heart of the Atheist becomes as blank as his system: the service of the Pantheist has as little emotion as the supposed principle which governs the universe; and the abject and craven superstition, which prompts to trembling and despair when the man feels himself to be in circumstances of terror, is quite compatible with the most unbridled indulgence and unblushing criminality in other circumstances when the mind is freed from the pressure of alarm. And whatever these systems differ in they all agree in this-that they are not fitted to lay an effectual restraint on pride, on lust, on passion, and the other evil principles of the human heart. The Atheist glories in the circumstance that he is unrestrained: nor will the cobwebs which the dreamy Pantheist weaves be able to restrain the rising passion: nor will the irregular impulses of Superstition be able to stem the ever-flowing torrent. "Still less can these systems quicken, refine, and spiritualize the soul, impart to it a steady cheerfulness, or become an ever-flowing source of comfort. Such effects cannot follow from a scheme which gives no God, or which gives us a God without moral qualities or a God supposed to be capricious. These effects can follow only from belief in a God, the Governor and Judge of all, ever restraining and punishing, as he ever hates sin, and yet withal as loving and merciful as he is just and holy."

But we must now bring to an end our observations on this very clever and superior work, which merits much more detailed notice and more praise than we have awarded it; and we will close our remarks upon it by a further extract from its concluding chapter :

"The famous external tests of Leslie, in his 'Short and Easy Method with the Deists,' are not, we believe, more convincing than those now referred to. We affirm, without fear of contradiction, that no religion, originating in human wisdom or human history, has met, or even so much as attempted to meet, these fundamental principles of the human mind which are all satisfied in Christianity. It is surely strange that a system in such beautiful harmony with all the constituent parts of man's nature should have sprung up among the hills and plains of Judah. We could believe that a Hebrew shepherd composed the Principia' of Newton, or propounded the principles of the Novum Organum,' or the profoundest modern work of metaphysical philosophy, more readily than he could have measured the heights of the divine character or sounded the depths of human nature. We are utterly confounded and lost in amazement till, above the plains, where ancient shepherds tended their flocks, we see a light from heaven shining around them, and hear a voice guiding them to the Saviour which is Christ the Lord."

410

ART. VIII.—Adam Oehlenschläger's Selbstbiographie und Werke. Zum zweiten mule gesammelt, vermerkt und verbessert. Breslau. The Biography and Works of Adam Oehlenschläger. Second Edition: enlarged and amended. Breslau.

THE record and roll of the poetic greatness of Denmark may be now said, at least we greatly fear it, to be accomplished. It may, at all events, well be doubted whether, ever again, among her tuneful sons, she will be enabled to make boast of one who shall equal any of his great predecessors who have struck the Runic lyre, from Frega, the son of Odin, down to Oehlenschläger, whose sire gave lessons on the harpsichord.

The record is a rich one-rich in the names of poets, as in those, like Lang (better known as Saxo Grammaticus), and Rahbek, who have rescued the works of anonymous authors from oblivion, and preserved to Denmark those "popular ballads" which still make merry the hearts of her brave and honest children. Among the most esteemed of the poets of Denmark we may name Arreboc, Bishop of Trondjhem, author of the "Hexameron" and a curious poem called "Plague Powders for the Benefit of God's People;" Rangau, and Laaland, and Bording; Thomas Kingo, "the Dr. Watts of Denmark ;" and his brother Nicholas, who did for his country what one of the younger Dibdins did for his-write a metrical history of its kings; Shested, the Danish Darwin, and Halt, the Scandinavian "Tom Moore." All these are names of which our brethren of the Baltic are proud, and have a right to be so. To them may be added Falster, Kissenberg, and Sorterup, the satirists; and Holberg, who combined in himself the mastery of many styles, and has left a name that will never cease to be honoured. Tullin has sung the fields; Zetlitz wrote descriptive poems of great beauty; Wessel trifles ringing with humour; while Weyer lived long enough only to give promise of a greatness he was not permitted to attain. Ewald is one of the greatest of their lyric songsters, and over his grave Denmark wept almost as profusely as a few short months ago she wept on the bier of Oehlenschläger. Tode, Thaarup, Hertz, Baggun, Ingernam, Andersen, Rosenhaft, Welhaven, and Molbech, and, above all, Oehlenschläger-these are names which sound musically in the ears of Scandinavia. If we modify an assertion we have made, to the effect that Denmark will never again raise a child of song whose voice shall pour forth melody equal to that which may now be

heard at her hearths, we may then safely say that never again may poet be born in Denmark able to pluck the laurel which universal acclaim has awarded to Oehlenschläger.

It is now some three quarters of a century ago since a young harpsichord-player from Holstien, named Oehlenschläger, won the honest heart of a fair girl from Jutland and espoused her. The wedded lovers established themselves in Friedrichsbörg, a suburb of Copenhagen. They had not a score of ducats to enable them to commence life-neither were they quite portionless. The young wife had faith in God and trust in her husband. The latter had talent and occupation, and hope to brighten both. He had, moreover, the very lightest of hearts: he smiled where others wore an aspect of sadness: he was an optimist in most things: whatever chanced, and however undesirable it might have been, the mirthful Holsteiner laughed. Had he been alive last July he would have been unsaddened by the news of that battle of Istedt wherein the cause of the Duchies was settled for ever. His own Holstein lost on that day the independence to which she had no right. At the catastrophe he would have calmly smiled, tranquilly assured that God would not have so ordered it, had it not to his unerring wisdom seemed the best.

