STOCKHOLM

Here the dark woods, with many a patriarch tree,
In gloomy melancholy gaze on thee;
Here rocks on rocks up-piled upon the strand,
Seem the vast structure of some giant's hand;
While high aloft the lucid meteors glow,
And veins of iron in the mountains grow.

Tegner's Svea, translated by Oscar Baker.

One must be feeling in a particularly happy frame of mind not to be conscious of a certain depression when approaching London from almost any side. Nearly all large cities have to a greater or less extent transformed and half spoilt their surroundings.

Stockholm has done nothing of the sort and there lies its unique charm. A vast city of more than a quarter of a million souls rises straight from the primeval forest and clear blue water. The Swedish capital reposes on islands and spreads to the mainland north and south, surrounded by the woods and the lakes. Westward to the Cattegat is a shipway, hollowed partly by the spade of man and partly by the tooth of time; northward stretches a natural waterway to the ancient capital of Lofty Halls. And the winding fjord that leads up from the open sea, through which the great lake drains, is of wonderful beauty. Low rocky shores, island and mainland, spruce woods close to the water, recall the loveliest scenery of the New England lakes, but there is the added charm of heather wherever the trees leave room.

Small steamers lie in little coves so near the rockbound shore that it almost seems their rigging is likely to get tangled among boughs of oak, and their crews can pick wild strawberries the moment they step on land. For a mile or two the channel from the Baltic to Stockholm is most intricate and extremely narrow, then great lake-like expanses are traversed before the vessel enters another narrow gate. Little painted houses dot the woods, but they are few. The general effect of the constantly shifting shores is of almost fairy-like beauty, especially with the peculiarly Scandinavian interlocking of the water and the land.

At length across a stretch of island-dotted lake the spires and roofs of the capital seem to rise right out of the woods. Eventually one lands in the very middle of the town. The whole place is intensely modern, the metropolis of a most progressive folk. Large numbers of Stockholmers dwell in flats despite their love of flowers. One of the chief landmarks of the city is the tall network tower of iron bars that surmounts the telephone centre. This repose-disturbing, but extremely useful, invention has fascinated the Swedes. The charges are extremely low, and Stockholm actually boasts of having more telephone numbers than New York.

The first impression is that of a distinctly striking town; the vast Royal Palace and the huge Northern Museum produce a very individual effect, though hardly perhaps one that can be called monumental. All the conspicuous buildings are in some variety of the Classic style, several erected during the last few years. The streets are broad, but geography forbids any great regularity, excepting to the north and south. All roads lead to the water, except a few that lead to the woods; the chief ones pass through wide squares and parks. Immensely improved is the city since 1847, when an English traveller wrote: "The natural advantages of approach are not adequately appreciated, or rather done justice to by the Swedes. Their whole style of architecture is mean to a degree; and their houses on each side of the MÄlar quite unworthy that superb piece of water. With a few of the old palaces of Venice on each bank, and trees at intervals, and a gondola or two afloat, the northern capital, from its more romantic environs, would far exceed the other."[112]

The site indeed is almost unexcelled. So far as natural beauty goes, the owners of these nine bridge-linked islands[113] need not envy the dwellers on the Seven Hills. From the narrows that the islands guard broad waters spread far on almost every side; Lake MÄlar ripples gently for nearly eighty miles toward the west, splashing towns and villages and rocks and woods, and pours its broad waters swiftly past the islands toward the sea. Ocean steamers are moored by the wide busy quays of the prosperous city: small steamboats supplement the trolley trams to provide communications for the town. Toward the interior four lines of railway thread their way among the farms and the woods. For the vast silent forests of the North touch the immediate outskirts of the town; and trees are planted wherever the streets leave a small space unused.

By far the most conspicuous building, weirdly attractive by its complete incongruity with its surroundings, is the immense Royal Palace, a magnific pile in the heaviest French Classic style, whose rectangular courtyard is enclosed by a block measuring no less than 408 by 381 feet, and rising in three storeys to a height of nearly a hundred feet. These ample dimensions are increased by wings of about half the elevation projecting eastward toward the water front, and by another on the west that greatly lengthens the north faÇade. This structure, whose simplicity and grandeur made an impression on Fergusson, occupies quite a considerable portion of the original island of Staden.

