Riseholme

“ The hours of the morning between breakfast and lunch were the time which the inhabitants of Riseholme chiefly devoted to spying on each other. ”

“ He rose to be a famous soldier and marshal of the Swedish armies, and at the age of fifty-five was confronted with a riot in Stockholm. Inside the church of Riddenholm were the nobles of Sweden, barricaded and safe; outside on the steps he stood alone, having been dragged from his carriage, his sword in his right hand and on his left the ring of the Queen of France, which the people of the North believed to be a thing of witchcraft. ”

“ He and his troops were allowed to march out with drums beating, fifes playing, and colors flying, and they were also allowed to keep their guns and ammunition and all effects belonging to the Swedish Crown. It was agreed that no Swedes were to be kept there against their will; but any were to be allowed to stay one year if they wished, in order to arrange their affairs. Rysing and his Swedes were also to have a ship to take them back to Gottenburg in Sweden.
Thus, on September 25, 1655, our state became the property of the Dutch, and Swedish power ended forever on the banks of the Delaware. ”

“ Many of his general officers were slain; nearly half of his army was killed, disabled, or captured. Six Swedish standards were taken by the Danes. The moats were filled with the dead. The Swedes had “come in their shrouds.” The guns of the city thundered out a triple salute of triumph and the people sang Te Deums on the walls. Their hardships were not over. Fifteen months yet the city was invested and the home of daily privation; but their greatest peril was past. Copenhagen was saved, and with it the nation; the people had found itself and its king. ”

“ Surely there never were so many roses as at Roseholme. The house had been ransacked for jars, vases and bowls to hold them, and every available surface was a mass of glowing blossoms. The girls hovered from vase to vase, exclaiming with delight at each new combination of beauties.
Now tea was announced, and this time Colonel Ferrers offered his arm to Mrs. Merryweather, as the stranger and new-comer in the neighbourhood; but the good lady protested against anyone but the "birthday child" being taken in by the host, and the Colonel yielded, it must be said with a very good grace. ”

“ Another mile of crooked, crankling lanes takes us to the brow of the sea cliffs, whence we obtain a bird's-eye panorama of the broad sweep of Marloes sands. Ruddy sandstone rocks pitched at a steep angle encompass the bay, and peep grimly out from beneath the smooth, firm sands. Gateholm rises close in shore, an island at low tide only; the broad mass of Skokholm stretches out to sea, while the horizon line is broken by the lonely islet of Grassholm, a favourite haunt of sea birds, and scene of a notorious 'massacre of the innocents' by a party of yachtsmen, some few years ago. ”

“ I, his kinsman—” and he stopped while the smoke swirled down and I heard him coughing.
“Who would have been kinsman to me had I slept in my ship, Rudolf’s guest? And the maiden chose freely. He would have bit on my axe-blade—though he were Odin!” And Lord Snorē lifted his axe, shouting aloud in his anger.
I hear Swend yell to his men through the smoke; the floor shakes as they come running towards us. They break out of the gloom; they leap on the table smiting and stabbing. But the long arms of [29] our men pull them down; they fall. Lord Snorē’s axe swirls and bangs on their armour ”

“ The living of Leaseholme fell vacant, and he applied for it, remembering how his old friend the sea-captain, Lyons, had obtained the bishopric of York from Queen Elizabeth.
Captain Wikes was ordained by the Archbishop of York, and given the living he solicited, King Charles II. being glad to reward an old soldier of his father, who had shared his misfortunes, thus economically to himself. ”

“ There were no Danish soldiers in the island, only a peasant militia, ill-armed and untaught in the ways of war; so no one thought of resisting the change of masters. The people simply waited to see what would happen. Along in May a company of one hundred and twenty men with four guns landed, and took possession of Castle Hammershus, on the north shore, the only stronghold on the island, in the name of the Swedish king. Colonel Printzensköld, who had command, summoned the islanders to a meeting, and told them that he had come to be their governor. ”

