Chapter II: Part 2

The evening of leaving Zaandam we spent at Utrecht, of which the name is so well known from the peace which terminated the war of the Spanish succession, April 11, 1715. The town, long the seat of an ecclesiastical court, was also the great centre of the Jansenists, dissenters from Roman Catholicism under Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, condemned by Alexander VII. in 1656, at the instigation of the Jesuits. The doctrines of Jansenius still linger in its gloomy houses. Every appointment of a bishop is still announced to the Sovereign Pontiff, who as regularly responds by a bull of excommunication, which is read aloud in the cathedral, and then immediately put away and forgotten. Solemn and sad, but pre-eminently respectable, Utrecht has more the aspect of a decayed German city than a Dutch town, and so has its Cathedral of S. Martin (1254-67), which, though the finest Gothic building in Holland, is only a magnificent fragment, with a detached tower (1321-82) 338 feet high. The interior as usual is ruined by Calvinism and yellow paint. It contains the tomb of Admiral van Gent, who fell in the battle of Solbay. The nave, which fell in 1674, has never been rebuilt. The S. Pieterskerk (1039) and S. Janskerk offer nothing remarkable, but on a neighbouring canal is the quaint Paushuizen, or Pope's house, which was built by Pope Adrian VI. (Adrian Floriszoom) in 1517. Near this is the pretty little Archiepiscopal Museum, full of mediæval relics.

The interesting Moravian establishment of Zeist may be visited from Utrecht.

From Utrecht we travelled over sandy flats to Kampen, near the mouth of the wide river Yssel, with three picturesque gates—Haghen Poort, Cellebroeders Poort, and Broeders Poort; and a town hall of the sixteenth century. Here, as frequently elsewhere in Holland, we suffered from arriving famished at midday. All the inns were equally inhospitable: 'The table d'hôte is at 4 P.M.: we _cannot_ and _will not_ be bothered with cooking before that, and there is nothing cold in the house.' 'But you have surely bread and cheese?' 'Certainly not—_nothing_.'

At Zwolle, however, we found the Kroon an excellent hotel with an obliging landlord; and Zwolle, the native place of Terburg (1608), is a charming old town with a girdle of gardens, a fine church (externally), and a noble brick gateway called the Sassenpoort.

It was more the desire of seeing something of the whole country than anything else, and a certain degree of misplaced confidence in the pleasant volumes of Harvard, which took us up from Zwolle, through Friesland, the cow-paradise, to Leeuwarden, its ancient capital. Sad and gloomy as most other towns of Holland are, Leeuwarden is sadder and gloomier still. Its streets are wide and not otherwise than handsome, but they are almost deserted, and there are no objects of interest to see unless a leaning tower can be called so, with a top, like that at Pisa, inclined the other way, to keep it from toppling over. An hour's walk from the town there is said to be a fine still-inhabited castle, and, if time had allowed, respect for S. Boniface would have taken us to Murmerwoude, where he was martyred (June 8, 853), with his fifty-three companions. King Pepin raised a hermitage on the spot, and an ancient brick chapel still exists there.

Here and elsewhere in Friesland nothing is so worthy of notice as the helmets—the golden helmets of the women—costing something equivalent to 25_l._ or 30_l._, handed down as heirlooms, fitting close to the head, and not allowing a particle of hair to be visible.

In the late evening we went on to Groningen, a university town with a good hotel (Seven Provincen), an enormous square, and a noble tall Gothic tower of 1627, whence the watchman still sounds his bugle. Not far off is Midwolde, where the village church has fine tombs of Charles Jerome, Baron d'Inhausen and his wife, Anna von Ewsum.

As late as the sixteenth century this province was for the most part uninhabited—savage and sandy, and overrun by wolves. But three hundred years of hard work has transformed it into a fertile country, watered by canals, and sprinkled with country houses. Agriculturally it is one of the richest provinces of the kingdom. This is mostly due to its possessing a race of peasant-farmers who never shrink from personal hard work, and who will continue to direct the plough whilst they send their sons to the university to study as lawyers, doctors, or churchmen. These peasant farmers or boers possess the _beklemregt_, or right of hiring land on an annual rent, which the landlord can never increase. A peasant can bequeath his right to his heirs, whether direct or collateral. To the land, this system is an indescribable advantage, the cultivators doing their utmost to bring their lands to perfection, because they are certain that no one can take away the advantage from themselves or their descendants.

On leaving Groningen we traversed the grey, monotonous, desolate district of the Drenthe, sprinkled over at intervals by the curious ancient groups of stones called Hunnebedden, or beds of death (Hun meaning death), beneath which urns of clay containing human ashes have been found. From Deventer (where there is an old weigh-house, and a cathedral of S. Lievin with a crypt and nave of 1334), time did not allow us to make an excursion to the great royal palace of Het Loo, the favourite residence of the sovereigns. The descriptions in Harvard rather made us linger unnecessarily at Zutphen, a dull town, with a brick Groote Kerk (S. Walpurgis) which has little remaining of its original twelfth-century date, and a rather picturesque 'bit' on the walls, where the 'Waterpoort' crosses the river like a bridge.

