: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 60 No. 374 December 1846 by Various - Scotland Periodicals; England Periodicals Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

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Another allegorical saga is the narrative of the share taken by the man in the moon in the matter of the daily ebbing and flowing of the sea. His chief, or indeed only occupation, seems to be to pour water from a huge bucket. Being somewhat lazy, the old gentleman soon grows weary of the employment, and then he lies down to rest. Of course whilst he is napping, the water avails itself of the opportunity to return to its ordinary level.

The constellation of the Great Bear, or Charles's Wain, is, according to the Frieslanders, the chariot in which Elias and many other great prophets ascended into heaven. There being now-a-days no individual sufficiently pious for such a mode of transit, it has been put aside, with other heavenly curiosities, its only office being to carry the angels in their nocturnal excursions throughout the year. The angel who acts as driver for the night, fixes his eye steadily upon the centre point of the heavenly arch, in order that the two stars of the shaft of the chariot may keep in a straight line with the celestial focus. The rising and setting of the sun is thus explained:--A host of beautiful nymphs receive the sun beneath the earth in the western hemisphere, and cutting it into a thousand parts, they make of it little air balloons, which they sportively throw at the heavenly youths, who keep guard at the eastern horizon of the earth. The gallant band, not to be outdone by their fair antagonists, mount a high ladder, and when night has veiled the earth in darkness, toss back the golden balls, which, careering rapidly through the vault of heaven, fall in glittering showers upon the heads of the celestial virgins of the west. The children of the sky, having thus diverted themselves through the night, they hasten at dawn of day to collect the scattered balls, and joining them into one huge mass, they bear it upon their shoulders, mid singing and dancing, to the eastern gates of heaven. The enchanting rosy light which hovers round the rising orb is the reflection of the virgins' lovely forms, who, beholding their charge safely launched upon its course, retire, and leave it, as we see it, to traverse the sky alone.

With a lovelier vision, reader! we could not leave you dwelling upon the rugged but, to the heart's core, thoroughly poetic Frieslander. Let us leave the gentle Demmarik and devoted Koite to their chaste and heavenly mission, and with a bound leap into Denmark, whither Mr Kohl, in his forty-fourth volume of travels, summons us, and whither we must follow him, although the prosaic gentleman is somewhat of the earth, earthy, after the blessed imitations we have had, reader--you and we--of the eternal summer's day faintly embodied in the vision of that long bright day of the far north!

Should any adventurous youth sit down to Mr Kohl's volume on Denmark, and, half an hour afterwards, throw the book in sheer disgust and weariness out of the window, swearing never to look into it again, let him be advised to ring the bell, and to request Mary to bring it back again with the least possible delay. Having received it from the maid of all work's horny hand, let the said youth begin the book again, but, as he would a Hebrew Bible, at the other end. He may take our word for it there is good stuff there, in spite of the twaddle that encountered him erewhile at Hamburg. Mr Kohl has been won by aldermanic dinners in the chief city of the Hanseatic League, as Louis Philippe was touched by aldermanic eloquence and wit in the chief city of the world, and he babbles of mercantile operations and commercial enterprise, until the heart grows sick with fatigue, and is only made happy by the regrets which the author expresses--just one hour after the right time--respecting his inability to enlarge further upon the fruitful and noble theme of the monetary speculations of one of the richest and most disagreeable communities of Europe.

A good account of Denmark and the Danes is yet wanting. It may be collected by any honest writer, moderately conversant with the language and history of the country. We fear that Mr. Kohl will not supply the literary void, if we are to judge from the one volume before us. Others are, however, to follow; and as our author is immethodical, he may haply return to make good imperfections, and to fill up his hasty sketches. We cannot but regret that he should have passed so rapidly through the Duchy of Holstein. Had he followed the highways and byways of the province, instead of flitting like a swallow--to use his own words--over the ground by means of the newly-opened railroad through Kiel, his "Travels" would surely have been the better for his trouble. Instead of pausing where the most volatile would have been detained, our author satisfies himself with simply expressing his unfeigned regret at being obliged to pursue his journey, consoling his readers and himself with the very paradoxical assertion that we are most struck by the places of which we see least; since, being all of us more or less poetically disposed, we permit the imagination to supply the deficiencies of experience;--an argument which, we need scarcely say, if carried to its fullest limits, brings us to the conviction, that he who stays at home is best fitted to describe the countries the furthest distant from his fireside. Surely, Mr Kohl, you do not speak from knowledge of the fact!

