Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.306

The marble tombs of Christian V. and Frederick IV., and their queens – contemporaries of our William III. and Queen Anne – are placed in a quadrangular arrangement behind the altar, and are certainly magnificent structures of their kind, being formed of pure marble, and adorned with many figures, all in the finest style of art. Medallion portraits of the royal personages, and sculptures referring to events in their lives, are among the ornaments of these mausolea, the costliness of which tells the same tale as the Copenhagen palaces, of a time when the king was everything, and the people nothing. In beholding one of them, which seems to rise from the floor rather like some magical exhalation than a work of human hands, the idea occurred to me, 'Certainly this is making the very best of the sad case of death which it is possible for human nature to do, as far as its mere material elements are concerned.' In the left transept, a beautifully fitted-up chamber, as it may be called, in the Grecian style, are sarcophagi of two earlier sovereigns, not much less splendid. The series of monarchs thus liberally treated were all of them bad, selfish kings, who had little feeling for their people, over whom they maintained absolute rule. A more virtuous series, commencing with Frederick V. – the contemporary of our George II. – are disposed of less magnificently, most of them being placed in simple velvet-covered coffins on the floor. Amongst these, one dull-looking ark in black velvet attracts attention by its plainness. It contains the ashes of the imbecile Christian VII., whose queen Matilda passed through so sad a history. In the vicissitudes of subsequent ages, I should say that the plain monuments have the best chance of preservation. The cicerone here shows a pillar on which are three marks: one indicating the stature of Christian I. – the first prince of the existing dynasty, and a contemporary of our Edward IV.; he was, it seems, six feet ten inches in height, and his sword, which hangs on the wall, is long enough to reach up to the chin of a man of ordinary size; a second denotes the stature of Christian IV.; a third, strikingly lower, betokens the height of the late amiable king, Frederick VI.

Some other aisles contain the sarcophagi of distinguished noble families of Denmark. I was arrested for a little by one which has a door of iron grated-work, bearing a figure of the devil as large as life, with horns, tail, and claws. The explanation is, that the family reposing within is named Trolle, a famous one in Danish history. Trolle is the name of one of the beings of Scandinavian superstition; and this being is figured in the armorial-bearings of the house as a man having his head placed in the middle of his body. Latterly, I suppose, as these superstitions became obscure, the malignant Trolle was confounded with the devil; and hence the figure on the grating as an object bearing reference to this noble family. The English visitor is disposed to pause under a different feeling over the slab beneath which Saxo-Grammaticus reposes, when he recollects that Shakspeare obtained the foundation of his Hamlet in the pages of that historian. I find it stated in Feldborg's 'Denmark Delineated,' that when James VI. of Scotland came to Copenhagen in the course of his matrimonial excursion, he met in Roeskilde Cathedral the celebrated Dr Hemmingen, and discussed with him in Latin the substantial presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist. Dr Hemmingen had been placed here, as in an honourable banishment, for his Calvinistic notions on this subject. The Scottish monarch was so much pleased with his cast of opinion, that he invited him to dinner, and at parting bestowed upon him a golden beaker.

