It was late in the evening when the third train of the day whisked us into Copenhagen, where I took up my abode at a quiet hotel near the ramparts.

What a strange place this is. Works of art, and museums superior to anything in Europe, and streets, for the most part very paltry, and infamously paved. Traveller, be on your guard. The trottoirs of granite slab, worn slippery by the perambulating hobnails of those children of Amak, are very treacherous, and if you are supplanted, you will slide into a gutter nearly a foot deep, full of black sludge.

These people are a Dutch colony planted by King Christian II. in the neighbouring island of Amak.

The original female costume, which they still retain, consists of little black coalscuttle Quaker bonnets, very large dark-blue or white aprons, which almost hide their sober-coloured stuff gowns with their red and yellow edgings. Their ruddy faces, at the bottom of the said scuttles, look like hot cinders got there by mistake. Altogether they are a most neat, dapper, and cleanly-looking set of bodies. The men have also their peculiar costume. These people are the purveyors of vegetables for Copenhagen. Yon lady, standing in a little one-horse shay, full of flower-pots and bouquets, is another specimen of the clan, but seemingly one of the upper-crust section. Locomotive shops appear to be the fashion. Near the Church of our Lady are a lot of butchers’ carts drawn up, with meat for sale. They come from the environs of the city. Much life is concentred round the bridge near the palace. In the canal are several little stumpy sailing boats at anchor, crammed full of pots and crockery. These are from Bornholm and Jutland. Near them are some vessels with awnings: these are depÔts of cheeses and butter from Sleswig and Holstein.

Look at yon row of women with that amphibious white head-dress spotted brown. In front it looks like a bonnet; behind, it terminates in a kerchief. You are reminded by the mixture of another mongrel, but picturesque article of dress, worn by the Welsh peasant-women, the pais a gwn bach. How they are gabbling to those ladies and housekeeper-looking women, and sparring linguistically about something in the basket. Greek contending with Trojan for the dead body of Achilles.

Their whole stock in trade consists of specimens of “hornfish,” an animal like a sand eel, with long spiky snout, and of a silvery whiteness. They are about two feet long, and twenty skillings the pair. These women are from HelsingÖr, which is the whereabouts of the said fish. They come from thence every day, if the wind serves; and if it does not, I fancy they manage to come all the same.

Look at these men, too, in the street, sawing and splitting away for dear life, a lot of beech logs at that door. Fuel, I find, is very dear, from seventeen to twenty dollars the fathom.

Alas! for the poor dogs, victims of that terrible fear of hydrophobia which seems to infect continental nations more than England; they are running about with capacious wire muzzles, projecting some inches beyond the smeller, which renders them, it is true, incapable of biting, but also of exchanging those amiable blandishments and courtesies with their kind, so becoming and so natural to them, and forming one of the great solaces of canine existence.

Yonder is Thorwaldsen’s museum, with its yellow ochre walls, and frescoes outside representing the conveyance of his works from Italy hither. But that is shut up to-day, and besides, everybody has read an account of this museum of sculpture. An Englishman is surprised to learn that the sculptor’s body rests, at his own request, under some ivy-covered mould in the quad inside. But the ground, if not consecrated episcopally, is so by the atmosphere of genius around.

Let us just pop into this large building opposite. There is something to be seen here, perhaps, that will give us an insight into Copenhagen life.

“What is this place, sir?”

“This, sir, is the Royal Assistenz Huus.”

“What may that be?”

“It is a place where needy people can have money lent on clothes. It enjoys a monopoly to the exclusion of all private establishments of the kind. If the goods are not redeemed within a twelvemonth, they are sold.”

