“I trow the king’s son knows as much about these things as the best farmer among us,” said a red-capped bonder to another in the crowd.
“Ay, and a vast deal more, let me tell thee, neighbour Ole.” And then a strapping youth exclaims,
“How sorry I am that I’ve served out my time under the king (i.e., as a soldier); I finished last year. It must be sheer holiday work to serve under such a bonny lad as that.”
The Viceroy continually indulges in harmless pleasantries with the good folks, without any loss of dignity by thus unbending. Can any one tell me why things are so different in England? When Shakspeare said “that a sort of divinity hedges a king,” he did not mean to say that royalty should be iced. I remember many years ago being at a public masked ball at a continental capital when the King, who was good humouredly sauntering all among the maskers, came up and asked me what character my dress represented, and then made some witty apropos as he passed on through the crowd.
The usual explanation given for the sharper distinction of ranks in Great Britain is the vulgarity and want of savoir faire of the less elevated classes, who, if they get an inch, will take an ell. If this is true, it is a great blot on the Anglo-Saxon, or whatever you call it, character, that an Englishman cannot take some middle place between flunkeyism and forwardness, sycophancy and rudeness.
During the evening I am favoured with a visit from the Lehnsman, who informs me that the stream close by is rented by an Englishman, who never comes, although it holds good salmon. I also learn, that by a very wise regulation, which might be imitated with good effect in England, he has to report annually to the chief government officer of the district (1), upon the amount of grain sown; (2), the prospects of the harvest; (3), on the result of the harvest. This enables the authorities and merchants to regulate their measures accordingly, and neither more nor less grain is imported than is necessary.
Mons and Illing were the names of the two clever boatmen who manned our skiff the next day to Leirdalsören, distant nearly forty miles. Rounding a vast cliff, whose sides were so steep as not to afford a particle of foothold in case of need, the bark bounds merrily along before a regular gale, and we lose sight very soon of the peaceful Urland, and descry another little green spot, Underdal, with its black chapel of ease to the mother church. Lower down on the same side we open the entrance to Neri Fjord, guarded by stupendous limestone bluffs; one of these is black with the exposure of many thousand years, and nearly perpendicular. But the most picturesque is the western portal, where in parts the white rock has become turned into a beautiful purple, diversified here and there by patches of green foliage.
I should not have liked to be here on a sun-shiny day, just after dame Nature had completed the operation of opening the white limestone. A pair of green spectacles would have been much needed to take off the edge of the glare. That street in Marseilles (see Little Dorrit), the minute description of the glare and heat of which reminds one of the tautological pie-man, “all hot, hot—hot again!” must have been nothing to it.
Many eagles have made these fastnesses their dwelling-places, and I hear from the boatmen they commit frequent ravages among the sheep and goats.