The royal collection of pictures in the Christiansborg palace is a large one, occupying twelve stately rooms; but it contains only a few good pictures, and seldom detains a visitor long. While I was in Copenhagen, a small collection of the productions of living Norwegian artists was open to public inspection for a small fee, the proceeds being applicable to the relief of the Danish soldiers wounded in the Sleswig-Holstein war. Several of the landscapes, particularly one by a Mr Gude, representing the Hardanger Fiord, struck me as works of merit; and there was one conversation-piece, representing an old peasant reading the Bible to his wife, which seemed to me not less happy in its way. It is remarkable that the northern nations have not yet produced any painter of great reputation, but that in sculpture they have surpassed all other European nations besides Italy. The great distinction attained by Thorvaldsen has thrown a glory over Denmark, of which the Danes are justly proud. He was the son of a poor Icelandic boat-builder, and was born in Copenhagen. On his attaining to eminence in Rome about thirty years ago, his country at once awakened to a sense of his merits; and when he afterwards visited it, he was received with honours such as are usually reserved for some soldier who has saved his country, or added stupendously to its laurels. He ultimately settled in Denmark, where he died in 1844, leaving to his country many of his best works in marble, casts of all his great works, besides his pictures, curiosities, furniture, and the sum of 60,000 Danish dollars. The consequence has been the erection of the Thorvaldsen Museum, beyond all comparison the most interesting object in Copenhagen. It is a quadrangular building in what is called the Pompeii style, with a court in the middle; in the centre of which, within a simple square of marble slabs, rest the remains of the great artist. In the halls and galleries within are ranged the sculptures, casts, &c. under a judicious classification, each apartment being adorned with frescoes more or less appropriate to the objects contained in it. The finest object in the whole collection is undoubtedly the cast of a colossal figure of Christ, which Thorvaldsen executed, along with the twelve apostles, and a kneeling angel bearing a font, for the Frue Kirk in Copenhagen. The stranger sees the marble originals of all these figures in the church with admiration; but it is admitted that the cast of the Christ has a better effect than the original, in consequence of its superior relative arrangement. The Saviour is represented in the act of saying, 'Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden;' and there is a mixture of human benevolence with divine majesty in the attitude and expression, which perfectly answers to the text. The tendency seems to be to an admission that this is the finest embodiment of the idea of the Saviour of the world which that world has ever seen; and I shall not be surprised if this opinion be confirmed. Many of the artist's mythological figures – particularly those realising ideal beauty, his Psyches, Venuses, Dianas, and Apollos, the cast of his noble frieze of the triumphal march of Alexander, and some of his subjects embodying the poetry of human life – are eminently beautiful. The busts, which are numerous, are less interesting, and in most instances inferior as works of art. The representations of the artist himself, in sculpture and painting, are many, and calculated to give a perfect idea of the man – a massive figure, with a massive head, blue eyes, a pale complexion, and a gentle, but thoughtful expression of countenance. After dwelling to weariness on the creations of the man's genius, it is pleasant to walk into the rooms which contain his simple household furniture, books, favourite pictures, and other intimate memorials of his personal existence. It is equally agreeable to pause in the midst of the contemplation of his works, and observe the groups of admiring countrymen, from the noble to the peasant, who pass through the rooms to enjoy the spectacle of an intellectual triumph in which they feel that they have a part. Finally, one pauses with speechless emotion over the plain enclosure in the courtyard, which pronounces only the words Bertel Thorvaldsen over one whom these countrymen can never cease to revere. On the outside of the building there are frescoes representing —first, the national reception of Thorvaldsen on his final return to Copenhagen; and, second, the public joy on the introduction of his works into their country. I heard some criticise these frescoes severely; but I could never get so far as criticism in their case. Every such attempt is anticipated with me by a melting of the heart in sympathy with this worthy people, over the glory which Thorvaldsen has conferred upon them in the eyes of their fellow-nations, and that genial kindly relation between them and their immortal compatriot, of which this invaluable museum is the monument.

The Danes are remarkably fond of amusement, and the means of affording this gratification at Copenhagen are ample. The principal theatre (Konglige Theater) is a handsome house of moderate size, where both the Opera and Ballet are respectably presented. I was present one evening, when an operatic piece of Hans Christian Andersen, named Brylluppet ved Como-Soen, apparently of very simple construction, was performed, and I thought both the singing and orchestra exceedingly good. There are several other playhouses, some of which are chiefly frequented by the humbler classes. On the outskirts of the town there is an establishment called a Tivoli, resembling Vauxhall, and to which, as the admission is only 4½d. sterling, immense multitudes resort. Here is found a little theatre for dancing and short vaudevilles, which the people witness standing in the open air. There is a salon for music, where the people are under cover, but without seats, unless they choose to ask for refreshments. In the open air are merry-go-rounds, an undulating railway, and machines for testing strength. In Denmark, a merry-go-round is the enjoyment of old as well as young. It is composed of a circular stage, bearing carriages like those of a railway, and going partly upon wheels, while a brass band sounds vociferously in the centre. It was most amusing to us English to observe the gravity with which people of all ages took their places in this circumambient train. One curricle presents a decent shopkeeper with his wife, he with the baby on his knee, which he is endeavouring to awaken to a sense of its droll situation – the cigar kept firm in his mouth all the time; another exhibits a pair of young lovers in very amicable union; a third an aged couple, who might be grandfather and grandmother to the latter party. An inner circle of boys, whipping and spurring imaginary horses, complete the whimsicality of the machine, as it goes grinding and thundering on to the sound of the band. I do not envy the man who can turn away contemptuously from such a sight as this. The simplicity of intellect betrayed by such tastes one might certainly wish to see improved; but yet there is something in being easily pleased which a benevolent nature cannot easily resist. I quite loved the people for the innocence of heart shown in their amusements.

