Another eighteenth century palace, called Prindsens because the Crown Prince adorned it when in 1744 it was erected round its court, is now the National Museum. Even in the earliest age when "beasts were slaying men" Denmark was the abode of oyster-eating humanity which has left us the world-famed kitchen middens that make so fascinating to us the first beginnings of our race. This collection is of extraordinary interest as letting us trace in a general way the whole story of mankind from the time when he chipped flints into implements and built cromlechs of unshapen stones to the days when he learned to preach the message of peace from pulpits of Renaissance architecture and to shoot his fellows with long guns.
As is natural in Denmark the collection of prehistoric implements is extremely representative and large. We see man armed with rude axes of flint or variegated marble and women adorned with amber beads, during the long, long millenniums of the two ages of stone. We see the swords and knives and the tree-trunk coffins of those who had learned the secret of the metals and substituted for stone first blunt bronze and then sharp iron. We see the works of Egypt and Assyria, of Greece and Rome, and of all the cultured races of the South. We see the beginning of civilisation in the North and the spoils of the Viking Age, the gold and jewels brought to Denmark by foray or by trade. We see the North becoming Christian and building churches of stone or staves and the Scandinavian countries moulding themselves into what they are to-day.[64] For purely educational purposes and for stimulating the imagination few museums on earth have quite the same power as this one.[65]
Denmark is a country where education is a serious thing, and in few capitals may one learn so much as here. No amount of merely technical instruction would give the Danes the technical skill that they possess. If any doubt the real and practical usefulness of good general education, this small country can supply the object-lesson that he needs; if any do not know just what education means, the Danes have hit upon a definition that is of real value and much comfort too. "Education is that which survives when all that was learned has been forgotten."
Much of the spirit of the Norse fills the air of the Danish capital, but the town is too young to be mentioned in the sagas; to many of the heroes of the Danes there are monuments in streets and memorials in galleries, but they do not give their atmosphere to the town. The spirit of the city is rather that of solid achievement by a great people which no longer rests its pride on glory gotten in war. And if the nations of mankind were to be judged on the same principle that was applied to the holders of the Talents Denmark would be very near the top. The extreme richness of her small homeland is a still unexploded myth. If it were an American state it would be one of the most thinly settled areas of the country, outside the actual mountains. Denmark's place in the modern world is due to education and to nothing else. The sole fertility of the land is in the brains of her children. If America were occupied by a sufficient population of Danes she might almost take a contract to supply the solar system with food.[66]
Even in a city of so many associations and despite the noble army of Danish worthies who have written their names in broader or fainter type across its streets, it is still the great name of Thorwaldsen that more than any other dominates Copenhagen. "Sylvanus" tells the truth in his remark: "Men speak not, think not of the king; they ask you, 'Have you seen the Frue kirk?' or Church of our Lady, within whose walls are the twelve apostles of Thorwaldsen, with the grandest, most holy conception of the Saviour, the chisels of future ages may vainly essay to surpass. The figures, larger than life and thrown into life by the immortal Icelander, teem with varying expression and deep feeling."
The exterior of the church is severely plain; indeed, it is very ugly, with two ranges of windows and a tower stuck through the sloping roof, a hexastyle Doric portico against it. This last feature in itself is, however, a thing of much beauty and its tympanum has sculptures by Thorwaldsen.[67]
The inside is very truly one of the most impressive in Europe. Not that the actual architecture rises very far above the commonplace. The aisles open by round arches with heavy piers between; Doric colonnades above sustain the deeply panelled tunnel vault; there is an unlighted apse. Here, over the altar, stands the famous statue of Christ, one of the most striking in the world; the face radiates divine compassion, the hands are stretched out to all who come. In front an angel holds a font-shell, and against each pier is the figure of one of the Apostles. The supreme excellence of these glorious statues in white marble with their effective drapery and the absence of any other attempt at ornament renders the interior of this church striking in an extraordinary degree. There is an element of almost barbaric display in the huge number of works of art collected in many Gothic churches, and there is truth in the Japanese contention that not more than a single picture or figure should be displayed at the same time. If the statues were removed from the church one would hardly cross the street to see it, but were they erected in St. Paul's Cathedral they would lose more than half their effect.
The only criticism that one can possibly make on Thorwaldsen is that his long sojourn in Rome seems to have given him a little trace of the softness of the South, a certain absence of virility that, slight as it is, attracts instant attention in the North. Not a trace of this appears in the figure of St. Paul: determination on every line of the strong face, clinched by the position of the left hand on the sword.[68] There is a large collection of the Master's works in the mongrel-Egyptian Valhalla next Christiansborg Palace (p. 131), in the centre of whose court Thorwaldsen sleeps beneath ivy trailing on the ground. Grace, tenderness, youth, beauty, and gentle mirth—these were the inspirations that gave his hand power. Nothing fearful or terrible is among his works. No agony like the Niobe or the Laocoon, never even the crucifixion of the Saviour. Even in sepulchral monuments he strove to lessen the gloom of death by symbols of a deathless life.[69]
Even with Thorwaldsen fresh in mind, it is probably safe to say that the name of no Copenhagener, past or present, is so well-known in England and America as that of Hans Andersen, unrivalled as the teller of fairy tales. Few would maintain that he was the greatest of the Danes or the most illustrious alumnus of the University, but not very many are seriously interested in statuary, and in science still fewer, while all children love stories and there is an atmosphere about those of Hans Andersen of which most of us are conscious more or less from the cradle to the grave.