MR. GOSSE'S - VISITS TO DENM.ARK.* MR. EDMUND Goss's paid: his

first visit to Denmark in 1872, when the country was slowly regaining vigour and life .after the "'dreadful time of the war of 1864. lie does well to introduce us into the capital through the gateway of the conquered Duchies, for in the sight of hostile troops in occupa- tion, of reluctant Danes under the Prussian flag, and all the traces of a cruel war, we learn much that helps us to under- stand the life of Copenhagen and the feeling of Dunes of that .day. The little countries of the North are all distinguished 4y their int ease nationality, and Denmark especially—once S Great Power and now merely a pawn in the game of nations ---is more fiercely, frantically national than any country in Europe. It is so to-day, and it was do ubly so in 1872, when Denmark, from having been on the brink of annihilation, was 'recovering strength and power and a new outlook onnffitirs, :The national spirit affsoted•Danish art and letters to au extra- .ordinary degree and kept them completely aloof from the ideas that were moving Europe. The great men of the North, Ibsen and Bjornson, had not yet made their voices heard. 'Thorwaldsen and Hans Christian Andersen, both of a preced- ing generation, though Andersen was alive at the time of Mr. -Gosse's visits, were the only two Northmen who seem to have made a mark on European art and letters since the poets of the Sagas, and. Thorwaldsen was, as Mr. Gosse reminds us, a Northman only by birth. This detachment was, of course, partly geographical—the northern countries seemed very far .away from the rest of Europe then—but it' was, to a far greater extent, political. • "In the midst of its disappointment and soreness the humiliated but highly cultivated little country drew itself proudly together in the folds of its threadbare refinement and resented any attempt to widen its testhetio range or renew its intellectual sympathies as being an insult to the ancestors, to the fine old row of portraits looking down, in sorrow upon the living. and defeated progeny below. Denmark refused to listen' to ' modern ' ideas as an elderly maiden lady in straitened circumstances refrains from adopting :any household improvements which her parents did not recognize."

This attitude bad. its inevitable effect upon Danish writers and artists. It made them narrow, dogmatic, and intensely national. Curiously enough, though, the honors of the war ,did not'influenco the subjects of Danish writers and painters, .as "French art kept alive, kept as bright and vivid as it could, the scarlet of its national wounds. . . . Nothing was painted, clothing was sung, because it seemed too unnerving and also in a sense too private?'

The Dane, like a schoolboy who has been worsted in a scuffle, took his good things into his own room to enjoy him- self alone. Mr. Gosse says of Holger Drachmanu, that "the -curse of Babel was heavy upon him as upon all great poets who write in the lesser languages." But we may believe that, in the years following the loss of the Duchies, Danish poets were proud of the crabbedness of their tongue, and were glad 'to have to owe no patronage to any one from without. This national spirit, then, was at once the greatness and the weak- ness of Danish intellectual life : its greatness because Danish 'writers kept alive and burning the lamp of the spirit of their land, its weakness because in their eagerness to bring light to their own room they kept the curtains too closely drawn upon the world outside.

It is true that the room which they lit was no inconsiderable one. Then, as now, Denmark was Copenhagen. There was no provincial society, no life but that of the harbour city. Of this Mr. Gosse speaks with truth when he speaks of her 4‘ extraordinary mental activity" and "distinguished outlook on affairs." Even Swedes, the ancient enemies, and Norwegians, with their rough antagonism to a social condition which they felt to be in advance of their own, were drawn by the magnet of Copenhagen. Long, before setting foot in Denmark Mr. Gosse had, he tells us, felt its charm. He was intensely in. terested in everything connected with Denmark, keenly " Two Visits to Denmark. By Edmund (fosse. London : Smith, Elder and Co. [7s. ed. not.]

sympathetic with the Danes in' their sorrows, and much in. dined, we may believe, to see all things Danish, even Danish houses and Danish food, through rosy spectacles. He was fortunate in having as his host and guide the celebrated Dr. I Fog, a man of great learning and eminence, Provat, or, as it is here translated, Dean, of Holmens Kirke, one of the principal' churches in Copenhagen. Dr. Fog knew all that was best int Copenhagen. Through him Mr. Geese became acquainted!