A Sunday evening which I spent in Copenhagen on my return from the north afforded me an additional insight into the habits of the Danes in this respect. Sunday, it must be premised, is held all over Scandinavia much less strictly than in England, and its religious character is considered as terminating at six in the evening. What I had seen in Norway made me not quite unprepared for what I found at Copenhagen; nevertheless it was somewhat startling. The evening being fine, the whole of the broad shady walks between the west gate of the city and the palace of Fredericksberg, two miles off, were crowded with groups of people in their best clothes; not merely peasants and artisans, or even shopkeepers, but persons of superior condition, though perhaps not in such great proportion. The peasant women, with their gaudy gold-laced caps and ribbons, gave a striking character to the scene. There were no drunk or disorderly people – all perfectly quiet and well-behaved. Along the side of the road are numerous tea-gardens, some of them having little theatres, others merry-go-rounds and nine-pins, and so forth. These were all in full operation. It was astounding to see old women, identical in aspect with those who in Scotland sit on pulpit-stairs, and spend the Sunday evening over Boston's 'Fourfold State' and 'Crook in the Lot,' here swimming along in the circular railway to the music of a band. I tell, however, but a simple fact when I say that such was the case. Scores of little parties were enjoying themselves in the recesses along the walks. I observed that many of these were family parties, whose potations consisted only of tea. As the only variation to a laborious life for a whole week, it must have been intensely enjoyed. In one garden connected with a third-rate tavern there was a dancing saloon, with a clarionet, two fiddles, and a bass, to which a few lads and lasses were waltzing; and this seemed no solitary case. There was evidence of enjoyment everywhere, but not the slightest symptom of a sense that there was anything wrong in it. All seemed to be done openly and in good faith. I could not help contrasting the scene with the Sunday evenings of my own country. There the middle-classes spend the time at least quietly, if not religiously, at home; and having the power, use it, to forbid all public or acknowledged means of amusement to their inferiors. It is well known, however, that the taverns frequented by the common people are very busy that evening. It has been stated that in Glasgow, on the evening of the Sunday on which the Communion was administered last winter, one thousand and eighty public-houses were found in full business. The difference, therefore, between Denmark and Britain is mainly this – that in the one country amusements of a comparatively innocent nature are partaken of without a sense of guilt, while in the other enjoyments of a degrading kind are enjoyed clandestinely, and with the feeling of a reprobation hanging over them which must add to their anti-moral tendency. We must pause, then, I conceive, before we express the feelings which are most apt to arise in our minds regarding the Scandinavian mode of spending the Sunday evening.

The Museum of Northern Antiquities may perhaps be admitted to divide the palm of interest with the Thorvaldsen Museum; but I postpone all reference to the subject till a proper groundwork shall have been laid by the description of my journeyings in Sweden and Norway.

R. C.

PIANOS FOR THE MILLION

There seems to be an increasing disposition among us to regard music as an agent of civilisation, and therefore an increasing anxiety to diffuse a taste for the art throughout all classes of the people. The simple songs that are found in countries in an early stage of progress cannot constitute the music of a refined nation, any more than their rude ballads can be the staple, instead of the mere germ, of their poetry. Both, however, serve as an excellent foundation for the superstructures of taste; and to both we return occasionally from amid the complications of art, to snatch from them a healthy inspiration.