“ His fame, now that he is dead, is greater than when he was alive. His work abides in all its strength.
There is little in East Bergholt to remind one of Constable, where his reputation remains as that of a genial and kindly-hearted man; but the landscape in all its essential features remains the same. The house in which he was born was pulled down in 1841, which is a great pity, as it is described as a large and handsome mansion. But I never saw a small village with so many attractive residences, though why anybody should live in any of them I could not, for the life of me, understand. ”

“ Among women, however, the practice is limited to [107] the upper middle class and the upper class.
Now, to return to Sweden’s capital. Riddarholmen, or the Island of the Knights, was one of the first three islands of the city to be fortified. On a square on this island is a statue of Birger Jarl mounted on a lofty pillar, from which he gazes over the happy city whose foundations he laid. This chieftain also conquered Finland and, hence, secured the basis of the later “Greater Sweden.” ”

“ In one of your (Reverdil's) drives with the king, you would lead him to Rudersdahl (an inn on the road to Copenhagen) . Osten, Colonel Numsen, and other persons would be assembled there: the king would be induced to go on to the capital, after signing the order, which would be entrusted to Numsen, to convey Struensee to Kronborg, and arrest the queen in her apartments. Numsen would be able to get back to Hirschholm almost at the same time as the king arrived in Copenhagen, and before the queen suspected our interview and the removal of Struensee. ”

“ The living of Leaseholme, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, was held by three successive generations of the Wikeses for upwards of a century; all of whom were men of literary talents, popular preachers, great oddities—but much given to the bottle. The first of the Wikes family who held the living was a gentleman who had been captain in the army in the reign of Charles I., and had fought for the unfortunate monarch throughout the civil war. ”

“ He told them that they would sit long at dinner at Harlech, and find the society of his Head as pleasant as it had ever been to them when it was on his body. From Harlech they would proceed, he said, to Gwales, the island now called Gresholm, [181] far off the coast of Pembrokeshire, and remain there feasting in the society of his Head so long as they did not open a certain door looking towards Cornwall. Once, however, they opened that door, it would be time for them to set out for London, and there in the White Hill to bury it with its face towards France ”

“ At one end of the Vale of Dedham is a hill whence you may look all along the valley (Constable has made it the subject of one of his pictures) as far as Harwich; and as I lingered by the Stour—the river which divides Essex and Suffolk—East Bergholt, clothed with woods and crowned with a church, in which there is a stained-glass window put up in honour of Constable, and a baptismal font, the gift of Constable’s brother, unfolded to my wondering eye all her rural charms. There are people who love to climb hills ”

“ Ritchie, known to the numerous readers of the Christian World as “Christopher Crayon,” has the pen of a ready, racy, refreshing writer. He never writes a dull line, and never for a moment allows our interest to flag. In the work before us, which is not his first, he is, I should think, at his best. The volume is the outcome of extensive reading, many rambles over the districts described, and of thoughtful observation. We seem to live and move and have our being in East Anglia. ”

“ He had come to make an end of Denmark.
Copenhagen was almost without defences. The old earth walls mounted only six guns, with breastworks scarce knee-high. In places King Karl could have driven his sleigh into the heart of the city at the head of his army. But for the second time he hesitated when a swift blow would have won all—and lost. Overnight the Danish nation awoke to a fight for its life. King and people, till then strangers, in that hour became one. ”

“ But Riessinger also was a German, and from his relations both to Tuppo and to the king (of whom he calls himself, in the “Super feudis” of Andreas de Ysernia in 1477, the “devotus atque fidelis servus”) seems to have some claim to consideration. The phrase “fidelissimi Germani” is in itself a very curious one, as it leaves us wondering whether they were “fidelissimi” in the abstract, or to one another, or to the king. If to one another, we may find a parallel in the frequency with which John of Cologne and Manthen of Gerretzem proclaim their loyalty to each other. ”

“ Lisle, or Lille, is a large and strongly fortified city in the north-east of France, and the capital of French Flanders; it is situated on the navigable river Deule. The origin of this town is ascribed by tradition to Julius Cæsar, who is said to have built a castle on an island in the Deule, whence it derived the name of Insula, Isla, and eventually of Lisle; the Flemish name is Ryssel ”