The architect was a Frenchman, Nicodemus de Tessin, and so much impressed with the designs was Louis XIV. that he specially congratulated his Swedish brother on the magnificent edifice he was proposing to erect. This king had planned to incorporate part of an older building on the site, but a fire which occurred while he was himself lying-in-state in the unfinished structure nearly cremated the body of the monarch and quite gave the architect complete liberty of design. The present building was begun by the renowned Charles XII. on his accession in 1697, and, much delayed by war and turmoil, its erection dragged on till 1760. For a wonder the later architects employed, including De Tessin's son, resisted the temptation to modify the plans.[114] Simplicity is by far the chief merit of the palace, only in the centre of each side are pilasters introduced; the top is finished with the plainest cornice and balustrade and the sky line is as horizontal as that of the sea.

The building made a great impression in Europe when it was erected, and several travellers speak of it in terms of rather exaggerated praise. Thus Laing,[115] himself a Scot, after a very appreciative description, exclaims, "What are our public buildings about Edinburgh, our churches, hospitals, squares, street-fronts, with all their pillars, porticos, pilasters, cornices and carved work, compared to the composition and effect of this chaste and grand building?—minced pies, pastry-cook work in freestone." The only really serious defect is that the design is not adapted to the site and the material is not adapted to the design. Such a structure requires a vast space all round and looks cramped on a small island; it needs material of the most substantial, set off by avenues of trees and formal gardens on a lavish scale, but amid the rocks of Stockholm it is plastered and in the City of Flowers its immediate environs are comparatively destitute of vegetation.[116]

In the same general style as the palace and close to it are other public buildings, but unfortunately the topography of the islands forbids their forming parts of a single great design. The beautiful Riddarhus, or Hall of Knights, the headquarters of the Swedish nobles in the capital, is a seventeenth century structure of brick and stone, designed by Simon de la VallÉe, adorned with Corinthian pilasters and floral bands between the storeys. The Riksdaghuset, or Houses of Parliament, recently erected, form a fine block of red granite buildings that rather crush the little island of the Holy Ghost, on which they stand. The two upper storeys have Corinthian columns or pilasters and the sky-line is broken by sculpture rising over the balustrade. Both chambers are octagonal, and their members, for whom women vote, reach them by a most striking stairway, excellently adorned with marble, mottled, white and green. (See chapter-heading.)

Close to the palace, looking over the harbour, is a very impressive statue of Gustavus III.; it was the work of J. T. Sergel, second only to Thorwaldsen among the sculptors of the North. Brilliantly this charmer king, this monarch of the double face,[117] taught Sweden to sin, fatuously he sought to bring to the icy pine-woods of the North the tinsel trinkets of Versailles. The country did not prosper, the royal house was undermined, the king was murdered, and soon a brave French soldier came to restore vigour and virtue to the long-suffering land.

Still the reign that gave to Sweden Karl Mikael Bellman, the poet, and other illustrious men was by no means altogether barren of good results. The old French culture introduced is very far from being lost, and the Swedish Academy, which Gustavus founded in 1786, is one of a number of learned societies that have their homes in this city and have done much to make the Swedish capital pre-eminent for its devotion for letters. Another is the Academy of Sciences, in whose institution the great LinnÆus had no small share. Many of their members have a reputation Europe-wide. Lost now is the position to which Sweden once attained, chief military power in the North, but higher her place in the world. The sword-won dominion of Gustavus Adolphus could not endure for very long—geography forbade—but a nobler Swedish empire was founded, or at any rate consolidated, by the genius of LinnÆus, and that shows no sign of decay. There will dawn a day when mere brute force will no longer be the test of a nation's weal, but in Europe it is hardly yet.

[Face page 206

Across a monumental bridge, adorned with statues and lamps, on the island of Djurgarden, stands a recently finished structure of Renaissance character which looks like a great cruciform church, but is in fact the Northern, or the Folk, Museum. The great hall contains figures in armour, old coaches and such like to illustrate days that are past, but more interesting are the little chambers that show us in detail the life of Sweden in bygone years. Within an old cottage we see a duck-coop under the sofa and shut-up cupboards against the walls. Carved chests and spinning wheels and lace and little looms and fishing implements and traps for bears, saddles and flutes and harps and drums give the attentive student a very fair idea of how the peasants used to pass their days. No servile breed these men who crushed the armies of the Empire in the war of Thirty Years and first subdued the woods by the Delaware.

A story told by W. W. Thomas[118] is fairly characteristic of the stern and independent nature of the farmers who have made Sweden.