It is not in mere refinement that the operation of music is obvious and powerful: it humanises, and 'makes the whole world kin.' 'There is no free-masonry so intimate and immediate, I believe,' says a recent author when relating a conversation with Mrs Hemans, 'as that which exists among the lovers of music; and although, when we parted, I could not tell the colour of her eyes and hair, I felt that a confidence and a good understanding had arisen between us, which the discussion of no subject less fascinating could have excited.' It is in this point of view that music should be regarded by philanthropists: the science should be given to the masses of the people as a bond of sympathy between them and the upper stratum of society. But while many efforts are making in this direction, there is still great sluggishness in one important branch of the business: the lower classes have no good instruments, and have no great artists; the inspiration derived from a Jenny Lind or a Sontag never descends beneath a certain line in the social scale; and the pianoforte, the most useful of all musical instruments, has never served for a rallying-point in the domestic circles of the poor.

To deal with the former of these two difficulties is arduous – perhaps impossible. Even in this country, where everything bears a money value, including even the light that enters our houses, there are some galleries where the works of great painters are patent to the public. But the sister art is a monopoly of the rich, because the efforts of performers produce no permanent creations, but merely an evanescent sound, which may elevate the mind and linger on the memory, but can never be reproduced by the listener. A painter lives by the sale of works which survive even himself perhaps for hundreds of years; but a musician retails performances that are not prolonged even by an echo. The great singer, however, demands a higher reward than the great poet; and the great actor grows rich while the great dramatist barely lives. Who can help it? We give willingly what they demand: there is no compulsion in the case, and the day of sumptuary laws is gone by.

But this deprivation does not press so much upon the poor as upon a great portion of the middle-classes. We cannot find fault with musical artists for demanding half a guinea or a guinea from every one who chooses to listen to a few songs; because such sums are voluntarily paid, and all dealers, even those who deal in harmonious sounds, have the same right to sell them in the dearest market that they have to buy their wines and jewels in the cheapest. But unluckily the deprivation is felt by the very class which would benefit the most, and confer the most benefit, by being admitted on reasonable terms to such exhibitions of high art. It is neither from among the poor nor the rich that great artists usually spring, but from that large middle-class in which the genius of individuals receives an impulse from pecuniary necessity. In that rank large sums cannot be paid for a song, and their claims to gentility will not permit them to class themselves even at a concert with the grade beneath them, permitted to listen for a lower price in organ lofts and at the back of galleries. We do not say that there is no remedy even for this evil. The genius of the present age is fertile in expedients, and perhaps some plan may be hit upon to satisfy the exorbitant expectations of musical artists, by providing a larger and more frequent audience at prices better adapted to ordinary means. So long as the present system, however, continues, music cannot be expected to make any rapid progress among us; for the effect of the system is to degrade art to the level of fashion, and thus repress the noble and generous aspirations of genius.

But the difficulty arising from the enormous expense of such musical instruments as the piano is less complicated; and indeed it would appear at first sight to be very extraordinary that in an age of almost unbounded speculation and competition it should exist at all. There is nothing in the construction of the machinery of a piano which ought to prevent it from being found in tens of thousands of houses in this country from which it is at present entirely excluded. The existing piano, however, is a traditional instrument – an heir-loom of the wealthy; and for them alone it must be manufactured. Its case must be of expensive foreign woods, and its keys of ivory; its legs must be elegantly turned; its handsome feet must roll on brazen wheels adapted for the rich carpet; and generally it must be decorated with carvings in wood, such as of themselves, entirely superfluous as they are, add several pounds to the expense. The manufacturers say that all this is so because the instruments must be made exclusively for the rich, who would not purchase them if they were not elegant in form, and costly in material and workmanship. But this, we strongly suspect, is no longer true. Music has now descended lower in the social scale than it did in the last generation, and thousands of hearts are beating with the feeling of art and its aspirations, which were formerly cold and silent. The comparatively poor and the really economical do not buy pianos, simply because they are far beyond their means; and in England the cause of musical science and kindly feeling is deprived of the aid of a family instrument, which in Germany is found even in the parlour of the village public-houses.

