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liar with much that would have burdened others. An anecdote is here in point.

While Mr. Polk resided in Tennessee, a story was put in circulation, calculated to injure his reputation as a public man. He was, at the time of which we speak, several hundred miles away from home. A gentleman well known, who was then editor of a political paper, eager to vindicate his fair fame, repaired to Mrs. Polk, and made known the circumstances to her. She instantly led him into her husband's private office, and selecting different journals and manuscripts, referred immediately to the page and paragraph containing proofs of her husband's non-participation in the plot imputed to him. These were soon published to the world. Mr. Polk was then hurrying home. Rumours of these accusations had reached him, and he was anxious to confute them, before they were generally received. As he was crossing one of the rivers of Tennessee, he accidentally met with a paper, containing a complete refutation of the falsehood. In extreme, but delighted surprise, he turned to a friend, and remarked, "Why! this is indeed singular-who could have done it? No one but Sarah knew so intimately my private affairs." Mrs. Polk possesses the faculty of making herself popular with all classes of people. None see her but to praise. The sweetness of her countenance, radiant with the impress of mind, and the affectionate warmth of her reception, inspire the beholder with the feeling that she is an uncommon woman.

I remember my own impressions, when, in company with some friends, I visited the White House, on the occasion of a public levee. An immense crowd had assembled, for it was the first day of the new year. The foreign courts were well represented, in the imposing splendour of official costumes and uniforms shining with gold. The audience-room was nearly filled. Many ladies, beautifully attired, stood near the wife of the President; but among them all, I should have selected her, as fitly representing, in person and manner, the dignity and grace of the American female character. Modest, yet commanding in appearance, I felt she was worthy of all the admiration which has been lavished upon her. She was affable, easy in her deportment, richly and most becomingly dressed. The thought involuntarily entered my mind, "You well become the high station which Providence has assigned you."

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of dancing at the White House during President Polk's administration. A company of ladies conversing with Mrs. Polk one day, alluded to the matter rather plainly.

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Why," said she, in reply to a question indirectly put to her on the subject, “I wouldn't dance in the President's house, would you?"

This silenced them. They were, at once, struck with the propriety of an answer, so delicately intimating that the public ball-room, or the private drawing-room, were much more suitable places for such pleasures, than the residence of the chief magistrate of the nation.

Her religious views are extremely liberal. They commend themselves, in the loveliness of their charity, even to those who do not coincide with her. There is a perfectness in her character, a freedom from austerity and bigotry, that speaks louder than the most untiring efforts put forth by many to reform the erring.

She was always regular in her attendance on the ministrations of her pastor, while in Washington. Those who were members with her, and by whom she was recognised as a true Christian, testify to the uniformity of her example, her affectionate interest in their welfare, and her untiring solicitude for the prosperity of the holy cause, in which she has for so many years been engaged.

Her leave-taking of the church was mournful, yet tenderly solemn. The elements of the holy communion were administered to her, amid the silent weeping of gathered friends, waiting to bid her farewell. It was an impressive scene; few words were spoken, and those were uttered in the tremulous tones of grief, but the many prayers for her welfare, silently breathed by the sympathizing communicants, blended into one, as on the wings of love and faith they were wafted before the Eternal.

I have but faintly limned her virtues; suffice it to say that she is respected and loved by thousands who have never seen her. Her name has always been associated with good and holy things. As a wife, a benefactress, a friend, she is a model for every woman to imitate, whether of exalted or lowly estate. Her life has been unmarked by sorrow, until the bereavement which has so lately afflicted her.

Existence cannot seem so joyous to her now, since that dark hour. But she has an arm whereon to lean; an Almighty presence overshadows her path, to guide her, till the dawn of a purer day ushers her into the better land,

Much has been said about the discontinuance where dwell her richest treasures.

LIFE IN THE NORTH.

BY FREDERIKA BREMER.

WRITTEN FOR SARTAIN'S MAGAZINE, AND TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL SWEDISH

BY MARY HOWITT.

CHAPTER I.

