wiry, flaxen hair to grow
+freely through the opening where the crown should have been: the naked
+brown shoulder and upper part of the arm, which was just as brown,
+were the prettiest of the whole.</p>
+
+<p>The other boy had only a pair of trowsers on. They were also ragged,
+but the rags were bound fast into the pockets with packthread; one
+string round the ancles, one under the knee, and another round about
+the waist. He, however, kept together what he had, and that is always
+respectable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be off!&quot; shouted the Captain, from the vessel; and the boy with the
+tied-up rags turned round, and we&mdash;yes, we saw nothing but packthread,
+in bows, genteel bows. The front part of the boy only was covered: he
+had only the foreparts of trowsers&mdash;the rest was packthread, the bare,
+naked packthread.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="VADSTENE"></a><h2>VADSTENE</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>In Sweden, it is not only in the country, but even in several of the
+provincial towns, that one sees whole houses of grass turf or with
+roofs of grass turf; and some are so low that one might easily spring
+up to the roof, and sit on the fresh greensward. In the early spring,
+whilst the fields are still covered with snow, but which is melted on
+the roof, the latter affords the first announcement of spring, with
+the young sprouting grass where the sparrow twitters: &quot;Spring comes!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Between Motala and Vadstene, close by the high road, stands a
+grass-turf house&mdash;one of the most picturesque. It has but one window,
+broader than it is high, and a wild rose branch forms the curtain
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>We see it in the spring. The roof is so delightfully fresh with grass,
+it has quite the tint of velvet; and close to it is the chimney, nay,
+even a cherry-tree grows out of its side, now full of flowers: the
+wind shakes the leaves down on a little lamb that is tethered to the
+chimney. It is the only lamb of the family. The old dame who lives
+here, lifts it up to its place herself in the morning and lifts it
+down again in the evening, to give it a place in the room. The roof
+can just bear the little lamb, but not more&mdash;this is an experience and
+a certainty. Last autumn&mdash;and at that time the grass turf roofs are
+covered with flowers, mostly blue and yellow, the Swedish
+colours&mdash;there grew here a flower of a rare kind. It shone in the eyes
+of the old Professor, who on his botanical tour came past here. The
+Professor was quickly up on the roof, and just as quick was one of his
+booted legs through it, and so was the other leg, and then half of the
+Professor himself&mdash;that part where the head does not sit; and as the
+house had no ceiling, his legs hovered right over the old dame's head,
+and that in very close contact. But now the roof is again whole; the
+fresh grass grows where learning sank; the little lamb bleats up
+there, and the old dame stands beneath, in the low doorway, with
+folded hands, with a smile on her mouth, rich in remembrances, legends
+and songs, rich in her only lamb on which the cherry-tree strews its
+flower-blossoms in the warm spring sun.</p>
+
+<p>As a background to this picture lies the Vettern&mdash;the bottomless lake
+as the commonalty believe&mdash;with its transparent water, its sea-like
+waves, and in calm, with &quot;Hegring,&quot; or fata morgana on its steel-like
+surface. We see Vadstene palace and town, &quot;the city of the dead,&quot; as a
+Swedish author has called it&mdash;Sweden's Herculaneum, reminiscence's
+city. The grass-turf house must be our box, whence we see the rich
+mementos pass before us&mdash;memorials from the chronicle of saints, the
+chronicle of kings and the love songs that still live with the old
+dame, who stands in her low house there, where the lamb crops the
+grass on the roof. We hear her, and we see with her eyes; we go from
+the grass-turf house up to the town, to the other grass-turf houses,
+where poor women sit and make lace, once the celebrated work of the
+rich nuns here in the cloister's wealthy time.</p>
+
+<p>How still, solitary and grass-grown are these streets! We stop by an
+old wall, mouldy-green for centuries already. Within it stood the
+cloister; now there is but one of its wings remaining. There, within
+that now poor garden still bloom Saint Bridget's leek, and once ran
+flowers. King John and the Abbess, Ana Gylte, wandered one evening
+there, and the King cunningly asked: &quot;If the maidens in the cloister
+were never tempted by love?&quot; and the Abbess answered, as she pointed
+to a bird that just then flew over them: &quot;It may happen! One cannot
+prevent the bird from flying over the garden; but one may surely
+prevent it from building its nest there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus thought the pious Abbess, and there have been sisters who thought
+and acted like her. But it is quite as sure that in the same garden
+there stood a pear-tree, called the tree of death; and the legend says
+of it, that whoever approached and plucked its fruit would soon die.
+Red and yellow pears weighed down its branches to the ground. The
+trunk was unusually large; the grass grew high around it, and many a
+morning hour was it seen trodden down. Who had been here during the
+night?</p>
+
+<p>A storm arose one evening from the lake, and the next morning the
+large tree was found thrown down; the trunk was broken, and out from
+it there rolled infants' bones&mdash;the white bones of murdered children
+lay shining in the grass.</p>
+
+<p>The pious but love-sick sister Ingrid, this Vadstene's Heloise, writes
+to her heart's beloved, Axel Nilsun&mdash;for the chronicles have preserved
+it for us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Broderne og Systarne leka paa Spil, drikke Vin och dansa med
+hvarandra i Tradg&aring;rden!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(The brothers and sisters amuse themselves in play, drink wine and
+dance with one another in the garden).</p>
+
+<p>These words may explain to us the history of the pear-tree: one is led
+to think of the orgies of the nun-phantoms in &quot;Robert le Diable,&quot; the
+daughters of sin on consecrated ground. But &quot;judge not, lest ye be
+judged,&quot; said the purest and best of men that was born of woman. We
+will read Sister Ingrid's letter, sent secretly to him she truly
+loved. In it lies the history of many, clear and human to us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jag djerfues for ingen utan for dig allena bek&auml;nna, att jag form&aring;r
+ilia &aring;nda mit Ave Maria eller l&auml;sa mit Paternoster, utan du kommer mig
+ich&aring;gen. Ja i sjelfa messen kommer mig fore dit t&auml;ckleliga Ansigte och
+vart k&aring;rliga omgange. Jag tycker jag kan icke skifta mig for n genann
+an Menniska, jungfru Maria, St. Birgitta och himmelens H&auml;rskaror
+skalla kanske straffe mig h&aring;rfar? Men du vet det val, hjertans k&auml;raste
+att jag med fri vilja och upps&auml;t aldrig dissa reglar samtykt. Mine
+for&auml;ldrer hafva v&auml;l min kropp i dette fangelset insatt, men hjert&auml;t
+kan intet s&aring; snart fr&aring;n verlden ater kalles!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(I dare not confess to any other than to thee, that I am not able to
+repeat my Ave Maria or read my Paternoster, without calling thee to
+mind. Nay, even in the mass itself thy comely face appears, and our
+affectionate intercourse recurs to me. It seems to me that I cannot
+confess to any other human being&mdash;the Virgin Mary, St. Bridget, and
+
+the whole host of heaven will perhaps punish me for it. But thou
+knowest well, my heart's beloved, that I have never consented with my
+free-will to these rules. My parents, it is true, have placed my body
+in this prison, but the heart cannot so soon be weaned from the
+world).</p>
+
+<p>How touching is the distress of young hearts! It offers itself to us
+from the mouldy parchment, it resounds in old songs. Beg the
+grey-haired old dame in the grass turf-house to sing to thee of the
+young, heavy sorrow, of the saving angel&mdash;and the angel came in many
+shapes. You will hear the song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl
+who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber,
+sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him,
+and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and
+pleasure in Copenhagen. And all the nuns of the cloister sang: &quot;Christ
+grant that such an angel were to come, and take both me and thee!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The old dame will also sing for thee of the beautiful Ogda and Oluf
+Tyste; and at once the cloister is revived in its splendour, the bells
+ring, stone houses arise&mdash;they even rise from the waters of the
+Vettern: the little town becomes churches and towers. The streets are
+crowded with great, with sober, well-dressed persons. Down the stairs
+of the town hall descends with a sword by his side and in fur-lined
+cloak, the most wealthy citizen of Vadstene, the merchant Michael. By
+his side is his young, beautiful daughter Agda, richly-dressed and
+happy; youth in beauty, youth in mind. All eyes are turned on the rich
+man&mdash;and yet forget him for her, the beautiful. Life's best blessings
+await her; her thoughts soar upwards, her mind aspires; her future is
+happiness! These were the thoughts of the many&mdash;and amongst the many
+there was one who saw her as Romeo saw Juliet, as Adam saw Eve in the
+garden of Paradise. That one was Oluf, the handsomest young man, but
+poor as Agda was rich. And he must conceal his love; but as only he
+lived in it, only he knew of it; so he became mute and still, and
+after months had passed away, the town's folk called him Oluf Tyste
+(Oluf the silent).</p>
+
+<p>Nights and days he combated his love; nights and days he suffered
+inexpressible torment; but at last&mdash;one dew-drop or one sunbeam alone
+is necessary for the ripe rose to open its leaves&mdash;he must tell it to
+Agda. And she listened to his words, was terrified, and sprang away;
+but the thought remained with him, and the heart went after the
+thought and stayed there; she returned his love strongly and truly,
+but in modesty and honour; and therefore poor Oluf came to the rich
+merchant and sought his daughter's hand. But Michael shut the bolts of
+his door and his heart too. He would neither listen to tears nor
+supplications, but only to his own will; and as little Agda also kept
+firm to her will, her father placed her in Vadstene cloister. And Oluf
+was obliged to submit, as it is recorded in the old song, that they
+cast</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;&mdash;&mdash; den svarta Muld<br /></span>
+<span> Alt &ouml;fver sk&ouml;n Agdas arm.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2"><sup>[B]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She was dead to him and the world. But one night, in tempestuous
+weather, whilst the rain streamed down, Oluf Tyste came to the
+cloister wall, threw his rope-ladder over it, and however high the
+Vettern lifted its waves, Oluf and little Agda flew away over its
+fathomless depths that autumn night.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning the nuns missed little Agda. What a screaming and
+shouting&mdash;the cloister is disgraced! The Abbess and Michael the
+merchant swore that vengeance and death should reach the fugitives.
+Lindkj&ouml;ping's severe bishop, Hans Brask, fulminated his ban over them,
+but they were already across the waters of the Vettern; they had
+reached the shores of the Venern, they were on Kinnakulla, with one of
+Oluf's friends, who owned the delightful Hellekis.</p>
+
+<p>Here their marriage was to be celebrated. The guests were invited, and
+a monk from the neighbouring cloister of Husaby, was fetched to marry
+them. Then came the messenger with the bishop's excommunication, and
+this&mdash;but not the marriage ceremony&mdash;was read to them.</p>
+
+<p>All turned away from them terrified. The owner of the house, the
+friend of Oluf's youth, pointed to the open door and bade them depart
+instantly. Oluf only requested a car and horse wherewith to convey
+away his exhausted Agda; but they threw sticks and stones after them,
+and Oluf was obliged to bear his poor bride in his arms far into the
+forest.</p>
+
+<p>Heavy and bitter was their wandering. At last, however, they found a
+home: it was in Guldkroken, in West Gothland. An honest old couple
+gave them shelter and a place by the hearth: they stayed there till
+Christmas, and on that holy eve there was to be a real Christmas
+festival. The guests were invited, the furmenty set forth; and now
+came the clergyman of the parish to say prayers; but whilst he spoke
+he recognised Oluf and Agda, and the prayer became a curse upon the
+two. Anxiety and terror came over all; they drove the excommunicated
+pair out of the house, out into the biting frost, where the wolves
+went in flocks, and the bear was no stranger. And Oluf felled wood in
+the forest, and kindled a fire to frighten away the noxious animals
+and keep life in Agda&mdash;he thought that she must die. But just then she
+was stronger of the two.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Our Lord is almighty and gracious; He will not leave us!&quot; said she.
+&quot;He has one here on the earth, one who can save us, one, who has
+proved like us, what it is to wander amongst enemies and wild animals.
+It is the King&mdash;Gustavus Vasa! He has languished like us!&mdash;gone astray
+in Dalecarlia in the deep snow! he has suffered, tried, knows it&mdash;he
+can and he will help us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The King was in Vadstene. He had called together the representatives
+of the kingdom there. He dwelt in the cloister itself, even there
+where little Agda, if the King did not grant her pardon, must suffer
+what the angry Abbess dared to advise: penance and a painful death
+awaited her.</p>
+
+<p>Through forests and by untrodden paths, in storm and snow, Oluf and
+Agda came to Vadstene. They were seen: some showed fear, others
+insulted and threatened them. The guard of the cloister made the sign
+of the cross on seeing the two sinners, who dared to ask admission to
+the King.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will receive and hear all,&quot; was his royal message, and the two
+lovers fell trembling at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>And the King looked mildly on them; and as he long had had the
+intention to humiliate the proud Bishop of Lindkj&ouml;ping, the moment was
+not unfavourable to them; the King listened to the relation of their
+lives and sufferings, and gave them his word, that the excommunication
+should be annulled. He then placed their hands one in the other, and
+said that the priest should also do the same soon; and he promised
+them his royal protection and favour.</p>
+
+<p>And old Michael, the merchant, who feared the King's anger, with which
+he was threatened, became so mild and gentle, that he, as the King
+commanded, not only opened his house and his arms to Oluf and Agda,
+but displayed all his riches on the wedding-day of the young couple.
+The marriage ceremony took place in the cloister church, whither the
+King himself led the bride, and where, by his command, all the nuns
+were obliged to be present, in order to give still more ecclesiastical
+pomp to the festival. And many a heart there silently recalled the old
+song about the cloister robbery and looked at Oluf Tyste:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Krist gif en sadan Angel<br /></span>
+<span> Kom, tog b&aring;d mig och dig!&quot;<a name="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3"><sup>[C]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sun now shines through the open cloister-gate. Let truth shine
+into our hearts; let us likewise acknowledge the cloister's share of
+God's influence. Every cell was not quite a prison, where the
+imprisoned bird flew in despair against the window-pane; here
+sometimes was sunshine from God in the heart and mind, from hence also
+went out comfort and blessings. If the dead could rise from their
+graves they would bear witness thereof: if we saw them in the
+moonlight lift the tombstone and step forth towards the cloister, they
+would say: &quot;Blessed be these walls!&quot; if we saw them in the sunlight
+hovering in the rainbow's gleam, they would say: &quot;Blessed be these
+walls!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How changed the rich, mighty Vadstene cloister, where the first
+daughters of the land were nuns, where the young nobles of the land
+wore the monk's cowl. Hither they made pilgrimages from Italy, from
+Spain: from far distant lands, in snow and cold, the pilgrim came
+barefooted to the cloister door. Pious men and women bore the corpse
+of St. Bridget hither in their hands from Rome, and all the
+church-bells in all the lands and towns they passed through, tolled
+when they came.</p>
+
+<p>We go towards the cloister&mdash;the remains of the old ruin. We enter St.
+Bridget's cell&mdash;it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and
+narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look
+from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We
+see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame
+around her God, whilst she read her morning and evening prayers. In
+the tile-stone of the floor there is engraved a rosary: before it, on
+her bare knees, she said a pater-noster at every pearl there pointed
+out. Here is no chimney&mdash;no hearth, no place for it. Cold and solitary
+it is, and was, here where the world's most far-famed woman dwelt, she
+who by her own sagacity, and by her contemporaries was raised to the
+throne of female saints.</p>
+
+<p>From this poor cell we enter one still meaner, one still more narrow
+and cold, where the faint light of day struggles in through a long
+crevice in the wall. Glass there never was here: the wind blows in
+here. Who was she who once dwelt in this cell?</p>
+
+<p>In our times they have arranged light, warm chambers close by: a whole
+range opens into the broad passage. We hear merry songs; laughter we
+hear, and weeping: strange figures nod to us from these chambers. Who
+are these? The rich cloister of St. Bridget's, whence kings made
+pilgrimages, is now Sweden's mad-house. And here the numerous
+travellers write their names on the wall. We hasten from the hideous
+scene into the splendid cloister church,&mdash;the blue church, as it is
+called, from the blue stones of which the walls are built&mdash;and here,
+where the large stones of the floor cover great men, abbesses and
+queens, only one monument is noticeable, that of a knightly figure
+carved in stone, which stands aloft before the altar. It is that of
+the insane Duke Magnus. Is it not as if he stepped forth from amongst
+the dead, and announced that such afflicted creatures were to be where
+St. Bridget once ruled?</p>
+
+<p>Pace lightly over the floor! Thy foot treads on the graves of the
+pious: the flat, modest stone here in the corner covers the dust of
+the noble Queen Philippa. She, that mighty England's daughter, the
+great-hearted, the immortal woman, who with wisdom and courage
+defended her consort's throne, that consort who rudely and barbarously
+cast her off! Vadstene's cloister gave her shelter&mdash;the grave here
+gave her rest.</p>
+
+<p>We seek one grave. It is not known&mdash;it is forgotten, as she was in her
+lifetime. Who was she? The cloistered sister Elizabeth, daughter of
+the Holstein Count, and once the bride of King Hakon of Norway. Sweet
+creature! she proudly&mdash;but not with unbecoming pride&mdash;advanced in her
+bridal dress, and with her court ladies, up to her royal consort. Then
+came King Valdemar, who by force and fraud stopped the voyage, and
+induced Hakon to marry Margaret, then eleven years of age, who thereby
+got the crown of Norway. Elizabeth was sent to Vadstene cloister,
+where her will was not asked. Afterwards when Margaret&mdash;who justly
+occupies a great place in the history of Scandinavia, but only
+comparatively a small one in the hearts&mdash;sat on the throne, powerful
+and respected, visited the then flourishing Vadstene, where the Abbess
+of the cloister was St. Bridget's grand-daughter, her childhood's
+friend, Margaret kissed every monk on the cheek. The legend is well
+known about him, the handsomest, who thereupon blushed. She kissed
+every nun on the hand, and also Elizabeth, her, whom she would only
+see here. Whose heart throbbed loudest at that kiss? Poor Elizabeth,
+thy grave is forgotten, but not the wrong thou didst suffer.</p>
+
+<p>We now enter the sacristy. Here, under a double coffin lid, rests an
+age's holiest saint in the North, Vadstene cloister's diadem and
+lustre&mdash;St. Bridget.</p>
+
+<p>On the night she was born, says the legend, there appeared a beaming
+cloud in the heavens, and on it stood a majestic virgin, who said: &quot;Of
+Birger is born a daughter whose admirable voice shall be heard over
+the whole world.&quot; This delicate and singular child grew up in the
+castle of her father, Knight Brake. Visions and revelations appeared
+to her, and these increased when she, only thirteen years of age, was
+married to the rich Ulf Gudmundsen, and became the mother of many
+children. &quot;Thou shalt be my bride and my agent,&quot; she heard Christ say,
+and every one of her actions was, as she averred, according to his
+announcement. After this she went to Niddaros, to St. Oluf's holy
+shrine: she then went to Germany, France, Spain and Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes honoured and sometimes mocked, she travelled, even to Cyprus
+and Palestine. Conscious of approaching death, she again reached Rome,
+where her last revelation was, that she should rest in Vadstene, and
+that this cloister especially should be sanctified by God's love. The
+splendour of the Northern lights does not extend so far around the
+earth as the glory of this fair saint, who now is but a legend. We
+bend with silent, serious thoughts before the mouldering remains in
+the coffin here&mdash;those of St. Bridget and her daughter St. Catherine;
+but even of these the remembrance will be extinguished. There is a
+tradition amongst the people, that in the time of the Reformation the
+real remains were carried off to a cloister in Poland, but this is not
+certainly known. Vadstene, at least, is not the repository of St.
+Bridget and her daughter's dust.</p>
+
+<p>Vadstene was once great and glorious. Great was the cloister's power,
+as St. Bridget saw it in the prospect of death. Where is now the
+cloister's might? It reposes under the tomb-stones&mdash;the graves alone
+speak of it. Here, under our feet, only a few steps from the church
+door, is a stone in which are carved fourteen rings: they announce
+that fourteen farms were given to the cloister, in order that he who
+moulders here might have this place, fourteen feet within the church
+door. It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister's
+power was greater than that of all sinners: the stone on his grave
+records it with no ordinary significance of language.</p>
+
+<p>Gustavus, the first Vasa, was the sun&mdash;the ruling power: the
+brightness of the cloister star must needs pale before him.</p>
+
+<p>There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene's rich palace which he
+erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister. At a far
+distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its
+splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged
+edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the
+windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round
+about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage
+road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored
+image.</p>
+
+<p>We now stand before it in daylight. Not a pane of glass is to be found
+in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the
+balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and
+resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers
+aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a
+sun-dial it shows the time&mdash;the time that is gone. The other two balls
+are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the
+space below is used as a cow-stall.</p>
+
+<p>The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish: they seem as
+if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new.
+In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was
+opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome
+greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down: we go through
+the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene
+palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space: even
+the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of
+timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the
+dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark grey dropping
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>We walk from hall to hall, and the wooden shutters are opened to admit
+daylight. All is vast, lofty, spacious, and adorned with antique
+chimney-pieces, and from every window there is a charming prospect
+over the clear, deep Vettern. In one of the chambers in the ground
+floor sat the insane Duke Magnus, (whose stone image we lately saw
+conspicuous in the church) horrified at having signed his own
+brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of
+Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to
+see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she
+came&mdash;he thought she came&mdash;in the form of a mermaid, raising herself
+aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate
+Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this
+window, and below it we saw the deep moat in which he sank.</p>
+
+<p>We enter the yeoman's hall, and the council hall, where, in the
+recesses of the windows, on each side, are painted yeomen in strange
+dresses, half Dalecarlians and half Roman warriors.</p>
+
+<p>In this once rich saloon, Svanta Steenson Sture knelt to Sweden's
+Queen, Catherine L&eacute;jonhufved: she was Svanta Sture's love, before
+Gustavus Vasa's will made her his Queen. The lovers met here: the
+walls are silent as to what they said, when the door was opened and
+the King entered, and saw the kneeling Sture, and asked what it meant.
+Margaret answered craftily and hastily: &quot;He demands my sister Martha's
+hand in marriage!&quot; and the King gave Svanta Sture the bride the Queen
+had asked for him.</p>
+
+<p>We are now in the royal bridal chamber, whither King Gustavus led his
+third consort. Catherine Steenbock, also another's bride, the bride of
+the Knight Gustavus. It is a sad story.</p>
+
+<p>Gustavus of the three roses, was in his youth honoured by the King,
+who sent him on a mission to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. He
+returned adorned with the Emperor's costly golden chain&mdash;young,
+handsome, joyous and richly clad, he returned home, and knew well how
+to relate the magnificence and charms of foreign lands: young and old
+listened to him with admiration, but young Catherine most of all.
+Through him the world in her eyes became twice as large, rich, and
+beautiful; they became dear to each other, and their parents blessed
+their love. The love-pledge was to be drunk,&mdash;when there came a
+message from the King, that the young Knight must, without delay,
+again bear a letter and greeting to the Emperor Charles. The betrothed
+pair separated with heavy hearts, but with a promise of mutual
+inviolable troth. The King then invited Catherine's parents to come to
+Vadstene palace. Catherine was obliged to accompany them; here King
+Gustavus saw her for the first time, and the old man fell in love with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas was kept with great hilarity; there were song and harp in
+these halls, and the King himself played the lute. When the time came
+for departure, the King said to Catherine's mother, that he would
+marry the young girl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But she is the bride of the Knight Gustavus!&quot; stammered the mother.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young hearts soon forget their sorrows,&quot; thought the King. The mother
+thought so likewise, and as there chanced to come a letter the same
+day and hour from the young Knight Gustavus, Fra Steenbock committed
+it to the flames. All the letters that came afterwards and all the
+letters that Catherine wrote, were burnt by her mother, and doubts and
+evil reports were whispered to Catherine, that she was forgotten
+abroad by her young lover. But Catherine was secure and firm in her
+belief of him. In the spring her parents made known to her the King's
+proposal, and praised her good fortune. She answered seriously and
+determinedly, &quot;No!&quot; and when they repeated to her that it should and
+must happen, she repeatedly screamed in the greatest anguish, &quot;No no!&quot;
+and sank exhausted at her father and mother's feet, and humbly prayed
+them not to force her.</p>
+
+<p>And the mother wrote to the King that all was going on well, but that
+her child was bashful. The King now announced his visit to Torpe,
+where her parents, the Steenbocks, dwelt. The King was received with
+rejoicing and feasting, but Catherine had disappeared and the King
+himself was the successful one who found her. She sat dissolved in
+tears under the wild rose tree, where she had bidden farewell to her
+heart's beloved.</p>
+
+<p>There was merry song and joyous life in the old mansion; Catherine
+alone was sorrowful and silent. Her mother had brought her all her
+jewels and ornaments, but she wore none of them: she had put on her
+simplest dress, but in this she only fascinated the old King the more,
+and he would have that their betrothal should take place before he
+departed. Fra Steenbock wrested the Knight Gustavus's ring from
+Catherine's finger, and whispered in her ear: &quot;It will cost the friend
+of thy youth his life and fortune; the King can do everything!&quot; And
+the parents led her to King Gustavus, showed him that the ring was
+from the maiden's hand; and the King placed his own golden ring on her
+finger in the other's stead. In the month of August the flag waved
+from the mast of the royal yacht which bore the young Queen over the
+Vettern. Princes and knights, in costly robes, stood by the shore,
+music played, and the people shouted. Catherine made her entry into
+Vadstene Palace. The nuptials were celebrated the following day, and
+the walls were hung with silk and velvet, with cloth of gold and
+silver! It was a festival and rejoicing. Poor Catherine!</p>
+
+<p>In November, the Knight Gustavus of the three roses, returned home.
+His prudent, noble mother, Christina Gyldenstjerne, met him at the
+frontiers of the kingdom, prepared him, consoled him, and soothed his
+mind: she accompanied him by slow stages to Vadstene, where they were
+both invited by the King to remain during the Christmas festival. They
+accepted the invitation, but the Knight Gustavus was not to be moved
+to come to the King's table or any other place where the Queen was to
+be found. The Christmas approached. One Sunday evening, Gustavus was
+disconsolate; the Knight was long sleepless, and at daybreak he went
+into the church, to the tomb of his ancestress, St. Bridget. There he
+saw, at a few paces from him, a female kneeling before Philippa's
+tomb. It was the Queen he saw; their eyes met, and Gustavus hastened
+away. She then mentioned his name, begged him to stay, and commanded
+him to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I command it, Gustavus!&quot; said she; &quot;the Queen commands it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And she spoke to him; they conversed together, and it became clear to
+them both what had been done against them and with them; and she
+showed him a withered rose which she kept in her bosom, and she bent
+towards him and gave him a kiss, the last&mdash;their eternal
+leave-taking&mdash;and then they separated. He died shortly afterwards, but
+Catherine was stronger, yet not strong enough for her heart's deep
+sorrow. Here, in the bed-chamber, in uneasy dreams, says the story,
+she betrayed in sleep the constant thought of her heart, her youth's
+love, to the King, saying: &quot;Gustavus I love dearly; but the rose&mdash;I
+shall never forget.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From a secret door we walk out on to the open rampart, where the sheep
+now graze; the cattle are driven into one of the ruined towers. We see
+the palace-yard, and look from it up to a window. Come, thou
+birch-wood's thrush, and warble thy lays; sing, whilst we recal the
+bitterness of love in the rude&mdash;the chivalrous ages.</p>
+
+<p>Under that window there stood, one cold winter's night, wrapped in his
+white cloak, the young Count John of East Friesland. His brother had
+married Gustavus Vasa's eldest daughter, and departed with her to his
+home: wherever they came on their journey, there was mirth and
+feasting, but the most splendid was at Vadstene Palace. Cecilia, the
+King's younger daughter, had accompanied her sister hither, and was
+here, as everywhere, the first, the most beautiful in the chase as
+well as at the tournament. The winter began directly on their arrival
+at Vadstene; the cold was severe, and the Vettern frozen over. One
+day, Cecilia rode out on the ice and it broke; her brother, Prince
+Erik, came galloping to her aid. John, of East Friesland, was already
+there, and begged Erik to dismount, as he would, being on horseback,
+break the ice still more. Erik would not listen to him, and as John
+saw that there was no time for dispute, he dragged Erik from the
+horse, sprang into the water himself, and saved Cecilia. Prince Erik
+was furious with wrath, and no one could appease him. Cecilia lay long
+in a fever, and during its continuance, her love for him who had saved
+her life increased. She recovered, and they understood each other, but
+the day of separation approached. It was on the night previous that
+John, in his white cloak, ascended from stone to stone, holding by his
+silk ladder, until he at length entered the window; here they would
+converse for hours in all modesty and honour, speak about his return
+and their nuptials the following year; and whilst they sat there the
+door was hewn down with axes. Prince Erik entered, and raised the
+murderous weapon to slay the young Lord of East Friesland, when
+Cecilia threw herself between them. But Erik commanded his menials to
+seize the lover, whom they put in irons and cast into a low, dark
+hole, that cold frosty night, and the next day, without even giving
+him a morsel of bread or a drop of water, he was thrown on to a
+peasant's sledge, and dragged before the King to receive judgment.
+Erik himself cast his sister's fair name and fame into slander's
+babbling pool, and high dames and citizens' wives washed unspotted
+innocence in calumny's impure waters.</p>
+
+<p>It is only when the large wooden shutters of the saloons are opened,
+that the sunbeams stray in here; the dust accumulates in their twisted
+pillars, and is only just disturbed by the draught of air. In here is
+a warehouse for corn. Great fat rats make their nests in these halls.
+The spider spins mourning banners under the beams. This is Vadstene
+Palace!</p>
+
+<p>We are filled with sad thoughts. We turn our eyes from this place
+towards the lowly house with the grass-turf roof, where the little
+lamb crops the grass under the cherry-tree, which strews its fragrant
+leaves over it. Our thoughts descend from the rich cloister, from the
+proud palace, to the grassy turf, and the sun fades away over the
+grassy turf, and the old dame goes to sleep under the grassy turf,
+below which lie the mighty memorials of Vadstene.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEPUPPETSHOWMAN"></a><h2>THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>There was an elderly man on the steam-boat, with such a contented face
+that, if it did not lie, he must be the happiest man on earth. That he
+indeed said he was: I heard it from his own mouth. He was a Dane,
+consequently my countryman, and was a travelling theatrical manager.
+He had the whole <i>corps dramatique</i> with him; they lay in a large
+chest&mdash;he was a puppet showman. His innate good-humour, said he, had
+been tried by a polytechnic candidate,<a name="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4"><sup>[D]</sup></a> and from this experiment on
+his patience he had become completely happy. I did not understand him
+at the moment, but he soon laid the whole case clearly before me; and
+here it is.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was in Slagelse,&quot; said he, &quot;that I gave a representation at the
+parsonage, and had a brilliant house and a brilliant company of
+spectators, all young persons, unconfirmed, except a few old ladies.
+Then there came a person dressed in black, having the appearance of a
+student: he sat down amongst the others, laughed quite at the proper
+time, and applauded quite correctly; that was an unusual spectator!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was bent on ascertaining who he was, and then I heard that he was a
+candidate from the polytechnic school, who had been sent out to
+instruct people in the provinces. At eight o'clock my representation
+was over; the children were to go early to bed, and one must think of
+the convenience of the public.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At nine o'clock the candidate began his lectures and experiments, and
+now <i>I</i> was one of <i>his</i> auditory.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was remarkable to hear and look at! The chief part of it went over
+my head and into the parson's, as one says. Can it be possible,
+thought I, that we human beings can find out such things? in that
+case, we must also be able to hold out longer, before we are put into
+the earth. It was merely small miracles that he performed, and yet all
+as easy as an old stocking&mdash;quite from nature. In the time of Moses
+and the prophets, such a polytechnic candidate would have been one of
+the wise men of the land, and in the Middle Ages he would have been
+burnt. I could not sleep the whole night, and as I gave a
+representation the next evening, and the candidate was there again, I
+got into a real merry humour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have heard of an actor, who when playing the lovers' parts, only
+thought of one of the spectators; he played for <i>her</i> alone, and
+forgot all the rest of the house; the polytechnic candidate was my
+<i>her</i>, my only spectator, for whom I played. And when the performance
+was over, all the puppets were called forward, and I was invited by
+the polytechnic candidate to take a glass of wine with him; and he
+spoke about my comedy, and I of his science; and I believe we each
+derived equal pleasure from the other. But yet I had the advantage,
+for there was so much in his performance that he could not account
+for: as for instance, that a piece of iron which falls through a
+spiral line, becomes magnetic,&mdash;well, how is that? The spirit comes
+over it, but whence does it come from? it is just as with the human
+beings of this world, I think; our Lord lets them fall through the
+spiral line of time, and the spirit comes over them&mdash;and there stands
+a Napoleon, a Luther, or a similar person.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are
+so accustomed to them that we call them things of every-day life.' And
+he spoke and he explained, so that it seemed at last as if he lifted
+my scull, and I honestly confessed, that if I were not an old fellow,
+I would go directly to the polytechnic school, and learn to examine
+the world in the summer, although I was one of the happiest of men.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'One of the happiest!' said he, and it was just as if he tasted it.
+'Are you happy?' 'Yes!' said I, 'I am happy, and I am welcome in all
+the towns I come to with my company! There is certainly one wish, that
+comes now and then like a night-mare, which rides on my good-humour,
+and that is to be a theatrical manager for a living company&mdash;a company
+of real men and women.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'You wish to have your puppets animated; you would have them become
+real actors and actresses,' said he, 'and yourself be the manager? you
+then think that you would be perfectly happy?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now he did not think so, but I thought so; and we talked for and
+against; and we were just as near in our opinions as before. But we
+clinked our glasses together, and the wine was very good; but there
+was witchcraft in it, or else the short and the long of the story
+would be&mdash;that I was intoxicated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I was not; my eyes were quite clear; it was as if there was
+sunshine in the room, and it shone out of the face of the polytechnic
+candidate, so that I began to think of the old gods in my youth, and
+when they went about in the world. And I told him so, and then he
+smiled, and I durst have sworn that he was a disguised god, or one of
+the family!&mdash;And he was so&mdash;my first wish was to be fulfilled: the
+puppets become living beings and I the manager of men and women. We
+drank that it should be so! he put all my puppets in the wooden chest,
+fastened it on my back, and then let me fall through a spiral line. I
+can still hear how I came down, slap! I lay on the floor, that is
+quite sure and certain, and the whole company sprang out of the chest.
+The spirit had come over us all together; all the puppets had become
+excellent artists&mdash;they said so themselves&mdash;and I was the manager.
+Everything was in order for the first representation; the whole
+company must speak with me, and the public also. The female dancer
+said, that if she did not stand on one leg, the house would be in an
+uproar: she was master of the whole and would be treated as such.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She who played the queen, would also be treated as a queen when off
+the stage, or else she should get out of practice, and he who was
+employed to come in with a letter made himself as important as the
+first lover. 'For,' said he, 'the small are of just as much importance
+as the great, in an artistic whole.' Then the hero demanded that the
+whole of his part should only be retorts on making his exit, for these
+the public applauded; the prima donna would only play in a red light,
+for that suited her best&mdash;she would not be blue: they were all like
+flies in a bottle, and I was also in the bottle&mdash;for I was the
+manager. I lost my breath, my head was quite dizzy! I was as miserable
+as a man can be; it was a new race of beings I had come amongst; I
+wished that I had them altogether again in the chest, that I had never
+been a manager: I told them that they were in fact only puppets, and
+so they beat me to death. That was my feeling!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I lay on the bed in my chamber; but how I had come there from the
+polytechnic candidate, he must know best&mdash;for I do not. The moon shone
+in on the floor where the puppet-chest lay upset, and all the puppets
+spread about&mdash;great and small, the whole lot. But I was not floored! I
+sprang out of bed, and threw them all into the chest; some on their
+heads, and some on their legs; I smacked the lid down and sat myself
+upon it: it was worth painting, can't you conceive it? I can! 'Now you
+shall be there!' said I, 'and I will never more wish that you may
+become flesh and blood!' I was so glad; I was the happiest man
+alive&mdash;the polytechnic candidate had tried me! I sat in perfect bliss,
+and fell asleep on the chest; and in the morning&mdash;it was, properly
+speaking, at noon, for I slept so very long that morning&mdash;I sat there
+still, happy and edified&mdash;I saw that my previous and only wish had
+been stupid. I inquired for the polytechnic candidate, but he was
+gone, like the Greek and Roman gods.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And from that time I have been the happiest man alive. I am a
+fortunate manager; my company does not argue with me, neither does the
+public; they are amused to their heart's content, and I can myself put
+all my pieces nicely together. I take the best parts out of all sorts
+of comedies that I choose, and no one troubles himself about it.
+Pieces that are now despised at the large theatres, but which thirty
+years ago the public ran to see, and cried over&mdash;those pieces I now
+make use of. I now present them before the young folks; and the young
+folks&mdash;they cry just as their fathers and mothers used to do. I give
+'Johanna Montfakon' and 'Dyveke,' but abbreviated; for the little
+folks do not like long, twaddling love-stories. They must have it
+unfortunate&mdash;but it must be brief. Now that I have travelled through
+Denmark, both to the right and left, I know everybody and am known
+again. Now I have come to Sweden, and if I am successful and gain much
+money, I will be a Scandinavian, if the humour hold; and this I tell
+you, as you are my countryman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I, as his countryman, naturally tell it again&mdash;only for the sake
+of telling it.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THESKJRGAARDS"></a><h2>THE &quot;SKJ&Auml;RGAARDS&quot;.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The canal voyage through Sweden goes at first constantly upwards,
+through elvs and lakes, forests and rocky land. From the heights we
+look down on vast extents of forest-land and large waters, and by
+degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents. At Mem
+we are again down by the salt fiord: a solitary tower raises its head
+between the remains of low, thick walls&mdash;it is the ruins of Stegeberg.
+The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests,
+which enclose small grass-grown valleys. The screaming sea-gulls fly
+around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze:
+it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings,
+sons of high-born fathers, exercised their deeds here. The same sea's
+surface then appeared to them as now to us, with its numberless isles,
+which lie strewed about here in the water by thousands along the whole
+coast. The depth of water between the rocky isles and the solid land
+is that we call &quot;The Skj&auml;rgaards:&quot; their waters flow into each other
+with varying splendour. We see it in the sunshine, and it is like a
+large English landscape garden; but the greensward plain is here the
+deep sea, the flower-beds in it are rocks and reefs, rich in firs and
+pines, oaks and bushes. Mark how, when the wind blows from the east,
+and the sea breaks over sunken rocks and is dashed back again in spray
+from the cliffs, your limbs feel&mdash;even through the ship on which you
+stand&mdash;the power of the sea: you are lifted as if by supernatural
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>We rush on against wind and sea, as if it were the sea-god's snorting
+horse that bore us; from Skj&auml;rgaard to Skj&auml;rgaard. The signal-gun is
+fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house. Sometimes
+we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark,
+stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water: one has
+the form of the tortoise's arched shell, another has the elephant's
+back and rough grey colour. Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that
+the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.</p>
+
+<p>We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks
+of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat
+with the blast; the Skj&auml;rgaards sometimes become only a narrow canal,
+sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone,
+and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little
+fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the
+land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose
+red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background. A group of
+cows lies basking in the sun on the stony surface, near a little
+smiling pasture, which appears to have been cultivated here or cut out
+of a meadow in Scania. How solitary must it not be to live on that
+little island! Ask the boy who sits there by the cattle, he will be
+able to tell us. &quot;It is lively and merry here,&quot; says he. &quot;The day is
+so long and light, the seal sits out there on the stone and barks in
+the early morning hour, and all the steamers from the canal must pass
+here. I know them all; and when the sun goes down in the evening, it
+is a whole history to look into the clouds over the land: there stand
+mountains with palaces, in silver and in gold, in red and in blue;
+sailing dragons with golden crowns, or an old giant with a beard down
+to his waist&mdash;altogether of clouds, and they are always changing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The storms come on in the autumn, and then there is often much
+anxiety when father is out to help ships in distress; but one becomes,
+as it were, a new being.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In winter the ice is locked fast and firm, and we drive from island
+to island and to the main land; and if the bear or the wolf pays us a
+visit we take his skin for a winter covering: it is warm in the room
+there, and they read and tell stories about old times!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, old Time, how thou dost unfold thyself with remembrances of these
+very Skj&auml;rgaards&mdash;old Time which belonged to the brave. These waters,
+these rocky isles and strands, saw heroes more greatly active than
+actively good: they swung the axe to give the mortal blow, or as they
+called it, &quot;the whining Jetteqvinde.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5"><sup>[E]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Here came the Vikings with their ships: on the headland yonder they
+levied provisions; the grazing cattle were slaughtered and borne away.
+Ye mouldering cliffs, had ye but a tongue, ye might tell us about the
+duels with the two-handed sword&mdash;about the deeds of the giants. Ye saw
+the hero hew with the sword, and cast the javelin: his left hand was
+as cunning as his right The sword moved so quickly in the air that
+there seemed to be three. Ye saw him, when he in all his martial array
+sprang forwards and backwards, higher than he himself was tall, and if
+he sprang into the sea he swam like a whale. Ye saw the two
+combatants: the one darted his javelin, the other caught it in the
+air, and cast it back again, so that it pierced through shield and man
+down into the earth. Ye saw warriors with sharp swords and angry
+hearts; the sword was struck downwards so as to cut the knee, out the
+combatant sprang into the air, and the sword whizzed under his feet.
