Newland

“ One of the nicest men among the many hundreds who have been willing subjects is Lord Newlands. I was struck with his considerate and charming manner to all he came in contact with, even to an old charwoman. It was interesting to hear him talk of his old friend, Dr. Jowett, Master of Balliol College, whose memory he regarded with the deepest respect. My early caricature of him seemed to have pleased him so much that he not only gave a good sum for it at the sale of Vanity Fair cartoons [328] at Christie's, but also commissioned me to make a copy of it. ”

“ I will now write one note to Major Carbonnell, introducing you as my particular friend, and requesting that he will make London agreeable. He knows everybody, and will take you everywhere.”
“When does your lordship start for the country?”
“To-morrow; so we may as well part to-night. By-the-by, you have credit at Drummond’s, in the name of Newland, for a thousand pounds; the longer you make it last you the better.” ”

“ After the first month or two, patients talked quite seriously and candidly about "the old hospital." Again and again men told us that they should never forget Newlands. Like the true Englishmen they were, they partly loved Newlands because of the beauty of the scenery. The Englishman, though generally insensible of, or at any rate irresponsive to, the arts, is never irresponsive to a view. (John Stuart Mill's Autobiography contains, by the way, a curious passage in regard to this point.) ”

“ The Captain thinks that one of you will eat up Nyssen’s cake; what do you say about it?”
“Well,” said Tom, “we have bold men in Norway, as all our histories will tell you; but bold as we are, I do not think you will get a man in the whole country to do that.”
“There was a young fellow once who did it in my country though,” said Jacob, “and dearly he paid for it. The family used to place the yearly gifts to Nyssen under the sails of their windmill every Christmas Eve;—you Norwegians do not know what windmills are; you grind all your corn by water, poor devils!” ”

“ He was caressing a particularly ugly dog, which he called Garm,—an appellation which proved him to be what in England would be called a fast man; it is much as if an English young gentleman were to call his dog Satan. He was haranguing, of course, on the vast superiority of Norway to Sweden, and the infinite degradation which the former country had received from the union of the crowns,—that being not only the most favourite topic of Norwegian declamation, but, in the present instance, at all events, the most injudicious and unsuitable subject in which to exhibit before so mixed an audience. ”

“ But I soon found something better to do, when I began to get acquainted with the people, worthy souls that they are. I had invitations without end, and got on capitally with them,—quite a popular character I am.”
“The English are popular,” said the Parson, certainly; “high and low we have found that, wherever we have been. What we English have done to deserve it is more than I can say; but Norway and Sweden, agreeing in nothing else, agree at all events in doing honour to the English traveller.”
“Do not be taking the conceit out of Moodie”, said Birger ”

“ If I had half-a-dozen curates, the parish could not be visited, nor the annex kyrker properly served; for in former times it supported six priests and six deacons; so what one cannot do at all, one soon ceases to distress one’s self about. The work is not done, cannot be done, and no one expects it to be done. We have work enough—especially those who, like me, are elevated to the Storthing,—but it is not ecclesiastical work.”
“Do you know,” said the Parson, “I wonder that, under such circumstances, you have no dissenters in Norway; our Wesleyans arose from precisely the same cause. ”

“ There was more lost at Pultava than Charles’s gallant army.”
[22]
“There are men in Sweden yet,” said Birger, slightly paraphrasing the legend of “Holger.”
“There are,” said the Parson; “and if you could only agree among yourselves, you might have hopes of muzzling the White Bear yet. Another union of Calmar?”
“O, hang the union of Calmar; there is no more honesty in a Dane or a Norseman than there is in a Russ. We are not going to have another Bloodbath at Stockholm. My mother is a Lejonhöved, [1] and I am not likely to forget that day.” ”

“ There were the old Dictator’s mast-heads, just where we had seen them twenty times before, over the trees of Laxö,—that is, the island we are just opening, where those salmon nets are hanging up to dry.
“‘By the keel of Skidbladner, that sailed over dry land,’ says Hulm, ‘what is the fellow at now?’ as we opened the point of the island, and the line-of-battle ship, that had been lying with her main-topsail aback, squared away her yards and dashed in after us. ‘O, by Thor and by Mjölner! if that is your fun I will see what Norwegian rocks are made of. ”

