he to this place, that he used often impiously to exclaim that "God might keep heaven to himself, if He only allowed him to hunt in Gurré." These wicked words brought a curse upon him, for after his death he was doomed, says the legend, to ride every night through Gurré and the adjacent country. He is known as "The Flying Huntsman," and, at his approach, frightful noises are heard in the air, and people hide themselves. His coal-black hounds have flaming tongues hanging out of their mouths, and Waldemar himself sometimes rides holding his own head under his left arm. The gates he would pass through burst open to admit him and his train, and he also rides over the roofs of houses. The following lines allude to the wild huntsman: Hvad suser saa lystig i Storm og i nat, Giennem Luft, over Skov, over Fieldene brat. Which may be translated thus: What sound from the forests so startling and shrill The phantom-hounds bark at the horn's well-known sound, For ever, till doomsday, he onwards must fly, Through the night, through the storm, 'neath the dark starless sky— In regard to the enchanted ring worn by the king's favourite, Tovelillé, there is a story somewhat similar told of Charlemagne, whose queen, Fastrada, to whom he was much attached, is said to have died at the castle of Frankenberg, an old tower about a mile from Aix-laChapelle. The emperor had his queen's body enclosed in a glass coffin, and never left it day or night, abandoning himself so entirely to his grief that he quite neglected the affairs of the empire. At length, one day, while Charlemagne had fallen asleep, one of his suite opened the glass coffin, removed the gold wedding-ring from the finger of the corpse, and thus broke the spell in which the emperor had been held. The ring was thrown into a lake-now filled up-close to the castle. But the legend does not add that Charlemagne preferred the lake of Frankenberg to heaven, or that he haunted that locality after his death, either as a pilgrim spectre or an airy huntsman. In returning from Esrom Lake, you see the island of Hveen, in the Sound, which was presented to the celebrated astronomer, Tycho Brahe, by the then reigning monarch, Frederick II., and where an observatory was built for him. In this retreat Tycho passed some years in the calm pursuit of the elevated science to which he had devoted himself; but his royal benefactor, Frederick, died in 1588, and his son, Christian IV., who ascended the throne when a mere child, was influenced against the astronomer by the enemies he had at court. Among these were the court physicians, who hated Tycho on account of his discoveries in chemistry, which interfered with their pharmacopoeia; and the cabal against him became so powerful, that he was obliged to leave Denmark, and to spend the remainder of his life in exile. He died at Prague in 1601. It is not strange that persons possessed of superior genius and talent should have enemies and detractors among the envious; but it is strange that among a class of men who ought to be well educated and liberal, even in our own more enlightened days, as well as in those of Tycho Brahe, opposition and ill will should be engendered against those highminded individuals who devote themselves to the search of improvement and of truth. Yet so it is! Tycho Brahe was not the only celebrated Dane compelled by the intrigues of a clique to quit his native land. The elder Heiberg, a popular dramatist, and one of the wittiest men of his day, for political allusions introduced on the stage, and political sentiments too freely expressed, made himself liable to a prosecution, and, in 1800, he was banished from Denmark. Another distinguished individual was banished about the same time for adopting, too warmly, the republican principles, which, originating in France during the first French revolution, had spread to many other countries. This individual was Malthe Conrad Bruun, better known as the eminent geographer, "Malte Brun." Both of these exiles found an asylum at Paris, where Malte Brun died in 1826, at the age of fifty-one. Things are altered now for the better in Denmark. There can be no nation where freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of every kind, more fully prevails than in that happy, patriotic, and wellgoverned country. Near Elsineur there is a beautiful little cemetery, full of trees, flowers, and graceful monuments. It reminded me of some lines by Guldberg, a Danish poet of the earlier part of this century: Home of the happy dead, all hail! In thee A refuge for each rank, sex, age, we see. Nor gleams the moon on nights of sleepless sorrow. From him, the offspring of a noble race, Whose