+Mighty Sagas from the olden times! Mouldering rocks, could ye but tell
+us of these things!</p>
+
+<p>Ye, deep waters, bore the Vikings' ships, and when the strong in
+battle lifted the iron anchor and cast it against the enemy's vessel,
+so that the planks were rent asunder, ye poured your dark heavy seas
+into the hold, so that the bark sank. The wild <i>Berserk</i> who with
+naked breast stood against his enemy's blows, mad as a dog, howling
+like a bear, tearing his shield asunder, rushing to the bottom of the
+sea here, and fetching up stones, which ordinary men could not
+raise&mdash;history peoples these waters, these cliffs for us! A future
+poet will conjure them to this Scandinavian Archipelago, chisel the
+true forms out of the old Sagas, the bold, the rude, the greatness and
+imperfections of the time, in their habits as they lived.</p>
+
+<p>They rise again for us on yonder island, where the wind is whistling
+through the young fir wood. The house is of beams, roofed with bark;
+the smoke from the fire on the broad stone in the hall, whirls through
+the air-hole, near which stands the cask of mead; the cushions lie on
+the bench before the closed bedsteads; deer-skins hang over the balk
+walls, ornamented with shields, helmets, and armour. Effigies of gods,
+carved, on wooden poles, stand before the high seat where the noble
+Viking sits, a high-born father's youngest son, great in fame, but
+still greater in deeds; the skjalds (bards) and foster-brothers sit
+nearest to him. They defended the coasts of their countrymen, and the
+pious women; they fetched wheat and honey from England, they went to
+the White Sea for sables and furs&mdash;their adventures are related in
+song. We see the old man ride in rich clothing, with gloves sewn with
+golden thread, and with a hat brought from Garderige; we see the youth
+with a golden fillet around his brow; we see him at the <i>Thing</i>; we
+see him in battle and in play, where the best is he that can cut off
+the other's eyebrows without scratching the skin, or causing a wink
+with the eyes, on pain of losing his station. The woman sits in the
+log-house at her loom, and in the late moonlight nights the spirits of
+the fallen come and sit down around the fire, where they shake the
+wet, dripping clothes; but the serf sleeps in the ashes, and on the
+kitchen bench, and dreams that he dips his bread in the fat soup, and
+licks his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Thou future poet, thou wilt call forth the vanished forms from the
+Sagas, thou wilt people these islands, and let us glide past these
+reminiscences of the olden time with the mind full of them; clearly
+and truly wilt thou let us glide, as we now with the power of steam
+fly past that firmly standing scenery, the swelling sea, rocks and
+reefs, the main land, and wood-grown islands.</p>
+
+<p>We are already past Braavigen, where numberless ships from the
+northern kingdoms lay, when Upsala's King, Sigurd Ring, came,
+challenged by Harald Hildetand, who, old and grey, feared to die on a
+sick bed, and would fall in battle; and the mainland thundered like
+the plains of Marathon beneath the tramp of horses' hoofs during the
+battle:<a name="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6"><sup>[F]</sup></a> bards and female warriors surrounded the Danish King. The
+blind old man raised himself high in his chariot, gave his horse free
+rein, and hewed his way. Odin himself had due reverence paid to
+Hildetand's bones; and the pile was kindled, and the King laid on it,
+and Sigurd conjured all to cast gold and weapons, the most valuable
+they possessed, into the fire; and the bards sang to it, and the
+female warriors struck the spears on the bright shields. Upsala's
+Lord, Sigurd Ring, became King of Sweden and Denmark: so says the
+Saga, which sounded over the land and water from these coasts.</p>
+
+<p>The memorials of olden times pass swiftly through our thoughts; we fly
+past the scene of manly exercises and great deeds in the olden
+times&mdash;the ship cleaves the mighty waters with its iron paddles, from
+Skj&auml;rgaard to Skj&auml;rgaard.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="STOCKHOLM"></a><h2>STOCKHOLM.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We cast runes<a name="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7"><sup>[G]</sup></a> here on the paper, and from the white ground the
+picture of Birger Jarl's six hundred years old city rises before thee.</p>
+
+<p>The runes roll, you see! Wood-grown rocky isles appear in the light,
+grey morning mist; numberless flocks of wild birds build their nests
+in safety here, where the fresh waters of the M&auml;laren rush into the
+salt sea. The Viking's ship comes; King Agna stands by the prow&mdash;he
+brings as booty the King of Finland's daughter. The oak-tree spreads
+its branches over their bridal chamber; at daybreak the oak-tree bears
+King Agna, hanged in his long golden chain: that is the bride's work,
+and the ship sails away again with her and the rescued Fins.</p>
+
+<p>The clouds drive past&mdash;the years too.</p>
+
+<p>Hunters and fishermen erect themselves huts;&mdash;it is again deserted
+here, where the sea-birds alone have their homes. What is it that so
+frightens these numberless flocks? the wild duck and sea-gull fly
+screaming about, there is a hammering and driving of piles. Oluf
+Sk&ouml;tkonge has large beams bored down into the ground, and strong iron
+chains fastened across the stream: &quot;Thou art caught, Oluf
+Haraldson,<a name="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8"><sup>[H]</sup></a> caught with the ships and crews, with which thou didst
+devastate the royal city Sigtuna; thou canst not escape from the
+closed M&auml;lar lake!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is but the work of one night; the same night when Oluf Hakonson,
+with iron and with fire, burst his onward way through the stubborn
+ground; before the day breaks the waters of the M&auml;lar roll there; the
+Norwegian prince, Oluf sailed through the royal channel he had cut in
+the east. The stockades, where the iron chains hang, must bear the
+defences; the citizens from the burnt-down Sigtuna erect themselves a
+bulwark here, and build their new, little town on stock-holms.<a name="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9"><sup>[I]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The clouds go, and the years go! Do you see how the gables grow? there
+rise towers and forts. Birger Jarl makes the town of Stockholm a
+fortress; the warders stand with bow and arrow on the walls,
+reconnoitring over lake and fjord, over Brunkaberg sand-ridge. There
+were the sand-ridge slopes upwards from R&ouml;rstrand's Lake they build
+Clara cloister, and between it and the town a street springs up:
+several more appear; they form an extensive city, which soon becomes
+the place of contest for different partisans, where Ladelaas's sons
+plant the banner, and where the German Albrecht's retainers burn the
+Swedes alive within its walls. Stockholm is, however, the heart of the
+kingdom: that the Danes know well; that the Swedes know too, and there
+is strife and bloody combating. Blood flows by the executioner's hand,
+Denmark's Christian the Second, Sweden's executioner, stands in the
+market-place.</p>
+
+<p>Roll, ye runes! see over Brunkaberg sand-ridge, where the Swedish
+people conquered the Danish host, there they raise the May-pole: it is
+midsummer-eve&mdash;Gustavus Vasa makes his entry into Stockholm.</p>
+
+<p>Around the May-pole there grow fruit and kitchen-gardens, houses and
+streets; they vanish in flames, they rise again; that gloomy fortress
+towards the tower is transformed into a palace, and the city stands
+magnificently with towers and draw-bridges. There grows a town by
+itself on the sand-ridge, a third springs up on the rock towards the
+south; the old walls fall at Gustavus Adolphus's command; the three
+towns are one, large and extensive, picturesquely varied with old
+stone houses, wooden shops, and grass-roofed huts; the sun shines on
+the brass balls of the towers, and a forest of masts stands in that
+secure harbour.</p>
+
+<p>Rays of beauty shoot forth into the world from Versailles' painted
+divinity; they reach the M&auml;lar's strand into Tessin's<a name="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10"><sup>[J]</sup></a> palace, where
+art and science are invited as guests with the King, Gustavus the
+Third, whose effigy cast in bronze is raised on the strand before the
+splendid palace&mdash;it is in our times. The acacia shades the palace's
+high terrace on whose broad balustrades flowers send forth their
+perfume from Saxon porcelain; variegated silk curtains hang half-way
+down before the large glass windows; the floors are polished smooth as
+a mirror, and under the arch yonder, where the roses grow by the wall,
+the Endymion of Greece lives eternally in marble. As a guard of honour
+here, stand Fogelberg's Odin, and Sergei's Amor and Psyche.</p>
+
+<p>We now descend the broad, royal staircase, and before it, where, in
+by-gone times, Oluf Sk&ouml;tkonge stretched the iron chains across the
+mouth of the M&auml;lar Lake, there is now a splendid bridge with shops
+above and the Streamparterre below: there we see the little steamer
+'Nocken,'<a name="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11"><sup>[K]</sup></a> steering its way, filled with passengers from Diurgarden
+to the Streamparterre. And what is the Streamparterre? The Neapolitans
+would tell us: It is in miniature&mdash;quite in miniature&mdash;the
+Stockholmers' &quot;Villa Reale.&quot; The Hamburgers would say: It is in
+miniature&mdash;quite in miniature&mdash;the Stockholmers' &quot;Jungfernstieg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is a very little semi-circular island, on which the arches of the
+bridge rest; a garden full of flowers and trees, which we overlook
+from the high parapet of the bridge. Ladies and gentlemen promenade
+there; musicians play, families sit there in groups, and take
+refreshments in the vaulted halls under the bridge, and look out
+between the green trees over the open water, to the houses and
+mansions, and also to the woods and rocks: we forget that we are in
+the midst of the city.</p>
+
+<p>It is the bridge here that unites Stockholm with Nordmalen, where the
+greatest part of the fashionable world live, in two long Berlin-like
+streets; yet amongst all the great houses we will only visit one, and
+that is the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>We will go on the stage itself&mdash;it has an historical signification.
+Here, by the third side-scene from the stage-lights, to the right, as
+we look down towards the audience, Gustavus the Third was assassinated
+at a masquerade; and he was borne into that little chamber there,
+close by the scene, whilst all the outlets were closed, and the motley
+group of harlequins, polichinellos, wild men, gods and goddesses with
+unmasked faces, pale and terrified crept together; the dancing
+ballet-farce had become a real tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>This theatre is Jenny Lind's childhood's home. Here she has sung in
+the choruses when a little girl; here she first made her appearance in
+public, and was cheeringly encouraged when a child; here, poor and
+sorrowful, she has shed tears, when her voice left her, and sent up
+pious prayers to her Maker. From hence the world's nightingale flew
+out over distant lands, and proclaimed the purity and holiness of art.</p>
+
+<p>How beautiful it is to look out from the window up here, to look over
+the water and the Streamparterre to that great, magnificent palace, to
+Ladegaards land, with the large barracks, to Skipholmen and the rocks
+that rise straight up from the water, with S&ouml;dermalm's gardens,
+villas, streets, and church cupolas between the green trees: the ships
+lie there together, so many and so close, with their waving flags. The
+beautiful, that a poet's eye sees, the world may also see! Roll, ye
+runes!</p>
+
+<p>There sketches the whole varied prospect; a rainbow extends its arch
+like a frame around it. Only see! it is sunset, the sky becomes cloudy
+over S&ouml;dermalm, the grey sky becomes darker and darker&mdash;a pitch-dark
+ground&mdash;and on it rests a double rainbow. The houses are illumined by
+so strong a sunlight that the walls seem transparent; the linden-trees
+in the gardens, which have lately put forth their leaves, appear like
+fresh, young woods; the long, narrow windows in the Gothic buildings
+on the island shine as if it were a festal illumination, and between
+the dark firs there falls a lustre from the panes behind them as of a
+thousand flames, as if the trees were covered with
+flickering&mdash;Christmas lights; the colours of the rainbow become
+stronger and stronger, the background darker and darker, and the white
+sun-lit sea-gulls fly past.</p>
+
+<p>The rainbow has placed one foot high up on S&ouml;dermalm's churchyard.
+Where the rainbow touches the earth, there lie treasures buried, is a
+popular belief here. The rainbow rests on a grave up there: Stagnalius
+rests here, Sweden's most gifted singer, so young and so unhappy; and
+in the same grave lies Nicander, he who sang about King Enzio, and of
+&quot;Lejonet i Oken;&quot;<a name="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12"><sup>[L]</sup></a> who sang with a bleeding heart: the fresh
+vine-leaf cooled the wound and killed the singer. Peace be with his
+dust&mdash;may his songs live for ever! We go to your grave where the
+rainbow points. The view from here is splendid. The houses rise
+terrace-like in the steep, paved streets; the foot-passengers can,
+however, shorten the way by going through narrow lanes, and up steps
+made of thick beams, and always with a prospect downwards of the
+water, of the rocks and green trees! It is delightful to dwell here,
+it is healthy to dwell here, but it is not genteel, as it is by
+Brunkaberg's sand-ridge, yet it will become so: Stockholm's &quot;Strada
+Balbi&quot; will one day arise on S&ouml;dermalm's rocky ground.</p>
+
+<p>We stand up here. What other city in the world has a better prospect
+over the salt fjord, over the fresh lake, over towers, cupolas,
+heaped-up houses, and a palace, which King Enzio himself might have
+built, and round about the dark, gloomy forests with oaks, pines and
+firs, so Scandinavian, dreaming in the declining sun? It is twilight;
+the night comes on, the lamps are lighted in the city below, the stars
+are kindled in the firmament above, and the tower of Redderholm's
+church rises aloft towards the starry space. The stars shine through
+there; it is as if cut in lace, but every thread is of cast-iron and
+of the thickness of beams.</p>
+
+<p>We go down there, and in there, in the stilly eve.&mdash;A world of spirits
+reigns within. See, in the vaulted isles, on carved wooden horses,
+sits armour, that was once borne by Magnus Ladelaas, Christian the
+Second, and Charles the Ninth. A thousand flags that once waved to the
+peal of music and the clang of arms, to the darted javelin and the
+cannon's roar, moulder away here: they hang in long rags from the
+staff, and the staves lie cast aside, where the flag has long since
+become dust. Almost all the Kings of Sweden slumber in silver and
+copper coffins within these walls. From the altar aisle we look
+through the open-grated door, in between piled-up drums and hanging
+flags: here is preserved a bloody tunic, and in the coffin are the
+remains of Gustavus Adolphus. Who is that dead opposite neighbour in
+the chapel, across there in the other side-aisle of the church? There,
+below a glass lid, lies a dress shot through, and on the floor stands
+a pair of long, thick boots&mdash;they belonged to the hero-King, the
+wanderer, Charles XII., whose realm is now this narrow coffin.</p>
+
+<p>How sacred it is here under this vaulted roof! The mightiest men of
+centuries are gathered together here, perishable as these moth-eaten
+flags&mdash;mute and yet so eloquent. And without there is life and
+activity: the world goes on in its old course; generations change in
+the old houses; the houses change&mdash;yet Stockholm is always the heart
+of Sweden, Birger's city, whose features are continually renewed,
+continually beautified.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="DIURGAERDEN"></a><h2>DIURGAERDEN.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Diurgaerden is a large piece of land made into a garden by our Lord
+himself. Come with us over there. We are still in the city, but before
+the palace lie the broad hewn stone stairs, leading down to the water,
+where the Dalkulls&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, the Dalecarlian women&mdash;stand and ring with
+metal bells. On board! here are boats enough to choose amongst, all
+with wheels, which the Dalkulls turn. In coarse white linen, red
+stockings, with green heels, and singularly thick-soled shoes, with
+the upper-leather right up the shin-bone, stands the Dalkull; she has
+ornamented the boat, that now shoots away, with green branches. Houses
+and streets rise and unfold themselves; churches and gardens start
+forth; they stand on S&ouml;dermalm high above the tops of the ships'
+masts. The scenery reminds one of the Bhosphorus and Pera; the motley
+dress of the Dalkulls is quite Oriental&mdash;and listen! the wind bears
+melancholy Skalmeie tones out to us. Two poor Dalecarlians are playing
+music on the quay; they are the same drawn-out, melancholy tones that
+are played by the Bulgarian musicians in the streets of Pera. We stept
+out, and are in the Diurgarden.</p>
+
+<p>What a crowd of equipages pass in rows through the broad avenue! and
+what a throng of well-dressed pedestrians of all classes! One thinks
+of the garden of the Villa Borghese, when, at the time of the wine
+feast, the Roman people and strangers take the air there. We are in
+the Borghese garden; we are by the Bosphorus, and yet far in the
+North. The pine-tree rises large and free; the birch droops its
+branches, as the weeping willow alone has power to do&mdash;and what
+magnificently grand oaks! The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees,
+beautiful to the painter's eye; splendid green grass plains lie
+stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close
+past, as if it were a river. Large ships with swelling sails, the one
+high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied
+numbers.</p>
+
+<p>Come! let us up to Bystr&ouml;m's villa; it lies on the stony cliff up
+there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur: we
+see from here the whole tripartite city, S&ouml;dermalm, Nordmalm and the
+island with that huge palace. It is delightful, the building here on
+this rock, and the building stands, and that almost entirely of
+marble, a &quot;Casa santa d'Italia,&quot; as if borne through the air here in
+the North. The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but
+heavy: there is nothing genial. Round about stand large marble figures
+by Bystr&ouml;m, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity. Madonna is
+encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the
+flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the
+weeping Cupid, one thinks of a <i>pose</i> arranged by a ballet-master.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, however, see what is pretty. The little Cupid-seller is
+pretty, and the stone is made as flexible as life in the waists of the
+bathing-women. One of them, as she steps out, feels the water with her
+feet, and we feel, with her, a sensation that the water is cold. The
+coolness of the marble-hall realizes this feeling. Let us go out into
+the sunshine, and up to the neighbouring cliff, which rises above the
+mansions and houses. Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices
+in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and
+the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze
+bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that
+Scandinavian improvisatore. Here he lay in the grass, composed and
+sang his anacreontic songs, and here, in the summer-time, his annual
+festival is held. We will raise his altar here in the red evening
+sunlight. It is a flaming bowl, raised high on the jolly tun, and it
+is wreathed with roses. Morits tries his hunting-horn, that which was
+Oberon's horn in the inn-parlour, and everything danced, from Ulla to
+&quot;Mutter paa Toppen:&quot;<a name="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13"><sup>[M]</sup></a> they stamped with their feet and clapped their
+hands, and clinked the pewter lid of the ale-tankard; &quot;hej kara Sj&aelig;l!
+fukta din aske!&quot; (Hey! dear soul! moisten your clay).</p>
+
+<p>A Teniers' picture became animated, and still lives in song. Morits
+blows the horn on Bellmann's place around the flowing bowl, and whole
+crowds dance in a circle, young and old; the carriages too, horses and
+waggons, filled bottles and clattering tankards: the Bellmann
+dithyrambic clangs melodiously; humour and low life, sadness&mdash;and
+amongst others, about</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;&mdash;&mdash; hur &ouml;gat gret<br /></span>
+<span> Ved de Cypresser, som str&ouml;ddes.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14"><sup>[N]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Painter, seize thy brush and palette and paint the Maenade&mdash;but not
+her who treads the winebag, whilst her hair flutters in the wind, and
+she sings ecstatic songs. No, but the Maenade that ascends from
+Bellmann's steaming bowl is the Punch's Anadyomene&mdash;she, with the high
+heels to the red shoes, with rosettes on her gown and with fluttering
+veil and mantilla&mdash;fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose
+of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks
+with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about
+breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible
+that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce
+to us the human heart's sadness and hope.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="ASTORY"></a><h2>A STORY.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>All the apple-trees in the garden had sprung out. They had made haste
+to get blossoms before they got green leaves; and all the ducklings
+were out in the yard&mdash;and the cat too! He was, so to speak, permeated
+by the sunshine; he licked it from his own paws; and if one looked
+towards the fields, one saw the corn standing so charmingly green! And
+there was such a twittering and chirping amongst all the small birds,
+just as if it were a great feast. And that one might indeed say it
+was, for it was Sunday. The bells rang, and people in their best
+clothes went to church, and looked so pleased. Yes, there was
+something so pleasant in everything: it was indeed so fine and warm a
+day, that one might well say: &quot;Our Lord is certainly unspeakably good
+towards us poor mortals!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the clergyman stood in the pulpit in the church, and spoke so loud
+and so angrily! He said that mankind was so wicked, and that God would
+punish them for it, and that when they died, the wicked went down into
+hell, where they would burn for ever; and he said that their worm
+would never die, and their fire never be extinguished, nor would they
+ever get rest and peace!</p>
+
+<p>It was terrible to hear, and he said it so determinedly. He described
+hell to them as a pestilential hole, where all the filthiness of the
+world flowed together. There was no air except the hot, sulphurous
+flames; there was no bottom; they sank and sank into everlasting
+silence! It was terrible, only to hear about it; but the clergyman
+said it right honestly out of his heart, and all the people in the
+church were quite terrified. But all the little birds outside the
+church sang so pleasantly, and so pleased, and the sun shone so
+warm:&mdash;it was as if every little flower said: &quot;God is so wondrous good
+to us altogether!&quot; Yes, outside it was not at all as the clergyman
+preached.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, when it was bed-time, the clergyman saw his wife sit
+so still and thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What ails you?&quot; said he to her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What ails me?&quot; she replied; &quot;what ails me is, that I cannot collect
+my thoughts rightly&mdash;that I cannot rightly understand what you said;
+that there were so many wicked, and that they should burn
+eternally!&mdash;eternally, alas, how long! I am but a sinful being; but I
+could not bear the thought in my heart to allow even the worst sinner
+to burn for ever. And how then should our Lord permit it? he who is so
+wondrously good, and who knows how evil comes both from without and
+within. No, I cannot believe it, though you say it.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was autumn. The leaves fell from the trees; the grave, severe
+clergyman sat by the bedside of a dying person; a pious believer
+closed her eyes&mdash;it was the clergyman's own wife.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If any one find peace in the grave, and grace from God, then it is
+thou,&quot; said the clergyman, and he folded her hands, and read a psalm
+over the dead body.</p>
+
+<p>And she was borne to the grave: two heavy tears trickled down that
+stern man's cheeks; and it was still and vacant in the parsonage; the
+sunshine within was extinguished:&mdash;she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>It was night. A cold wind blew over the clergyman's head; he opened
+his eyes, and it was just as if the moon shone into his room. But the
+moon did not shine. It was a figure which stood before his bed&mdash;he saw
+the spirit of his deceased wife. She looked on him so singularly
+afflicted; it seemed as though she would say something.</p>
+
+<p>The man raised himself half erect in bed, and stretched his arms out
+towards her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not even to thee is granted everlasting peace. Thou dost suffer;
+thou, the best, the most pious!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the dead bent her head in confirmation of his words, and laid her
+hand on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And can I procure you peace in the grave?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes!&quot; it sounded in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give me a hair, but a single hair of the head of that sinner, whose
+fire will never be quenched; that sinner whom God will cast down into
+hell, to everlasting torment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; so easily thou canst be liberated, thou pure, thou pious one!&quot;
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then follow me,&quot; said the dead; &quot;it is so granted us. Thou canst be
+by my side, wheresoever thy thoughts will. Invisible to mankind, we
+stand in their most secret places; but thou must point with a sure
+hand to the one destined to eternal punishment, and ere the cock crow
+he must be found.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And swift, as if borne on the wings of thought, they were in the great
+city, and the names of the dying sinners shone from the walls of the
+houses in letters of fire: &quot;Arrogance, Avarice, Drunkenness,
+Voluptuousness;&quot; in short, sin's whole seven-coloured arch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, in there, as I thought it, as I knew it,&quot; said the clergyman,
+&quot;are housed those condemned to eternal fire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And they stood before the splendidly-illumined portico, where the
+broad stairs were covered with carpets and flowers, and the music of
+the dance sounded through the festal saloons. The porter stood there
+in silk and velvet, with a large silver-headed stick.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Our</i> ball can match with the King's,&quot; said he, and turned towards
+the crowd in the street&mdash;his magnificent thoughts were visible in his
+whole person. &quot;Poor devils! who stare in at the portico, you are
+altogether ragamuffins, compared to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Arrogance,&quot; said the dead; &quot;dost thou see him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Him!&quot; repeated the clergyman; &quot;he is a simpleton&mdash;a fool only, and
+will not be condemned to eternal fire and torment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A fool only,&quot; sounded through the whole house of Arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>And they flew into the four bare walls of Avarice, where skinny,
+meagre, shivering with cold, hungry and thirsty, the old man clung
+fast with all his thoughts to his gold. They saw how he, as in a
+fever, sprang from his wretched pallet, and took a loose stone out of
+the wall. There lay gold coins in a stocking-foot; he fumbled at his
+ragged tunic, in which gold coins were sewed fast, and his moist
+fingers trembled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is ill: it is insanity; encircled by fear and evil dreams.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And they flew away in haste, and stood by the criminals' wooden couch,
+where they slept side by side in long rows. One of them started up
+from his sleep like a wild animal, and uttered a hideous scream: he
+struck his companion with his sharp elbow, and the latter turned
+sleepily round.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold your tongue, you beast, and sleep! this is your way every night!
+Every night!&quot; he repeated; &quot;yes, you come every night, howling and
+choking me! I have done one thing or another in a passion; I was born
+with a passionate temper, and it has brought me in here a second time;
+but if I have done wrong, so have I also got my punishment. But one
+thing I have not confessed. When I last went out from here, and passed
+by my master's farm, one thing and another boiled up in me, and I
+directly stroked a lucifer against the wall: it came a little too near
+the thatch, and everything was burnt&mdash;hot-headedness came over it,
+just as it comes over me, I helped to save the cattle and furniture.
+Nothing living was burnt, except a flock of pigeons: they flew into
+the flames, and the yard dog. I had not thought of the dog. I could
+hear it howl, and that howl I always hear yet, when I would sleep; and
+if I do get to sleep, the dog comes also&mdash;so large and hairy! He lies
+down on me, howls, and strangles me! Do but hear what I am telling
+you. Snore&mdash;yes, that you can&mdash;snore the whole night through, and I
+not even a quarter of an hour!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the blood shone from the eyes of the fiery one; he fell on his
+companion, and struck him in the face with his clenched fist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Angry Mads has become mad again!&quot; resounded on all sides, and the
+other rascals seized hold of him, wrestled with him, and bent him
+double, so that his head was forced between his legs, where they bound
+it fast, so that the blood was nearly springing out of his eyes, and
+all the pores.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will kill him!&quot; said the clergyman,&mdash;&quot;poor unfortunate!&quot; and as
+he stretched his hands out over him, who had already suffered too
+severely, in order to prevent further mischief, the scene changed.</p>
+
+<p>They flew through rich halls, and through poor chambers;
+voluptuousness and envy, all mortal sins strode past them. A recording
+angel read their sin and their defence; this was assuredly little for
+God, for God reads the heart; He knows perfectly the evil that comes
+within it and from without, He, grace, all-loving kindness. The hand
+of the clergyman trembled: he did not venture to stretch it out, to
+pluck a hair from the sinner's head. And the tears streamed down from
+his eyes, like the waters of <i>grace</i> and love, which quenched the
+eternal fire of hell.</p>
+
+<p>The cock then crowed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Merciful God! Thou wilt grant her that peace in the grave which I
+have not been able to redeem.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That I now have!&quot; said the dead; &quot;it was thy hard words, thy dark,
+human belief of God and his creatures, which drove me to thee! Learn
+to know mankind; even in the bad there is a part of God&mdash;a part that
+will conquer and quench the fire of hell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And a kiss was pressed on the clergyman's lips:&mdash;it shone around him.
+God's clear, bright sun shone into the chamber, where his wife,
+living, mild, and affectionate, awoke him from a dream, sent from God!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="UPSALA"></a><h2>UPSALA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It is commonly said, that Memory is a young girl with light blue eyes.
+Most poets say so; but we cannot always agree with most poets. To us
+memory comes in quite different forms, all according to that land, or
+that town to which she belongs. Italy sends her as a charming Mignon,
+with black eyes and a melancholy smile, singing Bellini's soft,
+touching songs. From Scotland Memory's sprite appears as a powerful
+lad with bare knees; the plaid hangs over his shoulder, the
+thistle-flower is fixed on his cap; Burns's songs then fill the air
+like the heath-lark's song, and Scotland's wild thistle flowers
+beautifully fragrant as the fresh rose. But now for Memory's sprite
+from Sweden, from Upsala. He comes thence in the form of a student&mdash;at
+least, he wears the Upsala student's white cap with the black rim. To
+us it points out its home, as the Phrygian cap denotes Ganymede.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the year 1843, that the Danish students travelled to Upsala.
+Young hearts met together; eyes sparkled: they laughed, they sang.
+Young hearts are the future&mdash;the conquering future&mdash;in the beautiful,
+true and good; it is so good that brothers should know and love each
+other. Friendship's meeting is still annually remembered in the
+palace-yard of Upsala, before the monument of Gustavus Vasa&mdash;by the
+hurra! for Denmark, in warm-hearted compliment to me.</p>
+
+<p>Two summers afterwards, the visit was returned. The Swedish students
+came to Copenhagen, and that they might there be known amongst the
+multitude, the Upsala students wore a white cap with a black rim: this
+cap is accordingly a memorial,&mdash;the sign of friendship's bridge over
+that river of blood which once flowed between kindred nations. When
+one meets in heart and spirit, a blissful seed is then sown. Memory's
+sprite, come to us! we know thee by the cap from Upsala: be thou our
+guide, and from our more southern home, after years and days, we will
+make the voyage over again, quicker than if we flew in Doctor Faustus'
+magic cloak. We are in Stockholm: we stand on the Ridderholm where the
+steamers lie alongside the bulwarks: one of them sends forth clouds of
+thick smoke from its chimney; the deck is crowded with passengers, and
+the white cap with the black rim is not wanting.</p>
+
+<p>We are off to Upsala; the paddles strike the waters of the M&auml;lar, and
+we shoot away from the picturesque city of Stockholm. The whole
+voyage, direct to Upsala, is a kaleidescope on a large scale. It is
+true, there is nothing of the magical in the scenery, but landscape
+gives place to landscape, and clouds and sunshine refresh their
+variegated beauty. The M&auml;lar lake curves, is compressed, and widens
+again: it is as if one passed from lake to lake through narrow canals
+and broad rivers. Sometimes it appears as if the lake ended in small
+rivulets between dark pines and rocks, when suddenly another large
+lake, surrounded by corn fields and meadows, opens itself to view: the
+light-green linden trees, which have just unfolded their leaves, shine
+forth before the dark grey rocks. Again a new lake opens before us,
+with islets, trees and red painted houses, and during the whole voyage
+there is a lively arrival and departure of passengers, in flat
+bottomed boats, which are nearly upset in the billowy wake of the
+vessel.</p>
+
+<p>It appears most dangerous opposite to Sigtuna, Sweden's old royal
+city: the lake is broad here; the waves rise as if they were the
+waters of the ocean; the boats rock&mdash;it is fearful to look at! But
+here there must be a calm; and Sigtuna, that little interesting town
+where the old towers stand in ruins, like outposts along the rocks,
+reflects itself in the water.</p>
+
+<p>We fly past! and now we are in Tyris rivulet! Part of a meadow is
+flooded; a herd of horses become shy from the snorting of the
+steamer's engine; they dash through the water in the meadow, and it
+spurts up all over them. It glitters there between the trees on the
+declivity: the Upsala students lie encamped there, and exercise
+themselves in the use of arms.</p>
+
+<p>The rivulet forms a bay, and the high plain extends itself. We see old
+Upsala's hills; we see Upsala's city with its church, which, like
+Notre Dame, raises its stony arms towards heaven. The university rises
+to the view, in appearance half palace and half barracks, and there
+aloft, on the greensward-clothed bank, stands the old red-painted huge
+palace with its towers.</p>
+
+<p>We stop at the bulwark near the arched bridge, and so go on shore.
+Whither wilt thou conduct us first, thou our guide with the
+white-and-black student's cap? Shall we go up to the palace, or to
+Linnaeus's garden! or shall we go to the church-yard where the nettles
+grow over Geier's and T&ouml;rnro's graves? No, but to the young and the
+living Upsala's life&mdash;the students. Thou tellest us about them; we
+hear the heart's pulsations, and our hearts beat in sympathy!</p>
+
+<p>In the first year of the war between Denmark and the insurgents, many
+a brave Upsala student left his quiet, comfortable home, and entered
+the ranks with his Danish brothers. The Upsala students gave up their
+most joyous festival&mdash;the May-day festival&mdash;and the money they at
+other times used to contribute annually towards the celebration
+thereof, they sent to the Danes, after the sum had been increased by
+concerts which were given in Stockholm and Vesteraas. That
+circumstance will not be forgotten in Denmark.</p>
+
+<p>Upsala student, thou art dear to us by thy disposition! thou art dear
+to us from thy lively jests! We will mention a trait thereof. In
+Upsala, it had become the fashion to be Hegelianers&mdash;that is to say,
+always to interweave Hegel's philosophical terms in conversation. In
+order to put down this practice, a few clever fellows took upon
+themselves the task of hammering some of the most difficult technical
+words into the memory of a humorous and commonly drunken country
+innkeeper, at whose house many a <i>Sexa</i> was often held; and the man
+spoke Hegelianic in his mellow hours, and the effect was so absurd,
+that the employment of philosophical scraps in his speech was
+ridiculed, understood, and the nuisance abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful songs resound as we approach: we hear Swedish, Norwegian and
+Danish. The melody's varied beacon makes known to us where Upsala's
+students are assembled. The song proceeds from the assembly-room&mdash;from
+the tavern saloon, and like serenades in the silent evening, when a
+young friend departs, or a dear guest is honoured. Glorious melodies!
+ye enthral, so that we forget that the sun goes down, and the moon
+rises.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Herre min Gud hvad din M&aring;nen lyser<br /></span>
+<span> Se, hvilken Glands ut ofver Land och Stad!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is now sung, and we see:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;H&ouml;gt opp i Slottet hvarenda ruta<br /></span>
+<span> Blixtrar some vore den en &auml;delsten.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15"><sup>[O]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Up thither then is our way! lead us, memory's sprite, into the palace,
+the courteous governor of Upland's dwelling; mild glances greet us; we
+see dear beings in a happy circle, and all the leading characters of
+Upsala. We again see him whose cunning quickened our perceptions as to
+the mysteries of vegetable life, so that even the toad-stool is
+unveiled to us as a building more artfully constructed than the
+labyrinths of the olden time. We see &quot;The Flowers'&quot; singer, he who led
+us to &quot;The Island of Bliss;&quot; we meet with him whose popular lays are
+borne on melodies into the world; his wife by his side. That quiet,
+gentle woman with those faithful eyes is the daughter of Frithiof's
+bard; we see noble men and women, ladies of the high nobility, with
+sounding and significant family names with <i>silver</i> and
+<i>lilies</i>,&mdash;<i>stars</i> and <i>swords</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Hark! listen to that lively song. Gunnar Wennerberg, Gluntarra's poet
+and composer, sings his songs with Boronees,<a name="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16"><sup>[P]</sup></a> and they acquire a
+dramatic life and reality.</p>
+
+<p>How spiritual and enjoyable! one becomes happy here, one feels proud
+of the age one lives in, happy in being distant from the horrible
+tragedies that history speaks of within these walls.</p>
+
+<p>We can hear about them when the song is silent, when those friendly
+forms disappear, and the festal lights are extinguished: from the
+pages of history that tale resounds with a clang of horror. It was in
+those times, which the many still call poetic&mdash;the romantic middle
+ages&mdash;that bards sang of its most brilliant periods, and covered with
+the radiance of their genius the sanguinary gulf of brutality and
+superstition. Terror seizes us in Upsala's palace: we stand in the
+vaulted hall, the wax tapers burn from the walls, and King Erik the
+Fourteenth sits with Saul's dark despondency, with Cain's wild looks.
+Niels Sture occupies his thoughts, the recollection of injustice
+exercised against him lashes his conscience with scourges and
+scorpions, as deadly terrible as they are revealed to us in the page
+of history.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik the Fourteenth, whose gloomy distrust often amounted to
+insanity, thought that the nobility aimed at his life. His favourite,
+Goran Persson, found it to his advantage to strengthen him in this
+belief. He hated most the popularly favoured race of the Stures, and
+of them, the light-haired Niels Sture in particular; for Erik thought
+that he had read in the stars that a man with light hair should hurl
+him from the throne; and as the Swedish General after the lost battle
+of Svarteaa, laid the blame on Niels Sture, Erik directly believed it,
+yet dared not to act as he desired, but even gave Niels Sture royal
+presents. Yet because he was again accused by one single person of
+having checked the advance of the Swedish army at B&auml;h&uuml;s, Erik invited
+him to his palace at Svartsj&ouml;, gave him an honourable place at his
+royal table, and let him depart in apparent good faith for Stockholm,
+where, on his arrival, the heralds were ordered to proclaim in the
+streets: &quot;Niels Sture is a traitor to his country!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There Goran Persson and the German retainers seized him, and sat him
+by force on the executioner's most miserable hack; struck him in the
+face so that the blood streamed down, placed a tarred straw crown on
+his head, and fastened a paper with derisive words, on the saddle
+before him. They then let a row of hired beggar-boys and old
+fish-wives go in couples before, and to the tail of the horse they
+bound two fir-trees, the roots of which dragged on the ground and
+swept the street after the traitor. Niels Sture exclaimed that he had
+not deserved this treatment from his King and he begged the groom, who
+went by his side, and had served him in the field of battle, to attest
+the truth like an honest man; when they all shouted aloud, that he
+suffered innocently, and had acted like a true Swede. But the
+procession was driven forward through the streets without stopping,
+and at night Niels Sture was conducted to prison.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik sits in his royal palace: he orders the torches and candles
+to be lighted, but they are of no avail&mdash;his thoughts' scorpions sting
+his soul.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have again liberated Niels Sture,&quot; he mutters; &quot;I have had placards
+put up at every street-corner, and let the heralds proclaim that no
+one shall dare to speak otherwise than well of Niels Sture! I have
+sent him on an honourable mission to a foreign court, in order to sue
+for me in marriage! He has had reparation enough made to him; but
+never will he, nor his mighty race, forget the derision and shame I
+have made him suffer. They will all betray me&mdash;kill me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And King Erik commands that all Sture's kindred shall be made
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik sits in his royal palace: the sun shines, but not into the
+King's heart. Niels Sture enters the chamber with an answer of consent
+from the royal bride, and the King shakes him by the hand, making fair
+promises&mdash;and the following evening Niels Sture is a prisoner in
+Upsala Palace.</p>
+
+<p>King Erik's gloomy mind is disturbed; he has no rest; he has no peace,
+between fear and distrust. He hurries away to Upsala Palace; he will
+make all straight and just again by marrying Niels Sture's sister.
+Kneeling, he begs her imprisoned father's consent, and obtains it; but
+in the very moment, the spirit of distrust is again upon him, and he
+cries in his insanity:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you will not forgive me the shame I brought on Niels!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Goran Persson announced that King Erik's brother,
+John, had escaped from his prison, and that a revolt was breaking out.
+And Erik ran, with a sharp dagger into Niels Sture's prison.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Art thou there, traitor to thy country!&quot; he shouted, and thrust the
+dagger into Shire's arm; and Sture drew it out again, wiped off the
+blood, kissed the hilt, and returned the weapon to the King, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be lenient with me, Sire; I have not deserved your disfavour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Erik laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! ho! do but hear the villain! how he can pray for himself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the King's halberdier stuck his lance through Niels Sture's eye,
+and thus gave him his death. Sture's blood cleaves to Upsala
+Palace&mdash;to King Erik always and everlastingly. No church masses can
+absolve his soul from that base crime.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now go to the church.</p>
+
+<p>A little flight of stairs in the side aisle leads us up to a vaulted
+chamber, where kings' crowns and sceptres, taken from the coffins of
+the dead, are deposited in wooden closets. Here, in the corner, hangs
+Niels Sture's blood-covered clothes and knight's hat, on the outside
+of which a small silk glove is fastened. It was his betrothed one's
+dainty glove&mdash;that which he, knight-like, always bore.</p>
+
+<p>O, barbarous era! highly vaunted as you are in song, retreat, like the
+storm-cloud, and be poetically beautiful to all who do not see thee in
+thy true light.</p>
+
+<p>We descend from the little chamber, from the gold and silver of the
+dead, and wander in the church's aisles. The cold marble tombs, with
+shields of arms and names, awaken other, milder thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The walls shine brightly, and with varied hues, in the great chapel
+behind the high altar. The fresco paintings present to us the most
+eventful circumstances of Gustavus Vasa's life. Here his clay
+moulders, with that of his three consorts. Yonder, a work in marble,
+by Sargel, solicits our attention: it adorns the burial-chapel of the
+De Geers; and here, in the centre aisle, under that flat stone, rests
+Linnaeus. In the side chapel, is his monument, erected by <i>amici</i> and
+<i>discipuli</i>: a sufficient sum was quickly raised for its erection, and
+the King, Gustavus the Third, himself brought his royal gift. The
+projector of the subscription then explained to him, that the purposed
+inscription was, that the monument was erected only by friends and
+disciples, and King Gustavus answered: &quot;And am not I also one of
+Linnaeus's disciples?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The monument was raised, and a hall built in the botanical garden,
+under splendid trees. There stands his bust; but the remembrance of
+himself, his home, his own little garden&mdash;where is it most vivid? Lead
+us thither.</p>
+
+<p>On yonder side of Fyri's rivulet, where the street forms a declivity,
+where red-painted, wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as
+fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnaeus's garden. We
+stand within it. How solitary! how overgrown! Tall nettles shoot up
+between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges. No water-plants appear more
+in that little, dried-up basin; the hedges that were formerly clipped,
+put forth fresh leaves without being checked by the gardener's shears.</p>
+
+<p>It was between these hedges that Linnaeus at times saw his own
+double&mdash;that optical illusion which presents the express image of a
+second self&mdash;from the hat to the boots.</p>
+
+<p>Where a great man has lived and worked, the place itself becomes, as
+it were, a part and parcel of him: the whole, as well as a part, has
+mirrored itself in his eye; it has entered into his soul, and become
+linked with it and the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>We enter the orangeries: they are now transformed into assembly-rooms;
+the blooming winter-garden has disappeared; but the walls yet show a
+sort of herbarium. They are hung round with the portraits of learned
+Swedes&mdash;herbarium from the garden of science and knowledge. Unknown
+faces&mdash;and, to the stranger, the greatest part are unknown names&mdash;meet
+us here.</p>
+
+<p>One portrait amongst the many attracts our attention: it looks
+singular; it is the half-length figure of an old man in a shirt, lying
+in his bed. It is that of the learned theologian, Oedmann, who after
+he had been compelled to keep his bed by a fever, found himself so
+comfortable in it, that he continued to lie there during the remainder
+of his long life, and was not to be induced to get up. Even when the
+next house was burning, they were obliged to carry him out in his bed
+into the street. Death and cold were his two bugbears. The cold would
+kill him, was his opinion; and so, when the students came with their
+essays and treatises, the manuscripts were warmed at the stove before
+he read them. The windows of his room were never opened, so that there
+was a suffocating and impure air in his dwelling. He had a
+writing-desk on the bed; books and manuscripts lay in confusion round
+about; dishes, plates, and pots stood here or there, as the
+convenience of the moment dictated, and his only companion was a deaf
+and dumb laughter.</p>
+
+<p>She sat still in a corner by the window, wrapped up in herself, and
+staring before her, as if she were a figure that had flown out of the
+frame around the dark, mouldy canvas, which had once shown a picture
+on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the room, in this impure atmosphere, the old man lived
+happily, and reached his seventieth year, occupied with the
+translation of travels in Africa. This tainted atmosphere, in which he
+lay, became, to his conceit, the dromedary's high back, which lifted
+him aloft in the burning sun; the long, hanging-down cobwebs were the
+palm-trees' waving banners, and the caravan went over rivers to the
+wild bushmen. Old Oedmann was with the hunters, chasing the elephants
+in the midst of the thick reeds; the agile tiger-cat sprang past, and
+the serpents shone like garlands around the boughs of the trees: there
+was excitement, there was danger&mdash;and yet he lay so comfortably in his
+good and beloved bed in Upsala.</p>
+
+<p>One winter's day, it happened that a Dalecarlian peasant mistook the
+house, and came into Oedmann's chamber in his snow-covered skin cloak,
+and with his beard full of ice. Oedmann shouted to him to go his way,
+but the peasant was deaf, and therefore stepped quite close up to the
+bed. He was the personification of Winter himself, and Oedmann fell
+ill from this visit: it was his only sickness during the many years he
+lay here as a polypus, grown fast, and where he was painted, as we see
+his portrait in the assembly-room.</p>
+
+<p>From the hall of learning we will go to its burial-place&mdash;that is to
+say, its open burial-place&mdash;the great library. We wander from hall to
+hall, up stairs and down stairs. Along the shelves, behind them and
+round about, stand books, those petrifactions of the mind, which might
+again be vivified by spirit. Here lives a kind-hearted and mild old
+man, the librarian, Professor Schr&ouml;der. He smiles and nods as he hears
+how memory's sprite takes his place here as guide, and tells of and
+shows, as we see, Tegner's copy and translation of Ochlenschloeger's
+&quot;Hakon Jarl and Palnatoke.&quot; We see Vadstene cloister's library, in
+thick hog's leather bindings, and think of the fair hands of the nuns
+that have borne them, the pious, mild eyes that conjured the spirit
+out of the dead letters. Here is the celebrated Codex Argentius, the
+translation of the &quot;Four Evangelists.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_Q_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q_17"><sup>[Q]</sup></a> Gold and silver letters
+glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic
+manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's
+Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings
+and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in
+spirit, and longs to be out in the free air&mdash;and we are there; by
+Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf,
+out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church
+stands&mdash;the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes
+gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it
+leads us close past Upsala's old hills&mdash;Odin's, Thor's and Freia's
+graves, as they are called.</p>
+
+<p>There once stood ancient Upsala, here now are but a few peasants'
+farms. The low church, built of granite blocks, dates from a very
+remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple. Each of
+the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands.
+Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin
+greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old
+housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the
+silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The
+wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden,
+and for the heart's constant thoughts&mdash;young love!</p>
+
+<p>Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been
+remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! and years after, when the same
+wanderer again stood here, she, the blooming rose, had been laid in
+the earth; the spring roses had strown their leaves over her coffined
+clay; the sweet music of her lips sounded but in memory; the smile in
+her eyes and around her mouth, was gone like the sunbeams, which then
+shone on Upsala's hills. Her name in the greensward is grown over; she
+herself is in the earth, and it is closed above her; but the hill
+here, closed for a thousand years, is open.</p>
+
+<p>Through the passage which is dug deep into the hills, we come to the
+funereal urns which contain the bones of youthful kindred; the dust of
+kings, the gods of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>The old housewife, from the peasant's cot, has lighted half a hundred
+wax candles and placed them in rows in the otherwise pitchy-dark,
+stone-paved passage. It shines so festally in here over the bones of
+the olden time's mighty ones, bones that are now charred and burnt to
+ashes. And whose were they? Thou world's power and glory, thou world's
+posthumous fame&mdash;dust, dust like beauty's rose, laid in the dark
+earth, where no light shines; thy memorials are but a name, the name
+but a sound. Away hence, and up on the hill where the wind blows, the
+sun shines, and the eye looks over the green plain, to the sunlit,
+dear Upsala, the student's city.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="SALA"></a><h2>SALA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Sweden's great King, Germany's preserver, Gustavus Adolphus, founded
+Sala. The little wood, close by, still preserves legends of the heroic
+King's youthful love&mdash;of his meeting here with Ebba Brahe.</p>
+
+<p>Sala's silver mines are the largest, the deepest, and oldest in
+Sweden: they reach to the depth of one hundred and seventy fathoms,
+consequently they are almost as deep as the Baltic. This of itself is
+enough to awaken an interest for a little town; but what is its
+appearance? &quot;Sala,&quot; says the guide-book, &quot;lies in a valley, in a flat,
+and not very pleasant district.&quot; And so truly it is: it was not very
+attractive approaching it our way, and the high road led directly into
+the town, which is without any distinctive character. It consists of a
+long street with what we may term a nucleus and a few fibres. The
+nucleus is the market-place, and the fibres are the few lanes
+diverging from it. The long street&mdash;that is to say, long in a little
+town&mdash;is quite without passengers; no one comes out from the doors, no
+one is to be seen at the windows.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore with pleased surprise that I at length descried a
+human being: it was at an ironmonger's, where there hung a paper of
+pins, a handkerchief and two tea-pots in the window. There I saw a
+solitary shop-boy, standing quite still, but leaning over the counter
+and looking out of the open door. He certainly wrote in his journal,
+if he had one, in the evening: &quot;To-day a traveller drove through the
+town; who he was, God knows, for I don't!&quot;&mdash;yes, that was what the
+shop-boy's face said, and an honest face it was.</p>
+
+<p>In the inn at which I arrived, there was the same grave-like stillness
+as in the street. The gate was certainly closed, but all the inner
+doors were wide open; the farm-yard cock stood uplifted in the middle
+of the traveller's room and crowed, in order to show that there was
+somebody at home. The house, however, was quite picturesque: it had an
+open balcony, from which one might look out upon the yard, for it
+would have been far too lively had it been facing the street. There
+hung the old sign and creaked in the wind, as if to show that it at
+least was alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass in
+the street had got the mastery over the pavement. The sun shone
+brightly, but shone as into the bachelor's solitary room, and on the
+old maid's balsams in the flower-pots. It was as still as a Scotch
+Sunday&mdash;and yet it was a Tuesday. One was disposed for Young's &quot;Night
+Thoughts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I looked out from the balcony into the neighbouring yard: there was
+not a soul to be seen, but children had been playing there. There was
+a little garden made of dry sticks: they were stuck down in the soft
+soil and had been watered; a broken pan, which had certainly served by
+way of watering-pot, lay there still. The sticks signified roses and
+geraniums.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a delightful garden&mdash;alas, yes! We great, grown-up men&mdash;we
+play just so: we make ourselves a garden with what we call love's
+roses and friendship's geraniums; we water them with our tears and
+with our heart's blood; and yet they are, and remain, dry sticks
+without root. It was a gloomy thought; I felt it, and in order to get
+the dry sticks in my thoughts to blossom, I went out. I wandered in
+the fibres and in the long threads&mdash;that is to say, in the small
+lanes&mdash;and in the great street; and here was more life than I dared to
+expect. I met a herd of cattle returning or going&mdash;which I know
+not&mdash;for they were without a herdsman. The shop-boy still stood behind
+the counter, leaned over it and greeted me; the stranger took his hat
+off again&mdash;that was my day's employment in Sala.</p>
+
+<p>Pardon me, thou silent town, which Gustavus Adolphus built, where his
+young heart felt the first emotions of love, and where the silver lies
+in the deep shafts&mdash;that is to say, outside the town, &quot;in a flat, and
+not very pleasant district.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I knew no one in the town; I had no one to be my guide, so I
+accompanied the cows, and came to the churchyard. The cows went past,
+but I stepped over the stile, and stood amongst the graves, where the
+grass grew high, and almost all the tombstones lay with worn-out
+inscriptions. On a few only the date of the year was legible.
+&quot;Anno&quot;&mdash;yes, what then? And who rested here? Everything on the stone
+was erased&mdash;blotted out like the earthly life of those mortals that
+here were earth in earth. What life's dream have ye dead played here
+in silent Sala?</p>
+
+<p>The setting sun shone over the graves; not a leaf moved on the trees;
+all was still&mdash;still as death&mdash;in the city of the silver-mines, of
+which this traveller's reminiscence is but a frame around the shop-boy
+who leaned over the counter.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEMUTEBOOK"></a><h2>THE MUTE BOOK.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>By the high road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house.
+Our way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the
+windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard,
+in an arbour of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The
+corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that
+forenoon. No one stood by and wept over that dead man; no one hung
+sorrowfully over him; his face was covered with a white cloth, and
+under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was
+a whole sheet of grey paper, and between each lay withered flowers,
+deposited and forgotten&mdash;a whole herbarium, gathered in different
+places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave
+with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is that dead man?&quot; we asked, and the answer was: &quot;The old student
+from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned
+languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was
+something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and
+himself up to drinking spirits, and as his health suffered by it, he
+came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and
+lodging.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was as gentle as a child, when the dark humour did not come over
+him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted
+deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book
+with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day and look at one
+plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his
+cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might
+have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the
+lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful
+rest in the grave!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They raised the winding-sheet. There was peace in the face of the
+dead: a sunbeam fell on it; a swallow in its arrowy flight, darted
+into the new-made arbour, and in its flight circled twittering over
+the dead man's head.</p>
+
+<p>How strange it is!&mdash;we all assuredly know it&mdash;to take out old letters
+from the days of our youth and read them: a whole life, as it were,
+then rises up with all its hopes, and all its troubles. How many of
+those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as
+the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of
+them for many years&mdash;them whom we once thought we should always cling
+to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with.</p>
+
+<p>The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the
+friend&mdash;the friend of his school-days&mdash;the friend for life. He fixed
+this leaf on the student's cap in the green wood, when the vow of
+friendship was concluded for the whole of life. Where does he now
+live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign
+conservatory-plant, too fine for the gardens of the North&mdash;it looks as
+if there still were fragrance in these leaves!&mdash;<i>she</i> gave it to
+him&mdash;she, the young lady of that noble garden.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the marsh-lotus which he himself has plucked and watered with
+salt tears&mdash;the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters. And here is a
+nettle: what does its leaf say? What did he think on plucking it&mdash;on
+preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley from the woodland
+solitudes; here are honeysuckle leaves from the village ale-house
+flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass.</p>
+
+<p>The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead
+man's head; the swallow again flies past; &quot;quivit! quivit!&quot; Now the
+men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse,
+whose head rests on the Mute-Book&mdash;preserved&mdash;forgotten!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEZTHERDALE"></a><h2>THE Z&Auml;THER DALE.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Everything was in order, the carriage examined, even a whip with a
+good lash was not forgotten. &quot;Two whips would be best,&quot; said the
+ironmonger, who sold it, and the ironmonger was a man of experience,
+which travellers often are not. A whole bag full of &quot;slanter&quot;&mdash;that
+is, copper coins of small value&mdash;stood before us for bridge-money, for
+beggars, for shepherd's boys, or whoever might open the many
+field-gates for us that obstructed our progress. But we had to do this
+ourselves, for the rain pattered down and lashed the ground; no one
+had any desire to come out in such weather. The rushes in the marsh
+bent and waved; it was a real rain feast for them, and it whistled
+from the tops of the rushes: &quot;We drink with our feet, we drink with
+our heads, we drink with the whole body, and yet we stand on one leg,
+hurra! We drink with the bending willow, with the dripping flowers on
+the bank; their cups run over&mdash;the marsh marigold, that fine lady, can
+bear it better! Hurra! it is a feast! it pours, it pours; we whistle
+and we sing; it is our own song. Tomorrow the frogs will croak the
+same after us and say, 'it is quite new!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the rushes waved, and the rain pattered down with a splashing
+noise&mdash;it was fine weather to travel in to Z&auml;ther Dale, and to see its
+far-famed beauties. The whip-lash now came off the whip; it was
+fastened on again, and again, and every time it was shorter, so that
+at last there was not a lash, nor was there any handle, for the handle
+went after the lash&mdash;or sailed after it&mdash;as the road was quite
+navigable, and gave one a vivid idea of the beginning of the deluge.</p>
+
+<p>One poor jade now drew too much, the other drew too little, and one of
+the splinter bars broke; well, by all that is vexatious, that was a
+fine drive! The leather apron in front had a deep pond in its folds
+with an outlet into one's lap. Now one of the linch-pins came out; now
+the twisting of the rope harness became loose, and the cross-strap was
+tired of holding any longer. Glorious inn in Z&auml;ther, how I now long
+more for thee than thy far-famed dale. And the horses went slower, and
+the rain fell faster, and so&mdash;yes, so we were not yet in Z&auml;ther.</p>
+
+<p>Patience, thou lank spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin
+thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as
+still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the
+carriage to Z&auml;ther. But to the inn, by the road side, close to the
+far-famed valley, I got at length, towards evening.</p>
+
+<p>And everything was flowing in the yard, chaotically mingled; manure
+and farming implements, staves and straw. The poultry sat there washed
+to shadows, or at least like stuck-up hens' skins with feathers on,
+and even the ducks crept close up to the wet wall, sated with the wet.
+The stable-man was cross, the girl still more so; it was difficult to
+get them to bestir themselves: the steps were crooked, the floor
+sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air
+was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on
+the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made
+by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells
+and purling brooks.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long hollow; I saw the tops of the trees looming up, and the
+rain drew its thick veil over it. The whole of that long evening did I
+sit and look upon it during that shower of showers. It was as if the
+Venern, the Vettern and a few more lakes ran through an immense sieve
+from the clouds. I had ordered something to eat and drink, but I got
+nothing. They ran up and they ran down; there was a hissing sound of
+roasting by the hearth; the girls chattered, the men drank &quot;sup,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_R_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_R_18"><sup>[R]</sup></a>
+strangers came, were shown into their rooms, and got both roast and
+boiled. Several hours had passed, when I made a forcible appeal to the
+girl, and she answered phlegmatically: &quot;Why, Sir, you sit there and
+write without stopping, so you cannot have time to eat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a long evening, &quot;but the evening passed!&quot; It had become quite
+still in the inn; all the travellers, except myself, had again
+departed, certainly in order to find better quarters for the night at
+Hedemore or Brunbeck. I had seen, through the half-open door into the
+dirty tap-room, a couple of fellows playing with greasy cards; a huge
+dog lay under the table and glared with its large red eyes; the
+kitchen was deserted; the rooms too; the floor was wet, the storm
+rattled, the rain beat against the windows&mdash;&quot;and now to bed! said I.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>I slept an hour, perhaps two, and was awakened by a loud bawling from
+the high road. I started up: it was twilight, the night at that period
+is not darker&mdash;it was about one o'clock. I heard the door shaken
+roughly; a deep manly voice shouted aloud, and there was a hammering
+with a cudgel against the planks of the yard-gate. Was it an
+intoxicated or a mad man that was to be let in? The gate was now
+opened, but many words were not exchanged. I heard a woman scream at
+the top of her voice from terror. There was now a great bustling
+about; they ran across the yard in wooden shoes; the bellowing of
+cattle and the rough voices of men were mingled together. I sat on the
+edge of the bed. Out or in! what was to be done? I looked from the
+window; in the road there was nothing to be seen, and it still rained.
+All at once some one came up stairs with heavy footsteps: he opened
+the door of the room adjoining mine&mdash;now he stood still! I listened&mdash;a
+large iron bolt fastened my door. The stranger now walked across the
+floor, now he shook my door, and then kicked against it with a heavy
+foot, and whilst all this was passing, the rain beat against the
+windows, and the blast made them rattle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are there any travellers here?&quot; shouted a voice; &quot;the house is on
+fire!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I now dressed myself and hastened out of the room and down the stairs.
+There was no smoke to be seen, but when I reached the yard, I saw that
+the whole building&mdash;a long and extensive one of wood&mdash;was enveloped in
+flames and clouds of smoke. The fire had originated in the baking
+oven, which no one had looked to; a traveller, who accidently came
+past, saw it, called out and hammered at the door: and the women
+screamed, and the cattle bellowed, when the fire stuck its red tongue
+into them.</p>
+
+<p>Now came the fire-engine and the flames were extinguished. By this
+time it was morning. I stood in the road, scarcely a hundred steps
+from the far-famed dale. &quot;One may as well spring into it as walk into
+it!&quot; and I sprang into it; and the rain poured down, and the water
+flowed&mdash;the whole dale was a well.</p>
+
+<p>The trees turned their leaves the wrong side out, purely because of
+the pouring rain, and they said, as the rushes did the day before: &quot;We
+drink with our heads, we drink with our feet, and we drink with the
+whole body, and yet stand on our legs, hurra! it rains, and it pours;
+we whistle and we sing; it is our own song&mdash;and it is quite new!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, that the rushes also sang yesterday&mdash;but it was the same, ever
+the same. I looked and looked, and all I know of the beauty of Z&auml;ther
+Dale is, that she had washed herself!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEMIDSUMMERFESTIVALINLACKSAND"></a><h2>THE<br />MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL<br />IN LACKSAND.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Lacksand lay on the other side of the dal-elv which the road now led
+us over for the third or fourth time. The picturesque bell-tower of
+red painted beams, erected at a distance from the church, rose above
+the tall trees on the clayey declivity: old willows hung gracefully
+over the rapid stream. The floating bridge rocked under us&mdash;nay, it
+even sank a little, so that the water splashed under the horse's
+hoofs; but these bridges have such qualities! The iron chains that
+held it rattled, the planks creaked, the boards splashed, the water
+rose, and murmured and roared, and so we got over where the road
+slants upwards towards the town. Close opposite here the last year's
+May-pole still stood with withered flowers. How many hands that bound
+these flowers are now withered in the grave?</p>
+
+<p>It is far prettier to go up on the sloping bank along the elv, than to
+follow the straight high-road into the town. The path conducts us,
+between pasture fields and leaf trees, up to the parsonage, where we
+passed the evening with the friendly family. The clergyman himself was
+but lately dead, and his relatives were all in mourning. There was
+something about the young daughter&mdash;I knew not myself what it was&mdash;but
+I was led to think of the delicate flax flower, too delicate for the
+short northern summer.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke about the Midsummer festival the next day, and of the
+winter season here, when the swans, often more than thirty at a time,
+sit (motionless themselves) on the elv, and utter strange, mournful
+tones. They always come in pairs, they said, two and two, and thus
+they also fly away again. If one of them dies, its partner always
+remains a long time after all the others are gone; lingers, laments,
+and then flies away alone and solitary.</p>
+
+<p>When I left the parsonage in the evening, the moon, in its first
+quarter, was up. The May-pole was raised; the little steamer, 'Prince
+Augustus,' with several small vessels in tow, came over the Siljan
+lake and into the elv; a musician sprang on shore, and began to play
+dances under the tall wreathed May-pole. And there was soon a merry
+circle around it&mdash;all so happy, as if the whole of life were but a
+delightful summer night.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning was the Midsummer Festival. It was Sunday, the 24th of
+June, and a beautiful sunshiny day it was. The most picturesque sight
+at the festival is to see the people from the different parishes
+coming in crowds, in large boats over Siljan's lake, and landing on
+its shores. We drove out to the landing-place, Barkedale, and before
+we got out of the town, we met whole troops coming from there, as well
+as from the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Close by the town of Lacksand, there is a row of low wooden shops on
+both sides of the way, which only get their interior light through the
+doorway. They form a whole street, and serve as stables for the
+parishioners, but also&mdash;and it was particularly the case that
+morning&mdash;to go into and arrange their finery. Almost all the shops or
+sheds were filled with peasant women, who were anxiously busy about
+their dresses, careful to get them into the right folds, and in the
+mean time peeped continually out of the door to see who came past. The
+number of arriving church-goers increased; men, women, and children,
+old and young, even infants; for at the Midsummer festival no one
+stays at home to take care of them, and so of course they must come
+too&mdash;all must go to church.</p>
+
+<p>What a dazzling army of colours! Fiery red and grass green aprons meet
+our gaze. The dress of the women is a black skirt, red bodice, and
+white sleeves: all of them had a psalm-book wrapped in the folded silk
+pocket-handkerchief. The little girls were entirely in yellow, and
+with red aprons; the very least were in Turkish-yellow clothes. The
+men were dressed in black coats, like our palet&ocirc;ts, embroidered with
+red woollen cord; a red band with a tassel hung down from the large
+black hat; with dark knee breeches, and blue stockings, with red
+leather gaiters&mdash;in short, there was a dazzling richness of colour,
+and that, too, on a bright sunny morning in the forest road.</p>
+
+<p>This road led down a steep to the lake, which was smooth and blue.
+Twelve or fourteen long boats, in form like gondolas, were already
+drawn up on the flat strand, which here is covered with large stones.
+These stones served the persons who landed, as bridges; the boats were
+laid alongside them, and the people clambered up, and went and bore
+each other on land. There certainly were at least a thousand persons
+on the strand; and far out on the lake, one could see ten or twelve
+boats more coming, some with sixteen oars, others with twenty, nay,
+even with four-and-twenty, rowed by men and women, and every boat
+decked out with green branches. These, and the varied clothes, gave to
+the whole an appearance of something so festal, so fantastically rich,
+as one would hardly think the north possessed. The boats came nearer,
+all crammed full of living freight; but they came silently, without
+noise or talking, and rowed up to the declivity of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>The boats were drawn up on the sand: it was a fine subject for a
+painter, particularly one point&mdash;the way up the slope, where the whole
+mass moved on between the trees and bushes. The most prominent figures
+there, were two ragged urchins, clothed entirely in bright yellow,
+each with a skin bundle on his shoulders. They were from Gagne, the
+poorest parish in Dalecarlia. There was also a lame man with his blind
+wife: I thought of the fable of my childhood, of the lame and the
+blind man: the lame man lent his eyes, and the blind his legs, and so
+they reached the town.</p>
+
+<p>And we also reached the town and the church, and thither they all
+thronged: they said there were above five thousand persons assembled
+there. The church-service began at five o'clock. The pulpit and organ
+were ornamented with flowering lilacs; children sat with lilac-flowers
+and branches of birch; the little ones had each a piece of oat-cake,
+which they enjoyed. There was the sacrament for the young persons who
+had been confirmed; there was organ-playing and psalm-singing; but
+there was a terrible screaming of children, and the sound of heavy
+footsteps; the clumsy, iron-shod Dal shoes tramped loudly upon the
+stone floor. All the church pews, the gallery pews, and the centre
+aisle were quite filled with people. In the side aisle one saw various
+groups&mdash;playing children, and pious old folks: by the sacristy there
+sat a young mother giving suck to her child&mdash;she was a living image of
+the Madonna herself.</p>
+
+<p>The first impression of the whole was striking, but only the
+first&mdash;there was too much that disturbed. The screaming of children,
+and the noise of persons walking were heard above the singing, and
+besides that, there was an insupportable smell of garlic: almost all
+the congregation had small bunches of garlic with them, of which they
+ate as they sat. I could not bear it, and went out into the
+churchyard: here&mdash;as it always is in nature&mdash;it was affecting, it was
+holy. The church door stood open; the tones of the organ, and the
+voices of the psalm-singers were wafted out here in the bright
+sunlight, by the open lake: the many who could not find a place in the
+church, stood outside, and sang with the congregation from the
+psalm-book: round about on the monuments, which are almost all of
+cast-iron, there sat mothers suckling their infants&mdash;the fountain of
+life flowed over death and the grave. A young peasant stood and read
+the inscription on a grave:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Ach hur s&ouml;dt al hafve lefvet,<br /></span>
+<span> Ach hur skj&ouml;ut al kunne d&ouml;e!&quot;<a name="FNanchor_S_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_S_19"><sup>[S]</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Beautiful Christian, scriptural language, verses certainly taken from
+the psalm-book, were read on the graves; they were all read, for the
+service lasted several hours. This, however, can never be good for
+devotion.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd at length streamed from the church; the fiery-red and
+grass-green aprons glittered; but the mass of human beings became
+thicker, and closer, and pressed forward. The white head-dresses, the
+white band over the forehead, and the white sleeves, were the
+prevailing colours&mdash;it looked like a long procession in Catholic
+countries. There was again life and motion on the road; the
+over-filled boats again rowed away; one waggon drove off after the
+other; but yet there were people left behind. Married and unmarried
+men stood in groups in the broad street of Lacksand, from the church
+up to the inn. I was staying there, and I must acknowledge that my
+Danish tongue sounded quite foreign to them all. I then tried the
+Swedish, and the girl at the inn assured me that she understood me
+better than she had understood the Frenchman, who the year before had
+spoken French to her.</p>
+
+<p>As I sit in my room, my hostess's grand-daughter, a nice little child,
+comes in, and is pleased to see my parti-coloured carpet-bag, my
+Scotch plaid, and the red leather lining of the portmanteau. I
+directly cut out for her, from a sheet of white paper, a Turkish
+mosque, with minarets and open windows, and away she runs with it&mdash;so
+happy, so happy!</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after, I heard much loud talking in the yard, and I had a
+presentiment that it was concerning what I had cut out; I therefore
+stepped softly out into the balcony, and saw the grandmother standing
+below, and with beaming face, holding my clipped-out paper at arm's
+length. A whole crowd of Dalecarlians, men and women, stood around,
+all in artistic ecstacy over my work; but the little girl&mdash;the sweet
+little child&mdash;screamed, and stretched out her hands after her lawful
+property, which she was not permitted to keep, as it was too fine.</p>
+
+<p>I sneaked in again, yet, of course, highly flattered and cheered; but
+a moment after there was a knocking at my door: it was the
+grandmother, my hostess, who came with a whole plate full of
+spice-nuts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I bake the best in all Dalecarlia,&quot; said she; &quot;but they are of the
+old fashion, from my grandmother's time. You cut out so well, Sir,
+should you not be able to cut me out some new fashions?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And I sat the whole of Midsummer night, and clipped fashions for
+spice-nuts. Nutcrackers with knights' boots, windmills which were both
+mill and miller&mdash;but in slippers, and with the door in the
+stomach&mdash;and ballet-dancers that pointed with one leg towards the
+seven stars. Grandmother got them, but she turned the ballet-dancers
+up and down; the legs went too high for her; she thought that they had
+one leg and three arms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They will be new fashions,&quot; said she; &quot;but they are difficult.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="FAITHANDKNOWLEDGE"></a><h2>FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Truth can never be at variance with truth, science can never militate
+against faith: we naturally speak of them both in their purity: they
+respond to and they strengthen man's most glorious thought:
+<i>immortality</i>. And yet you may say, &quot;I was more peaceful, I was safer
+when, as a child, I closed my eyes on my mother's breast and slept
+without thought or care, wrapping myself up simply in faith.&quot; This
+prescience, this compound of understanding in everything, this
+entering of the one link into the other from eternity to eternity,
+tears away from me a support&mdash;my confidence in prayer; that which is,
+as it were, the wings wherewith to fly to my God! If it be loosened,
+then I fall powerless in the dust, without consolation or hope.</p>
+
+<p>I bend my energies, it is true, towards attaining the great and
+glorious light of knowledge, but it appears to me that therein is
+human arrogance: it is, as one should say, &quot;I will be as wise as God.&quot;
+&quot;That you shall be!&quot; said the serpent to our first parents when it
+would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my
+understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer
+teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in
+the whole creation of the world&mdash;in the great and in the small, where
+the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an
+endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and
+sorrow. What can my prayer change, where everything is law, from
+eternity to eternity?</p>
+
+<p>You tremble as you see the Almighty, who reveals Himself in all
+loving-kindness&mdash;that Creator, according to man's expression, whose
+understanding and heart are one&mdash;you tremble when you know that he has
+elected you to immortality.</p>
+
+<p>I know it in the faith, in the holy, eternal words of the Bible.
+Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that
+which breaks it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in
+the name of knowledge&mdash;<i>immortality</i>. Hear it! the beautiful also
+bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and
+knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the
+wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws
+of love, as you believe in the laws of sense.</p>
+
+<p>When the child gathers flowers in the fields and brings us the whole
+handful, where one is erect and the other hangs the head, thrown as it
+were among one another, then it is that we see the beauty in every one
+by itself&mdash;that harmony in colour and in form, which pleases our eye
+so well. We arrange them instinctively, and every single beauty is
+blended together in one entire beauteous group. We do not look at the
+flower, but on the whole bouquet. The beauty of harmony is an instinct
+in us; it lies in our eyes and in our ears, those bridges between our
+soul and the creation around us&mdash;in all our senses there is such a
+divine, such an entire and perfect stream in our whole being, a
+striving after the harmonious, as it shows itself in all created
+things, even in the pulsations of the air, made visible in Chladni's
+figures.</p>
+
+<p>In the Bible we find the expression: &quot;God in spirit and in
+truth,&quot;&mdash;and hence we most significantly find an expression for the
+admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is
+this revelation of God but spirit and truth? And just as our own soul
+shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does
+the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth. There is
+harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large,
+swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in
+the firmamental space&mdash;as far as the eye sees, as far as science
+ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.</p>
+
+<p>But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest
+expression; &quot;created in God's image,&quot; man, who is able to comprehend
+and admit in himself all God's creation, the harmony in the harmony
+then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as
+creatures we have equally &quot;no right to demand;&quot; yet how differently
+God has granted us abilities! some few so immensely great, others so
+mean! At our birth God places us in our homes and positions; and to
+how many of us are allotted the hardest struggles! We are placed
+<i>there</i>, introduced <i>there</i>&mdash;how many may not say justly: &quot;It were
+better for me that I had never been born!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Human life, consequently&mdash;the highest here on the earth&mdash;does not come
+under the laws of harmonious beauty: it is inconceivable, it is an
+injustice, and thus cannot take place.</p>
+
+<p>The defect of harmony in life lies in this:&mdash;that we only see a small
+part thereof, namely, existence here on the earth: there must be a
+life to come&mdash;an immortality.</p>
+
+<p>That, the smallest flower preaches to us, as does all that is created
+in beauty and harmony.</p>
+
+<p>If our existence ceased with death here, then the most perfect work of
+God was not perfect; God was not justice and love, as everything in
+nature and revelation affirms; and if we be referred to the whole of
+mankind, as that wherein harmony will reveal itself, then our whole
+actions and endeavours are but as the labours of the coral-insect:
+mankind becomes but a monument of greatness to the Creator: he would
+then only have raised His <i>glory</i>, not shown His greatest <i>love</i>.
+Loving-kindness is not self-love.</p>
+
+<p>We are immortal! In this rich consciousness we are raised towards God,
+fundamentally sure, that whatever happens to us, is for our good. Our
+earthly eye is only able to reach to a certain boundary in space; our
+soul's eye also has but a limited scope; but beyond <i>that,</i> the same
+laws of loving-kindness must reign, as here. The prescience of eternal
+omniscience cannot alarm us; we human beings can apprehend the notion
+thereof in ourselves. We know perfectly what development must take
+place in the different seasons of the year; the time for flowers and
+for fruits; what kinds will come forth and thrive; the time of
+maturity, when the storms must prevail, and when it is the rainy
+season. Thus must God, in an infinitely greater degree, have the same
+knowledge of the whole created globes of His universe, as of our earth
+and the human race here. He must know when that development, that
+flowering in the human race ordained by Himself, shall come to pass;
+when the powers of intellect, of full development, are to reign; and
+under these characters, come to a maturity of development, men will
+become mighty, driving wheels&mdash;every one be the eternal God's likeness
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p>History shows us these things: joint enters into joint, in the world
+of spirits, as well as in the materially created world; the eye of
+wisdom&mdash;the all-seeing eye&mdash;encompasses the whole! And should we then
+not be able, in our heart's distress, to pray to this Father with
+confidence&mdash;to pray as the Saviour prayed: &quot;If it be possible, let
+this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These last words we do not forget! and our prayer will be granted, if
+it be for our good; or if it be not, then let us, as the child here,
+that in its trouble comes to its earthly Father, and does not get its
+wish fulfilled, but is refreshed by mild words, and the affectionate
+language of reason, so that the eye weeps, which thereby mitigates
+sorrow, and the child's pain is soothed. This, will prayer also grant
+us: the eye will be filled with tears, but the heart will be full of
+consolation! And who has penetrated so deeply into the ways of the
+soul, that he dare deny that prayer is the wings that bear thee to
+that sphere of inspiration whence God will extend to thee the
+olive-branch of help and grace?</p>
+
+<p>By walking with open eyes in the path of knowledge, we see the glory
+of the Annunciation. The wisdom of generations is but a span on the
+high pillar of revelation, above which sits the Almighty; but this
+short span will grow through eternity, in faith and with faith.
+Knowledge is like a chemical test that pronounces the gold pure!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="INTHEFOREST"></a><h2>IN THE FOREST.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind,
+and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn,
+which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for
+the Midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches
+of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on
+long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head
+of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.</p>
+
+<p>The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely
+hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere,
+yet it is most flush in the forest&mdash;it extends for miles around. Our
+road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or
+the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking.
+Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into
+the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the
+air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and
+lime. It is an up and down hill road, always bending, and so, ever
+changing, but yet always forest scenery&mdash;the close, thick forest. We
+pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed
+night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.</p>
+
+<p>We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are
+to be seen: this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted&mdash;not a bird
+flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel
+springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our
+eye searchingly over the wood-grown mountain-side, which slopes so
+far, far forward; but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere
+does that blueish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are
+fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p>The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on
+them, fly off again, and dance, as though it were to qualify
+themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think: &quot;Nothing
+is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing.&quot;
+They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that Time's
+horses always fly onward with us!</p>
+
+<p>How solitary it is here!&mdash;so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely
+alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the
+earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit
+stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold
+themselves&mdash;endless, inexhaustible, as he is&mdash;as the magnet which
+apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby.
+As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended
+solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas
+pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works
+of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel&mdash;for capricious
+fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of
+pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing
+Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the
+open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here
+to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade
+where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this
+stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a
+pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the
+North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?</p>
+
+<p>In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South,
+are <i>sagas</i> of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards
+the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind;
+up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and
+acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we
+see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on
+the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further
+towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the
+carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the
+outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.</p>
+
+<p>The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses
+itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and
+transformed cultivated fields and towns&mdash;nay, whole parishes, into
+barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with
+moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest;
+no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman
+lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss
+of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled
+the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it
+gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the
+time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright
+through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra
+and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came,
+sat there, and sang: &quot;Many, many years shalt thou live!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts!
+Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the
+summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go
+to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song
+springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the
+procession?&mdash;paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high
+with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright
+copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother
+sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which
+completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries
+the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession
+moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
+children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows'
+horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the
+same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her
+tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is
+fuel enough here&mdash;the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and
+rots.</p>
+
+<p>But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest
+desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile&mdash;he comes from the
+thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the
+thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames
+run from tree to tree&mdash;it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame
+leaps to the tops of the trees&mdash;what a crackling and roaring, as if it
+were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall
+down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the
+fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The
+howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm,
+rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine
+the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
+and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the
+broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes
+worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is
+about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past
+them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore
+we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
+peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and
+opened paths.</p>
+
+<p>The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a
+steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a
+distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh
+green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the
+blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at
+work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now
+laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and
+faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is
+delightful in the forest.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="FAHLUN"></a><h2>FAHLUN.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We made our way at length out of the forest, and saw a town before us
+enveloped in thick smoke, having a similar appearance to most of the
+English manufacturing towns, save that the smoke was greenish&mdash;it was
+the town Fahlun.</p>
+
+<p>The road now went downwards between large banks, formed by the dross
+deposited here from the smelting furnaces, and which looks like
+burnt-out hardened lava. No sprout or shrub was to be seen, not a
+blade of grass peeped forth by the way-side, not a bird flew past, but
+a strong sulphurous smell, as from among the craters in Solfatara,
+filled the air. The copper roof of the church shone with corrosive
+green.</p>
+
+<p>Long straight streets now appeared in view. It was as deathly still
+here as if sickness and disease had lain within these dark wooden
+houses, and frightened the inhabitants from coming abroad; yet
+sickness and disease come but to few here, for when the plague raged
+in Sweden, the rich and powerful of the land hastened to Fahlun, whose
+sulphureous air was the most healthy. An ochre-yellow water runs
+through the brook, between the houses; the smoke from the mines and
+smelting furnaces has imparted its tinge to them; it has even
+penetrated into the church, whose slender pillars are dark from the
+fumes of the copper. There chanced to come on a thunder-storm when we
+arrived, but its roaring and the lightning's flashes harmonized well
+with this town, which appears as if it were built on the edge of a
+crater.</p>
+
+<p>We went to see the copper mine which gives the whole district the name
+of &quot;Stora Kopparberget,&quot; (the great copper mountain). According to the
+legend, its riches were discovered by two goats which were
+fighting&mdash;they struck the ground with their horns and some copper ore
+adhered to them.</p>
+
+<p>From the solitary red-ochre street we wandered over the great heaps of
+burnt-out dross and fragments of stone, accumulated to whole ramparts
+and hills. The fire shone from the smelting furnaces with green,
+yellow and red tongues of flame under a blue-green smoke; half-naked,
+black-smeared fellows threw out large glowing masses of fire, so that
+the sparks flew around and about:&mdash;one was reminded of Schiller's
+&quot;Fridolin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The thick sulphureous smoke poured forth from the heaps of cleansed
+ore, under which the fire was in full activity, and the wind drove it
+across the road which we must pass. In smoke, and impregnated with
+smoke, stood building after building: three buildings had been
+strangely thrown, as it were, by one another: earth and stone-heaps,
+as if they were unfinished works of defence, extended around.
+Scaffolding, and long wooden bridges, had been erected there; large
+wheels turned round; long and heavy iron chains were in continual
+motion.</p>
+
+<p>We stood before an immense gulf, called &quot;Stora St&ouml;ten,&quot; (the great
+mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there
+is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley:
+the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above,
+like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the
+shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in
+miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch,
+appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark
+holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels
+turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying
+gulf&mdash;from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two
+and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is
+hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up
+merry enough. Habit makes one daring.</p>
+
+<p>They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that
+one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun,
+and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of
+rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook
+again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate
+with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual
+witticism here: &quot;I have never before killed myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which
+looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each
+having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step
+on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one
+gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step one gets
+by degrees to the bottom. They said it was very easy, only one must
+step boldly, so that the foot should not come between and get crushed;
+and then one must remember that there is no railing or balustrade
+here, and directly outside these stairs there is the deep abyss into
+which one may fall headlong. The deepest shaft has a perpendicular
+depth of more than a hundred and ninety fathoms, but for this there is
+no danger, they say, only one must not be dizzy, nor get alarmed. One
+of the workmen, who had come up, descended with a lighted pine-branch
+as a torch: the flame illumined the dark rocky wall, and by degrees
+became only a faint streak of light which soon vanished.</p>
+
+<p>We were told that a few days before, five or six schoolboys had
+unobserved stolen in here, and amused themselves by going from step to
+step on these machine-like rocking stairs, in pitchy darkness, but at
+last they knew not rightly which way to go, up or down, and had then
+begun to shout and scream lustily. They escaped luckily that bout.</p>
+
+<p>By one of the large openings, called &quot;Fat Mads,&quot; there are rich copper
+mines, but which have not yet been worked. A building stands above it:
+it was at the bottom of this that they found, in the year 1719, the
+corpse of a young miner. It appeared as if he had fallen down that
+very day, so unchanged did the body seem&mdash;but no one knew him. An old
+woman then stepped forward and burst into tears: the deceased was her
+bridegroom, who had disappeared forty nine years ago. She stood there
+old and wrinkled; he was young as when they had met for the last time
+nearly half a century before.<a name="FNanchor_T_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_T_20"><sup>[T]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>We went to &quot;The Plant House,&quot; as it is called, where the vitriolated
+liquid is crystallized to sulphate of copper. It grew up long sticks
+placed upright in the boiling water, resembling long pieces of
+grass-green sugar. The steam was pungent, and the air in here
+penetrated our tongues&mdash;it was just as if one had a corroded spoon in
+one's mouth. It was really a luxury to come out again, even into the
+rarefied copper smoke, under the open sky.</p>
+
+<p>Steaming, burnt-out, and herbless as the district is on this side of
+the town, it is just as refreshing, green, and fertile on the opposite
+side of Fahlun. Tall leafy trees grow close to the farthest houses.
+One is directly in the fresh pine and birch forests, thence to the
+lake and to the distant blueish mountain sides near Z&auml;ther.</p>
+
+<p>The people here can tell you and show you memorials of Engelbrekt and
+his Dalecarlians' deeds, and of Gustavus Vasa's adventurous
+
+wanderings. But we will remain here in this smoke-enveloped town, with
+the silent street's dark houses. It was almost midnight when we went
+out and came to the market-place. There was a wedding in one of the
+houses, and a great crowd of persons stood outside, the women nearest
+the house, the men a little further back. According to an old Swedish
+custom, they called for the bride and bridegroom to come forward, and
+they did so&mdash;they durst not do otherwise. Peasant girls, with candles
+in their hands, stood on each side; it was a perfect tableau: the
+bride with downcast eyes, the bridegroom smiling, and the young
+bridesmaids each with a laughing face. And the people shouted: &quot;Now
+turn yourselves a little! now the back! now the face! the bridegroom
+quite round, the bride a little nearer!&quot; And the bridal pair turned
+and turned&mdash;nor was criticism wanting. In this instance, however, it
+was to their praise and honour, but that is not always the case. It
+may be a painful and terrible hour for a newly-wedded pair: if they do
+not please the public, or if they have something to say against the
+match, or the persons themselves, they are then soon made to know what
+is thought of them. There is perhaps also heard some rude jest or
+another, accompanied by the laughter of the crowd. We were told, that
+even in Stockholm the same custom was observed among the lower classes
+until a few years ago, so that a bridal pair, who, in order to avoid
+this exposure, wanted to drive off, were stopped by the crowd, the
+carriage-door was opened on each side, and the whole public marched
+through the carriage. They would see the bride and bridegroom&mdash;that
+was their right.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in Fahlun, the exhibition was friendly; the bridal pair smiled,
+the bridesmaids also, and the assembled crowd laughed and shouted,
+hurra! In the rest of the market-place and the streets around, there
+was dead silence and solitude.</p>
+
+<p>The roseate hue of eve still shone: it passed, changed into that of
+morn&mdash;it was the Midsummer time.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="WHATTHESTRAWSSAID"></a><h2>WHAT THE STRAWS SAID.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>On the lake there glided a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish
+and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch,
+sat four young girls&mdash;so pretty&mdash;so sylph-like! and they each plucked
+up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two
+together, at the top and the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall now see if they will come together in a square,&quot; said the
+girls: &quot;if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled,&quot;
+and they bound them, and they thought.</p>
+
+<p>No one got to know the secret thought, the heart's silent wish of the
+others. But yet a little bird sings about it.</p>
+
+<p>The thoughts of one flew over sea and land, over the high mountains,
+where the mule finds its way in the mists, down to Mignon's beautiful
+land, where the old gods live in marble and painting. &quot;Thither,
+thither! shall I ever get there?&quot; That was the wish, that was the
+thought, and she opened her hand, looked at the bound straws, and they
+appeared only two and two bound together.</p>
+
+<p>And where were the second one's thoughts? also in foreign lands, in
+the gunpowder's smoke, amongst the glitter of arms and cannons, with
+him, the friend of her childhood, fighting for imperial power, against
+the Hungarian people. Will he return joyful and unharmed&mdash;return to
+Sweden's peaceful, well-constituted, happy land? The straws showed no
+square: a tear dwelt in the girl's eye.</p>
+
+<p>The third smiled: there was a sort of mischief in the smile. Will our
+aged bachelor and that old maiden-lady yonder, who now wander along so
+young, smile so young, and speak so youthfully to each other, not be a
+married couple before the cuckoo sings again next year? See&mdash;that is
+what I should like to know! and the smile played around the thinker's
+mouth, but she did not speak her thoughts. The straws were
+separated&mdash;consequently the bachelor and the old maid also. &quot;It may,
+however, happen nevertheless,&quot; she certainly thought: it was apparent
+in the smile; it was obvious in the manner in which she threw the
+straws away.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is nothing I would know&mdash;nothing that I am curious to know!&quot;
+said the fourth; but yet she bound the straws together; for within her
+also there was a wish alive; but no bird has sung about it; no one
+guesses it.</p>
+
+<p>Rock thyself securely in the heart's lotus flower, thou shining
+humming-bird, thy' name shall not be pronounced: and besides the
+straws said as before&mdash;&quot;without hope!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now you! now you!&quot; cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the
+neighbouring land, from the green isle, that Gylfe ploughed from
+Sweden. &quot;What dear thing do you wish shall happen, or not
+happen!&mdash;tell us the wish!&quot;&mdash;&quot;If the oracle speaks well for me,&quot; said
+he, &quot;then I will tell you the silent wish and prayer, with which I
+bind these knots on the grass straw; but if I have no better success
+than you have had, I will then be silent!&quot; and he bound straw to
+straw, and as he bound, he repeated: &quot;it signifies nothing!&quot; He now
+opened his hand, his eyes shone brighter, his heart beat faster. The
+straws formed a square! &quot;It will happen, it will happen!&quot; cried the
+young girls. &quot;What did you wish for?&quot; &quot;That Denmark may soon gain an
+honourable peace!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It will happen! it will happen!&quot; said the young girls; &quot;and when it
+happens, we will remember that the straws have told it before-hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will keep these four straws, bound in a prophetic wreath for
+victory and peace!&quot; said the stranger; &quot;and if the oracle speaks
+truth, then I will draw the whole picture for you, as we sit here
+under the hanging birch by the lake, and look on Z&auml;ther's blue
+mountains, each of us binding straw to straw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A red mark was made in the almanack; it was the 6th of July, 1849. The
+same day a red page was written in Denmark's history. The Danish
+soldier made a red, victorious mark with his blood, at the battle of
+Fredericia.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEPOETSSYMBOL"></a><h2>THE POET'S SYMBOL.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>If a man would seek for the symbol of the poet, he need not look
+farther than &quot;The Arabian Nights' Tales.&quot; Scherezade who interprets
+the stories for the Sultan&mdash;Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is
+the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will
+decapitate Scherezade.</p>
+
+<p>Powerful Sultan! Poor Scherezade!</p>
+
+<p>The Sultan-public sits in more than a thousand and one forms, and
+listens. Let us regard a few of these forms.</p>
+
+<p>There sits a sallow, peevish, scholar; the tree of his life bears
+leaves impressed with long and learned words: diligence and
+perseverance crawl like snails on the hog's leather bark: the moths
+have got into the inside&mdash;and that is bad, very bad! Pardon the rich
+fulness of the song, the inconsiderate enthusiasm, the fresh young,
+intellect. Do not behead Scherezade! But he beheads her out of hand,
+<i>sans</i> remorse.</p>
+
+<p>There sits a dress-maker, a sempstress who has had some experience of
+the world. She comes from strange families, from a solitary chamber
+where she sat and gained a knowledge of mankind&mdash;she knows and loves
+the romantic. Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for
+you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so
+much of life's prose, gasp after romance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Behead her!&quot; says the dress-maker.</p>
+
+<p>There sits a figure in a dressing gown&mdash;this oriental dress of the
+North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer's son,
+&amp;c., &amp;c., &amp;c. It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from
+that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he
+belongs: his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the
+dress-maker's: he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all
+down the vertebrae, through the very spine: he must be crammed with
+mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.</p>
+
+<p>Scherezade is beheaded!</p>
+
+<p>Wise, enlightened Sultan! Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou
+bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as
+Atlas sustained the world. Do not cast an evil eye upon poor
+Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and
+art a child again,&mdash;do not behead Scherezade!</p>
+
+<p>Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the
+badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely
+master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French,
+that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one
+strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the
+brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet,
+absolving <i>charmant</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Mighty annihilator and elevator!&mdash;the newspapers' Zeus&mdash;thou weekly,
+monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger!
+Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou
+art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a <i>suite</i> of
+thine own clique. Do not behead her!</p>
+
+<p>We will see one figure more&mdash;the most dangerous of them all; he with
+the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river's swell&mdash;the
+blind enthusiast. The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is
+for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis
+becomes her scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>This is the poet's symbol&mdash;paint it:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But why none of the worthier figures&mdash;the candid, the honest, and the
+beautiful? They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye.
+Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the
+stars, and sings of the harmony there above, and here beneath, in
+man's heart.</p>
+
+<p><i>That</i> will not clearly show the symbol:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sword of death hangs over her head whilst she relates&mdash;and the
+Sultan-figure bids us expect that it will fall. Scherezade is the
+victor: the poet is, like her, also a victor. He is rich,
+victorious&mdash;even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours.
+There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after
+bubble sparkles on the magic stream. The heavens shine with shooting
+stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away.
