LETTER XIV.
Christiania
is a clean, neat city; but it has none of the graces of architecture, which
ought to keep pace with the refining manners of a people—or the outside of the
house will disgrace the inside, giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth
devoid of taste. Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying
more than Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a
characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the period when
they were erected; but size, without grandeur or elegance, has an emphatical
stamp of meanness, of poverty of conception, which only a commercial spirit
could give.
The same
thought has struck me, when I have entered the meeting-house of my respected
friend, Dr. Price. I am surprised that the dissenters, who have not laid
aside all the pomps and vanities of life, should imagine a noble pillar, or
arch, unhallowed. Whilst men have senses, whatever soothes them lends
wings to devotion; else why do the beauties of nature, where all that charm them are spread around with a lavish hand, force even the
sorrowing heart to acknowledge that existence is a blessing? and
this acknowledgment is the most sublime homage we can pay to the Deity.
The argument
of convenience is absurd. Who would labour for wealth, if it were to
procure nothing but conveniences. If we wish to
render mankind moral from principle, we must, I am persuaded, give a greater
scope to the enjoyments of the senses by blending taste with them. This
has frequently occurred to me since I have been in the north, and observed that
there sanguine characters always take refuge in drunkenness after the fire of
youth is spent.
But I have
flown from Norway. To go back to the wooden houses; farms constructed
with logs, and even little villages, here erected in the same simple manner,
have appeared to me very picturesque. In the more remote parts I had been
particularly pleased with many cottages situated close to a brook, or bordering
on a lake, with the whole farm contiguous. As the family increases, a
little more land is cultivated; thus the country is obviously enriched by
population. Formerly the farmers might more justly have been termed
woodcutters. But now they find it necessary to spare the woods a little,
and this change will be universally beneficial; for whilst they lived entirely
by selling the trees they felled, they did not pay sufficient attention to
husbandry; consequently, advanced very slowly in agricultural knowledge.
Necessity will in future more and more spur them on; for the ground, cleared of
wood, must be cultivated, or the farm loses its value; there is no waiting for
food till another generation of pines be grown to
maturity.
The people
of property are very careful of their timber; and, rambling through a forest
near Tonsberg, belonging to the Count, I have stopped to admire the appearance
of some of the cottages inhabited by a woodman’s family—a man employed to cut
down the wood necessary for the household and the estate. A little lawn
was cleared, on which several lofty trees were left which nature had grouped,
whilst the encircling firs sported with wild grace. The dwelling was
sheltered by the forest, noble pines spreading their branches over the roof;
and before the door a cow, goat, nag, and children, seemed equally content with
their lot; and if contentment be all we can attain, it is, perhaps, best
secured by ignorance.
As I have
been most delighted with the country parts of Norway, I was sorry to leave Christiania
without going farther to the north, though the advancing season admonished me
to depart, as well as the calls of business and affection.
June and
July are the months to make a tour through Norway; for then the evenings and
nights are the finest I have ever seen; but towards the middle or latter end of
August the clouds begin to gather, and summer disappears almost before it has
ripened the fruit of autumn—even, as it were, slips from your embraces, whilst
the satisfied senses seem to rest in enjoyment.
You will
ask, perhaps, why I wished to go farther northward. Why? not only because
the country, from all I can gather, is most romantic, abounding in forests and
lakes, and the air pure, but I have heard much of the intelligence of the
inhabitants, substantial farmers, who have none of that cunning to contaminate
their simplicity, which displeased me so much in the conduct of the people on
the sea coast. A man who has been detected in any dishonest act can no
longer live among them. He is universally shunned, and shame becomes the
severest punishment.
Such a
contempt have they, in fact, for every species of fraud, that they will not
allow the people on the western coast to be their countrymen; so much do they
despise the arts for which those traders who live on the rocks are notorious.
The
description I received of them carried me back to the fables of the golden age:
independence and virtue; affluence without vice; cultivation of mind, without
depravity of heart; with “ever smiling Liberty;” the nymph of the
mountain. I want faith!
My
imagination hurries me forward to seek an asylum in such a retreat from all the
disappointments I am threatened with; but reason drags me back, whispering that
the world is still the world, and man the same compound of weakness and folly, who must occasionally excite love and disgust, admiration
and contempt. But this description, though it seems to have been sketched
by a fairy pencil, was given me by a man of sound understanding, whose fancy
seldom appears to run away with him.
A law in
Norway, termed the odels right, has lately been modified, and probably
will be abolished as an impediment to commerce. The heir of an estate had
the power of re-purchasing it at the original purchase money, making allowance
for such improvements as were absolutely necessary, during the space of twenty
years. At present ten is the term allowed for afterthought; and when the
regulation was made, all the men of abilities were invited to give their
opinion whether it were better to abrogate or modify it. It is certainly
a convenient and safe way of mortgaging land; yet the most rational men whom I
conversed with on the subject seemed convinced that the right was more
injurious than beneficial to society; still if it contribute to keep the farms
in the farmers’ own hands, I should be sorry to hear that it were abolished.
The
aristocracy in Norway, if we keep clear of Christiania, is far from being
formidable; and it will require a long the to enable the merchants to attain a
sufficient moneyed interest to induce them to reinforce the upper class at the
expense of the yeomanry, with whom they are usually connected.
England and
America owe their liberty to commerce, which created new species of power to
undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence; the
tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.
Farewell!
I must prepare for my departure.