A sale of this kind, I found, was now going on. Seated at a table, placed upon a sort of dais, were two functionaries, dressed in brown-holland coats, who performed the part of auctioneers. One drawled out the several bids, and another booked the name and offer of the highest bidder, and very hot work it seemed to be; the one and the other kept mopping their foreheads, and presently a Jewish-looking youth, who had been performing the part of jackal, handing up the articles of clothing, and exhibiting them to the buyers, brought the two brown-holland gents a foaming tankard of beer, which being swallowed, the scribe began scribbling, and the other Robins drawling again. A very nice pair of black trousers were now put up: “Better than new; show them round, Ignatius.” A person of clerical appearance seized them, and examined them thoroughly; then a peasant woman got hold of them; she had very dark eyes and a very red pippin-coloured face. A broad scarlet riband, passing under her chin, fastened her lace-bordered cap, while on her crown was a piece of gold cloth. One would have thought that the way in which her countenance was swaddled would have impeded her utterance; but she led off the bidding, and was quickly followed by the motley crowd round the platform. But the clerical-looking customer who had been lying by, now took up the running, and had it easy. He marched off in triumph with his prize, and I feel no doubt that he would preach in them the next Sunday.

Leaving these daws to scramble for the plumes, I passed into another large room, where I saw some nice-looking, respectable persons behind a large counter, examining different articles brought by unfortunates who were hard up. There was none of that mixture of cunning, hardness, and brutality about their demeanour which stamps the officials of the private establishments of the sort in England.

Hence we go to an old clothes establishment of another sort—I mean the Ethnographic Museum. Here you find yourself, as you proceed from chamber to chamber, now tÊte-À-tÊte with a Greenland family in their quaint abode; anon you are lower down Europe among the Laplanders, and among other little amusements you behold the get-up of a Lap wizard and his divining drum (quobdas). Hence you proceed eastward, and are now promenading with a Japanese beau in his handsome dress of black silk, now shuddering at the hideous grimaces of a Chinese deity. All this has been recently arranged with extraordinary care, and on scientific principles, by the learned Professor Thomsen.

“Herr Professor,” exclaimed a bearded German, “can’t we see the Museum of Northern Antiquities to-day? I have come all the way from Vienna to see it, and must leave this to-morrow.”

“UnmÖglich, mein Herr,” replied the Professor. “To-morrow is the day. If you saw it to-day you would not see the flowers of the collection; and we will not show it without the flowers. The most costly and interesting specimens are locked up, and can’t be opened unless all the attendants are present.”

“Mais, Mons. Professeur,” put in a French savan.

“C’est impossible,” replied the Professor, shrugging up his shoulders.

“Could not we just have a little peep at it, sir?” here asked some of my fair countrywomen, in wheedling accents.

“I am very sorry, ladies, but this is not the day, you know. I shall be most happy to explain all to-morrow, at four o’clock,” was the reply of the polyglot Professor.

It would be well if the curators of museums in England would have the example of Professor Thomsen before their eyes. There is no end to his civility to the public, and to his labours in the departments of science committed to his care. Speaking most of the European languages, he may be seen, his Jove-like, grizzled head towering above the rest, listening to the questions of the curious crowd, and explaining to each in their own tongue in which they were born the meaning of the divers objects of art and science stored up in this palace. Next day, I found him engaged in lionizing a big-wig; at least, so I concluded, when I perceived that, on either breast, he wore a silver star of the bigness of a dahlia flower of the first magnitude; while his coat, studded with gold buttons, was further illustrated by a green velvet collar. Subsequently I learned, what I, indeed, guessed, that he was a Russian grandee on his travels. He is the owner of one of the best antiquarian collections in Europe. Professor Thomsen, not to be outdone, likewise exhibited four orders. While the Muscovite examined the various curiosities of the stone,[1] the bronze, and the iron period, I heard him talking with the air of a man whose mind was thoroughly made up about the three several migrations from the Caucasus of the Celts, Goths, and Sclavonians.

An Englishman, when he sees this wonderful collection, cannot but be struck with astonishment, on the one hand, at the industry and tact of Professor Thomsen, who has been the main instrument in its formation; and with shame and regret, on the other, that Great Britain has no collection of strictly national antiquities at all to be compared with it; and, what is more, it is daily being increased. The sub-curator, Mr. C. Steinhauer, informed me, that already, this year, he had received and added to the museum one hundred and twenty different batches of national antiquities, some believed to date as far back as before the Christian era. And then, the specimens are so admirably arranged, that you may really learn something from them as to the state of civilization prevailing in Scandinavia at very remote periods: the collection being a connected running commentary or history, such as you will meet with nowhere else. Observe this oak coffin, pronounced to be not less than two thousand years old; and those pieces of woollen cloth of the same date. Look at that skeleton of a stag’s head, discovered in the peat.