At Arnhem, the Roman Arenacum, once the residence of the Dukes of Gueldres, and still the capital of Guelderland, we seemed to have left all the characteristics of Holland behind. Numerous modern villas, which might have been built for Cheltenham or Leamington, cover the wooded hills above the Rhine. In the Groote Kerk (1452) is a curious monument of Charles van Egmont, Duc de Gueldres, 1538, but there is nothing else to remark upon. We intended to have made an excursion hence to Cleves, but desperately wet weather set in, and, as Dutch rain often lasts for weeks together when it once begins, we were glad to hurry England-wards, only regretting that we could not halt at Nymegen, a most picturesque place, where Charlemagne lived in the old palace of the Valckhof (or Waalhof, residence on the Waal), of which a fragment still exists, with an old baptistery, a Stadhuis of 1534, and a Groote Kerk containing a noble monument to Catherine de Bourbon (1469), wife of Duke Adolph of Gueldres.

We left Holland feeling that we should urge our friends by all means to see the pictures at Rotterdam, the Hague, and Amsterdam, but to look for all other characteristics of the Netherlands in such places as Breda, Dortrecht, Haarlem, Alkmaar, and Zwolle.

_IN DENMARK._

Formerly the terrors of a sea-voyage from Kiel deterred many travellers from thinking of a tour in Denmark or Sweden, but now a succession of railways makes everything easy, and while nothing can be imagined more invigorating or pleasant, there is probably no pleasure more economical than a summer in Scandinavia. Those who are worn with a London season will feel as if every breath in the crystal air of Denmark endued them with fresh health and strength, and then, after they have seen its old palaces and its beech woods and its Thorwaldsen sculptures, a voyage of ten minutes will carry them over the narrow Sound to the soft beauties of genial Sweden and the wild splendours of Norway.

Either Hamburg or Lübeck must be the starting-point for the overland route to Denmark, and the old free city of Lübeck, though quite a small place, is one of the most remarkable towns in Germany. We arrived there one hot summer afternoon, after a weary journey over the arid sandy plains which separate it from Berlin, and suddenly seemed to be transported into a land of verdure. Lilacs and roses bloomed everywhere; a wood lined the bank of the limpid river Trave, and in its waters—beyond the old wooden bridge—were reflected all the tallest steeples, often strangely out of the perpendicular, of many-towered Lübeck. A wonderful gate of red brick and golden-hued terra-cotta is the entrance from the station, and in the market-place are the quaintest turrets, towers, tourelles, but all ending in spires. The lofty houses, so full of rich colour, throw cool shade on the streets on the hottest summer day; and we enjoyed a Sunday in the excellent hotel, with wooden galleries opening towards a splashing fountain in a quiet square, where a fat constable busied himself in keeping everybody from fulfilling any avocation whatever whilst service was being performed in the churches, but let them do exactly as they pleased as soon as it was over.

It must, at best, be a weary journey across West Holstein, through a succession of arid flats varied by stagnant swamps. We spent the weary hours in studying Dunham's 'History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway,' which cannot be sufficiently recommended to all Scandinavian travellers. The glowing accounts in the English guide books of a lake and an old castle beguiled us into spending a night at Sleswig, but it turned out that the lake had disappeared before the memory of man, and that the castle was a white modern barrack. The colourless town and its long sleepy suburb, moored as if upon a raft in the marshes, straggle along the edge of a waveless fiord. At the end is the rugged cathedral like a barn, with a belfry like a dovecot, and inside it a curious altarpiece by Hans Brüggemann, pupil of Albert Dürer, and the noble monument of Frederick I., the first Lutheran King of Denmark; while richly carved doors at the sides of the church admit one to see how the grandmother of the Princess of Wales and various other potentates lie—Danish fashion—in gorgeous exposed coffins without any tombs at all. Everywhere roses grow in the streets, trained upon the house walls; and, up the pavement, crowds of the children were hurrying in the early morning, carrying in their hands the shoes they were going to wear when they were in school. In the evenings these children will not venture outside the town, for over the marshes they say that the wild huntsman rides, followed by his demon hounds and blowing his magic horn. It is the spirit of Duke Abel the fratricide, who, in the fens, murdered his brother Eric VI. of Denmark, and who was afterwards lost there himself, falling from his horse, and being dragged down by the weight of his armour. To give rest to his wandering spirit, the clergy dug up his body and despatched it to Bremen, but there his vampire gave the canons no peace, so they sent the corpse back again, and now it lies once more in the marshes of Gottorp.

Most unutterably hideous is the country through which the railway now travels, wearisome levels only broken here and there by mounds, probably sepulchral. A straight line with tiny hillocks at intervals would do for a sketch of the whole of Sleswig and the greater part of Funen and Zealand. In times of early Danish history it was a frequent punishment to bury criminals alive in these dismal peat mosses. Twelve hours of changelessly flat scenery bring travellers from Hamburg to Frederikshaven, where we embark upon the Little Belt, the luggage-vans of the train being shunted on board the steamer. Immediately opposite lie the sandy shores of Funen, and in a few minutes we are there. Then four hours of ugly scenery take us across the island. It is only necessary to look out at the little town of Odense, called after the old hero-god, which was the birth-place of Hans Christian Andersen in 1805. The cathedral of Odense contains the shrine of the sainted King Canute IV. (1080-86), who was murdered while kneeling before the altar, owing to indignation at the severe taxation to which the love of Church endowment had incited him.

Nyborg, where we meet the sea again, will recall to lovers of old ballads the story of the innocent young knight Folker Lowmanson, and his cruel death here in a barrel of spikes, from the jealousy of Waldemar IV. for his beautiful queen Helwig, and how, to know his fate—

With anxious heart did Denmark's Queen
To Nyborg urge her horse,
And at the gate his bier she met,
And on it Folker's corse.