+The world does not know it, for it is the poet's own creation, richer
+than the king's costly illuminations. He is happy, as Scherezade is;
+he is victorious, he is mighty. <i>Imagination</i> adorns his walls with
+tapestry, such as no land's ruler owns; <i>feeling</i> makes the beauteous
+chords sound to him from the human breast; <i>understanding</i> raises him,
+through the magnificence of creation, up to God, without his
+forgetting that he stands fast on the firm earth. He is mighty, he is
+happy, as few are. We will not place him in the stocks of
+misconstruction, for pity and lamentation; we merely paint his symbol,
+dip into the colours on the world's least attractive side, and obtain
+it most comprehensibly from</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>See&mdash;that is it! Do not behead Scherezade!</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THEDALELV"></a><h2>THE DAL-ELV.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Before Homer sang there were heroes; but they are not known; no poet
+celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature, they
+must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought
+before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for
+what they are, and then they may be said first to exist. The elvs of
+the north have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in
+unknown beauty. The world's great highroad does take this direction;
+no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of
+the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable.
+Schubert is as yet the only stranger who has written about the wild
+magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its
+greatness.</p>
+
+<p>Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless
+windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes
+extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending
+trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and
+sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.</p>
+
+<p>Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between
+Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become
+confluent and have one bed above B&aring;lstad. They have taken up rivers
+and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial
+riches to be found; the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand,
+smilingly pastoral&mdash;idyllic: one is drawn onward up to the very source
+of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut: one feels a desire
+to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.</p>
+
+<p>The first mighty fall, Njupeskoers cataract, is seen by the Norwegian
+frontier in Sernasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from
+the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.</p>
+
+<p>We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within
+itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters
+over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic
+porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.</p>
+
+<p>We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees
+the water-sprite swim, like the sea-horse with a mane of green
+sea-weed, and where the a&euml;rial images present visions of witchcraft in
+the warm summer days.</p>
+
+<p>We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake, under the weeping willows of
+the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along
+slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over
+the rapid current under B&aring;lstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv
+widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as
+large and extended as if it were in North America.</p>
+
+<p>We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay
+declivities: the yellow water falls like fluid amber in picturesque
+cataracts before the copper-works, where rainbow-coloured tongues of
+fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blows on the copper
+plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall.</p>
+
+<p>And now, as a concluding passage of splendour in the life of the
+Dal-elvs, before they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic, is
+the view of Elvkarleby Fall. Schubert compares it with the fall of
+Schafhausen; but we must remember, that the Rhine there has not such a
+mass of water as that which rushes down Elvkarleby.</p>
+
+<p>Two and a half Swedish miles from Gefle, where the high road to Upsala
+goes over the Dal-elv, we see from the walled bridge, which we pass
+over, the whole of that immense fall. Close up to the bridge, there is
+a house where the bridge toll is paid. There the stranger can pass the
+night, and from his little window look over the falling waters, see
+them in the clear moonlight, when darkness has laid itself to rest
+within the thicket of oaks and firs, and all the effect of light is in
+those foaming, flowing waters, and see them when the morning sun
+stretches his rainbow in the trembling spray, like an airy bridge of
+colours, from the shore to the wood-grown rock in the centre of the
+cataract.</p>
+
+<p>We came hither from Gefle, and saw at a great distance on the way, the
+blue clouds from the broken, rising spray, ascend above the dark-green
+tops of the trees. The carriage stopped near the bridge; we stepped
+out, and close before us fell the whole redundant elv.</p>
+
+<p>The painter cannot give us the true, living image of a waterfall on
+canvas&mdash;the movement is wanting; how can one describe it in words,
+delineate this majestic grandeur, brilliancy of colour, and arrowy
+flight? One cannot do it; one may however attempt it; get together, by
+little and little, with words, an outline of that mirrored image which
+our eye gave us, and which even the strongest remembrance can only
+retain&mdash;if not vaguely, dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>The Dal-elv divides itself into three branches above the fall: the two
+enclose a wood-grown rocky island, and rush down round its smooth-worn
+stony wall. The one to the right of these two falls is the finer; the
+third branch makes a circuit, and comes again to the main stream,
+close outside the united fall; here it dashes out as if to meet or
+stop the others, and is now hurried along in boiling eddies with the
+arrowy stream, which rushes on foaming against the walled pillars that
+bear the bridge, as if it would tear them away along with it.</p>
+
+<p>The landscape to the left was enlivened by a herd of goats, that were
+browsing amongst the hazel bushes. They ventured quite out to the very
+edge of the declivity, as they were bred here and accustomed to the
+hollow, thundering rumble of the water. To the right, a flock of
+screaming birds flew over the magnificent oaks. Cars, each with one
+horse, and with the driver standing upright in it, the reins in his
+hand, came on the broad forest road from Oens Br&uuml;ck.</p>
+
+<p>Thither we will go in order to take leave of the Dal-elv at one of the
+most delightful of places, which vividly removes the stranger, as it
+were, into a far more southern land, into a far richer nature, than he
+supposed was to be found here. The road is so pretty&mdash;the oak grows
+here so strong and vigorously with mighty crowns of rich foliage.</p>
+
+<p>Oens Br&uuml;ck lies in a delightfully pastoral situation. We came thither;
+here was life and bustle indeed! The mill-wheels went round; large
+beams were sawn through; the iron forged on the anvil, and all by
+water-power. The houses of the workmen form a whole town: it is a long
+street with red-painted wooden houses, under picturesque oaks, and
+birch trees. The greensward was as soft as velvet to look at, and up
+at the manor-house, which rises in front of the garden like a little
+palace, there was, in the rooms and saloon, everything that the
+English call comfort.</p>
+
+<p>We did not find the host at home; but hospitality is always the
+house-fairy here. We had everything good and homely. Fish and wild
+fowl were placed before us, steaming and fragrant, and almost as
+quickly as in beautiful enchanted palaces. The garden itself was a
+piece of enchantment. Here stood three transplanted beech-trees, and
+they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the
+wild chesnut-trees of the avenue in a singular manner: they looked as
+if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden-yellow oranges
+hung in the conservatory; the splendid southern exotics had to-day got
+the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh,
+warm, sunny air of the northern summer.</p>
+
+<p>That branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with
+small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in
+Scandinavian splendour. There are small islands with green, silent
+groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brackens,
+variegated bell-flowers, and cowslips&mdash;no Turkey carpet has fresher
+colours. The stream between these islands and holms is sometimes
+rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with
+silky-green rushes, water-lilies, and brown-feathered reeds; sometimes
+it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a
+large, still mill-dam.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a landscape in Midsummer for the games of the river-sprites,
+and the dancers of the elves and fairies! Here, in the lustre of the
+full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprite seize the
+golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one
+single night like this.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of Oens Br&uuml;ck is the main stream&mdash;the full Dal-elv.
+Do you hear the monotonous rumble? it is not from Elvkarleby Fall that
+it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa-Foss, in which lies
+Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.</p>
+
+<p>Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the
+red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the
+Dal-elv.</p>
+
+<p>Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills
+yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into
+the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic&mdash;thy
+eternity.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="DANEMORA"></a><h2>DANEMORA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Reader, do you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize
+you, this mighty &quot;Loreley&quot; of the heights, this evil-genius from the
+land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into
+the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep
+declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must
+creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She
+sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his
+swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the
+nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and
+it sways under him&mdash;the walls vanish from him.</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the
+air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.</p>
+
+<p>We met with her at Danemora's immense gulf, whither we came on broad,
+smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest. She sat on the
+extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun
+with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large
+beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.</p>
+
+<p>The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun,
+into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the
+chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering
+through the air. But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones
+and marrow; through all the nerves. Her icy breath blew in his neck,
+and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder. It
+seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and
+higher: the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall&mdash;a
+fall in sleep, that shock in the blood. Did it go quicker downwards,
+or was it going up again? He could not distinguish by the sensation.</p>
+
+<p>The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow&mdash;the dirty trodden,
+eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth
+from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark,
+yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The
+stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above
+him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers
+sounded; the watery damps dripped down&mdash;and he again entered the tun,
+which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness
+breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye
+measured the giddy depth through the tun: &quot;It is appalling,&quot; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Appalling!&quot; echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at
+Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the
+same street as the Sealander&mdash;if the Sound be called a street
+(strait). &quot;But, however, one can say one has been down there,&quot; said
+he, and he pointed to the gulf; &quot;right down, and up again; but it is
+no pleasure at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why descend at all?&quot; said I. &quot;Why will men do these things?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One must, you know, when one comes here,&quot; said he. &quot;The plague of
+travelling is, that one must see everything: one would not have it
+supposed otherwise. It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again,
+not to have seen everything, that others ask him about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you have no desire, then let it alone. See what pleases you on
+your travels. Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become
+quite giddy: you will then have formed some conception of the passage
+downward. I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you.&quot;
+And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, so it is: I apprehend it all,&quot; said he: &quot;I am clearly sensible
+of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun's warmth never
+thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the
+workmen, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; one should be able to tell all about it,&quot; said he. &quot;That <i>you</i>
+can, for you have seen it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No more than you,&quot; said I. &quot;I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the
+snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was
+time I should get into the tun&mdash;no, thank you. Giddiness tickled me
+with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt
+the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as
+well as any one: the descent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz,
+under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein,
+through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered
+about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the
+deep passages? Gloom&mdash;darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense
+of oppression&mdash;a longing for air and light, which is by far the best;
+and that we have now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!&quot; said the man; and he
+drew forth his &quot;Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden,&quot; from which he
+read: &quot;Danemora's iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in
+Sweden; the best in Europe. They have seventy-nine openings, of which
+seventeen only are being worked. The machine mine is ninety-three
+fathoms deep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Just then the bells sounded from below: it was the signal that the
+time of labour for that day was ended. The hue of eve still shone on
+the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf,
+it was a perfect twilight. Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the
+workmen swarmed forth. They looked like flies, quite small in the
+space below: they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the
+steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places: they climbed
+higher and higher&mdash;upwards, upwards&mdash;and at every step they became
+larger. The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three
+or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the
+tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against
+the side of the rock, so that they swung from it: and it became darker
+and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is appalling!&quot; said the man from Scania. &quot;One ought, however, to
+have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one <i>had</i> been.
+You, however, have certainly been down there,&quot; said he again to me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Believe what you will,&quot; I replied; and I say the same to the reader.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="THESWINE"></a><h2>THE SWINE.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and
+since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the
+grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if
+we think of the &quot;prodigal son,&quot; we are at once in the midst of the
+sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in
+Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had
+his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like in
+the world. It was an old state-carriage, the seats were taken out of
+it, the wheels taken off, and thus it stood, without further ceremony,
+on its own bottom, and four swine were shut in there. If these were
+the first that had been in it one could not determine; but that it was
+once a state-carriage everything about it bore witness, even to the
+strip of morocco that hung from the roof inside, all bore witness of
+better days. It is true, every word of it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Uff,&quot; said the occupiers within, and the carriage creaked and
+complained&mdash;it was a sorrowful end it had come to.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The beautiful is past!&quot; so it sighed; so it said, or it might have
+said so.</p>
+
+<p>We returned here in the autumn. The carriage, or rather the body of
+the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they
+were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind
+tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor
+quiet: the birds of passage were gone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The beautiful is past!&quot; said the carriage, and the same sigh passed
+through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: &quot;The
+beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm
+sunshine, and the song of birds&mdash;past! past!&quot; So it said, and so it
+creaked in the trunks of the tall trees, and there was heard a sigh,
+so inwardly deep, a sigh direct from the heart of the wild rose-bush,
+and he who sat there was the rose-king. Do you know him! he is of a
+pure breed, the finest red-green breed: he is easily known. Go to the
+wild rose hedges, and in autumn, when all the flowers are gone, and
+the red hips alone remain, one often sees amongst these a large
+red-green moss-flower: that is the rose-king. A little green leaf
+grows out of his head&mdash;that is his feather: he is the only male person
+of his kind on the rose-bush, and he it was who sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Past! past! the beautiful is past! The roses are gone; the leaves of
+the trees fall off!&mdash;it is wet here, and it is cold and raw!&mdash;The
+birds that sang here are now silent; the swine live on acorns; the
+swine are lords in the forest!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They were cold nights, they were gloomy days; but the raven sat on the
+bough and croaked nevertheless: &quot;brah, brah!&quot; The raven and the crow
+sat on the topmost bough: they have a large family, and they all said:
+&quot;brah, brah! caw, caw!&quot; and the majority is always right.</p>
+
+<p>There was a great miry pool under the tall trees in the hollow, and
+here lay the whole herd of swine, great and small&mdash;they found the
+place so excellent. &quot;Oui! oui!&quot; said they, for they knew no more
+French, but that, however, was something. They were so wise, and so
+fat, and altogether lords in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>The old ones lay still, for they thought; the young ones, on the
+contrary, were so brisk&mdash;busy, but apparently uneasy. One little pig
+had a curly tail&mdash;that curl was the mother's delight. She thought that
+they all looked at the curl, and thought only of the curl; but that
+they did not. They thought of themselves, and of what was useful, and
+of what the forest was for. They had always heard that the acorns they
+ate grew on the roots of the trees, and therefore they had always
+rooted there; but now there came a little one&mdash;for it is always the
+young ones that come with news&mdash;and he asserted that the acorns fell
+down from the branches: he himself had felt one fall right on his
+head, and that had given him the idea, so he had made observations,
+and now he was quite sure of what he asserted. The old ones laid their
+heads together. &quot;Uff,&quot; said the swine, &quot;uff! the finery is past! the
+twittering of the birds is past! we will have fruit! whatever can be
+eaten is good, and we eat everything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oui! oui!&quot; said they altogether.</p>
+
+<p>But the mother sow looked at her little pig with the curly tail.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One must not, however, forget the beautiful!&quot; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Caw! caw!&quot; screamed the crow, and flew down, in order to be appointed
+nightingale: one there should be&mdash;and so the crow was directly
+appointed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Past! past!&quot; sighed the Rose King, &quot;all the beautiful is past!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was wet; it was gloomy; there was cold and wind, and the rain
+pelted down over the fields, and through the forest, like long water
+jets. Where are the birds that sang? where are the flowers in the
+meadows, and the sweet berries in the wood?&mdash;past! past!</p>
+
+<p>A light shone from the forester's house: it twinkled like a star, and
+shed its long rays out between the trees. A song was heard from
+within; pretty children played around their old grandfather, who sat
+with the Bible on his lap and read about God, and eternal life, and
+spoke of the spring that would come again: he spoke of the forest that
+would renew its green leaves, of the roses that would flower, of the
+nightingales that would sing, and of the beautiful that would again be
+paramount.</p>
+
+<p>But the Rose King did not hear it; he sat in the raw, cold weather,
+and sighed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Past! past!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the swine were lords in the forest, and the mother sow looked at
+her little pig, and his curly tail.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There will always be some, who have a sense for the beautiful!&quot; said
+the mother sow.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+ <a name="POETRYSCALIFORNIA"></a><h2>POETRY'S CALIFORNIA.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Nature's treasures are most often unveiled to us by accident. A dog's
+nose was dyed by the bruised purple fish, and the genuine purple dye
+was discovered; a pair of wild buffalos were fighting on America's
+auriferous soil, and their horns tore up the green sward that covered
+the rich gold vein.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In former days,&quot; as it is said by most, &quot;everything came
+spontaneously. Our age has not such revelations; now one must slave
+and drudge if one would get anything; one must dig down into the deep
+shafts after the metals, which decrease more and more;&mdash;when the earth
+suddenly stretches forth her golden finger from California's
+peninsula, and we there see Monte Christo's foolishly invented riches
+realized; we see Aladdin's cave with its inestimable treasures. The
+world's treasury is so endlessly rich that we have, to speak plain and
+straightforward, scraped a little off the up-heaped measure; but the
+bushel is still full, the whole of the real measure is now refilled.
+In science also, such a world lies open for the discoveries of the
+human mind!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But in poetry, the greatest and most glorious is already found, and
+gained!&quot; says the poet. &quot;Happy he who was born in former times; there
+was then many a land still undiscovered, on which poetry's rich gold
+lay like the ore that shines forth from the earth's surface.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Do not speak so! happy poet thou, who art born in our time! thou dost
+inherit all the glorious treasures which thy predecessors gave to the
+world; thou dost learn from them, that truth only is eternal,&mdash;the
+true in nature and mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Our time is the time of discoveries&mdash;poetry also has its new
+California.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where does it exist?&quot; you ask.</p>
+
+<p>The coast is so near, that you do not think that <i>there</i> is the new
+world. Like a bold Leander, swim with me across the stream: the black
+words on the white paper will waft you&mdash;every period is a heave of the
+waves.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was in the library's saloon. Book-shelves with many books, old and
+new, were ranged around for every one; manuscripts lay there in heaps;
+there were also maps and globes. There sat industrious men at little
+tables, and wrote out and wrote in, and that was no easy work. But
+suddenly, a great transformation took place; the shelves became
+terraces for the noblest trees, with flowers and fruit; heavy clusters
+of grapes hung amongst leafy vines, and there was life and movement
+all around.</p>
+
+<p>The old folios and dusty manuscripts rose into flower-covered tumuli,
+and there sprang forth knights in mail, and kings with golden crowns
+on, and there was the clang of harp and shield; history acquired the
+life and fullness of poetry&mdash;for a poet had entered there. He saw the
+living visions; breathed the flowers' fragrance; crushed the grapes,
+and drank the sacred juice. But he himself knew not yet that he was a
+poet&mdash;the bearer of-light for times and generations yet to come.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the fresh, fragrant forest, in the last hour of
+leave-taking. Love's kiss, as the farewell, was the initiatory baptism
+for the future poetic life; and the fresh fragrance of the forest
+became sweeter, the chirping of the birds more melodious: there came
+sunlight and cooling breezes. Nature becomes doubly delightful where a
+poet walks.</p>
+
+<p>And as there were two roads before Hercules, so there were before him
+two roads, shown by two figures, in order to serve him; the one an old
+crone, the other a youth, beautiful as the angel that led the young
+Tobias.</p>
+
+<p>The old crone had on a mantle, on which were wrought flowers, animals,
+and human beings, entwined in an arabesque manner. She had large
+spectacles on, and beside her lantern she held a bag filled with old
+gilt cards&mdash;apparatus for witchcraft, and all the amulets of
+superstition: leaning on her crutch, wrinkled and shivering, she was,
+however, soaring, like the mist over the meadow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come with me, and you shall see the world, so that a poet can have
+benefit from it,&quot; said she. &quot;I will light my lantern; it is better
+than that which Diogenes bore; I shall lighten your path.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the light shone; the old crone lifted her head, and stood there
+strong and tall, a powerful female figure. She was Superstition.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am the strongest in the region of romance,&quot; said she,&mdash;and she
+herself believed it.</p>
+
+<p>And the lantern's light gave the lustre of the full moon over the
+whole earth; yes, the earth itself became transparent, as the still
+waters of the deep sea, or the glass mountains, in the fairy tale.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My kingdom is thine! sing what thou see'st; sing as if no bard before
+thee had sung thereof.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And it was as if the scene continually changed. Splendid Gothic
+churches, with painted images in the panes, glided past, and the
+midnight-bell struck, and the dead arose from the graves. There, under
+the bending elder tree, sat the mother, and swathed her newly-born
+child; old, sunken knights' castles rose again from the marshy ground;
+the drawbridge fell, and they saw into the empty halls, adorned with
+images, where, under the gloomy stairs of the gallery, the
+death-proclaiming white woman came with a rattling bunch of keys. The
+basilisk brooded in the deep cellar; the monster bred from a cock's
+egg, invulnerable by every weapon, but not from the sight of its own
+horrible form: at the sight of its own image, it bursts like the steel
+that one breaks with the blow of a stout staff. And to everything that
+appeared, from the golden chalice of the altar-table, once the
+drinking-cup of evil spirits, to the nodding head on the gallows-hill,
+the old crone hummed her songs; and the crickets chirped, and the
+raven croaked from the opposite neighbour's house, and the
+winding-sheet rolled from the candle. Through the whole spectral world
+sounded, &quot;death! death!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go with me to life and truth,&quot; cried the second form, the youth who
+was beautiful as a cherub. A flame shone from his brow&mdash;a cherub's
+sword glittered in his hand. &quot;I am <i>Knowledge</i>,&quot; said he: &quot;my world is
+greater&mdash;its aim is truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And there was a brightness all around; the spectral images paled; it
+did not extend over the world they had seen. Superstition's lantern
+had only exhibited <i>magic-lantern</i> images on the old ruined wall, and
+the wind had driven wet misty vapours past in figures.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will give thee a rich recompense. Truth in the created&mdash;truth in
+God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And through the stagnant lake, where before the misty spectral figures
+rose, whilst the bells sounded from the sunken castle, the light fell
+down on a swaying vegetable world. One drop of the marsh water, raised
+against the rays of light, became a living world, with creatures in
+strange forms, fighting and revelling&mdash;a world in a drop of water. And
+the sharp sword of Knowledge cleft the deep vault, and shone therein,
+where the basilisk killed, and the animal's body was dissolved in a
+death-bringing vapour: its claw extended from the fermenting
+wine-cask; its eyes were air, that burnt when the fresh wind touched
+it.</p>
+
+<p>And there resided a powerful force in the sword; <i>so</i> powerful, that
+the grain of gold was beaten to a flat surface, thin as the covering
+of mist that we breathe on the glass-pane; and it shone at the sword's
+point, so that the thin threads of the cobweb seemed to swell to
+cables, for one saw the strong twistings of numberless small threads.
+And the voice of Knowledge seemed over the whole world, so that the
+age of miracles appeared to have returned. Thin iron ties were laid
+over the earth, and along these the heavily-laden waggons flew on the
+wings of steam, with the swallow's flight; mountains were compelled to
+open themselves to the inquiring spirit of the age; the plains were
+obliged to raise themselves; and then thought was borne in words,
+through metal wires, with the lightning's speed, to distant towns.
+&quot;Life! life!&quot; it sounded through the whole of nature. &quot;It is our time!
+Poet, thou dost possess it! Sing of it in spirit and in truth!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the genius of Knowledge raised the shining sword; he raised it far
+out into space, and then&mdash;what a sight! It was as when the sunbeams
+shine through a crevice in the wall in a dark space, and appear to us
+a revolving column of myriads of grains of dust; but every grain of
+dust here was a world! The sight he saw was our starry firmament!</p>
+
+<p>Thy earth is a grain of dust here, but a speck whose wonders astonish
+thee; only a grain of dust, and yet a star under stars. That long
+column of worlds thou callest thy starry firmament, revolves like the
+myriads of grains of dust, visibly hovering in the sunbeam's revolving
+column, from the crevice in the wall into that dark space. But still
+more distant stands the milky way's whitish mist, a new starry heaven,
+each column but a radius in the wheel! But how great is this itself!
+how many radii thus go out from the central point&mdash;God!</p>
+
+<p>So far does thine eye reach, so clear is thine age's horizon! Son of
+time, choose, who shall be thy companion? Here is thy new career! with
+the greatest of thy time, fly thou before thy time's generation! Like
+twinkling Lucifer, shine thou in time's roseate morn.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Yes, in knowledge lies Poetry's California! Every one who only looks
+backward, and not clearly forward, will, however high and honourably
+he stands, say, that if such riches lie in knowledge, they would long
+since have been made available by great and immortal bards, who had a
+clear and sagacious eye for the discovery of truth. But let us
+remember that when Thespis spoke from his car, the world had also wise
+men. Homer had sung his immortal songs, and yet a new form of genius
+appeared, to which a Sophocles and Aristophanes gave birth; the Sagas
+and mythology of the North were as an unknown treasure to the stage,
+until Oehlenschl&auml;ger showed what mighty forms from thence might be
+made to glide past us.</p>
+
+<p>It is not our intention that the poet shall versify scientific
+discoveries. The didactic poem is and will be, in its best form,
+always but a piece of mechanism, or wooden figure, which has not the
+true life. The sunlight of science must penetrate the poet; he must
+perceive truth and harmony in the minute and in the immensely great
+with a clear eye: it must purify and enrich the understanding and
+imagination, and show him new forms which will supply to him more
+animated words. Even single discoveries will furnish a new flight.
+What fairy tales cannot the world unfold under the microscope, if we
+transfer our human world thereto? Electro-magnetism can present or
+suggest new plots in new comedies and romances; and how many humorous
+compositions will not spring forth, as we from our grain of dust, our
+little earth, with its little haughty beings look out into that
+endless world's universe, from milky way to milky way? An instance of
+what we here mean is discoverable in that old noble lady's words: &quot;If
+every star be a globe like our earth, and have its kingdoms and
+courts&mdash;what an endless number of courts&mdash;the contemplation is enough
+to make mankind giddy!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We will not say, like that French authoress: &quot;Now, then, let me die:
+the world has no more discoveries to make!&quot; O, there is so endlessly
+much in the sea, in the air, and on the earth&mdash;wonders, which science
+will bring forth!&mdash;wonders, greater than the poet's philosophy can
+create! A bard will come, who, with a child's mind, like a new
+Aladdin, will enter into the cavern of science,&mdash;with a child's mind,
+we say, or else the puissant spirits of natural strength would seize
+him, and make him their servant; whilst he, with the lamp of poetry,
+which is, and always will be, the human heart, stands as a ruler, and
+brings forth wonderful fruits from the gloomy passages, and has
+strength to build poetry's new palace, created in one night by
+attendant spirits.</p>
+
+<p>In the world itself events repeat themselves; the human character was
+and will be the same during long ages and all ages; and as they were
+in the old writings, they must be in the new. But science always
+unfolds something new; light and truth are everything that is
+created&mdash;beam out from hence with eternally divine clearness. Mighty
+image of God, do thou illumine and enlighten mankind; and when its
+intellectual eye is accustomed to the lustre, the new Aladdin will
+come, and thou, man, shalt with him, who concisely dear, and richly
+sings the beauty of truth, wander through Poetry's California.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h5>THE END.</h5>
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1">[A]</a><div class="note"><p> A chip of wood in the form of a halberd, circulated for the
+purpose of convening the inhabitants of a district in Sweden and
+Norway.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2">[B]</a><div class="note"><p> The black mould over the beautiful Agda's arm.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3">[C]</a><div class="note"><p> Christ grant that such an angel were to come, and take both me and
+thee!</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4">[D]</a><div class="note"><p> One who has passed his examination at a polytechnic school.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5">[E]</a><div class="note"><p> Giantess.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6">[F]</a><div class="note"><p> The battle of Braavalla.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7">[G]</a><div class="note"><p> &quot;To cast runes&quot; was, in the olden time, to exercise witchcraft.
+When the apple, with ciphers cut in it, rolled into the maiden's lap,
+her heart and mind were infatuated.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8">[H]</a><div class="note"><p> Afterwards called Saint Oluf.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9">[I]</a><div class="note"><p> Stock, signifies bulks, or beams; holms, <i>i.e.</i> islets, or river
+islands; hence Stockholm.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10">[J]</a><div class="note"><p> The architect Tessin.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11">[K]</a><div class="note"><p> The water-sprite.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12">[L]</a><div class="note"><p> &quot;The Lion in the desert;&quot; <i>i.e.</i> Napoleon.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13">[M]</a><div class="note"><p> The landlady of an alehouse.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14">[N]</a><div class="note"><p> How the eyes wept by the cypresses that were strewn around.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15">[O]</a><div class="note"><p> Lord, my God, how Thy moon shines! See what lustre over land and
+city! High up in the palace every pane glistens as if it were a gem.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_P_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_P_16">[P]</a><div class="note"><p> Gluntarra duets, by Gunnar Wennerberg.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_Q_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Q_17">[Q]</a><div class="note"><p> A Gothic translation of the Four Evangelists, and ascribed to the
+Moesogothic Archbishop Ulphilas.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_R_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_R_18">[R]</a><div class="note"><p> Swedish, <i>sup</i>. Danish, <i>snaps</i>. German, <i>schnaps</i>. English,
+<i>drams</i>.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_S_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_S_19">[S]</a><div class="note"><p> &quot;How sweet to live&mdash;how beautiful to die!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_T_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_T_20">[T]</a><div class="note"><p> In another mine they found, in the year 1635, a corpse perfectly
+fresh, and almost with the appearance of one asleep; but his clothes,
+and the ancient copper coins found on him, bore witness that it was
+two hundred years since he had perished there.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pictures of Sweden, by Hans Christian Andersen
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diff --git a/old/12313.txt b/old/12313.txt
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+++ b/old/12313.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of Sweden, by Hans Christian Andersen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pictures of Sweden
+
+Author: Hans Christian Andersen
+
+Release Date: May 10, 2004 [EBook #12313]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES OF SWEDEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Asad Razzaki and PG Distributed Proofreaders. Produced
+from page images provided by the Internet Archive Children's Library.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PICTURES OF SWEDEN
+
+
+By
+
+HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
+
+Author of
+"The Improvisatore," &c.
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+
+1851.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+TROLLHAeTTA
+
+THE BIRD PHOENIX
+
+KINNAKULLA
+
+GRANDMOTHER
+
+THE PRISON-CELLS
+
+BEGGAR-BOYS
+
+VADSTENE
+
+THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN
+
+THE "SKJAeRGAARDS"
+
+STOCKHOLM
+
+DIURGAERDEN
+
+A STORY
+
+UPSALA
+
+SALA
+
+THE MUTE BOOK
+
+THE ZAeTHER DALE
+
+THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND
+
+FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE
+
+IN THE FOREST
+
+FAHLUN
+
+WHAT THE STRAWS SAID
+
+THE POET'S SYMBOL
+
+THE DAL-ELV
+
+DANEMORA
+
+THE SWINE
+
+POETRY'S CALIFORNIA
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+We Travel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand
+their song? Well, hear it in a free translation.
+
+"Get on my back," says the stork, our green island's sacred bird, "and
+I will carry thee over the Sound. Sweden also has fresh and fragrant
+beech woods, green meadows and corn-fields. In Scania, with the
+flowering apple-trees behind the peasant's house, you will think that
+you are still in Denmark."
+
+"Fly with me," says the swallow; "I fly over Holland's mountain ridge,
+where the beech-trees cease to grow; I fly further towards the north
+than the stork. You shall see the vegetable mould pass over into rocky
+ground; see snug, neat towns, old churches and mansions, where all is
+good and comfortable, where the family stand in a circle around the
+table and say grace at meals, where the least of the children says a
+prayer, and, morning and evening, sings a psalm. I have heard it, I
+have seen it, when little, from my nest under the eaves."
+
+"Come with me! come with me!" screams the restless sea-gull, and flies
+in an expecting circle. "Come with me to the Skjaergaards, where rocky
+isles by thousands, with fir and pine, lie like flower-beds along the
+coast; where the fishermen draw the well-filled nets!"
+
+"Rest thee between our extended wings," sing the wild swans. "Let us
+bear thee up to the great lakes, the perpetually roaring elvs
+(rivers), that rush on with arrowy swiftness; where the oak forest has
+long ceased, and the birch-tree becomes stunted. Rest thee between our
+extended wings: we fly up to Sulitelma, the island's eye, as the
+mountain is called; we fly from the vernal green valley, up over the
+snow-drifts, to the mountain's top, whence thou canst see the North
+Sea, on yonder side of Norway.
+
+"We fly to Jemteland, where the rocky mountains are high and blue;
+where the Foss roars and rushes; where the torches are lighted as
+_budstikke_[A] to announce that the ferryman is expected. Up to the
+deep, cold-running waters, where the midsummer sun does not set; where
+the rosy hue of eve is that of morn."
+
+[Footnote A: A chip of wood in the form of a halberd, circulated for
+the purpose of convening the inhabitants of a district in Sweden and
+Norway.]
+
+That is the birds' song. Shall we lay it to heart? Shall we accompany
+them?--at least a part of the way. We will not sit upon the stork's
+back, or between the swans' wings. We will go forward with steam, and
+with horses--yes, also on our own legs, and glance now and then from
+reality, over the fence into the region of thought, which is always
+our near neighbour-land; pluck a flower or a leaf, to be placed in the
+note-book--for it sprung out during our journey's flight: we fly and
+we sing. Sweden, thou glorious land! Sweden, where, in ancient times,
+the sacred gods came from Asia's mountains! land that still retains
+rays of their lustre, which streams from the flowers in the name of
+"Linnaeus;" which beams for thy chivalrous men from Charles the
+Twelfth's banner; which sounds from the obelisk on the field of
+Lutzen! Sweden, thou land of deep feeling, of heart-felt songs! home
+of the limpid elvs, where the wild swans sing in the gleam of the
+Northern Lights! Thou land, on whose deep, still lakes Scandinavia's
+fairy builds her colonnades, and leads her battling, shadowy host over
+the icy mirror! Glorious Sweden! with thy fragrant Linnaeus, with
+Jenny's soul-enlivening songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and
+the swallow, with the restless sea-gull and the wild swans. Thy
+birch-woods exhale refreshing fragrance under their sober, bending
+branches; on the tree's white stem the harp shall hang: the North's
+summer wind shall whistle therein!
+
+
+
+
+TROLLHAeTTA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Who did we meet at Trollhaetta? It is a strange story, and we will
+relate it.
+
+We landed at the first sluice, and stood as it were in a garden laid
+out in the English style. The broad walks are covered with gravel, and
+rise in short terraces between the sunlit greensward: it is charming,
+delightful here, but by no means imposing. If one desires to be
+excited in this manner, one must go a little higher up to the older
+sluices, which deep and narrow have burst through the hard rock. It
+looks magnificent, and the water in its dark bed far below is lashed
+into foam. Up here one overlooks both elv and valley; the bank of the
+river on the other side, rises in green undulating hills, grouped with
+leafy trees and red-painted wooden houses, which are bounded by rocks
+and pine forests. Steam-boats and sailing vessels ascend through the
+sluices; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them
+up above the rock, and from the forest itself it buzzes, roars and
+rattles. The din of Trollhaetta Falls mingles with the noise from the
+saw-mills and smithies.
+
+"In three hours we shall be through the sluices," said the Captain:
+"in that time you will see the Falls. We shall meet again at the inn
+up here."
+
+We went from the path through the forest: a whole flock of bare-headed
+boys surrounded us. They would all be our guides; the one screamed
+longer than the other, and every one gave his contradictory
+explanation, how high the water stood, and how high it did not stand,
+or could stand. There was also a great difference of opinion amongst
+the learned.
+
+We soon stopped on a ling-covered rock, a dizzying terrace. Before us,
+but far below, was the roaring water, the Hell Fall, and over this
+again, fall after fall, the rich, rapid, rushing elv--the outlet of
+the largest lake in Sweden. What a sight! what a foaming and roaring,
+above--below! It is like the waves of the sea, but of effervescing
+champagne--of boiling milk. The water rushes round two rocky islands
+at the top so that the spray rises like meadow dew. Below, the water
+is more compressed, then hurries down again, shoots forward and
+returns in circles like smooth water, and then rolls darting its long
+sea-like fall into the Hell Fall. What a tempest rages in the
+deep--what a sight! Words cannot express it!
+
+Nor could our screaming little guides. They stood mute; and when they
+again began with their explanations and stories, they did not come
+far, for an old gentleman whom none of us had noticed (but he was now
+amongst us), made himself heard above the noise, with his singularly
+sounding voice. He knew all the particulars about the place, and about
+former days, as if they had been of yesterday.
+
+"Here, on the rocky holms," said he, "it was that the warriors in the
+heathen times, as they are called, decided their disputes. The warrior
+Staerkodder dwelt in this district, and liked the pretty girl Ogn right
+well; but she was fonder of Hergrimmer, and therefore he was
+challenged by Staerkodder to combat here by the falls, and met his
+death; but Ogn sprung towards them, took her bridegroom's bloody
+sword, and thrust it into her own heart. Thus Staerkodder did not gain
+her. Then there passed a hundred years, and again a hundred years: the
+forests were then thick and closely grown; wolves and bears prowled
+here summer and winter; the place was infested with malignant robbers,
+whose hiding-place no one could find. It was yonder, by the fall
+before Top Island, on the Norwegian side--there was their cave: now it
+has fallen in! The cliff there overhangs it!"
+
+"Yes, the Tailor's Cliff!" shouted all the boys. "It fell in the year
+1755!"
+
+"Fell!" said the old man, as if in astonishment that any one but
+himself could know it. "Everything will fall once, and the tailor
+directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that
+if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he
+should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the
+first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down
+into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The
+Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she
+betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was
+seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed.
+That outside there is called 'The Thieves' Fall,' and down there under
+the water is another cave, the elv rushes in there and returns
+boiling; one can see it well up here, one hears it too, but it can be
+heard better under the bergman's loft.
+
+And we went on and on, along the Fall, towards Top Island,
+continuously on smooth paths covered with saw-dust, to Polham's
+Sluice. A cleft had been made in the rock for the first intended
+sluice-work, which was not finished, but whereby art has created the
+most imposing of all Trollhaetta's Falls; the hurrying water falling
+here perpendicularly into the black deep. The side of the rock is here
+placed in connection with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge,
+which appears as if thrown over the abyss. We venture on to the
+rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on
+the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from
+the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the
+rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the
+fine spray. The torrent flows on each side, as if shot out from a
+gigantic cannon, fall after fall: we look out over them all, and are
+filled with the harmonic sound, which since time began, has ever been
+the same.
+
+"No one can ever get to the island there," said one of our party,
+pointing to the large island above the topmost fall.
+
+"I however know one!" said the old man, and nodded with a peculiar
+smile.
+
+"Yes, my grandfather could!" said one of the boys, "scarcely any one
+besides has crossed during a hundred years. The cross that is set up
+over there was placed there by my grandfather. It had been a severe
+winter, the whole of Lake Venern was frozen; the ice dammed up the
+outlet, and for many hours there was a dry bottom. Grandfather has
+told about it: he went over with two others, placed the cross up, and
+returned. But then there was such a thundering and cracking noise,
+just as if it were cannons. The ice broke up and the elv came over the
+fields and forest. It is true, every word I say!"
+
+One of the travellers cited Tegner:
+
+    "Vildt Goeta stortade fran Fjallen,
+     Hemsk Trollet fran sat Toppfall roet!
+     Men Snillet kom och spraengt stod Hallen,
+     Med Skeppen i sitt skoet!"
+
+"Poor mountain sprite," he continued, "thy power and glory recede! Man
+flies over thee--thou mayst go and learn of him."
+
+The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered something to
+himself--but we were just by the bridge before the inn. The steam-boat
+glided through the opened way, every one hastened to get on board, and
+it directly shot away above the Fall, just as if no Fall existed.
+
+"And that can be done!" said the old man. He knew nothing at all about
+steam-boats, had never before that day seen such a thing, and
+accordingly he was sometimes up and sometimes down, and stood by the
+machinery and stared at the whole construction, as if he were counting
+all the pins and screws. The course of the canal appeared to him to be
+something quite new; the plan of it and the guide-books were quite
+foreign objects to him: he turned them and turned them--for read I do
+not think he could. But he knew all the particulars about the
+country--that is to say, from olden times.
+
+I heard that he did not sleep at all the whole night. He studied the
+passage of the steam-boat; and when we in the morning ascended the
+sluice terraces from Lake Venern, higher and higher from lake to lake,
+away over the high-plain--higher, continually higher--he was in such
+activity that it appeared as if it could not be greater--and then we
+reached Motala.
+
+The Swedish author Tjoerneroes relates of himself, that when a child he
+once asked what it was that ticked in the clock, and they answered him
+that it was one named "_Bloodless_." What brought the child's pulse to
+beat with feverish throbs and the hair on his head to rise, also
+exercised its power in Motala, over the old man from Trollhaetta.
+
+We now went through the great manufactory in Motala. What ticks in the
+clock, beats here with strong strokes of the hammer. It is
+_Bloodless_, who drank life from human thought and thereby got limbs
+of metals, stone and wood; it is _Bloodless_, who by human thought
+gained strength, which man himself does not physically possess.
+_Bloodless_ reigns in Motala, and through the large foundries and
+factories he extends his hard limbs, whose joints and parts consist of
+wheel within wheel, chains, bars, and thick iron wires. Enter, and see
+how the glowing iron masses are formed into long bars. _Bloodless_
+spins the glowing bar! see how the shears cut into the heavy metal
+plates; they cut as quietly and as softly as if the plates were paper.
+Here where he hammers, the sparks fly from the anvil. See how he
+breaks the thick iron bars; he breaks them into lengths; it is as if
+it were a stick of sealing-wax that is broken. The long iron bars
+rattle before your feet; iron plates are planed into shavings; before
+you rolls the large wheel, and above your head runs living wire--long
+heavy wire! There is a hammering and buzzing, and if you look around
+in the large open yard, amongst great up-turned copper boilers, for
+steam-boats and locomotives, _Bloodless_ also here stretches out one
+of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man
+alone stands and is silenced by--_stop!_
+
+The perspiration oozes out of one's fingers'-ends: one turns and
+turns, bows, and knows not one's self, from pure respect for the human
+thought which here has iron limbs. And yet the large iron hammer goes
+on continually with its heavy strokes: it is as if it said: "Banco,
+Banco! many thousand dollars; Banco, pure gain! Banco! Banco!"--Hear
+it, as I heard it; see, as I saw!
+
+The old gentleman from Trollhaetta walked up and down in full
+contemplation; bent and swung himself about; crept on his knees, and
+stuck his head into corners and between the machines, for he would
+know everything so exactly; he would see the screw in the propelling
+vessels, understand their mechanism and effect under water--and the
+water itself poured like hail-drops down his forehead. He fell
+unconscious, backwards into my arms, or else he would have been drawn
+into the machinery, and been crushed: he looked at me, and pressed my
+hand.
+
+"And all this goes on naturally," said he; "simply and comprehensibly.
+Ships go against the wind, and against the stream, sail higher than
+forests and mountains. The water must raise, steam must drive them!"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"Yes," said he, and again _yes_, with a sigh which I did not then
+understand; but, months after, I understood it, and I will at once
+make a spring to that time, and we are again at Trollhaetta.
+
+I came here in the autumn, on my return home; stayed some days in this
+mighty piece of nature, where busy human life forces its way more and
+more in, and, by degrees, transforms the picturesque to the useful
+manufactory. Trollhaetta must do her work; saw beams, drive mills,
+hammer and break to pieces: one building grows up by the side of the
+other, and in half a century hence here will be a city. But that was
+not the story.
+
+I came, as I have said, here again in the autumn. I found the same
+rushing and roaring, the same din, the same rising and sinking in the
+sluices, the same chattering boys who conducted fresh travellers to
+the Hell Fall, to the iron-bridge island, and to the inn. I sat here,
+and turned over the leaves of books, collected here through a series
+of years, in which travellers have inscribed their names, feelings and
+thoughts at Trollhaetta--almost always the same astonishment, expressed
+in different languages, though generally in Latin: _veni, vidi,
+obstupui_.
+
+One has written: "I have seen nature's master-piece pervade that of
+art;" another cannot say what he saw, and what he saw he cannot say. A
+mine owner and manufacturer, full of the doctrine of utility, has
+written: "Seen with the greatest pleasure this useful work for us in
+Vaermeland, Trollhaetta." The wife of a dean from Scania expresses
+herself thus. She has kept to the family, and only signed in the
+remembrance book, as to the effect of her feelings at Trollhaetta. "God
+grant my brother-in-law fortune, for he has understanding!" Some few
+have added witticisms to the others' feelings; yet as a pearl on this
+heap of writing shines Tegner's poem, written by himself in the book
+on the 28th of June, 1804:
+
+    "Gotha kom i dans fran Seves fjallar, &c."
+
+I looked up from the book and who should stand before me, just about
+to depart again, but the old man from Trollhaetta! Whilst I had
+wandered about, right up to the shores of Siljan, he had continually
+made voyages on the canal; seen the sluices and manufactories, studied
+steam in all its possible powers of service, and spoke about a
+projected railway in Sweden, between the Hjalmar and Venern. He had,
+however, never yet seen a railway, and I described to him these
+extended roads, which sometimes rise like ramparts, sometimes like
+towering bridges, and at times like halls of miles in length, cut
+through rocks. I also spoke of America and England.
+
+"One takes breakfast in London, and the same day one drinks tea in
+Edinburgh."
+
+"That I can do!" said the man, and in as cool a tone as if no one but
+himself could do it, "I can also," said I; "and I have done it."
+
+"And who are you, then?" he asked.
+
+"A common traveller," I replied; "a traveller who pays for his
+conveyance. And who are you?"
+
+The man sighed.
