Tegnér had long feared he might become a victim. In his poetic facility he saw only a mental intensity emanating from that source; and he was doubtless right. Overwork had also aggravated the danger. Ere long he grew full of great and impossible schemes. He wrote to Mr. Longfellow that he was about to issue a new edition of his writings in a hundred volumes! Finally, in 1838, he was sent to the insane hospital at Schleswig. After a short stay he seemed to mend, and returned to his labors, as all thought, restored. But his vital energy was slowly waning. In 1845 he was obliged to seek release from public duty, and in the year following was stricken with paralysis. It was not the first attack of this kind that had come upon him, but it was the last. “His head now possessed its old-time soundness; his voice had recovered its usual clearness. Only the evening before his death he was attacked by a slight delirium, which was betrayed by his speaking often of Goethe as his countryman. Resigned and peaceful he neared his end. Water and light were still his refreshments. When the autumn sun one day shone brightly into his sick chamber, he broke forth with the words, ‘I lift up my hands to God’s house and mountain,’ which he often afterward repeated. They were his last Sun-song. To his absent children he sent his farewell greeting; to his oldest son a ring with Luther’s picture, which he had worn on his hand for thirty years. Shortly before midnight on the second of November, 1846,—the most beautiful aurora borealis lighted up the sky—the spirit of the skald gently broke its fetters. Scarcely a sigh betrayed the separation to his kneeling wife, who read upon his face, lit up at once by the moon and death, ‘blessed peace and heavenly rapture.’”

Tegnér’s successor in Swedish belles-lettres was Rúneberg, of whom we shall now give a brief sketch. Tegnér belongs to the romantic era of European literature, and, as we know, it would be hard to find a more purely romantic poet. Runeberg was destined to found in Sweden the modern or realistic school. He was the son of a “merchant-captain,” and born in 1804 in Finland. He was sent to college, became professor of Latin, and finally of Greek. He caught in some way the spirit of the coming change, unlearned the old methods in which he had begun to write, and in 1832 published his “Elk Hunters.” This was the beginning of nature-writing in Sweden. It was followed by the delicate idyl of “Hanna,” the brilliant “Christmas Eve,” and finally “Nadeschda” and “King Fjalar.” These bear favorable comparison with anything in modern literature. In his shorter pieces, and notably the “Ensign Stal’s Stories,” Runeberg has earned perhaps greater fame. His death occurred in 1877. The school he founded is continued by the living pens of Wirsén, Carl Snoilsky, and Viktor Rydberg.

We will translate, to close our sketch, a random morsel of Runeberg, not as an example of his genius and skill, but rather of his simplicity and love of nature. The meter is already familiar to us in “Hiawatha,” and was borrowed by both Runeberg and Longfellow from the national epic of Finland, the “Kalevála.”