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.