Such honour shown to son of knight
I never yet could hear;
The Queen of Denmark walked on foot
Herself before his bier.

In tears then Helwig mounted horse
And silent homeward rode,
For in her heart a life-long grief
Had taken its abode.

At Nyborg we embark on a miserable steamer for the passage of the Great Belt. It lasts an hour and a half, and is often most wretched. On landing at Korsor travellers are hurried into the train which is waiting for the vessel.

Now the country improves a little. Here and there we pass through great beech woods. Down the green glades of one of them a glimpse is caught of the college of Sorö. It occupies the site of a monastery founded by Asker Ryg, a chieftain who, when he departed on a journey of warfare, vowed that if the child to which his wife, Inge, was about to give birth proved to be a girl, he would give his new building a spire, but a tower if it were a boy. On his return he saw two towers rising in the distance. Inge had given birth to twin sons, who lived to become Asbiorn Snare, celebrated in the ballad of 'Fair Christal,' and Absalon, the warrior Bishop of Roeskilde—'first captain by sea and land.' Absalon is buried here in the church of Sorö, which contains the tomb of King Olaf, the shortlived son of the famous Queen Margaret; of her cruel father, Waldemar Atterdag, whose last words expressed regret that he had not suffocated his daughter in her cradle; and of her grandfather, Christopher II., with his wife, Euphemia of Pomerania. Soon we pass Ringsted, which is scarcely worth stopping at, though its church contains the fine brass of King Erik Menred (1319) and his queen, Ingeborga, and though twenty kings and queens were entombed there before Roeskilde became the royal place of sepulture. Amongst them lies the popular Queen Dagmar, first wife of Waldemar II., still celebrated in ballad literature, for there is scarcely a Dane who is ignorant of the touching story of 'Queen Dagmar's Death,' which begins

Queen Dagmar is lying at Ribé sick,
At Ringsted is made her grave,

and which contains her last touching request to her husband, and her simple confession of the only 'sin' she could remember—

Had I on a Sunday not laced my sleeves,
Or border upon them sewn,
No pangs had I felt by day or night,
Or torture of hell-fire known.

Tradition tells us that the dismal town of Ringsted was founded by King Ring, a warrior who, when he was seriously wounded in battle, placed the bodies of his slain heroes and that of his queen, Alpol, on board a ship laden with pitch, and going out to the open sea, set the vessel on fire, and then fell upon his sword.

In the twilight we pass Roeskilde, and at 10-1/2 P.M. long rows of street lamps reflected in canals show that we have reached Copenhagen.

To those whose travels have chiefly led them southwards there is a great pleasure in the first awaking in Copenhagen. Everything is new—the associations, the characteristics, the history; even the very names on the omnibuses are suggestive of the sagas and romances of the North; and though the summer sun is hot, the atmosphere is as clear as that of a tramontana day in an Italian winter, and the air is indescribably elastic. The comfortable Hôtel d'Angleterre stands in the Kongens Nytorv, a modern square, with trees surrounding a statue in the centre, but there are glimpses of picturesque shipping down the side streets, and hard by is a spire quite ideally Danish, formed by three marvellous dragons with their tails twisted together in the air. Tradition declares that it was moved bodily from Calmar, in the south of Sweden. It rises now from a beautiful building of brick erected in 1624 by Christian IV., brother-in-law of James I. of England, and used as the Exchange.

Not far off is the principal palace—Christiansborg Slot, often rebuilt, and very white and ugly. It was partially destroyed by fire in 1884. Besides the royal residence, its vast courts contain the Chambers of Parliament, the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery chiefly filled with the works of native artists, amongst which those of Marstrand and Bloch are very striking and well worthy of attention.

A queer building in the shadow of the palace, which attracts notice by its frescoed walls, is the Thorwaldsen Museum, the shrine where Denmark has reverentially collected all the works and memorials of her greatest artist—Bertel Thorwaldsen. Though his family is said to have descended from the Danish king Harold Stildetand, he was born (in 1770) the son of one Gottschalk, who, half workman, half artist, was employed in carving figures for the bows of vessels. From his earliest childhood little Bertel accompanied his father to the wharfs and assisted him in his work, in which he showed such intelligence that in his eleventh year he was allowed to enter the Free School of Art. Here he soon made wonderful progress in sculpture, but could so little be persuaded to attend to other studies that he reached the age of eighteen scarcely able to read. In his twenty-third year he obtained the great gold medal, to which a travelling stipend is attached, and thus he was enabled to go to Rome, where, encouraged at first by the patronage of Thomas Hope, the English banker, he soon reached the highest pitch of celebrity. Denmark became proud of her son, so that his visits to his native town in 1819 and 1837 were like triumphal progresses, all the city going forth to meet him, and lodging him splendidly at the public cost; but his heart always clung to the Eternal City, which continued to be the scene of his labours. Of his many works perhaps his noble lion at Lucerne is the best known. He never married, though he was long attached to a member of the old Scottish house of Mackenzie, and he died on a visit to Copenhagen in 1844.

In accordance with Thorwaldsen's own wish, he rests in the centre of his works. His grave has no tombstone, but is covered with green ivy. All around the little court which contains it are halls and galleries filled with the marvellously varied productions of his genius, arranged in the order of their execution—casts of all his absent sculptures and many most grand originals. Especially beautiful are the statue of Mercury, modelled from a Roman boy, of which the original is in the possession of Lord Ashburton, and the exquisite reliefs of the Ages of Love, and of Day and Night, the two latter resulting from the inspiration of a single afternoon. But all seem to culminate in the great Hall of Christ, for though the statues here are only cast from those in the Vor Frue Kirche, they are far better seen in the well-lighted chamber than in the church. The colossal figures of the apostles lead up to the Saviour in sublime benediction; perhaps the statues of Simon Zelotes and the pilgrim S. James are the noblest amongst them. In the last room are gathered all the little personal memorials of Thorwaldsen—his books, pictures, and furniture.

