THE KREMLIN OF MOSCOW.

I never had a very definite idea of the Kremlin of Moscow. It has been mentioned in books about Russia as a part of the city that every one must understand. The Acropolis of Athens and of Corinth, and the Capitoline Hill of Rome, enclosed with a wall to shut them off from the rest of the city, a refuge for the people in time of peril, the site for the most sacred temples and the most gorgeous palace for the sovereign, would be the Kremlin of Athens, or Corinth, or Rome. As far back as in 1340, walls of oak enclosed these heights. A few years afterwards, to resist the Tartars, the wooden walls gave place to stone, but treason gave the fierce barbarian hordes possession of the citadel, and the walls were destroyed. They were built again and again, but in 1485, when it was needful to protect the Kremlin against the attack of artillery, the walls were rebuilt on a scale never before attempted. The solid and lofty stone walls now enclose an area of about a mile and a half in circumference. Five massive gates admit the flow of life to the temples of religion and of justice within this enclosure. The chief entrance is called the “Redeemer” Gate. The passage through the wall by this gate is like going through a railroad tunnel. It is a holy hole, for over it is a picture of the Redeemer of Smolensk, and no one may pass under it without taking off his hat. Formerly, whoever was so hasty or forgetful as to neglect this mark of respect, was punished by being compelled to prostrate himself fifty times before the insulted picture. The Emperor of all the Russias never fails to uncover his head as he enters this gate. Hundreds were going in as I approached: on foot, in droskies, in carriages, but all were mindful of the place, and entered as if they were going into a holy place. Between the Nicholas and Trinity Gates are the arsenal and great cannons, some of them monster guns, quite antiquated by modern progress, but formidable in their proper place; and the long rows that are marked as left behind by the French in their retreat, tell a grim tale of the madness and folly of that disastrous campaign. Through this very Gate Nicholas, the French troops under Napoleon entered the Kremlin. Short as the stay of the Emperor was in the city, it was long enough for him to attempt to blow up the tower over this gate; but a miracle, as the superstitious Russians believe, was wrought to preserve it; for over the gate is a picture of St. Nicholas, “the comfort of suffering humanity,” and when the explosion took place which was to blow this massive structure into ruins, it made a rent indeed, extending upward to the frame of the picture, and there it suddenly stopped, not cracking the glass over the picture, nor the glass lamp hanging before it! And Alexander I. caused an inscription to be put up in memory of the miracle.

We ascend the hill and stand upon a wide paved plateau, or esplanade, with a scene immediately around, before, and below us, of interest, grandeur, beauty, and novelty. A cloudless sky and a blazing sun are over us. All the buildings are dazzling in whiteness, and the domes of thirty-two churches within the Kremlin, and hundreds below and around, are blazing at noon-tide in their gold and green. Each one of three hundred and seventy churches has several domes, and besides them there are theatres and palaces, and convents and other public buildings, roofs painted green, sides white, and gilt overlaying domes, turrets, and spires. Gardens filled with trees, among the dwellings, as in more Oriental cities, and the river circling its way into and out of the town, give us some idea of what Babylon or Nineveh might have been in their vast enclosure and picturesque rural attractions within their massive walls.

In the midst of the Kremlin, and above every other structure in Moscow, rises toward the sky the white, solid, simple Tower of Ivan; majestic in its simplicity and height, as if it were the axis about which this fairy world of Moscow was revolving, it stands sublimely there, with a bell of 444,000 pounds at its foot, and another of 130,000 swinging in its crown.

PLAN OF THE CENTRE OF MOSKVA CITY.
Scale of Feet.

A. THE KREMLIN.

B. THE KITAI GOROD.

At the foot of the Ivan Tower, supported by a pedestal of stone, is the largest bell in the world, and probably the largest that ever was in the world. A piece is broken out of its side, and the fragment is lying near. The breadth of the bell is so great,—it is twenty feet across,—that the cavity underneath has been used as a chapel, where as many people can stand as in a circle sixty feet around.

In Russia, the bell is an instrument of music for the worship of God as truly and really as the organ in any other country! This fact is not mentioned in the accounts we have of the wonderful, enormous, and almost incredibly heavy bells that have been cast in Moscow. But it is the key to what would otherwise be difficult to explain. It appears absurd to cast bells so large as to be next to impossible for convenient use; in danger always of falling and dragging others to ruin in their fall. But when the bell is a medium of communication with the Infinite, and the worship of a people and an empire finds expression in its majestic tones, it ceases to be a wonder that it should have a tongue which requires twenty-four men to move, and whose music should send a thrill of praise into every house in the city, and float away beyond the river into the plains afar.

Moscow is the holy city of the Greek Church. Pilgrims come hither from thousands of miles off, and on foot, and sometimes without shoes. I have seen them with staves in their hand, and their travel-worn feet wound up in cloths, wending their way to the sacred hill. And when they draw nigh unto the city, and on the evening air the music of these holy bells is first borne to their ears, they fall upon their faces, prostrate, and worship God. If they could go no further, they would be content to die there, for they have heard the bells of Moscow, and on their majestic tones their souls have been taken up to heaven. This is the sentiment of the superstitious peasant, and it is a beautiful sentiment, ideal indeed, but all the more delicate and exalted.

As long as five hundred years ago, this casting of bells was an art in Russia. It is one of the fine arts now. Perhaps our great bell-founders will not admit that the founders there have any more skill in their manufacture than we have, and I am not sure that their bells have any tones more exquisite than ours would have if we would put as much silver and gold into our bell-metal as they do. But so long as those precious metals are at the present premium, little or none of them will find its way into our church bells. We have not the idea of the Russian as to the use of a bell. We use it to call the people to the house of worship. They use the bell for worship. Our bells speak to us. Their bells praise God. They cast their silver and their gold into the molten mass, and it becomes an offering, as on an altar, to him who is worshipped with every silvery note and golden tone of the holy bell.

This one great bell is the growth of centuries. In 1553 it was cast, and weighed only 36,000 pounds. It fell in a fire, and was recast in 1654, being increased to the astonishing weight of 288,000 pounds. This was too vast a weight to be taken up to the top of the tower, and it was sustained by a frame at the foot of it. In 1706, it fell in another fire and was broken into fragments, which lay there on the ground about thirty years. It was recast in 1733; four years afterwards a piece was knocked out of the side of it, and it has been standing here on the ground more than a century. It weighs 444,000 pounds! In the thickest part it is two feet through. It has relief pictures on it of the Emperor and Empress, of the Saviour and the Virgin Mary, and the evangelists.

Ascending the Ivan Tower, we find on three successive stories bells to the number of thirty-four. Some of these are of a size to fill one with astonishment had he not seen the giant below. The largest is on the first story above the chapel, and weighs more than sixty tons. It swings freely and is easily rung. I smote it with the palm of my hand, supposing that such a blow could not produce the slightest vibration in such a mighty mass of iron, but it rung out as clear and startling as if a spirit within had responded to my knock without. Two bells are of solid silver, and their tones are exquisitely soft, liquid, and pure. It was exciting to go from one to another and strike them with their tongues, or with your hand, and catch the variety and richness of their several melodies.

The chapel below is dedicated to the patron saint of all ladies about to be married, and it may be readily believed that the bell that gives expression to their prayers will have, at least to their ears, the sweetest tone of all the bells in Moscow.

I came down from the Kremlin to my lodgings at Billot’s, and, wearied with the wanderings of the day, have been lying on the bed and looking out on the city. It is just before sunset, and the day has been oppressively warm. A delicious glow from the gorgeous west is bathing all the domes and roofs with splendid colors, and silence is stealing in with the setting sun upon the crowded town. It is the eve of one of their most holy festivals of the church. One vast church edifice is directly in view of my window and but a short way off. As I lie musing, from this church comes the softest, sweetest tone of an evening bell. Another tone responds. A third is heard. The Ivan Tower on the height of the Kremlin utters his tremendous voice, like the voice of many waters. And all the churches and towers over the whole city, four hundred bells and more, in concert, in harmony, “with notes almost divine,” lift up their voices in an anthem of praise, such as I never thought to hear with mortal ears: waves of melody, an ocean of music, deep, rolling, heaving, changing, swelling, sinking, rising, overwhelming, exalting. I had heard the great organs of Europe, but they were tame and trifling compared with this. The anthem of Nature at Niagara is one great monotone. The music of Moscow’s bells is above and beyond them all. It is the voice of the people. It utters the emotions of millions of loving, beating, longing hearts, not enlightened, perhaps, like yours, but all crying out to the great Father, in these solemn and inspiring tones, as if these tongues had voices to cry: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CHURCHES OF MOSCOW.

WE were alone in the holiest of all the holy places in the empire of Russia: a church and a sepulchre; the place where the emperors crown themselves and the primates of the church are lying in their grave-clothes all around; the grandest of all earthly grandeur, and the solemn evidences of the mightier power of King Death staring at the pageant in mockery of all that man is and does.

We were alone in the Cathedral of the Assumption; four gigantic gilded and pictured columns in the midst of it support five great domes; and on the sides are arranged the huge sarcophagi in which repose the bones of old patriarchs whose names are part of the history of the church, and whose relics are thus kept near at hand impressing the worshipper with something of awe, as one will feel it in the presence of the dead. There was no attendant in the church when we entered, and the deep silence reigning seemed befitting the place. We were silent, for the grandeur of the scene, the historic associations with the place, the evidences around us that this spot is holy in the eyes and hearts of the millions of this vast empire, made us solemn. Before us is the Iconastasis, or screen for sacred pictures, and behind this screen are the pictures of the patriarchs and fathers of the church. No woman may enter this holy place. It is very plain that the woman’s rights ideas of equality have not penetrated this veil. Here, too, are views of the final judgment scene, and of the life and death of the Virgin Mary. These sacred pictures surround the sanctuary, the holy of holies, before it is the principal altar, and behind it the throne of the Archbishop of Moscow. In the centre of the church, with the four great pillars at each corner, is the coronation platform, on which takes place the most august ceremony known to the Greek Church or the Russian people. We cannot enter fully into the sentiment of awe that possesses the minds of a half-civilized race, who receive their sovereign with a mingled conception of the divine and human in his person. He seeks to perpetuate this reverential sentiment. He secludes himself from the world before he comes to take the imperial crown; he mortifies himself by fasting and prayer; and when the appointed day arrives for his investiture with the high office to which God has called him, there is none in all his realm that is high and holy enough to put on him the emblem of the power he is to take. This cathedral is thronged with the highest dignitaries of church and state, and the representatives of other empires, eastern and western, with the richest display of all that can illustrate the glory of this scene. They surround this empty platform, and gaze upon it with fixed expectancy. A solitary man enters and ascends alone; he speaks, but it is to repeat the words in which is expressed his faith in the doctrines of the church; he kneels to pray for his empire; he takes his own golden crown, and with his own unaided hands he places it upon his head; he descends, and entering the holiest sanctuary takes the bread and wine from the altar, and thus alone with God, whom alone he confesses to be his superior, he consecrates himself to the throne of Russia. Thus from Ivan the Terrible, all the way down to the Alexander who was shot at in Paris during the exhibition, have the Czars been self-crowned on this sacred spot.

THE RUSSO-GREEK SERVICE.

In a side chapel near the altar lies Peter, the first metropolitan of Moscow, with a nail of the Saviour’s cross and a part of his seamless robe. On the right is the coffin of Philip, who had the courage to rebuke the Terrible Ivan, a terribly brutal ruler, murdering his nobles without mercy, and when Philip became too troublesome he murdered him. Now the dead prelate lies here with one of his skeleton hands exposed to view on his breast, and it is part of the Emperor’s service, when he approaches this tomb, to kiss the holy bone, that is left convenient for the purpose.

Very like this cathedral is that of the Archangel Michael close by; and here lie the coffins and relics of the early rulers of the Runic and Romanoff dynasties, all the way down to Peter the Great. The tomb of Demetrius, son of Ivan the Terrible, is the most sacred of all; he disappeared mysteriously, and the country was plunged into a long and bloody civil war; and, finally, his murdered body and coffin were brought to view by a miracle, and the forehead of the dead prince being exposed, or a hole about an inch in diameter being cut through the coffin and the forehead raised up to it, or what is just as good, a bone being put across the hole, the people approach with reverence and press their lips upon this holy and disgusting skull.

Our meditations among the tombs were disturbed by the entrance of visitors, many of them natives of the country, whose reverence in the midst of so much that to them was specially sacred, we could not fail to respect. I cannot kiss a bone with any enthusiasm; but there is no accounting for the tastes of people; and disgusting as is the idolatry of the Greek Church to me, I know that many English and American Christians wish to have that church united to theirs. I would like to see it reformed first.

There are no restrictions on religious worship in Russia! On one street in the capital of Russia, where the Emperor himself resides, and the Greek Church reigns in all its glory, there are six churches of as many different religious persuasions, all protected by the law.

The English have a church of their own in Moscow, and a rectory, for there are a large number of English-speaking people in these cities, not only men in trade, but tutors and governesses who are induced to come to Russia from England to teach the children and youth the English language. It is quite as great an accomplishment to speak English, as with us it is to speak French. And such is the extension of business westward, it is quite important that one who is in commercial pursuits of any kind should understand a language which more rapidly than any other is spreading over the world. We meet more Russians speaking our own tongue than of almost any other people.

During the Crimean war complaint was made to the Emperor that the English chaplain in Moscow offered prayers every Sunday that Queen Victoria might be victorious over all her enemies, and the Emperor replied that the chaplain might pray for the Queen or anybody else.

In the city of Moscow there are three hundred and seventy churches of the Greek faith, two Roman Catholic, and four Protestant; of these four, two are for those who worship in the German language, one French, and one English.

On the Sabbath I attended the Greek service in the St. Basil Cathedral. The crowd was so vast that multitudes were unable to get within the doors. A narrow door at the side yielded to the touch, and the sacristan received us as strangers and conducted us into the holy place where the priests were performing service. A choir of five—two old men, two young men, and a boy—made the responses and sang parts of the service with an energy and power that was exciting and astonishing as we stood by them and saw the effort they made to give effect to their utterances. The devotion of the crowded auditory was affecting. If one may judge of emotion by what he sees of people worshipping in a strange language, he must believe that these are truly devout, and deeply impressed with the services in which they are earnestly engaged.

It is Trinity Sunday. Wagon loads of green branches of trees are carried through the streets for sale. Every house, shop, shrine, church, and station is adorned with evergreens; windows and doors are garlanded; the humblest house in the poorest quarter we passed through had its sprig of green, and where the poverty of the person prevented any display, it was evident that no one was ashamed to do what he could in honor of the day. The women and children carried flowers, the lily of the valley seeming to be the favorite; and bunches of it were constantly offered for sale, by those who would do a little business for themselves and help the rest to worship after their fashion.

We went up the Kremlin to the Archangel Cathedral. Thousands on thousands of people, a countless multitude, were standing around the Ivan Tower and the big bell, unable to gain entrance into any church, for these were all filled to overflowing by the densest mass of sweltering humanity. Many of this crowd were common and unclean people, like the very poor everywhere; they were ragged, unshod, and dirty. Those in better order had long frock-coats on, reaching to the ground nearly, with high boots over their pantaloons. These crowds were quiet, lounging around as if they had nothing to do and were doing it patiently, but not earnestly. They seemed to me a dull, phlegmatic race, incapable of emotion; but this is a judgment of no great account, for it is not unlikely the Russians may be as easily roused to action, for good or evil, as the Germans or English.

Work of all sorts was going on in the city, with not the slightest indication that the day was a sabbath. It was only wonderful that so many people could be busy with the work of every day, and such multitudes at leisure to enjoy a holiday.

Now and then a procession of poor pilgrims passed along, with sandals of bark bound upon the soles of their feet, for they had come a long distance from the far interior to worship in this holy city. Weary and foot-sore they were, men and women, in scanty, but heavy clothing, even in this hot weather, and wearing a look of solemn suffering as they trudged along with staves in their hands. They have not yet learned that the hill of Zion is now as near to them as in the Kremlin, and that God is worshipped acceptably only by those who worship in heart and truth. Some of these pilgrims may be beggars so disguised, for here, as at home, there is no form of swindling more common than religious imposture. The Russians are very kind and tender to idiots, and beggars go about barefoot even in winter, pretending to be underwitted!

On the wide area in front of St. Basil is the Golgotha, or skull place, a name given to a circular stone platform, said to be the place of public executions in old times, but if so, it has long since ceased to be used for any such purpose. Here the Czar sometimes stands in the midst of myriads of his subjects. Here the Patriarch blesses the people. Here the Patriarch has mounted an ass and the Emperor of all the Russias has led the beast by the bridle to the Cathedral of the Assumption. But the church has no such supremacy over the state now, as such a ceremony would imply. The Czar is a devout member as well as head of the Greek Church, and the Patriarch is his friend and coadjutor. The progress of the truth on the great question of religious liberty has made itself felt here as well as in western nations, and with all the ignorance and despotism and superstition, and the semi-civilization of this people, the government does not obstruct the spread of the Holy Scriptures, nor interfere with liberty of worship in any part of the mighty empire.

One of the priests of this church very kindly led us into the sacristy of the former patriarchs and now of the Holy Synod, where he would show us the treasury, the library, and the vestry of the ancient metropolitans of Russia and the patriarchs of Moscow. It was the same old story which had been told us over and over again in the cathedrals of the Romish Church, ad nauseam; and unless we had been advertised of the fact, we would not have supposed that we had taken a departure from Italy or Spain.

A reliquary containing a part of the purple robe which the Saviour of sinners was clad with in mockery of his kingship, and a bit of the rock of Calvary, are among the most precious relics which this rich collection boasts; yet they are not more admired by the faithful than the robes which were worn by the metropolitans five hundred years ago, and are now exhibited; a sakkos of crimson velvet, covered with great pearls, rubies, emeralds, almandines, garnets, and diamonds, making it weigh more than fifty pounds. And it is said that the Czar John the Terrible presented this priceless robe to the church as an expiatory offering after he had caused his own son to be murdered. The crimson garment, price of blood or not, is cherished with religious care as one of the most valuable things in the treasury of the Holy Synod.

But it is more wearisome to read of, than it is to see and note the robes and mitres and images worn by the bishops, figures of the Virgin and infant Saviour and St. John, cut in precious stones, the crucifixion scene done on an onyx stone, and others in gold and silver. Yet all these yield in value and religious interest to a few pots and kettles which are used in this chamber, and were now presented to what were presumed to be our admiring eyes. It may be that our instantaneous conversion to the Greek faith was anticipated as the effect of the sight. We stood it unmoved, and will venture to describe the things seen with no expectation that the perusal will make a convert of you.

Here is prepared the Holy Oil, or Mir, with which every orthodox Russian subject is baptized. The same mixture is used to consecrate every emperor who comes regularly to the throne, and to sanctify every church in the empire that is to be used for worship by the orthodox Greek communion. Now, if all the oil to be used for all these purposes, in an empire of sixty millions of people and by the adherents of the same church in other countries, is to be prepared in this room and by the priests here employed, it is plain they must have their hands and kettles full pretty much all the time.

The ceremony of oiling a child in the Greek Church, at its baptism, is performed by the priest taking a little brush or feather, dipped in the holy chrism, and touching with it the mouth, eyes, ears, hands and feet, back and breast; the eyes are thus anointed that the child may see only what is good, the ears to prevent him hearing the evil that is in the world, the lips that they may speak the truth, the hands and feet that they may be always found in the right way. Whence this oil that has such wondrous properties? When Christianity was first introduced into Russia, Constantinople furnished an infinitely little portion of holy oil that was then in use in the church for these sacred purposes; and this portion being used by the priests in preparing a large quantity, and some of that being used in preparing more, and thus from time to time each new supply being composed in part of what was prepared before, it comes to pass, on the strictly philosophical principle of the infinite divisibility of matter, some of the same unguent that came from Constantinople many centuries agone, is now used in anointing the eyes, ears, and mouth of every child that is baptized in Russia. If you do not believe it, it still comes to the same thing, and I do not see that it makes any difference.

The holy chrism is made by the clergy during Lent, with great care and solemnity; about thirty different ingredients being used, gums, balsams, and spices. These are put into two large silver kettles and a huge caldron, scrupulously clean; and when the mixture is thoroughly made it is poured out into sixteen silver jars, which are distributed among the several bishops of the empire. The silver utensils used in this work, and all of which are exhibited as the most sacred treasures of the church, are said to weigh thirteen hundred pounds. And with them is a vessel of copper with mother-of-pearl coating, that contained the original oil as it came from Constantinople; and each year a few drops are taken out of it, and as many of the new mixture returned, so that the supply is always kept good, and the faithful of the church believe that this is the true succession of the oil with which Mary anointed the feet of her Saviour.

CHAPTER XXIX.
PALACE AND INSTITUTIONS OF MOSCOW.

IF you are weary reading of royal palaces, you will be sorry to be invited to the one more gorgeously adorned and illustrated than any other which you and I have entered in company. You have often heard of, and perhaps have seen, some specimens of barbaric splendor! You have associated with the word barbaric, ideas of Oriental and excessive magnificence, laid on without the more refined and chastened taste of modern civilization. It is a word the old Romans used to define foreign people, and whatever came to Rome from foreign parts: all the world was barbarous or Roman. We do not use the word in the same sense as barbarous. But with it, in connection with gold and pearls and decorations of the palace, we associate a wealth of luxury and brilliancy of ornamentation, that would suit the meridian of Persia rather than of Paris.

Not having seen the palaces of the interior of Asia, I cannot draw a comparison between them and the royal residences of European monarchs. But we are now on the border between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe, between barbarism in its best estate and civilization. Take a map of the world and see where Moscow stands! What vast, uncultured, desolate regions lie at the east of it, and still further on, what empires and peoples that make up the bulk of the human race! Out of the barbarism of that eastern portion of the earth’s plane, Russia is emerging, and Moscow is her frontier town; a wall and a monument: a sign and guide, signifying what Russia has been, and leading on to something higher and better, though the future is still in the depths of political and moral uncertainties.

The Tartar hordes have in ages past been fond of making raids upon Moscow, and leaving her palaces heaps of smoking ruins. In old times the Russians built them of wood for the most part, though one of stone erected in 1484 is still standing. Then the Czars removed the capital to St. Petersburg, and for a long time the Kremlin was without a palace or an emperor. The celebrated Empress Anne gave Moscow a palace, and her presence now and then, and Catharine II. designed a royal residence so vast and gorgeous as to rival the palaces of the world, but it was never finished; its model is preserved as a curiosity in the treasury. What she did build, the French wantonly burned when they were compelled to desert the city which its own inhabitants had consigned to destruction. This house, at the doors of which we have been standing while I have given you these historical facts, is the work of the late Nicholas, and is only about twenty years old. It has no likeness in the various orders of architecture; there is no correspondence or harmony between the within and without of it: yet the whole interior is a blaze of gold and upholstery that leaves all rules of taste and art out of the question. We pass through the Empress’s drawing-room, hung with white silk, her cabinet in crimson, her dressing and bath rooms with malachite mantels and priceless ornaments; the Emperor’s cabinet, with magnificent paintings of the proud French coming into Moscow, and the poor French skulking out,—grim satires these on the horrors and fortunes of war; the state apartments, with huge crystal vases at the entrance; the Hall of St. George, with the names of regiments and soldiers inscribed in gold upon the walls, who have been decorated with this order for bravery on the field; the Hall of St. Andrew, hung with blue silk, and inscribed with the names of heroes; the Emperor’s throne, more ostentatious and imposing than any other in Europe; the audience-chamber and banqueting-room, on which is lavished the last resource of gilt and paint to make a show,—and yet when we are ushered into the Gold Court, all former magnificence is for the moment forgotten in the dazzling splendor that fills the place, as if the walls were blazing with living golden light. A flight of steps at one end of the room, called “the red stair case,” is never trodden upon but when the Emperor, on the greatest of all occasions, goes to the Cathedral of the Assumption. This is part of the old palace begun by Catharine, and has a history running back to the time when John the Terrible stood here and saw the comet that he construed into an omen of his doom. And up this flight of stairs came Napoleon, the greatest of actors, when he took possession of the palace of the Kremlin. And when he went down these stairs he began that descent which never stopped till he touched the bottom of his tomb.