"A Swedish peasant, clad in homespun and driving a rough farm wagon, pulled up at a post station in the west of Sweden. There were but two horses left in the stable, and these he immediately ordered to be harnessed into his wagon. Just as they were being hitched up, there rattled into the courtyard in great style the grand equipage of the governor of the province, with coachman and footman in livery. Learning the state of affairs and wishing to avoid a long and weary delay, the coachman ordered these two horses to be taken from the peasant's cart and harnessed into the governor's carriage. But the peasant stoutly refused to allow this to be done.

"'What,' said the governor, 'do you refuse to permit those horses to be harnessed into my carriage?'

"'Yes, I do,' said the peasant.

"'And do you know who I am?' said the governor, somewhat in a rage. 'I am the governor of this province, a knight of the Royal Order of the Northern Star, and one of the chamberlains of His Majesty the King.'

"'Oh, ho!' said the peasant. 'And do you, sir, know who I am?'

"He said this in such a bold and defiant manner that the governor was somewhat taken aback. He began to think that the fellow might be some great personage after all—some prince, perhaps, travelling in disguise.

"'No,'he said, in an irresolute voice, 'I do not know who you are. Who are you?'

"'Well,' replied the peasant, walking up to his face and looking him firmly in the eye, 'I'll tell you who I am—I am the man that ordered those horses.'

"After this there was nothing more to be said. The peasant quietly drove away on his journey, and the governor waited until such time as he could legally procure fresh means of locomotion."

Along the "clearstorey" of the church-like museum are a series of little chambers fitted and furnished to illustrate the life of the middle classes from 1520 to the end of the nineteenth century. These are far less distinctively Swedish than the objects taken from cottages.[119]

So modern is Stockholm, bustling capital of a great industrial nation, so entirely Classic its principal buildings, that it seems almost incongruous that it should be a town of great historic interest, whose story goes back to saga days. The site is heard of now and then in the very earliest annals of the North.

Once a king of Upsala is fabled here to have celebrated his marriage and gotten his bane. Round his neck he wore a great gold chain that his sires had worn of yore. He desired to wed the lovely Skialf, whose father, a monarch further east, he had just conquered and slain in war. She only bargained that a funeral feast for her parent might decorously precede the marriage feast for herself. The king of Upsala and his warriors poured down the grave-ale right heartily so that they could not stand. The bride and her friends had only feigned to drink so that they were in better condition for action when the feast was done. They contrived to slip one end of a rope through the great gold chain and the other end over the bough of a large oak. Thus the monarch of Upsala was hung and the bride unwed sailed home.[120]

Within the present limits of Stockholm too, Olaf the Holy as a precocious viking youth showed some of that astuteness that was with him all through life. He had been harrying in the neighbourhood of Sigtuna, much to the annoyance of the Swedes, and "when autumn set in Olaf Haraldson got to know that Olaf the Swede-king drew together a great host, and also that he had done chains athwart Stocksound, and set guard thereover. But the Swede-king was of mind that King Olaf would there bide the frosts, and he held Olaf's host of little worth, for he had but a small company. So King Olaf went out to Stocksound, and might not get through there, for a castle was on the west side of the sound and a host of men on the south. But when they heard that the Swede-king was gone aboard ship, and had a great host and a multitude of ships, King Olaf let dig a dyke through Agni's-thwaite into the sea. At this time great rains prevailed.

"Now from all Sweden every running water falls into the Low, and out to sea there is one oyce from the Low, so narrow that many rivers be wider. But when great rains or snow-thaws prevail, the waters fall with such a rush that through Stocksound the water runs in a force, and the Low goes so much upon the lands that wide-about be floods. Now when the dyke got to the sea, then leapt out the water and the stream. Then King Olaf let take inboard all the rudders of his ships, and hoist all sails topmast high. And there was a high wind at will blowing. They steered with the oars, and the ships went apace out over the shoal, and came all whole into the sea.

"Then the Swedes went to see Olaf the Swede-king, and told him that by then Olaf the Thick had got him away out into the sea. So the Swede-king rated soundly those who should have watched that Olaf gat not away."

The fact that the sagas give the place (or neighbourhood) the only distinctive part of the present name makes somewhat superfluous the legends that have grown up to account for the designation Stockholm. One of these declares that in the twelfth century by robber bands the ancient capital of Sigtuna had been destroyed. So placing their remaining valuables in a dug-out stock, the surviving citizens committed it to the waters of the lake and followed in their boats the drifting log. At the island where at last their stock came to shore the future capital rose.