name and deeds far generations prize- Yes, hail to thee, garden of death! For here, That which, to us, but deep repose appears, Over these tombs may angel forms await! From death to endless life, above yon distant skies! The watchmen still sing, at Elsineur, a verse as each hour strikes during the night while taking their rounds. It was pleasing to hear, not a cracked old tenor, but the full, sonorous, bass voice of the night-guardian who used to pass our lodging near Marienlyst. He used to favour us very distinctly with "Vor klokk er slagen ti"-" Our clock has now struck ten"-when, no doubt, he thought it was time for us to retire; at eleven he always made a halt under our windows, through which our lights were still shining; and when we happened-too often, I fear, for the sober ideas of the good watchman-to have our candles not extinguished at midnight, he seemed quite rabid, and used to sing out lustily that it was 66 twelve o'clock." These night-songs are always of a religious tone, though I cannot go as far as M. de Flaux in averring that "Ce chant des rues est rempli d'une poësie naïve et sublime." My readers shall judge for themselves, for I will translate a few verses of the watchmen's songs : NINE O'CLOCK. The day is drawing to a close, And night its shades are casting round; For Jesus' sake, and all His woes, Forgive, oh God, the sins which in our hearts abound! Protect our royal race! And from the demon's might, Good people, great and small, Commit yourselves to God this night- Put out your fire and light For the clock has now struck ten. ELEVEN O'CLOCK. Father! protect us all, The great ones and the small! Take Thou into Thy care Our houses and our home! And while through life we roam, 'Twas at the midnight hour With earnest prayer and praise, And may He count you 'midst His chosen flock! There is a verse for every hour until five in the morning, but the above four will be sufficient to show what they are. The author of the original verses, which were very slightly altered in 1784, was Thomas Kingo, Bishop of Fyen, born at Slangerup, in Zealand, in December, 1634, and son of John King, a native of Scotland, whose father, Thomas, the bishop's grandfather, went over to Denmark with his son, and settled at Elsineur as tapestry weaver to King Christian IV. This Bishop Kingo was an exceedingly pious man, and the collection of hymns which were written by him are still used in the churches of Denmark. He died in October, 1703. We had a pleasant voyage over the smooth waters of the Sound from Elsineur to Copenhagen, and after spending a few days very agreeably at the Hôtel Royal, we took leave, with great regret, of Denmark, and our kind Danish friends; and I feel sure that we shall always remember, with grateful pleasure, our charming little northern tour. 68 THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. BY A CRIMEAN OFFICER. III. THE second volume, at last, begins with the "Invasion of the Crimea." The two leaders of the expedition are introduced-the one for our love, and the other for our contempt. There can be little doubt as to how much Lord Raglan deserved the former. But the narrative given here seems to indicate difficulty, on the author's part, in choosing the best line to secure it. Lord Raglan is not, therefore, put simply before us in the real beauty of his character-a man loyal, unostentatious, and passively resolute-but, while the effect of his gentle presence, the appeal of his maimed sword-arm, the persuasive power of his words, are all made artistically to convey the vivid resemblance of the outward man, the mind within is but the fancy of Mr. Kinglake. Were it not for the evil of public misguidance, there would be something highly amusing in the air of infallibility with which this author reads men and pronounces on motives. He seems quite to ignore that the power so complacently assumed is alone that of Omniscience, that intuition-one of the highest gifts to humanity-perishes when merging into arbitrary imputation of motive. The characters in this book are simply dressed to the author's taste: those he hates are rendered fiends, while those he loves are refined into myths. Upon this principle there is a calumniating version of St. Arnaud's life produced, and an inappreciable eulogy of Lord Raglan. Of the latter presently: it behoves us first to examine the grounds of denunciation that exist against the former. The implied stigma conveyed in "formerly Le Roy" may be at once dismissed as part of The shrug, the hum, or ha! these petty brands St. Arnaud was not ashamed of having been formerly Le Roy; in fact, he was never anything else. "St. Arnaud" was merely a suffix, assumed