The Museum of Northern Antiquities should also be visited and the Tower of the Trinity Church, with a roadway inside making an easy ascent to the strange view of many roofs and many waters which is obtained from the top. But the most delightful place in Copenhagen is the Palace of Rosenborg, standing at the end of a stately old garden—where it was built by Inigo Jones for Christian IV., and containing the room where the king died, with his wedding dress, and most of his other clothes and possessions. This palace-building monarch, celebrated for the drinking bouts in which he indulged with his brother-in-law, James I. of England, was the greatest dandy of his time, and before we leave Denmark we shall become very familiar with his portraits, always distinguished by the wonderful left whisker twisted into a pigtail falling on one side of the chin. Other rooms in Rosenborg are devoted to each of the succeeding sovereigns, and filled with relics and memorials which carry one back into most romantic corners of Danish history, the ever-alternate succession of Christians and Fredericks making a most terrible bewilderment, down to the two English queens, Louisa the beloved and Caroline Matilda the unfortunate. Most curious amongst a myriad objects of value are the three great silver Lions—'Great Belt, Little Belt, and Sound'—which, by ancient custom, appear as mourners at all the funerals of the sovereigns, accompanying them to Roeskilde and returning afterwards to the palace.

Those interested in such matters will wander as we did through the more ancient parts of Copenhagen in search of old silver and specimens of the older Copenhagen china. Formerly the china imitated that of Miessen, but it has now a more distinctive character, and is chiefly used in reproducing the works of Thorwaldsen. Copenhagen has no other especial manufactures.

No visitors to the Danish capital must omit a visit to Tivoli, the pretty odd pleasure grounds—very respectable too—near the railway station, where all kinds of evening amusements are provided in illuminated gardens and woods by a tiny lake, really very pretty. Here we watched the cars rushing like a whirlwind down one hill and up another, with their inmates screaming in pleasurable agony; and saw the extraordinary feats of 'the Cannon King,' who tossed a cannon ball, catching it on his hands, his head, his feet—anywhere, and then stood in front of a cannon and was shot, receiving in his hands the ball, which did nothing worse than twist him round by its force.

One day we went out—an hour and a half by rail—to Roeskilde, where a church was first founded by William, an Englishman, in the days of King Harold Blaatand (Blue-tooth), brother of Canute the Great. It is dedicated to S. Lucius, because tradition tells that a terrible dragon, who infested the neighbouring fiord and banqueted on the inhabitants, was destroyed for ever when the head of the holy Pope S. Lucius was brought from Rome and presented for his breakfast. The tall spires of the cathedral rise, slender and grey, from the little town, and beneath, embosomed in sweeping cornfields, a lovely fiord stretches away into pale blue distances. Endless kings and queens are buried at Roeskilde. The earlier sovereigns have glorious tombs, amongst which the most conspicuous is that of Queen Margaret—'the Semiramis of the North,' who, born in the prison of Syborg, where her unhappy mother Queen Helwig was imprisoned by Waldemar Atterhag, and allowed to run wild in the forest in her childhood, lived to become one of the wisest of Northern sovereigns, and to unite, by the Act known as 'the Union of Calmar,' the crowns of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, which attained unwonted prosperity under her sway. There are effigies of Frederic II. and Christian IV., the grandfather and uncle of our Charles I., which recall his type of countenance and have the same peaked beard. Christian IV., the great palace-builder, whose birth was believed to have been prophesied by the mermaid Isbrand, was born (April 12, 1577) under a hawthorn tree on the road between Frederiksborg and Roeskilde, as his mother, Sophia of Mecklenbourg, insisted on taking walks with her ladies in waiting far longer than was prudent. This king, his father, and all the later members of his royal house lie, not in their tombs, but in gorgeous coffins embossed with gold and silver upon the floor of the church, which has a very odd effect. The entrance of one of the private chapels is a gate with a huge figure, in wrought ironwork, of the devil with his tail in his hand. In another chapel are fine works of Marstrand (1810-75), the best of the pupils of Eckersberg, who gave the first stimulus to the art of painting in Denmark, where it has since attained to great eminence.

The district around Roeskilde, and indeed the greater part of Denmark, is devoted to corn, for there is no country in Europe, except England and Belgium, which can compete with this as a corn-grower. It is curious that though the neighbouring Sweden and Norway are so covered with pines, no conifer will grow in Denmark except under most careful cultivation. The principal native tree is the beech, and the beech woods are nowhere more beautiful than in the neighbourhood of Copenhagen. The railway to Elsinore passes through the beautiful beech forests which are familiar to us through the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. Here, near a little roadside station, rises the Hampton Court of Denmark, the great Castle of Frederiksborg, the most magnificent of the creations of Christian IV., which John of Friburg erected for that monarch, who looked personally into the minutest details of his expenses, and so raised this structure, glorious as it is, with an economy which greatly astonished his thrifty parliament. In the depths of the beech woods is a great lake, in the centre of which, on three islands united by bridges, rises the palace, most beautiful in its time-honoured hues of red brick and grey stone, with high roofs, richly sculptured windows, and wondrous towers and spires. Each view of the castle seems more picturesque than the last. It is a dream of architectural beauty, to which the great expanse of transparent waters and the deep verdure of the surrounding woods add a mysterious charm. A gigantic gate tower admits the visitor to the courtyard, where Christian IV., with his own hand, chopped off the head of the Master of the Mint, which he had established here, who had defrauded him. 'He tried to cheat us, but we have cheated him, for we have chopped his head off,' said the King. Inside, the palace has been gorgeously restored since a great fire by which it was terribly injured in 1859. The chapel, with the pew of Christian IV.—'bedekammer,' prayer chamber, it is called—is most curious. There is a noble series of the pictures of the native artist Carl Bloch, recalling the works of Overbeck in their majesty and depth of feeling, but far more forcible.