But the true founder of Stockholm was stout Birger Jarl, of royal race, and father of kings, who ruled the land (as regent for his son) from 1251 till his death in 1266.[121] He desired to lock the MÄlar with a fortress town, and the advantages of doing this were so great that we may safely reject the idle tale that he too cast a log into the lake and vowed to build the town wherever the waters cast it up. Many a legend has grown to account for a city's name, but men of the stamp of Birger Jarl know what they want too well to trust to the decision of the winds. The new town rapidly grew in importance and from its splendid position gradually became the capital of the country.

Gone are the winding lanes of mediÆval days, gone are all traces of the city's youth except a couple of churches. A son of Birger Jarl, Magnus Ladulaas, who reigned from 1279 till 1290, founded a Franciscan convent and placed it on Riddarsholm, the island of the Knights. His surname, which signifies the locker of barns, was gained by a most just law he made compelling nobles like common folk to pay for any corn or straw that they might require on travels. "No Roman Emperor," gratefully exclaims the old Swedish Chronicle, "could wish himself a nobler name that Ladulaas, and very few could have laid claim to it, for the name of Ladu-brott (barn-breaker) would suit most rulers much better."[122]

It is sad to know that this evil custom, the right to demand hospitality from unwilling hosts, was founded—largely at any rate—by an Englishman and a saint (p. 188). Other natives of the British Isles than he have bitterly complained of Continental inns. Henry had a practical remedy; he instituted the custom, that was sure to be abused, of making every peasant's house a free hostelry for travellers of note.[123]

The ancient church of the Franciscans (now known as the Riddarsholms-Kyrka) is a brick structure of the early fourteenth century, raised a few years after the convent was founded; it is not greatly impressive. Nave of five bays, quire of three, triple apse to the east, clumsy-looking tower to the west. Round pillars hold up a heavy vault, whitewash daubed, and, as is so commonly the case in Scandinavia, unrelieved by any clearstorey. On to the tower has been hoisted a cast iron spire that rises 290 feet into the clear air and looks as awkward and unhappy as the similar feature over the cathedral at Rouen. The great interest of the church is that it has become the valhalla of warrior, sage and king; the floor is laid in gravestones, the walls blaze with the painted arms of the Knights of the Seraphim Order, the air is thick with the banners that Swedes have won in war. In the quire is the effigy of the founder, but as space in the church was small classic chapels have been added both north and south to be the last resting-places of other of Sweden's honoured dead. On the sun-warmed side of the quire a chapel bears date 1633, and its rather indifferent architecture is forgotten from the fact that it contains, within a later sarcophagus of green marble, the ashes of Gustavus Adolphus, one of the noblest of mankind, the hero king who perished victorious on the field of LÜtzen (1632).

Opposite on the north is the Carolinian chapel, a domed Classic structure with detached columns outside where rest the renowned twelfth Charles and other princes of the Vasa House. Another chapel bears the name of Bernadotte, founder of the ruling line.

It was before the altar of this church during the fourteenth century that the arrogant noble, Bo Jonsson, called Grip, because his arms were a griffin's head, who "ruled the land with a glance of his eye,"[124] uncontrolled by the helpless king, hewed in pieces his foe Karl Nilsson, and was never called to account on this side of the veil. Here, too, among the dead in later days, far into the night mused the third Gustavus, hoping to receive some omen from his fathers' graves.

It is rather misleading to call this comparatively humble shrine the Westminster Abbey of the land that holds the Cathedral of Upsala and so many other glorious fanes. Instead of one of the grandest minsters on the earth, echoing several times a day with Christian praise, it is a somewhat commonplace church whose silence is broken only by the chatter of tourists, save on the anniversary of some hero's death or when another monarch has entered upon his last sleep. Nevertheless there is a deep and haunting interest in this last earthly resting-place of so many who have helped to shape the world.

Close to this church is a fine statue by Fogelberg to Birger Jarl.

The Storkyrka, or great church of St. Nicholas, has been Classicised without. It is better so, for with the great palace forcing Classic standards on the city, Gothic must look out of place, however much better its general lines would have suited the untamed site and the ancient traditions of Stockholm. Pastor here 1543-52 was the famous Olavus Petri[125] who, with his brother, Laurentius, Archbishop of Upsala, did much to shape the Swedish Reformation. Messenius' Rhyme-Chronicle tells us:

On Master Olof's wedding day
Our Lutherdom had made such way
That mass in Swedish first was sung.
So all men followed their own tongue.
For so had Master Olof seen
How things at Wittenberg had been;
There first at Carlstadt's marriage feast
Was German mass sung by a priest.