The right wing of the palace is the treasury building, with the most remarkable collection of objects to be seen in Russia. The Tower of London illustrates England as this museum tells the history of the Russian empire. Her past and present intercourse with the Asiatic nations, and her more modern commercial relations with the West, have made Moscow the emporium of all that distinguishes her ancient and modern commerce, and exchange of presents when treaties have been made. What riches of plate, jewels, silks, manufactures, which China, India, Persia, Armenia, and other powers, peoples, and tribes have poured into the lap of this colossal power in the progress of centuries! When the French were coming, the prudent Russians, foreseeing the evil, removed these pearls and diamonds and rubies, these vessels of gold and silver, these costly fabrics of art and toil which could never be replaced, and concealed them far in the interior, where the feet of the enemy would not be apt to follow them.

Among the historical curiosities here preserved with religious care, the traveller from the land of liberty views with sorrow and indignation the throne of Poland! Other thrones, as trophies of conquered kingdoms, stand near. One of ivory was brought from Constantinople in 1472. Another is from Persia, taken as long ago as 1660. It is covered with 876 diamonds, 1,223 rubies, and many other precious stones. Blazing in front of these thrones is an orb, which the Greek emperors, Basilius and Constantine, sent to Wladimir Monomachus, Prince of Kief, with a piece of the true cross! This orb is adorned with fifty-eight diamonds, eighty-nine rubies, twenty-three sapphires, fifty emeralds, and thirty-seven other stones, and with enamels colored in the highest style of Grecian art, to tell the story of King David, of the land of Israel.

One of the most wonderful institutions of Moscow is the hospital for foundlings, into which about twelve thousand children are taken yearly. As many, if not more, are received into a similar institution in St. Petersburg. It is said that no cities in the world surpass those of Russia in the comforts provided for the care of these outcasts from the birth, the most forlorn and helpless of all the objects that appeal to human sympathy. The government makes a yearly grant of about a million of dollars to this hospital in Moscow, and it has large resources besides, so that there is no lack of funds to meet the wants of these unfortunate little people, whose fathers and mothers forsaking them are taken up by the Lord.

In some cities I have seen a table made to revolve outside the walls of the asylum, and in, so that a child could be placed upon it outside, and on the door-bell being rung the table would be set in motion, and the infant is gently rolled into the house. The mother or friend who brought the child and laid it upon the table would thus be relieved of its charge, and would silently depart, leaving the child, yet utterly unseen and unknown. This system has its advantages, and many attendant evils. But here in Moscow they affect no such mystery about the matter. The hospital receives the infant children of poor and honest parents who are willing to give their babes to the state, and it also takes the offspring of sin and shame who are brought by their mothers or left on the highway and picked up by the police or the wayfarer. A reception-room is always open. A man or woman enters with a babe. No question is asked but these:—

“Has the child been baptized?”

If yes, “By what name?” If it has not been baptized, that sacrament is at once administered, and the name given is registered opposite a number, which is hereafter worn as a sign around its neck, and this number is handed to the person who brings the child. This number entitles the bearer to come back any time within ten years and claim the child. The nurses are mothers who have left their own children in the country, and come here to get the wages and living in the hospital, which are far better than they enjoy at home. And some of the nurses are the mothers whose children are here, and as they have the number that marks their own, they can easily change about till they get the care of the babe they seek to watch, without its ever being known to be theirs.

Nothing is now wanting that medical skill and good nursing can supply to preserve the lives of these orphans. We go from ward to ward, admiring the cleanliness, order, and comfort on every side. The babes are bathed in copper tubs, convenient in shape, and lined with thick flannel. They are not laid on the hard knees or sharp hoops of unfeeling nurses to be dressed, but they are suffered to lie on pillows of down while this operation is performed. After four weeks of such tender care, and when the child may be supposed to have gained some strength, they are sent with their nurses into the country. They are, however, exposed to such a climate, and the fare of the peasantry is so coarse, that it takes a tough child to weather the first year of life, and at least one-half of them die before they are twelve months old. Half of the remainder who survive the year fall by the way before they grow up; and so it comes to pass that only one quarter, twenty-five out of a hundred, of these children of the state live to be men and women. This is a small proportion, and it is quite likely that full as many of them would have lived to grow up, if there had been no hospital to care for them.

Another institute we find here in Moscow that has nothing to match it, and cannot have in our democratic country. The female orphan children of servants of the Emperor are taken into it, and eight hundred are constantly receiving an education to fit them for being teachers! They are bound to devote six years after they leave the institute to the business of teaching in the interior of the empire. They have a small salary, and thus provide for themselves while they are doing a good work for the state. No foundlings are admitted into this house. The orphans are all supposed to be children of honest parents, and this supposition keeps up a higher tone of self-respect than would be possible among a thousand children who did not know who their parents are.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing we have read of in the figure language of the Bible, but men in sheep’s clothing I had never seen till I met them to-day, in midsummer, in the market-places of Moscow. They could have but one suit of clothing, and to cover their nakedness must wear it summer and winter. It was made, “coat and pants,” of sheepskin with the wool on, and was worn by some with the wool outside, and by others with the wool in. On a day like this of sweltering heat, when it was not safe for us to walk in the sun without parasols, these natives of the north, with their winter clothes on, were not apparently oppressed; and it was a comfort to believe that they had become accustomed to it, and had no idea of any thing more enjoyable than an indefinite degree of heat.

As winter is the longer half of the year, it is the harvest time for those who are in the line of buying and selling meats and all provisions that are preserved by frost. As soon as the cold weather fairly sets in, the fatted cattle and pigs and poultry are doomed to die by the hands of the butcher. The carcasses are instantly frozen and sent to market. Here it is packed up in enormous heaps, and families who are able to buy at wholesale prices lay in their winter supplies, and those who live from hand to mouth can buy at any time fresh meat that was killed in the fall. The weather is so uniformly cold that little danger of a thaw is apprehended, but if it comes, away goes the meat. And it must at any time be cooked immediately on thawing, so that it is rather a precarious mode of preserving provisions. But it is adapted to the country and climate, it saves packing and salting, and has the advantage of furnishing fresh meat, at moderate prices, at all times. The fish from the White Sea are also kept, like wood-piles, in heaps with oxen and sheep and deer. The flesh of mammoths and elephants of past ages has been found in perfect preservation in the icy regions of the north, and it is certainly one of the remarkable provisions of nature that cold, which is so destructive of animal life, should also be the preserver of flesh, for indefinite periods, after the life principle has been extinguished.

The Jews in Chatham Street, New York, who press their wares upon the notice of passers by, are modest compared with the vendors of old clothes and miscellaneous matters in the markets of Moscow. It was hard to get away from them without making an investment in the most undesirable of all worldly goods,—a coat that somebody else had cast off. And such a jumble of things! reminding one of the sign on the country store window-shutter of an alliterative dealer: “Bibles, Blackball, Butter, Testaments, Tar, Treacle, Godly-books, and Gimlets, for sale here.” Ironware, pot-metal, in the shape of utensils for cooking, seemed to abound; and if the poorer people, who are the buyers here, have any thing to cook, it is very pleasant to know it. Their food is mainly milk, eggs, pickles, cabbage, and black bread, with beef and mutton according to their ability to buy it. As a general thing the Russian peasants are not underfed; the land being so largely in the immediate care of the laborer himself, he can manage to get food for himself and family. And as they clothe themselves in the rudest and most primitive way, literally using skins of beasts, and in their natural state, they ought to be able to live comfortably without handling much money.

The “Riding School” of Moscow is the building in which a remarkable museum is gathered. This building is one of the longest with an unbroken area in the world, the roof, without a column to support it, covering a space 560 feet long and 160 wide. It is constructed on this enormous scale for the exercise of regiments, cavalry and foot, in winter, when the weather is so severe as to render drills out of doors impossible. The Ethnological Society of the North of Europe had selected this place—and it was my good fortune to be here at the time—for the exhibition of the Slavonic races in wax! Here they are in all their varied employments, according to the climate, habits, and necessities of the several peoples; with their actual surroundings of forest, ice, snow, sea, river; the men, women, and children, with dogs, poultry, oxen, reindeer, and sledges, hunting and fishing, freezing and trying to keep warm, marrying and trading and travelling; here are Albanian costumes, and there a cavern and human skeletons sitting in it, telling a story I could not understand, and here a cottage out of whose roof the smoke curls gracefully, and the open door and chickens and children playing near, need no interpreter to speak of comfort and content.

If one were writing a volume of the manners and customs of the Slavonic races, he would learn more of them by the study of this museum than in months of travel among the people. The society is composed of learned and thoughtful men of Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, &c., who meet annually for the collection and diffusion of useful knowledge on the subject of their own race specially and the family of man. We are very apt to think that, outside of our own English-speaking countries, there is little doing to promote the civilization and thus the happiness of the human race. Travel takes this and many other conceits out of a man. One of the first things he learns, if he is capable of learning any thing, is that he knows very little of what is going on in the world. Then he finds that people whom he thought slow and only half civilized are far ahead of him in many things, and by degrees he comes to the conclusion that there is much in the world to be learned that he had never dreamed of. But if he sticks to it that what he does not know is not worth knowing, like my fellow countryman who insists that there is more art in Illinois than in all Europe, then you may be sure that he answers to the cane shown to Sydney Smith by one of this sort of travellers who said:

“This stick, sir, has been all around the world, sir.”

“Is it possible,” replied Mr. Smith, “why it’s nothing but a stick for all that!”

CHAPTER XXX.
FROM MOSCOW TO ST. PETERSBURG.

A COUPLE of English commercial travellers arrived to-day and were very conversable at dinner. No class of men one meets abroad are more free to impart what they know, than these agents of trading houses in England, who infest all countries, and push their way into every company that is willing to hear their ceaseless flow of talk. At dinner one of them asked a Frenchman in what country of Europe Egypt was situated, and the Frenchman did not know; they discussed the subject for some time, neither of them thinking it was not in Europe at all. But the two having failed to settle the geographical position of Egypt came back to matters nearer at hand, and the invasion of Russia by the French and the downfall of Napoleon, made the conversation lively. For when did or will a Frenchman and Briton agree upon the character, the genius, or the deserts of the Man of Destiny. And this led to the mention of the Sparrow Hills, and to an excursion thither, from which we have just returned.

On our way out of the city, we passed the church of the Saviour, the largest church in Moscow, with the most splendid dome, which, being covered with gilding, looks like a mighty sun rising. The church has been in process of building more than fifty years, and is far from being finished yet. It is intended as a memorial of the French invasion and its awful fate; and it was begun in the year 1812, so memorable for that critical event in the history of Russia, of France, and of mankind. And it was on the Sparrow Hills that Napoleon first saw Moscow.

An hour’s ride from the hotel brought us to the Simonoff Monastery, which has been here through all the storms of weather and war these last five hundred years. Rich in lands with thousands of serfs, and the treasury into which emperors and princes poured their royal gifts, it has been sacked again and again by invading hordes, but has lived on, with six churches within its walls. A lake near by is reached by an underground passage, and miracles of healing are said to be wrought upon the sick who come here with faith, and stay until they get well. In the midst of the enclosure rises a tower more than three hundred feet, and a blind bell-ringer delights in leading you to the look-out loft, and answering every question you can ask respecting every object in your sight. You may be sure that he is right in his answers, though he is blind as a bat.

The Novo-Devichi Convent, with six churches and a romantic history, the Donskoi Monastery, and the Novospaski Monastery, are scattered through this region, and are all visible and accessible in the visit to the hill country around Moscow. But the roads are wretched and the weather hot; the sun is getting low in the west, and we are in haste to enjoy the glories that are to burst upon our sight when we come to stand where Napoleon stood at the head of his proud legions and first saw Moscow!

At the foot of the hill flows the river Moskva, and row-boats are plying back and forth to carry the many passengers, chiefly of the humbler classes of people, who are going to and from the hills, on this feast-day in the Church, and so a holiday for them all. Leaving the carriage, we were ferried across and then climbed the hills, where hundreds of the Muscovites were enjoying themselves on the green slopes, eating, drinking, and laughing gaily, playing tricks upon one another, and making themselves merry, as the same class of people do in every part of the world. And it is pleasant to think that other people have “a good time” as well as we, in what clime soever they chance to live, and however much they lack the things that we think indispensable to enjoyment. Some of them were playing cards on the ground, some were drinking quas, a strong spirit; and some who had already taken too much for their manners, called out saucily to us to come and take a drink of gin.

Before us, as we turned on reaching the brow of the hill, stood the holy city of Russia, its ancient capital, the border city between the Eastern and the Western worlds! The sun unclouded and intensely glowing is behind us, and shedding its golden radiance in floods upon the domes and pinnacles of three hundred and seventy churches, countless towers and roofs and walls, the Kremlin standing above the rest in its majesty, with its crown of cathedrals and palace, a constellation of splendor rarely equalled in the cities of the world. The river makes a circular sweep through the plain at our feet, and then flows through the city.

It was June, 1812, when Napoleon, at the head of the French army, crossed the Niemen and pushed on to Wilna, from which the Russian army retired, drawing him on in pursuit, and, with masterly foresight, involving their enemy in more and more hopeless difficulties. Napoleon would have been glad to meet the Russians in signal battle, but the leader of the Russians understood his ground too well to risk an engagement. The Emperor Alexander, however, had not the sagacity to perceive nor the patience to bear the policy of his general, and, displacing him, put another man in his place, who gave battle at Borodino on the first day of September, when 80,000 men were killed or wounded, and the Russians retired to Moscow. The French were sadly crippled by the losses in this battle, and their provisions were now nearly exhausted. They were hastening on to the capture of Moscow to save their own lives. On the 12th of September the Russian army silently marched out of the city, carrying with them every thing that could be removed. Of three hundred thousand inhabitants, only the convicts and a few others remained to take the chances of war.

On the very next day, the advance of the French army reached the brow of the hill where we were standing a few hours ago; and Napoleon, excited by the sight of the sunny domes and roofs of the golden city, cried out, “All this is yours.” The soldiers caught up the cry, “Moscow! Moscow!” and it ran like fire along the ranks till the whole army shouted in concert, “Moscow! Moscow!” An hour or two more and they made their triumphal entry into a city whose gates were open without a defender, and to the dismay of the conqueror the city was a desert without food or inhabitants. Through the deserted streets and up to the sacred gate of the Kremlin the conqueror took his silent and sullen way, and ascended the steps of the palace which was left ready for his reception. He had reached the end of his awful march of two thousand miles, but one was before him more terrible by far. His army was starving, and the city was empty. On the morning following his occupation, a fire broke out and defied all efforts to arrest it. Perhaps the wretched remnant of inhabitants were the incendiaries. This is not a settled question. But the soldiers sought to save the city, and could not. The hospitals, in which 20,000 wounded had been left, were consumed. The glorious churches were now shining in flames. The palaces and houses of the rich were given up to the soldiery, and the sacredness of temples and altars was no protection against the lawless rabble that rioted in the ruin and plunder of the town. The liberated convicts and ragged poor ravaged the homes of princes and the vestries of priests, and now roamed the streets in furs and robes. What the fire spared the battle-axe destroyed. Works of art and elegance and luxury, the vast accumulations of wealth and ages, all went down in the vortex of remorseless war.

And now Napoleon sought to make peace with the enemy whose chief city he had in his possession. But his enemy was his master, and refused to hear of peace. After a month of delay, and the dreadful winter of the North at hand, he set off with his shattered hosts to return. And the story of that return is frozen into the memory of man. Its horrors the pencil has sought to portray, and no pen can do it justice. The frost and snow made havoc with the miserable soldiers: they froze by thousands and died on the march. Wild disorder reigned, and death was the only commander whom officer or man obeyed. Napoleon, always true to himself, deserted his faithful army and fled to Paris. Of the half a million of men who composed his troops when he began the invasion of Russia, about 200,000 were made prisoners, 125,000 were slain in battles, and 130,000 perished by cold, hunger, and fatigue! A disaster without a parallel in the annals of the race.

And this was the beginning of the end. The powers of Europe combined against him, and the world knows the story.

Moscow is a city of so much historical interest, and it is so peculiar in its architecture, plan, and people, that we have lingered longer than perhaps has been agreeable to you. But the time was when Moscow was far more of a city than it is now. Two hundred and thirty years ago (it is written in history), Moscow had two thousand churches; but the statements of the former population of this city are so astounding as to be scarcely credible. In 1600 the plague made such ravages here that 127,000 persons were dead in the streets at one time, and 500,000 died in the city. All of these stories, including the number of the churches, must be greatly exaggerated, and yet they are some index to the former extent and power of this splendid capital. But all this greatness must have been when the people were only a little removed from barbarism. Dr. Collins, physician to the Czar, says in 1670, “the custom of tying up wives by the hair of the head and flogging them, begins to be left off.” It was certainly time, though it was two hundred years ago. No traces of that ancient custom remain. The doves that inhabit the streets, are held to be sacred birds, emblems of the Holy Spirit, and more of the spirit of love, than would be indicated by such rough treatment of wives, may be counted upon as prevailing within the houses where these peaceful birds are cherished. In no country that I have been in, is there more kissing done in public. At the railroad stations and in the market places, when a party of friends meet, they rush into each other’s embrace, and all kiss; the men the men, the women the women, and the men and women kiss each other. These are the peasants. I could not say that it is common among the more cultivated people.

Our host, M. Billot, sent us to the station with extra style; his wife was going into the country to see her children at school, and in her private carriage we were to ride to the depot with her, as a special mark of attention. During our stay in Moscow the family had done every thing in their power to make the visit agreeable, and it was crowned with this last act of attention, an escort to the station when we took our leave.

There is but one train in twenty-four hours from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and as it is to be a ride of twenty hours, it is important to have some accommodations for sleeping. Our experience in going to Moscow had been so unhappy that we sought to improve upon the matter on the return trip. We learned that the first-class cars were arranged in compartments for six persons, and that the seats at night were to be converted into berths, so that each passenger buying a ticket was also the holder of a berth for sleeping in. The compartments were elegantly fitted up, and we (two of us) found ourselves upon setting off, on one side, and two Russian ladies on the other. They spoke the French language, and being as innocent of English, as we of Russ, the conversation that soon sprang up, was in the only tongue we could use in common. The apartment was hot to the verge of suffocation. We put up a window, which in a bright June day would be considered pleasant in any country, but the ladies gave instant signs of apprehensions that they would take cold. Soon one of them shut the window with a decision that forbade appeal. We ventured to set the door open to admit the air from the open window across the passage, but this was too much for the sensitive women, and we had to close it. I found the same dread of cold in hot weather to be common to all the natives. An omnibus, the body of which was made of sheet iron, which I was riding in on a blazing summer-day, was heated literally like an oven. I was obliged to leave it, but the people evidently enjoyed the baking. They have it so cold in cold weather, that the brief hot season seems to be refreshing, and the hotter the better they like it. At four P.M. we stopped at Klin for dinner—thirty minutes—all seated at table, and dinner was decently served: soup, boiled chicken and rice, quails, vegetables, jelly: price one rouble (sixty-four cents), wines and fruit extra. The natives at table were well mannered, with just such exceptions as you meet with in all countries; one man left in disgust because there was too much confusion, and another refused to pay for his dinner until after he had eaten it. But the order, the dinner, the price of it, and the time to enjoy the meal, were all more agreeable to travellers than they would have been on most of the routes in our own beloved and well-regulated country.

At Tver, on the Volga, we halted for a few moments only. A little girl, four or five years old, barefoot and poorly clad, came before the car window begging. She bowed to us as if before a picture of the Virgin, crossed herself, touched her forehead, bent her head low, the hair falling over her face, and then, raising her head quickly, threw the hair back, and so amused the people. We threw her money, which she caught in her lap, crossed herself, blessed us, and asked for more. Three girls came up and joined her, going through the same motions, and got some coppers; and now a big boy made his appearance and put in his claims which proved unsuccessful. Then he turned upon the little girl, knocked her about for a minute, robbed her of her alms and fled. Boys are boys all the world over. I wish the cars would wait long enough for me to catch the little rascal, and recover the money for the girl.

This is a city of nearly 30,000 inhabitants; its splendid domes and beautiful Greek temples, as seen in passing, speak of a city of unusual culture.

Night came, according to the watch, but no darkness. Nine, ten, twelve, no signs of night, except that sunshine was gone. We wished to go to sleep. But here an unexpected difficulty arose. The two ladies declared it to be impossible for them to sleep in the cars, and therefore they did not wish the seats disturbed. We proposed to the conductor to arrange ours into berths, and let the others remain in statu quo ante bellum. He said they must be worked together: all or none. In vain we argued the case with these implacable women; and, when we found that our appeals to their pity and their sense of justice were alike without avail, we gave it up. Each of us four settled into a corner, and the two ladies soon gave certain infallible signs that they were sound asleep, and so they continued until long after the break of day. The truth was, and the conductor understood it, but we did not, there was an extra charge for making up the berths, and the ladies saved the money by sleeping perpendicularly.

At midnight it was as light as noon often is with us. I could write at any hour, and these lines you are now reading are written at half-past two o’clock in the morning. At three, the east began to glare with the rising splendor of another day. The heavy clouds that skirt the horizon are robes of fire. Gorgeously the colors of the rainbow are painted one by one on these shifting scenes,—orange, red, purple, violet, I could count them all. How mean, tame, pale, all earthly pageants seem: the domes, the minarets, the golden-jewelled orbs and crowns of Czars, compared with this wasted wealth of glory that the King of kings scatters from his full hand with the rising of each day’s sun. I had never seen the sun rise in a latitude so far north. Its splendors charmed me out of all my hard feelings towards these sleeping Russian dames, who deprived me of a night’s repose and gave me such a magnificent morning.

Sitting up all night with a couple of Russian ladies might, or might not, suggest the idea of telling you something of the marriage customs of this strange country. A French writer, whose name I forget, has said “the Russians are a nation of polite savages,” a remark that is not very apt, but it helps us toward a proper understanding of the social condition of the people. The rich are very rich; the poor are very poor. The nobles are courtly, polite, and as refined in manners as those of the same social class in Germany; but the serfs, or those who belonged to the nobles with the soil, before the emancipation, are rude, and not half civilized. The two classes, or rather the extremes of the two classes, would justify the description of the Frenchman, who, like many writers of his country, would not be specially tied by the truth, if he wished to point an epigram.

It was no uncommon thing in those days of serfdom for the proprietor to order this matter of marriage among his people, telling the young men to get a wife when he thought it time, and providing them, if the young men were slow in making their choice. And in the peasant class the marriage was liable to all the caprices and irregularities to be expected in a state of things where the will of the master was scarcely restrained by law or custom, so that he had the social happiness of his people very much in his own hands. In such a country, and under such circumstances, it would not be strange if some social evil was suffered.

Almost as soon as a girl is born, in the better ranks of society, her parents begin to prepare the dowry she must have when she goes to her husband. For this is indispensable in the eyes of any Russian young gentleman who proposes to be married. She must furnish every thing for an outfit in life, even to a dozen new shirts for her coming husband.

I have just heard of a lady of rank and wealth who had prepared a costly dowry of silks, linen, jewels, plate, &c., for her beloved daughter, who died as she came to be twenty years old. The mother resolved to endow six girls with these riches, and actually advertised for them. A host of applicants came, and she selected six. None of them had lovers. But now they had a respectable dowry secured, each girl was speedily engaged, and with the husband took the dowry, and paid the rich lady by promising to pray for the repose of her daughter’s soul.

In no country is this arrangement of terms carried on with more caution and completeness than in Russia. The young man goes to the house of his proposed bride, and counts over the dresses, and examines the furniture, and sees to the whole with his own eyes, before he commits himself to the irrevocable bargain. In high life such things are conducted with more apparent delicacy, but the facts are ascertained with accuracy, the business being in the hands of a broker or a notary. The trousseau is exposed in public before the wedding day. And this publicity has long been as unblushing as the customs that are now becoming fashionable in New York. The publication in the newspapers of intended marriages; of descriptions of bridal dresses and presents; of the names and toilettes of guests at fashionable parties; the value of jewels worn, &c., now common and approved in the highest circles of American society, is the same thing with the exposure to the public gaze of a bride’s dowry in Russia.

At Whitsunday there is a curious custom, which is gradually giving way with the advance of civilization. The young people of a neighborhood come together, and the girls stand in a row, like so many statues, draped indeed, and not only draped, but dressed in their best, and painted too; for the young ladies, and the older ones also, of this country use cosmetics freely, and a box of lady’s paint is a very common present for a young man to make to the girl he likes. Behind the row of girls are their mothers; the young men having made known their choice, the terms are settled between the parents of the parties.

The ladies in Russia are very anxious to marry, because they have no liberty before marriage. They are kept constantly under the maternal eye until they are given up to the husband, and then they take their own course, which is a round of gayety and dissipation, only regulated by their means of indulgence. The Greek Church, like the Roman, permits no divorce, but the Emperor, like the Pope, can grant special dispensations.