A drive of four miles through beech woods leads to the comfortable later palace of Fredensborg, built as 'a Castle of Peace' by Frederick IV. and Louisa of Mecklenbourg, with a lovely garden, and a view of the Esrom lake down green glades, in one of which is a mysterious assembly of stone statues in Norwegian costumes.

We may either take the railway or drive by Gurre from hence to Elsinore (Helsingor), where the great castle of Kronberg rises, with many towers built of grey stone, at the end of the little town on a low promontory jutting out into the sea. Stately avenues surround its bastions, and it is delightful to walk upon the platform where the first scene of Shakspere's 'Hamlet' is laid, and to watch the numberless ships in the narrow Sound which divides Denmark and Sweden. The castle is in perfect preservation. It was formerly used as a palace. Anne of Denmark was married here by proxy to James VI. of Scotland, and here poor Caroline Matilda sate daily for hours at her prison window watching vainly for the fleet of England which she believed was coming to her rescue. Beyond the castle, a sandy plain reminding us of Scottish links, covered with bent-grass and drifted by seaweed, extends to Marienlyst, a little fashionable bathing place embosomed in verdure. Here a Carmelite convent was founded by the wife of Eric IX., that Queen Philippa—daughter of Henry IV. of England—who successfully defended Copenhagen against the Hanseatic League, but was afterwards beaten by her husband, because her ships were defeated at Stralsund, an indignity which drove her to a monastic life. Hamlet's Grave and Ophelia's Brook are shown at Marienlyst, having been invented for anxious inquirers by the complaisant inhabitants. Alas! both were unknown to Andersen, who lived here in his childhood, and it is provoking to learn that Hamlet had really no especial connection with Elsinore, and was the son of a Jutland pirate in the insignificant island of Mors. But Denmark is the very home of picturesque stories, which are kept alive there by the ballad literature of the land, chiefly of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, but still known to rich and poor alike as in no other country. For hundreds of years these poetical histories have been the tunes to which, in winter, when no other exercise can be taken, people dance for hours, holding each other's hands in two lines, making three steps forwards and backwards, keeping time, balancing, or remaining still for a moment, as they sing one of their old ballads or its refrain.

It was in a wild evening, with huge blue foam-crested waves rushing down the Sound, that we crossed in ten minutes to Helsingborg in Sweden, mounted for the sunset to the one huge remaining tower of its castle, and sketched as typical of almost all village towers in Denmark the belfry of the church where King Eric Menred was married to the Swedish princess Ingeborga.

_IN SWEDEN._

It is not beautiful in Sweden, but it is very pretty; if everything were not so very much alike, it would be very pretty indeed. The whole country as far north as Upsala is like an exaggerated Surrey—little hills covered with fir-woods and bilberries, brilliant, glistening little lakes sleeping in sandy hollows, but all just like one another.

We turned aside in our way from Helsingborg to the north to visit the old university of Lund, the Oxford of Sweden, a sleepy city, where the students lead a separate life in lodgings of their own, only being united in the public lectures; for in Sweden, as in Italy, the taking of a degree only proves that the graduates have passed a certain number of examinations, not, as in England, that they have lived together for three years at least, forming their character and taste by mutual companionship and intimacy. The cathedral of Lund is a most noble Norman building, with giants and dwarfs sculptured against the pillars of its grand crypt, and a glorious archbishop's tomb, green and mossy with damp.

An immense railway journey, by day and night through the endless forests, brought us to Stockholm, where we arrived in the early morning. Though the town is little beyond an ugly collection of featureless modern streets, the situation is quite exquisite, for the city occupies a succession of islets between Lake Malar and the Baltic, surrounding, on a central isle, the huge Palace built from stately designs of Count Tessin in the middle of the last century, and the old church of Riddarholmen, where Gustavus Adolphus and many other royal persons repose beneath the banner-hung arches.

It sounds odd, but, next to the Palace, the most imposing building in Stockholm is certainly the Grand Hotel Rydberg, which is most comfortable and economical, in spite of its palatial aspect. There is no table d'hôte, and everything is paid for at the time, in the excellent restaurant on the first floor of the hotel. Here, a side table is always covered with dainties peculiarly Swedish, corn and birch brandy, and different kinds of potted fish, with fresh butter and olives, and it is the universal custom in Sweden to attack the side table before sitting down to the regular dinner. The rooms in the hotel are excellent, and their front windows overlook all that is most characteristic in Stockholm—the glorious view down the fiord of the Baltic: its farther hilly bank covered with houses and churches; the bridge at the junction of the Baltic and Lake Malar, which is the centre of life in the capital, and the little pleasure garden below, where hundreds of people are constantly eating and drinking under the trees, and whence strains of music are wafted late into the summer night; the mighty palace dominating the principal island, and the little steam gondolas, filled with people, which dart and hiss through the waters from one island to another. In Stockholm, where waters are many and bridges few, these steam gondolas are the chief means of communication, and we made great use of them, the passages costing twelve oëre, or one penny. The great white sea-gulls, poising over the water-streets or floating upon the waves, are also a striking feature.

