In the rather risky work of foretelling the future Andersen was at any rate as successful as any one else. "Yes, in years to come we shall fly on the wings of steam high in the air, over the mighty ocean. The young inhabitants of America will visit the old Continent of Europe. They will come to admire the ancient monuments and ruined cities, just as we make pilgrimages to the fallen glories of Southern Asia.
"In years to come they will certainly visit us....
"The airship comes: it is crowded with passengers, for the journey is quicker than by sea.... The passengers will tread the country of Shakespeare, as the intellectual ones of the party have it—the home of politics and machinery, as others say.
"Here they stay for a whole day: they are a busy race, but they can afford so much time for England and Scotland.
"On they go, through the tunnel under the Channel to France.
"One whole day is given to Germany and one to the North—the birthplace of Oerstedt and Linnæus—to Norway, home of the ancient heroes and of the Normans. Iceland is taken on the return journey: the Geyser foams no longer, Hekla is extinguished; but an eternal stone table of the Saga still holds fast the island rock in the midst of the stormy seas."
A delightful description of the writer himself is given us by Lady Wilde: "Hans Andersen was described to me as a tall, white-haired old man, with the most gentle and lovable manners. The son of a poor tailor, with no inheritance from nature or fortune save his genius, he gained a distinguished position in society and was an immense favourite in Copenhagen. He read nothing but his own works, and always talked as if fresh from Fairyland. The children adored him, and he was never so happy as when he gathered a circle of them round him, while he enchained their attention with some magical story fresh woven from his brain, and made them laugh or weep as he chose, with the mirth or pathos of his strange fancies."
Southward the city leaps a narrow arm of sea and spreads on to the kitchen-garden island of Amager or Amak. During the early sixteenth century King Christian II., brother-in-law to the Emperor Charles V. famed for his noble work in organising schools in the cities and instituting a system of posts, but infamous for a stupendous crime that crushed the achievement of the great Margaret in the dust (p. [217]), invited farmers and gardeners from the Low Countries to colonise Amak. Great was the benefit both to immigrants and Danes; the fertile island still retains much of old Flemish ways and imports the old costumes of Holland into the markets of the Danish capital.
Of Anglo-Danish relations during the Napoleonic wars, of Nelson's victory in 1801 and Wellesley's in 1807, silence is better than words. The conqueror at Trafalgar has immortal fame without the added laurels won in the Sound, the hero of Waterloo needs not to add to his victories the operations against this town. No Dane could be expected to look back on those miserable events but with indignation, few English but with very deep regret. Necessary, perhaps, those actions, but wretched all the same. We live in better days. The presence of the Church of St. Alban in the lovely gardens by the very citadel, a sanctuary to whose erection Danish Queen Alexandra contributed, is a witness for all time that the relations between Denmark and England to-day are of no ordinary kind. The tall Gothic spire is an ornament to the city and one of its landmarks from the harbour, but there might have been advantages in less purely English architecture and perhaps dedication to some Danish saint.[70]