“ It is a fact, too, that with all that immense range of royal forest at his undivided command, he has never shot a stag or an elk yet. He considers himself on honour, and behaves like a gentleman and a kammerjunker, as he is.” [58]
“He is the only man in Sweden who does, then,” said Birger. “I will engage for it. Bjornstjerna, Hof Ofwer Jagmästere, as he writes himself, never loses a chance if he can get one on the sly. By the way, how nicely the mist has cleared off, without any one seeing it. Positively I can see the stars again. ”

“ Only fancy that overpowering country, which is now kept in order by the rest of Europe, only because, just at present, it lies at the back of creation, and cannot get out of the Baltic, Black, and White Seas, to do harm to any one,—only fancy that pleasant land, with its present unlimited resources, and Gothenborg for its Portsmouth, and Christiania, and Frederiksvärn and Christiansand for its outports—a pleasant vision, is it not, Mr. Guardsman? Don’t you think it probable that something of this sort has soothed the slumbers of the White Bear we were speaking of, before this? ”

“ He considers Christiansand the emporium of fashion and the centre of civilization. By-the-bye, what are we to do with our men? I will not leave Torkel behind,—I have quite an affection for the fellow.”
“Leave Torkel behind!” said Birger; “why should you? you do not think the Swedes will eat him, do you? I mean to take Piersen myself; these Norwegians, rascals as they are, all of them, are a great deal smarter and handier in forest work than our Swedes; their education fits them for Jacks-of-all-trades ”

“ The Major, who had recovered from his weakness, asked him his candid opinion. "We must hope for the best, sir," replied the surgeon.
"That is to say, there is no hope," replied the Major; "and I feel that you are right. How long do you think that I may live?"
"If the wound does not take a favourable turn, about forty-eight hours, sir," replied the surgeon; "but we must hope for a more fortunate issue."
"In a death-bed case you medical men are like lawyers," replied the Major, "there is no getting a straightforward answer from you. Where is Mr Newland?" ”

“ The coast of Sweden and the banks of the Gotha below the town, offer a striking contrast to the lovely scenery they had left. There are the rocks and the fringing islets, as in Norway, but here they are all flat, and most of them absolutely bare. The coasts, too, where they could be seen, exhibited ledges of rock and wastes of sand, with just enough cultivation to make the desolateness painful, by connecting it with the idea of people living there. ”

“ Fancy what a set of scoundrels these Swedes must be, when they have to print on all their notes, ‘Whoso forges this shall be hanged’—we do not do that in Norway.”
“No,” said the Parson, “you are none of you clever enough to forge—the Norges Bank’s Representativ is quite safe in such clumsy hands as yours.”
“There he sits, just in that fork close to the trunk,” said Torkel, who, if he had not, as the Parson insinuated, skill enough in his fingers to forge a note, had quickness enough in his eyes to see through a log of timber, if a bear had been hiding behind it. “There is young Innocence! Oh! ”

“ Just then the Stockholm steamer, Daniel Thunberg, hove in sight, with her light blue pennant of smoke, so unlike the black volumes that roll from the chimneys of coal-burning Englishmen.
“They have got something on board for us,” said Moodie; “that calico concern on her foremast is their best Swedish imitation of our English jack, and they always hoist it whenever they have got a letter or parcel for me. There goes a gun; those rascals are always glad of any opportunity for making a bang. Hallo, there! Nils!” ”

“ A short canal and a single lock passes me into the great lake Wener, where I command some of the best rivers and some of the best bear-country in Sweden. If I want to smell salt water again, I have but to put my cutter in tow of the market-tug, and to steam away to Gotheborg; and when I want to be sulky, here I am, looking after my menagerie of Scandinavian birds and beasts, and adding odds and ends to my museum. I dare say people wonder at the old flag ‘that braved a thousand years, the battle and the breeze,’ as they pass backward and forward in the steamers ”

“ When I went on my reconnoitring expedition to Norway last year, my fourteen-foot [10] rod, my fly-book, and a change of clothes constituted all the cares of my life; and I contend, as you do, that no traveller whose object is information has any business with more. But we are going now more in the character of settlers: we are not going to explore, but to enjoy that which has been explored for us. Why should we not, therefore, take whatever may make life enjoyable? ”