In his present volumes, Mr Kohl refers only passingly to the subject of education in Denmark. He remarks that the national schools far surpassed his expectations. He might have said more. For the last thirty or forty years, we believe, it has been rare to meet with the commonest peasant who could not read and write; a fact proving, at least, that Denmark is rather in advance than otherwise of her richer neighbours in carrying out the educational measures which, of late years, have so largely occupied the attention of the various governments of Europe. No one in Denmark can enter the army or navy who has not previously received his education at one or other of the military academies of the country. The course of study is well arranged. It embraces, besides the classics, modern languages, drawing, and exercises both equestrian and gymnastic. The academies themselves are under the immediate direction of the best military and naval officers in the service. For the education of the people, two or three schools are provided in every village, the masters receiving a small salary, with a house and certain perquisites. In 1822 the system of Bell was introduced in the elementary public schools, and since that period it has been generally adhered to.

Our author speaks with natural surprise of the small number of Roman Catholics he encountered in the Danish States. The Papists have no church or chapel throughout the kingdom; indeed, with the exception of the private chapel of the Austrian minister, no place of worship. We were aware that such was the fact a few years ago; we were scarcely prepared to find that Rome, who has been so busy in planting new shoots of her faith in every nook of the known world, is still content to have no recognition in Denmark. Heavy penalties are incurred by all who secede to the Romish church. In Sweden a change to Roman Catholicism is followed by banishment. This severity, we presume, must be ascribed to state policy rather than to a spirit of intolerance, for Jews and Christians of every denomination are permitted the freest exercise of their faith. Since the year 1521, the era of the Reformation in Denmark, the religion of the country has been Lutheran. The Danish church is divided into five dioceses, of which the bishop of Zealand is the metropolitan. His income is about a thousand a-year, whilst that of the other prelates varies from four to six hundred. The funds of the clergy are derived principally from tithes; but the parish ministers receive part of their stipend in the form of offerings at the three great annual festivals. Until lately, there existed much lukewarmness on all religious questions. Within the last ten or fifteen years, however, a new impulse has been given to the spiritual mind by the writing and preaching of several Calvinistic ministers, who have migrated from Switzerland and established themselves in Copenhagen. Their object has been to stop the recreations which, until their arrival, enlivened the Sabbath-day. They have met with more success in the higher classes than amongst the people, who now, as formerly, assemble on the green in front of the village church at the close of service, and pursue their several pastimes.

The condition of the peasantry of Denmark is described as much better--as indeed it is--than that of the labourers of any other country. If there is no superabundance of wealth in Denmark, there is likewise no evidence of abject poverty. The terms upon which the peasants hold their farms from the landed proprietors are by no means heavy; and their houses, their manner of dressing, and their merry-makings, of themselves certify that their position is easy, and may well bear a comparison with that of their brethren of other countries. Within the last twenty years, great improvements have been effected in agriculture, and the best English machines are now in common use amongst the labourers.

Upon the moral and political condition of the Danish people at large, we will postpone all reflections, until the appearance of Mr Kohl's remaining volumes. We take leave of volume one, with the hope that the sequel of the work will faithfully furnish such interesting particulars as the readers of Mr Kohl have a right to demand, and he, if he be an intelligent traveller, has it in his power to supply. We do not say that this first instalment is without interest. It contains by far too much desultory digression; it has more than a sprinkling of German prosing and egotism: but many of its pages may be read with advantage and instruction. If the work is ever translated, the translator, if he hope to please the English reader, must take his pen in one hand and his shears in the other.

LORD METCALFE'S GOVERNMENT OF JAMAICA.

No just estimate of the nature, extent, and value of that service, and of those endowments, can be formed, without recalling the peculiar difficulties with which Lord Metcalfe had to contend, and which he so successfully surmounted, in administering the government of Jamaica.

The only part of colonial society known in England, consisted of those West Indian proprietors who were resident here. They were highly educated--their stations were elevated--their wealth was great, attracting attention, and sometimes offending, by its display. It was a very prevalent supposition, that they constituted the whole of what was valuable, or wealthy, or respectable in West Indian colonial society; that those who were resident in the colonies could have no claim to either of these descriptions; and that they were the mere hired managers of the properties of the West Indians resident in England. This notion was entertained by the government. The hospitable invitations from the West Indians in England, which a Governor on the eve of his departure for his colony accepted, served to impress it strongly on his mind. He proceeded to his government with too low an estimate of the character, attainments, respectability, and property of those who composed the community over whom he was to preside. The nobleman or general officer on whom the government had been bestowed, entered on his administration, familiar, indeed, with the Parliament of Great Britain, and with what Mr Burke calls "her imperial character, and her imperial rights," but little acquainted with, and still less disposed to recognise, the rights and privileges of the Colonial Assemblies, although those assemblies, in the estimation of the same great authority, so exceedingly resembled a parliament in all their forms, functions, and powers, that it was impossible they should not imbibe some idea of a similar authority. "Things could not be otherwise," he adds; "and English colonies must be had on those terms, or not had at all." He could not, as Mr Burke did, "look upon the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world."

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