“There is nothing in that,” says an Hibernian, fresh from Dublin. “Did you ever see the great fossil elk in Trinity College Museum?”

Ay! but there is something more interesting about this stag’s head, nevertheless. Examine it closely. Imbedded in the bone of the jaw, see, there is a flint arrow-head; the bow that sped that arrow must have been pulled by a nervous arm. This “stag that from the hunter’s aim had taken some hurt,” perhaps retreated into a sequestered bog to languish, and sunk, by his weight, into the bituminous peat, and was thus embalmed by nature as a monument of a very early and rude period.

Presently we get among the gold ornaments. There the Irishman is completely “shut up.” “The Museum of Trinity College,” and “Museum of the Royal Irish Academy,” are beaten hollow. Nay, to leave no room for boasting, facsimiles of the gold head and neck ornaments in Dublin are actually placed here side by side with those discovered in Denmark. The weight of some of the armlets and necklets is astonishing. Here is a great gold ring, big enough for the waist; but it has no division, like the armlets, to enable the wearer to expand it, and fit it to the body; moreover, the inner side presents a sharp edge, such as would inconvenience a human wearer.

“That,” said Professor Thomsen, seeing our difficulty, “must have been the waistband of an idol; which, as there was no necessity for taking it off, must have been soldered fast together, after it had once encircled the form of the image.[2]”

“What can be the meaning of these pigmy ornaments and arms?” said I.

“Why, that is very curious. You know the ancient Scandinavian chieftain was buried with his sword and his trinkets. This was found to be expensive, but still the tyrant fashion was inflexible on the subject; so, to comply with her rules, and let the chief have his properties with him in the grave, miniature swords, &c., were made, and buried with him; just in the same way as some of your ladies of fashion, though they have killed their goose, will still keep it; in other words, though their diamonds are in the hands of the Jews, still love to glitter about in paste.”

“Cunning people those old Vikings,” thought I.

“Yes,” continued our obliging informant, “and look at these,” pointing to what looked like balls of gold. “They are weights gilt all over. The reason why they were gilt was the more easily to detect any loss of weight, which a dishonest merchant, had discovery not been certain, might otherwise have contrived to inflict on them.” Those mighty wind-instruments, six feet long, are the war-horns (Luren) of the bronze period; under these coats of mail throbbed the bosoms of some valorous freebooters handed down to fame by Snorro. “Look here,” continued he, “these pieces of thick gold and silver wire were used for money in the same way as later the links of a chain were used for that purpose. Here is a curious gold medal of Constantine, most likely used as a military decoration. The reverse has no impress on it.” This reminded me of the buttons and other ornaments in Thelemarken, which are exact copies of fashions in use hundreds of years ago. Here again are some Bezants, coins minted at Byzantium, which were either brought over by the ships of the Vikings, or were carried up the Volga to Novgorod, a place founded by the Northmen, and so on to Scandinavia, by the merchants and mercenary soldiers who in early times flocked to the East. Gotland used to be a gathering-place for those who thus passed to and fro, and to this Wisby owes its former greatness. Many of these articles of value were probably buried by the owner on setting out upon some fresh expedition from which he never returned, and their discovery has been due to the plough or the spade, while others have been unearthed from the barrows and cromlechs. Here, again, are some primstavs, or old Scandinavian wooden calendars. You see they are of two sorts—one straight, like the one I picked up in Thelemarken, while another is in the shape of an elongated ellipse. If you compare them, you will now find how much they differed, not only in shape, but also in the signs made to betoken the different days in the calendar. “You have heard of our Queen Dagmar. Here is a beautiful enamelled cross of Byzantine workmanship which she once wore around her neck. You have travelled in Norway? Wait a moment,” continued the voluble Professor, as he directed an attendant to open a massive escritoir. “You are aware, sir, that it is the custom in Norway and Sweden for brides to wear a crown. I thought that, before the old custom died, I would secure a memento of it. I had very great difficulty, the peasants were so loth to part with them, but at last I succeeded, and behold the result, sir. That crown is from Iceland, that from Sweden, and that from Norway. It is three hundred years old. That fact I have on the best authority. It used to be lent out far and near for a fixed sum, and, computing the weddings it attended at one hundred per annum, which is very moderate, it must have encircled the heads of thirty thousand brides on their wedding-day. Very curious, Excellence!” he continued, giving the Russian grandee a sly poke in the ribs.