The marriage ceremonies vary, as in all countries, according to the rank and wealth of the parties. A procession is sometimes met in the streets; and the Emperor’s carriage would, at any time, turn out and give the right of way to a bridal party.

It pleases me always, in a strange country, to find that social enjoyments are so equally distributed over the earth, varying in kind and degree, indeed, according to the religion and civilization of the people, but still all of them having their own ways and means of making themselves happy.

CHAPTER XXXI.
FINLAND.

AT nine in the morning we were to be on board the steamer Wyborg, Captain Nystrom, to go from St. Petersburg to Finland, and thence to Sweden. When we reached the wharf, so great was the crowd of passengers and the crush of luggage and the pressure of freight, that it seemed doubtful if we should be able to get on board. It was summer time, very hot, and the people who had not yet escaped from the city heat, and were able to, were rushing to their rural residences on the sea-coast. They are as much in the habit of this, as our rich people at home are of flying in midsummer to the hills or the sea-shore.

Americans are abroad. Four or five families from the city of New York met on the deck of this steamer, all of whom were making this northern tour, and none of whom were known to each other as away from home. As the boat was to be our hotel for several days, this sudden accession of neighbors was very agreeable, and made the prospect of the excursion more pleasant. And gradually this circle widened, till it embraced Russians and Finns and Swedes and English, with whom our own tongue was more easily a means of communication than it was in Italy or Spain.

We are steaming out of one of the four mouths of the Neva, as it widens into the Gulf of Finland, and for several miles the intricate channel is staked out with care. Cronstadt is the famous port of St. Petersburg, one of the strongest fortifications in the world, and we had expected to see a frowning precipice, a long and lofty range of rocks, defying attack, a Gibraltar in the north of Europe. There is no rock at all. The fortifications are low, and all the more impregnable for that; but we were taken down by their appearance, the situation being so widely different from our anticipations. Napier came here with the British fleet, at the opening of the war that was afterwards called the Crimean, for the very good reason that when the Admiral hurled the whole power of the navy of England against Cronstadt in vain, the war was prosecuted to its close in the southern part of the Russian empire, the Crimea.

The approach to Cronstadt is difficult, and the channel easily defended by the immense fortifications which successive emperors have constructed, well knowing that this is the northern gate of the empire. The dry docks are on a gigantic scale, to meet the demands of a first-class naval power, which Russia is not, and will never be till she moves her seat of government and field of operations to the Bosphorus. Forests of masts, denser forests of masts than we had seen since leaving New York, stood along the docks of Cronstadt. A steamer crowded with passengers, from stem to stern, passed us as we were lying here; she was bound to Revel, and all the Russian coast of the Gulf of Finland. The people are apparently as given to travel as the Americans.

By this time we had begun to get accustomed to the people around us. The Russian children had fur caps on and the ladies wore woollen cloaks, though the weather was so hot as to make the shade of an awning indispensable. Smoking was strictly forbidden, but the captain and all who chose, smoked in the face of the signs that were posted up to prohibit the practice. The Gulf of Finland, on which we are now, is smooth as a summer lake; the day is lovely, skies bright, the breeze delicious, the air bracing; if we have associated chills and fogs and ice and bitter cold with Finland, we must come in winter to find them, for the Hudson River in summer was never more quiet, nor its banks more brilliant in the noontide, than this region to-day. The day has been one to be remembered, among pleasant memories of travel, and toward sunset we run into the harbor of Wyborg. The ancient city stands on an arm of the gulf that sets up six or eight miles, the lumber station of Tronsund being at the mouth. Near this are saw-mills that cut up 160,000 logs in a year, and ships from all parts of Europe come here for lumber; one vessel, rejoicing in the name of Pius IX., was lying at anchor waiting her turn to get northern pine to carry home to Italy. The channel was obstructed in 1854 to prevent the British under Napier from getting up to Wyborg, and now the trouble is just as great for friends as foes, only that the Russians have put the poles into the water, each pole being made to hold a flag above the waves, to designate the tortuous channel. Two large islands lie in front of the town, and make a safe, snug harbor. An arm of the sea stretches away between the lines of fortification and the old town, and in the midst of the water a mighty rock rises majestically, crowned with a tower of other times, partly in ruins now, for the storms of heaven and the storms of earth and sea have often beaten upon it in peace and war. Its roof is gone, but it is a prison still, and its hollow sides have secrets never to be revealed till the final day. The sun is in the west, as we approach the city, and its domed churches blaze in its setting glory. The old castle, now in ruins, has a history of just six hundred years, a history of courage, endurance, and heroism, while it resisted the might of Russia, until in 1710 it yielded to Peter the Great. Then followed, with an interval of a few years only, the submission of Finland to the yoke of Russia, which it still wears.

Finland is a Protestant country, Lutheran being the established religion of the country. The Greek and Roman churches are regarded with equal dislike. All native Finlanders are obliged to have their children baptized in the Lutheran Church. They must also be able to read before they can be married, or take any part in the government of the country.

The public officers are appointed by the Russian government, but the Finns pay no tribute to Russia, except the support of the civil list for their own officers. The Grand Duke of Finland is the Emperor of Russia himself. Under him are four orders, the nobles, clergy, citizens, and peasants. Each of these orders is represented in the legislature of Finland, meeting annually to regulate the domestic affairs of the state, subject to the veto of the Emperor of Russia.

For the last ten years every harvest has failed, being cut off by untimely frosts. Great famines have therefore prevailed, with diseases incident to want, and many have perished. Men on salaries have voluntarily paid fifteen per cent of their incomes to feed the poor, and they will do so for a few years more; but if the same destitution should continue five years, the country will be depopulated. So severe has been the distress, that the inhabitants have eaten the bark of trees, and as little or no nourishment can be found in bark, they are rapidly dying out. The Russian government is preparing to transport all who are willing to go, to some portions of Russia where there is land in abundance, and a population is wanted.

The Emperor is popular among the Finns, who have ceased to regard him as a conqueror, and now look up to him as a protector and friend. He is bound by an oath to preserve the integrity of their constitution, and they trust him. The Finns are not drafted into the Russian army. They enlist in it freely, under the temptation of bounty money. But they have a strong national feeling of their own, refusing to be called Russian, or to admit that they are part of that empire.

Wages are very low. A skilled mechanic gets only about a rouble (eighty cents) a day, and a farm hand is glad to earn ten cents a day. But with this terrible state of things, poor pay and no food, emigration is not allowed, either by Finnish or Russian law, and there is no prospect before the peasantry but to perish on the ground.

The country is more thoroughly sunken in the water than any other inhabited part of the globe. It seemed to me that the inhabitants might have been called Finlanders, because they ought to be amphibious. But the name comes from the ancient fen, or fennen, which is also an English word for bog or morass. The Laplanders were the original settlers on the southern shore of the Baltic, but they have retired to more northern regions still. The interior of the country is almost filled with lakes, irregularly shaped, and making travelling by land exceedingly tedious, as one must wind his way far around these arms and branches. There is one lake, Saima, two hundred miles wide, in which there are a thousand and more of islands. The largest is called Amasara, or mother-island; on this island there are seventy-seven lakes, and in these lakes fifty islands. This great lake is connected with Lake Ladoga, in Russia, and, by a canal here at Wyborg, with the Gulf of Finland. Now it will pay you to take a map, and, with this description, see what a stretch of water communication extends through Finland into Russia. If you were to go by this canal to Lake Saima, and so to Lake Ladoga, you would not see much of the people, but you would find it easier and pleasanter getting through than to take the only other conveyance, that of the drosky. This is a low sulky, in which only one person can sit, though a driver, if you must have one, manages to get a seat by the horse’s heels. The horses are small, nervous, and wiry, and have learned from colthood to go on the jump all the time, up hill and down hill, and on a level. Ladies who come travelling here must and do adapt themselves to this unsocial mode of travel, and ride all day alone, or with the company of a ragged boy, who speaks no word the traveller understands, and spends his time in walloping the beast, to quicken his rapid canter. Between the lonely post-houses it is rare to meet a human being, or to pass a habitation; but the solemn pine-trees make the gloom more gloomy, and huge boulder stones rise, like towers of giant builders waiting for their masters to return. Some of them have been utilized by the progress of art and science. It was one of these great boulders that was cut into the splendid Alexander column we saw in St. Petersburg, the largest monolith in the world. The enginery required to move it from its place, where, perhaps, the deluge left it, and transport it to the heart of a distant city, fairly rivals the skill of the Egyptian pyramid builders, or the men who set Pompey’s Pillar on its base.

A crowd of five hundred people or more were on the dock at Wyborg waiting for the steamer, when we touched the shores of Finland. At least a hundred droskies and other conveyances, with little horses attached, swelled the concourse. Many of the persons were expecting to receive their friends who were coming by the steamer, and as there are but two arrivals from St. Petersburg in a week, every steamer brings a goodly number. Many were well dressed, “fashionable” ladies and gentlemen, who welcomed their friends with cordial greetings, the kissing being quite as affectionate and common as in Russia. But more of the people on shore were the poor, the toilers, looking for a little something to do; and the drivers of the droskies were as importunate and impudent as the donkey boys in Alexandria or the hackmen in New York, and none in the wide world are worse.

A gentleman of Wyborg, with whom we had formed a speaking and very agreeable acquaintance on board, proposed an excursion through the town into the country, as the steamer was to lie at the wharf till after midnight. It was now only nine o’clock at night, and there was plenty of time before sunset to take a ride of a few miles into the interior! A long line of droskies was therefore engaged, and in single file we set off, at a break-neck pace, but according to the custom of the horses and the country.

The town of Wyborg has about six thousand inhabitants,—Swedes, Russians, Germans, and Finlanders. The churches are numerous, the Lutherans being more in number than all the rest, which are chiefly Greek for the Russians. The town is ancient and uninviting in its appearance, with nothing to indicate enterprise or progress.

Through it we were carried, all flying, by the tower or castle or prison of the year 1300, and out into the country where villas were here and there planted, and some little culture was displayed. Our destination was the summer residence of Baron Nicolai, a wealthy Russian, who has made himself the possessor of a peninsula, and here has laid out a park and grounds with the novel and beautiful idea of making a miniature Finland,—a little representation, with the aid of nature and art, of the lakes and islands, the rocks and hills, of the very country of which this princely domain is an insignificant part. At the gate we were very properly required to pay an entrance fee, which goes to the relief of the poor of the neighborhood, and the visitor is not forbidden to enlarge his fee to any amount more agreeable to himself. The villa we soon pass has nothing imposing in its aspect, but in the midst of a park of ancient shade trees has an air of quiet contentment that justifies the name its first owner gave it, “Mon Repos”—My Rest. Passing it we pursue the shaded walks, by the borders of little lakes and along running streams, till we come to a wooded islet, reached by a foot-bridge and crowned with a monumental tomb, and this is the family sepulchre. Fittingly did the master of all these grounds call the spot to which he had retired “My Rest;” for he who spent such vast sums of money to convert these rocks and wilds into a garden of Eden now sleeps in the tomb, and his son reigns in his stead, rarely, however, coming here, and only for a few days in summer.

Such had been our associations with Finland, that we were more than surprised to find so much culture and taste, elegance indeed, within an hour of landing on its coasts. And as we emerged from the woods in our walks we came suddenly upon the shore of the bay, and the glorious sun was sinking to his “repose” at ten o’clock! It seemed very late for the sun to be going to bed; he keeps earlier hours in our country, and it is odd to be out sight-seeing at this time of day!

Yet in the midst of this Finnish paradise there was a pest as bad as the serpent in Eden. We were nearly devoured by mosquitoes! They beset us behind and before and bit us horribly. With handkerchiefs over our faces, and with bushes to drive them away, we were pursued as if they were starving like the other inhabitants, and they sent in their bills with no more mercy than landlords in Spain. I would not take the place, with all its splendor and natural attractions, for a gift, if it were encumbered with the condition of being obliged to live in it through the summer season. But some people get used to these little plagues. Nature is fond of setting off one thing against another, and it may be that the inhabitants of mosquito regions have some compensating advantages that make these evils a luxury rather than otherwise. They do prevail in the cold climates of the north, as well as in malarious southerly regions, and there is good reason to believe that they are not very troublesome to the settled inhabitants, however savage they are upon strangers. For I have observed in the United States, and within a very few miles of New York, if a man purchases a home, a “Mon Repos” like this we are now visiting, and says to himself, “this is my rest,” he is able to say, in answer to the inquiries of friends as to mosquitoes, “We are not troubled with them at all.” And if the fever and ague has been there through all generations, he is free to declare, “There is nothing of it around us.” From which we infer that mosquitoes and other plagues like them, and the chills, respect the manorial rights of the owners of the soil, and only draw the blood and shake the bones of strangers, who in all ages and countries have been considered as lawful prey.

We stood on the shore and saw the sun go down in clouds of glory, and then returned, in the same style in which we came, to our ship. A great amount of freight was to be left and more taken in, and this kept the vessel in such confusion that sleep was quite out of the question. At two o’clock I was sitting at my cabin window writing without a candle, and a carriage came to the wharf with a gentleman and lady to come on board. No one would have thought of its being night to see the arrival. It was difficult to adjust one’s mind to the fact that we had come into such a latitude, that night could be told from day only by looking at your watch.

The ride to “Mon Repos” brought our steamer passengers into pleasant relations. We had come to feel less like strangers, and more like acquaintances, not to say friends. I came on deck early this morning, and had a cup of coffee at the same little table with a lady whose grace and beauty had rendered her somewhat a point of attraction yesterday. Two little children were playing at her feet, and a nurse for each was in waiting. I soon learned from her, as we fell into conversation naturally, that she spoke all the languages of northern Europe, as Russ, German, Swedish, Finnish, and the French besides, but not a word of English, and this she regretted all the more, she said, since so many Americans are now travelling through her country. Her native tongue was Finnish, and her education would have been finished had she known mine.

Rarely in any country is a lady to be found with a wider culture and more accomplished manners than this Finland wife and mother has. She reads the English language, but has never attempted to speak it; and the standard authors of our country and of England were her study and delight, as the best French and Italian writers are familiar to educated persons among us.

The company by degrees came on deck, and all nationalities were soon merged into one family. Two or three from the capital are talking in English to an English party on their way to the interior of Finland, going a-fishing. Norway is farmed out to English gentlemen, so that it is hard to find a good stream for salmon and trout that is not the private property of some one in England, who keeps it for his own enjoyment. Finland is now persecuted by these piscatorial parties. One of the English gentlemen was loud in his praises of the fish of Finland, and his own wonderful skill in “killin’ of them.” The streams are very swift, and the true sportsman uses only the fly hook. This gent said, “I kill them loyally, with fly only; sometimes, when they will not rise to it, I take a bait, but in that case I throw them back into the water, even if they weigh twenty or thirty pounds. It’s the pleasure of killin’ of them that I enjoy; it’s not for the fish, it’s the killin’ of them.” The “parties” expect to enjoy two or three months in Finland fishing and shooting. It was an entertainment to note the pleasurable anticipations of these pleasant people, on their way to enjoy what to me and many must be about as great a bore and punishment as could be endured in the name of sport.

The Gulf of Finland, as we are running along the coast, is full of islands, to the very edge of which our vessel often comes,—romantic, rocky, hilly islands, to the right of us and left of us, without the sight of an inhabitant. The weather is glorious, cool, bracing, breezy, a cloudless sky and a brilliant sun covering the smooth water and these green isles with a blaze of beauty as we plough our way northward. How widely does all this differ from what we had expected when meditating a cruise along the coast of Finland!

We come to Fredericksham by a tortuous channel, among islands and rocks strongly fortified; but, verily, it seems scarcely worth while to make special provision to prevent people from coming up into these regions. The domes and spires of the city tell us that God is worshipped there; and, as the morning sun tips the temples with fire, we send up our matin prayers with the people of the town, whose God is also ours.

We passed the ruined fortress of Sclava, of some importance once, but now only a monument of the times when Russia and Sweden were fighting for the poor bone of Finland, from which all the meat, if it ever had any, was picked before the war was over.

The war is nominally over, and Russia is the master now; but the people keep up the old spirit of patriotic love for the mother land and tongue. The Russ is the language taught in the schools. If a scholar speaks in his own language the teacher flogs him, according to law; and if the scholar speaks in the Russian language, the other boys flog him when the school is out. So that flogging would seem to be the fate of speaking at all.

We chatted freely with the ladies respecting the social customs of Finland. There is much less freedom of social intercourse among unmarried young men and women, in polite circles, than in England, or even France. Parties of young men by themselves are common, and of young ladies by themselves; balls for dancing bring them together, and their parents come with them, but one young lady said archly, “They are not always near enough to hear what we say.” These fashions are common to Russia and Finland, and other countries in the north. I had seen it written, in an English book of travels, that at dinner parties the ladies sit by themselves, apart from the gentlemen, but have met with nothing of the kind, and am assured it is a mistake. Yet it is true that the ladies generally enter the dining-room by themselves, in advance of the gentlemen, and then sit promiscuously. There is more freedom of manner and less stiffness and formality than in the same social rank in England or Germany.

It is not probable that the practice of bringing up children in this exclusion from social intercourse tends to improve their morals or manners. On the contrary, it makes matters worse. In well-ordered households, where the virtues are inculcated in the first lessons that youthful minds receive, and where parental example, more powerful than lessons or discipline, is such as children may safely follow, it will be found that as boys and girls are apt to be mixed up in the family, so they should be in social life.

Helsingfors.

CHAPTER XXXII.
FINLAND (Continued).

AT the close of a delightful day’s sail along the coast of Finland, we reached the harbor of Helsingfors. The distant sight of the city is imposing, and one’s admiration is doubtless heightened by the surprise he feels when first finding such splendid structures in this part of the world.

The Fortress of Sweaborg, commanding the approach to the city, is rather a series of fortifications than a single fort. The works of nature have been turned to as good an account at this point as in the Straits of Gibraltar. Seven islands were placed by the Great Maker in just the right position for the purpose of being fortified to protect the city, and they have been so strongly fortified as to defy the force of any foe. The combined fleets of France and England tried their guns upon it in 1855, and retired from the trial, quite content to get away.

Peace is reigning now. The fortress fell into the hands of the Russians in 1808, after the garrison was reduced to the last extremity by famine, and it was the last stronghold that Sweden held in Finland. When this was gone, all was gone, and the Finns changed masters. But their subjection is rather nominal than real, as we shall see when we enter the town. On the shore where we land is the “Society House,” or, as we should call it, “The Company’s Hotel;” and we find similar houses in many parts of northern Europe. They are hotels built by the company running the steamers, or by associations, and they combine many of the features of the first-class hotels at watering-places in England or America. Near it is the palace in which the Emperor of Russia, who is also the Grand Duke of Finland, resides when he makes his brief visit, now and then, to this remote and “outlandish” part of his empire. His accommodations here are very narrow, but just as comfortable as those in the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg, holding five thousand people.

On the ship we had formed the acquaintance of a gentleman of Helsingfors, whose pleasant manners and intelligent conversation had greatly interested us during the voyage. As we had now reached his home, and were going ashore, he gave us a warm invitation to his house, which, of course, we declined, and then he insisted upon being our guide to see the famous old town. It is one of the richest in historical interest in the north.

On a grand square stand the chief public buildings, and they present an appearance that would be commanding in Paris or London. The senate-house stretches across one side of the square, the Lutheran church adorns another, the university fills a third, and from the fourth a broad avenue opens, half a mile long, to the foot of a hill crowned with an OBSERVATORY.

The University of Finland! In our ignorance, we had associated Finlanders with the Laps and the Esquimaux, and had never thought of letters and science and art in connection with this race. Among the pleasures of a visit to Finland we had not reckoned an introduction to a venerable university, endowed, sustained, and flourishing on a par with those of Germany. In fact, very few of the German universities have accommodations and advantages equal to this at Helsingfors. It would be considered first-class in England or France, and there is nothing comparable to it in the United States. It has a magnificent stone edifice of architectural proportions and finish, that make the building a perpetual lecture on the beautiful and sublime in art; and within is the most complete system of rooms for every department of knowledge here pursued,—for museums, laboratories, lectures, recitations. The professors were in session in the great audience-room as we entered it; the place was adorned with a full-length portrait of the Emperor Alexander I., who is styled, in the Latin inscription, “the father of his country and the university.” The prophecy is added that art will preserve his features, and his fame will fill the whole earth. The professors seemed an earnest set of men, mostly young, all fine-looking and well dressed. I took them to be happy and successful in their calling, and I wished much that I understood their language, so as to enter into the sympathies of a set of scholars giving their lives to the pursuits of science in Finland.

The university has five separate departments, law, medicine, theology, &c., with thirty-one professors, and it is older than any university in Russia. It was founded in 1630 by the Empress Christina, eleven years before the art of printing was introduced into Finland. Its charter was signed by Axel Oxenstiern, a famous name in his country’s annals. The library contains 200,000 volumes, in all languages and in every realm of human learning. It is admirably arranged in a series of beautiful rooms, in niches and galleries, having an air of repose and seclusion inviting to quiet study, such as Ptolemy anticipated when he put over the Alexandrian doors the fitting inscription, “The food of the soul.”

And the halls, floors, walls, and the whole interior, are kept with a scrupulous neatness unknown in any institution of learning claiming the dignity of a college, or university, that my feet ever entered, in the most enlightened, civilized, and beloved land in the world. Yet there is little in the way of literature in the Finnish language, which is spoken only by the peasants, the Swedish being the language of law and social life among the other classes. Some rich treasures of popular poetry have been discovered floating about in the memories of the people, and these have been gathered as curious specimens of an unlettered, but imaginative race. Kalewala, an epic poem, was first printed in 1835, and an earnest effort has been made to rouse young Finland to seek laurels in the fields of song. Two of the professors deliver lectures in Finnish. Schiller and Shakespeare have been done into the native tongue of the Finns. And the imperial decree has gone forth that after 1883 the Finnish language shall be the official tongue of the country. If Russia would be as kind and considerate of the feelings of Poland, she would conciliate her southern subjects as readily as she has her northern.

We were now led to the Senate-house. The Diet, or Congress of Finland, consists of four chambers, the nobles, the clergy, the citizens, the peasants. Each of them has a hall of its own for meeting; that of the nobles has a large chamber, with two hundred or more handsome chairs. On the walls is placed the coat-of-arms of each noble family in Finland, with the name inscribed upon it, an ostentatious display indeed, but very interesting. We came upon one familiar name; it was that of our friend who was our guide. His brother is the head of the family, and, in his absence, the next in order, our friend, takes his seat in the senate.

We rode out of town a mile to the beautiful Botanical Garden, one of the resorts of the ladies and gentlemen of the city. Here they come toward evening, and enjoy themselves in social intercourse, and take a cup of tea in the grounds. The park is laid out tastefully,—beautiful shaded avenues, green meadows, banks of flowers, and the walks lead up to rocky heights overlooking the bay and sea; and these heights have been fortified to resist the coming foe. The guns, which were brought up here in the Crimean war time, are now lying about useless; but they are doing as much service when dismounted and rusting on the ground as they did in the fight, for they were not big enough to reach the ships of the enemy, whose bombs went easily over these heights into the town.

Below, and in front of a beautiful “House of Refreshments,” tables are scattered about in great numbers, and at one of these our company sat, to enjoy the hospitality of Herr Edelfelt, our new-made friend, who insisted upon entertaining us at tea in the Finland fashion out of doors, as we had declined his invitation to his own house. This custom of taking dinner, tea, or supper at a garden or restaurant is prevalent among respectable people in many parts of continental Europe, and, by the accession of Europeans into the United States, is gradually becoming an accepted custom there.

Near to this garden is a health establishment of great repute. All the medicinal springs of Europe and America, and of Asia and Africa too, I presume, are reproduced by skilful doctoring, and whosoever drinks may be cured of whatsoever disease he has, provided the disease is curable by any of the waters of the world. To this many-mouthed fountain of life thousands resort in the morning and drink the waters. As they are required by the rules of health to take a brisk walk up the heights and down again, before and after taking the refreshing draught, there can be no manner of doubt that strangers resorting hither must derive great benefit. The air is salubrious, the scenery magnificent, the climate bracing, the regimen judicious, and the morning exercises quite as edifying for invalids as those prescribed by Dr. Jay, of Bath. It is quite probable that this artificial fountain in Finland has cured as many patients as Baden or Kissingen, and yet it has not been celebrated half so widely. Besides drinking, bathing is plentifully enjoyed; and his case must be hard that is not softened somewhat by the internal and external application of pure cold water, with plenty of exercise in the open air, on the heights of Helsingfors, in Finland. I drank none of the water, inhaled the air, took the constitutional walk, and was perfectly well when I came away. As I stayed there only about an hour, the inference is fair that if I had used the waters and remained a week or two, I should have been competent to give the cure a first-rate certificate.

