"Architects are obstinate people," said he, "and one must know how to manage them. Thank God, that is a knowledge which I possess in a tolerable degree. When the church of Our Lady was built, the architect left six niches on either side of the interior, and these were to contain the twelve apostles. In vain did I represent to them that statues were meant to be looked at on all sides, and that nobody could see through a stone wall; I implored, I coaxed them, it was all in vain. Then thought I to myself, he is best served who serves himself, and thereupon I made the statues a good half-foot higher than the niches. You should have seen the length of the architects' faces when they found this out. But they could not help themselves; the infernal sentry-boxes were bricked up, and my apostles stand out upon their pedestals, as you may have seen when you visited the church."
Thorwaldsen is devotedly attached to Copenhagen, and has made a present to the city of all his works and collections, upon condition that a fitting locality should be prepared for their reception, and that the museum should bear his name. The king gave a wing of the Christiansburg for this purpose, the call for subscriptions was enthusiastically responded to, and the building is now well advanced. Its style of architecture is unostentatious, and its rows of large windows will admit a broad decided light upon the marble groups. Pending its completion, the majority of the statues and pictures are lodged in the palace.
Mr Boas appears bent upon establishing his parallel between Denmark and Italy. He traces it in the fondness of the Danes for art, poetry, and music, in their gay and joyous character, and in their dress. He even discovers an Italian punchinello figuring in a Danish puppet-show; and as it was during the month of August that he found himself in Denmark, the weather was not such as to dispel his illusions.
"It would be erroneous," he says, "to suppose that Danish costumes weaken or obliterate the idea of a southern region conveyed by this country. A Bolognese professor would not think of covering his head with the red cap of a Lazzarone, and Roman marchesas dress themselves, like Danish countesses, according to the Journal des Modes. National costumes in all countries have taken refuge in villages, and the peasants in the environs of Copenhagen have no reason to be ashamed of their garb, which is both showy and picturesque. The men wear round hats and dark-blue jackets, lined with scarlet and adorned with long glittering rows of bullet-shaped buttons. The women are very tasteful in their attire. Their dark-green gowns, with variegated borders, reach down to their heels, and the shoulder-strap of the closely fitting boddice is a band of gold lace. The chief pains are bestowed upon the head-dress, which is various in its fashion, sometimes composed of clear white stuff, with an embroidered lappet, falling down upon the neck; sometimes of a cap of many colours, heavily embroidered with gold, and having broad ribands of a red purple, which flutter over the shoulders. One meets every where with this original sort of costume; for the peasant women repair in great numbers to the festivals at the various towns, and in Copenhagen they are employed as nurses to the children of the higher classes.
"During my sojourn in the Danish capital, the weather was so obliging as in no way to interfere with my Cisalpine illusions. The sky continued a spotless dome of lapis-lazuli, out of which the sun beamed like a huge diamond; and if now and then a little cloud appeared, it was no bigger than a white dove flitting across the blue expanse. The days were hot, a bath in the lukewarm sea scarcely cooled me, and at night a soft dreamy sort of vapour spread itself over the earth. I only remember one single moment when the peculiarities of a northern climate made themselves obvious. It was in the evening, and I was returning with my friend Holst from the delightful forest-park of Friedrichsberg. The sky was one immense blue prairie, across which the moon was solitarily wandering, when suddenly the atmosphere became illuminated with a bright and fiery light; a large flaming meteor rushed through the air, and, bursting with a loud report, divided itself into a hundred dazzling balls of fire. These disappeared, and immediately afterwards a white mist seemed to rise out of the earth, and the stars shone more dimly than before. Over stream and meadow rolled the fog, in strange fantastical shapes, floating like a silver gauze among the tree-stems and foliage, till it gradually wove itself into one close and impervious veil. To such appearances as these must legends of elves and fairies owe their origin."
It is something rather new for an author to introduce into his book a criticism of another work on the same subject. This, Mr Boas, who appears to be a bold man, tolerably confident in his own capabilities and acquirements, has done, and in a very amusing, although not altogether an unobjectionable manner. He must be sanguine, however, if he expects his readers to place implicit faith in his impartiality. Under the title of "A Tour in the North," he devotes a long chapter to a bitter attack on the Countess Hahn-Hahn's book of that name. Here is its commencement:—
"A year previously to myself, Ida, Countess Hahn-Hahn, had visited Sweden, and the fruit of her journey was, as is infallible with that lady, a book. When I arrived at Stockholm, people were just reading it, and I found them highly indignant at the nonsense and misrepresentations it contains. When a German goes to Sweden he is received as a brother, with a warmth and heartiness which should make a doubly pleasing impression, if we reflect how important it is in our days to preserve a mutual confidence and good-will between nations. When meddling persons make the perfidious attempt to embitter a friendly people by scoffing and abuse, there should be an end to forbearance, and it becomes a duty to strike in with soothing words. We must show the Swedes how such scribblings are appreciated in Germany, lest they should think we take a pleasure in ridiculing what is noble and good."
And thereupon, Mr Boas does "strike in," as he calls it; but however soothing his words may prove to his ill-used Swedish friends, we have considerable doubts as to their emollient effect upon the Countess, supposing always that she condescends to read them. He hits that lady some very hard knocks, not all of them, perhaps, entirely undeserved; makes out an excellent case for the Swedes, and proves, much more satisfactorily to himself than to us, that Madame Hahn-Hahn is of a very inferior grade of bookmaking tourists.
"In the first place" he says, "I declare that her work on Sweden is no original, but a dull imitation of Gustavus Nicolai's notorious book, 'Italy, as it really is.' Like that author, the Countess labours assiduously to collect together all the darkest shades and least favourable points of the country and people she visits; exaggerates them when she finds them, and invents them when she does not. For the beauties of the country she has neither eye nor feeling; she intentionally avoids speaking of them, and her book is meant, like that of Nicolai, to operate as a warning, and scare away travellers. The good lady says this very explicitly. 'Travellers are beginning to turn their attention a good deal to the north, for the south is becoming insufficient to gratify that universal rage for rambling, with which I myself, as a true child of the century, am also infected. But the north is so little known—I, for my part, only knew it through Dahl's poetical landscapes—that one feels involuntarily disposed to deck it with the colours of the south, because the south is beautiful, and the north is said also to be so. Thus one is apt to set out with a delusion, and I think it will therefore be an act of kindness to those who may visit Sweden after me, if I say exactly how I found it.' Uncommonly good, Gustavus the second. But it would be unfair to Nicolai to assert that his book is as dull and nonsensical as that of the Countess Hahn-Hahn. He went to Italy with the idea that it never rained there, and that oranges grew on the hedges, as sloes do with us. This was childish, and one could not help laughing at it. But when his imitatress perpetually laments and complains, because on the Maeler lake, under the 59th degree of latitude, she does not find the sultry southern climate—it becomes worse than childish, and one is compelled to pity her. The Countess chanced to hit upon a cool rainy month for her visit—I am wrong, she was not a month in Scandinavia altogether—and thereupon she cries out as if she were drowning, and despises both country and people."
It is easy to understand that there can be little sympathy between the Countess Hahn-Hahn, an imaginative and somewhat capricious fine lady, with strong aristocratic and exclusive tendencies, and such a matter-of-fact person as Mr Boas, who, in spite of his sentimentality, which is a sort of national infirmity, and although he informs us in one part of his book that he is a poet, leans much more to the practical and positive than to the imaginative and dreamy, and we moreover suspect is a bit of a democrat. Having, however, taken the Countess en grippe, as the French call it, he shows her no mercy, and, it must be owned, displays some cleverness in hitting off and illustrating the weak points of her character and writings.