Though the Danes, in general, do not seem to ride much themselves, yet they entertain great respect for horsemanship, and take pleasure in beholding it. I believe they consider the English to be the finest horsemen in the world.

When I reflected upon the scene I had witnessed at the Circus, I could not help thinking that it, in some measure, marked the intellectual attainments of the people, to find the highest of the land attending, and deriving gratification from, such miserable exhibitions. That nation cannot be very far advanced in refinement, whose upper and most cultivated classes take delight in witnessing spectacles in which no mental talent is exercised, and but very little even of physical dexterity displayed. Those men take greatest pleasure in brutal feats of strength, in the pranks of a rope-dancer, or the contortions of a mountebank, whose finer perceptions have never been awakened to the the subtleties of wit, the graces of eloquence, or the harmony

of poetry; who have never been conscious of those more elegant pleasures, which refinement affords, and cultivated reason teaches to appreciate.

CHAPTER IV.

GARDENS AND TOMBS.

THERE is a summer palace of the king, about two miles from Copenhagen; it is well situated, and surrounded by extensive gardens. The Danes take great pleasure in the cultivation of flowers, and most of them, even of the humbler sort, are found to cherish in their houses a few select and estimable plants. But the taste is chiefly displayed in their burial-grounds, or kirka-gortins, one of which is to be seen in the vicinity of every town. For these holy spots, which are laid out with much good taste, and

kept in the neatest order, the choicest flowers are selected; and such as are too delicate to withstand the chills of winter, are carefully brought home, and tenderly nurtured in the atmosphere of the stove-warmed sitting-room, until returning summer invites them again to the open air.

Perhaps I ought not to attempt to criticise gardening, since I have never myself taken any delight in that exercise, though I do not wish to undervalue the taste for it in others. I may as well confess, at once, that I am perfectly ignorant of the distinctions between monadelphias and diadelphias, syngenesias and gynandrias, of stamens united by the anthers, or stamens not so united in short, I am able only to admire the external beauty of a flower, without knowing whether it be attributed by the learned to this or that particular class. I am afraid my poor friends, the Danes, are almost in the same lamentable state of darkness.

There are minds, strange and irregular it may

be, that would feel no pride in surveying the thousand maimed, maltreated, and imprisoned, yet cherished unfortunates which spread forth their charms in the fever of a greenhouse. There are men who have no heart to bestow upon a harem of flowers, which are confined in their glass cage, and seem to bloom for the eyes of their owner alone; but these men may yet have delight in beholding the herbage of the fieldin the offspring of seeds that were sown by the hand of nature, and are unconscious of the pruning-knife, untortured by the cramping pot, and far removed from the distorted and overcrowded bed.

To gaze over a meadow glowing with Mayflowers, or daffodils, animates some men with the most buoyant joy; to pause in a lazy walk, and muse over a humble primrose or cowslip, fills them with absorbing pleasure; and, whilst they wander amid the beauties and varieties of Spring, their rugged breasts are softened with a conscious happiness and enlarged devotion that