We are now at the sixtieth degree of north latitude, eighteen degrees further north than New York city, or more than a thousand miles nearer the North Pole. We have returned to the ship, and night is nominally about us, but no darkness settles on the world. We can read and write all night without a candle, if we are so disposed. And there is no sleep to be had, for all the livelong night the natives are pouring on board with freight; passengers are coming; they fill up the cabin and spend the parting hours with friends, eating, drinking, laughing, and talking obstreperously; and the leaving-taking, with the inevitable indiscriminate kissing, keeps the place in a constant uproar, that knows no alleviation until at four in the morning we put to sea, and find rest in the cradle of the deep.

We are now going further north, by narrow passages among islands simply masses of rocks, utterly barren, washed by the waves till they are perfectly smooth; and not a tree, nor shrub, nor blade of grass is in sight upon them. The channel is very tortuous, marked by poles, and sometimes it is so near the rocks that we seem to be grazing their precipitous sides. The weather is cool, clear, and delightful; though midsummer, the overcoat or shawl is agreeable; and the exhilaration of the day and the passage among the islands became general among the passengers, who throng the hurricane-deck to enjoy the scenery. Some of the islands that we pass in the course of the day have some available land and a few inhabitants, whose chief pursuit is fishing. And these scattered islands, and the adjoining shores on the mainland, furnish sailors that enter the service of other countries, and are among the most hardy, healthful, and valuable seamen to be found. The subjects of the Russian government, either here or in any other part of the empire, are not allowed to expatriate themselves at their own pleasure, as thousands would gladly do, if they could make their way into some more hospitable portion of the globe. But they can often find opportunities to get on board merchant vessels as seamen, and they are not slow to avail themselves of such opportunities. The soil does not give them food. They have no market for the fish that the sea would furnish. They are therefore very poor, and in bad seasons famine overtakes them. The people that have money, the well-to-do people,—and there are many such in Finland,—have plenty of dried salmon, and fresh too, beef and potatoes, which, with bread and butter, make good enough living for anybody; and to these staples they add some of the luxuries that money will command anywhere. But the poor are very poor, and they constitute the masses of the people,—the great multitude whose condition we go to look into when we visit foreign lands.

Abo is pronounced Obo. It is the name of the northernmost town of any note in Finland, and a famous old town it is. We were told that the hotel is the farthest north of any hotel in the world. Away up above us on the borders of the Gulf of Bothnia,—and Abo is at the dividing line between the Baltic and Bothnia,—is Bjonneborg, and Christireestad, and Wasa, and Uleaborg, and Tornea on the very head of the gulf, where there is something in the way of a house of refreshment for travellers, I have not a doubt. Perhaps this is the last that aspires to the distinction of a hotel on the European plan, and we will enjoy the comfortable satisfaction of thinking that, as we are going no farther north, there is no place of rest and entertainment to receive us if we should.

A large crowd of people was standing at the wharf to see the steamer, to greet friends expected, and to hear the news. They were quiet, orderly, and well-looking. There was no rush to the gangway, no pulling and hauling to get on, or get baggage and passengers, though there were hundreds waiting for any kind of a job by which a little money could be made. The hotel—the Society House, as it is called—is close by the landing, and affords all the substantial comforts a traveller requires.

The old castle, historic, romantic, and famous, is in full view; a massive stone tower on which the storms of centuries, in war and peace, have spent their fury. The streets of the town are wide and the houses low, and one looks in vain for the appearances of a city that was founded by Eric the Saint, who reigned from 1157 to 1160, the time when the Sun of Christianity first softened the rigor of this northern clime. The castle was founded then, and for long centuries held in check the Russians who sought the conquest of Finland.

The cathedral has been an object of intense interest for ages past, as the first monument of Christianity in this region, and the burial-place of the most illustrious persons in the history of the country. One of the tombs bears the name of Catharine Monsdotter, who was taken from humble life and married to the King of Sweden, and by one of those strange reverses, now ceasing to be strange, she returned to Finland and died in obscurity, and her husband perished in prison. Her remains repose among queens and princes, but she finds no compensation in this for the loss of a diadem. Two white marble statues, life-size, stand on a sarcophagus in one of the chapels, over the dust of a man and wife who were celebrated for their wealth and noble birth, having the blood of kings; and the statue of the wife is even now decked (not adorned) with necklace and bracelets,—gaudy jewelry indeed to garnish a whited sepulchre.

In 1827 an awful conflagration swept over this city of only 20,000 inhabitants, and consumed two-thirds of all the houses in it; the inside of the cathedral was destroyed, the university and its great library, and the chief public edifices fell a prey to the flames, and the town will never recover from the disaster. Its university was removed to Helsingfors, where we have already visited it. Its trade is now of no account. The interior of the country furnishes little or nothing for export, and the glory of Abo—for it once had some glory—is departed for ever.

The Gulf of Bothnia extends six degrees to the north of Abo, but there is no trade or travel that requires a steamer, and ours is now to strike across the gulf, through the Aland Isles to Stockholm. We are bound there to visit Sweden and Norway. Those who have not this trip in view, and wish to see more of the country, can remain at Abo and go back to Wyborg and St. Petersburg by land. There is semi-occasionally a coach for travellers in Finland, but the more excellent way is by private carriage, or carriole, the carriage of the country; a narrow low sulky, with room enough for one, hardly for two, besides the driver. It has no top; but there is another trap called a kibitka, a long, narrow wagon with no springs, and a leathern hood which you can draw over you in case of rain, and with a bed in the bottom of it, on which, if not too long, you can stretch yourself out, while the driver attends to the little animal ahead, that tears up and down hill, through the sand, at a fearful pace, regardless of an occasional break-down and turn-over. This is a Russian innovation, and in the Paris Exhibition there were several very handsome specimens of the vehicle, which is far more pleasant to read about than to ride in. The bondkara is still another wretched contrivance, about the same thing as our buck-board; with this essential, not to say fatal difference, that ours has four wheels, and the board extending from the forward to the hind axle makes an agreeable spring; an experienced driver sitting before, and the passenger behind him, holding on with both hands, can ride astride and not suffer much. The bondkara of Finland has but two wheels, and the bench, without a back, is fastened to the axle-tree, the driver before, the traveller behind; the equilibrium must be preserved with care or the load goes to the ground, and when the wild horse tears down hill as if running away, the passenger must hold on tight with both hands on the sides of the seat, and the other—but he has no other, unless he’s a little behindhand, in which case he would do well to use it as best he can. The average speed of ten miles an hour is made, and that is pretty well in such a country as this.

It is very strange that the intercourse of nations does not lead to the more rapid adoption of improvements which have been found to be useful. Nations are slow to learn of one another. We in America have railroad arrangements that Europeans know, but will not introduce. They have many things in their system that we ought to apply, but will not. People of different countries have an idea that what they do not know is not worth knowing, and so they prefer a poor way of their own to a better way of others. But we have nothing to learn from Finland in the line of travel. Patient endurance is something, and the people of Finland deserve credit for the spirit with which they have borne themselves through the long period of their dreary history. They are not numerous, the entire population amounting to but 1,800,000 souls: 40,000 are members of the Russian or Greek Church; the rest are Protestants, mostly Lutherans. It embraces only 6,844 geographical miles of surface, and no other country is so much covered with water. Yet it has a splendid university, with thirty-one professors; it abounds in churches, it has a peaceful, moral, and intelligent population, and some of the gentlemen and ladies whom it was my pleasant fortune to meet were among the most agreeable and cultivated persons I have encountered abroad.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
SWEDEN.

The day was bright as we left the harbor of Abo, and struck out into the sea among the Aland Isles. The wind was strong, but not enough to disturb the weaker brethren who are easy victims of the sea. Breakfast was served at ten and a half o’clock, and already the Swedish customs at meals began to show themselves. Before sitting down to the table, or immediately on taking a seat, as you prefer, little glasses of gin schnapps are passed around, and each one is expected to take a nip as an appetizer. The same at dinner. Ditto at supper. Also after meals a punch, not like the American drink of that name, but something that looks thick, oily, amber-colored, and inducing a smacking of the lips, which, without uttering a word, say, “It ees goot.” Breakfast, after schnapps, comprised radishes sent around as the first course, with Bologna sausages, tongue and dried beef, salt fish, bread and butter, beefsteak and potatoes, ham and eggs, with coffee if you insisted on having it. There is evidently no need of starving when you get all that for breakfast, and about four hours afterwards sit down to dinner and take soup (if you can), with fish following, and beef, poultry, game, salad, cucumbers, puddings, fruit, nuts, &c., and wine at your order. Eating is one of the principal institutions in these northern climates. There is but one other institution more highly valued, and that is drinking. They keep at one or the other or both pretty steadily. Besides the four regular meals, lunch and supper, in addition to those I have named, they are fond of intermediate refreshments, and a drink never comes amiss. The amount of strong liquor they can carry without apparent inconvenience is something wonderful. And it is more remarkable as we get along into the north toward the Pole. They say it is the bracing climate which induces such an expenditure of vital force, that the supply must be replenished with nourishing food and stimulating drink.

We were crossing the Baltic. It was warm off the coast of Finland. It was cold in the middle of the sea, so cold at noon that we had to wrap up with shawls and blankets, and then be uncomfortable on deck, and were finally driven below. But when at four o’clock we ran in among the islands off the Swedish coast, we found it warm again. So there are belts about the globe itself.

We approach Stockholm through a thousand isles and more, so near each other that we seem to be winding our way along a narrow river. Now and then a tower, solitary and sublime, starts up from some grand cliff. An ancient castle stands among the rocky headlands. Suddenly the city rises, like Venus or Venice, from the bosom of the sea, beautiful in the sunlight that gilds her palaces and domes. The entrance to Stockholm is magnificent. I have not been more impressed by the approach to any other city but Constantinople.

As our steamer touched the wharf the captain’s wife and children and a few friends came on board to welcome him home. He had been absent nearly two weeks! Had crossed the Baltic and sailed or steamed along down the coast from Abo to Petersburg and back again, and his friends were here to receive him as if he had been around the world! And it was good to see the greeting. His young and beautiful wife the captain was proud to present to his new-made friends on the ship, while two charming children clung to his legs as if they would not let him go again.

Porters from the hotels were ready to take the luggage, and the passengers, ladies and gentlemen, went ashore and walked up the streets at their leisure. There was a quietness about this quite refreshing. No bustle, no pulling and hauling, no loud talking and swearing; the landing in Sweden was a pleasant contrast to that of more highly cultured countries, our own for instance.

Stockholm Steamers.

Hotel Rydburg received us,—large enough to entertain two or three hundred guests,—and a curiously arranged house it was, the geography of which I have not learned, after its careful study of several days. I know that to get to my room I have to go up two flights of stairs, then out upon a balcony, then down one flight of stairs, then ring a door-bell and get admission into a room that is not mine, then across this apartment into my own, which is a spacious and handsomely furnished room,—sofa, lounge, ottomans, piano, secretary, bookcase containing a set of Voltaire’s works in seventy French volumes, pictures, engravings, stuffed birds, and other specimens in natural history, all suggesting the idea that the mysterious passages through which I have been conducted have led me out of the hotel proper into some private house attached, and that some Swedenborgian philosopher has rented his premises to the hotel. He certainly has things comfortable if such be the fact, and I will use them as not abusing them while I stay.

Scandinavia includes the peninsula of which Sweden is but a part, Norway and Denmark making up the rest of it; and its history, is it not all written by Pliny and Tacitus in pagan antiquity times? and a thousand years after they wrote of it, did not Saxo Grammaticus the Dane, and Snorrow Sturleson, of Sunny Iceland, bring down the story to their times? Not far from the same time when the Saxons invaded England, the Gothic tribes under Odin migrated to Sweden, and founded an empire on the borders of Lake Malar, with Sigtuna for its capital. Odin was a god, in his own esteem and that of his followers, and he combined in his sublime and mysterious person all the offices of priest and king and teacher; he was the law-giver and judge. With lofty aspirations for power, he conquered by his will, his arms, and his address, and finally he became the object of religious worship through the north of Europe. The Sagas, or sacred books of the ancient Swedes, give us the fullest insight into the views of the Scandinavians in religion, as to the creation of the world, the government of the universe, and the destiny of man. It was in the ninth century that Christianity was openly preached in Sweden for the first time, and the dynasty of pagan kings did not terminate till the beginning of the eleventh century, when Eric V., in 1001, being converted, destroyed the great temple at Upsala, where, to this day, are the graves of Thor and Woden and Freytag, on which this Eric, the first Christian king, was slain by his pagan people in their fury, excited by the destruction of their temple.

The history of Sweden since Christianity became its religion has been glorious among the nations, although she has been a small and inconsiderable power. Under Gustavus Wasa, in 1529, the Roman Catholic religion was abolished and the Lutheran established, and just one hundred years afterwards, Gustavus Adolphus, the grandson of Wasa, was called upon by the Protestant powers of Europe to put himself at their head to resist the Roman Catholic movement to obtain universal dominion in Christendom. He was triumphant in his masterly generalship, and fell covered with glory at the battle of Lutzen. His name is now inscribed with that of Washington, among the noblest characters the human race has ever produced.

At the present time the King of Sweden must be a Lutheran, the government is a hereditary constitutional monarchy, restricted in its descent to the male line. The congress is composed of four separate houses,—nobles, clergy, burgesses, and peasants; and the unanimous consent of these four houses, and the approbation of the king, are required to make any alteration in the constitution, which is therefore not likely to be very suddenly amended. In other measures a majority in three houses may pass a bill, but if two houses vote aye, and two vote no, then a committee of eighteen, from each house, takes the subject in hand, and their decision, approved by the king, is final. This arrangement works well for conservatism, but is not favorable to progress. It is easy to retard legislation, and difficult to press things through.

Having a letter to Dr. Stolberg, of Stockholm, I was directed to call at the Caroline Institute to learn his address. A walk of a mile into the outskirts of the city took me to what proved to be a hospital, with ample grounds and excellent arrangements. A woman answered my ring at the door, and led me to the study of one of the professors, and left me there to await his coming. It was so simple in its furniture, and yet so well fitted up for business, I could plainly see it was for work, not rest, that he had that den made. And when he came, a thin, bent, pale student, cap on his head and pipe in his mouth, and working-wrapper on, I felt at once that he lived in his books and his thoughts. He would have me go to his chemical laboratory, and when he found me interested in the experiments he was making, he became enthusiastic in his descriptions, and would have cheerfully given up the day to the “pursuit of science” with a stranger from a distant land. Yet I had but one question to ask him, and he was able to give me the address of the man I was seeking.

Here was a hospital, or rather an asylum for invalids, into which, on easy conditions, a poor body could get admission, and be kindly cared for at the expense of the state. Many of these institutions are scattered over the world, the fruit of Christianity, and when I find them in places where I least expect, they tell me that love works the same results everywhere. I soon found Dr. Stolberg, in a modest dwelling, in a garden retired from the street, and he received me with great courtesy and warmth.

In Sweden a physician makes no charge whatever for medical attendance; and, what is more remarkable still, very many of the people who can afford to pay for the services of a doctor are willing to avail themselves of such aid without paying any thing for it. One physician told me that of ninety-six cases that he had treated within a certain time, only six paid him at all! It is customary for those who do pay to pay by the year, and fifty-six dollars, or about twelve American dollars, would be a large sum for persons in good circumstances to give for the benefit of a physician’s counsel for a whole year. There is, therefore, no great inducement, in the way of profit, to go into the medical profession. Nor is it an introduction to society, the physician not being in this respect materially above the apothecary in social standing.

The clergy, as a profession, are not materially better off than the physicians. Their pay comes from the state, but their salaries are very small, and, with only here and there an exception, they have very little influence, social or political. They are not men of learning, and perhaps they are as influential as they could be expected to be. The established religion is Lutheran, with one archbishopric, eleven bishoprics, with 3,500 clergymen. They are said to be “highly educated,” but I was assured that there is a great lack of education among the clergy, and the very small salaries which even the dignitaries receive would confirm the statement that the church does not retain the aid of learned and able men.

The press is free, and when a man is called to account for the abuse of this freedom, the case goes to a jury, whose action is final, and there is no appeal from it.

Only one in a thousand of the population is ignorant of letters; they can read, and nearly all can write.

A common laborer gets about twenty-seven cents of our money for a day’s work, and a mechanic at his trade earns a little more. The cost of living must be very little, where the working classes can support themselves and families on incomes so small as these!

Yet they do live comfortably, and if it were not for drinking intoxicating liquors, they would be well off.

They are, as a people, as little given to other vices as in any country of Europe, perhaps I might say, in the world. The statistical tables show that many, very many, children are born into the world whose parents are not lawfully married, and it is therefore set down to the discredit of Sweden and Norway that they are very lax in their social morals. There is this, however, to be said on this delicate subject, the law forbids the marriage of any parties who have not taken the Lord’s Supper, and many do not wish to become communicants in the church, who are also quite willing to be married. But the church will not sanction their union, and they live together in the marital relation, true to each other, but without the blessing of the church. Their children are returned in the census to the discredit of the morals of Sweden! Here is an interesting point for moralists to study. The practice is wrong, and so is the law that has made the practice so common.

The mysterious words, Riddarholm kyrkan, provided always your education has not extended into the language of Sweden, are used to define a kyrkan or kirk, the Riders’ or Horsemen’s or Knights’ Church in Stockholm, decidedly the most peculiar and interesting of all I have seen in the north of Europe.

Divine service is celebrated within its walls but once a year. It is not a house for the living to pray in, but for the dead to lie in. It is not for the dead of common clay, but for the dust of kings only,—a royal mausoleum. It is a structure of nameless architecture, once Gothic doubtless, but worked over until small trace of its original design appears. A spire once almost reached the clouds, and when the lightnings played too fiercely on it, it was replaced by one of cast iron, which tapers finely to a lofty height, and defies the thunders.

It is a symbol, the whole church is, of a rude age and land. The doors were opened at noon of a bright summer day, and yet as we entered, a sense of gloom, of ruin, of vast antiquity, and the utter emptiness of this poor life of ours, came over me like a thick cloud. Every stone of uneven, broken pavement was a tomb, and the inscriptions long since were worn away by the feet of strangers. In dumb silence, for centuries the royal remains of successive dynasties have been resting here, and their names are forgotten, rubbed out, and unwritten elsewhere. The flags, spears, drums, swords, guns, and implements of war unused in modern times, are hung around the walls, as if this were an arsenal and not a sepulchre. In front of the high altar, with recumbent effigies of ancient kings, and in the midst of inscriptions hard to read and some still harder to understand, was one epitaph in these words:—

Justitiæ Splendor

Patriæ Pater

Vivas in Eternum

O Magne Beate.

On either side of the door, and on elevated pedestals, are equestrian statues, cased, both horse and rider, in solid armor; and that of Charles IX. is said to have been made by Benvenuto Cellini. The armor is more interesting from its association with the name of its maker than the king who wore it. Such is fame.

On the right of the high altar, and within the choir, is the tomb which every Protestant who comes to the north visits as a shrine,—not to pray for the repose of a soul, but to testify his reverence for the name of Gustavus Adolphus. The trophies of his victories adorn his sarcophagus of green porphyry, which was made in Italy to receive his remains. His own “garments rolled in blood,” in which he fell while fighting on the field of Lutzen, November 16, 1632, are preserved remarkably in their stains, for more than two centuries! His epitaph is short and fitting: “Moriens triumphavit,”—

“Dying he triumphed.”

The cause of truth, religious liberty, and the rights of man, all denied and crushed by the Papal power,—the cause which woke the soul of Luther and inspired the Reformation for these three centuries,—has been struggling on toward the universal empire of the human soul. That was the cause in which Gustavus Adolphus died covered with wounds and glory, and his epitaph says that he triumphed when he died. I think he did. True, the battle goes on still, and many a hard field is to be fought over yet, before He whose right it is shall reign unquestioned in His dominion over the souls of the race. But the grand foe of the Church of Christ was then the civil power of the Papacy. Rome had the armies of all papal kings at her command, and they moved at her ghostly will, propagating her religion, like that of the Moslem, by the sword. It was to roll back this tide, more terrible than the waves of the Crusades, that Gustavus Adolphus was called to lead the armies of the Protestant powers, and the result was complete success. There is not now one crowned head on earth that acknowledges the supremacy of the popes. Austria has cast off its allegiance, and it was Austria that led the South of Europe against Gustavus Adolphus. Italy is independent of Rome. And Spain, the birthplace of the Inquisition, and the most abject to the Pope, has cast out the principle of intolerance, and proclaimed the rights of worship. What Luther did for the truth in the pulpit, Gustavus Adolphus did for the same cause in the field.

We went down the stone stairway, worn deeply by the tread of generations, into the lower regions, where lie whole rows of dead kings turned to dust, coffins tucked away on shelves and in niches, reminding me of the Bible words: “All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.” What’s the glory, though, of such a resting-place, it is hard to say. Their dust is no better than that of other men. Their names, even among kings, have ceased to be distinguished from other names. No man could go among these walks of tombs, these shelved kings, and pick out one or another, and say who is who. And if he could, I do not see that it would be any particular satisfaction to the quiet gentleman on the shelf. If the visitor should say, “Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms?” no answer would come back from the tomb.

We did not set foot within the gates of his majesty, the King of Sweden, and this neglect was much to the disgust of some of our Swedish friends, who consider the royal residence a marvel of architectural grandeur and beauty. We could not see it, even when they pointed to its magnificence with the same exalted opinion of its splendor that possessed the Jews in sight of their temple. The Lion’s Staircase, rising from the water’s edge and leading to the main entrance, adorned with two bronze, and therefore quiet, lions, presents a grand front to the palace, and within the same interminable suites of apartments, and the same gaudy furniture, and the same sort of pictures and statuary, with nothing that has a title to any distinction above what is common in all palaces.

The picture-gallery has some five hundred paintings, some by Van Dyck, Paul Veronese, Domenichino, and others equally well known to fame, and the sculpture gallery boasts a sleeping Endymion, and a few other gems; but we are out of the enchanted zone, and must not expect to be charmed with the brush or the chisel in Sweden. We shall find Thorvaldsen when we come to Denmark.

But the royal library has 75,000 volumes, and if it had the library that Queen Christina sent to the Vatican at Rome, it would be still a greater wonder, and then would be increased if the ancient collection made by Charles X., and consumed by fire in 1697, had been preserved. The Codex Aureus, a Latin manuscript of the gospels, dating in the sixth or seventh century, “is written in Gothic characters of gold, on folio leaves of vellum, alternately white and violet.”

“This book is additionally interesting, from its containing an Anglo-Saxon inscription, of which the following is a translation: ‘In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, I, Alfred Aldorman (Senior or Prince), and Werburg, my wife, got up this book from a heathen war-troop, with our pure treasure, which was then of pure gold. And this we got for the love of God, and for our souls’ behoof, and for that we would not that this holy book should longer abide in heathenesse; and now will we give it to Christ’s Church, God to praise, and glory, and worship, in thankful remembrance of his passion, and for the use of the holy brotherhood, who in Christ’s Church do daily speak God’s praise, and that they may every month read for Alfred, and for Werburg, and for Alhdryd (their daughter), their souls to eternal health, as long as they have declared before God that baptism (holy rites) shall continue in this place. Even so I, Alfred, Dux, and Werburg, pray and beseech, in the name of God Almighty, and of his saints, that no man shall be so daring as to sell or part with this holy book from Christ’s Church, so long as baptism there may stand. (Signed) Alfred, Werburg, Alhdryd.’ No trace appears to exist of the history of this volume from the time it was thus given to Canterbury Cathedral until it was purchased in Italy, and added to this library. Here also is a huge manuscript copy of the Bible, written upon prepared asses’ skin. It was found in a convent at Prague, when that city was taken by the Swedes during the Thirty Years’ War. A copy of Koberger’s Bible, printed at Leyden, 1521, and the margins of which are filled with annotations by Martin Luther. Besides these, the library is rich in manuscripts and rare editions.”