The museums of Stockholm have little to call for any especial notice, except a grand statue of the sleeping Endymion from the Villa Adriana, and the curious collection of royal clothes down to the present date, a gallery of costume like that which once existed in London at the Tower Royal. The chief curiosity which the Swedish collection contains is the hat worn by Charles XII. when he was killed, in which the upward progress of the bullet can be traced, proving that the king's death was caused by an assassin, and not the result of a chance shot from the walls of Frederikshald. No especial features mark the interior of the Palace, though the Royal Stable for a hundred and forty-six horses is worthy of a visit; and the churches are uninteresting, except perhaps S. Nicholas, the coronation church, which contains the helmet and spurs of S. Olaf, stolen from Throndtjem. Riddarholmen can scarcely be regarded as a church; it is rather a great sepulchral hall hung with trophies, having a few tombs on the floor of the building, and vaults opening under the side walls, in which the different groups of royal persons are buried together in families. Under a chapel on the left lies Gustavus Adolphus, the justly popular great-grandson of Gustavus Wasa, who fell at the battle of Lutzen, and who, as soldier, general, and king, ever knew true merit, and laboured for the glory of his country rather than for his own. In the opposite chapel repose the present royal family, descendants of Bernadotte, Prince of Pontecorvo, the only one of Napoleon's generals whose dynasty still occupies a throne. He began life as a common soldier, and his election as Charles XIV. of Sweden was chiefly due to the kindness with which he treated Swedish prisoners taken in the Pomeranian wars. But the Swedes have never had cause to repent of their choice, and their reigning house is probably the most popular in Europe. The coffins of those members of the royal family who have died within the memory of man are ever laden with fresh flowers.

Close by the Riddarholmen Church is the most picturesque bit of street architecture in Stockholm, where a statue of Burger Jarl, the traditional founder of the town, forms a foreground to the chapel of Gustavus Adolphus and one of the many bridges.

In saying that Stockholm is not picturesque one may seem to have spoken disparagingly, but, nevertheless, it is perfectly charming: there is so much life and movement upon its blue waters, and its many little public gardens give such a gay aspect to the buildings. Of these, the chief is the Kongsträgården, surrounding a statue of Charles XIII., where the pleasant Café Blanche is filled all the evening with an animated crowd, gossiping and eating ices under the verandah and shrubberies, and listening to the music. While we were staying in Stockholm a hundred Upsala students came in their white caps to sing national melodies in the Catherina Church. We lived through two hours of fearful heat to hear them, and most beautiful it was. King Oscar II. was present—a noble royal figure and handsome face. He is the ideal sovereign of the age—artist, poet, musician, student, equally at home in ancient and modern languages, profoundly versed in all his duties, and nobly performing them.

We had intended going often, as the natives do, to dine amongst the trees and flowers at Hasselbacken, in the Djurgården, a wooded promontory, to which little steamers are always plying, but, alas! during eight of the ten July days we spent at Stockholm it rained incessantly. We were so cold that we were thankful for all the winter clothes we brought with us, and were filled with pity for the poor Swedes in being cheated out of their short summer, of which every day is precious. The streets were always sopping, but, in the covered gondolas, we managed several excursions to quiet, damp palaces on the banks of lonely fiords—Rosendal, remarkable for a grand porphyry vase in a brilliant little flower garden; and Ulriksdal, with its clipped avenues and melancholy creek.

Our limited knowledge of Swedish often caused us to embark in amusing ignorance as to whither we were going, and led us into many a surprise. One day we set off, intending to go to Drottningholm, but, on reaching the quay, found the steamer just gone. At that moment such a fearful storm of rain came on that we were obliged to rush for shelter wherever we could, and the nearest point of refuge was the deck of the steamer _Mary_, which instantly started. We feared we might be bound for the Baltic, and, failing to make any one understand us, resolved to disembark at the first landing-place. But then the rain was worse than ever, and we allowed ourselves to be carried on down Lake Malar, till our boat turned into a little creek, and landed us on the pier of a manufacturing town. We had not reached the end of the pier, however, before the rain came on again in such convulsive torrents that we fled back to the _Mary_, which again started on its travels, and this time, after stopping at many little ports, conveyed us back to Stockholm. When we asked the captain what we were to pay for our voyage, he said, 'Oh, nothing;' and very much amused he and his crew seemed to be by our ignorance and adventures.