The idea seemed to amuse the old gentleman of the stars and green velvet collar wonderfully.

“Sapperlot! Potztannsend noch ein mal!” he ejaculated, with great animation, while the antiquarian dust seemed to roll from his eyes, and they gleamed up uncommonly.

In the same case I observed more than one hundred Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian spoons of quaint shape, though they were nearly all of what we call the Apostle type.

But we must take leave of the museum with the remark that, to see it thoroughly, would require a great many visits. To an Englishman, whose country was so long intimately connected with Scandinavia,—and which has most likely undergone pretty nearly the same vicissitudes of civilization and occupancy as Scandinavia itself—this collection must be intensely interesting, especially when examined by the light thrown upon it by Worsaae and others.

Indeed, if England wishes to know the facts of her Scandinavian period, it is to these people that she must look for information.

“Ten per cent. for my money!” That, alas! is too often an Englishman’s motto now-a-days; “and I can’t get that by troubling my head about King Olaf or Canute.”

While I write this I am reminded of an agreeable, good-looking young Briton whom I met here; he is a physician making four thousand a-year by administering doses of soft sawder. Thrown by circumstances early on the world, he has not had the opportunity of acquiring ideas or knowledge out of the treadmill of his profession. He is just fresh from Norway, through which he has shot like a rocket, being pressed for time.

“How beautiful the rivers are there,” he observed; “so rapid. By-the-bye, though, your river at Oxford must be something like them. The poet says, ‘Isis rolling rapidly!’”

Leaving the museum, I dined at the great restaurant’s of Copenhagen, Jomfru Henkel’s, in the Ostergade; it was too crowded for comfort. Dinner is À la carte.

Some convicts were mending the roadway in one of the streets; their jackets were half black, half yellow, trousers ditto, only that where the jacket was black, the inexpressibles were yellow on the same side, and vice versÂ. Their legs were heavily chained. Many carriages were assembled round the church of the Holy Ghost; I found it was a wedding. All European nations, I believe, but the English, choose the afternoon for the ceremony.

Thorwaldsen’s colossal statues in white marble of our Saviour and his Apostles which adorn the Frue Kirke, are too well known to need description.

At the Christianborg, or Palace of King Christian, the lions that caught my attention first were the three literal ones in massive silver, which always figure at the enthronization of the Danish monarchs. Next to them I observed the metaphorical lions, viz., the sword of Gustavus Adolphus, the cup in which Peter the Great used to take his matutinal dram, the portrait of the unhappy Matilda, and of the wretched Christian VII.

Blush Oxford and Cambridge, when you know that on the walls of this palace, side by side with the freedom of the City of London and the Goldsmiths’ Company (but the London citizens are of course not very particular in these matters), hang your diplomas of D.C.L., engrossed on white satin, conferred upon this precious specimen of a husband and king.

That evening I went to see a comedy of Holberg’s at the theatre, Jacob von TybÖ by name. It seemed to create immense fun, which was not to be wondered at, for the piece contained a rap at the German customs, and braggadocio style of that people in vogue here some hundred years ago. The taste for that sort of thing, as may readily be imagined, no longer exists here. Roars of laughter accompanied every hit at Tuskland. The two Roskilds and Madame Pfister acquitted themselves well. The temperature of the building was as nearly as possible that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, as far as I was able to judge by my own feelings compared with the historical account of that delectable place. A lady next me told me that they had long talked of an improved building.

Next day I visited the Seamen’s Burial Ground, where, clustering about an elevated mound, are the graves of the Danish sailors who fell in 1807. I observed an inscription in marble overgrown with ivy:—

True to the motto, the monuments are decked every Saturday with fresh flowers. Fuchsias were also growing in great numbers about. The different spaces of ground are let for a hundred years; if the lease is not renewed then, I presume the Company will enter upon the premises. There were traces about, I observed, of English whittlers. Our countrymen seem to remember the command of the augur to Tarquinius, “cut boldly,” and the King cut through.