The King of Sweden is the most affable and approachable monarch in Europe. In his daily walks, or while going about in the public steamers that ply through the waters of the city, as omnibuses do in New York, he enters freely into conversation with the people. To strangers, especially Americans, he is exceedingly kind, or, as his subjects would say, gracious. I saw him frequently while he was riding, but came no nearer to his Majesty. He had one of the most splendid reviews that I had ever seen, when the whole of the Swedish army that is stationed in this part of the country, together with the militia, all liable to be called on to do military duty, are put through a drill for a few days and nights every year, in the summer season. A vast open country, hill, wood and plain, is chosen, tents pitched, and for a few days mimic war goes through all its motions, saving and except that there is no blood shed. This annual exercise does something to keep up a martial spirit, and makes a few grand holidays, when the whole city is agog with the excitement. A fête day in Rome, an emperor’s day in Paris, or Derby day in London, would not exceed the annual review in Stockholm. The nobility and fashion, the beauty and folly, the masses of people in all sorts of conveyances, and more on foot than on wheels, were out at the parade. The squadrons were set on the hills, so far apart that a telescope was needed to see what was going on, and the marching and countermarching made a pretty show that delighted the people, and gave the soldiers a taste of the amusements they would have when rushing into battle under a blazing sun, and blazing guns in front of them.

The wars of Sweden occupy a large place in European history. Yet when we see how small the population, how limited the resources, and remote the situation of the country, it seems incredible that human wisdom has been so foolish as to permit a race of kings to waste the lives and wealth of a nation of honest men, in the miserable game of war.

But the genius of Sweden is seen in a very clever arrangement to make the burden of soldiering as light as possible. The standing army proper is very small and has little to do at present. But the reserve is large, and consists of men who are distributed about the kingdom and quartered on the government lands, which they work in time of peace, and thus earn their own support. If the crown lands are leased to others, a certain number of these soldiers is set apart for, or quartered on the land; and the lessee has their labor, and is responsible for their support. In this ingenious way the government makes its land pay the expenses of its army in peace. We might take a leaf out of the royal book of Sweden, and, by a wise administration of our vast national landed property, make it contribute something to the support of the government, while we improved its value. That would be certainly more statesmanlike than to give it away by millions every year to speculators. The Swedish soldiers are also employed in making roads, and on other public works, as ours might be, greatly to their own moral benefit, and to the advantage of the country.

It strikes me that there is more order and less crime in this northern part of Europe than in any other country I have yet visited. I see little evidence of abject poverty and low vice. By night or day I have not seen a person on the streets at Stockholm who seemed to be of the abandoned class. Longer acquaintance may correct this impression and reveal another state of facts. Two American travellers were robbed of their watches and money, at the hotel where I am lodged, but a few days ago. It is not at all likely the thief is a native of these regions. He has probably followed the travellers, or, what is quite as likely, been one of their travelling companions. The landlord paid the losses without a lawsuit, and the Americans went on their way.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
SWEDEN (Continued).

BY the beautiful island of Drottningholm, on which the king’s mother resides in a palace within a park, that seems the abode of peace and plenty, and along the shores of other islands small and picturesque, but lovely to look on as we pass them on our way, we sail out into Lake Malar.

It is a wide, winding, beautiful sheet of water,—one of the many noble lakes that Sweden holds in her bosom. Two islands in it come so nearly together, that a drawbridge for a railroad stretches across, and opens for us to pass through, and then we sweep out into another expanse of water, the shores skirted with pines and hemlock; no hills in sight, but the scenery is lovely, though lacking grandeur. We are going into the heart of Sweden. Now the shores are cultivated to the water’s edge, and fine farms rise to view, with here and there a red cottage, with a tile roof: all the peasant houses and fisherman cottages are painted with red ochre, cheap, but unpleasant to the eye. Now the shores are bolder, rocky, and great forest trees, fir and spruce, are abundant.

The oldest place in Sweden, and that carries us back into far antiquity, is Sigtuna, and we have come to it, on the shores of Lake Malar, about four hours from Stockholm. We are in the midst of the remains of the old pagan worship of Scandinavia, where the altars to heathen deities, whose graves (!) we are going to see to-day, have smoked with human sacrifices.

Odin or Woden (whence comes our Wedensday or Wednesday), a hero of the north,—in time to which history, at least reliable history, runneth not back,—here established the seat of his power, and it took its name from his original title, which was Sigge, and Tuna, which is our word town. Here Sigge, or Odin, reared stone temples, of which the ruins are before us. Here his power became so great, and such the reverence of rude peoples for power, that the temples and altars which he reared to gods whom he worshipped, became, in the eyes and hearts of the people, dedicate to him, whom they came to revere and worship as a god. From this spot the worship of Odin, and afterwards of his son Thor (whence our Thursday), spread through the whole of the North of Europe, and, in spite of the subsequent triumph of Roman Christianity, and then of the Lutheran Reformation, the Odin superstition—a secret, unconfessed, but controlling reverence for those heroic human deities, the hero worship of the human soul—still obtains among the more ignorant classes of the people over all this northern country. The legends that have come down from sire to son, keep alive in successive generations the hidden fear of these false gods, and form the largest part of the unwritten poetry and romance of all Scandinavia.

Pirates from Finland came here and laid waste the fortified town of Odin, and it has again and again been built and destroyed; but here is the remnant of an ancient temple or church, and three towers, which have the highest interest of antiquity (whatever that is) hanging, like mantling ivy, all about them. No one but an antiquary would wish to spend more than a moment in Sigtuna, among its 400 inhabitants. Tyre and Sidon on the sea coast are not so desolate as this spot, which seems accursed for its pagan crimes and impostures in days long since gone by.

Sweet pictures of rural life in Sweden were seen this morning as we sailed through this Lake Malar. Opposite Sigtuna, and a little farther on, we touched the shore, and landed Professor Olivecrona, of the University of Upsala, with his wife and a party of English friends. He had been to Stockholm to meet them, and bring them up the lake to his country residence in summer. It was a beautiful mansion, very near to the water’s edge, in the midst of woods and delightful walks. The children and servants came down to the landing just in front of the house, to a private wharf, and as the parents went ashore, and four lovely children in their light summer dresses welcomed them, and greeted the friends coming with them, it was a scene of domestic beauty and happiness that quite touched an old man’s heart some three or four thousand miles from home.

More islands, among which our boat makes its tortuous course, coming so near to the rocks that we might easily scrape them; now and then a bare white rock holds its peak solitary above the water, and a bird of prey perches on its top, looking into the deep for his dinner. Now the shores are clothed with green forests, and again we emerge among meadows, and in the bright sun the contrasts of light and shadow, as we pass by the pines and fir trees, are constantly pleasing. An air of infinite quietude pervades the region, and it is painful to believe that it was once a “habitation of cruelty.”

Suddenly a grand old chateau, the ancient residence of the Brahe family, one of the oldest and most illustrious in Sweden, opened on our view. It was built in 1630, and each one of its four towers is surmounted by an orrery, in honor of the famous astronomer whose name alone has made the family famous. A boat comes off from the shore, and takes passengers who wish to visit the house. Its library and museum and galleries of art make it a popular resort. On its walls are portraits of Tycho, and the Ebba Brahe, whom Gustavus Adolphus loved, and would have married but for more ambitious schemes of her mother that never came to pass.

During this delightful passage of six hours through Lake Malar, in one of the loveliest days of summer, we have not seen a sail nor a steamer, except the return boat of the line that has brought us. And this fact is sufficient to show the utter stagnation of commercial life in the interior of Sweden.

I confess to surprise on coming to Upsala and finding the ancient university here in high prosperity, with all the appliances of education that first-class institutions require. Linnæus, the great botanist, was professor here, and his statue is one of the ornaments of the university. The Hospital,—a new and extensive building,—a royal palace on a hill, the Agricultural College, the Library, &c., with a Botanical Garden and ample parks, suggest to the traveller that in Sweden one might find a home to his mind, if his lot had been cast in this part of the earth.

You have a fondness for old books and manuscripts. Here they are in abundance; not of the sort, perhaps, that most antiquarians would run after, but, nevertheless, very precious and costly.

Bishop Ulfilas, toward the close of the fourth century, translated the four gospels into the Gothic language, and his translation was copied in letters of silver upon vellum of a pale purple color, in characters very like the Runic. This manuscript is the very oldest extant in the Teutonic tongue, and was probably made by the Ostro-Gothic scribes in Italy. It was once owned by an abbey in Westphalia. Then it was treasured up in Cologne; then by the fortunes of war it passed to Konigsberg, and to Amsterdam, with Vossius, on whose death the Swedish chancellor bought it and presented it to the University of Upsala. It is known among biblical scholars as the Codex Argenteus, or Silver Copy, from the style of the lettering.

Upsala.

If you have a taste for Icelandic literature, so refreshing in the heats of summer, here you can find the oldest and coldest of the Eddas; and alongside of them is a Bible with the marginal notes of Luther and Melancthon. Students in and out of the university have free access to these treasures, and the reading-room is a pleasant resort for those who love to refresh themselves in the midst of a hundred thousand books, in all tongues and every realm of human thought.

About fifty professors and fifteen hundred students compose the faculty and attendance of this famous university. It was founded in 1477, and has but one rival in Sweden, that at Ludd, founded in 1666. The expense of a student’s education, including board, fees, &c., is about three hundred dollars a year.

No one can be admitted to practise in any of three professions,—law, medicine, or divinity,—without taking his degrees at one of the two universities. This ensures a high order of acquirements in professional men, and when we state one fact in addition, that one male person in every 688 in Sweden enjoys an education at the universities, it will be seen that these institutions reach the whole people, and extend their advantages into the midst of the masses. Sweden, and in this respect she is not singular in Europe, has not made the mistake which we in the United States have been making, of multiplying little colleges, and little theological seminaries, one-horse institutions, with the idea that, by bringing a school to the door of every man, or of every church, we should be enlarging the area of education, and multiplying the number of educated men. Thus we have reduced the standard of fitness for professorships. Thus we have diminished the number of students. Lowering the mark to which scholars should aspire, we have cheapened education, suppressed literary ambition, made the professions less attractive, and filled them with an inferior order of men, compared with what they would have been had the standard of great universities, with their high qualifications of professorships and degrees, been maintained. If all the money which has been expended in the maintenance of feeble and famishing colleges and divinity schools had been applied to the education of youth in two, three, or four universities, they would have been far better taught, and the surplus of money over and above the expenses of their education would endow a new university as often as the extension of territory and the increase of population render it necessary.

A student of the university is required to wear a cap of peculiar make, to distinguish him, not in the university town only, but wherever he may travel in Sweden. The cap is white, with a black border, and a rosette of the national colors in front. This requisition is useful in keeping the student upon his good behavior, and also as a peripatetic advertisement of the educational institutions of the country. It is only by slow degrees that our people come into the habit of putting classes into uniform. It is but recently that the police were so clad: now we have letter-carriers, railway officials, &c. The clergy formerly were generally known by a white neckcloth, but that has ceased to be their distinction.

The old cathedral had the appearance of neglect; it was out one side from the busy haunts of men, and this was in its favor, but it seemed to be neglected. Twenty-four whitewashed columns support the roof. In side chapels are the tombs and the remains of the old kings of Sweden. And when I had spelled out some of the Latin inscriptions, and had linked the names of these sleepers with the old-time stories of the land, the venerable cathedral began to take upon itself the form of a great monument of the dead past. And well it might, for the first stones were laid for its foundation in the year 1289, and it was consecrated in 1435. Its dimensions rise into the sublime, for it is 370 feet long, 141 feet wide, and 115 feet high.

The columns within are capped with carvings of grotesque beasts, strangely out of taste in the house of God. Linnæus lies buried here, and a splendid mural tablet and bronze medallion portrait of him adorn the wall. Here lie Gustavus Wasa and two of his wives, and a long series of fresco paintings in seven compartments celebrate the great events in the life of this illustrious man. Here, too, is a tomb of John III., remarkable for this,—that it was made in Italy, was lost at sea on its way here, was fished up sixty years afterwards, and brought to this spot.

The sacristan was very kind in revealing to our not very reverent eyes the precious things here kept for special exhibition to those who would pay for the privilege. With this understanding we were permitted to behold crowns and sceptres, a gold cup two feet high, a dagger that had been stuck into a king, and a statue of the old god-king Thor! This last is not worshipped here, but is cherished as a memorial of the times when paganism was prevalent, and as a trophy of the triumph of Christianity over the powers of darkness.

About three miles north of Upsala, the seat of the great university, is Old Upsala, more sacred than any other spot in Sweden: for here are the lofty mounds which tradition has consecrated as graves of the gods,—the gods who aforetime were held in reverent awe and honor by the Scandinavian race, and who, to this day, hold some sort of sway over the rude masses of the North.

We rode out in carriages from the university, and passed in sight of the house which covers the Mora Stone, on which the kings of Sweden were chosen and crowned. It is made of about twelve different stones joined and inscribed with the names of the monarchs who have been elected by the voice of the people. In 1780 the house was built over it by Gustavus III., but that was seven centuries after the first inscription upon it; for here it is written that Sten Kil was chosen in 1060, and seven others, down to Christian I., in 1457. Gustavus Wasa met his subjects here in mass-meeting and addressed them from this stone in 1520. The hoar of ages, with all the memories of the revolutions of these centuries, gathers on this spot. It is now only a shrine for pilgrims with antiquity on the brain, who wander the world over to see what the world has been. I have a large development of that weakness, and it has a great gratification in this part of Europe: more, indeed, than it had in Egypt; less than in Palestine. In the Holy Land the sacred associations with the religion we love makes every acre of it dear to the heart: we take pleasure in every stone, and favor all the dust of Judea. With less awe,—indeed, with no awe,—but with wonder, we now come to Old Upsala, to the graves of the pagan deities.

They are three conical mounds, about fifty feet in height, very regular in shape, with a broad plateau at the summit, and the unvarying tradition of the country is, that the largest of the mounds is the grave of Odin; the next, that of Thor; and the smallest, the grave of Freytag, Odin’s daughter. In all probability these are natural hillocks artificially reduced to these regular forms, and superstitiously set apart in the minds of the people as the graves of persons to whom their ancestors paid divine honors. To this hour, the name of Odin is used as that of a demon king, and “Go to Odin” is the profane execration which answers to the modern imprecation, “Go to the devil.”

On this spot the great temple to Odin was erected, and his worship maintained with horrid rites and ceremonies. The altars here have smoked with human blood and burnt sacrifices. In the sacred groves that surrounded the temple these savage deities were propitiated with all manner of offerings, parents laying their children with their own hands upon the altars, and slaying them in the face of heaven. A record still exists of seventy-two bodies being seen suspended at one time from the limbs of trees in this grove; men, and lower animals than men, if any animals are lower than such men, being offered in company to please the deities of the wood.

We entered the old church, the tower of which is said to be a part of the temple. This tower is the most ancient building in Scandinavia. A rude stone image of a human being, uncared for and lying in total neglect and dirt, was pointed out as an idol of Thor, that had once and often been worshipped on this spot and honored with these human sacrifices. It seemed more likely that it was a bogus image, and, therefore, all the more fitting to be presented as one of the false gods of a superstitious race, whose reverence is not yet so thoroughly extinguished as to prevent them from leaving hay on the highway at night, to feed the horses of Odin when he comes riding through the country on his missions of destruction.

On the reach of the Reformation to this region, the great battle of faith was fought on this spot. Here Gustavus Wasa, in his robes of royalty, addressed the crowds of pagan people, and besought them to turn from their idols to the living God. They replied with sullen rage, and threatened him with death. He finally flung off his robes, and told them they might have Odin for their king if they would, but he would not be their king unless they would worship the Lord God Almighty and his Son Jesus Christ. This was the decisive hour and word. They yielded, but only an outward obedience, a lip service, and it required long years and generations to extirpate the pagan worship from the minds of the people. One king of Sweden, Domold, was actually offered in sacrifice on Odin’s altar to propitiate the gods when the people were suffering by famine. And when Eric V., in 1001, embraced the Christian religion and destroyed the temple, the tower of which is said to be standing now as part of this church, the people in their fury put him to death.

From Odin, or Woden, as he was called, comes our Weden’s-day, and from Thor our Thur’s-day, and from Fry-tag our Fri-day; and these every-day words make links of association to connect our times with those fearful days, now past and gone for ever.

I was surprised by finding the practice of dining out of doors in summer quite as common here as in France. On our return from Upsala to Stockholm, Dr. Scholberg went with us to spend part of a day at the Deer Park, a vast tract of land in easy reach from the capital, that has been set apart for the use of the people. It is entered through a grand gateway, ornamented with a bronze deer on each side; within are villas and cafes, and theatres and concert-rooms. Long drives over country roads take us under majestic old trees,—oaks and elms, pines and spruce; and now and then we pass parties taking their mid-day or evening meal under the trees, or among the beautiful gardens that surround their houses. Our ride takes us up and down hill, in sight often of the sea: one has a taste of the country, rare indeed to be had so near the town. The quickest way to get there is to take one of the many little steamers that ply, like our omnibuses or street-cars, among the waters of this northern Venice; but many of them do not hold as many passengers as a horse-car carries. They are just like a large row-boat, with sharp bows and stern, and a boiler in the middle. They require but very little coal, and, being driven with great care, very seldom, if ever, blow up the people sitting so near to the boiler and all its works, as to suggest continually the idea that it would require no great effort to scald the company. If our American people could do any thing with moderation, they might introduce these little iron steamers with great usefulness into the North and East Rivers, and, indeed, into the waters of all our great cities. We often availed ourselves of them, for they run everywhere, and the fare is lower than in our city cars. A few minutes of fast running brought us to Deer Park, and our Swedish doctor led us to what was considered the best restaurant in the place. Hundreds of people were already there to dine, and at the middle of the day. It did not speak well for the industry and habits of the people, that so many of them could thus quit business at such an hour and go off out of town to their dinner. And Stockholm is the only city in the North where there is such a class of people. The city has the name of being very like Venice in this matter. And here they were in the middle of the day, hundreds of people, away from home, and making a business of eating and drinking.

Dinner was a study and an art. They had some science in it. There was an ante-prandium and the prandium, and the dessert and the post-prandium, and more post that I did not see; but what I did may be set down to give you an idea of the Swedes at dinner. First, every gentleman steps to a side table and takes a glass of schnapps, or gin, or other liquor that he prefers, and appetizes himself by eating of salt fish, dried tongue, cold meats, bread and cheese, making a very satisfactory snack or lunch, which would serve most of men for a fair dinner. The second course is soup, and one who is recently from Paris needs a little education to make it pleasant to his taste. Then follow salmon, chicken, roast beef, pudding, ice cream, jellies; and with these dishes, which are served one after another, and all to be eaten, are the usual trimmings of bread and butter, with vegetables to any extent. When this bill of fare—a dinner to order, and exquisitely cooked and served in good style—is disposed of, you are expected to indulge in the national punch, an oily, fiery, pungent liquor, that should not be taken without medical advice; yet it may be that it assists digestion after the organs have been overladen with such a dinner as I have just eaten and described. Now, it is not unlikely that such dinners are very largely enjoyed by the people, for all that I have mentioned may be had for seventy-five cents! And as you pay for just what you order, and no more, it is possible to make a sufficient dinner for half the money, and thousands do. We protracted our stay till the evening (not the dark) came on, and rode to the charming rural retreat for the royal household, and had the pleasure of gratifying our democratic eyes by seeing the ladies of the family taking their tea out of doors, so much in the same way that other people take theirs, we should not have suspected them of being any thing more than common, had we not been told of it, and actually had seen the august servant, with a white wig and pompous strut, bringing the “tea things” out to the little table in the garden. So many other little family circles did we see enjoying themselves in the same way, that we could readily see it was a national habit, and quite in harmony with those domestic pictures which Frederika Bremer has made us so familiar with in her letters about Swedish homes.

Costumes of Sweden.

One thing impressed me daily in these north countries of Europe,—the general content and comfort of the people. The climate has not helped them to this, for it is far less favorable to general enjoyment than that of the south. But there is an amount of industry, intelligence, and morality, that make a contrast easily marked between the people of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and the inhabitants of Spain and Italy. I find no such masses of squalid vice and misery here, as one may easily see in Naples or Seville.

Sweden has all the elements of a great and good people. She is making progress, too, in moral and intellectual culture, and her people are rising in the scale of social enjoyment. I notice these things in the rural districts even more than in the cities, which are so much the same all the world over.

CHAPTER XXXV.
SWEDEN (Continued).

WE are going across the kingdom, from Stockholm to Gottenburg. We might be carried through by rail in a day; but what should we see of life in Sweden if we went flying over it in that style? We will take the slower and better way, by the raging canal. This canal is the Erie of Sweden. It extends from lake to lake, and so connects sea with sea, the Baltic with the Atlantic; it leaves Malar lake, and takes lakes Wetter and Wener in its way, and all the chief towns of the interior; and as the travelling is rationally moderate, the pauses frequent and long, we have a fine opportunity to study the country and the people whom we have come to see.

It is a steam canal; that is, a canal for steam navigation, as the Erie and other canals of our country ought to be, and might be, but for the penny-wise and pound-foolish policy of politicians. The steamers are small. We embarked for this inland voyage on the Oscar, a royal name. The cabin had ten state-rooms, with two berths in each; a wash-stand in the middle had a movable cover, making a table, on which I am writing. The boat is furnished with great simplicity, but is comfortable. It is crowded with passengers; several families, with children and luggage immense, probably emigrants on their way to the land of promise. Their friends in troops thronged the wharf to see them go, and when the hand-shakings and hugging and kissing were finished, the boat was off, and the tears and waving of rags continued as we steamed away.

The clouds wept too, for a few moments, and then, like the passengers, dried up; smiles and the sun came out again, and beautiful Stockholm seemed more beautiful as we left it than it did while we were in it. The green slopes around the city were joyous in the sinking sun. The iron steeple of the Ridderkolm, and the white palace, and many spires, glistened in the light. Gems of islands, with pretty bridges uniting their shores, neat villas, with lawns carpeted with rich verdure, abodes, we may hope, of sweet content and comfort, are on either hand, and now and then, from a window or balcony, a white handkerchief greets a friend on board, who responds, and we have a telegraphic communication at once with the people we are leaving. I do love to find in strange lands, and among those whose language is all unknown to me, the same ties, the same loves and hopes, that fill our own hearts at home. It makes me know that all these people are my kin, children of my Father.

We have been passing across Lake Malar. But now, at seven in the evening, we enter a lock, and the Gota Canal begins. The village of Sodertelje receives us here. So sweet does it seem to be, in its quiet repose, that every house appears to invite you to stop and make a visit. It was at this point that St. Olaf, when a viking, was shut in by the fleets of the Swedes and Danes, and he cut his way out, not through the enemies’ fleets, but by digging a canal to the Baltic! This was in the eleventh century, and no such feats of rapid canalling were known from that time down to the Dutch Gap ditch, during the late war in America. The story of the saint is history, and the other one will not be forgotten.

The passage of the lock from the lake to the canal is tedious, but in the mean time the villagers come on board and greet friends, the children, as in all other countries, ply their sales of cake and fruit, till we are out and enter the Gota Canal. The banks for some time are fifty feet high, but they slope away gradually, and are beautiful in their green sod. Neat cottages and wooded walks and gardens, signs of taste and culture, and plenty, are on our right hand and left; and these dwellings are so near that the canal seems a street like those of Venice, where you step from the gondola to the marble threshold of your house. Passengers on board recognize their acquaintance, and exchange salutations. Now and then an old mansion, with many out-buildings, shows that an extensive farm is behind; and occasionally we pass a village which appears to be of modern creation, as if progress was making even in Sweden. We are following the course of the very same canal that St. Olaf, the viking, cut in such a hurry eight hundred years ago, and we soon come to the end of it, and run again into the sea, or a bay of the Baltic, and keep along the coast, among a wilderness of islands, touching now and then at one of them to drop or take a passenger. Heaps of rock on the points are painted white to guide us in the mazes of these intricate passes, and sometimes trees have been moored in the water to mark the pathway of the ship. Ruins of castles, each one of which has its legends as romantic as those of the Rhine, still haunt these rocks. Stegeborg Castle is the most picturesque in its solitary grandeur and desolation, and the traditions of the country associate it with many a hard-fought fight in times so far gone by that history is rather too romantic to be credited.

The night is now about us, but in these latitudes it makes little difference for seeing the country whether it is night or day. There was no sleeping to be done, for some of the rising generation rose all night, and made the little cabin vocal with their cries, so that only those who enjoy the music of sleepless babes could be said to have a pleasant night in that vicinity. Out of my little window I see the islands, with their stunted firs, shores rarely rising so as to be entitled to the dignity of hills, sometimes a forest, and here and there a house, red and neat, with no signs of slovenliness or poverty.