“ Ritchie, in regard to political and theological questions, they cannot fail to gain much enjoyment from his excellent delineation of old days in East Anglia.’—Norwich Mercury.
‘“East Anglia” has the merit of not being a compilation, which is more than can be said of the great majority of books produced in these days to satisfy the revived taste for topographical gossip. Mr. Ritchie is a Suffolk man—the son of a Nonconformist minister of Wrentham in that county—and he looks back to the old neighbourhood and the old times with an affection which is likely to communicate itself to its readers. ”

“ He had expressed a wish to my wife to read our story, and I sent to London for a copy of “The Making of an American,” which he fell to reading at once, according to his habit. They say in Denmark that he reads everything and never forgets anything, and has it all at his fingers’ end always. I had proof of that when we next met. It was in the Old Town at the reopening of the Domkirke. I was coming out of our hotel at seven in the morning, and in the Square ran plumb into a gentleman in a military cloak, who had a young man for company and a girl of fifteen or sixteen. ”

“ It proved the longest and hardest winter any one then living could remember. Easter was at hand before the ice broke up, and let a fishing smack slip over to Ystad, on the mainland. It came back with news that set the whole island wondering. Peace had been made, and Denmark had ceded all its ancient provinces east of the Öresund to Karl Gustav. Ystad itself and Skaane, the province in which Jens Kofoed had been campaigning, were Swedish now, and so was Bornholm. All unknown to its people, the island had changed hands in the game of war overnight, as it were. ”

“ The ‘Saint George’ drew too much water, and, fortunately for us, Lord Nelson chose our ship to hoist his flag on board. Didn’t we cheer him as he came alongside. Copenhagen stands on a dead flat facing the sea; it is defended by a large fort and two heavy batteries, thrown up on rocks or sandbanks. Besides these there was the Danish fleet drawn up in a long line before the city, and eighteen floating batteries, mounting no less than 690 guns. Some way off, in front of the city, is a shoal called the Middle Ground, and then another channel, and then comes the long island of Saltholm. ”

“ Said another to him, ‘Do not trouble yourself about inventing figures for a landscape; you cannot remain an hour in a spot without the appearance of some living thing, that will in all probability better accord with the scene and the time of day than any invention of your own.’ After a visit to his artist friends in London, he resumed his mill life, and in 1779 he finally commenced his artistic career, and painted all the country round. His studies were chiefly Dedham, East Bergholt, the Valley of the Stour, and the neighbouring village of Stratford. ”

“ Edmunds still preserves the name and fame of one of the most illustrious of our Anglo-Saxon martyrs. King Alfred, with a policy worthy of his sagacity, made Guthrum, the Danish governor of Suffolk, a Christian, and continued him in his rule. The Danes in East Anglia were then an immense army, and thus at once they were turned from foes into friends. Guthrum was baptized, and it is to be hoped was all the better for it. At any rate, he returned to Suffolk and divided many of the estates which had been held by Saxon proprietors killed in war. ”

“ Now, my Lord Snorē was a fierce man [15] of manner and face, being very large, with his shaggy head held high on great shoulders—a man more for fighting and combat than for young women’s eyes—and old ones’ tongues.
Yet like some ugly men he seemed the manlier by his ugliness.
We sat in the hall of Lord Rudolf of Lolland, anxiously waiting the coming of the ship of his brother, gone Viking—hoping for word of the ship we had searched for. And Lord Snorē hunted and rode with Lord Rudolf every day, till it came to the evening that he had set for departure. ”

“ Captain Nichols stumped the poop with his characteristic jerky stride, all business; second mate Tom was aloft with a half dozen hands, and the pleasant swish of falling canvas, and the rattle of blocks and running gear, sounded above as they cast off the long sea gaskets. About us in the harbor the men o' war and transports lay silent to their moorings, sleeping off the effect of a day and night [281] of revelry ashore. Mr. Zerk stood out over the bow on the port cathead, his hand on the catfall, as he leaned far over. ”