OVIND.*
THERE is a certain freshness about Ovind, though it deals with a subject with which for the last thirty years or more English readers have been made familiar. But in truth our pictures of "country life in Norway " have chiefly come to us through Sweden, and Swedish literature has been touched by French influence. Miss Bremer's tales, in particular, bear evident traces of it, and it is sometimes one of their least pleasing features. But Ovind is thoroughly simple and genuine, a word-painting wonderfully like those Scandinavian pictures which most of us saw for the first time in the Exhibition of 1862. It is a thorough pastoral, just such, but that it is in prose, as Theocritus could write when he chose,--such as our Wessex Theocritus, Mr. Barnes, gives us now. And a very bright, sweet picture it is of the Northern Arcadia.
()rind, a peasant lad, is the swain ; Merit, a girl of the farmer class, the nymph. The two first meet, at four years old, when Merit buys a goat, the boy's special charge and delight, for a butter buscuit. The bargaining, the remorse of the seller, who dreams that night " that the goat had gone to heaven ; the Lord sat there with a great beard, as in the Catechism, and the • (rind: a Story of Country L(fe in Norway. By Biiirnstierne Bjornson. Tran- slated from the Norwegian, by Sivert and Elizabeth Hjealeid. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. Middlesborough : Burnett and Hood. 1869. goat stood and nibbled the leaves from a shining tree ; but Ovind sat alone upon the roof, and couldn't come up," and the tender repentance of the buyer when she comes back with her treasure, and leaves behind as a keepsake the garter with which she had led him off, are very prettily told. Then comes school, a delightful place, where little boys played together, as Ovind had heard, and where the boy and girl meet again, sitting side by side, and shyly looking at each other from under their elbows. So time goes on, till Ovind finds out that there is a world even in Arcadia which knows the difference between large frocks and small ones, fine clothes and shabby. This discovery he makes at Merit's fête, where he stands apart, looking disconsolately at his suit " of home- spun and plaided vest, with its two bright buttons and one black," and watching his darling dance with the spruce Jon Harmer," who has been at the Agricultural School, and is to take the farm." After this, we have the confirmation, the great event in a northern peasant's youth. In Norway, it seems, they have a sort of com- petitive examination for this rite. The passage in which our author describes the candidates waiting for the trial is fine, with bits of character-drawing :— "A third sat and took signs from everything round him. If the clock, which was on the point of striking, did not sound till he counted twenty, he would pass ; if the footstep he heard in the passage was that of the farm-boy Lars, he would pass ; if the great raindrop that ran down the window pane should get to the bottom, he would pass. The last and final proof should be, if he could get the one boot twisted right round the other, but this he always found to be impossible The seventh sat and gave up in despair all the things he had thought he would be when he grew up. Once he had thought of being a general or a pastor, and once he had even dreamt of being king. But now that time was gone by. Up to the present ho had thought of going to sea, and of becoming a captain, perhaps a pirate, and thereby to attain great riches. How he gave up first the riches, then' the pirate, then the captain, and the mate, and he stopped at the common sailor, or, at the most, the boatswain, if ever he got to sea at all, but probably he must just take a place on his father's farm The ninth reckoned differently,—he made up a small account-book between himself and God. On the one aide, he wrote, ' Debit ; He shall let me pass,' and on the other side, ' Credit so shall I never lie any more, nor tell tales; always go to church, leave the girls to themselves, and never swear any more." The tenth thought that if Jon Harmer had passed last year, it would be more than injustice if he, who had always got on better at school, and besides was of better family, should not pass this year. By his side sat the eleventh, who revolved in his mind the most fearful plans of revenge in case he should fail, either to burn the school down, or else to leave the village and come again as the thundering judge of the pastor and the whole of the school commissioners, but proudly to let mercy go before justice The twelfth sat by himself under the clock, with both his hands in his pockets, looking over the assembly with. a sorrowful, dejected air. No one here knew what was his responsibility ; one at home knew it. Ho was betrothed. A great daddy longlegs came crawling along the floor near to his feet; he used to tread upon the odious insect, but to-day he kindly lifted his foot to let it go in peace where it would. His voice was as mild as a collect ; his eyes said continually that all men were good ; his hands slowly moved out of his pocket and up to his hair, to smooth it down. If only he could squeeze himself through this dangerous needle-eye, he would recover himself on the• other side, smoke tobacco, and make his engagement public."
Admirable, too, is the chapter of lettere which are written when Ovind leaves home to study at the Agricultural School, admirable, but not in the least suited to quotation, so typically common-place is it in its fidelity to truth. And this, indeed, may be said with more or less truth of the whole tale. There are no very effective bits in it, no very striking figures, no very brilliant colours, but its subdued harmonious tones have a singular charm about them, and leave a very distinct impression. The cottage under the steep, wooded ridge, the bargaining children of early days, the lovers of after years as they stand among the trees, with the dog looking- over the edge and barking in an officiously troublesome way which compels explanations ; old There, Ovind's father, well-to-do, but very retentive of his wealth, thinking that a man " may praise God without wearing silver buttons ;" the fine old schoolmaster, walking about the church at the confirmation-time " in his blue dress-coat and knickerbockers, high boots, stiff neck-cloth, and pipe sticking out of his pocket ;" Merit herself, sweet and tender, but somewhat shallow, with whom, as the schoolmaster puts it, " the grace of God is like water in a shallow dam,—it is there when. it rains, but away when the sun shines ;" and Ovind himself, a true- scion of the self-relying race that has made itself one of the masters of the world,—all these are the creations of a true artist, who can make his effects with very modest colour?, Ovind,. we understand, is a production of his youth ; we all the more- anxious to see more of his work.
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