+
+"You do not know me: my time is past; my power is nothing! _Bloodless_
+is stronger than I!" and he was gone.
+
+I then understood who he was. Well, in what humour must a poor
+mountain sprite be, who only comes up every hundred years to see how
+things go forward here on the earth!
+
+It was the mountain sprite and no other, for in our time every
+intelligent person is considerably wiser; and I looked with a sort of
+proud feeling on the present generation, on the gushing, rushing,
+whirling wheel, the heavy blows of the hammer, the shears that cut so
+softly through the metal plates, the thick iron bars that were broken
+like sticks of sealing-wax, and the music to which the heart's
+pulsations vibrate: "Banco, Banco, a hundred thousand Banco!" and all
+by steam--by mind and spirit.
+
+It was evening. I stood on the heights of Trollhaetta's old sluices,
+and saw the ships with outspread sails glide away through the meadows
+like spectres, large and white. The sluice gates were opened with a
+ponderous and crashing sound, like that related of the copper gates of
+the secret council in Germany. The evening was so still that
+Trollhaetta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were
+a chorus from a hundred water-mills--ever one and the same tone. In
+one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer
+through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature
+was felt. Suddenly a large bird flew out from the trees, far in the
+forest, down towards the Falls. Was it the mountain sprite?--We will
+imagine so, for it is the most interesting fancy.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIRD PHOENIX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the garden of Paradise, under the tree of knowledge, stood a hedge
+of roses. In the first rose a bird was hatched; its flight was like
+that of light, its colours beautiful, its song magnificent.
+
+But when Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were
+driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's
+flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died
+in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one--the only
+one--the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up
+its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself up in
+its nest, and that a new Phoenix, the only one in the world, flies out
+from the red egg.
+
+The bird hovers around us, rapid as the light, beautiful in colour,
+glorious in song. When the mother sits by the child's cradle, it is by
+the pillow, and with its wings flutters a glory around the child's
+head. It flies through the chamber of contentment, and there is the
+sun's radiance within:--the poor chest of drawers is odoriferous with
+violets.
+
+But the bird Phoenix is not alone Arabia's bird: it flutters in the
+rays of the Northern Lights on Lapland's icy plains; it hops amongst
+the yellow flowers in Greenland's short summer. Under Fahlun's copper
+rocks, in England's coal mines, it flies like a powdered moth over the
+hymn-book in the pious workman's hands. It sails on the lotus-leaf
+down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the Hindoo girl
+glisten on seeing it.
+
+The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? The bird of Paradise, song's
+sacred swan! It sat on the car of Thespis, like a croaking raven, and
+flapped its black, dregs-besmeared wings; over Iceland's minstrel-harp
+glided the swan's red, sounding bill. It sat on Shakspeare's shoulder
+like Odin's raven, and whispered in his ear: "Immortality!" It flew at
+the minstrel competition, through Wartzburg's knightly halls.
+
+The bird Phoenix! Dost thou not know it? It sang the Marseillaise for
+thee, and thou didst kiss the plume that fell from its wing: it came
+in the lustre of Paradise, and thou perhaps didst turn thyself away to
+some poor sparrow that sat with merest tinsel on its wings.
+
+The bird of Paradise! regenerated every century, bred in flames, dead
+in flames; thy image set in gold hangs in the saloons of the rich,
+even though thou fliest often astray and alone. "The bird Phoenix in
+Arabia"--is but a legend.
+
+In the garden of Paradise, when thou wast bred under the tree of
+knowledge, in the first rose, our Lord kissed thee and gave thee thy
+proper name--Poetry.
+
+
+
+
+KINNAKULLA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens! Thee will we visit. We stand by
+the lowest terrace in a plenitude of flowers and verdure; the ancient
+village church leans its grey pointed wooden tower, as if it would
+fall; it produces an effect in the landscape: we would not even be
+without that large flock of birds, which just now chance to fly away
+over the mountain forest.
+
+The high road leads up the mountain with short palings on either side,
+between which we see extensive plains with hops, wild roses,
+corn-fields, and delightful beech woods, such as are not to be found
+in any other place in Sweden. The ivy winds itself around old trees
+and stones--even to the withered trunk green leaves are lent. We look
+out over the flat, extended woody plain, to the sunlit church-tower of
+Maristad, which shines like a white sail on the dark green sea: we
+look out over the Venern Lake, but cannot see its further shore.
+Skjaergaardens' wood-crowned rocks lie like a wreath down in the lake;
+the steam-boat comes--see! down by the cliff under the red-roofed
+mansions, where the beech and walnut trees grow in the garden.
+
+The travellers land; they wander under shady trees away over that
+pretty light green meadow, which is enwreathed by gardens and woods:
+no English park has a finer verdure than the meadows near Hellekis.
+They go up to "the grottos," as they call the projecting masses of red
+stone higher up, which, being thoroughly kneaded with petrifactions,
+project from the declivity of the earth, and remind one of the
+mouldering colossal tombs in the Campagna of Rome. Some are smooth and
+rounded off by the streaming of the water, others bear the moss of
+ages, grass and flowers, nay, even tall trees.
+
+The travellers go from the forest road up to the top of Kinnakulla,
+where a stone is raised as the goal of their wanderings. The traveller
+reads in his guide-book about the rocky strata of Kinnakulla: "At the
+bottom is found sandstone, then alum-stone, then limestone, and above
+this red-stone, higher still slate, and lastly, trap." And, now that
+he has seen this, he descends again, and goes on board. He has seen
+Kinnakulla:--yes, the stony rock here, amidst the swelling verdure,
+showed him one heavy, thick stone finger, and most of the travellers
+think that they are like the devil, if they lay hold upon one finger,
+they have the body--but it is not always so. The least visited side of
+Kinnakulla is just the most characteristic, and thither will we go.
+
+The road still leads us a long way on this side of the mountain, step
+by step downwards, in long terraces of rich fields: further down, the
+slate-stone peers forth in flat layers, a green moss upon it, and it
+looks like threadbare patches in the green velvet carpet. The high
+road leads over an extent of ground where the slate-stone lies like a
+firm floor. In the Campagna of Rome, one would say it is a piece of
+_via appia_, or antique road; but it is Kinnakulla's naked skin and
+bones that we pass over. The peasant's house is composed of large
+slate-stones, and the roof is covered with them; one sees nothing of
+wood except that of the door, and above it, of the large painted
+shield, which states to what regiment the soldier belongs who got this
+house and plot of ground in lieu of pay.
+
+We cast another glance over Venern, to Lockoe's old palace, to the town
+of Lendkjobing, and are again near verdant fields and noble trees,
+that cast their shadows over Blomberg, where, in the garden, the poet
+Geier's spirit seeks the flower of Kinnakulla in his grand-daughter,
+little Anna.
+
+The plain expands here behind Kinnakulla; it extends for miles around,
+towards the horizon. A shower stands in the heavens; the wind has
+increased: see how the rain falls to the ground like a darkening veil.
+The branches of the trees lash one another like penitential dryades.
+Old Husaby church lies near us, yonder; though the shower lashes the
+high walls, which alone stand, of the old Catholic Bishop's palace.
+Crows and ravens fly through the long glass-less windows, which time
+has made larger; the rain pours down the crevices in the old grey
+walls, as if they were now to be loosened stone from stone: but the
+church stands--old Husaby church--so grey and venerable, with its
+thick walls, its small windows, and its three spires stuck against
+each other, and standing, like nuts, in a cluster.
+
+The old trees in the churchyard cast their shade over ancient graves.
+Where is the district's "Old Mortality," who weeds the grass, and
+explains the ancient memorials? Large granite stones are laid here in
+the form of coffins, ornamented with rude carvings from the times of
+Catholicism. The old church-door creaks in the hinges. We stand within
+its walls, where the vaulted roof was filled for centuries with the
+fragrance of incense, with monks, and with the song of the choristers.
+Now it is still and mute here: the old men in their monastic dresses
+have passed into their graves; the blooming boys that swung the censer
+are in their graves; the congregation--many generations--all in their
+graves; but the church still stands the same. The moth-eaten, dusty
+cowls, and the bishops' mantle, from the days of the cloister, hang in
+the old oak presses; and old manuscripts, half eaten up by the rats,
+lie strewed about on the shelves in the sacristy.
+
+In the left aisle of the church there still stands, and has stood time
+out of mind, a carved image of wood, painted in various colours which
+are still strong: it is the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus. Fresh
+flower wreaths are hung around hers and the child's head; fragrant
+garlands are twined around the pedestal, as festive as on Madonna's
+birthday feast in the times of Popery. The young folks who have been
+confirmed, have this day, on receiving the sacrament for the first
+time, ornamented this old image--nay, even set the priest's name in
+flowers upon the altar; and he has, to our astonishment, let it remain
+there.
+
+The image of Madonna seems to have become young by the fresh wreaths:
+the fragrant flowers here have a power like that of poetry--they bring
+back the days of past centuries to our own times. It is as if the
+extinguished glory around the head shone again; the flowers exhale
+perfume: it is as if incense again streamed through the aisles of the
+church--it shines around the altar as if the consecrated tapers were
+lighted--it is a sunbeam through the window.
+
+The sky without has become clear: we drive again in under Cleven, the
+barren side of Kinnakulla: it is a rocky wall, different from almost
+all the others. The red stone blocks lie, strata on strata, forming
+fortifications with embrasures, projecting wings and round towers; but
+shaken, split and fallen in ruins--it is an architectural fantastic
+freak of nature. A brook falls gushing down from one of the highest
+points of the Cleven, and drives a little mill. It looks like a
+plaything which the mountain sprite had placed there and forgotten.
+
+Large masses of fallen stone blocks lie dispersed round about; nature
+has spread them in the forms of carved cornices. The most significant
+way of describing Kinnakulla's rocky wall is to call it the ruins of a
+mile-long Hindostanee temple: these rocks might be easily transformed
+by the hammer into sacred places like the Ghaut mountains at Ellara.
+If a Brahmin were to come to Kinnakulla's rocky wall, he would
+recognise the temple of Cailasa, and find in the clefts and crevices
+whole representations from Ramagena and Mahabharata. If one should
+then speak to him in a sort of gibberish--no matter what, only that,
+by the help of Brockhaus's "Conversation-Lexicon" one might mingle
+therein the names of some of the Indian spectacles:--Sakantala,
+Vikramerivati, Uttaram Ramatscheritram, &c.--the Brahmin would be
+completely mystified, and write in his note-book: "Kinnakulla is the
+remains of a temple, like those we have in Ellara; and the inhabitants
+themselves know the most considerable works in our oldest Sanscrit
+literature, and speak in an extremely spiritual manner about them."
+But no Brahmin comes to the high rocky walls--not to speak of the
+company from the steam-boat, who are already far over the lake Venern.
+They have seen wood-crowned Kinnakulla, Sweden's hanging gardens--and
+we also have now seen them.
+
+
+
+
+GRANDMOTHER.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grandmother is so old, she has so many wrinkles, and her hair is quite
+white; but her eyes! they shine like two stars, nay, they are much
+finer--they are so mild, so blissful to look into. And then she knows
+the most amusing stories, and she has a gown with large, large flowers
+on it, and it is of such thick silk that it actually rustles.
+Grandmother knows so much, for she has lived long before father and
+mother--that is quite sure.
+
+Grandmother has a psalm-book with thick silver clasps, and in that
+book she often reads. In the middle of it lies a rose, which is quite
+flat and dry; but it is not so pretty as the roses she has in the
+glass, yet she smiles the kindliest to it, nay, even tears come into
+her eyes!
+
+Why does Grandmother look thus on the withered flower in the old book?
+Do you know why?
+
+Every time that Grandmother's tears fall on the withered flower the
+colours become fresher; the rose then swells and the whole room is
+filled with fragrance; the walls sink as if they were but mists; and
+round about, it is the green, the delightful grove, where the sun
+shines between the leaves. And Grandmother--yes, she is quite young;
+she is a beautiful girl, with yellow hair, with round red cheeks,
+pretty and charming--no rose is fresher. Yet the eyes, the mild,
+blissful eyes,--yes, they are still Grandmother's! By her side sits a
+man, young and strong: he presents the rose to her and she smiles. Yet
+grandmother does not smile so,--yes; the smile comes,--he is
+gone.--Many thoughts and many forms go past! That handsome man is
+gone; the rose lies in the psalm-book, and grandmother,--yes, she
+again sits like an old woman, and looks on the withered rose that lies
+in the book.
+
+Now grandmother is dead!
+
+She sat in the arm-chair, and told a long, long, sweet story. "And now
+it is ended!" said she, "and I am quite tired: let me now sleep a
+little!" And so she laid her head back to rest. She drew her breath,
+she slept, but it became more and more still; and her face was so full
+of peace and happiness--it was as if the sun's rays passed over it.
+She smiled, and then they said that she was dead.
+
+She was laid in the black coffin; she lay swathed in the white linen:
+she was so pretty, and yet the eyes were closed--but all the wrinkles
+were gone. She lay with a smile around her mouth: her hair was so
+silvery white, so venerable, one was not at all afraid to look on the
+dead, for it was the sweet, benign grandmother. And the psalm-book was
+laid in the coffin under her head (she herself had requested it), and
+the rose lay in the old book--and then they buried grandmother.
+
+On the grave, close under the church-wall, they planted a rose-tree,
+and it became full of roses, and the nightingale sang over it, and the
+organ in the church played the finest psalms that were in the book
+under the dead one's head. And the moon shone straight down on the
+grave--but the dead was not there: every child could go quietly in the
+night-time and pluck a rose there by the churchyard-wall. The dead
+know more than all we living know--the dead know the awe we should
+feel at something so strange as their coming to us. The dead are
+better than us all, and therefore they do not come.
+
+There is earth over the coffin, there is earth within it; the
+psalm-book with its leaves is dust the rose with all its recollections
+has gone to dust. But above it bloom new roses, above is sings the
+nightingale, and the organ plays:--we think of the old grandmother
+with the mild, eternally young eyes. Eyes can never die! Ours shall
+once again see her young, and beautiful, as when she for the first
+time kissed the fresh red rose which is now dust in the grave.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRISON-CELLS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By separation from other men, by solitary confinement, in continual
+silence, the criminal is to be punished and amended; therefore were
+prison-cells contrived. In Sweden there were several, and new ones
+have been built. I visited one for the first time in Mariestad. This
+building lies close outside the town, by a running water, and in a
+beautiful landscape. It resembles a large white-washed summer
+residence, window above window.
+
+But we soon discover that the stillness of the grave rests over it. It
+is as if no one dwelt here, or like a deserted mansion in the time of
+the plague. The gates in the walls are locked: one of them is opened
+for us: the gaoler stands with his bunch of keys: the yard is empty,
+but clean--even the grass weeded away between the stone paving. We
+enter the waiting-room, where the prisoner is received: we are shown
+the bathing-room, into which he is first led. We now ascend a flight
+of stairs, and are in a large hall, extending the whole length and
+breadth of the building. Galleries run along the floors, and between
+these the priest has his pulpit, where he preaches on Sundays to an
+invisible congregation. All the doors facing the gallery are half
+opened: the prisoners hear the priest, but cannot see him, nor he
+them. The whole is a well-built machine--a nightmare for the spirit.
+In the door of every cell there is fixed a glass, about the size of
+the eye: a slide covers it, and the gaoler can, unobserved by the
+prisoner, see everything he does; but he must come gently,
+noiselessly, for the prisoner's ear is wonderfully quickened by
+solitude. I turned the slide quite softly, and looked into the closed
+space, when the prisoner's eye immediately met mine. It is airy,
+clean, and light within the cell, but the window is placed so high
+that it is impossible to look out of it. A high stool, made fast to a
+sort of table, and a hammock, which can be hung upon hooks under the
+ceiling, and covered with a quilt, compose the whole furniture.
+
+Several cells were opened for us. In one of these was a young, and
+extremely pretty girl. She had lain down in her hammock, but sprang
+out directly the door was opened, and her first employment was to lift
+her hammock down, and roll it together. On the little table stood a
+pitcher with water, and by it lay the remains of some oatmeal cakes,
+besides the Bible and some psalms.
+
+In the cell close by sat a child's murderess. I saw her only through
+the little glass in the door. She had had heard our footsteps; heard
+us speak; but she sat still, squeezed up into the corner by the door,
+as if she would hide herself as much as possible: her back was bent,
+her head almost on a level with her lap, and her hands folded over it.
+They said this unfortunate creature was very young. Two brothers sat
+here in two different cells: they were punished for horse stealing;
+the one was still quite a boy.
+
+In one cell was a poor servant girl. They said: "She has no place of
+resort, and without a situation, and therefore she is placed here." I
+thought I had not heard rightly, and repeated my question, "why she
+was here," but got the same answer. Still I would rather believe that
+I had misunderstood what was said--it would otherwise be abominable.
+
+Outside, in the free sunshine, it is the busy day; in here it is
+always midnight's stillness. The spider that weaves its web down the
+wall, the swallow which perhaps flies a single time close under the
+panes there high up in the wall--even the stranger's footstep in the
+gallery, as he passes the cell-doors, is an event in that mute,
+solitary life, where the prisoners' thoughts are wrapped up in
+themselves. One must read of the martyr-filled prisons of the
+Inquisition, of the crowds chained together in the Bagnes, of the hot,
+lead chambers of Venice, and the black, wet gulf of the wells--be
+thoroughly shaken by these pictures of misery, that we may with a
+quieter pulsation of the heart wander through the gallery of the
+prison-cells. Here is light, here is air;--here it is more humane.
+Where the sunbeam shines mildly in on the prisoner, there also will
+the radiance of God shine into the heart.
+
+
+
+
+BEGGAR-BOYS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The painter Callot--who does not know the name, at least from
+Hoffmann's "in Callot's manner?"--has given a few excellent pictures
+of Italian beggars. One of these is a fellow, on whom the one rag
+lashes the other: he carries his huge bundle and a large flag with the
+inscription, "Capitano de Baroni." One does not think that there can
+in reality be found such a wandering rag-shop, and we confess that in
+Italy itself we have not seen any such; for the beggar-boy there,
+whose whole clothing often consists only of a waistcoat, has in it not
+sufficient costume for such rags.
+
+But we see it in the North. By the canal road between the Venern and
+Vigen, on the bare, dry rocky plain there stood, like beauty's
+thistles in that poor landscape, a couple of beggar-boys, so ragged,
+so tattered, so picturesquely dirty, that we thought we had Callot's
+originals before us, or that it was an arrangement of some industrious
+parents, who would awaken the traveller's attention and benevolence.
+Nature does not form such things: there was something so bold in the
+hanging on of the rags, that each boy instantly became a Capitano de
+Baroni.
+
+The younger of the two had something round him that had certainly once
+been the jacket of a very corpulent man, for it reached almost to the
+boy's ancles; the whole hung fast by a piece of the sleeve and a
+single brace, made from the seam of what was now the rest of the
+lining. It was very difficult to see the transition from jacket to
+trowsers, the rags glided so into one another. The whole clothing was
+arranged so as to give him an air-bath: there were draught holes on
+all sides and ends; a yellow linen clout fastened to the nethermost
+regions seemed as if it were to signify a shirt. A very large straw
+hat, that had certainly been driven over several times, was stuck
+sideways on his head, and allowed the boy's wiry, flaxen hair to grow
+freely through the opening where the crown should have been: the naked
+brown shoulder and upper part of the arm, which was just as brown,
+were the prettiest of the whole.
+
+The other boy had only a pair of trowsers on. They were also ragged,
+but the rags were bound fast into the pockets with packthread; one
+string round the ancles, one under the knee, and another round about
+the waist. He, however, kept together what he had, and that is always
+respectable.
+
+"Be off!" shouted the Captain, from the vessel; and the boy with the
+tied-up rags turned round, and we--yes, we saw nothing but packthread,
+in bows, genteel bows. The front part of the boy only was covered: he
+had only the foreparts of trowsers--the rest was packthread, the bare,
+naked packthread.
+
+
+
+
+VADSTENE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Sweden, it is not only in the country, but even in several of the
+provincial towns, that one sees whole houses of grass turf or with
+roofs of grass turf; and some are so low that one might easily spring
+up to the roof, and sit on the fresh greensward. In the early spring,
+whilst the fields are still covered with snow, but which is melted on
+the roof, the latter affords the first announcement of spring, with
+the young sprouting grass where the sparrow twitters: "Spring comes!"
+
+Between Motala and Vadstene, close by the high road, stands a
+grass-turf house--one of the most picturesque. It has but one window,
+broader than it is high, and a wild rose branch forms the curtain
+outside.
+
+We see it in the spring. The roof is so delightfully fresh with grass,
+it has quite the tint of velvet; and close to it is the chimney, nay,
+even a cherry-tree grows out of its side, now full of flowers: the
+wind shakes the leaves down on a little lamb that is tethered to the
+chimney. It is the only lamb of the family. The old dame who lives
+here, lifts it up to its place herself in the morning and lifts it
+down again in the evening, to give it a place in the room. The roof
+can just bear the little lamb, but not more--this is an experience and
+a certainty. Last autumn--and at that time the grass turf roofs are
+covered with flowers, mostly blue and yellow, the Swedish
+colours--there grew here a flower of a rare kind. It shone in the eyes
+of the old Professor, who on his botanical tour came past here. The
+Professor was quickly up on the roof, and just as quick was one of his
+booted legs through it, and so was the other leg, and then half of the
+Professor himself--that part where the head does not sit; and as the
+house had no ceiling, his legs hovered right over the old dame's head,
+and that in very close contact. But now the roof is again whole; the
+fresh grass grows where learning sank; the little lamb bleats up
+there, and the old dame stands beneath, in the low doorway, with
+folded hands, with a smile on her mouth, rich in remembrances, legends
+and songs, rich in her only lamb on which the cherry-tree strews its
+flower-blossoms in the warm spring sun.
+
+As a background to this picture lies the Vettern--the bottomless lake
+as the commonalty believe--with its transparent water, its sea-like
+waves, and in calm, with "Hegring," or fata morgana on its steel-like
+surface. We see Vadstene palace and town, "the city of the dead," as a
+Swedish author has called it--Sweden's Herculaneum, reminiscence's
+city. The grass-turf house must be our box, whence we see the rich
+mementos pass before us--memorials from the chronicle of saints, the
+chronicle of kings and the love songs that still live with the old
+dame, who stands in her low house there, where the lamb crops the
+grass on the roof. We hear her, and we see with her eyes; we go from
+the grass-turf house up to the town, to the other grass-turf houses,
+where poor women sit and make lace, once the celebrated work of the
+rich nuns here in the cloister's wealthy time.
+
+How still, solitary and grass-grown are these streets! We stop by an
+old wall, mouldy-green for centuries already. Within it stood the
+cloister; now there is but one of its wings remaining. There, within
+that now poor garden still bloom Saint Bridget's leek, and once ran
+flowers. King John and the Abbess, Ana Gylte, wandered one evening
+there, and the King cunningly asked: "If the maidens in the cloister
+were never tempted by love?" and the Abbess answered, as she pointed
+to a bird that just then flew over them: "It may happen! One cannot
+prevent the bird from flying over the garden; but one may surely
+prevent it from building its nest there!"
+
+Thus thought the pious Abbess, and there have been sisters who thought
+and acted like her. But it is quite as sure that in the same garden
+there stood a pear-tree, called the tree of death; and the legend says
+of it, that whoever approached and plucked its fruit would soon die.
+Red and yellow pears weighed down its branches to the ground. The
+trunk was unusually large; the grass grew high around it, and many a
+morning hour was it seen trodden down. Who had been here during the
+night?
+
+A storm arose one evening from the lake, and the next morning the
+large tree was found thrown down; the trunk was broken, and out from
+it there rolled infants' bones--the white bones of murdered children
+lay shining in the grass.
+
+The pious but love-sick sister Ingrid, this Vadstene's Heloise, writes
+to her heart's beloved, Axel Nilsun--for the chronicles have preserved
+it for us:--
+
+"Broderne og Systarne leka paa Spil, drikke Vin och dansa med
+hvarandra i Tradgarden!"
+
+(The brothers and sisters amuse themselves in play, drink wine and
+dance with one another in the garden).
+
+These words may explain to us the history of the pear-tree: one is led
+to think of the orgies of the nun-phantoms in "Robert le Diable," the
+daughters of sin on consecrated ground. But "judge not, lest ye be
+judged," said the purest and best of men that was born of woman. We
+will read Sister Ingrid's letter, sent secretly to him she truly
+loved. In it lies the history of many, clear and human to us:--
+
+"Jag djerfues for ingen utan for dig allena bekaenna, att jag formar
+ilia anda mit Ave Maria eller laesa mit Paternoster, utan du kommer mig
+ichagen. Ja i sjelfa messen kommer mig fore dit taeckleliga Ansigte och
+vart karliga omgange. Jag tycker jag kan icke skifta mig for n genann
+an Menniska, jungfru Maria, St. Birgitta och himmelens Haerskaror
+skalla kanske straffe mig harfar? Men du vet det val, hjertans kaeraste
+att jag med fri vilja och uppsaet aldrig dissa reglar samtykt. Mine
+foraeldrer hafva vael min kropp i dette fangelset insatt, men hjertaet
+kan intet sa snart fran verlden ater kalles!"
+
+(I dare not confess to any other than to thee, that I am not able to
+repeat my Ave Maria or read my Paternoster, without calling thee to
+mind. Nay, even in the mass itself thy comely face appears, and our
+affectionate intercourse recurs to me. It seems to me that I cannot
+confess to any other human being--the Virgin Mary, St. Bridget, and
+the whole host of heaven will perhaps punish me for it. But thou
+knowest well, my heart's beloved, that I have never consented with my
+free-will to these rules. My parents, it is true, have placed my body
+in this prison, but the heart cannot so soon be weaned from the
+world).
+
+How touching is the distress of young hearts! It offers itself to us
+from the mouldy parchment, it resounds in old songs. Beg the
+grey-haired old dame in the grass turf-house to sing to thee of the
+young, heavy sorrow, of the saving angel--and the angel came in many
+shapes. You will hear the song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl
+who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber,
+sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him,
+and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and
+pleasure in Copenhagen. And all the nuns of the cloister sang: "Christ
+grant that such an angel were to come, and take both me and thee!"
+
+The old dame will also sing for thee of the beautiful Ogda and Oluf
+Tyste; and at once the cloister is revived in its splendour, the bells
+ring, stone houses arise--they even rise from the waters of the
+Vettern: the little town becomes churches and towers. The streets are
+crowded with great, with sober, well-dressed persons. Down the stairs
+of the town hall descends with a sword by his side and in fur-lined
+cloak, the most wealthy citizen of Vadstene, the merchant Michael. By
+his side is his young, beautiful daughter Agda, richly-dressed and
+happy; youth in beauty, youth in mind. All eyes are turned on the rich
+man--and yet forget him for her, the beautiful. Life's best blessings
+await her; her thoughts soar upwards, her mind aspires; her future is
+happiness! These were the thoughts of the many--and amongst the many
+there was one who saw her as Romeo saw Juliet, as Adam saw Eve in the
+garden of Paradise. That one was Oluf, the handsomest young man, but
+poor as Agda was rich. And he must conceal his love; but as only he
+lived in it, only he knew of it; so he became mute and still, and
+after months had passed away, the town's folk called him Oluf Tyste
+(Oluf the silent).
+
+Nights and days he combated his love; nights and days he suffered
+inexpressible torment; but at last--one dew-drop or one sunbeam alone
+is necessary for the ripe rose to open its leaves--he must tell it to
+Agda. And she listened to his words, was terrified, and sprang away;
+but the thought remained with him, and the heart went after the
+thought and stayed there; she returned his love strongly and truly,
+but in modesty and honour; and therefore poor Oluf came to the rich
+merchant and sought his daughter's hand. But Michael shut the bolts of
+his door and his heart too. He would neither listen to tears nor
+supplications, but only to his own will; and as little Agda also kept
+firm to her will, her father placed her in Vadstene cloister. And Oluf
+was obliged to submit, as it is recorded in the old song, that they
+cast
+
+    "----den svarta Muld
+     Alt oefver skoen Agdas arm."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: The black mould over the beautiful Agda's arm.]
+
+She was dead to him and the world. But one night, in tempestuous
+weather, whilst the rain streamed down, Oluf Tyste came to the
+cloister wall, threw his rope-ladder over it, and however high the
+Vettern lifted its waves, Oluf and little Agda flew away over its
+fathomless depths that autumn night.
+
+Early in the morning the nuns missed little Agda. What a screaming and
+shouting--the cloister is disgraced! The Abbess and Michael the
+merchant swore that vengeance and death should reach the fugitives.
+Lindkjoeping's severe bishop, Hans Brask, fulminated his ban over them,
+but they were already across the waters of the Vettern; they had
+reached the shores of the Venern, they were on Kinnakulla, with one of
+Oluf's friends, who owned the delightful Hellekis.
+
+Here their marriage was to be celebrated. The guests were invited, and
+a monk from the neighbouring cloister of Husaby, was fetched to marry
+them. Then came the messenger with the bishop's excommunication, and
+this--but not the marriage ceremony--was read to them.
+
+All turned away from them terrified. The owner of the house, the
+friend of Oluf's youth, pointed to the open door and bade them depart
+instantly. Oluf only requested a car and horse wherewith to convey
+away his exhausted Agda; but they threw sticks and stones after them,
+and Oluf was obliged to bear his poor bride in his arms far into the
+forest.
+
+Heavy and bitter was their wandering. At last, however, they found a
+home: it was in Guldkroken, in West Gothland. An honest old couple
+gave them shelter and a place by the hearth: they stayed there till
+Christmas, and on that holy eve there was to be a real Christmas
+festival. The guests were invited, the furmenty set forth; and now
+came the clergyman of the parish to say prayers; but whilst he spoke
+he recognised Oluf and Agda, and the prayer became a curse upon the
+two. Anxiety and terror came over all; they drove the excommunicated
+pair out of the house, out into the biting frost, where the wolves
+went in flocks, and the bear was no stranger. And Oluf felled wood in
+the forest, and kindled a fire to frighten away the noxious animals
+and keep life in Agda--he thought that she must die. But just then she
+was stronger of the two.
+
+"Our Lord is almighty and gracious; He will not leave us!" said she.
+"He has one here on the earth, one who can save us, one, who has
+proved like us, what it is to wander amongst enemies and wild animals.
+It is the King--Gustavus Vasa! He has languished like us!--gone astray
+in Dalecarlia in the deep snow! he has suffered, tried, knows it--he
+can and he will help us!"
+
+The King was in Vadstene. He had called together the representatives
+of the kingdom there. He dwelt in the cloister itself, even there
+where little Agda, if the King did not grant her pardon, must suffer
+what the angry Abbess dared to advise: penance and a painful death
+awaited her.
+
+Through forests and by untrodden paths, in storm and snow, Oluf and
+Agda came to Vadstene. They were seen: some showed fear, others
+insulted and threatened them. The guard of the cloister made the sign
+of the cross on seeing the two sinners, who dared to ask admission to
+the King.
+
+"I will receive and hear all," was his royal message, and the two
+lovers fell trembling at his feet.
+
+And the King looked mildly on them; and as he long had had the
+intention to humiliate the proud Bishop of Lindkjoeping, the moment was
+not unfavourable to them; the King listened to the relation of their
+lives and sufferings, and gave them his word, that the excommunication
+should be annulled. He then placed their hands one in the other, and
+said that the priest should also do the same soon; and he promised
+them his royal protection and favour.
+
+And old Michael, the merchant, who feared the King's anger, with which
+he was threatened, became so mild and gentle, that he, as the King
+commanded, not only opened his house and his arms to Oluf and Agda,
+but displayed all his riches on the wedding-day of the young couple.
+The marriage ceremony took place in the cloister church, whither the
+King himself led the bride, and where, by his command, all the nuns
+were obliged to be present, in order to give still more ecclesiastical
+pomp to the festival. And many a heart there silently recalled the old
+song about the cloister robbery and looked at Oluf Tyste:
+
+    "Krist gif en sadan Angel
+    Kom, tog bad mig och dig!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: Christ grant that such an angel were to come, and take
+both me and thee!]
+
+The sun now shines through the open cloister-gate. Let truth shine
+into our hearts; let us likewise acknowledge the cloister's share of
+God's influence. Every cell was not quite a prison, where the
+imprisoned bird flew in despair against the window-pane; here
+sometimes was sunshine from God in the heart and mind, from hence also
+went out comfort and blessings. If the dead could rise from their
+graves they would bear witness thereof: if we saw them in the
+moonlight lift the tombstone and step forth towards the cloister, they
+would say: "Blessed be these walls!" if we saw them in the sunlight
+hovering in the rainbow's gleam, they would say: "Blessed be these
+walls!"
+
+How changed the rich, mighty Vadstene cloister, where the first
+daughters of the land were nuns, where the young nobles of the land
+wore the monk's cowl. Hither they made pilgrimages from Italy, from
+Spain: from far distant lands, in snow and cold, the pilgrim came
+barefooted to the cloister door. Pious men and women bore the corpse
+of St. Bridget hither in their hands from Rome, and all the
+church-bells in all the lands and towns they passed through, tolled
+when they came.
+
+We go towards the cloister--the remains of the old ruin. We enter St.
+Bridget's cell--it still stands unchanged. It is low, small and
+narrow: four diminutive frames form the whole window, but one can look
+from it out over the whole garden, and far away over the Vettern. We
+see the same beautiful landscape that the fair Saint saw as a frame
+around her God, whilst she read her morning and evening prayers. In
+the tile-stone of the floor there is engraved a rosary: before it, on
+her bare knees, she said a pater-noster at every pearl there pointed
+out. Here is no chimney--no hearth, no place for it. Cold and solitary
+it is, and was, here where the world's most far-famed woman dwelt, she
+who by her own sagacity, and by her contemporaries was raised to the
+throne of female saints.
+
+From this poor cell we enter one still meaner, one still more narrow
+and cold, where the faint light of day struggles in through a long
+crevice in the wall. Glass there never was here: the wind blows in
+here. Who was she who once dwelt in this cell?
+
+In our times they have arranged light, warm chambers close by: a whole
+range opens into the broad passage. We hear merry songs; laughter we
+hear, and weeping: strange figures nod to us from these chambers. Who
+are these? The rich cloister of St. Bridget's, whence kings made
+pilgrimages, is now Sweden's mad-house. And here the numerous
+travellers write their names on the wall. We hasten from the hideous
+scene into the splendid cloister church,--the blue church, as it is
+called, from the blue stones of which the walls are built--and here,
+where the large stones of the floor cover great men, abbesses and
+queens, only one monument is noticeable, that of a knightly figure
+carved in stone, which stands aloft before the altar. It is that of
+the insane Duke Magnus. Is it not as if he stepped forth from amongst
+the dead, and announced that such afflicted creatures were to be where
+St. Bridget once ruled?
+
+Pace lightly over the floor! Thy foot treads on the graves of the
+pious: the flat, modest stone here in the corner covers the dust of
+the noble Queen Philippa. She, that mighty England's daughter, the
+great-hearted, the immortal woman, who with wisdom and courage
+defended her consort's throne, that consort who rudely and barbarously
+cast her off! Vadstene's cloister gave her shelter--the grave here
+gave her rest.
+
+We seek one grave. It is not known--it is forgotten, as she was in her
+lifetime. Who was she? The cloistered sister Elizabeth, daughter of
+the Holstein Count, and once the bride of King Hakon of Norway. Sweet
+creature! she proudly--but not with unbecoming pride--advanced in her
+bridal dress, and with her court ladies, up to her royal consort. Then
+came King Valdemar, who by force and fraud stopped the voyage, and
+induced Hakon to marry Margaret, then eleven years of age, who thereby
+got the crown of Norway. Elizabeth was sent to Vadstene cloister,
+where her will was not asked. Afterwards when Margaret--who justly
+occupies a great place in the history of Scandinavia, but only
+comparatively a small one in the hearts--sat on the throne, powerful
+and respected, visited the then flourishing Vadstene, where the Abbess
+of the cloister was St. Bridget's grand-daughter, her childhood's
+friend, Margaret kissed every monk on the cheek. The legend is well
+known about him, the handsomest, who thereupon blushed. She kissed
+every nun on the hand, and also Elizabeth, her, whom she would only
+see here. Whose heart throbbed loudest at that kiss? Poor Elizabeth,
+thy grave is forgotten, but not the wrong thou didst suffer.
+
+We now enter the sacristy. Here, under a double coffin lid, rests an
+age's holiest saint in the North, Vadstene cloister's diadem and
+lustre--St. Bridget.
+
+On the night she was born, says the legend, there appeared a beaming
+cloud in the heavens, and on it stood a majestic virgin, who said: "Of
+Birger is born a daughter whose admirable voice shall be heard over
+the whole world." This delicate and singular child grew up in the
+castle of her father, Knight Brake. Visions and revelations appeared
+to her, and these increased when she, only thirteen years of age, was
+married to the rich Ulf Gudmundsen, and became the mother of many
+children. "Thou shalt be my bride and my agent," she heard Christ say,
+and every one of her actions was, as she averred, according to his
+announcement. After this she went to Niddaros, to St. Oluf's holy
+shrine: she then went to Germany, France, Spain and Rome.
+
+Sometimes honoured and sometimes mocked, she travelled, even to Cyprus
+and Palestine. Conscious of approaching death, she again reached Rome,
+where her last revelation was, that she should rest in Vadstene, and
+that this cloister especially should be sanctified by God's love. The
+splendour of the Northern lights does not extend so far around the
+earth as the glory of this fair saint, who now is but a legend. We
+bend with silent, serious thoughts before the mouldering remains in
+the coffin here--those of St. Bridget and her daughter St. Catherine;
+but even of these the remembrance will be extinguished. There is a
+tradition amongst the people, that in the time of the Reformation the
+real remains were carried off to a cloister in Poland, but this is not
+certainly known. Vadstene, at least, is not the repository of St.
+Bridget and her daughter's dust.
+
+Vadstene was once great and glorious. Great was the cloister's power,
+as St. Bridget saw it in the prospect of death. Where is now the
+cloister's might? It reposes under the tomb-stones--the graves alone
+speak of it. Here, under our feet, only a few steps from the church
+door, is a stone in which are carved fourteen rings: they announce
+that fourteen farms were given to the cloister, in order that he who
+moulders here might have this place, fourteen feet within the church
+door. It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister's
+power was greater than that of all sinners: the stone on his grave
+records it with no ordinary significance of language.
+
+Gustavus, the first Vasa, was the sun--the ruling power: the
+brightness of the cloister star must needs pale before him.
+
+There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene's rich palace which he
+erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister. At a far
+distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its
+splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged
+edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the
+windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round
+about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage
+road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored
+image.
+
+We now stand before it in daylight. Not a pane of glass is to be found
+in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the
+balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and
+resembling colossal toadstools. The iron spire of the one still towers
+aloft in the air; the other spire is bent: like the hands on a
+sun-dial it shows the time--the time that is gone. The other two balls
+are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the
+space below is used as a cow-stall.
+
+The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish: they seem as
+if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new.
+In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was
+opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome
+greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down: we go through
+the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene
+palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the
+eye.
+
+Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space: even
+the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of
+timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the
+dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark grey dropping
+stones.
+
+We walk from hall to hall, and the wooden shutters are opened to admit
+daylight. All is vast, lofty, spacious, and adorned with antique
+chimney-pieces, and from every window there is a charming prospect
+over the clear, deep Vettern. In one of the chambers in the ground
+floor sat the insane Duke Magnus, (whose stone image we lately saw
+conspicuous in the church) horrified at having signed his own
+brother's death-warrant; dreamingly in love with the portrait of
+Scotland's Queen, Mary Stuart; paying court to her and expecting to
+see the ship, with her, glide over the sea towards Vadstene. And she
+came--he thought she came--in the form of a mermaid, raising herself
+aloft on the water: she nodded and called to him, and the unfortunate
+Duke sprang out of the window down to her. We gazed out of this
+window, and below it we saw the deep moat in which he sank.
+
+We enter the yeoman's hall, and the council hall, where, in the
+recesses of the windows, on each side, are painted yeomen in strange
+dresses, half Dalecarlians and half Roman warriors.
+
+In this once rich saloon, Svanta Steenson Sture knelt to Sweden's
+Queen, Catherine Lejonhufved: she was Svanta Sture's love, before
+Gustavus Vasa's will made her his Queen. The lovers met here: the
+walls are silent as to what they said, when the door was opened and
+the King entered, and saw the kneeling Sture, and asked what it meant.
+Margaret answered craftily and hastily: "He demands my sister Martha's
+hand in marriage!" and the King gave Svanta Sture the bride the Queen
+had asked for him.
+
+We are now in the royal bridal chamber, whither King Gustavus led his
+third consort. Catherine Steenbock, also another's bride, the bride of
+the Knight Gustavus. It is a sad story.
+
+Gustavus of the three roses, was in his youth honoured by the King,
+who sent him on a mission to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. He
+returned adorned with the Emperor's costly golden chain--young,
+handsome, joyous and richly clad, he returned home, and knew well how
+to relate the magnificence and charms of foreign lands: young and old
+listened to him with admiration, but young Catherine most of all.
+Through him the world in her eyes became twice as large, rich, and
+beautiful; they became dear to each other, and their parents blessed
+their love. The love-pledge was to be drunk,--when there came a
+message from the King, that the young Knight must, without delay,
+again bear a letter and greeting to the Emperor Charles. The betrothed
+pair separated with heavy hearts, but with a promise of mutual
+inviolable troth. The King then invited Catherine's parents to come to
+Vadstene palace. Catherine was obliged to accompany them; here King
+Gustavus saw her for the first time, and the old man fell in love with
+her.
+
+Christmas was kept with great hilarity; there were song and harp in
+these halls, and the King himself played the lute. When the time came
+for departure, the King said to Catherine's mother, that he would
+marry the young girl.
+
+"But she is the bride of the Knight Gustavus!" stammered the mother.
+
+"Young hearts soon forget their sorrows," thought the King. The mother
+thought so likewise, and as there chanced to come a letter the same
+day and hour from the young Knight Gustavus, Fra Steenbock committed
+it to the flames. All the letters that came afterwards and all the
+letters that Catherine wrote, were burnt by her mother, and doubts and
+evil reports were whispered to Catherine, that she was forgotten
+abroad by her young lover. But Catherine was secure and firm in her
+belief of him. In the spring her parents made known to her the King's
+proposal, and praised her good fortune. She answered seriously and
+determinedly, "No!" and when they repeated to her that it should and
+must happen, she repeatedly screamed in the greatest anguish, "No no!"
+and sank exhausted at her father and mother's feet, and humbly prayed
+them not to force her.
+
+And the mother wrote to the King that all was going on well, but that
+her child was bashful. The King now announced his visit to Torpe,
+where her parents, the Steenbocks, dwelt. The King was received with
+rejoicing and feasting, but Catherine had disappeared and the King
+himself was the successful one who found her. She sat dissolved in
+tears under the wild rose tree, where she had bidden farewell to her
+heart's beloved.
+
+There was merry song and joyous life in the old mansion; Catherine
+alone was sorrowful and silent. Her mother had brought her all her
+jewels and ornaments, but she wore none of them: she had put on her
+simplest dress, but in this she only fascinated the old King the more,
+and he would have that their betrothal should take place before he
+departed. Fra Steenbock wrested the Knight Gustavus's ring from
+Catherine's finger, and whispered in her ear: "It will cost the friend
+of thy youth his life and fortune; the King can do everything!" And
+the parents led her to King Gustavus, showed him that the ring was
+from the maiden's hand; and the King placed his own golden ring on her
+finger in the other's stead. In the month of August the flag waved
+from the mast of the royal yacht which bore the young Queen over the
+Vettern. Princes and knights, in costly robes, stood by the shore,
+music played, and the people shouted. Catherine made her entry into
+Vadstene Palace. The nuptials were celebrated the following day, and
+the walls were hung with silk and velvet, with cloth of gold and
+silver! It was a festival and rejoicing. Poor Catherine!
+
+In November, the Knight Gustavus of the three roses, returned home.
+His prudent, noble mother, Christina Gyldenstjerne, met him at the
+frontiers of the kingdom, prepared him, consoled him, and soothed his
+mind: she accompanied him by slow stages to Vadstene, where they were
+both invited by the King to remain during the Christmas festival. They
+accepted the invitation, but the Knight Gustavus was not to be moved
+to come to the King's table or any other place where the Queen was to
+be found. The Christmas approached. One Sunday evening, Gustavus was
+disconsolate; the Knight was long sleepless, and at daybreak he went
+into the church, to the tomb of his ancestress, St. Bridget. There he
+saw, at a few paces from him, a female kneeling before Philippa's
+tomb. It was the Queen he saw; their eyes met, and Gustavus hastened
+away. She then mentioned his name, begged him to stay, and commanded
+him to do so.