"WE discover throughout all nature an activity which knows no rest. That which appears to our eyes repose is merely a slow change." Thus says H. C. Oersted in his Philosophy of the Universal Laws of Nature; and not only to Nature, but to man, to nations, to the world, to all created things, do the words of the great naturalist apply. Therefore beautiful and fraught with meaning is the old northern myth regarding the Tree of the World, whose head, to prevent its withering, must every morning be afresh sprinkled with the waters of the Urda-brunn, or fountain of life. By this means, says the saga, its foliage greens ever anew, and from its leaves falls "dew into the valleys," the honey dew from which the bees collect their nourishment. True and beautiful! for the tree does not live through its great boughs alone, but it breathes through its smallest leaves. These convey the power of the sun and the nutritive principles of the air, by invisible channels, to the root, and the vigorous sap ascends also from the root to them. In this movement of exchanges all life moves both in heaven and upon earth. Friend in the South! I know that life in the North seems to thee scarcely more than a lifeless condition, like that of the bear in his winter sleep; like the slow movement of Uranus round the sun compared to the whirling waltz of Mercury-the life of the South. And this may be admitted, that life in the North, compared with life in the South, may be called a still life.

But the life of the developing plant, the ripening fruit, the ascending day, the advancing spring, is also a still life, and yet it is progressive, full of power. And such is the life of the North at this moment. I speak of the Scandinavian North. And as an auspicious star conducted me lately to that part of it where this life is in most activity, that is to Denmark, I will converse with thee a little about life as it is there. And yet, in its essential principles this is not different from that which is contemporaneously moving in Sweden and Norway.

Be

Denmark! Thou knowest it, and yet thou dost not know it, this wonderful little islandkingdom, which stretches from the vicinity of the north pole, where the Greenlander tosses in his "kajack" amid the icy waves, and sees the spirits of his fellows hunt and play in the flames of the northern lights, where eternal Death seems in the Isse-fiords to have erected the pillars of its temple of never-melting icebergs, which still tremble and sometimes are prostrated at the sound of the human voice,* to the southern ocean, where, under the glowing line, the sugar-cane and the coffee-plant are cultivated by the negro, and the life of nature never ceases to bloom in magnificence. tween Greenland and Santa Cruz-eternal winter and eternal summer-lies an archipelago of islands subject to the Danish crown-Iceland, with the most ancient memories of the North, the volcanic cradle of the skalds; the Faro Isles, peculiar in scenery and people, where amid rocks and mists the sun portrays Ossianic shapes; the Halligs, where the men and the sea contend for the land; and many, very many more. But Denmark proper, the oldest and the original Denmark, that by whose cradle the Vala-songs resounded; that which, in common with Sweden and Norway, has a mythic lore, and in that a philosophy of life loftier than that of any other people on the earth; that

They who have not frequently seen these Fiords, may summon to their aid all the powers of their imagination, and even then will not be fully able to conceive them. Imagine a tract of many miles full of icebergs, so huge that they descend from two to three hundred fathoms below the surface of the sea. In sailing past them, you see houses, castles, gateways, windows, chimneys, and the like. Some are white, some blue, others green, according

as they are of salt or fresh water, whereby their illusion is

greatly increased, especially when the powerful rays of which is, without doubt, in a great measure derived from the sun come in aid. They have an attractive power, currents, and by which large ships are in danger of being driven upon them. The Greenlanders are familiar with them, notwithstanding which many of them pay for this

confidence with their lives. But as the seals are fond of their vicinity, they are obliged to seek them there, and fetch away bread or death. Echo is so strong among the icebergs, that when people speak in sailing under them, they not only hear their words distinctly returned from

the summits, but if these are rotten, as it is there called

that is, loose-they are shaken by the sound, and plunge down headlong-and wo to those who are near them.