Around the humble hearth of the harpsichord-player and his wife the olive branches began to cluster thickly. The third of them was this Adam Oehlenschläger, whose name is familiar as a household word to those who are interested in and familiar with the history of the poets. It was on the 14th of November, 1779, that the little Adam was born, the hero of a greatness of which neither he nor his parents presumed to dream. No congratulations greeted him as he appeared on the stage of this world, but his after-path through it was cheered by the applause of an empire; and when his tomb opened, last January, youth, beauty, and age stood mournfully around; and king and people showered down tears and regrets over the coffined breast of Scandinavia's pride.

By his father's side, the little Adam was half a German; for Holstein, though annexed to Denmark from the circumstance of Denmark's king being born Holstein's duke, is part and parcel of Allemania. By his mother's side he was a Dane: the consequence is, that Germany is well nigh as proud of him as Denmark. Adam, in the course of his career, toiled for applause from each that was largely, loudly, and longly given by both; but, while our poet won this meed of praise from the great intellects of Germany, he never forgot that the sovereign king to whom he owed, and with alacrity paid, a full allegiance,

was enthroned at Copenhagen. Adam was therefore a Dane without reserve, but loving Germany for the blood that was in him by paternal descent.

The royal family of Denmark deserved nothing less than allegiance and grateful affection at the hands of the Oehlenschlägers, seeing that these in the crown of Denmark have always had to recognize, if not the source, the helpers of their fortune. On the recommendation of a Danish noble, whose daughter the old harpsichord-player had cunningly indoctrinated in the concord of sweet sounds, the father of the then future poet was raised to the comparative greatness of intendant of the summer palace and gardens at Friedrichsbörg. The step was a great one in the household history of the modest family, and raised them from obscurity into something like distinction, gave them a new and healthy residence, and more of that great "wherewith," lack of which robs life of every charm. Not that the intendant's emoluments were at all on a princely scale-quite the contrary; but his income was rendered less precarious than it had been when his sole dependence for a livelihood was placed on what he could earn by teaching the harpsichord and playing the organ in such churches as possessed an instrument and lacked a professor. Little as was the increase in the annual emolument, it was neither selfishly applied nor thoughtlessly squandered. A portion of it was fairly given to the family necessities, even to its luxuries; but the noble couple were blessed with hearts of a truly Christian calibre, and a great share of their enlarged revenue was divided among those who were in distress and needed material comfort.

At a hearth presided over by such a couple as this, the virtues were enshrined. Had Adam been born in the purple, his chance of righteous training could not have been improved. Had his sire been Sovereign of Denmark, instead of that monarch's servant, Adam would probably have been a mere crown prince, illustrious by courtesy, instead of poet-king, winning the imperishable crown of fame by the splendour of his achievements.

With multifarious duties that took the father from home, and with occupations not less numerous which bound the busy matron to her threshhold or her hearth, there was no spare time left them to give instructions in book learning to Adam. The latter was accordingly sent to pick up what learning he could from an ancient dame, who illustrated all she taught with heavy commentary of fist. With his hapless and sorely-bruised schoolfellows Adam sat in aching misery; but, from early life, he was

quick in seizing compensation for evil; and, in the stern dame's school, he found a balsam for her beating and his contusions in a picture Bible, the intelligible instruction of which he drank in greedily through his eyes, or read as well as he could and fixed for ever in his mind. The study of the Bible was a study of intense love. He was never weary of poring over the rich record of saving history, and painting its divine heroes on the tablet of his memory. From young theological student, or rather while thus in youth studying and loving the solemn page of Scripture, his father, organist of the royal chapel, appointed him to a first place in the organ loft, and bade him lead the tuneful quire. It liked him well. He had a good voice and exerted it prudently, and he loved to listen to the Gospel lessons read from the pulpit by the good but not very able minister. It was the matter and not the manner for which Adam most cared, and to the passages of scriptural history he lent an ear quickened by grave delight. When, however, the preacher ascended the pulpit, and wearily poured out period after period, each more incomprehensible than its predecessor to the perplexed listener, young Adam was wont to slip away with his beloved Bible under his arm: and, to a little congregation of young followers, like him driven behind the organ from want of power to comprehend what was being mystically inculcated before it, there to read in subdued voice the lessons that they loved, and so both impart and acquire an instruction which they could not have obtained from the good and solemn Dryasdust, specially ordained to confound them.

With secular learning it was much the same, pursued and achieved under difficulties. From the spiteful dame, Adam passed to the savage sexton. The latter kept a school, but committed its conduct to the stewardship of an usher, who was very dirty, very slothful, very capricious, and intolerably severe -not at all the less so for being occasionally very lax in his discipline. While under this unworthy mentor, Adam first felt within him a visitation from the deities who recline in melodious dignity by Helicon. He was but nine years old when he made a most successful attempt to versify a psalm. In pardonable pride he exhibited this his first-born of a glorious family to the usher. That unclean official growled a criticism that savoured of little approbation, and, with savage delight, put his very dirty finger on a line which he pronounced remarkable for nothing but false quantities. The young poet eagerly scanned the line, found it perfect, and boldly maintained its correctness against his despotic reviewer. The latter, who was for ever smoking, took the pipe from his mouth, and spat an extorted assent at

VOL. XXVIII.-F F