+
+"I command it, Gustavus!" said she; "the Queen commands it."
+
+And she spoke to him; they conversed together, and it became clear to
+them both what had been done against them and with them; and she
+showed him a withered rose which she kept in her bosom, and she bent
+towards him and gave him a kiss, the last--their eternal
+leave-taking--and then they separated. He died shortly afterwards, but
+Catherine was stronger, yet not strong enough for her heart's deep
+sorrow. Here, in the bed-chamber, in uneasy dreams, says the story,
+she betrayed in sleep the constant thought of her heart, her youth's
+love, to the King, saying: "Gustavus I love dearly; but the rose--I
+shall never forget."
+
+From a secret door we walk out on to the open rampart, where the sheep
+now graze; the cattle are driven into one of the ruined towers. We see
+the palace-yard, and look from it up to a window. Come, thou
+birch-wood's thrush, and warble thy lays; sing, whilst we recal the
+bitterness of love in the rude--the chivalrous ages.
+
+Under that window there stood, one cold winter's night, wrapped in his
+white cloak, the young Count John of East Friesland. His brother had
+married Gustavus Vasa's eldest daughter, and departed with her to his
+home: wherever they came on their journey, there was mirth and
+feasting, but the most splendid was at Vadstene Palace. Cecilia, the
+King's younger daughter, had accompanied her sister hither, and was
+here, as everywhere, the first, the most beautiful in the chase as
+well as at the tournament. The winter began directly on their arrival
+at Vadstene; the cold was severe, and the Vettern frozen over. One
+day, Cecilia rode out on the ice and it broke; her brother, Prince
+Erik, came galloping to her aid. John, of East Friesland, was already
+there, and begged Erik to dismount, as he would, being on horseback,
+break the ice still more. Erik would not listen to him, and as John
+saw that there was no time for dispute, he dragged Erik from the
+horse, sprang into the water himself, and saved Cecilia. Prince Erik
+was furious with wrath, and no one could appease him. Cecilia lay long
+in a fever, and during its continuance, her love for him who had saved
+her life increased. She recovered, and they understood each other, but
+the day of separation approached. It was on the night previous that
+John, in his white cloak, ascended from stone to stone, holding by his
+silk ladder, until he at length entered the window; here they would
+converse for hours in all modesty and honour, speak about his return
+and their nuptials the following year; and whilst they sat there the
+door was hewn down with axes. Prince Erik entered, and raised the
+murderous weapon to slay the young Lord of East Friesland, when
+Cecilia threw herself between them. But Erik commanded his menials to
+seize the lover, whom they put in irons and cast into a low, dark
+hole, that cold frosty night, and the next day, without even giving
+him a morsel of bread or a drop of water, he was thrown on to a
+peasant's sledge, and dragged before the King to receive judgment.
+Erik himself cast his sister's fair name and fame into slander's
+babbling pool, and high dames and citizens' wives washed unspotted
+innocence in calumny's impure waters.
+
+It is only when the large wooden shutters of the saloons are opened,
+that the sunbeams stray in here; the dust accumulates in their twisted
+pillars, and is only just disturbed by the draught of air. In here is
+a warehouse for corn. Great fat rats make their nests in these halls.
+The spider spins mourning banners under the beams. This is Vadstene
+Palace!
+
+We are filled with sad thoughts. We turn our eyes from this place
+towards the lowly house with the grass-turf roof, where the little
+lamb crops the grass under the cherry-tree, which strews its fragrant
+leaves over it. Our thoughts descend from the rich cloister, from the
+proud palace, to the grassy turf, and the sun fades away over the
+grassy turf, and the old dame goes to sleep under the grassy turf,
+below which lie the mighty memorials of Vadstene.
+
+
+
+
+THE PUPPET-SHOWMAN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was an elderly man on the steam-boat, with such a contented face
+that, if it did not lie, he must be the happiest man on earth. That he
+indeed said he was: I heard it from his own mouth. He was a Dane,
+consequently my countryman, and was a travelling theatrical manager.
+He had the whole _corps dramatique_ with him; they lay in a large
+chest--he was a puppet showman. His innate good-humour, said he, had
+been tried by a polytechnic candidate,[D] and from this experiment on
+his patience he had become completely happy. I did not understand him
+at the moment, but he soon laid the whole case clearly before me; and
+here it is.
+
+[Footnote D: One who has passed his examination at a polytechnic
+school.]
+
+"It was in Slagelse," said he, "that I gave a representation at the
+parsonage, and had a brilliant house and a brilliant company of
+spectators, all young persons, unconfirmed, except a few old ladies.
+Then there came a person dressed in black, having the appearance of a
+student: he sat down amongst the others, laughed quite at the proper
+time, and applauded quite correctly; that was an unusual spectator!
+
+"I was bent on ascertaining who he was, and then I heard that he was a
+candidate from the polytechnic school, who had been sent out to
+instruct people in the provinces. At eight o'clock my representation
+was over; the children were to go early to bed, and one must think of
+the convenience of the public.
+
+"At nine o'clock the candidate began his lectures and experiments, and
+now _I_ was one of _his_ auditory.
+
+"It was remarkable to hear and look at! The chief part of it went over
+my head and into the parson's, as one says. Can it be possible,
+thought I, that we human beings can find out such things? in that
+case, we must also be able to hold out longer, before we are put into
+the earth. It was merely small miracles that he performed, and yet all
+as easy as an old stocking--quite from nature. In the time of Moses
+and the prophets, such a polytechnic candidate would have been one of
+the wise men of the land, and in the Middle Ages he would have been
+burnt. I could not sleep the whole night, and as I gave a
+representation the next evening, and the candidate was there again, I
+got into a real merry humour.
+
+"I have heard of an actor, who when playing the lovers' parts, only
+thought of one of the spectators; he played for _her_ alone, and
+forgot all the rest of the house; the polytechnic candidate was my
+_her_, my only spectator, for whom I played. And when the performance
+was over, all the puppets were called forward, and I was invited by
+the polytechnic candidate to take a glass of wine with him; and he
+spoke about my comedy, and I of his science; and I believe we each
+derived equal pleasure from the other. But yet I had the advantage,
+for there was so much in his performance that he could not account
+for: as for instance, that a piece of iron which falls through a
+spiral line, becomes magnetic,--well, how is that? The spirit comes
+over it, but whence does it come from? it is just as with the human
+beings of this world, I think; our Lord lets them fall through the
+spiral line of time, and the spirit comes over them--and there stands
+a Napoleon, a Luther, or a similar person.
+
+"'All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are
+so accustomed to them that we call them things of every-day life.' And
+he spoke and he explained, so that it seemed at last as if he lifted
+my scull, and I honestly confessed, that if I were not an old fellow,
+I would go directly to the polytechnic school, and learn to examine
+the world in the summer, although I was one of the happiest of men.
+
+"'One of the happiest!' said he, and it was just as if he tasted it.
+'Are you happy?' 'Yes!' said I, 'I am happy, and I am welcome in all
+the towns I come to with my company! There is certainly one wish, that
+comes now and then like a night-mare, which rides on my good-humour,
+and that is to be a theatrical manager for a living company--a company
+of real men and women.'
+
+"'You wish to have your puppets animated; you would have them become
+real actors and actresses,' said he, 'and yourself be the manager? you
+then think that you would be perfectly happy?'
+
+"Now he did not think so, but I thought so; and we talked for and
+against; and we were just as near in our opinions as before. But we
+clinked our glasses together, and the wine was very good; but there
+was witchcraft in it, or else the short and the long of the story
+would be--that I was intoxicated.
+
+"That I was not; my eyes were quite clear; it was as if there was
+sunshine in the room, and it shone out of the face of the polytechnic
+candidate, so that I began to think of the old gods in my youth, and
+when they went about in the world. And I told him so, and then he
+smiled, and I durst have sworn that he was a disguised god, or one of
+the family!--And he was so--my first wish was to be fulfilled: the
+puppets become living beings and I the manager of men and women. We
+drank that it should be so! he put all my puppets in the wooden chest,
+fastened it on my back, and then let me fall through a spiral line. I
+can still hear how I came down, slap! I lay on the floor, that is
+quite sure and certain, and the whole company sprang out of the chest.
+The spirit had come over us all together; all the puppets had become
+excellent artists--they said so themselves--and I was the manager.
+Everything was in order for the first representation; the whole
+company must speak with me, and the public also. The female dancer
+said, that if she did not stand on one leg, the house would be in an
+uproar: she was master of the whole and would be treated as such.
+
+"She who played the queen, would also be treated as a queen when off
+the stage, or else she should get out of practice, and he who was
+employed to come in with a letter made himself as important as the
+first lover. 'For,' said he, 'the small are of just as much importance
+as the great, in an artistic whole.' Then the hero demanded that the
+whole of his part should only be retorts on making his exit, for these
+the public applauded; the prima donna would only play in a red light,
+for that suited her best--she would not be blue: they were all like
+flies in a bottle, and I was also in the bottle--for I was the
+manager. I lost my breath, my head was quite dizzy! I was as miserable
+as a man can be; it was a new race of beings I had come amongst; I
+wished that I had them altogether again in the chest, that I had never
+been a manager: I told them that they were in fact only puppets, and
+so they beat me to death. That was my feeling!
+
+"I lay on the bed in my chamber; but how I had come there from the
+polytechnic candidate, he must know best--for I do not. The moon shone
+in on the floor where the puppet-chest lay upset, and all the puppets
+spread about--great and small, the whole lot. But I was not floored! I
+sprang out of bed, and threw them all into the chest; some on their
+heads, and some on their legs; I smacked the lid down and sat myself
+upon it: it was worth painting, can't you conceive it? I can! 'Now you
+shall be there!' said I, 'and I will never more wish that you may
+become flesh and blood!' I was so glad; I was the happiest man
+alive--the polytechnic candidate had tried me! I sat in perfect bliss,
+and fell asleep on the chest; and in the morning--it was, properly
+speaking, at noon, for I slept so very long that morning--I sat there
+still, happy and edified--I saw that my previous and only wish had
+been stupid. I inquired for the polytechnic candidate, but he was
+gone, like the Greek and Roman gods.
+
+"And from that time I have been the happiest man alive. I am a
+fortunate manager; my company does not argue with me, neither does the
+public; they are amused to their heart's content, and I can myself put
+all my pieces nicely together. I take the best parts out of all sorts
+of comedies that I choose, and no one troubles himself about it.
+Pieces that are now despised at the large theatres, but which thirty
+years ago the public ran to see, and cried over--those pieces I now
+make use of. I now present them before the young folks; and the young
+folks--they cry just as their fathers and mothers used to do. I give
+'Johanna Montfakon' and 'Dyveke,' but abbreviated; for the little
+folks do not like long, twaddling love-stories. They must have it
+unfortunate--but it must be brief. Now that I have travelled through
+Denmark, both to the right and left, I know everybody and am known
+again. Now I have come to Sweden, and if I am successful and gain much
+money, I will be a Scandinavian, if the humour hold; and this I tell
+you, as you are my countryman."
+
+And I, as his countryman, naturally tell it again--only for the sake
+of telling it.
+
+
+
+
+THE "SKJAeRGAARDS."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The canal voyage through Sweden goes at first constantly upwards,
+through elvs and lakes, forests and rocky land. From the heights we
+look down on vast extents of forest-land and large waters, and by
+degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents. At Mem
+we are again down by the salt fiord: a solitary tower raises its head
+between the remains of low, thick walls--it is the ruins of Stegeberg.
+The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests,
+which enclose small grass-grown valleys. The screaming sea-gulls fly
+around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze:
+it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings,
+sons of high-born fathers, exercised their deeds here. The same sea's
+surface then appeared to them as now to us, with its numberless isles,
+which lie strewed about here in the water by thousands along the whole
+coast. The depth of water between the rocky isles and the solid land
+is that we call "The Skjaergaards:" their waters flow into each other
+with varying splendour. We see it in the sunshine, and it is like a
+large English landscape garden; but the greensward plain is here the
+deep sea, the flower-beds in it are rocks and reefs, rich in firs and
+pines, oaks and bushes. Mark how, when the wind blows from the east,
+and the sea breaks over sunken rocks and is dashed back again in spray
+from the cliffs, your limbs feel--even through the ship on which you
+stand--the power of the sea: you are lifted as if by supernatural
+hands.
+
+We rush on against wind and sea, as if it were the sea-god's snorting
+horse that bore us; from Skjaergaard to Skjaergaard. The signal-gun is
+fired, and the pilot comes from that solitary wooden house. Sometimes
+we look upon the open sea, sometimes we glide again in between dark,
+stony islands; they lie like gigantic monsters in the water: one has
+the form of the tortoise's arched shell, another has the elephant's
+back and rough grey colour. Mouldering, light grey rocks indicate that
+the wind and weather past centuries has lashed over them.
+
+We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks
+of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat
+with the blast; the Skjaergaards sometimes become only a narrow canal,
+sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone,
+and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little
+fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the
+land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose
+red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background. A group of
+cows lies basking in the sun on the stony surface, near a little
+smiling pasture, which appears to have been cultivated here or cut out
+of a meadow in Scania. How solitary must it not be to live on that
+little island! Ask the boy who sits there by the cattle, he will be
+able to tell us. "It is lively and merry here," says he. "The day is
+so long and light, the seal sits out there on the stone and barks in
+the early morning hour, and all the steamers from the canal must pass
+here. I know them all; and when the sun goes down in the evening, it
+is a whole history to look into the clouds over the land: there stand
+mountains with palaces, in silver and in gold, in red and in blue;
+sailing dragons with golden crowns, or an old giant with a beard down
+to his waist--altogether of clouds, and they are always changing.
+
+"The storms come on in the autumn, and then there is often much
+anxiety when father is out to help ships in distress; but one becomes,
+as it were, a new being.
+
+"In winter the ice is locked fast and firm, and we drive from island
+to island and to the main land; and if the bear or the wolf pays us a
+visit we take his skin for a winter covering: it is warm in the room
+there, and they read and tell stories about old times!"
+
+Yes, old Time, how thou dost unfold thyself with remembrances of these
+very Skjaergaards--old Time which belonged to the brave. These waters,
+these rocky isles and strands, saw heroes more greatly active than
+actively good: they swung the axe to give the mortal blow, or as they
+called it, "the whining Jetteqvinde."[E]
+
+[Footnote E: Giantess.]
+
+Here came the Vikings with their ships: on the headland yonder they
+levied provisions; the grazing cattle were slaughtered and borne away.
+Ye mouldering cliffs, had ye but a tongue, ye might tell us about the
+duels with the two-handed sword--about the deeds of the giants. Ye saw
+the hero hew with the sword, and cast the javelin: his left hand was
+as cunning as his right The sword moved so quickly in the air that
+there seemed to be three. Ye saw him, when he in all his martial array
+sprang forwards and backwards, higher than he himself was tall, and if
+he sprang into the sea he swam like a whale. Ye saw the two
+combatants: the one darted his javelin, the other caught it in the
+air, and cast it back again, so that it pierced through shield and man
+down into the earth. Ye saw warriors with sharp swords and angry
+hearts; the sword was struck downwards so as to cut the knee, out the
+combatant sprang into the air, and the sword whizzed under his feet.
+Mighty Sagas from the olden times! Mouldering rocks, could ye but tell
+us of these things!
+
+Ye, deep waters, bore the Vikings' ships, and when the strong in
+battle lifted the iron anchor and cast it against the enemy's vessel,
+so that the planks were rent asunder, ye poured your dark heavy seas
+into the hold, so that the bark sank. The wild _Berserk_ who with
+naked breast stood against his enemy's blows, mad as a dog, howling
+like a bear, tearing his shield asunder, rushing to the bottom of the
+sea here, and fetching up stones, which ordinary men could not
+raise--history peoples these waters, these cliffs for us! A future
+poet will conjure them to this Scandinavian Archipelago, chisel the
+true forms out of the old Sagas, the bold, the rude, the greatness and
+imperfections of the time, in their habits as they lived.
+
+They rise again for us on yonder island, where the wind is whistling
+through the young fir wood. The house is of beams, roofed with bark;
+the smoke from the fire on the broad stone in the hall, whirls through
+the air-hole, near which stands the cask of mead; the cushions lie on
+the bench before the closed bedsteads; deer-skins hang over the balk
+walls, ornamented with shields, helmets, and armour. Effigies of gods,
+carved, on wooden poles, stand before the high seat where the noble
+Viking sits, a high-born father's youngest son, great in fame, but
+still greater in deeds; the skjalds (bards) and foster-brothers sit
+nearest to him. They defended the coasts of their countrymen, and the
+pious women; they fetched wheat and honey from England, they went to
+the White Sea for sables and furs--their adventures are related in
+song. We see the old man ride in rich clothing, with gloves sewn with
+golden thread, and with a hat brought from Garderige; we see the youth
+with a golden fillet around his brow; we see him at the _Thing_; we
+see him in battle and in play, where the best is he that can cut off
+the other's eyebrows without scratching the skin, or causing a wink
+with the eyes, on pain of losing his station. The woman sits in the
+log-house at her loom, and in the late moonlight nights the spirits of
+the fallen come and sit down around the fire, where they shake the
+wet, dripping clothes; but the serf sleeps in the ashes, and on the
+kitchen bench, and dreams that he dips his bread in the fat soup, and
+licks his fingers.
+
+Thou future poet, thou wilt call forth the vanished forms from the
+Sagas, thou wilt people these islands, and let us glide past these
+reminiscences of the olden time with the mind full of them; clearly
+and truly wilt thou let us glide, as we now with the power of steam
+fly past that firmly standing scenery, the swelling sea, rocks and
+reefs, the main land, and wood-grown islands.
+
+We are already past Braavigen, where numberless ships from the
+northern kingdoms lay, when Upsala's King, Sigurd Ring, came,
+challenged by Harald Hildetand, who, old and grey, feared to die on a
+sick bed, and would fall in battle; and the mainland thundered like
+the plains of Marathon beneath the tramp of horses' hoofs during the
+battle:[F] bards and female warriors surrounded the Danish King. The
+blind old man raised himself high in his chariot, gave his horse free
+rein, and hewed his way. Odin himself had due reverence paid to
+Hildetand's bones; and the pile was kindled, and the King laid on it,
+and Sigurd conjured all to cast gold and weapons, the most valuable
+they possessed, into the fire; and the bards sang to it, and the
+female warriors struck the spears on the bright shields. Upsala's
+Lord, Sigurd Ring, became King of Sweden and Denmark: so says the
+Saga, which sounded over the land and water from these coasts.
+
+[Footnote F: The battle of Braavalla.]
+
+The memorials of olden times pass swiftly through our thoughts; we fly
+past the scene of manly exercises and great deeds in the olden
+times--the ship cleaves the mighty waters with its iron paddles, from
+Skjaergaard to Skjaergaard.
+
+
+
+
+STOCKHOLM.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We cast runes[G] here on the paper, and from the white ground the
+picture of Birger Jarl's six hundred years old city rises before thee.
+
+[Footnote G: "To cast runes" was, in the olden time, to exercise
+witchcraft. When the apple, with ciphers cut in it, rolled into the
+maiden's lap, her heart and mind were infatuated.]
+
+The runes roll, you see! Wood-grown rocky isles appear in the light,
+grey morning mist; numberless flocks of wild birds build their nests
+in safety here, where the fresh waters of the Maelaren rush into the
+salt sea. The Viking's ship comes; King Agna stands by the prow--he
+brings as booty the King of Finland's daughter. The oak-tree spreads
+its branches over their bridal chamber; at daybreak the oak-tree bears
+King Agna, hanged in his long golden chain: that is the bride's work,
+and the ship sails away again with her and the rescued Fins.
+
+The clouds drive past--the years too.
+
+Hunters and fishermen erect themselves huts;--it is again deserted
+here, where the sea-birds alone have their homes. What is it that so
+frightens these numberless flocks? the wild duck and sea-gull fly
+screaming about, there is a hammering and driving of piles. Oluf
+Skoetkonge has large beams bored down into the ground, and strong iron
+chains fastened across the stream: "Thou art caught, Oluf
+Haraldson,[H] caught with the ships and crews, with which thou didst
+devastate the royal city Sigtuna; thou canst not escape from the
+closed Maelar lake!"
+
+[Footnote H: Afterwards called Saint Oluf.]
+
+It is but the work of one night; the same night when Oluf Hakonson,
+with iron and with fire, burst his onward way through the stubborn
+ground; before the day breaks the waters of the Maelar roll there; the
+Norwegian prince, Oluf sailed through the royal channel he had cut in
+the east. The stockades, where the iron chains hang, must bear the
+defences; the citizens from the burnt-down Sigtuna erect themselves a
+bulwark here, and build their new, little town on stock-holms.[I]
+
+[Footnote I: Stock, signifies bulks, or beams; holms, i.e. islets,
+or river islands; hence Stockholm.]
+
+The clouds go, and the years go! Do you see how the gables grow? there
+rise towers and forts. Birger Jarl makes the town of Stockholm a
+fortress; the warders stand with bow and arrow on the walls,
+reconnoitring over lake and fjord, over Brunkaberg sand-ridge. There
+were the sand-ridge slopes upwards from Roerstrand's Lake they build
+Clara cloister, and between it and the town a street springs up:
+several more appear; they form an extensive city, which soon becomes
+the place of contest for different partisans, where Ladelaas's sons
+plant the banner, and where the German Albrecht's retainers burn the
+Swedes alive within its walls. Stockholm is, however, the heart of the
+kingdom: that the Danes know well; that the Swedes know too, and there
+is strife and bloody combating. Blood flows by the executioner's hand,
+Denmark's Christian the Second, Sweden's executioner, stands in the
+market-place.
+
+Roll, ye runes! see over Brunkaberg sand-ridge, where the Swedish
+people conquered the Danish host, there they raise the May-pole: it is
+midsummer-eve--Gustavus Vasa makes his entry into Stockholm.
+
+Around the May-pole there grow fruit and kitchen-gardens, houses and
+streets; they vanish in flames, they rise again; that gloomy fortress
+towards the tower is transformed into a palace, and the city stands
+magnificently with towers and draw-bridges. There grows a town by
+itself on the sand-ridge, a third springs up on the rock towards the
+south; the old walls fall at Gustavus Adolphus's command; the three
+towns are one, large and extensive, picturesquely varied with old
+stone houses, wooden shops, and grass-roofed huts; the sun shines on
+the brass balls of the towers, and a forest of masts stands in that
+secure harbour.
+
+Rays of beauty shoot forth into the world from Versailles' painted
+divinity; they reach the Maelar's strand into Tessin's[J] palace, where
+art and science are invited as guests with the King, Gustavus the
+Third, whose effigy cast in bronze is raised on the strand before the
+splendid palace--it is in our times. The acacia shades the palace's
+high terrace on whose broad balustrades flowers send forth their
+perfume from Saxon porcelain; variegated silk curtains hang half-way
+down before the large glass windows; the floors are polished smooth as
+a mirror, and under the arch yonder, where the roses grow by the wall,
+the Endymion of Greece lives eternally in marble. As a guard of honour
+here, stand Fogelberg's Odin, and Sergei's Amor and Psyche.
+
+[Footnote J: The architect Tessin.]
+
+We now descend the broad, royal staircase, and before it, where, in
+by-gone times, Oluf Skoetkonge stretched the iron chains across the
+mouth of the Maelar Lake, there is now a splendid bridge with shops
+above and the Streamparterre below: there we see the little steamer
+'Nocken,'[K] steering its way, filled with passengers from Diurgarden
+to the Streamparterre. And what is the Streamparterre? The Neapolitans
+would tell us: It is in miniature--quite in miniature--the
+Stockholmers' "Villa Reale." The Hamburgers would say: It is in
+miniature--quite in miniature--the Stockholmers' "Jungfernstieg."
+
+[Footnote K: The water-sprite.]
+
+It is a very little semi-circular island, on which the arches of the
+bridge rest; a garden full of flowers and trees, which we overlook
+from the high parapet of the bridge. Ladies and gentlemen promenade
+there; musicians play, families sit there in groups, and take
+refreshments in the vaulted halls under the bridge, and look out
+between the green trees over the open water, to the houses and
+mansions, and also to the woods and rocks: we forget that we are in
+the midst of the city.
+
+It is the bridge here that unites Stockholm with Nordmalen, where the
+greatest part of the fashionable world live, in two long Berlin-like
+streets; yet amongst all the great houses we will only visit one, and
+that is the theatre.
+
+We will go on the stage itself--it has an historical signification.
+Here, by the third side-scene from the stage-lights, to the right, as
+we look down towards the audience, Gustavus the Third was assassinated
+at a masquerade; and he was borne into that little chamber there,
+close by the scene, whilst all the outlets were closed, and the motley
+group of harlequins, polichinellos, wild men, gods and goddesses with
+unmasked faces, pale and terrified crept together; the dancing
+ballet-farce had become a real tragedy.
+
+This theatre is Jenny Lind's childhood's home. Here she has sung in
+the choruses when a little girl; here she first made her appearance in
+public, and was cheeringly encouraged when a child; here, poor and
+sorrowful, she has shed tears, when her voice left her, and sent up
+pious prayers to her Maker. From hence the world's nightingale flew
+out over distant lands, and proclaimed the purity and holiness of art.
+
+How beautiful it is to look out from the window up here, to look over
+the water and the Streamparterre to that great, magnificent palace, to
+Ladegaards land, with the large barracks, to Skipholmen and the rocks
+that rise straight up from the water, with Soedermalm's gardens,
+villas, streets, and church cupolas between the green trees: the ships
+lie there together, so many and so close, with their waving flags. The
+beautiful, that a poet's eye sees, the world may also see! Roll, ye
+runes!
+
+There sketches the whole varied prospect; a rainbow extends its arch
+like a frame around it. Only see! it is sunset, the sky becomes
+cloudy over Soedermalm, the grey sky becomes darker and darker--a
+pitch-dark ground--and on it rests a double rainbow. The houses are
+illumined by so strong a sunlight that the walls seem transparent;
+the linden-trees in the gardens, which have lately put forth their
+leaves, appear like fresh, young woods; the long, narrow windows in
+the Gothic buildings on the island shine as if it were a festal
+illumination, and between the dark firs there falls a lustre from the
+panes behind them as of a thousand flames, as if the trees were
+covered with flickering--Christmas lights; the colours of the rainbow
+become stronger and stronger, the background darker and darker, and
+the white sun-lit sea-gulls fly past.
+
+The rainbow has placed one foot high up on Soedermalm's churchyard.
+Where the rainbow touches the earth, there lie treasures buried, is a
+popular belief here. The rainbow rests on a grave up there: Stagnalius
+rests here, Sweden's most gifted singer, so young and so unhappy; and
+in the same grave lies Nicander, he who sang about King Enzio, and of
+"Lejonet i Oken;"[L] who sang with a bleeding heart: the fresh
+vine-leaf cooled the wound and killed the singer. Peace be with his
+dust--may his songs live for ever! We go to your grave where the
+rainbow points. The view from here is splendid. The houses rise
+terrace-like in the steep, paved streets; the foot-passengers can,
+however, shorten the way by going through narrow lanes, and up steps
+made of thick beams, and always with a prospect downwards of the
+water, of the rocks and green trees! It is delightful to dwell here,
+it is healthy to dwell here, but it is not genteel, as it is by
+Brunkaberg's sand-ridge, yet it will become so: Stockholm's "Strada
+Balbi" will one day arise on Soedermalm's rocky ground.
+
+[Footnote L: "The Lion in the desert;" i.e. Napoleon.]
+
+We stand up here. What other city in the world has a better prospect
+over the salt fjord, over the fresh lake, over towers, cupolas,
+heaped-up houses, and a palace, which King Enzio himself might have
+built, and round about the dark, gloomy forests with oaks, pines and
+firs, so Scandinavian, dreaming in the declining sun? It is twilight;
+the night comes on, the lamps are lighted in the city below, the stars
+are kindled in the firmament above, and the tower of Redderholm's
+church rises aloft towards the starry space. The stars shine through
+there; it is as if cut in lace, but every thread is of cast-iron and
+of the thickness of beams.
+
+We go down there, and in there, in the stilly eve.--A world of spirits
+reigns within. See, in the vaulted isles, on carved wooden horses,
+sits armour, that was once borne by Magnus Ladelaas, Christian the
+Second, and Charles the Ninth. A thousand flags that once waved to the
+peal of music and the clang of arms, to the darted javelin and the
+cannon's roar, moulder away here: they hang in long rags from the
+staff, and the staves lie cast aside, where the flag has long since
+become dust. Almost all the Kings of Sweden slumber in silver and
+copper coffins within these walls. From the altar aisle we look
+through the open-grated door, in between piled-up drums and hanging
+flags: here is preserved a bloody tunic, and in the coffin are the
+remains of Gustavus Adolphus. Who is that dead opposite neighbour in
+the chapel, across there in the other side-aisle of the church? There,
+below a glass lid, lies a dress shot through, and on the floor stands
+a pair of long, thick boots--they belonged to the hero-King, the
+wanderer, Charles XII., whose realm is now this narrow coffin.
+
+How sacred it is here under this vaulted roof! The mightiest men of
+centuries are gathered together here, perishable as these moth-eaten
+flags--mute and yet so eloquent. And without there is life and
+activity: the world goes on in its old course; generations change in
+the old houses; the houses change--yet Stockholm is always the heart
+of Sweden, Birger's city, whose features are continually renewed,
+continually beautified.
+
+
+
+
+DIURGAERDEN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Diurgaerden is a large piece of land made into a garden by our Lord
+himself. Come with us over there. We are still in the city, but before
+the palace lie the broad hewn stone stairs, leading down to the water,
+where the Dalkulls--i.e., the Dalecarlian women--stand and ring with
+metal bells. On board! here are boats enough to choose amongst, all
+with wheels, which the Dalkulls turn. In coarse white linen, red
+stockings, with green heels, and singularly thick-soled shoes, with
+the upper-leather right up the shin-bone, stands the Dalkull; she has
+ornamented the boat, that now shoots away, with green branches. Houses
+and streets rise and unfold themselves; churches and gardens start
+forth; they stand on Soedermalm high above the tops of the ships'
+masts. The scenery reminds one of the Bhosphorus and Pera; the motley
+dress of the Dalkulls is quite Oriental--and listen! the wind bears
+melancholy Skalmeie tones out to us. Two poor Dalecarlians are playing
+music on the quay; they are the same drawn-out, melancholy tones that
+are played by the Bulgarian musicians in the streets of Pera. We stept
+out, and are in the Diurgarden.
+
+What a crowd of equipages pass in rows through the broad avenue! and
+what a throng of well-dressed pedestrians of all classes! One thinks
+of the garden of the Villa Borghese, when, at the time of the wine
+feast, the Roman people and strangers take the air there. We are in
+the Borghese garden; we are by the Bosphorus, and yet far in the
+North. The pine-tree rises large and free; the birch droops its
+branches, as the weeping willow alone has power to do--and what
+magnificently grand oaks! The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees,
+beautiful to the painter's eye; splendid green grass plains lie
+stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close
+past, as if it were a river. Large ships with swelling sails, the one
+high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied
+numbers.
+
+Come! let us up to Bystroem's villa; it lies on the stony cliff up
+there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur: we
+see from here the whole tripartite city, Soedermalm, Nordmalm and the
+island with that huge palace. It is delightful, the building here on
+this rock, and the building stands, and that almost entirely of
+marble, a "Casa santa d'Italia," as if borne through the air here in
+the North. The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but
+heavy: there is nothing genial. Round about stand large marble figures
+by Bystroem, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity. Madonna is
+encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the
+flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the
+weeping Cupid, one thinks of a _pose_ arranged by a ballet-master.
+
+Let us, however, see what is pretty. The little Cupid-seller is
+pretty, and the stone is made as flexible as life in the waists of the
+bathing-women. One of them, as she steps out, feels the water with her
+feet, and we feel, with her, a sensation that the water is cold. The
+coolness of the marble-hall realizes this feeling. Let us go out into
+the sunshine, and up to the neighbouring cliff, which rises above the
+mansions and houses. Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices
+in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and
+the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze
+bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that
+Scandinavian improvisatore. Here he lay in the grass, composed and
+sang his anacreontic songs, and here, in the summer-time, his annual
+festival is held. We will raise his altar here in the red evening
+sunlight. It is a flaming bowl, raised high on the jolly tun, and it
+is wreathed with roses. Morits tries his hunting-horn, that which was
+Oberon's horn in the inn-parlour, and everything danced, from Ulla to
+"Mutter paa Toppen:"[M] they stamped with their feet and clapped their
+hands, and clinked the pewter lid of the ale-tankard; "hej kara Sjael!
+fukta din aske!" (Hey! dear soul! moisten your clay).
+
+[Footnote M: The landlady of an alehouse.]
+
+A Teniers' picture became animated, and still lives in song. Morits
+blows the horn on Bellmann's place around the flowing bowl, and whole
+crowds dance in a circle, young and old; the carriages too, horses and
+waggons, filled bottles and clattering tankards: the Bellmann
+dithyrambic clangs melodiously; humour and low life, sadness--and
+amongst others, about
+
+    "----hur oegat gret
+     Ved de Cypresser, som stroeddes."[N]
+
+[Footnote N: How the eyes wept by the cypresses that were strewn
+around.]
+
+Painter, seize thy brush and palette and paint the Maenade--but not
+her who treads the winebag, whilst her hair flutters in the wind, and
+she sings ecstatic songs. No, but the Maenade that ascends from
+Bellmann's steaming bowl is the Punch's Anadyomene--she, with the high
+heels to the red shoes, with rosettes on her gown and with fluttering
+veil and mantilla--fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose
+of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks
+with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about
+breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible
+that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce
+to us the human heart's sadness and hope.
+
+
+
+
+A STORY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the apple-trees in the garden had sprung out. They had made haste
+to get blossoms before they got green leaves; and all the ducklings
+were out in the yard--and the cat too! He was, so to speak, permeated
+by the sunshine; he licked it from his own paws; and if one looked
+towards the fields, one saw the corn standing so charmingly green! And
+there was such a twittering and chirping amongst all the small birds,
+just as if it were a great feast. And that one might indeed say it
+was, for it was Sunday. The bells rang, and people in their best
+clothes went to church, and looked so pleased. Yes, there was
+something so pleasant in everything: it was indeed so fine and warm a
+day, that one might well say: "Our Lord is certainly unspeakably good
+towards us poor mortals!"
+
+But the clergyman stood in the pulpit in the church, and spoke so loud
+and so angrily! He said that mankind was so wicked, and that God would
+punish them for it, and that when they died, the wicked went down into
+hell, where they would burn for ever; and he said that their worm
+would never die, and their fire never be extinguished, nor would they
+ever get rest and peace!
+
+It was terrible to hear, and he said it so determinedly. He described
+hell to them as a pestilential hole, where all the filthiness of the
+world flowed together. There was no air except the hot, sulphurous
+flames; there was no bottom; they sank and sank into everlasting
+silence! It was terrible, only to hear about it; but the clergyman
+said it right honestly out of his heart, and all the people in the
+church were quite terrified. But all the little birds outside the
+church sang so pleasantly, and so pleased, and the sun shone so
+warm:--it was as if every little flower said: "God is so wondrous good
+to us altogether!" Yes, outside it was not at all as the clergyman
+preached.
+
+In the evening, when it was bed-time, the clergyman saw his wife sit
+so still and thoughtful.
+
+"What ails you?" said he to her.
+
+"What ails me?" she replied; "what ails me is, that I cannot collect
+my thoughts rightly--that I cannot rightly understand what you said;
+that there were so many wicked, and that they should burn
+eternally!--eternally, alas, how long! I am but a sinful being; but I
+could not bear the thought in my heart to allow even the worst sinner
+to burn for ever. And how then should our Lord permit it? he who is so
+wondrously good, and who knows how evil comes both from without and
+within. No, I cannot believe it, though you say it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was autumn. The leaves fell from the trees; the grave, severe
+clergyman sat by the bedside of a dying person; a pious believer
+closed her eyes--it was the clergyman's own wife.
+
+"If any one find peace in the grave, and grace from God, then it is
+thou," said the clergyman, and he folded her hands, and read a psalm
+over the dead body.
+
+And she was borne to the grave: two heavy tears trickled down that
+stern man's cheeks; and it was still and vacant in the parsonage; the
+sunshine within was extinguished:--she was gone.
+
+It was night. A cold wind blew over the clergyman's head; he opened
+his eyes, and it was just as if the moon shone into his room. But the
+moon did not shine. It was a figure which stood before his bed--he saw
+the spirit of his deceased wife. She looked on him so singularly
+afflicted; it seemed as though she would say something.
+
+The man raised himself half erect in bed, and stretched his arms out
+towards her.
+
+"Not even to thee is granted everlasting peace. Thou dost suffer;
+thou, the best, the most pious!"
+
+And the dead bent her head in confirmation of his words, and laid her
+hand on her breast.
+
+"And can I procure you peace in the grave?"
+
+"Yes!" it sounded in his ear.
+
+"And how?"
+
+"Give me a hair, but a single hair of the head of that sinner, whose
+fire will never be quenched; that sinner whom God will cast down into
+hell, to everlasting torment."
+
+"Yes; so easily thou canst be liberated, thou pure, thou pious one!"
+said he.
+
+"Then follow me," said the dead; "it is so granted us. Thou canst be
+by my side, wheresoever thy thoughts will. Invisible to mankind, we
+stand in their most secret places; but thou must point with a sure
+hand to the one destined to eternal punishment, and ere the cock crow
+he must be found."
+
+And swift, as if borne on the wings of thought, they were in the great
+city, and the names of the dying sinners shone from the walls of the
+houses in letters of fire: "Arrogance, Avarice, Drunkenness,
+Voluptuousness;" in short, sin's whole seven-coloured arch.
+
+"Yes, in there, as I thought it, as I knew it," said the clergyman,
+"are housed those condemned to eternal fire."
+
+And they stood before the splendidly-illumined portico, where the
+broad stairs were covered with carpets and flowers, and the music of
+the dance sounded through the festal saloons. The porter stood there
+in silk and velvet, with a large silver-headed stick.
+
+"_Our_ ball can match with the King's," said he, and turned towards
+the crowd in the street--his magnificent thoughts were visible in his
+whole person. "Poor devils! who stare in at the portico, you are
+altogether ragamuffins, compared to me!"
+
+"Arrogance," said the dead; "dost thou see him?"
+
+"Him!" repeated the clergyman; "he is a simpleton--a fool only, and
+will not be condemned to eternal fire and torment."
+
+"A fool only," sounded through the whole house of Arrogance.
+
+And they flew into the four bare walls of Avarice, where skinny,
+meagre, shivering with cold, hungry and thirsty, the old man clung
+fast with all his thoughts to his gold. They saw how he, as in a
+fever, sprang from his wretched pallet, and took a loose stone out of
+the wall. There lay gold coins in a stocking-foot; he fumbled at his
+ragged tunic, in which gold coins were sewed fast, and his moist
+fingers trembled.
+
+"He is ill: it is insanity; encircled by fear and evil dreams."
+
+And they flew away in haste, and stood by the criminals' wooden couch,
+where they slept side by side in long rows. One of them started up
+from his sleep like a wild animal, and uttered a hideous scream: he
+struck his companion with his sharp elbow, and the latter turned
+sleepily round.
+
+"Hold your tongue, you beast, and sleep! this is your way every night!
+Every night!" he repeated; "yes, you come every night, howling and
+choking me! I have done one thing or another in a passion; I was born
+with a passionate temper, and it has brought me in here a second time;
+but if I have done wrong, so have I also got my punishment. But one
+thing I have not confessed. When I last went out from here, and passed
+by my master's farm, one thing and another boiled up in me, and I
+directly stroked a lucifer against the wall: it came a little too near
+the thatch, and everything was burnt--hot-headedness came over it,
+just as it comes over me, I helped to save the cattle and furniture.
+Nothing living was burnt, except a flock of pigeons: they flew into
+the flames, and the yard dog. I had not thought of the dog. I could
+hear it howl, and that howl I always hear yet, when I would sleep; and
+if I do get to sleep, the dog comes also--so large and hairy! He lies
+down on me, howls, and strangles me! Do but hear what I am telling
+you. Snore--yes, that you can--snore the whole night through, and I
+not even a quarter of an hour!"
+
+And the blood shone from the eyes of the fiery one; he fell on his
+companion, and struck him in the face with his clenched fist.
+
+"Angry Mads has become mad again!" resounded on all sides, and the
+other rascals seized hold of him, wrestled with him, and bent him
+double, so that his head was forced between his legs, where they bound
+it fast, so that the blood was nearly springing out of his eyes, and
+all the pores.
+
+"You will kill him!" said the clergyman,--"poor unfortunate!" and as
+he stretched his hands out over him, who had already suffered too
+severely, in order to prevent further mischief, the scene changed.
+
+They flew through rich halls, and through poor chambers;
+voluptuousness and envy, all mortal sins strode past them. A recording
+angel read their sin and their defence; this was assuredly little for
+God, for God reads the heart; He knows perfectly the evil that comes
+within it and from without, He, grace, all-loving kindness. The hand
+of the clergyman trembled: he did not venture to stretch it out, to
+pluck a hair from the sinner's head. And the tears streamed down from
+his eyes, like the waters of _grace_ and love, which quenched the
+eternal fire of hell.
+
+The cock then crowed.
+
+"Merciful God! Thou wilt grant her that peace in the grave which I
+have not been able to redeem."
+
+"That I now have!" said the dead; "it was thy hard words, thy dark,
+human belief of God and his creatures, which drove me to thee! Learn
+to know mankind; even in the bad there is a part of God--a part that
+will conquer and quench the fire of hell."
+
+And a kiss was pressed on the clergyman's lips:--it shone around him.
+God's clear, bright sun shone into the chamber, where his wife,
+living, mild, and affectionate, awoke him from a dream, sent from God!
+
+
+
+
+UPSALA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is commonly said, that Memory is a young girl with light blue eyes.
+Most poets say so; but we cannot always agree with most poets. To us
+memory comes in quite different forms, all according to that land, or
+that town to which she belongs. Italy sends her as a charming Mignon,
+with black eyes and a melancholy smile, singing Bellini's soft,
+touching songs. From Scotland Memory's sprite appears as a powerful
+lad with bare knees; the plaid hangs over his shoulder, the
+thistle-flower is fixed on his cap; Burns's songs then fill the air
+like the heath-lark's song, and Scotland's wild thistle flowers
+beautifully fragrant as the fresh rose. But now for Memory's sprite
+from Sweden, from Upsala. He comes thence in the form of a student--at
+least, he wears the Upsala student's white cap with the black rim. To
+us it points out its home, as the Phrygian cap denotes Ganymede.
+
+It was in the year 1843, that the Danish students travelled to Upsala.
+Young hearts met together; eyes sparkled: they laughed, they sang.
+Young hearts are the future--the conquering future--in the beautiful,
+true and good; it is so good that brothers should know and love each
+other. Friendship's meeting is still annually remembered in the
+palace-yard of Upsala, before the monument of Gustavus Vasa--by the
+hurra! for Denmark, in warm-hearted compliment to me.
+
+Two summers afterwards, the visit was returned. The Swedish students
+came to Copenhagen, and that they might there be known amongst the
+multitude, the Upsala students wore a white cap with a black rim: this
+cap is accordingly a memorial,--the sign of friendship's bridge over
+that river of blood which once flowed between kindred nations. When
+one meets in heart and spirit, a blissful seed is then sown. Memory's
+sprite, come to us! we know thee by the cap from Upsala: be thou our
+guide, and from our more southern home, after years and days, we will
+make the voyage over again, quicker than if we flew in Doctor Faustus'
+magic cloak. We are in Stockholm: we stand on the Ridderholm where the
+steamers lie alongside the bulwarks: one of them sends forth clouds of
+thick smoke from its chimney; the deck is crowded with passengers, and
+the white cap with the black rim is not wanting.