“ Sweden and Norway!—Sweden and Norway for ever! Skaal! Skaal!”
[100]
“Upon my word,” said the Parson, “some one must have been shelling out in good earnest. There goes something stronger than water to all that noise.”
“Well,” said Birger, “it is very true: they did their work this afternoon like men, and then, instead of going and buying brandy, and making beasts of themselves, they very properly sent Torkel as spokesman to me, and asked my permission to get drunk, which, as they had behaved so well, of course I granted them, and gave them five or six orts to buy brandy with.” ”

“ I must say, though, that he is not half so indulgent to us poor Swedes.”
“My countryman, Laing,” said the Parson, “though a very observant traveller, is, also, a very extreme republican and a very prejudiced writer. He gives us facts in monarchical Sweden, as well as in republican Norway, and he gives them as he sees them, no doubt; but, he looks at the two countries through glasses of different tints. Now, my idea is, that, in point of drunkenness, there is not a pin to choose.”
“Yes, but there is, though,” said Birger. “The Norwegian is quarrelsome in his cups ”

“ The banks of all these canals are planted with trees, and arranged as shaded footways. All this sounds as if the place ought to be pretty, but, though every word of this is true, the reality falls far short of the ideas it conveys. The houses are mean and low, and, the windows being flush with the sides, the whole appearance is pasteboard-like and unsubstantial, which the reality is not. The Swedes build their wooden houses in very good taste, and they harmonise very well with the scenery, but they should stick to that—ne sutor ultra crepidam: let not the carpenter aspire to be a mason. ”

“ This is just the place for me; besides, it is not always [270] so hot as it is now,—I have driven my cariole across this river, many a time.”
“By the way, what do you do with yourself in the winter?” said the Captain; “you were never very much given to reading, and your shooting and fishing must fail you then.”
“Fishing, yes; shooting, no,” said Moodie; “the finest bear shooting is in the winter.”
“What! do you meet with bears in the forest?”
“Pooh, nonsense! you Englishmen are always fancying that we kick bears out of every bush in Sweden.”
“You Englishmen!” said Birger, glancing at the flag. ”

“ Länsman Matthiesen, true to his word, had not slept before he had picked out his fifty mountaineers, chalking their hats at the back with the letters “H.F.,” standing for hög fjeld, or the high forest, indicating the position they were to occupy.
While Birger was still rubbing his eyes and kicking up Jacob to boil the morning’s coffee, Matthiesen was numbering them from 1 to 50, with chalk, in the front of their hats, and selecting their skalfogdar, who were marked, as the Captain had been on the preceding evening, with the letters “S.F.” It is usual to appoint a skalfogde to every ten men ”

“ In national wealth, it has paid a dozen times over. There is no one who has ever lived, since the days of Oxenstjerna, to whom we owe so much as we do to Count Platen. In the very heat of the war—that is to say, in 1808—he conceived the idea of prolonging the water communication to the Baltic. He went over to England to inspect, with his own eyes, the Caledonian canal. He engaged Telford, returned to Sweden, and, within two months, sent in his plans, with their specification and estimates, which, strange to say, have not been exceeded in the execution. ”

“ Forest life is pleasant, but a contrast is pleasant also, and the Parson, as he lay back in a peculiarly easy chair, sipping leisurely the dram which invariably precedes a Norwegian meal, and which, in the present case, was true cognac of unquestionable genuineness and undeniable antiquity, considered himself in very great luck indeed; in fact, much as he admired the rude abundance of the hall, he infinitely preferred the quiet elegances of the præstgaard. He made some such observation to Nordlingen. ”

“ Norway, in Sweden it is much affected by those who would wish it to be supposed that they are habitués of the court; and thus it was that though—as it afterwards turned out—Captain Hjelmar could speak remarkably good English, he preferred addressing Englishmen in remarkably bad French, in order to show his court breeding.
“You see that tall rock,” said he, “that looks so black and distant, in front of that green island?—that rock really is one of the Hrimthursar of whom Lieutenant Birger has been telling you ”