It was very early in the morning when we left the canal-boat, and in the midst of a drizzling rain followed a porter who had been directed by the captain to take our luggage to a hotel, the best hotel in the village of Soderkoping.

This was the village we had selected as a quiet, retired, obscure, but pleasant place to pass a sabbath in, to see the Swedes in their rural churches and in their humble homes.

It was so early when we came to the little wooden tavern that no one was astir. We went around to the back door, as the porter led us, and there knocked long and loud, till a maid thrust her head out of the window, and made signs that she would come down and let us in, which she did. The American language was of no use now. French was no better. But we managed to let her know, morning as it was, we wanted beds. She led us to the chambers, and when we pointed to the sheets as having already seen service since the last wash, she took the hint in a moment, and, pulling them off, supplied their places with linen without wrinkles. After a few hours sleep we rose for breakfast, taking what should be set before us. It proved to be comfortable. Coffee with delicious cream, bread and beefsteak on a novel plan, chopped fine, made into cakes and fried in butter with spices.

It was our first sabbath in Sweden. An ancient brick church with a spire, a venerable structure, stood near a swiftly flowing stream of water, embowered in majestic trees, and surrounded with the graves of buried generations of those who had worshipped within its old walls. It was a solemn, yet beautiful spot, and all its surroundings were in keeping. The graveyard was laid off in little plats, and the graves were bordered with flowers. On some graves pots of flowers were set, and on others fresh-plucked flowers were strewn, soon to wither and to be replaced. The bell was tolling and the people were assembling; all came on foot and by walks leading through the yard from various parts of the village. Some had come evidently from a distance in the country, with books in their hands. All were decently devout in their deportment as they came; even among the young there was no levity, they were on a solemn errand, and were sensible of the time and place.

The sexton sat at the door, with a big key in his hand, and opened the door to let the people in, but locked it when prayer began, and kept it locked till prayer was ended, and then admitted those who had gathered. Earthen pitchers or jugs stood on stools near the door to receive the offerings, and many cast in what they had. The floor was of stone, and many were tombstones, the inscriptions worn by the footsteps of the living, so that the names of the dead were illegible. Eight immense whitewashed pillars supported Gothic arches on which the roof rested. The pulpit was of wood, elaborately carved, with Scripture scenes and figures. A sounding-board above it was ornamented with quaint devices, and surmounted by a human figure, perhaps an image of the Saviour. On the front the word Jehovah, in Hebrew letters, was inscribed. The pews were very plain, unpainted slips, with doors locked until the owners came, whose names were on slips of paper attached. On the sides of the church, long rude seats were free. We occupied them. The congregation was very slow in getting in. The same variety of dress that would mark one of our rural churches was apparent. Rich and poor met together. Some of the ladies were dressed elaborately with the flat French bonnet; others in a costume of the country, a small black shawl or kerchief thrown over the head and pinned under the chin. The men were all rustic in garb and manner, accustomed to out-of-door hard work. All appeared devotional, respectful; old and young, on coming in, bowed in silent prayer; all stood in singing. The service was Lutheran, the established religion. All had books of the service, which was read with a loud voice and much intonation by the clerk. The preacher was a handsome young man, with great energy of voice and no action. His text had the name Jesus Christ in it, and the words were often repeated with tenderness and earnestness. I could understand no other words, and could only hope that as even those were sweet to my ears, the preacher was commending him to the congregation as the chief among ten thousand, the one altogether lovely.

Many of the men took snuff. The man on my right, two on my left, two in front of me, held the box under their noses to catch what fell back in the operation. They also offered the same boxes to me. One of the men sneezed immoderately four or five times. The sexton going up the aisle, and standing on the tombstone of some old saint, blew his (the sextons, not the saint’s) nose with his fingers, wiped it with a blue cotton handkerchief, polished it off with the back of his hand, and then walked up to the pulpit to do his errand.

Bating the snuff-taking and the nasal twang in the singing, the service was pleasing even to us who heard no words that we could understand. We worshipped in spirit, and felt at home among the children of our Father, not one of whom knew that two strangers from beyond the sea were in their village church on this pleasant summer sabbath morning.

Soderkoping proved to be more of a place than we had anticipated. It was, and is even a watering-place. Pleasantly planted on the banks of the great canal, with historic and towering heights rising by its side, and rejoicing also in the possession of a mineral spring, whose healing virtues have been spread among the people of this and other countries, it has become a resort for invalids. It maintains at one end of the village a series of bathing-houses, and modest lodgings for visitors, and a “conversation hall” of moderate dimensions, and some hundreds of the ill-to-do may be carefully cared for, and, perhaps, cured at the same time. But there is no hotel, nor any thing worth the name. The village is primitive, simple, neat as a new pin, not the sign of a new building going on anywhere. It might have been finished years ago, and kept in order to be looked at as a curiosity. The dwellings are, all of them, low, unpretending, small, and usually of wood.

Dr. Gustaff Bottiger, physician and surgeon, called at our lodgings in Soderkoping. He spoke the French well, and English tolerably, and we were able to get on with him delightfully. He is a fine looking man, accomplished in manners, and superintendent of the “Water Cure.”

The mineral waters of this locality have had a reputation in Europe through the long period of eight hundred years. They were formerly resorted to by invalids from Italy and Spain, as well as other countries. But in the course of time, and after the discovery of other springs, and the invention of more, the fame of these in Sweden declined. The town declined also. But when the modern water-cure idea sprang into being, an establishment was opened here, which has proved to be a wonderful success. It is resorted to by a thousand persons every year, who come as patients, and patiently submit to the hydraulic, hydrostatic, and hydropathic, and all the hydra-headed processes of scientific treatment requisite to purify the system and make the patient clean inside and out. The cure is sure for nearly all diseases to which flesh is heir, but is specially efficient in expelling such monsters as rheumatism, gout, and dyspepsia. The College of Health in Sweden, a national institution, has the establishment under its control, and the company that have taken out a royal charter, and built the bath and packing houses, have made provision for ninety patients, who are constantly lodged, fed, and water-cured at public expense, and one hundred and thirty more are treated gratuitously, with the use of the establishment, while they pay for their board and lodging. Six hundred patients can be supplied with baths at one time.

The establishment thus combines the advantages of a free and pay hospital, as do many of our asylums for the afflicted in America. But I am not aware that any of our States have made provision for sending their invalid poor to water cures. Our inebriate asylums may be called water cures in the best sense of the term, and it is quite certain, whether intemperance be a sin or a disease, or both, there is no hope of a cure without the use of cold water.

Here at Soderkoping the rich and the poor are so mingled and packed and purified, that the distinction is not palpable, and the institution is a model of social and medical propriety and equality.

Dr. Bottiger is enthusiastic in his pursuit of the grand idea he is here set to work out, and the patients catch his enthusiasm, believe in him and in the cure, and that helps the cure amazingly. It is not worth while to discuss the reason of the thing, or to inquire whether the mineral water here flowing at least eight centuries, and probably eighteen and many more, is any better for the cure than other waters. I am inclined to believe that there is superior virtue in the springs. But any waters are good enough, with the advantage of air, exercise, temperance, and recreation, to make most people whole who are only partially broken down. Nine-tenths of these invalids, especially of the richer classes, are victims of their own imprudences. God gave man reason, but he makes a poor use, or rather no use of it, when he works his brain so much as to overwork it, and loads his stomach so as to overload it, and by neglect of the laws of health, which are just as well defined as the moral laws of God, brings upon himself dyspepsia, and that long catalogue of evils that haunt the victim. He must be a bad liver who has a diseased liver. It was his own fault, in the first place, and the warning that he had he neglected, and now when he comes to Soderkoping, or goes to Kissingen, Spa, or Kreusnacht, for the benefit of his health, he is suffering the penalty of his own indulgence or neglect. If an ante-mortem coroner’s inquest should be held on his arrival at the springs, the verdict would be served him right.

There are six or eight water-cure establishments in Sweden, one in Norway, none in Denmark. The system is popular in this part of Europe, and in Germany. Patients appear to be attracted to them not so much by advertisements of special advantages, but by the reports which patients spread abroad, when they go away relieved of their maladies.

Just after the doctor left us a young man called who had heard that two Americans were here, and he wished to get information respecting the United States. He brought with him a phrase-book in German and English, or rather in German and American, for the book was called “The Little American,” and was made to teach the American language. The most it could do was to aid the young to pick up a few phrases of the language, and to stimulate their desire to emigrate to the western world. The book was evidently issued by the steamship or emigration companies, for it gave all needful directions as to the expense and mode of getting to America, and it held out the most encouraging prospects to those who might be tempted to go. The desire is wide-spread—to seek a home in the New World. Books and papers and pictures are industriously spread among the village and rural population to stimulate this desire. The wages of labor are represented as so great in contrast with their own earnings, while nothing is said of the cost of living,—the price of land is said to be so low in comparison with land here, which is not to be bought at all,—that they are filled with the idea of going to a country where they suppose they may get all they want for little or nothing. To what a sad reality they wake up when they set their feet on our shores, and find themselves in the midst of the harpies of New York!

Our bill for boarding and lodging, every thing included, at this village tavern, where we were well cared for, and had all that we could reasonably desire, was less than a dollar a day for each person. Board at private houses can be procured for much less. And if you are not able to pay any thing, and have the dyspepsia, it is quite likely that I could give you a line of introduction to the doctor, who would put you on the free list, pack you, duck you, all but drown you, cure you, and send you on your way rejoicing, with refreshing memories of Soderkoping.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
SWEDEN (Continued).

WE went on board the canal steamer very early in the morning, and found the deck covered with passengers taking their coffee as comfortably as if they were at home. This was not breakfast, that was to come by and by; but they turned out early, and all wanted coffee immediately.

The steamer was large, adapted to the canal, the lake, and sea, for all these waters are to be ploughed in going from Stockholm to Gottenburg. One of the sailors hearing us speaking the English, addressed us in the same language, for he had been in the British service until he spoke the English as well as his own tongue. Indeed, I have rarely heard the English spoken by a foreigner so well as by this Swedish sailor; yet he had acquired it solely by the ear.

Locks are now frequent, and the passage very slow. One of them was tended by a comely maiden, not more than sixteen years old, dressed neatly with an embroidered petticoat, which she had to expose in pushing the beam around to open and close the lock. This was a novel application of female influence, but not very pleasing, being the first thing I had seen in Sweden that was uncivilized and offensive. Lock after lock, slowly and tediously we made our way through a pretty country, the fields well tilled, woods and green meadows interchanging often, and the land fenced off into smaller divisions than we had noticed in any other country. The soil appeared to be good from the abundance of the growth. The houses were neat, and the out-buildings numerous and well arranged, showing signs of thrift and taste. The look was that of a farming people well to do.

We enter another lake, short, but very pretty, by name Asplagen, with richly cultivated shores and sweet homes nestling among the trees; and on the rising grounds we see beautiful pictures of Swedish life, rich and prosperous residences, where it is evident that the good things of this life are enjoyed, and plenty of them.

An elderly Russian gentleman and a Swedish professor of physics in Stockholm were among the passengers; the Swede had travelled in America, and was very happy to meet an American, while the Russian was greatly interested in learning of that wonderful country. He spoke five languages, and he said that his countrymen, if educated at all, could speak both English and French. While these gentlemen were my constant companions on board, they cordially hated each other’s country, the old antipathy of Russian and Swede cropping out continually, and making it a difficult task to keep the peace between them.

Roxen Locks.

Another stretch of the canal brought us to Lake Roxen, a wide and beautiful expanse, the passage through it requiring an hour. At the western end of it is the town of Berg, where a hill is to be surmounted by a series of locks, eleven in number, opening one into another, and the process requires so much time that we can leave the ship and make an excursion to an interesting and ancient church in the neighborhood. It is the Vetra-Kloster, Gothic in style, and built in 1128, when Inge II. was king in Sweden, and he is buried in it. The Douglas family of Scotland, in the time of Cromwell, came to this place to find a safe retreat, and they became famous in the wars of Sweden. They are interred right royally in this sanctuary. The mansion they occupied stands conspicuously on the borders of the beautiful lake, commanding splendid views of this lovely scenery. Villages are scattered over a rich country, and the spires of churches pointing heavenward tell the pious hopes of a people whose God is the Lord. The church stands in the midst of a large graveyard, and this is filled with flowers and shrubs and shade trees, and the monumental stones bear dates of great antiquity. The portal of the church was once the prison of a convent which was attached to the church, for this was built when Romanism ruled this region as well as southern Europe. The floor is of stone, and the aisles are of tombstones bearing inscriptions in German, Swedish, and Latin; epigrammatic and striking some of them are, and have silently preached to the passer-by for some centuries. “Mors certa, hora incerta,” and “Hodie mihi, cras tibi,” are not very sententious, but they have their point on a gravestone.

In a stone sarcophagus of very singular form, with a long inscription upon it, lies the body of Inge II.; wooden effigies of unknown personages, divine or human alike unintelligible to me, keep the dead monarch company in his sleep of the ages. Another chapel contains two sarcophagi, in which side by side through successive centuries the royal ashes rest of those whose names are now forgotten, but might be spelled out, if it were worth the trouble. And in another chapel are the tombs of the Scotch Douglases, who fled their own country and found glory and graves, that’s all, in this retired spot in the heart of Sweden. For this is purely a rural church, far from the town and all the busy haunts of men, a fitting place for worship, and a comely spot for graves. It has been used for both, more than seven hundred years. The avarice of man has not encroached upon its acres, nor coveted its stones.

Returning from our excursion, we heard the sound of children’s voices, and were led to a neat school-house in a pleasant enclosure, retired from the street, and being in the pursuit of knowledge we turned in to see and hear. About fifty children were receiving instruction from a master, who courteously bade us enter, and proceeded with his work. All the scholars, and they were of both sexes, were standing, and reading in concert from a history of Sweden. The reading being finished, the teacher put questions to them on the portion they had read, which they answered promptly, and showed lively interest in the lesson. Around the walls were suspended maps of the world and of the several countries, and there were black-boards and all needful appliances, such as would belong to a well appointed school. In the Universal Exhibition at Paris I had seen a Swedish school-house with its furniture, &c., and had remarked that no country made a better exhibition of the apparatus for educating children than Sweden.

Returning from the visit to the Vetra-Kloster, and its graves of the kings and the Douglases, we found that the boat had made its way through the eleven locks and was once more fairly launched on the peaceful bosom of the grand canal. It was the hour for dining, and the table was spread on deck, awnings overhead and at the sides to shelter us from the cool wind while eating. The Swedish dinner, even on a canal-boat, was good, preceded by the inevitable schnapps and radishes and other appetizers, and followed by a tolerable soup, fine fish, veal, puddings, and various trimmings needless to mention. I give you the bill of fare merely to show that there is enough to eat all the world over, and that you are not likely to suffer for want of comfortable food, even on a canal in the heart of Sweden.

We pass through many villages, each with its venerable church, and houses shaded with overhanging trees, farms well tilled, and now smiling with growing harvests and heavy clover. I saw no Indian corn, though I looked for it often. Probably the warm weather is too short-lived for the crop to ripen. No women were working in the fields. But we came to a drawbridge, and whistling for some one to open it, a woman ran from her house with the lever in her hand, ground away as for dear life, and by the time we reached it the draw was open for us to pass through. The poor woman was exhausted by the severe exertion, her lips were white as snow, and she looked ready to faint as we glided by her, and the pilot gave her a caution to keep a better lookout next time.

And now we cross another lake, Boren by name, the most beautiful of any we have yet seen. This frequent change from the monotony of the canal to the lovely scenery of these lakes, imparts a charm to the journey across the country which we did not anticipate. We now come to Motala, where the greatest Swedish iron-works are located. An English company has possession of one of the most valuable iron-mines, and the Swedish government has set up a vast establishment here for the building of locomotives, iron-clad steamers, monitors, &c., which are said to be equal to any that are made in the world. The boat had to lie here for freight long enough for us to go through all the works, which were freely open to our inspection.

We enter Lake Wetter, one of the largest lakes in Europe. We are soon out at sea, at least so far that we cannot see the land. It is very rough, with high wind. One of the sailors assured me that old salts, for whom the ocean itself had no terrors, are sometimes made sick by the pitch and toss of Lake Wetter. We touch at Wadstena, a large town from which our good ship takes its name: a place of great importance in the commerce of the country, with shops on the docks, like those of a seaport. What I supposed were bags of grain, lying in great heaps to be taken on board, proved to be dried peas, and they, with beans, must be largely grown in these parts. In the suburbs of the place were elegant residences, with fine parks and beautiful gardens, old and wide-spreading trees, flower-beds and ornamental shrubbery, some of them evidently public resorts for the people, and others the appendages of private residences. Wealth, culture, and enjoyment were thus revealed, and I had that pleasure which so often greets me in travel,—the consciousness that a new and strange people, whom I shall probably never see again, are taking just as much comfort in life, and working out the ends of living just as well as the inhabitants of other lands with whom we are more familiar. The Swedish peasantry live well, generally, and are not exposed to the evils of want, as the hard-working classes in Poland and Russia. Labor is cheap, and provisions are cheap also. The houses of the well-to-do people are often made with double windows; they are rarely more than one story high, the ceilings are low, and thus they are more readily kept warm in winter. Indeed, I am assured that the inhabitants in these northern countries, including Russia, often suffer more from heat than cold in their houses during the severe weather of their cold season. Education is generally diffused in Sweden, nearly all being able to read and write; and, taken as a whole, the people being moral, industrious, frugal, and contented, what could they have more?

The captain came to my cabin, where I was writing, and asked me on deck to see the sunset and the loveliest view as we approached the village of Forsvik. It stands at the head of a small lake, and is embosomed with field and forest—a sweet picture; the manor-house, whose owner is also at the head of the iron-works, is large and elegant. Here we pass into the canal again, and through a dense forest, the banks of the canal being bold and rock-bound, and we just graze them as we pass; indeed, we seem to be more on land than water; and in fifteen minutes we have cut through the woods, and rush out into another lake, coming soon to the highest level between the two seas. We are three hundred and twenty feet above the sea level, all of which has been surmounted by locks, and now we must begin the descent by the same means, seventy-five locks in all being required to take us up from one sea, on one side of Sweden, and set us down in another sea, on the other side.

The evening had been delicious on deck, but as it drew nigh to midnight, I would turn in. My companion for the night was the Russian gentleman whose friendship I had secured during the day. His long, white beard had commanded my respect. He had asked me innumerable questions of my country and myself, all of which I had answered to the best of my ability. He had learned my name,—which he pronounced Preem, as all the continental Europeans do,—and somewhat of my profession, and he determined to do the polite thing, and in English too, before going into retirement for the night. His berth was on one side of the little cabin, mine on the other. We could shake hands across, but we did not. He arrayed himself in his robes of the night: a red night-cap surmounted his head, making a fiery contrast with his snow-white beard. Sitting up on his couch, he addressed me with great dignity and formality: “My Reverend Preem, I wish you good-night,” and subsided into the pillow.

In the course of the night we steamed out of the canal into Lake Wenner, the largest in Sweden, and the third in size of all the lakes in Europe. Even in bed we could perceive that we were at sea, for the roll of the ship was as if we were on the Mediterranean. But we made the most of the passage before morning, and touched the next day at Johkoping, one of the most important inland towns in the kingdom.

This Lake Wenner abounds in trout, and to catch them of the modest weight of forty pounds is nothing remarkable. It would have been remarked, however, if we had had the luck to catch one of that weight, or any thing like it.

A Swedish ship-captain entertained me with stories of his life on this canal, with vessels worked by sails, pulled by man, and sometimes bullock power, creeping cautiously through the lakes, and running in shore whenever the wind was up. He said that he had lived all his days in this way, and was now taking his ease. All day, as we were making our way slowly along, we had been hearing the praises sounded of the Falls of Trollhatten, which we were to reach in the afternoon. The scenery had been improving, rising sometimes into the grand, and always picturesque and pleasing, as we passed well-tilled farms and the abodes of prosperous peasants. A range of locks must be worried through to get by the Falls, and this gives us the time we want, to see and enjoy one of the finest cataracts in Europe! You know they have nothing very great in that line. I have seen them all, and written them up as much as they would bear, but they do not amount to any thing very wonderful, nothing indeed to be compared with ours. We have half a dozen falls that would outleap and outroar all theirs, and we must praise them as an off-set to their palaces and pictures and stone women. They have marvels of art; we, wonders of nature, especially Niagara. Foreigners enjoy a description of Niagara by one who has seen it more than to hear of any thing else in America. But they have often been sullenly incredulous when I have assured them that a mighty river, with the water of half a dozen inland seas, gathers itself within banks a mile asunder, and then makes one prodigious plunge over a precipice 150 feet deep, into an unfathomed gulf!

Trollhatten does not attempt such a feat. But the river is caught among a mass of rocks in a narrow gorge, just where the mountains break down to the valley, and the stream comes roaring, tumbling, foaming, rushing headlong with power, fury, madness, indescribable. Water in motion is always beautiful, and when a mighty volume of it is struggling with resisting forces, tearing its way over and down the jagged rocks, and among the green trees of overhanging precipices, what is beautiful becomes sublime and fearful, and admiration rises into awe. In one place the rocks have been actually cut away by art to allow the passage of the water for use, and then the torrent leaps seventy feet at one bound into a frightful abyss. One lofty rock, with a broad, smooth face, like a great tablet, is inscribed with the names of kings, and the dates of their visit to this romantic and interesting spot.

We are now to take the river. The canal is at an end for us. Already we have a taste of more exciting navigation. To get the steamer into the river the sailors are working away as if for dear life. One poor fellow is caught by the leg in a hawser-line, carried overboard, and when brought on deck is found to have one of his legs broken. It was a sad termination to our pleasure excursion of three days. We had been brought into such constant intercourse with the men that we knew them all, and felt a personal interest in the poor seaman now stretched helpless on the deck. He was carried to the forecastle, and put away to be taken to the hospital at Gottenburg, but we could not put him out of mind so easily. After the excitement was over, I asked the captain what the owners would do for a sailor thus injured in their service, and learned that they would pay his hospital charges, and nothing more; in the mean time, while he was getting well, his family must look out for themselves. I then proposed to the captain and the Swedish professor that we should take up a collection among the passengers to help the man’s family in their want. To my surprise, they said it was a thing unknown among them, and would not meet with any favor if attempted. They regarded the idea as quite fanciful and preposterous. Well, I said, “In my country the passengers would do it; if you will interpret for me I will make a little speech, and you will see that they will not only give, but be greatly pleased with the opportunity of doing something.” The professor consented to be the interpreter, and we called the passengers together. I told them that “two or three Americans travelling with them through their beautiful and interesting country had greatly enjoyed the pleasant voyage of the last few days; but its pleasure had been marred by the sad accident that had just occurred to one engaged in our service. Though he was unknown to us, he was a man and a brother, and in the country from which I came, when such an event took place, we were in the habit of showing our sympathy for the injured by giving him money to lighten the calamity that had befallen him. You would gladly do so if you were permitted, and we propose to go around with a hat and let every one who is disposed contribute what he or she is pleased to give.” The professor turned the speech into Swedish, or at least said as much in that tongue, probably more and better. I could not understand a word; but his remarks were received with lively applause, and at his allusions to the Americans I nodded most intelligently, taking it for granted that he was saying something complimentary. We then received the gifts, and I believe that every passenger, male and female, gave something, and with a cheerfulness beautiful to observe.

A lone tower, rising above a mass of ruins, with a single wall surmounted by a heap of stones, strikingly resembling a huge lion, is all that remains of Hongfel, one of the most extensive of the old-time castles of Sweden. Here the river divides into two. We enter the left branch, passing near a fertile island; and, as the sun is going down behind a bank of threatening clouds, the city of Gottenburg, a seaport on the German ocean, rises upon our view with commanding beauty as we approach, and see the towers of its churches and the roofs of its principal buildings glistening in the last rays of the summer’s setting sun. The harbor is well protected, and the forest of masts presented all the appearances of a busy seaport. The usual crowd was on the wharf as our boat came to, but perfect order prevailed. No rush was made for baggage or passengers, but each one waited to be called for,—a model of good breeding that might be shown to advantage in the wilds of western civilization. Those of us who had become well acquainted in three days’ companionship now shook hands and bade each other farewell in our several tongues, the broken-legged sailor not being forgotten, as he lay in his bunk waiting to be taken to the hospital. We were soon distributed in our several directions, and parted, perhaps not to meet again, certainly not all of us, in this world.

