TRACINGS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE.

COPENHAGEN.

Having passed with little trouble or difficulty through the customhouse formalities, we entered the city, and soon found ourselves established in comfortable apartments in the Hôtel Royal. This is a house on the usual large scale of the continental hotels, being a quadrangle surrounding a courtyard, and accessible from the street by a port-cocher. It is conducted by a gentleman—the term is in no respect inapplicable—named Leobel, who speaks English, and seems indefatigable in his friendly exertions for the benefit of his guests. I believe there are other good hotels in Copenhagen, but I have heard Mr Leobel's always admitted to be the best.

The first plunge into a large city is confusing. In our perfect ignorance of the relative situations of the streets and public buildings, we know not which way to turn without guidance. It is a good plan in such circumstances to go at the very first to the top of some height, natural or artificial, from which a view of the whole may be obtained. In Copenhagen there is a certain Trinity Church, situated obscurely in the densest part of the town, but furnished with a singular tower of great altitude, and so spacious, that the ascent is not by a stair, but by a spiral carriage-way, up which, it is said, Peter the Great of Russia used to drive a coach-and-six. Our little party immediately proceeded thither, and, ascending to the top—where, by the way, there is an observatory—were gratified with a comprehensive survey of the city and its environs. We soon ascertained that Copenhagen is built on a flat piece of ground, with no hills near it; that towards the sea, on the south and east, it is a congeries of batteries, docks, stores, and arsenals; that its west end, contrary to a flimsy theory on the subject, is the meaner and more ancient part; and that it is chiefly confined within a line of fortifications, but that these are now formed into public walks, here and there enlivened with windmills. The only arresting object beyond the bounds of the city is a slightly-rising ground, about two miles to the westward, crowned by a palace (Fredericksberg). The chalk formation, which prevails here, as over Denmark generally, is usually tumescent and tame of surface; hence there are few points in the environs of Copenhagen calculated to arrest attention.

A large irregular space in the centre of the town—called Kongens Nye Torv; that is, the King's New Market—gives a key to the whole, because from it radiate the leading thoroughfares, in which the shops and best houses are situated—Ostergade to the west, Gothersgade to the north, while to the east proceed the Amalie Gade, the Bred Gade, and others—broad modern streets, containing many fine buildings, and terminating on the citadel of Frederickshavn, the grand defence of the city in that direction. To be a town of only 127,000 inhabitants, and the capital of so small a state as Denmark, Copenhagen contains a surprising number of goodly public buildings, particularly palaces; so much, indeed, is this the case, that the houses for the residence of the people appear as something subordinate, and put half out of sight. These palaces convey a striking idea of the wantonness with which former rulers have used, or rather abused, the means extorted from the industrious part of the community. Will it be believed that four palaces were set down in the last century, in a cluster, divided only by the breadth of so many crossings; and that, after this was done, another was built (Christiansborg), which measures upwards of 600 feet in one direction, and is so huge a building, that Somerset House would appear but a fragment of it? These stately edifices are now given up to the service of the public as museums, picture-galleries, and libraries, while the existing sovereign is contented to live quietly in one of his equally numerous country palaces on an allowance of about sixty thousand a year. The effect, however, is, that Copenhagen is a place positively fatiguing from the multitude of its sights. One of those conscientious travellers who get a list of show-places from a friend, or from Murray's Handbook, and go through the whole as a duty, would be like to die here of pure exhaustion of spirits before he had got three-fourths way down the paper.

Notwithstanding the multitude of fine edifices, the city is deficient in sprightliness. The English ambassador, Keith, in 1771, spoke pathetically of the dulness of Copenhagen, and the same character yet clings to it. A certain plainness marks even the best of the population on the street. The shops, not fitted peculiarly, as in England, for the show of goods at the windows, and often accessible from obscure side-passages, contribute little gaiety to the street scenery. Equipages are few and homely. There is a great abundance of male figures in some sort of uniform, for the functionaries of the state, civil and military, are a legion; but these persons are also, in general, of very moderate appearance. One quickly remarks that nine out of every ten men, of whatever kind, have cigars in their mouths; and another circumstance, perhaps a corollary to the last, attracts observation—namely, the great number of young men wearing spectacles. While, however, one remarks an inferiority to England in so many respects, he is forced to confess in one important particular a comfortable superiority; and this is in the aspect of the humbler classes. Here, as in most other continental towns, there is scarcely any trace of that horde of abject miserables which is so prominent in every British city. The labouring people are generally clad decently, many of them, particularly the peasant women, gaily. As a matter of course—as indeed the grand cause of this peculiarity—there is no drunkenness seen amongst them. On the whole, the Danes, as seen in their metropolis, appear an innocent, amiable people—a little stolid, perhaps, but remarkably inoffensive and respectable.

It is, I believe, a general distinction between England and continental countries, that in the latter elegancies and fineries are first attended to, and things conducive to daily comfort only in the second place, while in England the comfortable and the ornamental go hand in hand together. Hence it is that, with all their fine palaces, which are indeed almost objects of the