第39章 LETTER XIV(1)

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,Ihave 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.