Tables and chairs, bedsteads, and other articles of furniture, are manufactured on purpose to suit the means of the various classes of purchasers. Bedsteads may be had in London, and we presume elsewhere with equal ease, at 18s. and at L.50 a piece; and chairs which, in one form, cost L.2 or L.3 each, in another – of stained wood, with cane seats, extremely pretty and lasting – sell for 15s. the half-dozen. Why should not the less wealthy families have their own piano as well as their own chair or bedstead? And the humbleness of the materials, it should be remarked, would not necessarily involve any want of elegance in shape. The cheap chairs alluded to are sometimes very passable imitations of rosewood chairs – and they answer the purpose as well! Let us add, that the introduction of the new process of desiccation applied to timber would seem to render the present a very favourable juncture for such speculations as we hint at. Formerly, many years' warehousing would have been required to divest the wood of those juices which interrupt sound, and the trade in the material would thus be a monopoly of wealthy capitalists; but now, thanks to the science of the day, timber may be thoroughly dried in hours instead of years, and thus a ruinous interest on invested money saved.

Should this new manufacture, however, be commenced, the speculators must please to bear in mind that we do not ask for inferior instruments, but for cheap materials and plain workmanship. Some time ago an attempt was made to introduce watches with imitative gold cases: but the works were spurious imitations likewise; and these out-of-time-pieces, brought forward, if we recollect rightly, at 15s., sank speedily to 5s., and are now rarely seen at all. This should be a lesson to piano-makers for the million. They should further recollect, however, that an instrument, hitherto the prescriptive property of the rich and refined, must, however humble its materials, retain a certain elegance of form. A plain deal piano, for instance, even if the wood were suitable, would not be bought; but one made of birch, and French polished, with cheap keys, &c. would not disgrace a drawing-room. We remember seeing furniture of this timber in some of the small country inns in Russia; and it struck us as having an enormously-extravagant look, having all the appearance of satin-wood. This, however, we give merely as an illustration of our meaning. We put forth these paragraphs as nothing more than a hint to set thinking on the subject persons who possess the mechanical knowledge we cannot pretend to; and having so done, we take leave of the subject.

L. R.

THE PRISONS OF PARIS AND THEIR TENANTS.

SECOND ARTICLE

The castle of Vincennes, within a few miles of Paris, has always been as terrible a place of detention as was the Bastille. Even in these days of comparative liberty and justice, Vincennes is made an engine of oppression; for throughout all political changes, the French government never scruples to seize and incarcerate illegally any one against whom it has a grudge.

The prisoners of Vincennes, till of late years, were seldom tried, and rarely knew what their offence was. The question they had to ask themselves was not, what is my crime? – but who is my enemy? who wants my fortune or my place? who covets my wife or my sister? who dreads my influence? Then the walls were so thick, the dungeons so deep, the guard so strict, that no cry for justice could reach the world outside.

An unhappy person destined to be the inmate of this castle was generally seized and brought there in the middle of the night. After crossing a drawbridge, which spans a moat forty feet deep, he found himself in the hands of two men, who, by the pale light of a lamp, directed his trembling steps. Heavy doors of iron, with enormous bolts, were opened and closed one after another; narrow, steep, winding stairs, descending and descending; on all sides padlocks, bars, and gratings; and vaults which the sun never saw! Arrived in his dungeon, the prisoner, who perhaps an hour before had been dancing and feasting at a court-ball, and still wore his suit of velvet and gold, was searched and stripped of everything but the bare clothes that covered him, and was then left with a miserable pallet, two straw chairs, and a broken pitcher – the parting injunction of the jailors being, that he was not to permit himself the slightest noise. 'C'est ici le palais de la silence!' say they – ('This is the palace of silence!') Those who were fortunate enough to see the light again, and lived to be restored to the world, were searched in the same way on leaving their dungeon, and were obliged to take an oath never to reveal what had passed in this state-prison, under the penalty of incurring the king's displeasure. As the king's displeasure would have immediately carried them back to Vincennes, we may believe that the vow was seldom violated.