"Denmark with the verdant shore

from whose shores the Norman bands went a People, a living unity; an eternal, undyforth throughout the world, with their heroes | ing genius, with a peculiar existence, a pecuand their songs; Denmark proper, the mother- liar mission in the history of mankind. Such land, consists of the great and fertile islands, a time does not come all at once, as by a where the beech woods murmur, where the stroke of magic. No; silent streams from the stork, the sacred bird of Denmark, builds its wells of life, silent influences of the sun, nest, in whose azure creeks the Dannebrog, quickening winds, storms, or zephyrs, prepare the national flag, floats-the beautiful islands it long beforehand. So in this case. What of Zealand, Jutland, and Funen. There has pure patriotism, what a great love for the the Danish people its home; the home of which humanly great, what genius and virtue effected Ingemann sings: through the men and women of Denmark; what the great kings of this little country, its warriors and poets have accomplished through the past centuries for the honour of the nation, for the good of the people, for the advancement of this spring of which we speak,-all that, we must leave here unnoticed; little indeed of that has the historian recorded: who on earth knows the sources of the Nile? But we revert to these things that we may not be wanting in justice and piety. The spring is come-the spring which they nobly prepared; and I will now speak of its phenomena as they have developed themselves within the last century, and especially within the last twenty or thirty years, as I have seen them, and see them at this moment in actual life. Regard this sketch as a faint attempt to reflect impressions for ever stamped on the heart's memory.

By the sparkling floods,
In thy breast dwells love secure
And peace within thy woods.
Singing wild birds cleave the air
O'er the giants' barrow,
And violets spring up everywhere
All the valley thorough.

Bloody Christian! Sweden's executioner, how couldst thou be born among this people, in this land!

It is a kindly and a noble land; a land of green and undulating fields, which, without mountains and rocks, but with fertile plains and beautiful woods, arises from the sea: Zealand, with rich corn-fields, old towns, with old, proud memories, cairns, and castles; Funen, with its orchards, its fine estates, its wealthy farms; Jutland, with its heaths, the Atlantic, Himmelberg, features of grand scenery, which are almost adored by those who have lived among them from childhood. Around the large islands cluster a wreath of small, often very small ones-which also abound with great recollections; some from the times of the sagas, some from later ages, and which have fostered many a great man for the common mother country. There breathes a fresh, kindly, vernal life over these islands, around which swell the waves of the North Sea, with the Cattegat, the Baltic, and the Atlantic. This harmonizes with the spirit of the people; for notwithstanding the solemnity of the memories of the ancient times-notwithstanding the stamp of the northern spirit in the character of family and popular life, it cannot be denied

that Scandinavia has in Denmark its link with southern Europe, and that the southern life shows itself amongst the Danish people, combined with the natural liveliness of disposition and manners of the islanders. The Danes have, of late years, undergone a great change, yet without losing their peculiar character. They have been born to a new life, or rather, they have awakened to a consciousness of their own proper life.

There is a spring-time also in the life of the people, when the inner life, as it were, bursts its limits and blossoms forth vigorously. These are the times when a people feels itself

On Christmas Eve, 1848, a chill and cloudy winter's evening, I found myself in Copenhagen, in a large hall, where more than a hundred children, boys and girls, sung, danced, and made a joyous clamour around a lofty Christmas Tree, glittering with lights, flowers, fruits, cakes, and sweetmeats, up to the very ceiling.

But brighter than the lights in the tree shone the gladness in the eyes of the children, and the bloom of health on their fresh counte

nances.

A handsome, stately, middle-aged lady in black went round amongst the children, with a motherly grace, examining their work in sewing and handicraft arts, encouraging and rewarding them in an affectionate manner. The children pressed round her and looked up to her, all seeming to love, none to fear her.

It was a charity-school in which I found myself; it was Denmark's motherly but childless Queen, Caroline Amalia, whom I here saw surrounded by poor children whom she had made her own. It was a beautiful scene; and what I here saw was also an image of a life, a movement, which at this time extends through the whole social life of the North. It is the womanly, the motherly movement in society, expanding itself to a wider circle, to the care of the whole race of children beyond the limits of home; to the enfranchisement, the elevation of all neglected infancy. It is the maternal

LIFE IN THE NORTH.