We had a fine day for our excursion by railway to Upsala, whence we hired a little carriage to take us on to Old Upsala, about three miles distant. A drive across a dull, marshy plain brings one to a delightfully wild district of downs, covered with hundreds of little sepulchral mounds like Wiltshire barrows, amid which three great tumuli, standing close together, are said to mark the graves of Odin, Thor, and Freya—heroes in their lifetime, gods in their death. Close beside them for centuries rose the temple which was the most sacred shrine of Scandinavian worship. It glittered all over with gold, and a golden chain, nine hundred ells in circumference, ran round its roof. In the temple were three statues, around which hovered all the principal mythological traditions of the north. The central figure was that of Odin or Wodan, the wizard-king, who is said to have come in the dawn of Swedish history from his domains of Asir, which extended from the Euxine to the Caspian, and whose capital was Asgard. He landed in Funen, where he founded Odense, and left his son Skjöld as a sovereign. Thence he passed into Sweden, and established his government at Sigtuna, not far from Upsala. His existence is affirmed by the Saxon Chronicle. He was called 'the Father of Victory,' for if he laid his hands on the heads of his generals, and predicted their success when they went out to battle, that success never failed them. He was also, says Snorro Sturlesen, 'the Father of all the arts of modern Europe.' Tradition has endowed him with every miraculous power. He could change his looks at pleasure—to his friends most beautiful, but a demon to his enemies. By his eloquence he captivated all who heard him, and as he always spoke in verse he was called 'the Artificer of Song.' His verses were endowed with such magic power that they could strike his enemies with blindness or deafness, or could blunt their weapons. To listen to the sweetness of his music even the ghosts would come forth and the mountains would unfold their inmost recesses. He was the inventor of Runic characters. He could slaughter thousands at a blow, and he could render his own followers invulnerable. At his will he could assume the form of beasts; at his word the fire would cease to burn, the wind to blow, or the sea to rage. If he hurled his spear between two armies, it secured victory to those on whose side it fell. The dwarfs (Lapps) had built for him a ship called _Skidbladner_, in which he could cross the most dangerous seas with safety; but when he did not want to use it, he could fold it up like a handkerchief. Everything was known to Odin, for did he not possess the mummified head of his enemy Mimir, which was all-wise, and he had only to consult it? Yet, with all these gifts and attributes, Odin remained human; he had no power over death. When he felt his end approaching he assembled all his friends and followers, and, giving himself nine wounds in a circle, allowed himself to bleed to death. The body of the great chieftain was burnt, and his ashes were buried under the mound of Upsala; but his spirit was believed to have gone back to the marvellous home in the Valhalla of Asgard, of which he had so often spoken, and whither he had always said that he should return. Henceforward it was considered that all blessings and mercies were gifts sent by Odin. The younger Edda tells that all who die in battle are Odin's adopted children. The Valkyriae pick them out upon the battle-field and conduct them to the Valhalla, where they have perpetual life in the halls of Odin. Their days are spent in hunting or the joys of imaginary combats, and they return at night to feast upon the inexhaustible flesh of the boar Sahrimnir, and to drink, out of horn cups, the mead formed from the milk of a single goat, which is strong enough nightly to intoxicate all the heroes. Huge logs constantly burn within the palace of Odin, for warmth is the northern idea of heaven, while in their hell it is eternal winter. When a Scandinavian chieftain died in battle, not only were his war-horse and all his gold and silver placed upon his funeral-pyre, but all his followers slew themselves that he might enter the halls of Odin properly attended. The more glorious the chieftain the greater the number who must accompany him to Valhalla. To rejoin Odin in Asgard became the height of a warrior's ambition. It is recorded of Ragnar Lodbrok that when he was dying no word of lamentation was heard from him: on the contrary, he was transported with joy as he thought of the feast preparing for him in Odin's palace. 'Soon, soon,' he exclaimed, 'I shall be seated in the pleasant habitation of the gods, and drinking mead out of carved horns! A brave man does not dread death, and I shall utter no word of fear as I enter the halls of Odin.' But stranger than all the legends concerning Odin is the fact that his memory is still so far fresh that 'Go to Odin' is yet used by the common people where an uncivil wish as to the lower regions would find expression in England. The fourth day of the week still commemorates Odin or Wodan—in old Norse Odinsdgr, in Swedish and Danish Onsdag, in English Wednesday.

On the right hand of Odin, in the temple of Upsala, sate the statue of Freyja, or Freyer, represented as a hermaphrodite, with the attributes of productiveness. Freyja was the goddess of love, who rode in a car drawn by wild cats. She knew beforehand all that would happen, and divided the souls of the dead with Odin. She is commemorated in the sixth day of the week, that Freytag or Freyja's Day which in Latin is Dies Veneris, or Venus' Day.

On the left of Odin sate Thor, who, says the Edda, was 'the most valiant of the sons of Odin.' He was the offspring of Odin and Frigga, 'the mother of the gods,' and the brother of 'Balder the Beautiful.' As the defender and avenger of the gods, he was represented as carrying the hammer with which he destroyed the giants, and which always returned to his hand when he threw it. He wore iron gauntlets, and had a girdle which doubled his strength when he put it on. The fifth day of the week was sacred to Thor, in old Norse Thórsdag, in Swedish and Danish Torsdag, in English Thursday; in Latin Dies Jovis, for Jupiter, the God of Thunder, had the same attributes as Thor.

There were three great festivals at Upsala, when multitudes flocked to the temple to consult its famous oracles or to sacrifice. The first was the winter festival of 'Mother Night'—saturnalia in honour of Frey, or the sun, to invoke the blessings of a fruitful year; the second feast was in honour of the Earth; the third was in honour of Odin, to propitiate the Father of Battles. Every ninth year, at least, the king and all persons of distinction were expected to appear before the great temple, and nine victims were chosen for human sacrifice—captives in time of war, slaves in time of peace—'I send thee to Odin' being the consolatory last words spoken to each as he fell. If public calamities had been caused by any royal mismanagement, the people chose their king as a sacrifice; thus the first king of the petty province of Vermeland was burnt to appease Odin during a famine. It is also recorded that King Aun sacrificed his nine sons to obtain a prolongation of his own life. The victims were either hewn down or burnt in the temple itself, or hung in the grove adjoining—'Odin's Grove'—of which every leaf was sacred. Still, according to the Voluspa, the famous prophecy of Vela, at the end of the world even Odin, with all the other pagan deities, will perish in the general chaos, when a new earth of celestial beauty will arise upon the ruins of the old.