It will give you an idea of the prices that rule in this country if I tell you that at the wharf we stepped into a carriage with two horses, our luggage was put on, we were driven to the hotel Gotha Kallare, the luggage was taken up to the chambers, and the price for the whole service was less than fifty cents of our money. Sweden still bears the palm of cheapness over all the countries I have seen.

Gottenburg proved to be an interesting place, though noted more for its commerce with Britain and America than for any thing else. The Merchants’ Exchange is a model in its way, combining a hall, and rooms for social entertainments, concerts, &c., which are managed by municipal authority. A museum of antiquities, illustrating the history and condition of the country, is well arranged, and would profitably detain the traveller a day or two to study it. The paintings are also interesting, where they preserve the memory of men and things belonging to Sweden, and of these there were many. The landlord of our hotel having learned from some of the Americans in our party that I was connected with the press, took pains to bring me into contact with my brethren of that fraternity in Gottenburg. Mr. Rubenson called and led me to the office of the Daily News, a paper devoted chiefly to the interests of merchants and sailors. I went through their press-rooms, composing and editorial apartments, and found them remarkably like those I was quite familiar with at home. This paper has a circulation of 8,000 daily, and on Saturday is published an edition of 3,000 extra, because on that day the poorer classes buy a paper for Sunday reading.

Mr. Rubenson took me to visit an institution the like of which I never heard of in any other city, and yet so useful in its object and result, that I had great satisfaction in visiting it. I am very anxious to have it known to the ladies of my own afflicted land. It was established by the energetic benevolence of one of the ladies of the city, who succeeded in getting a building specially erected and fitted for the purpose of giving young women instruction and practice in the arts of domestic life.

Impelled by a desire to benefit both the servant and the mistress, by improving the qualities of the one, and adding thus to the comfort of the other, this Swedish lady, with charity equal to her countrywoman Jenny Lind, or Fredrika Bremer, established this school. Girls of good moral character, who wish to go out to service, are received, and, under the direction of a competent matron, are made adepts in the sublime mysteries of the kitchen and laundry. The establishment takes in washing and baking and cooking for private families, hotels, and restaurants, and the money thus earned goes far toward paying the current expenses. The girls are taught to put their hands to every thing that must be done in the household. By turns they wait upon table, and the matron is at its head to give instruction, that they may become expert in serving the dinner as well as in cooking it, and those who sit at table may also learn to be decent in eating it.

And it was pleasant to learn that admission to this training-house is regarded as a great privilege. It is even secured as a reward for proficiency in the free schools; so that a young woman who has distinguished herself for good conduct in school, is entitled to still further education in this house as a reward of merit. These young women are in constant demand by families, who are ready to pay them higher wages, because they are graduates of a training-school where they have learned the theory and practice of household labor.

One of the greatest enjoyments of wanderings in foreign lands has been found in the discovery that there are good people all over the world; that they are toiling and praying for the good of their fellow-creatures, trying to make society better, the burden of the poor more easy to be borne, and this by helping them to help themselves. The future of these northern countries is more hopeful because of the enlightened philanthropy of such as the friends I have just met.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
NORWAY.

UP in this part of the world you must be very careful to look out for yourself, in all matters that require certainty as to times and ways of travel. It was hard to learn when a steamer would go north from Gottenburg, and all that we did learn from captains and porters and landlords proved to be erroneous. But at last it was settled that a boat would be along the next morning from Copenhagen, bound to Christiania, and if we were at the wharf at four A.M. we could go! We were called at three, and it was just as light as noonday. The luggage was taken by hand-carts, and the travellers, a goodly company, trudged to the wharf, a sleepy, grumbling set of Americans, who were sore vexed at being waked so early; four families, who met at Gottenburg, and were now embarking on the German Ocean to visit Norway. We suffered on deck from the cold, and were obliged to seek shelter in the cabin, but every berth, settee, chair, and peg, were occupied, so great was the crowd of passengers on the Viking to-day. Breakfast was served early, beginning with Norwegian cheese, quite equal to basswood, followed by eggs, caviar, beefsteaks, salt fish, and other things, and by the time this was over, the day was fairly opened; one of the brightest and most beautiful, with its cool, bracing, stimulating air, that we had ever seen. The Skager-rack (we had been familiar with the Skager-rack and Cattegat in the geography from school-days) stretched away to the horizon, seemingly to our own loved land in the west.

At Freidericksvern we landed a large number of our passengers. This is a naval station, and the residence of officers with their families. The hills about the picturesque town are attractive to the mineralogist, and the “crystals of shining feldspar are seen at a distance.” I did not see them. Entering a bay, and keeping near to the rock-bound coast, we steamed up a river for several hours, touched at Moss, crossed over to Hosten, a great naval station, and found a host of people on the wharf, to wait the steamer’s arrival. Here the fiord, or bay, divides into two, one leading to Dremmen, and the other, which we pursue, to Christiania, the capital of Norway. The mountains on the left are bold; sometimes lofty perpendicular rocks rise from the water. The sight is striking, grand indeed. Night approaches, but not darkness. It is nine, ten, eleven o’clock, and still the daylight lingers. At midnight we arrived at our destined port. We have been steaming almost due north twenty hours. Our baggage must be searched, for Norway has its own customs, though under the same crown with Sweden. But the search was slight and soon over. Perhaps you will be as much surprised to hear as I was to see that the city of Christiania is so much like other cities; if I had awoke out of sleep and found myself in it, I would not have supposed myself in the northernmost kingdom of Europe, and on the confines of the frozen zone. It has indeed a frigid look, a barrenness of ornament, a precise, severe, and perfectly plain style of building, if that may be called a style which is no style at all. But there is nothing about it to excite observation, except it be that it is more of a city, with greater attractions in objects of interest to visit, than one would look for in Norway.

The house at which I am stopping, Hotel du Nord, has rooms for two hundred guests; it is a hollow square, with a balcony on the four sides of the quadrangular court within, and each room on the balcony has a door opening upon it. On the piazza of the central building is a platform covered with awning, and surrounded with shrubs and flowers, with a fountain of water playing in the midst. I find in these hyperborean regions the people take pains to adorn their houses with plants and blooming flowers, to cheat themselves with the pleasing delusion that they are just as well off as those who dwell in more genial climes. This is true of the dwellers in the cities, and in the rural villages also, where I have noticed that windows are filled with plants exposed to the sun and the passer’s eye.

The stove in my room is of cast iron, and wood is the fuel. As it is now midsummer (July 6), we do not intend to use it, but it is a curiosity. It is four stories high, the lower one for the fuel, and the others are chambers to hold dishes for warming, and also to increase the surface for radiation of heat. We enjoy the sight of it, hoping that in the dreadful weather to come some of our successors may enjoy the heat thereof.

This morning we took our first breakfast in Norway, and, according to our usual custom of giving you a bill of fare in each country, to let you know how we live in strange lands, I will just mention that we had for our simple repast coffee, cold lobster, beefsteak, ham, tongue, corned beef, fried sole, boiled salmon, herring, with bread, butter, cheese, strawberries, and all other things needed to make out a meal.

The city has about fifty thousand people in it, and makes progress very slowly. It has a palace, which I positively did not visit, having made a resolution not to be tempted to go through any more, and a museum, which greatly entertained me for an hour or two.

In these Scandinavian countries (meaning Sweden, Norway, and Denmark), they are very curious to discover and to preserve all remnants of the heathen worship of Odin which once prevailed, and this museum has some very precious relics of that dead past. A massive gold collar, and various ornaments, which were found buried in the earth, are very naturally referred to the days of idolatry, when they adorned a statue of Odin. And I am more and more convinced that to this day there is a lurking reverence among the ignorant peasantry for the deity of those old-time heroes, whom their fathers worshipped. So prone is human nature to superstition, and so hard is it to blot out of the popular mind and heart those ideas which, even in remote generations, got firm hold.

Another very remarkable memorial of past times and customs treasured in the museum is the girdle and the knives which the gentlemen of Norway used in the good old days, now lost, when they pitched into one another in duels. First, each one of the combatants took a butcher-knife (we call them bowie-knives now), and plunged it as deep as he could into a block of wood. The blade, so much as was not in the wood, was then wound round tight with strips of leather, and the knives were cautiously drawn out, and each man took his own. It therefore had now a longer or shorter point, according to the strength he had to plunge it into the wood. Their girdles were then fastened together, so that they could not get away from one another. Now they went at it hip and thigh, cut and slash, till one or both were killed. If modern duellists were put to such tests of strength and courage, there would be few challenges.

Much more pleasant to look upon, and a memento of a very curious and perhaps a pleasing custom, which, however, is not of the by-gone times, but still common in Scandinavia, at least in the Bergen district, is the crown and girdle and frontlet worn by the bride on the wedding day. But all brides are not allowed to wear such ornaments as these: only brides who have been good girls all the time before. If they have been naughty, they must be married without these distinctions, and we may well believe that they are therefore very highly esteemed among young women in the north country. It seems to intimate, also, that it is not altogether a rare thing for a bride to be deprived of the privilege of being thus distinguished, for it is hardly possible that such a state of society can exist anywhere as to have an advertisement made at a wedding that a bride is no better than she should be. But the manners and customs of the world are very queer to the notions of those whose manners and customs are very different, and in no part of domestic life are these habits so monstrously diverse as in the matter of wedding ceremonies.

While wandering through the museum I found that the collection of heathen relics was comparatively small. They are often found by the peasants in their tillage of the land, but they keep them secret and sacred, attaching peculiar value to them as charms and medicines, averting evil and healing diseases. So powerful still is this hereditary heathenism in the vulgar mind.

The university is beautifully situated, and handsomely appointed for the instruction of about a thousand students, that great number flocking here to enjoy the lectures of its distinguished professors. But Norway has done very little for science or literature, though such names as Holberg and Wessel are well known abroad. The men of learning in Norway generally publish their writings in the German language, to find readers. Norway would furnish a limited field. Education is general, and it is rare to find a person who cannot read and write. Nearly every town has its newspaper, and at the capital there are reviews and magazines which evince learning and ability.

In the afternoon we set off to go by rail and boat a hundred miles into the interior, to spend the sabbath among the natives in the heart of the country. Going north from Christiania we found the scenery tame, but cheerful, as we passed among well-tilled farms, through small villages, with low but comfortable houses, and in each village a neat church, which told us, as we rode by, of two good things, first, that the people were Christians, and, secondly, that they were not split up into sects. Long may it be before a little village in Norway, with five hundred inhabitants, shall require five places of worship! Now and then in the open country a white mansion gave evidence of wealth and taste. A stream of water and frequent ponds, with saw-mills, rafts of logs and piles of lumber, showed the staple of this region; and we saw forests of fir, pine, spruce, and birch, the hardy natives of the North. Occasionally we caught fine views of distant hills, with long intervals of field and forest and villages.

At Eidsvold we came to Lake Mjosen. You can’t pronounce the name of the lake? Well, you must do as well as you can. The lake is a beautiful expanse of water sixty miles long, four or five wide, full of salmon and trout, and navigated by steamers, on one of which we are speedily embarked. The company is a curious mixture. Three or four American families, some English, many natives, and all social and friendly, for they are beyond the restraints of society, and are willing to give and take, as people should be, but are not, all the world over. We do not know how many kind-hearted neighbors we have in travel or at home until we break our respective shells and speak out.

The English commercial traveller is everywhere, and, of course, was on this boat. He is altogether ahead of the smartest, cutest, and most inquisitive Yankee. He will ask more questions and tell you more of his business than our communicative countrymen are disposed to mention. One of them was near me this afternoon; he was on his annual excursion among the inland towns of Norway, to get orders for his employer’s house (iron goods was the line of trade) in England. When he began his travels, a few years ago, he was the only agent from the city where the business was located; now, he said, there are twelve houses in the same trade, each one of which has its “commercial traveller” persecuting the natives of Norway into buying their goods. They must learn the language, of course, and then go from village to village all the summer, driving their business with energy, followed by other travellers of other houses, in other lines of traffic. So the shops of England are open at the door of every trader in the most obscure parts of this secluded country. So the iron and cotton and woollen goods of Sheffield and Birmingham and Manchester are forced out of the little island of their production into all the earth. I presume we do our share of the same kind of pushing; but John Bull is the master of the business.

On this boat were files of newspapers and a neat library of well selected books in Norse, and German, and in English, for the use of passengers. The large number of volumes in our own tongue showed that they made special circulations on having English-speaking travellers. Indeed, in the summer season Norway is taken possession of by the English. All the streams are bought or hired by sportsmen in England, who come annually, and thus secure the exclusive right to catch the fish in them. Many who are not aware of this “pre-emption” come to Norway, and are disappointed of their sport.

Close by the hotel stands an ancient church, well preserved, and very interesting. The pastor resides five miles away; but he arrived at the hotel before service, for the good people of the inn were his parishioners, and they make him welcome every Sunday morning for a little refreshment after his ride and before his labors begin. He was a very fat man, with a face that did not bespeak the scholar and divine any more than did the faces of my lamented friends Bethune and Krebs, both eloquent and learned, but not spirituel in their physique. He spoke neither English nor French, and our conversation was, therefore, only of the most general character, patched out of German and Latin.

At eleven o’clock we went over to the church. It is built of logs, in the form of a cross; the logs fitted nicely together, and boarded rudely on the outside. No plaster or paint was on the inside. Pine-tree branches, with projecting sticks, were convenient hat stands. In front of the pulpit the altar was railed off, and over the railing was the national coat of arms. Over the altar were little images, a crucifix, Virgin Mary, and such signs of lingering superstition as the Lutheran Church in these countries still retains.

The women sat on one side of the middle aisle, the men on the other. The men were fine looking, generally of good height and stalwart. The women were not good looking. They wore no peculiar costume. Many had bonnets on. Some had only a handkerchief on their heads, of white, yellow, red, or spotted, as the taste of each suggested. Some elderly ladies wore white lace or muslin caps, extending in front, and some had a black silk cap on the back of their heads. The men wore plain, black clothes, coarse, but clean and decent.

They were devout in appearance and very attentive. The preacher was earnest, and in his manner patriarchal, pastoral, affectionate. He had no Bible, and no notes before him, but discoursed with great fluency and fervor.

After sermon the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. The whole congregation communed. The house was packed full of people, and it appeared to me that every individual came forward to partake. They went up in successive groups, knelt, and the pastor placed his hand on the head of each one and pronounced words of absolution. When this was done the assistant came out and put a white gown on the pastor, over the black with a white ruff, in which he had preached. The assistant said a prayer while the pastor was kneeling, and then intoned a service, in which there were no responses, except from the organ. Each communicant received, while kneeling, both bread and wine from the hands of the pastor.

The service was very long, and it appeared longer to us who did not understand a word of the language used. But it was very affecting. There was so much earnestness and devotion in pastor and people; they approached with such evident solemnity and becoming fear, and yet with such strong desire, and the venerable pastor, like a father in the midst of his children, gave them the emblems of redeeming love with such gracious kindness of tone and manner that I was constrained to ask my companion what he thought of it, and he answered, “I should like to go and join them.” This would not have been proper, as we were strangers to all present, and it may be that it would have been inconsistent with their rules to receive us. But our hearts were with them, and we came away refreshed. We had been in communion with them, though they knew it not, and with our common Lord and Master, whose table in Norway is the same, and spread with the same simple but delicious fare in the north as in the south. And when we all come, as we shall come, from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God, I hope to meet my Norway pastor and his people at the Supper of the Lamb.

It made very plain to me the essential oneness of the church on earth. What did they,—these simple-hearted Christians in the heart of Norway,—what did they but testify their faith in Him whose sacrifice is their salvation?

It was pleasant to observe that the village was throughout the sabbath as quiet and orderly as any place in our own or any land could be. The scenery around it is picturesque and beautiful. Sombre mountains, sweet valleys, romantic waterfalls, green hillsides, these are the natural features of this secluded region, where I came to get into the very heart of Norway, and spend a sabbath among the people.

Cheap as living is in Sweden it is cheaper in Norway. In Lillehammer,—this pleasant village at the head of Lake Mjosen, in the midst of beautiful scenery, where a fire is a luxury in midsummer, and the windows of the cottages blossom with flowers, and the streams laugh loudly as they tumbled along among the hills, where the linen on the beds and the table is as white as the snow of the long winters,—here in Lillehammer I spent one day and two nights, and my hotel bill for five meals, two sleeps, and three rides, was three dollars of our money. That is cheap enough, I am sure; for the eating and sleeping and riding were just as good as you would get at Niagara Falls, where the prices are so high that the Falls appear low in comparison.

Early in the morning we returned to the steamboat on the lake, to go back to Christiania. A young woman, a cripple, was brought in an arm-chair by two men, and tenderly placed on board. The care they seemed to take of her was touching, and her gentleness made me wish that I had the Norse language at command that I might learn something of life among the lowly and the suffering, in this part of the world.

At Eidsvold we touched, and saw the people launching an iron steamer, for lake navigation, of course, and it was new to me to see a vessel launched sideways.

TRAVELLING IN CARIOLES IN NORWAY.

At Christiania a large party of Americans—and we were certainly in the midst of them—spent the afternoon in seeing the sights of the town, and riding about in the carioles of the country. A cariole is not a carry-all, for its capacity is to hold one, and no more. A boy may hang on behind to hold the little horse when you stop, but you ride alone and drive. Not much driving is required; you take your seat in this low, uncovered, rattling, comfortless concern, and away goes the rat of a horse, tearing along like mad; and as each person has to have a machine to himself, a dozen of them make a long string of vehicles, which, dashing over the stones, create a sensation. Young ladies from America are fond of this exciting exercise. It is almost equal to horseback riding. Some English ladies of title and wealth are making the tour of Norway this summer with no attendants, travelling only in the cariole. The government makes all needful provision for travellers that they may not be imposed upon by the post-keepers. Licensed houses are planted along the highways at intervals of about ten miles, where the keeper is obliged to keep a certain number of horses for hire, and if all are out, when a traveller comes he is required to get horses from his neighbors. You buy your cariole,—a cheap and miserable thing it is,—hire a bit of a horse, and are off. At the first post-house you leave your horse, take another, paying the legal price for its use, enter your name in a book with any complaint you may have to make of the treatment you have received, which the Government Inspector is to read when he comes in his regular tours. These post-houses could, at a pinch, give you something to eat and a place to sleep in; and a few days and nights of travel in Norway will make fare and quarters tolerable, at which you might have slightly elevated your nose in Paris or Broadway. I have been in several countries and have passed some years in travel, but never spent twenty-four hours in my life without food convenient for me, and a better place to sleep in than his who had not where to lay his head.

So we set off from the tavern in the capital of Norway, in a dozen carioles, rushing amain down the rough streets and out into the country to Oscar Hall, and marvelled exceedingly at the taste and beauty of its decorations within and without: nature adorned by art, in lovely grounds about the house, and the views of the Fiord, the mountains and plains.

The castle of Agershaus commands magnificent views, and keeps in its strongholds the regalia of Norway and the records of its romantic history. Old guns, relics of an effete system of warfare, bear on their faces rude pictures in brass of barbarians in war. The old castle is a prison now. And if you suppose that it takes an Englishman or even a United-Statesman to make a cute rogue, just read the story of the Robin Hood of Norway.

In the castle of Agershaus, in Christiania, in a cage of thick iron bars, is immured for life, Hoyland, the Robin Hood of Norway. His robberies were always confined to the upper classes, while his kindness and liberality to those in his own rank of life rendered him exceedingly popular amongst them. His crimes never appear to have been accompanied with personal violence. He is a native of Christiansand, where he began his career. On being imprisoned for some petty theft, he broke into the inspector’s room, while he was at church, and stole his clothes; these Hoyland dressed himself in and quietly walked out of the town unobserved and unsuspected. He was subsequently repeatedly captured, and imprisoned in this castle, and often made his escape. On one occasion he was taken on board a vessel just leaving the Christiania Fiord for America. Previous to his escape, all descriptions of irons having been found useless, he was placed in solitary confinement in the strongest part of the basement of the citadel—his room was floored with very thick planks. Here he had been confined for several years, when one night the turnkey said to him, “Well, you are fixed at last, you will never get out of this, and you may as well promise us you will not attempt it.” To this he only replied, “It is your business to keep me here if you can, and mine to prevent your doing so if possible.” The following day, when his cell was opened, the prisoner was gone, apparently without leaving a trace of the manner in which he had effected his escape. After a repeated and careful search, on removing his bed, it was found that he had cut through the thick planks of the flooring. On removing the planks cut away (and which he had replaced on leaving the cell) it appeared he had sunk a shaft, and formed a gallery under the wall of his prison—this enabled him to gain the court-yard, from which he easily reached the ramparts unseen, dropped into the ditch and got off. No trace of him could be found. About twelve months afterwards, the National Bank was robbed of 60,000 dollars, chiefly paper money, and in the most mysterious manner, there being no trace of violence upon the locks of the iron chest in which the money had been left, or upon those of the doors of the bank. Some time afterwards a petty theft was committed by a man who was taken and soon recognized to be Hoyland. He then disclosed how he had effected his last escape, which had taken him three years of steady patient labor to accomplish; while others slept he was at work, and with a nail for his only tool. Having money concealed in the mountains he was sheltered in Christiania—disguised himself—made acquaintance with the porter of the bank—gradually, without his knowledge, took impressions of the various locks—made keys for them—and thus committed the robbery before mentioned. He is said to carve beautifully in wood and stone, but is no longer allowed the use of tools. His sole occupation is knitting stockings with wooden pins. Twice during the day, while the other prisoners are not at work, he is allowed to leave his cell for air and exercise, and he occasionally gets the amusement of a chat with the governor, by writing to him that he will disclose where the rest of the bank money is concealed which he did not get rid of while at liberty.

Then we rode on and took a look at the Asylum for the Deaf, and Dumb, and at the Home for the Aged, and at the Orphan Asylum, and at the Workhouse, and all these institutions had the appearance of being the fruit of intelligent philanthropy and Christian charity.

Manufacturing villages were in the immediate vicinity of the city, with cotton and iron mills driven by water power, and every thing about them suggested thrift and comfort.

We rode out to the oldest church of the city, and found in the adjoining cemetery the grave of Bradshaw, whose guide everybody carries and nobody understands. I thought he was living and working in London, but it seems that several years ago he came up here, with one of his own guides, and found a grave.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DENMARK.

WE are coming down to Denmark. Down from Norway and along the coast of Sweden. First through the Skagerack and then the Cattegat, in the steamer Excellent Toll, by name, with twenty American passengers. Fleets of sailing vessels were in sight, the crews engaged in the mackerel fishery, a great business off this coast. The day was as lovely as the suns of Italy ever show, and the sunset revealed such splendors as I never saw except in Mantua, under Italian skies.

The sun went down as if into the western ocean, where poets often tell us he “quenches his beams.” A few clouds were lying along the horizon, in long rifts stretching a quarter of the way around the great circle of the heavens. They were burnished with golden splendors, and among the rifts the sky seemed painted with the hues of the rainbow. The passengers stood on the upper deck, and all were in raptures of admiration gazing upon the magnificent scene. Long after the sun was gone the great picture hung on the northern sky, and we watched it till the many-colored painting gradually and finally faded into the sombre tints of evening. The moon then gave us silver for gold, and for some hours after sunset it looked as though the sun were rising!

We passed the night on this voyage, touching at Gottenberg at midnight, for an hour only. The next day (July 10) was equally brilliant with the first, and the run along down the coast was exciting and pleasant. About midday we entered the Sound and soon came to Elsinore, where we had no Sound duties to pay. From time immemorial—so long that the date of the origin of the custom is lost in the fogs of the region—the Danes have been accustomed to demand and receive toll from every vessel passing Elsinore. No end of trouble was the result of this. The Vienna treaty of 1815, after Napoleon’s downfall, confirmed the Danes in their enjoyment of this imposition. Some nations afterwards commuted with Denmark, and the whole thing was abolished in 1857.