advance from the individual life into the general, to the erection of a new home. The asylum is an expanded embrace. There Christian love makes restitution for the injustice of fortune. There the child seems to escape from the faults and the calamities of its parents, to be preserved for society at large, and to be educated for its benefit. Silently proceeds the maternal power to give a new birth to the human race in its earliest years. But we rely on this power more than on any other on earth for the accomplishment of this work, if ever such a new birth is really to take place. And that the women of the North more clearly seem to accept this mission, and that the Queens of the North, Carolina Amalia in Denmark, and Josephina in Sweden, march at the head of this maternal movement, it is only a duty to acknowledge. Nor do these ladies confine themselves to the care of childhood; they extend their beneficent activity through a variety of channels to the children of misfortune, to the solitary, the sick, the old and neglected in society, who are sought out and assisted or consoled by the more fortunate.* Blessed is material help in the huts of the needy; but still more blessed is the intellectual result which is effected by the personal, affectionate sympathy of the rich, whether in intellectual or worldly wealth, for the poor in society.

CHAPTER II.

To this, an activity not less on the part of the men associates itself, supporting it and continuing it where it ceases. We will merely give an example of this. About thirty years ago, there swarmed in the streets of Copenhagen a multitude of lads from ten to fifteen years of age, like those in Stockholm, who are called Hamnbusar, or ragamuffins; a repulsive race, in filthy garments, and with wild thievish eyes; the children of crime and misery, and growing up in all wickedness, for ever on the watch for robbery and mischief. A government officer, who about that time received an office in the police, Mr. A. Drewsen, was struck by the prevalence of this class, laid it to heart, and with other similarly disposed and philanthropic men formed a plan to extirpate this growing evil by a thorough and searching remedy. When he had matured his scheme, he called on his fellowcitizens for assistance. He did not call in vain. Liberal subscriptions flowed in from all sides;

One of the most actively useful societies in Copenhagen ought to be mentioned, "The Female Association of Nurses," under the patronage of the Queen, and the management of the chief Lady of the Court of the Queen, the universally respected Mrs. Rosenörn.

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and by their means the young criminals were speedily removed from the capital to the remote provinces, where they were placed in good and orderly families, chiefly those of farmers. Transplanted into a better soil, these young shoots of vice almost wholly changed their nature, and became good and serviceable members of society; while ever since this period the amount of crime in the capital has signally decreased,* and the public good has as sensibly improved under the continued culture of the before neglected youth. Very rarely now is the eye or the mind shocked in the streets of Copenhagen by the sight of mendicant children.

Here we have the Nile-sources in society, those which are concealed in the heart, and which go forth out of their silent deeps to constitute the stream of beneficence, and fill the land with good corn. There are also silent blessings. No voice proclaims them on earth, but they rest with a secret sun-power on the benefactors, whether the day is stormy or the night dark and oblivious.

Denmark's motherly women; men like Drewsen, V. Osten, Brink-Seidelin, and others; and the venerable Collin, the minister of two kings, and to whom his country and its people owe so much on many accounts, cannot be without such blessings.

For the rest, it can do us no harm to listen to the words of these men, in the report which they have lately made of their operations in the above-mentioned departments.

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Many," say they, "are the circumstances with which we have become acquainted by placing ourselves in connexion with the families whose children have been taken under our care, and we have through them arrived at the conviction, that the great objects which those who desire to improve the condition of the labouring classes, above all others, ought to aim at, are:-a stricter morality; a more conscientious education of the children; more steadiness in labour and for the individual development during it; a greater regard for the sacredness of marriage, and its importance in society; and a more universal taste for the enjoyment of domestic life. Guided by these convictions, our association has proceeded with the education of children. It will henceforth receive increased activity in this direction, and we are persuaded, that although at the present moment, other circumstances demand great sacrifices, the labours of the association will

Another cause of this ought, however, to be taken into account; the more favourable circumstances of recent years in trade and cheapness of food. the consequence of which has been a growing prosperity amongst the working classes, plenty of employment and good wages, &c. In Denmark there is no genuine proletariat.

not be crippled for lack of the accustomed about it, retain through it all their goodaid."

This aid is frequently called for; for whatever is needed in Denmark for the promotion of a better condition of the people, is in no country more readily granted. No calls are made in the name of humanity, for the support of the general or of particular good, which are not eagerly responded to. Such a fountain lies in the heart of a people. There are gold mines richer, more inexhaustible than those of California.