One of the most curious little churches in Christendom now stands upon the site of the ancient temple. The apse is evidently built out of the pagan sanctuary. The belfry, Swedish-fashion, is detached, built of massive timbers and painted bright red. There are scarcely any human habitations near, only the mighty barrows, overgrown with wild thyme and a thousand other flowers, which rise over the graves of the gods. In the tomb of Odin the Government still gives the mead, which was the nectar of Scandinavian heroes, to pilgrim visitors.

Like most of the Swedish towns, Upsala is disappointing, and its mean, ill-paved streets show few signs of antiquity. At the east end of the cathedral is the lofty tomb of Gustavus Wasa, the first Protestant King of Sweden, whose effigy lies between the charming figures of his two pretty little wives. In 1519 he was carried off as a hostage by that Christian, King of Denmark, who forcibly made himself King of Sweden also, and ruled with savage tyranny. Escaping to Lübeck, he headed a revolutionary party against the tyrant, and, after many defeats, succeeded in taking Stockholm, where he was made king in 1523. Soon after, Olaf Petri's translation of the New Testament led to the Reformation in Sweden, where Gustavus Wasa was another Henry VIII., in taking the opportunity of seizing two-thirds of the Church revenues, and depriving all ecclesiastics of their incomes if they refused to embrace Lutheranism. One of his daughters-in-law was the famous Polish princess, Queen Catherine Jagellonica, who tried hard to upset the new religion, and inculcated Catholicism upon her son, King Sigismund, who was deposed, on religious grounds, in favour of his uncle, Charles IX., the father of Gustavus Adolphus. This Queen Catherine Jagellonica has a fine tomb in a side chapel of Upsala Cathedral.

On a brilliant July morning we embarked at Stockholm in the steamer which runs twice a week down Lake Malar to Gripsholm. Most lovely were the long reaches of still water with their fringe of russet rocks, every crevice tufted with birch and dwarf mountain ash, opening here and there to show some red timber houses or a wooden spire. It was several hours of soft diorama, with the music of the pines, before the great castle of Gripsholm, the Windsor of Sweden, came in sight, with its many red towers and Eastern-looking domes and cupolas. We were landed at the little pier of Mariefred, in itself a lovely scene, with old trees feathering into the water, and a picturesque church rising in a grove of walnuts on a green hill behind. Hard by is a little inn where the whole of the passengers in the steamer dined together, at many little tables, the great staple of food being fresh trout and salmon of the lake, the bilberries and cloudberries of the rocks, and the birch brandy and wild strawberries from the woods. After dinner every one trooped along the meadow paths to the castle, and rambled in friendly companionship over its numerous rooms, full of interest, and with many curious royal portraits and pieces of ancient furniture. There are endless historic recollections connected with Gripsholm, but they centre for the most part around the sons of Gustavus Wasa. Of these, John was immured here by Eric XIV., with his wife Catherine Jagellonica, who, during her imprisonment, gave birth to her son Sigismund (afterwards Sigismund III. of Poland), in a box-bed which still remains. Eric intended to have put his brother to death, but when he entered his cell for the purpose was so overcome by fraternal feeling that he begged his pardon instead. That pardon was not granted, for when John got the upper hand he imprisoned Eric in a small chamber at the top of the castle, where he languished for ten years, during which he wrote a treatise on military art, and translated the history of Johannes Magnus, and where—in the end—he was poisoned.

_IN NORWAY._

The weather changed to a cloudless sunshine, which hatched all the mosquitoes, as we entered Norway in the second week in July, and the heat was so intense that, in the long railway journey from Stockholm, we were very thankful for the little tank of iced water with which each railway carriage is provided. We were disappointed in Kristiania, which is a very dull place. The town was built by Christian IV. of Denmark, and has a good central church of his time, but it is utterly unpicturesque. In the picture gallery are several noble works of Tidemann, the special painter of expression and pathos. As a companion for life is the memory of a picture which represents the administration of the last sacrament to an old peasant, whose wife's grief is turned to resignation, which ceases even to have a wish for his retention, as she beholds the heaven-born comfort with which he is looking into an unknown future. Another of the finest works of the artist represents the reception of the sacrament by a convict, young and deeply repentant, before his execution.

There is no striking scenery in the environs of Kristiania, but they are wonderfully pretty. From the avenues upon the ramparts you look down over the broad expanse of the fyord, with low blue mountain distances. Little steamers dart backwards and forwards, and convey visitors in a few minutes across the bay to Oscars Halle, a tower and small country villa of the king on a wooded knoll.

We went by the railway which winds high amongst the hills to Kongsberg, a mining village in a lofty situation. Here, in a garden of white roses, there is a most comfortable small hotel kept by a Dane, which is a capital starting-point for all expeditions in Telemarken. There is a pretty waterfall near the village, and the church should be visited, for the sake of its curious pulpit hour-glass—indeed, four glasses—quarter, half-hour, three-quarters, hour—and the top of a stool let into the wall with an inscription saying that Mr. Jacobus Stuart, King of Scotland (James I. of England), sate upon it, Nov. 25, 1589, to hear a sermon preached by Mr. David Lentz, 'between 11 and 12,' on 'The Lord is my Shepherd.'