In the time of Tycho Brahe, the famous astronomer, whose house we saw on one of the lakes in Sweden as we were going to Upsala, the Danes built a mighty castle here, called Kronborg, and mounted big guns, so as to sweep the Sound and make it very desirable for vessels to stop as they were going by and pay their toll. If they refused to do so they were spoken to by these guns. And sometimes it was a word and a blow. This castle is famous in the legends and history of Denmark, and within the last hundred years it has held distinguished and royal prisoners, who have exchanged dungeons for the scaffold. Down in the subterranean casemates a thousand men may be stored away—soldiers to defend the castle, or prisoners to pine in captivity. In one of these secret hiding places, where neither light nor pity finds its way, a noted mythical giant of Danish story is said to reside. He never comes up to the surface of the earth, but when the State is in danger, and then he takes the head of the army and leads it on to victory. His grasp is so strong that his fingers leave their imprint on an iron crowbar when he holds it in his fist.

The views from the castle and from any of the elevations in Elsinore embrace the town, the fortifications, Helsingborg on the other side of the Sound, the Great Belt, the Baltic dotted with sails,—a grand panorama indeed.

Shakespeare was kind enough to make this vicinity classic and famous by his Hamlet, whose grave is said to be here, and travellers come to find it, as they look for Romeo and Juliet’s at Verona. In vain we are told that Hamlet did not live nor die in these parts; that Jutland and not Zealand, was his country. But they pay their money and they take their choice, and most of people choose to believe that Hamlet was buried hereabouts, and any heap of stones with Runic characters upon them would answer the purpose, but they cannot find even this. Drop the letter H and we have Amlet, and that signifies madman, and so you have the beginning of the story on which the tragedy was founded. And the story runs in this wise in the gossipy guide-books, so useful to travellers, and especially to those who have to write about their travels.

According to the Danish history of old Saxo Grammaticus, Hamlet was not the son of a Danish king, but of a famous pirate-chief, who was governor of Jutland in conjunction with his brother. Hamlet’s father married the daughter of the Danish king, and the issue of that marriage was Hamlet. Hamlet’s father was subsequently murdered by his brother, who married the widow and succeeded to the government of the whole of Jutland. As a pagan, it was Hamlet’s first duty to avenge his father. The better to conceal his purpose, he feigned madness. His uncle, suspecting it to be feigned, sent him to England, with a request to the king that he would put Hamlet to death. He was accompanied by two creatures of his uncle, whose letter to the English king was carved upon wood, according to the custom of the period. This Hamlet during the voyage contrived to get possession of, and so altered the characters as to make it a request that his two companions should be slain, and which was accordingly done on their arrival in England. He afterwards married the daughter of the English king: but subsequently returning to Jutland, and still feigning madness, contrived to surprise and slay his uncle, after upbraiding him with his various crimes. Hamlet then became governor of Jutland, married a second time to a queen of Scotland, and was eventually killed in battle.

I wish we could stop at Frederiksborg, but we must come back to it from Copenhagen. For here is the royal castle of Denmark, built in 1600, and now the repository of works of art and objects of antiquarian interest connected with the reigning house. It was in this castle that the unfortunate queen of Christian VII. died at the early age of twenty-three, a broken-hearted victim of slander and conspiracy. In one of the private rooms in which this beautiful woman was a prisoner, she wrote with a diamond upon the window pane this touching and self-sacrificing prayer:—

“O keep me innocent, make others great.”

The woodland scenery around the castle is charming. The Royal Forest covers a vast extent laid out with lovely walks and drives, and the whole island of Zealand is preserved for royal pleasures in forest and field.

A drive through this forest brings you to the Castle of Peace, so called because a treaty of peace was concluded in it with Sweden; and perhaps it keeps its name the more fittingly, as the palace is now cut up into apartments which are occupied by families, once rich, now poor, belonging to the aristocracy. They find it very convenient to live in a palace free of rent, and as the neighbors are all in the same condition with themselves, they are not mortified by the fact that they are dependents of the State. We would call such a place the royal poor-house. In England, the splendid palace at Hampton Court, which Cromwell built and gave to his king for fear he would take it without, is used for decayed families of the British aristocracy, who live genteelly in kings’ houses at very little expense.

Denmark is not one of the great countries of the earth, but very far from being least among the kingdoms. It has a history, and a future too, civilization, religion, science, art, and enterprise. It made a fine show at Paris in the World’s Industrial Exhibition, and has no reason to be ashamed of her agriculture, manufactures, and fish. I was surprised to notice in the fields so many of the productions common in the northern States of America. A kitchen garden looked homelike, with its pease and beans and cabbage and potatoes and turnips, and all the ordinary vegetables cultivated in the same way with our own; and the crops on the broader farms, wheat and rye and oats; so that the children, playing the games of the country and singing as they played, were doubtless familiar with the farmers’ song,—

“Oats, pease, beans, and barley grow.”

Let us study the history of Denmark for a moment. Time was when Denmark was the ruling power in Scandinavia, which name includes her and Norway and Sweden. Time was when Denmark conquered all England, and Sweyn I., the king of Denmark, was on the throne that the Georges and Victoria have since filled. Canute the Great was also king of Denmark and England, and a line of kings after him swayed the same double sceptre. This was when the Christian era was in the 1000’s, and perhaps Denmark has never had a more illustrious period of history than in the first part of the eleventh century. Then England and all the north, with part of Prussia, were under her crown.

She fell. And not by the superior prowess of any rival foreign prince, but through the treachery and violence of one of her own subjects. Those were turbulent times doubtless, and it is wonderful that the mighty monarch of such a kingdom could be seized, as Valdemar II. was (by one of his own subjects) while he and his son were hunting in the woods, carried on board a sloop and off to a foreign castle and immured in prison for three years. The proudest king in Europe was thus insulted and bearded and degraded, while Europe looked on without raising a hand to deliver him. At length the Pope threatened, and one word from him did what the kings of the earth could not. Valdemar was released and restored, but his prestige was destroyed and he never recovered from the effects of his fall. Provinces revolted and became independent. England set up for herself again. In 1387, Queen Margaret came to the throne of Denmark and Norway, and subdued Sweden. For a hundred years the three Scandinavian countries were under the same government. In 1448, the king of Denmark died, and for a whole century no male heir was left by any sovereign for the throne. Then the German dynasty came in, and the Duchy of Schleswig was united with Holstein, which was annexed to Denmark under Christian I. There begins that Schleswig-Holstein question, which bothered Europe and has plunged the country into war even in our day. The very next king, Christian II., lost Sweden; and then Denmark became a little monarchy, all by itself, which you will find embracing a peninsula and several islands on the north-west coast of Europe.

England and Denmark have been good friends notwithstanding the unpleasant relations that once existed. Three or four times the royal families have intermarried, and the Prince of Wales of the present day depends far more on the popularity in England of his Danish wife, than on any merits of his own for his future success on the British throne. These pleasant relations were disturbed in the early part of the present century when the British destroyed the Danish fleet and commerce; and, since that time, Denmark has cultivated the arts of peace, making for herself a name better than the glory of arms or extent of territory.

Christianity fought with paganism in Denmark during the eighth and ninth centuries; and, after a terrible struggle, triumphed over Thor and Odin, whose superstitious power is still felt in the minds of the more ignorant of the people. Then the Romish religion reigned, until the Luther reformation came with healing in its beams, and Protestantism became the religion of Denmark. The Lutheran form of worship is established, but, under the constitution, toleration is enjoyed.

In no one department of public interest have I been more pleased to be disappointed, than in the general intelligence prevailing among the people of these northern countries of Europe. They are Protestants, and, therefore, knowledge is diffused; the people wishing it, and the government encouraging it. No Roman Catholic government favors free schools and the universal elevation of the people. The Danes have a school in every parish, and every child is obliged to go to school and learn to read and write. There are higher grades of schools in all the towns, and two universities,—one at Copenhagen and one at Kiel. Thus the means of education being brought within the reach of the humblest, the whole country is enlightened.

A Domestic Scene in Denmark.

The women are good-looking, and in this matter there are national peculiarities worth noticing. At a fair or public entertainment, where men and women of the working classes are brought together in great numbers, the women of Denmark will be pronounced above the average for good looks, and, perhaps, the same thing would not be said of the men.

Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, and the capital of Copenhagen is Thorvaldsen’s Museum. Copenhagen has other and many attractions, but this museum is the crown and glory of Denmark. Art has her victories, and those of war are not so enduring in their glory as the fruits of genius and peace. Here in this ancient and beautiful city, in 1770,—a hundred years, save one, ago,—was born Albert Thorvaldsen, the son of an Iceland ship-carpenter. Poor, obscure, and friendless, but inspired with the genius of his future art, the boy made his own way to Rome. He found employment in the studio of Canova, and his talents soon commanded respect. But he lacked the aid of a patron and friend, and he was about to abandon Italy in despair, when an English banker, by the auspicious name of Hope, appreciated the artist, ordered a marble statue of Jason, which was standing in the clay, and from that glad hour his career was onward and brilliant, till he attained wealth and fame unsurpassed by any sculptor of ancient or modern times. He loved his native Scandinavian climes, and often visited the city of his birth, which he enriched with the noblest creations of his marvellous hand. But he dwelt in Rome, unmarried, save to his art; and when he returned, at the age of sixty-eight, to Copenhagen, he was received as a conqueror, was domiciled in the palace, and, six years afterwards, died in the midst of the lamentations of the people, who loved him and whom he loved.

Façade of the Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen.

As he made the people the heir of his glorious works—in large part the models of the statuary he had executed for kings and nations and wealthy individuals—it was resolved to erect a monument to his name, which should be at once a museum of his creations and a mausoleum for his remains. In the midst of the city, and on an open square, a building—a vast parallelogram with a court-yard in the centre of it—has been reared; the successive stories filled with the productions of the genius of this one man, including the minutest specimens, up to the model of his “Christ,” the highest achievement of his, not to say of human, art. In the midst of the little court-yard, surrounded on its four sides by the walls of this museum, so that every window on the inner side looks down into the court, there lie in solemn and sublime repose the ashes and bones of the man who made all these things! It is silent; but oh! how eloquent the lesson of the greatness and the vanity of genius! It is something, it is a grand thing, to have made all these marbles for the joy and instruction of mankind; and it is sweet to die with the consciousness of leaving for after generations the works that shall teach them lessons of virtue and strength and beauty. But to die and leave them all! To lie and moulder in the midst of them! To be rotting while even the clay that one’s fingers moulded into life-like shapes is admired—this makes the cup of life an insipid draught, and the wise man cries it is vanity, all vanity, after all. Yet not so vain after all! No man liveth unto himself; and one would gladly take the pay that a good, great man gets, who adds to the material wealth of the world the glorious creations of art for all time to come, and then dies in the midst of them. It is more also to be useful than to be great; and he who lives to make others happy, though not an artist in stone or oil, lives to a noble purpose, and his mausoleum is in the hearts made glad by his kindness while he lived.

On the outside of this museum the walls are covered with fresco paintings illustrating the mechanical processes by which the statuary was brought to its place. This is the antique Grecian, and even Egyptian, idea of celebrating an historical event. It might be called Thorvaldsen’s triumph. Within the frieze of the grand hall is the triumph of Alexander the Great. The Hall of Christ contains the casts of the Saviour and all his disciples—that wondrous group which in marble illuminates the chief church in Copenhagen. And as we ascend from floor to floor, and pass through successive chambers—all of them filled with the handiwork of the same great artist who sleeps in sight of every window—one is filled with admiring awe, while charmed with the beauty of the design and execution. Beauty is not the word, though much here is very beautiful. Thorvaldsen was one of the first to appreciate and encourage our own sculptor Powers, whose works are more beautiful than the Dane’s. Strength, majesty, power—these are the attributes that cover as with a garment the face, the head, the limbs of the heroes whom Thorvaldsen by his magic chisel turned into stone. The divine is revealed in his conception of the Redeemer of men. The god-like is in Moses and Peter and John the Baptist; and his ancient heroes are inspired with a sentiment that is easily drawn from the mythology of Scandinavia, in which the worship of Thor and Odin seems to be incorporated ineffaceably.

Portrait of Thorvaldsen. (By Horace Vernet.)

Away in the farthest corner of the museum is a collection of gems and bronzes and vases and coins and antique sculpture, which his taste and money had gathered in Italy. Here is the furniture of his sitting-room as it was the day he died, and here is a cast of Luther, which on that day of his death he had begun to work! Here are sketches he had made with pen and pencil, the dawn of his gigantic conceptions, afterwards made perfect in marble—now interesting as the outlines we have of the first thoughts of Raphael and Michael Angelo and others on their immortal works!

Never was an artist so honored by his countrymen; never was one’s fame more precious in the memory of his fellow-men. And I may easily convey to you an impression of the reverence in which he is held by saying that Thorvaldsen is to-day in Denmark what in our country is the name of Washington.

Vor Frue Kirke, the Notre Dame, the Church of our Lady, is the royal church—the Cathedral of Copenhagen.

I worshipped there yesterday; and of all the days in the year, and of all the churches in Europe, not one could have been selected more crowded with interest to a traveller whose tastes flow in the channels of religion and art.

For as I came to it there were standing on one side of the portal a statue of David, and on the other one of Moses, in bronze, both of them by the hand of Thorvaldsen, and sublime with the inspiration of his power. I stood a few moments before them, and thought of the royal poet and the inspired law-giver, and wondered at the art which could embody and express their spirit and mission with such silent eloquence. And then I entered the church itself, and it was all ablaze, not with five thousand candles, as I had seen at St. Peter’s at noonday, not with flaring gaslights, nor even the glorious sunlight alone, but with the greatest of modern statues, the Christ in marble, standing over the altar, and the twelve apostles, six on one hand and six on the other, along the sides of the house (Paul being put in the place of Iscariot), and all by the hand of the same master. Thorvaldsen chose this sanctuary as the place to be made beautiful and glorious with his works,—his triumphs. The Saviour is represented with extended arms, as if he were saying the sweetest of all his words, “Come unto me,” and on the face of his disciples rests the expression that sacred art might desire to present as characteristic of each one of the chosen group. In the middle of the chancel a marble angel, of loveliness unspeakable, is kneeling and holding in his hands a shell, which is the font for baptism. Copies of this are multiplied till the world is familiar with it. Near the door is a group representing a child walking with his face heavenward, and an angel follows, pointing with his finger over the child’s head. And on the other side of the door is a Mother’s Love in marble.

Those who worship here from day to day become familiar with all this sculpture, and are not distracted, if they are not aided by the beauty and the majesty of such a wealth of art. But a stranger within the gates, for a morning only, seeing it all at once for the first and the last time, would find it difficult to withdraw his soul from the marble and contemplate for an hour the unseen and eternal. And this would be more difficult when the worshipper is unable to understand a word of the service.

The church was full of people, going out and coming in, as in Romish churches. The officiating minister had on a white robe, ruffles, and red mantle, with a broad gilt cross on his back. He stood before the altar, on which was an image of the crucifixion, and two candles four feet high, and burning. After a brief service and sermon, he administered the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to a few who remained to receive it, kneeling; he gave them the bread, with a few words to each, and an assistant followed, putting the cup to the lips of the communicant. The formalities of the ceremony, the tones of the priest, the tergiversations, the responses of the choir, &c., were similar to the forms in use in the Church of Rome.

When this sacrament was concluded, I was about leaving the house, which was now nearly deserted, when I noticed something going on in the chancel. Twenty mothers, each with a babe in her arms, and a female attendant, entered and arranged themselves in a large circle around the kneeling marble angel holding the baptismal font. Twenty women, twenty babes, twenty female friends, not nurses, but god-mothers; not a man appeared. It was a beautiful spectacle; perhaps it would be impossible to invent a more lovely tableaux. The mothers, the infants, the friends, all clothed in white, all before the altar in a circle, in the midst of which was this white angel kneeling, and above the whole the finest statue on earth of Jesus, with open arms, as when he said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.”

The priest read a form of baptism, and then, passing around the circle, made the sign of the cross on the face of each child; he then read again; again he went to each child, and laid his hand upon its head as if in blessing: then he read again. The service was now so protracted that the mothers were allowed to sit down, and then, one by one, each came up with the attendant, and, the cap being removed, the babe was held over the font, the priest took water and poured it three times from his hand upon the head of the child, pronouncing its name and that of the Triune God.

This being concluded, and as I was coming out of the church, a carriage arrived with an elegantly dressed lady and her attendant with a babe, to be baptized after the people of the humbler class had received the sacrament. Alas! I said to myself, is aristocracy in religion the same everywhere?—and cannot the noble of this world be humble before God? So I would not return to the baptism of this “better born” infant, but went on my way praying that all alike might be washed in the blood of Christ, and made children of the kingdom.

It will surprise you—it certainly did me—to find that the people of these northern countries of Europe give far more time to mere amusements than the Americans do. I was struck with this on coming to Sweden, and saw something of it, but not so much in Norway; and here in Copenhagen they are as much given to it as the Athenians were to news.

Perhaps the French and Italians are more disposed to make themselves merry in crowds. But on recalling the habits of the masses as they are seen in public places in Paris and Florence, I think that I was never in any city in the world where so many people in proportion to the whole number go from home to be amused. On the outskirts of the city—but not so far away as to be difficult of access—there are large gardens, so called, laid off with walks and shrubbery and fountains, and in the midst are all sorts of spectacular games and plays, combining in one enclosure theatre, circus, gymnastics, music and dancing, concerts, orations, and whatever is usually found scattered in different parts of a city, and to be visited only after paying a fee for each admission. To enter this garden—for one is a type of many—you pay about ten cents, and that gives you the entrée to nearly all the shows. The theatre may charge another trifling fee, but the one admission makes all these amusements open to the visitor. Around every stage are little tables and chairs, and refreshments are served, if you choose to call for them, at an extra charge. To such places as this thousands upon thousands of respectable people resort night after night, usually coming before dark, for the days are long and nights short; men bring their wives and children, and take their evening meal together in little stalls provided for the purpose, and go home in good season. This is their refreshment after a day of toil, and it is not unlikely that it helps them to bear with patience the burdens of a working life.

These gardens are the institutions of Copenhagen, for the entertainment of the people. They are cheap, so as to be within the reach of all; and they are cheap, as one of the proprietors told me, because low prices bring more money than high. Doubtless there are other and more intellectual enjoyments provided for those who prefer them; but when you consider the enormous expense incurred to fit up and furnish every night such entertainments as these, you see it requires the attendance of many thousands, at the insignificant charge, to make them pay at all.

On certain days, the Royal Picture Galleries and Thorvaldsen’s Museum are thrown open to the people, and the throngs of working people, evidently in very humble life, as their dress and manner indicate, who pack the halls and rooms, show that the people have also a taste for something higher and better than plays. Something might be said of the effect of so much amusement upon the morals of the masses; but it is not safe for a transient visitor to speak with certainty of any thing but what he actually sees as he goes along. To me it is a pleasant, and only a pleasant reflection, that the people in these northern countries, who do not accomplish much beyond making a decent subsistence from year to year, find both time and money to spend in amusements that are not in themselves as demoralizing as the sensual and intoxicating pleasures which so many of our own poor pursue to their ruin.

You would have to go far and search long before you would find a more interesting museum than that of Northern Antiquities, which occupies part of the Christiansborg Palace. This northern country abounds in curious relics of past ages, defunct systems of religious worship, modes of warfare now wholly unknown; and by law all these remains, wherever found, belong to the crown. In every parish in Denmark the minister is made the agent of government, to have every thing discovered, and that promises to be of any interest, sent to the museum, where a fair price is paid for it to the finder.

There is scarcely an end to the number and variety of these curious objects, illustrating the manners and customs of the long-buried past. Weapons of war form the most conspicuous feature of such an exhibition, and stone is the material from which the most formidable are made; clubs and axes, arrow-heads of flint, chisels and knives most singularly and beautifully wrought; urns from ancient sepulchres, with bones of other animals than human, are here; and tradition tells us that the old Norse heroes were buried with their dogs and horses, to bear them company in the world of spirits. It is hard to say what part in the funeral rites a sieve could perform, but it is often found in the ancient tombs.

The Runic monuments are the most remarkable objects in the collection; and the one that has excited the closest scrutiny came from Greenland, in latitude 73, and is said to bear a date 1135.

Among the fire-arms of the earliest years of their use, we have old cannons to be loaded at the breech, and guns on the revolving principle, though we have been in the habit of thinking that both of these are inventions of our own times.

Besides these collections, there is the Royal Arsenal, and the Museum of Natural History, and the Royal Museum, and many others, which are but the repetition and extension of these and like objects of interest,—interesting, indeed, to look at for a few hours, tiresome after a while; and I will not weary you with the details.

Setting off by rail from Copenhagen to Hamburg, I encountered a gentleman who claimed to be a countryman of mine, because he hailed from South America. He was German born, in England bred, and he went to Uruguay, S. A., where he had been twenty-four years in business. He was now travelling with his family in the North of Europe. He was a shipping-merchant, and vessels in which he was interested come from Hamburg and Havre and England with furniture, tin-ware, and a thousand manufactured articles, and carry away hides, tallow, and so forth. It was easy to see that he had an eye to business in the midst of his pleasure travel, and that he was learning what wants of the North of Europe could be supplied from the South of America. My conversation with him developed the beautiful relations of the different parts of the earth to each other: the climate, the soil, the position of one country supplementing another, and showing that no country “liveth unto itself” any more than a man lives to himself. There is a thorough mutual dependence running through society and the whole world.

Hamburg.

Our rail ride was across the island of Zealand—flat, poor, wet, cold soil; the peasants’ houses were low, of stone, and thatched. The windows were so few and small, they must be ill ventilated, and probably unwholesome. Mustard was growing in large quantities, fields of rye were fair, and grass was looking well. Cattle abounded in the meadows,—not on the hills, for those were not in sight.

At ten o’clock at night, and while it was yet light, we reached the steamer at Corseow. It was a large, commodious, and well-furnished vessel, excepting that it had no state-rooms. The berths were good, but were all in one open cabin. The decks were crowded with live-stock,—pigs, calves, cows,—whose squeals, bleating, and moaning were to be our serenade till the morning light. A bountiful supper was served,—tea and coffee, meats, eggs, &c.,—and the charge for the whole was twenty-seven cents! And this being over, I spent the livelong night fighting, not wild beasts, nor the tame ones overhead, but those pestering fleas, which seem to be one of the pet annoyances of the travelling world.

We arrived at Kiel very early in the morning, and went ashore through mud and rain; and the only way to ride was on the outside of an omnibus, to the railroad station. This is a famous seaport, and like all other seaports, so that Kiel will not have a sketch. We make no stay, but by rail set off for Hamburg. Wheat and rye and buckwheat cover the fields. Little Indian corn is raised in these countries, where the soil and climate are as well suited to it as parts of our country where it flourishes. The gardens are filled with the same vegetables as our own,—potatoes, pease, beans, lettuce, radishes, beets, carrots, cauliflower, cabbage,—making it pleasant to know that the good things at home are just as abundant here. The flowers, too,—roses and lilies and lilacs, others wild, and cultivated,—make the wayside and the court-yards of the humble dwellings smile. All the fields of grass and grain are ridged, and a ditch is made about every twenty feet for a drain. Small tiles are used for underground draining. Few evidences appear of high cultivation; very little attention is paid to scientific preparation of manures, which might greatly enhance the value of the land.

At Elmshorn,—a very pretty village where we stopped a few moments, and large numbers of people gathered about the train, as if they were quite at leisure,—old women brought baskets of strawberries and cherries to the cars for sale; as large and of as fine a flavor, and of such varieties as were quite familiar to the eye and taste.

The train moves slowly on, and the spires of Hamburg appear in the distance. We are now fairly out of Scandinavia. With hearts full of thanksgiving to Him who has safely led us through our journey, we turn away from the land of Odin and Thor, and in a few weeks are

Home Again.

Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by John Wilson and Son.

Transcriber’s Note

This book uses inconsistent spelling and hyphenation, which were retained in the ebook version. Some corrections have been made to the text, including adjusting spelling in the table of contents to match the main text and normalizing punctuation.

Further corrections are noted below:

p. [62]: in it the first mass was celebrated in 1805 -> in it the first mass was celebrated in 1085

p. [179]: and the ablity of the organist -> and the ability of the organist

p. [230]: to wear only on funeral occasious -> to wear only on funeral occasions

p. [265]: Order and quiet are my chracteristics -> Order and quiet are my characteristics

p. [289]: vast quantites of charcoal -> vast quantities of charcoal

p. [323]: poured out their grateful ackowledgments -> poured out their grateful acknowledgments

p. [400]: fifty rix dollars, or about twelve American -> fifty-six dollars, or about twelve American

p. [447]: followed by eggs, carviar, beefsteaks -> followed by eggs, caviar, beefsteaks

p. [470]: Copenhagen has other and many attactions -> Copenhagen has other and many attractions

p. [476]: Suffer little little children to come -> Suffer little children to come

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.