The Dane does not willingly talk of his heart. He will frequently pretend to himself and others, that he has no great quantity of "that article." But he is fundamentally a cordial and good-natured man. No one loves more warmly, more faithfully than he. First of all, his fatherland. The Dane loves Denmark as his bride; his young, wedded wife. Holger, the Dane, the people's national genius, warm-hearted, true, brave, always at hand in the time of need, is the symbol of the people's life. The Dane in Copenhagen, or the Copenhagener, is not quite so good-natured as the Dane in general; he has frequently head at the expense of heart. He is critical. He has a quick glance for the faulty and the ludicrous in his neighbour, especially in the literary world. Holberg's spirit still lives in Copenhagen. And truly this critical disposition is frequently in the excess, and it does sometimes exaggerate the little failing more than is either handsome or reasonable. But this is not dangerous. The good-humoured smile is still near at hand, and the hand is ready for conciliation. Revenge and malice are unknown to the Dane; he abhors ill nature; and if he sees any one pursued by ill-will, he is immediately on his side, crying, "Hold! I cannot allow that!"

The Danes in Copenhagen appear to strangers a lively, joyous, life-enjoying, and in a high degree, amiable people; open-hearted, sympathizing, and ready to oblige. In many respects, they remind you of the Athenians, as Copenhagen, with its stirring and vivacious populace, its museums, its galleries and artists, its learned men and their lectures, its theatre-life and the people's enjoyment of it, may well be styled the northern Athens. Copenhagen bears the same relation to Denmark, that Paris does to France. It is the centre, the organic point of the land where sits the life and the soul. The quiet Stockholm would be astonished could it come on a visit to Copenhagen, and see the life and the activity there, and how the people there, principally in certain streets, swarm about one another; run amongst each other; throng and push one another; and as if not troubling themselves

humour. A silent party at Stockholm would actually be confounded at the bustle and loud loquacity in the drawing-rooms of Copenhagen. This produces not a harmonious, but a lively effect; while the frank kindness which is shown to the stranger, cannot but present life to him in a pleasant aspect.

But to praise politeness in drawing-rooms, is just as much as boasting that there is bread in bakers' shops. No, if you will become acquainted with the amiable disposition of the Danish people, you must go into the streets, amongst the people, who are called "the rabble;" see them in their traffic and mutual intercourse; talk with them; ask your way; beg a favour, and so on; and you will be amazed at the good-will, the politeness, and the readiness to oblige which you will meet with, till you are compelled to say, “In Copenhagen there is no rabble."

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The

In Copenhagen you will be obliged to say to yourself, "the Danes are a good-looking people." You see very many pleasant countenances, though but few handsome ones. contour is more oval, the features finer than in Sweden. In Sweden prevail more strength and beauty of the eyes; in Denmark it is the pleasant and living expression of the mouth. The complexion is fresh, and the expression of the countenance gladsome and kind. The ladies dress with taste and elegance. You see many black silk cloaks or mantillas; white bonnets with flowers or feathers floating about in the "Esplanade,” the “Lange-Linie,” along the Sound; in the “ Bredegade,” and the “Oestergade"-Oestergade, frightful to the memory of every quiet soul unaccustomed to the bustle of Copenhagen, and who feels himself in the predicament of wanting to purchase articles of clothing. For whatever you want, bonnet, cap, lace, ribbons, shawl, material for dresses, parasol, umbrella, gloves, stockings, shoes, for all these you are directed to the Oestergade. And when you arrive in this street, morning, noon, or night, whatever be the time, you find that the whole city is there already, purchasing, walking, talking, and looking about. If you are in the dangerous condition of being obliged to hasten through the Oestergade, in order to reach the other side of the city, then, poor, inexperienced wanderer, commit thy soul into God's hand, and make thy way as thou canst. But prepare thyself for exertion, opposition, and vexation. For at the very commencement, as thou attemptest to advance, three ladies and five servants, each with a basket on her arm, stop the way; and if thou attempt to pass to the right, there comes a crew of sailors in full speed; if to the left, two gentlemen in the greatest hurry, cigar in

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