+
+We are off to Upsala; the paddles strike the waters of the Maelar, and
+we shoot away from the picturesque city of Stockholm. The whole
+voyage, direct to Upsala, is a kaleidescope on a large scale. It is
+true, there is nothing of the magical in the scenery, but landscape
+gives place to landscape, and clouds and sunshine refresh their
+variegated beauty. The Maelar lake curves, is compressed, and widens
+again: it is as if one passed from lake to lake through narrow canals
+and broad rivers. Sometimes it appears as if the lake ended in small
+rivulets between dark pines and rocks, when suddenly another large
+lake, surrounded by corn fields and meadows, opens itself to view: the
+light-green linden trees, which have just unfolded their leaves, shine
+forth before the dark grey rocks. Again a new lake opens before us,
+with islets, trees and red painted houses, and during the whole voyage
+there is a lively arrival and departure of passengers, in flat
+bottomed boats, which are nearly upset in the billowy wake of the
+vessel.
+
+It appears most dangerous opposite to Sigtuna, Sweden's old royal
+city: the lake is broad here; the waves rise as if they were the
+waters of the ocean; the boats rock--it is fearful to look at! But
+here there must be a calm; and Sigtuna, that little interesting town
+where the old towers stand in ruins, like outposts along the rocks,
+reflects itself in the water.
+
+We fly past! and now we are in Tyris rivulet! Part of a meadow is
+flooded; a herd of horses become shy from the snorting of the
+steamer's engine; they dash through the water in the meadow, and it
+spurts up all over them. It glitters there between the trees on the
+declivity: the Upsala students lie encamped there, and exercise
+themselves in the use of arms.
+
+The rivulet forms a bay, and the high plain extends itself. We see old
+Upsala's hills; we see Upsala's city with its church, which, like
+Notre Dame, raises its stony arms towards heaven. The university rises
+to the view, in appearance half palace and half barracks, and there
+aloft, on the greensward-clothed bank, stands the old red-painted huge
+palace with its towers.
+
+We stop at the bulwark near the arched bridge, and so go on shore.
+Whither wilt thou conduct us first, thou our guide with the
+white-and-black student's cap? Shall we go up to the palace, or to
+Linnaeus's garden! or shall we go to the church-yard where the nettles
+grow over Geier's and Toernro's graves? No, but to the young and the
+living Upsala's life--the students. Thou tellest us about them; we
+hear the heart's pulsations, and our hearts beat in sympathy!
+
+In the first year of the war between Denmark and the insurgents, many
+a brave Upsala student left his quiet, comfortable home, and entered
+the ranks with his Danish brothers. The Upsala students gave up their
+most joyous festival--the May-day festival--and the money they at
+other times used to contribute annually towards the celebration
+thereof, they sent to the Danes, after the sum had been increased by
+concerts which were given in Stockholm and Vesteraas. That
+circumstance will not be forgotten in Denmark.
+
+Upsala student, thou art dear to us by thy disposition! thou art dear
+to us from thy lively jests! We will mention a trait thereof. In
+Upsala, it had become the fashion to be Hegelianers--that is to say,
+always to interweave Hegel's philosophical terms in conversation. In
+order to put down this practice, a few clever fellows took upon
+themselves the task of hammering some of the most difficult technical
+words into the memory of a humorous and commonly drunken country
+innkeeper, at whose house many a _Sexa_ was often held; and the man
+spoke Hegelianic in his mellow hours, and the effect was so absurd,
+that the employment of philosophical scraps in his speech was
+ridiculed, understood, and the nuisance abandoned.
+
+Beautiful songs resound as we approach: we hear Swedish, Norwegian and
+Danish. The melody's varied beacon makes known to us where Upsala's
+students are assembled. The song proceeds from the assembly-room--from
+the tavern saloon, and like serenades in the silent evening, when a
+young friend departs, or a dear guest is honoured. Glorious melodies!
+ye enthral, so that we forget that the sun goes down, and the moon
+rises.
+
+    "Herre min Gud hvad din Manen lyser
+     Se, hvilken Glands ut ofver Land och Stad!"
+
+is now sung, and we see:
+
+    "Hoegt opp i Slottet hvarenda ruta
+     Blixtrar some vore den en aedelsten."[O]
+
+[Footnote O: Lord, my God, how Thy moon shines! See what lustre over
+land and city! High up in the palace every pane glistens as if it
+were a gem.]
+
+Up thither then is our way! lead us, memory's sprite, into the palace,
+the courteous governor of Upland's dwelling; mild glances greet us; we
+see dear beings in a happy circle, and all the leading characters of
+Upsala. We again see him whose cunning quickened our perceptions as to
+the mysteries of vegetable life, so that even the toad-stool is
+unveiled to us as a building more artfully constructed than the
+labyrinths of the olden time. We see "The Flowers'" singer, he who led
+us to "The Island of Bliss;" we meet with him whose popular lays are
+borne on melodies into the world; his wife by his side. That quiet,
+gentle woman with those faithful eyes is the daughter of Frithiof's
+bard; we see noble men and women, ladies of the high nobility, with
+sounding and significant family names with _silver_ and
+_lilies_,--_stars_ and _swords_.
+
+Hark! listen to that lively song. Gunnar Wennerberg, Gluntarra's poet
+and composer, sings his songs with Boronees,[P] and they acquire a
+dramatic life and reality.
+
+[Footnote P: Gluntarra duets, by Gunnar Wennerberg.]
+
+How spiritual and enjoyable! one becomes happy here, one feels proud
+of the age one lives in, happy in being distant from the horrible
+tragedies that history speaks of within these walls.
+
+We can hear about them when the song is silent, when those friendly
+forms disappear, and the festal lights are extinguished: from the
+pages of history that tale resounds with a clang of horror. It was in
+those times, which the many still call poetic--the romantic middle
+ages--that bards sang of its most brilliant periods, and covered with
+the radiance of their genius the sanguinary gulf of brutality and
+superstition. Terror seizes us in Upsala's palace: we stand in the
+vaulted hall, the wax tapers burn from the walls, and King Erik the
+Fourteenth sits with Saul's dark despondency, with Cain's wild looks.
+Niels Sture occupies his thoughts, the recollection of injustice
+exercised against him lashes his conscience with scourges and
+scorpions, as deadly terrible as they are revealed to us in the page
+of history.
+
+King Erik the Fourteenth, whose gloomy distrust often amounted to
+insanity, thought that the nobility aimed at his life. His favourite,
+Goran Persson, found it to his advantage to strengthen him in this
+belief. He hated most the popularly favoured race of the Stures, and
+of them, the light-haired Niels Sture in particular; for Erik thought
+that he had read in the stars that a man with light hair should hurl
+him from the throne; and as the Swedish General after the lost battle
+of Svarteaa, laid the blame on Niels Sture, Erik directly believed it,
+yet dared not to act as he desired, but even gave Niels Sture royal
+presents. Yet because he was again accused by one single person of
+having checked the advance of the Swedish army at Baehues, Erik invited
+him to his palace at Svartsjoe, gave him an honourable place at his
+royal table, and let him depart in apparent good faith for Stockholm,
+where, on his arrival, the heralds were ordered to proclaim in the
+streets: "Niels Sture is a traitor to his country!"
+
+There Goran Persson and the German retainers seized him, and sat him
+by force on the executioner's most miserable hack; struck him in the
+face so that the blood streamed down, placed a tarred straw crown on
+his head, and fastened a paper with derisive words, on the saddle
+before him. They then let a row of hired beggar-boys and old
+fish-wives go in couples before, and to the tail of the horse they
+bound two fir-trees, the roots of which dragged on the ground and
+swept the street after the traitor. Niels Sture exclaimed that he had
+not deserved this treatment from his King and he begged the groom, who
+went by his side, and had served him in the field of battle, to attest
+the truth like an honest man; when they all shouted aloud, that he
+suffered innocently, and had acted like a true Swede. But the
+procession was driven forward through the streets without stopping,
+and at night Niels Sture was conducted to prison.
+
+King Erik sits in his royal palace: he orders the torches and candles
+to be lighted, but they are of no avail--his thoughts' scorpions sting
+his soul.
+
+"I have again liberated Niels Sture," he mutters; "I have had placards
+put up at every street-corner, and let the heralds proclaim that no
+one shall dare to speak otherwise than well of Niels Sture! I have
+sent him on an honourable mission to a foreign court, in order to sue
+for me in marriage! He has had reparation enough made to him; but
+never will he, nor his mighty race, forget the derision and shame I
+have made him suffer. They will all betray me--kill me!"
+
+And King Erik commands that all Sture's kindred shall be made
+prisoners.
+
+King Erik sits in his royal palace: the sun shines, but not into the
+King's heart. Niels Sture enters the chamber with an answer of consent
+from the royal bride, and the King shakes him by the hand, making fair
+promises--and the following evening Niels Sture is a prisoner in
+Upsala Palace.
+
+King Erik's gloomy mind is disturbed; he has no rest; he has no peace,
+between fear and distrust. He hurries away to Upsala Palace; he will
+make all straight and just again by marrying Niels Sture's sister.
+Kneeling, he begs her imprisoned father's consent, and obtains it; but
+in the very moment, the spirit of distrust is again upon him, and he
+cries in his insanity:
+
+"But you will not forgive me the shame I brought on Niels!"
+
+At the same time, Goran Persson announced that King Erik's brother,
+John, had escaped from his prison, and that a revolt was breaking out.
+And Erik ran, with a sharp dagger into Niels Sture's prison.
+
+"Art thou there, traitor to thy country!" he shouted, and thrust the
+dagger into Shire's arm; and Sture drew it out again, wiped off the
+blood, kissed the hilt, and returned the weapon to the King, saying:
+
+"Be lenient with me, Sire; I have not deserved your disfavour."
+
+Erik laughed aloud.
+
+"Ho! ho! do but hear the villain! how he can pray for himself!"
+
+And the King's halberdier stuck his lance through Niels Sture's eye,
+and thus gave him his death. Sture's blood cleaves to Upsala
+Palace--to King Erik always and everlastingly. No church masses can
+absolve his soul from that base crime.
+
+Let us now go to the church.
+
+A little flight of stairs in the side aisle leads us up to a vaulted
+chamber, where kings' crowns and sceptres, taken from the coffins of
+the dead, are deposited in wooden closets. Here, in the corner, hangs
+Niels Sture's blood-covered clothes and knight's hat, on the outside
+of which a small silk glove is fastened. It was his betrothed one's
+dainty glove--that which he, knight-like, always bore.
+
+O, barbarous era! highly vaunted as you are in song, retreat, like the
+storm-cloud, and be poetically beautiful to all who do not see thee in
+thy true light.
+
+We descend from the little chamber, from the gold and silver of the
+dead, and wander in the church's aisles. The cold marble tombs, with
+shields of arms and names, awaken other, milder thoughts.
+
+The walls shine brightly, and with varied hues, in the great chapel
+behind the high altar. The fresco paintings present to us the most
+eventful circumstances of Gustavus Vasa's life. Here his clay
+moulders, with that of his three consorts. Yonder, a work in marble,
+by Sargel, solicits our attention: it adorns the burial-chapel of the
+De Geers; and here, in the centre aisle, under that flat stone, rests
+Linnaeus. In the side chapel, is his monument, erected by _amici_ and
+_discipuli_: a sufficient sum was quickly raised for its erection, and
+the King, Gustavus the Third, himself brought his royal gift. The
+projector of the subscription then explained to him, that the purposed
+inscription was, that the monument was erected only by friends and
+disciples, and King Gustavus answered: "And am not I also one of
+Linnaeus's disciples?"
+
+The monument was raised, and a hall built in the botanical garden,
+under splendid trees. There stands his bust; but the remembrance of
+himself, his home, his own little garden--where is it most vivid? Lead
+us thither.
+
+On yonder side of Fyri's rivulet, where the street forms a declivity,
+where red-painted, wooden houses boast their living grass roofs, as
+fresh as if they were planted terraces, lies Linnaeus's garden. We
+stand within it. How solitary! how overgrown! Tall nettles shoot up
+between the old, untrimmed, rank hedges. No water-plants appear more
+in that little, dried-up basin; the hedges that were formerly clipped,
+put forth fresh leaves without being checked by the gardener's shears.
+
+It was between these hedges that Linnaeus at times saw his own
+double--that optical illusion which presents the express image of a
+second self--from the hat to the boots.
+
+Where a great man has lived and worked, the place itself becomes, as
+it were, a part and parcel of him: the whole, as well as a part, has
+mirrored itself in his eye; it has entered into his soul, and become
+linked with it and the whole world.
+
+We enter the orangeries: they are now transformed into assembly-rooms;
+the blooming winter-garden has disappeared; but the walls yet show a
+sort of herbarium. They are hung round with the portraits of learned
+Swedes--herbarium from the garden of science and knowledge. Unknown
+faces--and, to the stranger, the greatest part are unknown names--meet
+us here.
+
+One portrait amongst the many attracts our attention: it looks
+singular; it is the half-length figure of an old man in a shirt, lying
+in his bed. It is that of the learned theologian, Oedmann, who after
+he had been compelled to keep his bed by a fever, found himself so
+comfortable in it, that he continued to lie there during the remainder
+of his long life, and was not to be induced to get up. Even when the
+next house was burning, they were obliged to carry him out in his bed
+into the street. Death and cold were his two bugbears. The cold would
+kill him, was his opinion; and so, when the students came with their
+essays and treatises, the manuscripts were warmed at the stove before
+he read them. The windows of his room were never opened, so that there
+was a suffocating and impure air in his dwelling. He had a
+writing-desk on the bed; books and manuscripts lay in confusion round
+about; dishes, plates, and pots stood here or there, as the
+convenience of the moment dictated, and his only companion was a deaf
+and dumb laughter.
+
+She sat still in a corner by the window, wrapped up in herself, and
+staring before her, as if she were a figure that had flown out of the
+frame around the dark, mouldy canvas, which had once shown a picture
+on the wall.
+
+Here, in the room, in this impure atmosphere, the old man lived
+happily, and reached his seventieth year, occupied with the
+translation of travels in Africa. This tainted atmosphere, in which he
+lay, became, to his conceit, the dromedary's high back, which lifted
+him aloft in the burning sun; the long, hanging-down cobwebs were the
+palm-trees' waving banners, and the caravan went over rivers to the
+wild bushmen. Old Oedmann was with the hunters, chasing the elephants
+in the midst of the thick reeds; the agile tiger-cat sprang past, and
+the serpents shone like garlands around the boughs of the trees: there
+was excitement, there was danger--and yet he lay so comfortably in his
+good and beloved bed in Upsala.
+
+One winter's day, it happened that a Dalecarlian peasant mistook the
+house, and came into Oedmann's chamber in his snow-covered skin cloak,
+and with his beard full of ice. Oedmann shouted to him to go his way,
+but the peasant was deaf, and therefore stepped quite close up to the
+bed. He was the personification of Winter himself, and Oedmann fell
+ill from this visit: it was his only sickness during the many years he
+lay here as a polypus, grown fast, and where he was painted, as we see
+his portrait in the assembly-room.
+
+From the hall of learning we will go to its burial-place--that is to
+say, its open burial-place--the great library. We wander from hall to
+hall, up stairs and down stairs. Along the shelves, behind them and
+round about, stand books, those petrifactions of the mind, which might
+again be vivified by spirit. Here lives a kind-hearted and mild old
+man, the librarian, Professor Schroeder. He smiles and nods as he hears
+how memory's sprite takes his place here as guide, and tells of and
+shows, as we see, Tegner's copy and translation of Ochlenschloeger's
+"Hakon Jarl and Palnatoke." We see Vadstene cloister's library, in
+thick hog's leather bindings, and think of the fair hands of the nuns
+that have borne them, the pious, mild eyes that conjured the spirit
+out of the dead letters. Here is the celebrated Codex Argentius, the
+translation of the "Four Evangelists."[Q] Gold and silver letters
+glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic
+manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's
+Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings
+and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in
+spirit, and longs to be out in the free air--and we are there; by
+Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf,
+out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church
+stands--the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes
+gained in the war against the Danes. We follow the broad high road: it
+leads us close past Upsala's old hills--Odin's, Thor's and Freia's
+graves, as they are called.
+
+[Footnote Q: A Gothic translation of the Four Evangelists, and
+ascribed to the Moesogothic Archbishop Ulphilas.]
+
+There once stood ancient Upsala, here now are but a few peasants'
+farms. The low church, built of granite blocks, dates from a very
+remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple. Each of
+the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands.
+Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin
+greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old
+housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the
+silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The
+wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden,
+and for the heart's constant thoughts--young love!
+
+Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been
+remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! and years after, when the same
+wanderer again stood here, she, the blooming rose, had been laid in
+the earth; the spring roses had strown their leaves over her coffined
+clay; the sweet music of her lips sounded but in memory; the smile in
+her eyes and around her mouth, was gone like the sunbeams, which then
+shone on Upsala's hills. Her name in the greensward is grown over; she
+herself is in the earth, and it is closed above her; but the hill
+here, closed for a thousand years, is open.
+
+Through the passage which is dug deep into the hills, we come to the
+funereal urns which contain the bones of youthful kindred; the dust of
+kings, the gods of the earth.
+
+The old housewife, from the peasant's cot, has lighted half a hundred
+wax candles and placed them in rows in the otherwise pitchy-dark,
+stone-paved passage. It shines so festally in here over the bones of
+the olden time's mighty ones, bones that are now charred and burnt to
+ashes. And whose were they? Thou world's power and glory, thou world's
+posthumous fame--dust, dust like beauty's rose, laid in the dark
+earth, where no light shines; thy memorials are but a name, the name
+but a sound. Away hence, and up on the hill where the wind blows, the
+sun shines, and the eye looks over the green plain, to the sunlit,
+dear Upsala, the student's city.
+
+
+
+
+SALA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sweden's great King, Germany's preserver, Gustavus Adolphus, founded
+Sala. The little wood, close by, still preserves legends of the heroic
+King's youthful love--of his meeting here with Ebba Brahe.
+
+Sala's silver mines are the largest, the deepest, and oldest in
+Sweden: they reach to the depth of one hundred and seventy fathoms,
+consequently they are almost as deep as the Baltic. This of itself is
+enough to awaken an interest for a little town; but what is its
+appearance? "Sala," says the guide-book, "lies in a valley, in a flat,
+and not very pleasant district." And so truly it is: it was not very
+attractive approaching it our way, and the high road led directly into
+the town, which is without any distinctive character. It consists of a
+long street with what we may term a nucleus and a few fibres. The
+nucleus is the market-place, and the fibres are the few lanes
+diverging from it. The long street--that is to say, long in a little
+town--is quite without passengers; no one comes out from the doors, no
+one is to be seen at the windows.
+
+It was therefore with pleased surprise that I at length descried a
+human being: it was at an ironmonger's, where there hung a paper of
+pins, a handkerchief and two tea-pots in the window. There I saw a
+solitary shop-boy, standing quite still, but leaning over the counter
+and looking out of the open door. He certainly wrote in his journal,
+if he had one, in the evening: "To-day a traveller drove through the
+town; who he was, God knows, for I don't!"--yes, that was what the
+shop-boy's face said, and an honest face it was.
+
+In the inn at which I arrived, there was the same grave-like stillness
+as in the street. The gate was certainly closed, but all the inner
+doors were wide open; the farm-yard cock stood uplifted in the middle
+of the traveller's room and crowed, in order to show that there was
+somebody at home. The house, however, was quite picturesque: it had an
+open balcony, from which one might look out upon the yard, for it
+would have been far too lively had it been facing the street. There
+hung the old sign and creaked in the wind, as if to show that it at
+least was alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass in
+the street had got the mastery over the pavement. The sun shone
+brightly, but shone as into the bachelor's solitary room, and on the
+old maid's balsams in the flower-pots. It was as still as a Scotch
+Sunday--and yet it was a Tuesday. One was disposed for Young's "Night
+Thoughts."
+
+I looked out from the balcony into the neighbouring yard: there was
+not a soul to be seen, but children had been playing there. There was
+a little garden made of dry sticks: they were stuck down in the soft
+soil and had been watered; a broken pan, which had certainly served by
+way of watering-pot, lay there still. The sticks signified roses and
+geraniums.
+
+It had been a delightful garden--alas, yes! We great, grown-up men--we
+play just so: we make ourselves a garden with what we call love's
+roses and friendship's geraniums; we water them with our tears and
+with our heart's blood; and yet they are, and remain, dry sticks
+without root. It was a gloomy thought; I felt it, and in order to get
+the dry sticks in my thoughts to blossom, I went out. I wandered in
+the fibres and in the long threads--that is to say, in the small
+lanes--and in the great street; and here was more life than I dared to
+expect. I met a herd of cattle returning or going--which I know
+not--for they were without a herdsman. The shop-boy still stood behind
+the counter, leaned over it and greeted me; the stranger took his hat
+off again--that was my day's employment in Sala.
+
+Pardon me, thou silent town, which Gustavus Adolphus built, where his
+young heart felt the first emotions of love, and where the silver lies
+in the deep shafts--that is to say, outside the town, "in a flat, and
+not very pleasant district."
+
+I knew no one in the town; I had no one to be my guide, so I
+accompanied the cows, and came to the churchyard. The cows went past,
+but I stepped over the stile, and stood amongst the graves, where the
+grass grew high, and almost all the tombstones lay with worn-out
+inscriptions. On a few only the date of the year was legible.
+"Anno"--yes, what then? And who rested here? Everything on the stone
+was erased--blotted out like the earthly life of those mortals that
+here were earth in earth. What life's dream have ye dead played here
+in silent Sala?
+
+The setting sun shone over the graves; not a leaf moved on the trees;
+all was still--still as death--in the city of the silver-mines, of
+which this traveller's reminiscence is but a frame around the shop-boy
+who leaned over the counter.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUTE BOOK.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the high road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house.
+Our way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the
+windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard,
+in an arbour of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The
+corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that
+forenoon. No one stood by and wept over that dead man; no one hung
+sorrowfully over him; his face was covered with a white cloth, and
+under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was
+a whole sheet of grey paper, and between each lay withered flowers,
+deposited and forgotten--a whole herbarium, gathered in different
+places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave
+with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower.
+
+"Who is that dead man?" we asked, and the answer was: "The old student
+from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned
+languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was
+something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and
+himself up to drinking spirits, and as his health suffered by it, he
+came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and
+lodging.
+
+"He was as gentle as a child, when the dark humour did not come over
+him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted
+deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book
+with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day and look at one
+plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his
+cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might
+have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the
+lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful
+rest in the grave!"
+
+They raised the winding-sheet. There was peace in the face of the
+dead: a sunbeam fell on it; a swallow in its arrowy flight, darted
+into the new-made arbour, and in its flight circled twittering over
+the dead man's head.
+
+How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out old letters
+from the days of our youth and read them: a whole life, as it were,
+then rises up with all its hopes, and all its troubles. How many of
+those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as
+the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of
+them for many years--them whom we once thought we should always cling
+to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with.
+
+The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the
+friend--the friend of his school-days--the friend for life. He fixed
+this leaf on the student's cap in the green wood, when the vow of
+friendship was concluded for the whole of life. Where does he now
+live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign
+conservatory-plant, too fine for the gardens of the North--it looks as
+if there still were fragrance in these leaves!--_she_ gave it to
+him--she, the young lady of that noble garden.
+
+Here is the marsh-lotus which he himself has plucked and watered with
+salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters. And here is a
+nettle: what does its leaf say? What did he think on plucking it--on
+preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley from the woodland
+solitudes; here are honeysuckle leaves from the village ale-house
+flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass.
+
+The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead
+man's head; the swallow again flies past; "quivit! quivit!" Now the
+men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse,
+whose head rests on the Mute-Book--preserved--forgotten!
+
+
+
+
+THE ZAeTHER DALE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything was in order, the carriage examined, even a whip with a
+good lash was not forgotten. "Two whips would be best," said the
+ironmonger, who sold it, and the ironmonger was a man of experience,
+which travellers often are not. A whole bag full of "slanter"--that
+is, copper coins of small value--stood before us for bridge-money, for
+beggars, for shepherd's boys, or whoever might open the many
+field-gates for us that obstructed our progress. But we had to do this
+ourselves, for the rain pattered down and lashed the ground; no one
+had any desire to come out in such weather. The rushes in the marsh
+bent and waved; it was a real rain feast for them, and it whistled
+from the tops of the rushes: "We drink with our feet, we drink with
+our heads, we drink with the whole body, and yet we stand on one leg,
+hurra! We drink with the bending willow, with the dripping flowers on
+the bank; their cups run over--the marsh marigold, that fine lady, can
+bear it better! Hurra! it is a feast! it pours, it pours; we whistle
+and we sing; it is our own song. Tomorrow the frogs will croak the
+same after us and say, 'it is quite new!'"
+
+And the rushes waved, and the rain pattered down with a splashing
+noise--it was fine weather to travel in to Zaether Dale, and to see its
+far-famed beauties. The whip-lash now came off the whip; it was
+fastened on again, and again, and every time it was shorter, so that
+at last there was not a lash, nor was there any handle, for the handle
+went after the lash--or sailed after it--as the road was quite
+navigable, and gave one a vivid idea of the beginning of the deluge.
+
+One poor jade now drew too much, the other drew too little, and one of
+the splinter bars broke; well, by all that is vexatious, that was a
+fine drive! The leather apron in front had a deep pond in its folds
+with an outlet into one's lap. Now one of the linch-pins came out; now
+the twisting of the rope harness became loose, and the cross-strap was
+tired of holding any longer. Glorious inn in Zaether, how I now long
+more for thee than thy far-famed dale. And the horses went slower, and
+the rain fell faster, and so--yes, so we were not yet in Zaether.
+
+Patience, thou lank spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin
+thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as
+still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the
+carriage to Zaether. But to the inn, by the road side, close to the
+far-famed valley, I got at length, towards evening.
+
+And everything was flowing in the yard, chaotically mingled; manure
+and farming implements, staves and straw. The poultry sat there washed
+to shadows, or at least like stuck-up hens' skins with feathers on,
+and even the ducks crept close up to the wet wall, sated with the wet.
+The stable-man was cross, the girl still more so; it was difficult to
+get them to bestir themselves: the steps were crooked, the floor
+sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air
+was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on
+the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made
+by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells
+and purling brooks.
+
+It was a long hollow; I saw the tops of the trees looming up, and the
+rain drew its thick veil over it. The whole of that long evening did I
+sit and look upon it during that shower of showers. It was as if the
+Venern, the Vettern and a few more lakes ran through an immense sieve
+from the clouds. I had ordered something to eat and drink, but I got
+nothing. They ran up and they ran down; there was a hissing sound of
+roasting by the hearth; the girls chattered, the men drank "sup,"[R]
+strangers came, were shown into their rooms, and got both roast and
+boiled. Several hours had passed, when I made a forcible appeal to the
+girl, and she answered phlegmatically: "Why, Sir, you sit there and
+write without stopping, so you cannot have time to eat."
+
+[Footnote R: Swedish, _sup_. Danish, _snaps_. German, _schnaps_.
+English, _drams_.]
+
+It was a long evening, "but the evening passed!" It had become quite
+still in the inn; all the travellers, except myself, had again
+departed, certainly in order to find better quarters for the night at
+Hedemore or Brunbeck. I had seen, through the half-open door into the
+dirty tap-room, a couple of fellows playing with greasy cards; a huge
+dog lay under the table and glared with its large red eyes; the
+kitchen was deserted; the rooms too; the floor was wet, the storm
+rattled, the rain beat against the windows--"and now to bed! said I."
+
+
+
+I slept an hour, perhaps two, and was awakened by a loud bawling from
+the high road. I started up: it was twilight, the night at that period
+is not darker--it was about one o'clock. I heard the door shaken
+roughly; a deep manly voice shouted aloud, and there was a hammering
+with a cudgel against the planks of the yard-gate. Was it an
+intoxicated or a mad man that was to be let in? The gate was now
+opened, but many words were not exchanged. I heard a woman scream at
+the top of her voice from terror. There was now a great bustling
+about; they ran across the yard in wooden shoes; the bellowing of
+cattle and the rough voices of men were mingled together. I sat on the
+edge of the bed. Out or in! what was to be done? I looked from the
+window; in the road there was nothing to be seen, and it still rained.
+All at once some one came up stairs with heavy footsteps: he opened
+the door of the room adjoining mine--now he stood still! I listened--a
+large iron bolt fastened my door. The stranger now walked across the
+floor, now he shook my door, and then kicked against it with a heavy
+foot, and whilst all this was passing, the rain beat against the
+windows, and the blast made them rattle.
+
+"Are there any travellers here?" shouted a voice; "the house is on
+fire!"
+
+I now dressed myself and hastened out of the room and down the stairs.
+There was no smoke to be seen, but when I reached the yard, I saw that
+the whole building--a long and extensive one of wood--was enveloped in
+flames and clouds of smoke. The fire had originated in the baking
+oven, which no one had looked to; a traveller, who accidently came
+past, saw it, called out and hammered at the door: and the women
+screamed, and the cattle bellowed, when the fire stuck its red tongue
+into them.
+
+Now came the fire-engine and the flames were extinguished. By this
+time it was morning. I stood in the road, scarcely a hundred steps
+from the far-famed dale. "One may as well spring into it as walk into
+it!" and I sprang into it; and the rain poured down, and the water
+flowed--the whole dale was a well.
+
+The trees turned their leaves the wrong side out, purely because of
+the pouring rain, and they said, as the rushes did the day before: "We
+drink with our heads, we drink with our feet, and we drink with the
+whole body, and yet stand on our legs, hurra! it rains, and it pours;
+we whistle and we sing; it is our own song--and it is quite new!"
+
+Yes, that the rushes also sang yesterday--but it was the same, ever
+the same. I looked and looked, and all I know of the beauty of Zaether
+Dale is, that she had washed herself!
+
+
+
+
+THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lacksand lay on the other side of the dal-elv which the road now led
+us over for the third or fourth time. The picturesque bell-tower of
+red painted beams, erected at a distance from the church, rose above
+the tall trees on the clayey declivity: old willows hung gracefully
+over the rapid stream. The floating bridge rocked under us--nay, it
+even sank a little, so that the water splashed under the horse's
+hoofs; but these bridges have such qualities! The iron chains that
+held it rattled, the planks creaked, the boards splashed, the water
+rose, and murmured and roared, and so we got over where the road
+slants upwards towards the town. Close opposite here the last year's
+May-pole still stood with withered flowers. How many hands that bound
+these flowers are now withered in the grave?
+
+It is far prettier to go up on the sloping bank along the elv, than to
+follow the straight high-road into the town. The path conducts us,
+between pasture fields and leaf trees, up to the parsonage, where we
+passed the evening with the friendly family. The clergyman himself was
+but lately dead, and his relatives were all in mourning. There was
+something about the young daughter--I knew not myself what it was--but
+I was led to think of the delicate flax flower, too delicate for the
+short northern summer.
+
+They spoke about the Midsummer festival the next day, and of the
+winter season here, when the swans, often more than thirty at a time,
+sit (motionless themselves) on the elv, and utter strange, mournful
+tones. They always come in pairs, they said, two and two, and thus
+they also fly away again. If one of them dies, its partner always
+remains a long time after all the others are gone; lingers, laments,
+and then flies away alone and solitary.
+
+When I left the parsonage in the evening, the moon, in its first
+quarter, was up. The May-pole was raised; the little steamer, 'Prince
+Augustus,' with several small vessels in tow, came over the Siljan
+lake and into the elv; a musician sprang on shore, and began to play
+dances under the tall wreathed May-pole. And there was soon a merry
+circle around it--all so happy, as if the whole of life were but a
+delightful summer night.
+
+Next morning was the Midsummer Festival. It was Sunday, the 24th of
+June, and a beautiful sunshiny day it was. The most picturesque sight
+at the festival is to see the people from the different parishes
+coming in crowds, in large boats over Siljan's lake, and landing on
+its shores. We drove out to the landing-place, Barkedale, and before
+we got out of the town, we met whole troops coming from there, as well
+as from the mountains.
+
+Close by the town of Lacksand, there is a row of low wooden shops on
+both sides of the way, which only get their interior light through the
+doorway. They form a whole street, and serve as stables for the
+parishioners, but also--and it was particularly the case that
+morning--to go into and arrange their finery. Almost all the shops or
+sheds were filled with peasant women, who were anxiously busy about
+their dresses, careful to get them into the right folds, and in the
+mean time peeped continually out of the door to see who came past. The
+number of arriving church-goers increased; men, women, and children,
+old and young, even infants; for at the Midsummer festival no one
+stays at home to take care of them, and so of course they must come
+too--all must go to church.
+
+What a dazzling army of colours! Fiery red and grass green aprons meet
+our gaze. The dress of the women is a black skirt, red bodice, and
+white sleeves: all of them had a psalm-book wrapped in the folded silk
+pocket-handkerchief. The little girls were entirely in yellow, and
+with red aprons; the very least were in Turkish-yellow clothes. The
+men were dressed in black coats, like our paletots, embroidered with
+red woollen cord; a red band with a tassel hung down from the large
+black hat; with dark knee breeches, and blue stockings, with red
+leather gaiters--in short, there was a dazzling richness of colour,
+and that, too, on a bright sunny morning in the forest road.
+
+This road led down a steep to the lake, which was smooth and blue.
+Twelve or fourteen long boats, in form like gondolas, were already
+drawn up on the flat strand, which here is covered with large stones.
+These stones served the persons who landed, as bridges; the boats were
+laid alongside them, and the people clambered up, and went and bore
+each other on land. There certainly were at least a thousand persons
+on the strand; and far out on the lake, one could see ten or twelve
+boats more coming, some with sixteen oars, others with twenty, nay,
+even with four-and-twenty, rowed by men and women, and every boat
+decked out with green branches. These, and the varied clothes, gave to
+the whole an appearance of something so festal, so fantastically rich,
+as one would hardly think the north possessed. The boats came nearer,
+all crammed full of living freight; but they came silently, without
+noise or talking, and rowed up to the declivity of the forest.
+
+The boats were drawn up on the sand: it was a fine subject for a
+painter, particularly one point--the way up the slope, where the whole
+mass moved on between the trees and bushes. The most prominent figures
+there, were two ragged urchins, clothed entirely in bright yellow,
+each with a skin bundle on his shoulders. They were from Gagne, the
+poorest parish in Dalecarlia. There was also a lame man with his blind
+wife: I thought of the fable of my childhood, of the lame and the
+blind man: the lame man lent his eyes, and the blind his legs, and so
+they reached the town.
+
+And we also reached the town and the church, and thither they all
+thronged: they said there were above five thousand persons assembled
+there. The church-service began at five o'clock. The pulpit and organ
+were ornamented with flowering lilacs; children sat with lilac-flowers
+and branches of birch; the little ones had each a piece of oat-cake,
+which they enjoyed. There was the sacrament for the young persons who
+had been confirmed; there was organ-playing and psalm-singing; but
+there was a terrible screaming of children, and the sound of heavy
+footsteps; the clumsy, iron-shod Dal shoes tramped loudly upon the
+stone floor. All the church pews, the gallery pews, and the centre
+aisle were quite filled with people. In the side aisle one saw various
+groups--playing children, and pious old folks: by the sacristy there
+sat a young mother giving suck to her child--she was a living image of
+the Madonna herself.
+
+The first impression of the whole was striking, but only the
+first--there was too much that disturbed. The screaming of children,
+and the noise of persons walking were heard above the singing, and
+besides that, there was an insupportable smell of garlic: almost all
+the congregation had small bunches of garlic with them, of which they
+ate as they sat. I could not bear it, and went out into the
+churchyard: here--as it always is in nature--it was affecting, it was
+holy. The church door stood open; the tones of the organ, and the
+voices of the psalm-singers were wafted out here in the bright
+sunlight, by the open lake: the many who could not find a place in the
+church, stood outside, and sang with the congregation from the
+psalm-book: round about on the monuments, which are almost all of
+cast-iron, there sat mothers suckling their infants--the fountain of
+life flowed over death and the grave. A young peasant stood and read
+the inscription on a grave:
+
+    "Ach hur soedt al hafve lefvet,
+     Ach hur skjoeut al kunne doee!"[S]
+
+[Footnote S: "How sweet to live--how beautiful to die!"]
+
+Beautiful Christian, scriptural language, verses certainly taken from
+the psalm-book, were read on the graves; they were all read, for the
+service lasted several hours. This, however, can never be good for
+devotion.
+
+The crowd at length streamed from the church; the fiery-red and
+grass-green aprons glittered; but the mass of human beings became
+thicker, and closer, and pressed forward. The white head-dresses, the
+white band over the forehead, and the white sleeves, were the
+prevailing colours--it looked like a long procession in Catholic
+countries. There was again life and motion on the road; the
+over-filled boats again rowed away; one waggon drove off after the
+other; but yet there were people left behind. Married and unmarried
+men stood in groups in the broad street of Lacksand, from the church
+up to the inn. I was staying there, and I must acknowledge that my
+Danish tongue sounded quite foreign to them all. I then tried the
+Swedish, and the girl at the inn assured me that she understood me
+better than she had understood the Frenchman, who the year before had
+spoken French to her.
+
+As I sit in my room, my hostess's grand-daughter, a nice little child,
+comes in, and is pleased to see my parti-coloured carpet-bag, my
+Scotch plaid, and the red leather lining of the portmanteau. I
+directly cut out for her, from a sheet of white paper, a Turkish
+mosque, with minarets and open windows, and away she runs with it--so
+happy, so happy!
+
+Shortly after, I heard much loud talking in the yard, and I had a
+presentiment that it was concerning what I had cut out; I therefore
+stepped softly out into the balcony, and saw the grandmother standing
+below, and with beaming face, holding my clipped-out paper at arm's
+length. A whole crowd of Dalecarlians, men and women, stood around,
+all in artistic ecstacy over my work; but the little girl--the sweet
+little child--screamed, and stretched out her hands after her lawful
+property, which she was not permitted to keep, as it was too fine.
+
+I sneaked in again, yet, of course, highly flattered and cheered; but
+a moment after there was a knocking at my door: it was the
+grandmother, my hostess, who came with a whole plate full of
+spice-nuts.
+
+"I bake the best in all Dalecarlia," said she; "but they are of the
+old fashion, from my grandmother's time. You cut out so well, Sir,
+should you not be able to cut me out some new fashions?"
+
+And I sat the whole of Midsummer night, and clipped fashions for
+spice-nuts. Nutcrackers with knights' boots, windmills which were both
+mill and miller--but in slippers, and with the door in the
+stomach--and ballet-dancers that pointed with one leg towards the
+seven stars. Grandmother got them, but she turned the ballet-dancers
+up and down; the legs went too high for her; she thought that they had
+one leg and three arms.
+
+"They will be new fashions," said she; "but they are difficult."
+
+
+
+
+FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Truth can never be at variance with truth, science can never militate
+against faith: we naturally speak of them both in their purity: they
+respond to and they strengthen man's most glorious thought:
+_immortality_. And yet you may say, "I was more peaceful, I was safer
+when, as a child, I closed my eyes on my mother's breast and slept
+without thought or care, wrapping myself up simply in faith." This
+prescience, this compound of understanding in everything, this
+entering of the one link into the other from eternity to eternity,
+tears away from me a support--my confidence in prayer; that which is,
+as it were, the wings wherewith to fly to my God! If it be loosened,
+then I fall powerless in the dust, without consolation or hope.
+
+I bend my energies, it is true, towards attaining the great and
+glorious light of knowledge, but it appears to me that therein is
+human arrogance: it is, as one should say, "I will be as wise as God."
+"That you shall be!" said the serpent to our first parents when it
+would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my
+understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer
+teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in
+the whole creation of the world--in the great and in the small, where
+the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an
+endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and
+sorrow. What can my prayer change, where everything is law, from
+eternity to eternity?
+
+You tremble as you see the Almighty, who reveals Himself in all
+loving-kindness--that Creator, according to man's expression, whose
+understanding and heart are one--you tremble when you know that he has
+elected you to immortality.
+
+I know it in the faith, in the holy, eternal words of the Bible.
+Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that
+which breaks it.
+
+Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in
+the name of knowledge--_immortality_. Hear it! the beautiful also
+bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and
+knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the
+wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws
+of love, as you believe in the laws of sense.
+
+When the child gathers flowers in the fields and brings us the whole
+handful, where one is erect and the other hangs the head, thrown as it
+were among one another, then it is that we see the beauty in every one
+by itself--that harmony in colour and in form, which pleases our eye
+so well. We arrange them instinctively, and every single beauty is
+blended together in one entire beauteous group. We do not look at the
+flower, but on the whole bouquet. The beauty of harmony is an instinct
+in us; it lies in our eyes and in our ears, those bridges between our
+soul and the creation around us--in all our senses there is such a
+divine, such an entire and perfect stream in our whole being, a
+striving after the harmonious, as it shows itself in all created
+things, even in the pulsations of the air, made visible in Chladni's
+figures.
+
+In the Bible we find the expression: "God in spirit and in
+truth,"--and hence we most significantly find an expression for the
+admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is
+this revelation of God but spirit and truth? And just as our own soul
+shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does
+the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth. There is
+harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large,
+swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in
+the firmamental space--as far as the eye sees, as far as science
+ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.
+
+But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest
+expression; "created in God's image," man, who is able to comprehend
+and admit in himself all God's creation, the harmony in the harmony
+then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as
+creatures we have equally "no right to demand;" yet how differently
+God has granted us abilities! some few so immensely great, others so
+mean! At our birth God places us in our homes and positions; and to
+how many of us are allotted the hardest struggles! We are placed
+_there_, introduced _there_--how many may not say justly: "It were
+better for me that I had never been born!"
+
+Human life, consequently--the highest here on the earth--does not come
+under the laws of harmonious beauty: it is inconceivable, it is an
+injustice, and thus cannot take place.
+
+The defect of harmony in life lies in this:--that we only see a small
+part thereof, namely, existence here on the earth: there must be a
+life to come--an immortality.
+
+That, the smallest flower preaches to us, as does all that is created
+in beauty and harmony.
+
+If our existence ceased with death here, then the most perfect work of
+God was not perfect; God was not justice and love, as everything in
+nature and revelation affirms; and if we be referred to the whole of
+mankind, as that wherein harmony will reveal itself, then our whole
+actions and endeavours are but as the labours of the coral-insect:
+mankind becomes but a monument of greatness to the Creator: he would
+then only have raised His _glory_, not shown His greatest _love_.
+Loving-kindness is not self-love.
+
+We are immortal! In this rich consciousness we are raised towards God,
+fundamentally sure, that whatever happens to us, is for our good. Our
+earthly eye is only able to reach to a certain boundary in space; our
+soul's eye also has but a limited scope; but beyond _that,_ the same
+laws of loving-kindness must reign, as here. The prescience of eternal
+omniscience cannot alarm us; we human beings can apprehend the notion
+thereof in ourselves. We know perfectly what development must take
+place in the different seasons of the year; the time for flowers and
+for fruits; what kinds will come forth and thrive; the time of
+maturity, when the storms must prevail, and when it is the rainy
+season. Thus must God, in an infinitely greater degree, have the same
+knowledge of the whole created globes of His universe, as of our earth
+and the human race here. He must know when that development, that
+flowering in the human race ordained by Himself, shall come to pass;
+when the powers of intellect, of full development, are to reign; and
+under these characters, come to a maturity of development, men will
+become mighty, driving wheels--every one be the eternal God's likeness
+indeed.
+
+History shows us these things: joint enters into joint, in the world
+of spirits, as well as in the materially created world; the eye of
+wisdom--the all-seeing eye--encompasses the whole! And should we then
+not be able, in our heart's distress, to pray to this Father with
+confidence--to pray as the Saviour prayed: "If it be possible, let
+this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."
+
+These last words we do not forget! and our prayer will be granted, if
+it be for our good; or if it be not, then let us, as the child here,
+that in its trouble comes to its earthly Father, and does not get its
+wish fulfilled, but is refreshed by mild words, and the affectionate
+language of reason, so that the eye weeps, which thereby mitigates
+sorrow, and the child's pain is soothed. This, will prayer also grant
+us: the eye will be filled with tears, but the heart will be full of
+consolation! And who has penetrated so deeply into the ways of the
+soul, that he dare deny that prayer is the wings that bear thee to
+that sphere of inspiration whence God will extend to thee the
+olive-branch of help and grace?
+
+By walking with open eyes in the path of knowledge, we see the glory
+of the Annunciation. The wisdom of generations is but a span on the
+high pillar of revelation, above which sits the Almighty; but this
+short span will grow through eternity, in faith and with faith.
+Knowledge is like a chemical test that pronounces the gold pure!
+
+
+
+
+IN THE FOREST
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind,
+and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn,
+which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for
+the Midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches
+of birch and the berries of the mountain-ash: the oat-cakes hang on
+long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head
+of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.