at a very early age; he was, therefore, "Le Roy St. Arnaud" to the day of his death, with as much notoriety as is Mr. Kinglake "Alexander William," though the world knows the one but as "St. Arnaud," the other as "Kinglake." The perversion is strange that requires so simple an explanation. Neither were his friends ashamed of the fact, who, upon his death, with an evident pride in the career of him who was gone, courted further interest and attention by the publication of his private letters, which no unprejudiced person can read without perceiving the inducement. Nothing can be more affectionate than the correspondence throughout-tender husband, and tender father. Most Englishmen may think its thoroughly private nature would have been more honoured if it had been reserved for the near relatives to whom it was specially addressed, but these evidently considered the relics too precious to be withheld from France. This is not the course adopted by the family of a man whose life they have reason to be ashamed of. And, indeed, Mr. Kinglake can produce but one charge against him. He assails his character alone ५ 蜜 by innuendo and sneer, of which the following is an instance: "There was once, at least, in his life a time of depression, when (to the astonishment of the good priest, who fell on his knees and thanked God as for a miracle wrought) he knelt down and confessed himself, seeking comfort and absolution from his Church;" or he distinguishes himself by saving a child's life in a fire, upon which the object for which he exposed himself is suppressed, and he is ridiculed as a mountebank thus: "If, for instance, there chanced to be a fire at night, he would fly to the spot, would scale the ladders, mount the roof, and contrive to appear aloft in seeming peril, displayed to a wondering crowd by the lurid glare of the flames;" or, we are told at such and such period, “again the clouds passed over him." Why the clouds pass over him, we are left to imagine darkly. It is no latent delicacy induces the author to spare a fuller shame, for in another passage he is confessedly ignorant of "errors of the more dishonouring sort;" but he is not above leaving the poisonous inference to be gathered, that the whole is mercifully suppressed. The solitary charge produced, and which is drawn from his own letters, is the having with Pelissier adopted the plan of smoking those Arabs to death who, hiding themselves in the recesses of their caves, refused to surrender. It was an awful system of warfare, one of those lapses to which infuriate exasperation will commit the most civilised hosts, and from which our own are no more exempt than those of France. The Indian tragedy has occurred since the Algerine. Invaders ourselves there, we found the necessity of barbarous punishment to repress barbarous crime. St. Arnaud seems to have adopted the course he took as the sole, though painful alternative. These Arabs were in the habit of stealing out to shoot down French soldiers, and of then flying to the fastness of their caves, from whence they would refuse to emerge. Upon this occasion eleven only surrendered, while the rest in concealment continued to shoot and defy their assailants. St. Arnaud met this with the torch, and with the knowledge that there was within a far larger number than his soldiers suspected: "No one but myself knew that under there, there are five hundred brigands who will never again slaughter Frenchmen. . . . I have done my duty, &c." sleep."* Of course, says Mr. Kinglake, having given the blackest version of the story, this was just the man for Fleury; "he was out in time for the deed, and before the daylight came he had stabbed France through in her But on the other hand, having "helped to make prize of France, he had earned a clear right to extort recompense from his chief accomplice, and to go back again and yet again with the terrible demand for more!" The French emperor was not, on his side, sorry to give a person so disagreeably devoted, especially being in very weak and delicate health, a command which would take him into the country of the Lower Danube; and thus was St. Arnaud appointed to the Crimean expedition. Political fanaticism can go no farther. But if the memory of St. Arnaud -who, to speak shortly, was an extremely gallant, extremely bombastic Frenchman suffer little by all this-alas! (and it is the most melancholy part of the whole book) the man whose character we have been waiting "An old reviewer" tells us, however, that "it was St. Arnaud who was compelled to go on by Fleury's pistol." If this ridiculous story were true, St. Arnaud might as well have received credit for his compunction. |