Chancellor of the kingdom he had been in earlier days (1532), but so much of an idealist was Olof that he desired public penance to be exacted from all who complained of the weather! This did not suit the sternly practical king, Gustaf Vasa, who dismissed him with the observation that he was as fit to be chancellor as an ass to play the lute, or a kicking cow to spin silk.

In the Storkyrka[126] had been crowned in 1520 the last sovereign of united Scandinavia, Christian II., a Dane of the Oldenburg line. Not by any means a bad king on the whole (p. 143), he had nevertheless by some inscrutable mental process got it into his head that the destruction of the leading men of Sweden would benefit that country and help to consolidate his own power. So during the very festivities that followed the coronation, no other specific charge being handy, he availed himself of the one complaint that can never fail, and on a trumped-up charge connected with religion, he caused many of the nobles and most honoured men of Sweden to be executed in the market-place of the capital. But the effect of the fatal Blood Bath of Stockholm, on November 8, 1520, was far other than the monarch planned. A deliverer for the wronged nation rose up in the son of one of those who perished.

An outlaw fugitive, Gustaf Vasa had several very narrow escapes from the machinations of Danish spies, but the peasants of Dalekarlia were sufficiently sympathetic to shield him, though at the risk of their lives. They had no very particular grievances and merely desired to live in peace; to his first patriotic harangue they listened in irritating silence. So, sick at heart and weary of body, the hero was plodding through the snow to seek a secure retreat for himself among the remote mountains of Norway. He heard himself hotly followed, but, looking round, was joyed to see not pursuing Danes, but penitent dalesmen. They had heard of the Blood Bath and of many other acts of cruelty and had come to agree with Gustaf. They now asked no more than to be led against the forces of the tyrant king. "For our country we will fight like men," they cried. "Come back, Gustaf, and be our chief."

And with them he returned to found one of the most brilliant lines of sovereigns that Europe ever knew. The Danes could make little stand before the enthusiastic fury of the rising Swedes; one of their own leaders declared that the devil himself could not subdue a people who lived by drinking water and eating bread baked from the bark of trees, and in 1523 Gustaf entered Stockholm as king, and knelt in thanksgiving before the same altar that had witnessed the coronation of the tyrant only three years before. His spirit broods over the city to-day, before the Hall of Knights and in the Northern Museum his colossal statue stands.

But it was to a capital in ruin that he came, and only three hundred families were camping amidst its broken walls. So serious did conditions seem to the new king that he ordered every other town in Sweden to pay Stockholm a tax of ten stout burghers, compensation to be sought from neighbouring farms. The natural forces of these town-extending times have, in Sweden as elsewhere, made such legislation more than superfluous to-day. Though on the very edge of the forest modern Stockholm is in some districts over-crowded, underhoused.

Till far into the nineteenth century the Scandinavian countries had the bad distinction of being the most drunken in Europe: LinnÆus as a scientist called attention to the national danger of drink. That Swedes and Norwegians are now the most abstemious of Europeans is a striking comment on the early Victorian maxim: "You can't make men sober by Act of Parliament."[127]

So heavenly are the environs of the city that they could not easily be spoiled; the Swedes have made the very most of the lavish gifts of Nature to add to the delights of their capital. They are not infected with a mania for cutting trees and building mile-long lines of slate and brick, nor apparently is every landowner consumed with a burning zeal to pile as many dwellings as he possibly can onto each square inch of ground. Parks are numerous and beautiful, largely because the woods are left alone.

Of the nine islands the largest except one and by far the most interesting is Djurgarden, so called because there was a deer-park in days gone by. A great part of its area is still left alone, forming a park almost unrivalled in the world. Wide stretches of primeval forest, miles of rockbound coast lapped by the rippling waters of the lake. At Skansen, midst the woods on elevated ground, is a splendid museum in the open air. Among the trees one keeps discovering all sorts of interesting things. Log houses with old furniture in which Swedes dressed as their fathers dressed play on musical instruments used of old. Other old cottages, moved from far, are boulder-built, turf-roofed, and hard mud-floored. Animals in cages, which are partly cut in rock, old Runic stones, old gravestones, old milestones are there too.