with Bishop Martensen, head of the Danish Chmvh, the great" Lutheran divine and an intimate friend of his host ; he heard'' Nicholas Gruntrig, then over ninety years of age, preach his last sermon in the little workhouse chapel, whither his advanced' ideas had banished him, and whence he launched his thunders. At the old Royal Theatre he saw Bournonville's ballets and Hertz's plays; he heard Niels Gade play the organ in Hol. mens Kirke and visited him in the country ; he invaded • Paled:In-Muller in his solitude at Fredensborg, and heard stories of Thorwaldsen at first hand:from Jens Adolf Jerichau, Thorwaldeen's pupil and friend.

Mr. Gosse's visits were, as a matter of fact, paidfar more to Danes than to Denmark. He does not mention the commers dal and agricultural aspect of the country of which we now hear so much, nor does he foreshadow these modern social laws that are held to be so perfect. His object, he tells us, is to "present a portrait of a condition of national culture," of " moral and intellectual" life. Even his pictures of the peace. ful Zealand scenery are backgrounds to the figures of his friends, and his descriptions of an old-fashioned society of forty years ago are introduced to show the mannerisms of some die. (Anguished man.

The Danish attitude of "intellectual self-sufficiency" could

not continue for ever, and it is largely owing. to Mr. Gosse that Scandinavian literature has now taken its rightful place. Important articles from his pen upon northern art and literature, many of which appeared in the pages of the Spectator, occupied the year between his first and second visite to Denmark. When he returned in 1874 he was, we gather, already a person of considerable importance to the Danish world of letter. All doors were open to him for his own sake as well as for that of Dr. Fog, his host for the second time, and we may believe that the younger Danish writers—among whom Georg Brandes was already foremost— with views less purely national than their seniors,. Were not sorry to have an opportunity of making a favourable im-

pression on the Englishman who bad already done so much for northern literature. We are shown a bewildering array of faces, a bewildering list of names. Authors, composers, dramatists, clerics, are continually dining or breakfasting with Mr. Gorse or he is calling at their houses. Many of the names he mentions convey nothing to the average English reader, and in this connexion Mr. Gosse puts forward Hoppner's plea for a nameless portrait---that a picture well painted must please even when the subject is not known. The portraits here are well painted without doubt, that of Yigfussen, the little Icelandie professors being par- ticularly charming ; but Mr. Goose's gallery is too crowded. The reader grows confused.

There is one portrait, however, that stands out from the

rest, perhaps because, in spite of Hoppner's dictum, a- great man can make the greatest picture. At the time of Mr. Goose's first visit Haus Christian Andersen was, living with the faithful friends, the Melchiors, with whom he spent so much of his later life. In all Mr. Game's book there is no figure like this of the frail, tall, old man at his window high up over the. Sound.

"His face," we read, "was a peasant's face, and a long lifetime of sensibility and culture had not removed from it the stamp of the soil. But it was astonishing how quickly this first impression subsided, while a sense of his great inward distinction took its place. He had but to speak, almost but to smile, and the man of genius stood revealed. I experienced the feeling which I have been told that many children felt in his company. All sense of shyness and reserve fell away, and I was painfully and eagerly, but with almost unprecedented success, endeavouring to express my feelings to him in Danish. . . lie took me out on to the balcony and bade me notice the long caravan of ships going by hi the Sound below---` They are like a flock of white swans,' he said— with the white towns of Malmo and Landskrona sparkling on the

Swedish coast and the sunlight falling on Tycho Brahe's Island.

Then he proposed to read to me a now fairy tale ho had just written. Ho read in a low voice, which presently sank almost to a hoarse whisper; he read slowly out of mercy for my imperfect apprehension, and as he read he sat beside me with his amazingly

tong and bony hand—a great brown hand almost like that of a man of the woods—grasping my shoulder."

This is the Andersen who has been as a good magician in HO many children's lives. His writings are not national as are those of even the greatest of his contemporaries. He belongs, not to Denmark only, but to Fairyland.