past, the people of Copenhagen have not even yet learned how to pave their streets, to introduce water into their houses, or to establish gas-lighting. They make a causeway of small, round, waterworn stones, like eggs placed on end, which tortures the feet, and causes every passing wagon to produce a noise so great, that conversation is drowned in it. They form a side pavement of the same materials, with a border of hewn granite slabs; the whole being far too narrow for the passing crowd, so that, there being, after all, little more than a choice between the egg pavement on the side and the egg pavement in the middle, the multitude is chiefly seen plodding its way along the causeway, among wheelbarrows, wains, and carriages. The diffusion of water, and the introduction of gas, are objects advocated by an enlightened few; but, as usual, municipal privileges and pedantic government regulations obstruct the blessing. It was a curious thing for me to tell the people of Copenhagen and Stockholm that they were, in this and some other matters, behind the small towns of Scotland which had so many as a thousand or twelve hundred inhabitants.

The first object to which our party bent their steps was the Castle of Rosenberg, an old palace in the northern section of the city, surrounded by some fine gardens, which are open to the public. Rosenberg is understood to be a production of the genius of Inigo Jones: it reminds one of the order of buildings which we in England call Elizabethan, and certainly was built by Christian IV. of Denmark at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is now simply a museum of the antiquities of the Danish royal family—that is, the furniture, dresses, ornaments, &c. which have belonged to those princes and their children, even to the toys of some of them, in the course of the last three or four centuries. Such a multitude of curious and elegant objects, recalling the royalty of past ages, perhaps nowhere else exists. They are so arranged in a suite of ancient state apartments, that you pass from one age to another in proper chronological succession, and find you have been reading the Danish history of several centuries in the course of an hour's lounge. The most conspicuous sovereign of the series is the builder of the house, who was in truth a noted monarch in his day, an active, hard-headed man, very warlike, very sensual, yet not devoid of a kind-hearted regard for the good of his people. He was the brother-in-law of our James I., whom he once visited with a dozen ships of war in his train; on which occasion he kept the English court for some time in such a whirlwind of conviviality, that Shakspeare is supposed to have been induced by it to pen the well-known passage in Hamlet, beginning,

and likewise to describe the usurping uncle as a drunkard. You see here King Christian's audience-chamber, a handsome old panelled room, full of little pictures, and having a small aperture in the door, through which it is said the king could, from his sitting-room, observe the conduct of his courtiers while they were waiting for him. In glass-cases are ranged a bewildering multitude of antique gold boxes, cups, baptismal basins, goblets, and drinking-horns, together with some elegant decorated swords, and other weapons. The object singled out for special observation is the celebrated silver horn of Oldenborg; not, it seems, that which Dousterswivel speaks of as given to Count Otto of Oldenborg by a mountain spirit, but one which is said to have been made for Christian I. in 1447. The singularly rich decorations and figurings on the outside are certainly in the style of that period, if I may judge by the mace preserved at St Andrews—a rich product of the Parisian workshop of the time of Charles VII. In a small room Christian IV. slept in a hammock; the rings by which it was suspended are still seen in the ceiling. Portraits of his favourite ladies hang around. In another room there is a great variety of drinking-glasses; some of them of the beautiful Venetian manufacture, said to be exceedingly rare and valuable. One of the richest articles in the whole collection is a set of horse-furniture which Christian presented to his son on his marriage, and which cost a million of francs. The very buckles are set with diamonds! An upper floor contains the grand hall of the palace, styled the Riddersal, or Knights' Chamber: it has a silver throne at one end, and much historical tapestry along the walls. One comes away with a strong sense of the prodigality in which the royalty of Denmark indulged during its days of absolute authority, when the people were condemned to slavery, at once the sole workers and the sole taxpayers in the country. I may remark that a party is shown through this palace by a well-bred gentlemanlike man, who speaks in French, if required, for a fee amounting to 6s. 9d. sterling. Everything is explained with precision, and nothing but what is historically true is stated. An enlightened visitor is thus left with a very different impression from what he would acquire in any similar show-house in England, where probably an old housekeeper, unfit for anything else, would be found placed as a cicerone, full of childish legends and myths, which she would relate as unchallengeable facts.

Before turning to any other Copenhagen sight, I may take the reader to a place much allied in character to the Château Rosenberg—namely, the cathedral of Roeskilde, which I did not visit till my return from the north. A railway of about sixteen English miles—the only thing of the kind as yet introduced into the country—enabled me to be deposited there in an hour. We found a huge ungainly brick church rising in the midst of a village which has something of the withered look of Versailles. The inside is as plain as the outside is coarse, and there is little trace of the Gothic architecture to be seen. Yet there are here some exceedingly curious, and even some beautiful objects. The altar-piece is a complicated exhibition of ancient Dutch wood-carving, representing the principal events in the life of Christ. It is said to be at least three hundred years old. Along the sides of the space enclosed for the Communion-table are two series of still more ancient wood-carvings, representing Bible events—the Old Testament on one side, and the New on the other. The quaintness of many of the figures, and the homely ideas embodied by the artist, are exceedingly amusing—for example, Adam writhing in painful sleep, as the Almighty is pulling Eve bodily out of his side; Noah calmly steering something like an omnibus, with seven faces looking out at as many windows; and Elijah going up into the air in a four-wheeled vehicle marvellously resembling the ill-constructed wains which still rumble through the streets of Copenhagen. Having dwelt long on the curious and minute work here displayed, we proceeded to view the sarcophagi of the Danish sovereigns of the last two centuries, all of which are placed in this church. I found the aisle in the right transept in the course of being repaired and adorned with frescoes, for the reception of the coffin of Christian IV., and a grand statue of the monarch by Thorvaldsen. As yet, he reposes in the half-lit vault below, with his queen by his side, and his naked sword lying rusted and out of order upon his coffin. The length of the weapon surprises the curious visitor, but is explained by the uncommon stature of the royal owner—for Christian, it seems, was a man of six feet five inches. The coffin is otherwise distinguished only by a number of plain silver ornaments.

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