And in parts the aborigines are housed, just as if in their native wilds. A wonderful people are these Lapps. For more than a thousand years they have lived in close proximity to one of the most cultured of all races, with which they have had constant intercourse and trade; yet here they are, exactly as Tacitus describes the Fenni, untaught barbarians and a standing contradiction to Rousseau's theories about the noble savage. Modern anthropology smiles at Dr. Johnson's crude remark, "One set of savages is like another." Nevertheless the huts of the Lapps seem strangely to reproduce the general atmosphere of those of the South African Kafirs.[128] The way in which the Lapps have so long resisted the seductions of civilisation is all the more remarkable in contrast with their near cousins the Finns.

On the highest land, called Bredablick, rises a tall tower from which may be enjoyed a view that is one of the most individual upon earth. Miles and miles of rolling woodland, chiefly pine and birch, spread in almost endless folds and display almost every shade of green. Arms of water stretch away in all directions till in many cases they become so narrow that they are lost among the trees; the broad end of MÄlar, myriad island lake, suggests itself on the western horizon, and, the very last thing one would naturally expect to see amid the silent woods, rises the great modern city with its towers and spires and domes and factory chimneys—the Venice of the North. Round the far horizon stand peaceful, peakless hills.[129]

A few miles north of Stockholm, far enough away to be beyond the furthest suburb of the town, a beautiful park slopes down to where the now narrowing and now widening Edsvik runs into the land. The property was once owned by Prince Ulrik, son of Charles XI., and from him has its name, Ulriksdal. Some of the most characteristic features of the scenery of two continents seem to be epitomised in the district all around. By the eternal forest of northern trees, and the constant clearings in glacial boulder-earth for farms, with wooden house and barn, by electric trolley cars and muddy roads, New England is recalled. Wide heather-covered wastes and gnarled old firs, thatched buildings here and there, do much to suggest the delightful landscapes of old Scotland.

Presumably it is the best of the land that has been cleared for crops, though it is not always very easy to declare why one acre is bearing artichokes[130] and the next one is left to the woods.

Approached through grand avenues of maple and lime and oak, surrounding three sides of a squared pierced by three tiers of windows, and surmounted by a black clock turret, smaller than many English country houses, is the Ulriksdal summer palace of the Swedish kings. It was erected in the seventeenth century by the renowned Field-Marshal Jacob de la Gardie, he who became the husband of Ebba Brahe, dearly loved by Gustavus Adolphus, to whom she was betrothed, though never wed. For the great king, whom half Europe in arms could not withstand, was unable to resist the pressure of his mother, intriguing queen, who would not have royal blood allied with common human clay. And by his German princess wife, whom he could never love, the king had no other child than the erratic Christina, brilliant and irresponsible as Mary Queen of Scots.

At this palace in 1871 the famous American explorer of Africa, Paul Du Chaillu, was received by King Charles XV. with Arcadian lack of ceremony that was rather disconcerting to the American conception of what royalty should do. The explorer could get no attention at the front door, but eventually raised some underling by going within and shouting up the stair. This official looked over the balusters and asked the intruder what he wanted. The king, he averred, was not at home, but when he learned that an invited guest stood there, he admitted that the monarch of two kingdoms was within. His Majesty was found at last, working on a picture in his shirt-sleeves, for he was a landscape painter of repute. As soon as he saw Du Chaillu approaching he proceeded to put on his coat.

Wearing a broad-brimmed soft felt hat, the monarch led the explorer through the house from room to room.[131] The general effect is splendid, but not unhomelike. One chamber is lined with old Dutch tiles, another with stamped leather in colours of the softest and most restful, other apartments have fine old panelling, while the northern sunlight streams in through some beautiful pieces of painted glass, the oldest about 1504 in date. The richness of the effect is greatly enhanced by fine old inlaid cabinets, choice china and some very good pictures.

Some cities, such as Oxford and Rome, owe almost everything to the activities of man: few would linger long by the Isis or the Tiber if their magnificent old buildings were gone. Some cities owe nearly everything to splendour of site and to the lavish gifts of God. Such a one pre-eminently is Stockholm. Other towns have sites more stately, streets more monumental, buildings more magnificent, but none can be compared with Stockholm in the features of water and island and forest that are peculiarly its own. There is another city built on islands by flowing waters near the open sea, but New York has pushed the forest far away except for a space on the New Jersey side, and both islands and city are far too big to bear any resemblance to Stockholm.

Though no such impression could well be sustained in the streets of a great modern city, the first view of the Swedish capital suggests nothing so much as an enchanted town, the capital of fairyland in the middle of a wood that one dreamed about as a little child.