+
+The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely
+hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere,
+yet it is most flush in the forest--it extends for miles around. Our
+road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or
+the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking.
+Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into
+the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the
+air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and
+lime. It is an up and down hill road, always bending, and so, ever
+changing, but yet always forest scenery--the close, thick forest. We
+pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed
+night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.
+
+We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are
+to be seen: this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted--not a bird
+flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel
+springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our
+eye searchingly over the wood-grown mountain-side, which slopes so
+far, far forward; but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere
+does that blueish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are
+fellow-men.
+
+The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on
+them, fly off again, and dance, as though it were to qualify
+themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think: "Nothing
+is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing."
+They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that Time's
+horses always fly onward with us!
+
+How solitary it is here!--so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely
+alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the
+earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit
+stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold
+themselves--endless, inexhaustible, as he is--as the magnet which
+apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby.
+As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended
+solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas
+pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works
+of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel--for capricious
+fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of
+pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing
+Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the
+open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here
+to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade
+where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this
+stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a
+pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the
+North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?
+
+In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South,
+are _sagas_ of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards
+the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind;
+up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and
+acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we
+see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on
+the still waters. The forests, we perceive, continue to extend further
+towards the west and the north, and are more dense as we proceed: the
+carriage-roads cease, and one can only pursue one's way along the
+outskirts by the solitary path, and on horseback.
+
+The saga, from the time of the plague (A.D., 1350), here impresses
+itself on the mind, when the pestilence passed through the land, and
+transformed cultivated fields and towns--nay, whole parishes, into
+barren fields and wild forests. Deserted and forgotten, overgrown with
+moss, grass, and bushes, churches stood for years far in the forest;
+no one knew of their existence, until, in a later century, a huntsman
+lost himself here: his arrow rebounded from the green wall, the moss
+of which he loosened, and the church was found. The wood-cutter felled
+the trees for fuel; his axe struck against the overgrown wall, and it
+gave way to the blow; the fir-planks fell, and the church, from the
+time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright
+through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra
+and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came,
+sat there, and sang: "Many, many years shalt thou live!"
+
+Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts!
+Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the
+summer-time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go
+to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song
+springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the
+procession?--paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart laden high
+with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright
+copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother
+sits at the top of the load and holds her spinning-wheel, which
+completes the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries
+the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession
+moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown
+children: they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows'
+horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery, she goes the
+same quiet pace as the others and lashes the saucy flies with her
+tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is
+fuel enough here--the tree falls of itself from old age and lies and
+rots.
+
+But take especial care of the fire fear the fire-spirit in the forest
+desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile--he comes from the
+thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the
+thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled, the flames
+run from tree to tree--it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flame
+leaps to the tops of the trees--what a crackling and roaring, as if it
+were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall
+down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the
+fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The
+howling of the wolf and the bear, dos't thou know it? A calm,
+rainy-day, and the forest-plains themselves, alone are able to confine
+the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks
+and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the
+broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes
+worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is
+about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past
+them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore
+we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the
+peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and
+opened paths.
+
+The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a
+steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a
+distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh
+green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the
+blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at
+work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now
+laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and
+faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is
+delightful in the forest.
+
+
+
+
+FAHLUN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We made our way at length out of the forest, and saw a town before us
+enveloped in thick smoke, having a similar appearance to most of the
+English manufacturing towns, save that the smoke was greenish--it was
+the town Fahlun.
+
+The road now went downwards between large banks, formed by the dross
+deposited here from the smelting furnaces, and which looks like
+burnt-out hardened lava. No sprout or shrub was to be seen, not a
+blade of grass peeped forth by the way-side, not a bird flew past, but
+a strong sulphurous smell, as from among the craters in Solfatara,
+filled the air. The copper roof of the church shone with corrosive
+green.
+
+Long straight streets now appeared in view. It was as deathly still
+here as if sickness and disease had lain within these dark wooden
+houses, and frightened the inhabitants from coming abroad; yet
+sickness and disease come but to few here, for when the plague raged
+in Sweden, the rich and powerful of the land hastened to Fahlun, whose
+sulphureous air was the most healthy. An ochre-yellow water runs
+through the brook, between the houses; the smoke from the mines and
+smelting furnaces has imparted its tinge to them; it has even
+penetrated into the church, whose slender pillars are dark from the
+fumes of the copper. There chanced to come on a thunder-storm when we
+arrived, but its roaring and the lightning's flashes harmonized well
+with this town, which appears as if it were built on the edge of a
+crater.
+
+We went to see the copper mine which gives the whole district the name
+of "Stora Kopparberget," (the great copper mountain). According to the
+legend, its riches were discovered by two goats which were
+fighting--they struck the ground with their horns and some copper ore
+adhered to them.
+
+From the solitary red-ochre street we wandered over the great heaps of
+burnt-out dross and fragments of stone, accumulated to whole ramparts
+and hills. The fire shone from the smelting furnaces with green,
+yellow and red tongues of flame under a blue-green smoke; half-naked,
+black-smeared fellows threw out large glowing masses of fire, so that
+the sparks flew around and about:--one was reminded of Schiller's
+"Fridolin."
+
+The thick sulphureous smoke poured forth from the heaps of cleansed
+ore, under which the fire was in full activity, and the wind drove it
+across the road which we must pass. In smoke, and impregnated with
+smoke, stood building after building: three buildings had been
+strangely thrown, as it were, by one another: earth and stone-heaps,
+as if they were unfinished works of defence, extended around.
+Scaffolding, and long wooden bridges, had been erected there; large
+wheels turned round; long and heavy iron chains were in continual
+motion.
+
+We stood before an immense gulf, called "Stora Stoeten," (the great
+mine). It had formerly three entrances, but they fell in and now there
+is but one. This immense sunken gulf now appears like a vast valley:
+the many openings below, to the shafts of the mine, look, from above,
+like the sand-martin's dark nest-holes in the declivities of the
+shore: there were a few wooden huts down there. Some strangers in
+miners' dresses, with their guide, each carrying a lighted fir-torch,
+appeared at the bottom, and disappeared again in one of the dark
+holes. From within the dark wooden houses, in which great water-wheels
+turned, issued some of the workmen. They came from the dizzying
+gulf--from narrow, deep wells: they stood in their wooden shoes two
+and two, on the edge of the tun which, attached to heavy chains, is
+hoisted up, singing and swinging the tun on all sides: they came up
+merry enough. Habit makes one daring.
+
+They told us that, during the passage upwards, it often happened that
+one or another, from pure wantonness, stepped quite out of the tun,
+and sat himself between the loose stones on the projecting piece of
+rock, whilst they fired and blasted the rock below so that it shook
+again, and the stones about him thundered down. Should one expostulate
+with him on his fool-hardiness, he would answer with the usual
+witticism here: "I have never before killed myself."
+
+One descends into some of the shafts by a sort of machinery, which
+looks as if they had placed two iron ladders against each other, each
+having a rocking movement, so that by treading on the ascending-step
+on the one side and then on the other, which goes upwards, one
+gradually ascends, and by going on the downward sinking-step one gets
+by degrees to the bottom. They said it was very easy, only one must
+step boldly, so that the foot should not come between and get crushed;
+and then one must remember that there is no railing or balustrade
+here, and directly outside these stairs there is the deep abyss into
+which one may fall headlong. The deepest shaft has a perpendicular
+depth of more than a hundred and ninety fathoms, but for this there is
+no danger, they say, only one must not be dizzy, nor get alarmed. One
+of the workmen, who had come up, descended with a lighted pine-branch
+as a torch: the flame illumined the dark rocky wall, and by degrees
+became only a faint streak of light which soon vanished.
+
+We were told that a few days before, five or six schoolboys had
+unobserved stolen in here, and amused themselves by going from step to
+step on these machine-like rocking stairs, in pitchy darkness, but at
+last they knew not rightly which way to go, up or down, and had then
+begun to shout and scream lustily. They escaped luckily that bout.
+
+By one of the large openings, called "Fat Mads," there are rich copper
+mines, but which have not yet been worked. A building stands above it:
+it was at the bottom of this that they found, in the year 1719, the
+corpse of a young miner. It appeared as if he had fallen down that
+very day, so unchanged did the body seem--but no one knew him. An old
+woman then stepped forward and burst into tears: the deceased was her
+bridegroom, who had disappeared forty nine years ago. She stood there
+old and wrinkled; he was young as when they had met for the last time
+nearly half a century before.[T]
+
+[Footnote T: In another mine they found, in the year 1635, a corpse
+perfectly fresh, and almost with the appearance of one asleep; but
+his clothes, and the ancient copper coins found on him, bore witness
+that it was two hundred years since he had perished there.]
+
+We went to "The Plant House," as it is called, where the vitriolated
+liquid is crystallized to sulphate of copper. It grew up long sticks
+placed upright in the boiling water, resembling long pieces of
+grass-green sugar. The steam was pungent, and the air in here
+penetrated our tongues--it was just as if one had a corroded spoon in
+one's mouth. It was really a luxury to come out again, even into the
+rarefied copper smoke, under the open sky.
+
+Steaming, burnt-out, and herbless as the district is on this side of
+the town, it is just as refreshing, green, and fertile on the opposite
+side of Fahlun. Tall leafy trees grow close to the farthest houses.
+One is directly in the fresh pine and birch forests, thence to the
+lake and to the distant blueish mountain sides near Zaether.
+
+The people here can tell you and show you memorials of Engelbrekt and
+his Dalecarlians' deeds, and of Gustavus Vasa's adventurous
+wanderings. But we will remain here in this smoke-enveloped town, with
+the silent street's dark houses. It was almost midnight when we went
+out and came to the market-place. There was a wedding in one of the
+houses, and a great crowd of persons stood outside, the women nearest
+the house, the men a little further back. According to an old Swedish
+custom, they called for the bride and bridegroom to come forward, and
+they did so--they durst not do otherwise. Peasant girls, with candles
+in their hands, stood on each side; it was a perfect tableau: the
+bride with downcast eyes, the bridegroom smiling, and the young
+bridesmaids each with a laughing face. And the people shouted: "Now
+turn yourselves a little! now the back! now the face! the bridegroom
+quite round, the bride a little nearer!" And the bridal pair turned
+and turned--nor was criticism wanting. In this instance, however, it
+was to their praise and honour, but that is not always the case. It
+may be a painful and terrible hour for a newly-wedded pair: if they do
+not please the public, or if they have something to say against the
+match, or the persons themselves, they are then soon made to know what
+is thought of them. There is perhaps also heard some rude jest or
+another, accompanied by the laughter of the crowd. We were told, that
+even in Stockholm the same custom was observed among the lower classes
+until a few years ago, so that a bridal pair, who, in order to avoid
+this exposure, wanted to drive off, were stopped by the crowd, the
+carriage-door was opened on each side, and the whole public marched
+through the carriage. They would see the bride and bridegroom--that
+was their right.
+
+Here, in Fahlun, the exhibition was friendly; the bridal pair smiled,
+the bridesmaids also, and the assembled crowd laughed and shouted,
+hurra! In the rest of the market-place and the streets around, there
+was dead silence and solitude.
+
+The roseate hue of eve still shone: it passed, changed into that of
+morn--it was the Midsummer time.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THE STRAWS SAID.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the lake there glided a boat, and the party within it sang Swedish
+and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch,
+sat four young girls--so pretty--so sylph-like! and they each plucked
+up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two
+together, at the top and the bottom.
+
+"We shall now see if they will come together in a square," said the
+girls: "if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled,"
+and they bound them, and they thought.
+
+No one got to know the secret thought, the heart's silent wish of the
+others. But yet a little bird sings about it.
+
+The thoughts of one flew over sea and land, over the high mountains,
+where the mule finds its way in the mists, down to Mignon's beautiful
+land, where the old gods live in marble and painting. "Thither,
+thither! shall I ever get there?" That was the wish, that was the
+thought, and she opened her hand, looked at the bound straws, and they
+appeared only two and two bound together.
+
+And where were the second one's thoughts? also in foreign lands, in
+the gunpowder's smoke, amongst the glitter of arms and cannons, with
+him, the friend of her childhood, fighting for imperial power, against
+the Hungarian people. Will he return joyful and unharmed--return to
+Sweden's peaceful, well-constituted, happy land? The straws showed no
+square: a tear dwelt in the girl's eye.
+
+The third smiled: there was a sort of mischief in the smile. Will our
+aged bachelor and that old maiden-lady yonder, who now wander along so
+young, smile so young, and speak so youthfully to each other, not be a
+married couple before the cuckoo sings again next year? See--that is
+what I should like to know! and the smile played around the thinker's
+mouth, but she did not speak her thoughts. The straws were
+separated--consequently the bachelor and the old maid also. "It may,
+however, happen nevertheless," she certainly thought: it was apparent
+in the smile; it was obvious in the manner in which she threw the
+straws away.
+
+"There is nothing I would know--nothing that I am curious to know!"
+said the fourth; but yet she bound the straws together; for within her
+also there was a wish alive; but no bird has sung about it; no one
+guesses it.
+
+Rock thyself securely in the heart's lotus flower, thou shining
+humming-bird, thy' name shall not be pronounced: and besides the
+straws said as before--"without hope!"
+
+"Now you! now you!" cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the
+neighbouring land, from the green isle, that Gylfe ploughed from
+Sweden. "What dear thing do you wish shall happen, or not
+happen!--tell us the wish!"--"If the oracle speaks well for me," said
+he, "then I will tell you the silent wish and prayer, with which I
+bind these knots on the grass straw; but if I have no better success
+than you have had, I will then be silent!" and he bound straw to
+straw, and as he bound, he repeated: "it signifies nothing!" He now
+opened his hand, his eyes shone brighter, his heart beat faster. The
+straws formed a square! "It will happen, it will happen!" cried the
+young girls. "What did you wish for?" "That Denmark may soon gain an
+honourable peace!"
+
+"It will happen! it will happen!" said the young girls; "and when it
+happens, we will remember that the straws have told it before-hand."
+
+"I will keep these four straws, bound in a prophetic wreath for
+victory and peace!" said the stranger; "and if the oracle speaks
+truth, then I will draw the whole picture for you, as we sit here
+under the hanging birch by the lake, and look on Zaether's blue
+mountains, each of us binding straw to straw."
+
+A red mark was made in the almanack; it was the 6th of July, 1849. The
+same day a red page was written in Denmark's history. The Danish
+soldier made a red, victorious mark with his blood, at the battle of
+Fredericia.
+
+
+
+
+THE POET'S SYMBOL.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If a man would seek for the symbol of the poet, he need not look
+farther than "The Arabian Nights' Tales." Scherezade who interprets
+the stories for the Sultan--Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is
+the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will
+decapitate Scherezade.
+
+Powerful Sultan! Poor Scherezade!
+
+The Sultan-public sits in more than a thousand and one forms, and
+listens. Let us regard a few of these forms.
+
+There sits a sallow, peevish, scholar; the tree of his life bears
+leaves impressed with long and learned words: diligence and
+perseverance crawl like snails on the hog's leather bark: the moths
+have got into the inside--and that is bad, very bad! Pardon the rich
+fulness of the song, the inconsiderate enthusiasm, the fresh young,
+intellect. Do not behead Scherezade! But he beheads her out of hand,
+_sans_ remorse.
+
+There sits a dress-maker, a sempstress who has had some experience of
+the world. She comes from strange families, from a solitary chamber
+where she sat and gained a knowledge of mankind--she knows and loves
+the romantic. Pardon, Miss, if the story has not excitement enough for
+you, who have sat over the needle and the muslin, and having had so
+much of life's prose, gasp after romance.
+
+"Behead her!" says the dress-maker.
+
+There sits a figure in a dressing gown--this oriental dress of the
+North, for the lordly minion, the petty prince, the rich brewer's son,
+&c., &c., &c. It is not to be learned from the dressing gown, nor from
+that lordly look and the fine smile around the mouth, to what stem he
+belongs: his demands on Scherezade are just the same as the
+dress-maker's: he must be excited, he must be brought to shudder all
+down the vertebrae, through the very spine: he must be crammed with
+mysteries, such as those which Spriez knew how to connect and thicken.
+
+Scherezade is beheaded!
+
+Wise, enlightened Sultan! Thou comest in the form of a schoolboy; thou
+bearest the Romans and Greeks together in a satchel on thy back, as
+Atlas sustained the world. Do not cast an evil eye upon poor
+Scherezade; do not judge her before thou hast learned thy lesson, and
+art a child again,--do not behead Scherezade!
+
+Young, full-dressed diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the
+badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely
+master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French,
+that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one
+strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the
+brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled in the sweet,
+absolving _charmant_!
+
+Mighty annihilator and elevator!--the newspapers' Zeus--thou weekly,
+monthly, and daily journals' Jupiter, shake not thy locks in anger!
+Cast not thy lightnings forth, if Scherezade sing otherwise than thou
+art accustomed to in thy family, or if she go without a _suite_ of
+thine own clique. Do not behead her!
+
+We will see one figure more--the most dangerous of them all; he with
+the praise on his lips, like that of the stormy river's swell--the
+blind enthusiast. The water in which Scherezade dipped her fingers, is
+for him a fountain of Castalia; the throne he erects to her apotheosis
+becomes her scaffold.
+
+This is the poet's symbol--paint it:
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+But why none of the worthier figures--the candid, the honest, and the
+beautiful? They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye.
+Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the
+stars, and sings of the harmony there above, and here beneath, in
+man's heart.
+
+_That_ will not clearly show the symbol:
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+The sword of death hangs over her head whilst she relates--and the
+Sultan-figure bids us expect that it will fall. Scherezade is the
+victor: the poet is, like her, also a victor. He is rich,
+victorious--even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours.
+There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after
+bubble sparkles on the magic stream. The heavens shine with shooting
+stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away.
+The world does not know it, for it is the poet's own creation, richer
+than the king's costly illuminations. He is happy, as Scherezade is;
+he is victorious, he is mighty. _Imagination_ adorns his walls with
+tapestry, such as no land's ruler owns; _feeling_ makes the beauteous
+chords sound to him from the human breast; _understanding_ raises him,
+through the magnificence of creation, up to God, without his
+forgetting that he stands fast on the firm earth. He is mighty, he is
+happy, as few are. We will not place him in the stocks of
+misconstruction, for pity and lamentation; we merely paint his symbol,
+dip into the colours on the world's least attractive side, and obtain
+it most comprehensibly from
+
+    "THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE."
+
+See--that is it! Do not behead Scherezade!
+
+
+
+
+THE DAL-ELV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Homer sang there were heroes; but they are not known; no poet
+celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature, they
+must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought
+before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for
+what they are, and then they may be said first to exist. The elvs of
+the north have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in
+unknown beauty. The world's great highroad does take this direction;
+no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of
+the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable.
+Schubert is as yet the only stranger who has written about the wild
+magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its
+greatness.
+
+Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless
+windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes
+extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending
+trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and
+sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.
+
+Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between
+Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become
+confluent and have one bed above Balstad. They have taken up rivers
+and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial
+riches to be found; the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand,
+smilingly pastoral--idyllic: one is drawn onward up to the very source
+of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut: one feels a desire
+to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.
+
+The first mighty fall, Njupeskoers cataract, is seen by the Norwegian
+frontier in Sernasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from
+the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.
+
+We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within
+itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters
+over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic
+porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.
+
+We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees
+the water-sprite swim, like the sea-horse with a mane of green
+sea-weed, and where the aerial images present visions of witchcraft in
+the warm summer days.
+
+We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake, under the weeping willows of
+the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along
+slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over
+the rapid current under Balstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv
+widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as
+large and extended as if it were in North America.
+
+We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay
+declivities: the yellow water falls like fluid amber in picturesque
+cataracts before the copper-works, where rainbow-coloured tongues of
+fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blows on the copper
+plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall.
+
+And now, as a concluding passage of splendour in the life of the
+Dal-elvs, before they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic, is
+the view of Elvkarleby Fall. Schubert compares it with the fall of
+Schafhausen; but we must remember, that the Rhine there has not such a
+mass of water as that which rushes down Elvkarleby.
+
+Two and a half Swedish miles from Gefle, where the high road to Upsala
+goes over the Dal-elv, we see from the walled bridge, which we pass
+over, the whole of that immense fall. Close up to the bridge, there is
+a house where the bridge toll is paid. There the stranger can pass the
+night, and from his little window look over the falling waters, see
+them in the clear moonlight, when darkness has laid itself to rest
+within the thicket of oaks and firs, and all the effect of light is in
+those foaming, flowing waters, and see them when the morning sun
+stretches his rainbow in the trembling spray, like an airy bridge of
+colours, from the shore to the wood-grown rock in the centre of the
+cataract.
+
+We came hither from Gefle, and saw at a great distance on the way, the
+blue clouds from the broken, rising spray, ascend above the dark-green
+tops of the trees. The carriage stopped near the bridge; we stepped
+out, and close before us fell the whole redundant elv.
+
+The painter cannot give us the true, living image of a waterfall on
+canvas--the movement is wanting; how can one describe it in words,
+delineate this majestic grandeur, brilliancy of colour, and arrowy
+flight? One cannot do it; one may however attempt it; get together, by
+little and little, with words, an outline of that mirrored image which
+our eye gave us, and which even the strongest remembrance can only
+retain--if not vaguely, dubiously.
+
+The Dal-elv divides itself into three branches above the fall: the two
+enclose a wood-grown rocky island, and rush down round its smooth-worn
+stony wall. The one to the right of these two falls is the finer; the
+third branch makes a circuit, and comes again to the main stream,
+close outside the united fall; here it dashes out as if to meet or
+stop the others, and is now hurried along in boiling eddies with the
+arrowy stream, which rushes on foaming against the walled pillars that
+bear the bridge, as if it would tear them away along with it.
+
+The landscape to the left was enlivened by a herd of goats, that were
+browsing amongst the hazel bushes. They ventured quite out to the very
+edge of the declivity, as they were bred here and accustomed to the
+hollow, thundering rumble of the water. To the right, a flock of
+screaming birds flew over the magnificent oaks. Cars, each with one
+horse, and with the driver standing upright in it, the reins in his
+hand, came on the broad forest road from Oens Brueck.
+
+Thither we will go in order to take leave of the Dal-elv at one of the
+most delightful of places, which vividly removes the stranger, as it
+were, into a far more southern land, into a far richer nature, than he
+supposed was to be found here. The road is so pretty--the oak grows
+here so strong and vigorously with mighty crowns of rich foliage.
+
+Oens Brueck lies in a delightfully pastoral situation. We came thither;
+here was life and bustle indeed! The mill-wheels went round; large
+beams were sawn through; the iron forged on the anvil, and all by
+water-power. The houses of the workmen form a whole town: it is a long
+street with red-painted wooden houses, under picturesque oaks, and
+birch trees. The greensward was as soft as velvet to look at, and up
+at the manor-house, which rises in front of the garden like a little
+palace, there was, in the rooms and saloon, everything that the
+English call comfort.
+
+We did not find the host at home; but hospitality is always the
+house-fairy here. We had everything good and homely. Fish and wild
+fowl were placed before us, steaming and fragrant, and almost as
+quickly as in beautiful enchanted palaces. The garden itself was a
+piece of enchantment. Here stood three transplanted beech-trees, and
+they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the
+wild chesnut-trees of the avenue in a singular manner: they looked as
+if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden-yellow oranges
+hung in the conservatory; the splendid southern exotics had to-day got
+the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh,
+warm, sunny air of the northern summer.
+
+That branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with
+small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in
+Scandinavian splendour. There are small islands with green, silent
+groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brackens,
+variegated bell-flowers, and cowslips--no Turkey carpet has fresher
+colours. The stream between these islands and holms is sometimes
+rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with
+silky-green rushes, water-lilies, and brown-feathered reeds; sometimes
+it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a
+large, still mill-dam.
+
+Here is a landscape in Midsummer for the games of the river-sprites,
+and the dancers of the elves and fairies! Here, in the lustre of the
+full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprite seize the
+golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one
+single night like this.
+
+On the other side of Oens Brueck is the main stream--the full Dal-elv.
+Do you hear the monotonous rumble? it is not from Elvkarleby Fall that
+it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa-Foss, in which lies
+Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.
+
+Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the
+red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the
+Dal-elv.
+
+Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills
+yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into
+the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic--thy
+eternity.
+
+
+
+
+DANEMORA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reader, do you know what giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize
+you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the
+land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into
+the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep
+declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must
+creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward. She
+sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his
+swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the
+nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and
+it sways under him--the walls vanish from him.
+
+Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the
+air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.
+
+We met with her at Danemora's immense gulf, whither we came on broad,
+smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest. She sat on the
+extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun
+with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large
+beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.
+
+The traveller raised his foot over the abyss, and set it on the tun,
+into which one of the workmen received him, and held him; and the
+chains rattled; the pulleys turned; the tun sank slowly, hovering
+through the air. But he felt the descent; he felt it through his bones
+and marrow; through all the nerves. Her icy breath blew in his neck,
+and down the spine, and the air itself became colder and colder. It
+seemed to him as if the rocks grew over his head, always higher and
+higher: the tun made a slight swinging, but he felt it, like a fall--a
+fall in sleep, that shock in the blood. Did it go quicker downwards,
+or was it going up again? He could not distinguish by the sensation.
+
+The tun touched the ground, or rather the snow--the dirty trodden,
+eternal snow, down to which no sunbeam reaches, which no summer warmth
+from above ever melts. A hollow sound was heard from within the dark,
+yawning cavern, and a thick vapour rolled out into the cold air. The
+stranger entered the dark halls; there seemed to be a crashing above
+him: the fire burned; the furnaces roared; the beating of hammers
+sounded; the watery damps dripped down--and he again entered the tun,
+which was hoven up in the air. He sat with closed eyes, but giddiness
+breathed on his head, and on his breast; his inwardly-turned eye
+measured the giddy depth through the tun: "It is appalling," said he.
+
+"Appalling!" echoed the brave and estimable stranger, whom we met at
+Danemora's great gulf. He was a man from Scania, consequently from the
+same street as the Sealander--if the Sound be called a street
+(strait). "But, however, one can say one has been down there," said
+he, and he pointed to the gulf; "right down, and up again; but it is
+no pleasure at all."
+
+"But why descend at all?" said I. "Why will men do these things?"
+
+"One must, you know, when one comes here," said he. "The plague of
+travelling is, that one must see everything: one would not have it
+supposed otherwise. It is a shame to a man, when he gets home again,
+not to have seen everything, that others ask him about."
+
+"If you have no desire, then let it alone. See what pleases you on
+your travels. Go two paces nearer than where you stand, and become
+quite giddy: you will then have formed some conception of the passage
+downward. I will hold you fast, and describe the rest of it for you."
+And I did so, and the perspiration sprang from his forehead.
+
+"Yes, so it is: I apprehend it all," said he: "I am clearly sensible
+of it."
+
+I described the dirty grey snow covering, which the sun's warmth never
+thaws; the cold down there, and the caverns, and the fire, and the
+workmen, &c.
+
+"Yes; one should be able to tell all about it," said he. "That _you_
+can, for you have seen it."
+
+"No more than you," said I. "I came to the gulf; I saw the depth, the
+snow below, the smoke that rolled out of the caverns; but when it was
+time I should get into the tun--no, thank you. Giddiness tickled me
+with her long, awl-like legs, and so I stayed where I was I have felt
+the descent, through the spine and the soles of the feet, and that as
+well as any one: the descent is the pinch. I have been in the Hartz,
+under Rammelsberg; glided, as on Russian mountains, at Hallein,
+through the mountain, from the top down to the salt-works; wandered
+about in the catacombs of Rome and Malta: and what does one see in the
+deep passages? Gloom--darkness! What does one feel? Cold, and a sense
+of oppression--a longing for air and light, which is by far the best;
+and that we have now."
+
+"But nevertheless, it is so very remarkable!" said the man; and he
+drew forth his "Hand-book for Travellers in Sweden," from which he
+read: "Danemora's iron-works are the oldest, largest, and richest in
+Sweden; the best in Europe. They have seventy-nine openings, of which
+seventeen only are being worked. The machine mine is ninety-three
+fathoms deep."
+
+Just then the bells sounded from below: it was the signal that the
+time of labour for that day was ended. The hue of eve still shone on
+the tops of the trees above; but down in that deep, far-extended gulf,
+it was a perfect twilight. Thence, and out of the dark caverns, the
+workmen swarmed forth. They looked like flies, quite small in the
+space below: they scrambled up the long ladders, which hung from the
+steep sides of the rocks, in separate landing-places: they climbed
+higher and higher--upwards, upwards--and at every step they became
+larger. The iron chains creaked in the scaffolding of beams, and three
+or four young fellows stood in their wooden shoes on the edge of the
+tun; chatted away right merrily, and kicked with their feet against
+the side of the rock, so that they swung from it: and it became darker
+and darker below; it was as if the deep abyss became still deeper!
+
+"It is appalling!" said the man from Scania. "One ought, however, to
+have gone down there, if it were only to swear that one _had_ been.
+You, however, have certainly been down there," said he again to me.
+
+"Believe what you will," I replied; and I say the same to the reader.
+
+
+
+
+THE SWINE.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That capital fellow, Charles Dickens, has told us about the swine, and
+since then it puts us into a good humour whenever we hear even the
+grunt of one. Saint Anthony has taken them under his patronage, and if
+we think of the "prodigal son," we are at once in the midst of the
+sty, and it was just before such a one that our carriage stopped in
+Sweden. By the high road, closely adjoining his house, the peasant had
+his sty, and that such a one as there is probably scarcely its like in
+the world. It was an old state-carriage, the seats were taken out of
+it, the wheels taken off, and thus it stood, without further ceremony,
+on its own bottom, and four swine were shut in there. If these were
+the first that had been in it one could not determine; but that it was
+once a state-carriage everything about it bore witness, even to the
+strip of morocco that hung from the roof inside, all bore witness of
+better days. It is true, every word of it.
+
+"Uff," said the occupiers within, and the carriage creaked and
+complained--it was a sorrowful end it had come to.
+
+"The beautiful is past!" so it sighed; so it said, or it might have
+said so.
+
+We returned here in the autumn. The carriage, or rather the body of
+the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they
+were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind
+tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor
+quiet: the birds of passage were gone.
+
+"The beautiful is past!" said the carriage, and the same sigh passed
+through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: "The
+beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm
+sunshine, and the song of birds--past! past!" So it said, and so it
+creaked in the trunks of the tall trees, and there was heard a sigh,
+so inwardly deep, a sigh direct from the heart of the wild rose-bush,
+and he who sat there was the rose-king. Do you know him! he is of a
+pure breed, the finest red-green breed: he is easily known. Go to the
+wild rose hedges, and in autumn, when all the flowers are gone, and
+the red hips alone remain, one often sees amongst these a large
+red-green moss-flower: that is the rose-king. A little green leaf
+grows out of his head--that is his feather: he is the only male person
+of his kind on the rose-bush, and he it was who sighed.
+
+"Past! past! the beautiful is past! The roses are gone; the leaves of
+the trees fall off!--it is wet here, and it is cold and raw!--The
+birds that sang here are now silent; the swine live on acorns; the
+swine are lords in the forest!"
+
+They were cold nights, they were gloomy days; but the raven sat on the
+bough and croaked nevertheless: "brah, brah!" The raven and the crow
+sat on the topmost bough: they have a large family, and they all said:
+"brah, brah! caw, caw!" and the majority is always right.
+
+There was a great miry pool under the tall trees in the hollow, and
+here lay the whole herd of swine, great and small--they found the
+place so excellent. "Oui! oui!" said they, for they knew no more
+French, but that, however, was something. They were so wise, and so
+fat, and altogether lords in the forest.
+
+The old ones lay still, for they thought; the young ones, on the
+contrary, were so brisk--busy, but apparently uneasy. One little pig
+had a curly tail--that curl was the mother's delight. She thought that
+they all looked at the curl, and thought only of the curl; but that
+they did not. They thought of themselves, and of what was useful, and
+of what the forest was for. They had always heard that the acorns they
+ate grew on the roots of the trees, and therefore they had always
+rooted there; but now there came a little one--for it is always the
+young ones that come with news--and he asserted that the acorns fell
+down from the branches: he himself had felt one fall right on his
+head, and that had given him the idea, so he had made observations,
+and now he was quite sure of what he asserted. The old ones laid their
+heads together. "Uff," said the swine, "uff! the finery is past! the
+twittering of the birds is past! we will have fruit! whatever can be
+eaten is good, and we eat everything!"
+
+"Oui! oui!" said they altogether.
+
+But the mother sow looked at her little pig with the curly tail.
+
+"One must not, however, forget the beautiful!" said she.
+
+"Caw! caw!" screamed the crow, and flew down, in order to be appointed
+nightingale: one there should be--and so the crow was directly
+appointed.
+
+"Past! past!" sighed the Rose King, "all the beautiful is past!"
+
+It was wet; it was gloomy; there was cold and wind, and the rain
+pelted down over the fields, and through the forest, like long water
+jets. Where are the birds that sang? where are the flowers in the
+meadows, and the sweet berries in the wood?--past! past!
+
+A light shone from the forester's house: it twinkled like a star, and
+shed its long rays out between the trees. A song was heard from
+within; pretty children played around their old grandfather, who sat
+with the Bible on his lap and read about God, and eternal life, and
+spoke of the spring that would come again: he spoke of the forest that
+would renew its green leaves, of the roses that would flower, of the
+nightingales that would sing, and of the beautiful that would again be
+paramount.
+
+But the Rose King did not hear it; he sat in the raw, cold weather,
+and sighed:
+
+"Past! past!"
+
+And the swine were lords in the forest, and the mother sow looked at
+her little pig, and his curly tail.
+
+"There will always be some, who have a sense for the beautiful!" said
+the mother sow.
+
+
+
+
+POETRY'S CALIFORNIA.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nature's treasures are most often unveiled to us by accident. A dog's
+nose was dyed by the bruised purple fish, and the genuine purple dye
+was discovered; a pair of wild buffalos were fighting on America's
+auriferous soil, and their horns tore up the green sward that covered
+the rich gold vein.
+
+"In former days," as it is said by most, "everything came
+spontaneously. Our age has not such revelations; now one must slave
+and drudge if one would get anything; one must dig down into the deep
+shafts after the metals, which decrease more and more;--when the earth
+suddenly stretches forth her golden finger from California's
+peninsula, and we there see Monte Christo's foolishly invented riches
+realized; we see Aladdin's cave with its inestimable treasures. The
+world's treasury is so endlessly rich that we have, to speak plain and
+straightforward, scraped a little off the up-heaped measure; but the
+bushel is still full, the whole of the real measure is now refilled.
+In science also, such a world lies open for the discoveries of the
+human mind!
+
+"But in poetry, the greatest and most glorious is already found, and
+gained!" says the poet. "Happy he who was born in former times; there
+was then many a land still undiscovered, on which poetry's rich gold
+lay like the ore that shines forth from the earth's surface."
+
+Do not speak so! happy poet thou, who art born in our time! thou dost
+inherit all the glorious treasures which thy predecessors gave to the
+world; thou dost learn from them, that truth only is eternal,--the
+true in nature and mankind.
+
+Our time is the time of discoveries--poetry also has its new
+California.
+
+"Where does it exist?" you ask.
+
+The coast is so near, that you do not think that _there_ is the new
+world. Like a bold Leander, swim with me across the stream: the black
+words on the white paper will waft you--every period is a heave of the
+waves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in the library's saloon. Book-shelves with many books, old and
+new, were ranged around for every one; manuscripts lay there in heaps;
+there were also maps and globes. There sat industrious men at little
+tables, and wrote out and wrote in, and that was no easy work. But
+suddenly, a great transformation took place; the shelves became
+terraces for the noblest trees, with flowers and fruit; heavy clusters
+of grapes hung amongst leafy vines, and there was life and movement
+all around.
+
+The old folios and dusty manuscripts rose into flower-covered tumuli,
+and there sprang forth knights in mail, and kings with golden crowns
+on, and there was the clang of harp and shield; history acquired the
+life and fullness of poetry--for a poet had entered there. He saw the
+living visions; breathed the flowers' fragrance; crushed the grapes,
+and drank the sacred juice. But he himself knew not yet that he was a
+poet--the bearer of-light for times and generations yet to come.
+
+It was in the fresh, fragrant forest, in the last hour of
+leave-taking. Love's kiss, as the farewell, was the initiatory baptism
+for the future poetic life; and the fresh fragrance of the forest
+became sweeter, the chirping of the birds more melodious: there came
+sunlight and cooling breezes. Nature becomes doubly delightful where a
+poet walks.
+
+And as there were two roads before Hercules, so there were before him
+two roads, shown by two figures, in order to serve him; the one an old
+crone, the other a youth, beautiful as the angel that led the young
+Tobias.
+
+The old crone had on a mantle, on which were wrought flowers, animals,
+and human beings, entwined in an arabesque manner. She had large
+spectacles on, and beside her lantern she held a bag filled with old
+gilt cards--apparatus for witchcraft, and all the amulets of
+superstition: leaning on her crutch, wrinkled and shivering, she was,
+however, soaring, like the mist over the meadow.
+
+"Come with me, and you shall see the world, so that a poet can have
+benefit from it," said she. "I will light my lantern; it is better
+than that which Diogenes bore; I shall lighten your path."
+
+And the light shone; the old crone lifted her head, and stood there
+strong and tall, a powerful female figure. She was Superstition.
+
+"I am the strongest in the region of romance," said she,--and she
+herself believed it.
+
+And the lantern's light gave the lustre of the full moon over the
+whole earth; yes, the earth itself became transparent, as the still
+waters of the deep sea, or the glass mountains, in the fairy tale.
+
+"My kingdom is thine! sing what thou see'st; sing as if no bard before
+thee had sung thereof."
+
+And it was as if the scene continually changed. Splendid Gothic
+churches, with painted images in the panes, glided past, and the
+midnight-bell struck, and the dead arose from the graves. There, under
+the bending elder tree, sat the mother, and swathed her newly-born
+child; old, sunken knights' castles rose again from the marshy ground;
+the drawbridge fell, and they saw into the empty halls, adorned with
+images, where, under the gloomy stairs of the gallery, the
+death-proclaiming white woman came with a rattling bunch of keys. The
+basilisk brooded in the deep cellar; the monster bred from a cock's
+egg, invulnerable by every weapon, but not from the sight of its own
+horrible form: at the sight of its own image, it bursts like the steel
+that one breaks with the blow of a stout staff. And to everything that
+appeared, from the golden chalice of the altar-table, once the
+drinking-cup of evil spirits, to the nodding head on the gallows-hill,
+the old crone hummed her songs; and the crickets chirped, and the
+raven croaked from the opposite neighbour's house, and the
+winding-sheet rolled from the candle. Through the whole spectral world
+sounded, "death! death!"
+
+"Go with me to life and truth," cried the second form, the youth who
+was beautiful as a cherub. A flame shone from his brow--a cherub's
+sword glittered in his hand. "I am _Knowledge_," said he: "my world is
+greater--its aim is truth."
+
+And there was a brightness all around; the spectral images paled; it
+did not extend over the world they had seen. Superstition's lantern
+had only exhibited _magic-lantern_ images on the old ruined wall, and
+the wind had driven wet misty vapours past in figures.
+
+"I will give thee a rich recompense. Truth in the created--truth in
+God!"
+
+And through the stagnant lake, where before the misty spectral figures
+rose, whilst the bells sounded from the sunken castle, the light fell
+down on a swaying vegetable world. One drop of the marsh water, raised
+against the rays of light, became a living world, with creatures in
+strange forms, fighting and revelling--a world in a drop of water. And
+the sharp sword of Knowledge cleft the deep vault, and shone therein,
+where the basilisk killed, and the animal's body was dissolved in a
+death-bringing vapour: its claw extended from the fermenting
+wine-cask; its eyes were air, that burnt when the fresh wind touched
+it.
+
+And there resided a powerful force in the sword; _so_ powerful, that
+the grain of gold was beaten to a flat surface, thin as the covering
+of mist that we breathe on the glass-pane; and it shone at the sword's
+point, so that the thin threads of the cobweb seemed to swell to
+cables, for one saw the strong twistings of numberless small threads.
+And the voice of Knowledge seemed over the whole world, so that the
+age of miracles appeared to have returned. Thin iron ties were laid
+over the earth, and along these the heavily-laden waggons flew on the
+wings of steam, with the swallow's flight; mountains were compelled to
+open themselves to the inquiring spirit of the age; the plains were
+obliged to raise themselves; and then thought was borne in words,
+through metal wires, with the lightning's speed, to distant towns.
+"Life! life!" it sounded through the whole of nature. "It is our time!
+Poet, thou dost possess it! Sing of it in spirit and in truth!"
+
+And the genius of Knowledge raised the shining sword; he raised it far
+out into space, and then--what a sight! It was as when the sunbeams
+shine through a crevice in the wall in a dark space, and appear to us
+a revolving column of myriads of grains of dust; but every grain of
+dust here was a world! The sight he saw was our starry firmament!
+
+Thy earth is a grain of dust here, but a speck whose wonders astonish
+thee; only a grain of dust, and yet a star under stars. That long
+column of worlds thou callest thy starry firmament, revolves like the
+myriads of grains of dust, visibly hovering in the sunbeam's revolving
+column, from the crevice in the wall into that dark space. But still
+more distant stands the milky way's whitish mist, a new starry heaven,
+each column but a radius in the wheel! But how great is this itself!
+how many radii thus go out from the central point--God!
+
+So far does thine eye reach, so clear is thine age's horizon! Son of
+time, choose, who shall be thy companion? Here is thy new career! with
+the greatest of thy time, fly thou before thy time's generation! Like
+twinkling Lucifer, shine thou in time's roseate morn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yes, in knowledge lies Poetry's California! Every one who only looks
+backward, and not clearly forward, will, however high and honourably
+he stands, say, that if such riches lie in knowledge, they would long
+since have been made available by great and immortal bards, who had a
+clear and sagacious eye for the discovery of truth. But let us
+remember that when Thespis spoke from his car, the world had also wise
+men. Homer had sung his immortal songs, and yet a new form of genius
+appeared, to which a Sophocles and Aristophanes gave birth; the Sagas
+and mythology of the North were as an unknown treasure to the stage,
+until Oehlenschlaeger showed what mighty forms from thence might be
+made to glide past us.
+
+It is not our intention that the poet shall versify scientific
+discoveries. The didactic poem is and will be, in its best form,
+always but a piece of mechanism, or wooden figure, which has not the
+true life. The sunlight of science must penetrate the poet; he must
+perceive truth and harmony in the minute and in the immensely great
+with a clear eye: it must purify and enrich the understanding and
+imagination, and show him new forms which will supply to him more
+animated words. Even single discoveries will furnish a new flight.
+What fairy tales cannot the world unfold under the microscope, if we
+transfer our human world thereto? Electro-magnetism can present or
+suggest new plots in new comedies and romances; and how many humorous
+compositions will not spring forth, as we from our grain of dust, our
+little earth, with its little haughty beings look out into that
+endless world's universe, from milky way to milky way? An instance of
+what we here mean is discoverable in that old noble lady's words: "If
+every star be a globe like our earth, and have its kingdoms and
+courts--what an endless number of courts--the contemplation is enough
+to make mankind giddy!"
+
+We will not say, like that French authoress: "Now, then, let me die:
+the world has no more discoveries to make!" O, there is so endlessly
+much in the sea, in the air, and on the earth--wonders, which science
+will bring forth!--wonders, greater than the poet's philosophy can
+create! A bard will come, who, with a child's mind, like a new
+Aladdin, will enter into the cavern of science,--with a child's mind,
+we say, or else the puissant spirits of natural strength would seize
+him, and make him their servant; whilst he, with the lamp of poetry,
+which is, and always will be, the human heart, stands as a ruler, and
+brings forth wonderful fruits from the gloomy passages, and has
+strength to build poetry's new palace, created in one night by
+attendant spirits.
+
+In the world itself events repeat themselves; the human character was
+and will be the same during long ages and all ages; and as they were
+in the old writings, they must be in the new. But science always
+unfolds something new; light and truth are everything that is
+created--beam out from hence with eternally divine clearness. Mighty
+image of God, do thou illumine and enlighten mankind; and when its
+intellectual eye is accustomed to the lustre, the new Aladdin will
+come, and thou, man, shalt with him, who concisely dear, and richly
+sings the beauty of truth, wander through Poetry's California.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pictures of Sweden, by Hans Christian Andersen
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