An Englishman usually approaches this town with his mind full of Shakspeare and Hamlet, and an eager expectation to see places hallowed by association with the name of him of the inky cloak: supply naturally follows demand, and hence it is not surprising to find that a place called 'Hamlet's Garden' has been 'got up' in the neighbourhood, and established as the scene of the murder of the royal Dane. Not being disposed to have much faith in the reality of a northern prince of the fourth century before the Christian era, I entered Elsinore with comparatively sober feelings. It is a very ordinary-looking mercantile town of 8000 inhabitants (yet the fourth in Denmark), situated on a low plain beside that Sound which has originally given it consequence. Not much less than a hundred vessels of all flags lay in the calm sea in front, waiting for wind, or till they should pay their dues to the king of Denmark. It is admitted that L.150,000 per annum are thus extorted under favour of the cannon of Cronberg Castle, which raises its huge form near by, like the beggar in 'Gil Blas,' whom the reader may remember described as having his gun presented on a pair of cross-sticks to enforce a demand neither less nor more justifiable. It is certainly surprising that a system so little different from the predatory practices of the Rhenish barons of the fourteenth century should still be found in vigour. I am afraid that my only true English associations with the place referred to things at which the Shakspearian enthusiast will scoff--to wit, James VI. dating during his honeymoon from Cronberg, 'quhair we are drinking and driving ower in the auld maner,' and his descendant, Queen Matilda, here sighing over the lost peace which was never more to be hers.[1] The mind is sometimes strangely perverse and wayward, and I often find myself interested in things for reasons sufficiently trivial. For instance, while passing through the fosses and walls which surround this hardy fortress, and while my companions were probably lost in admiration of its stately proportions, I could not help recalling a passage in Spottiswoode the historian, where, speaking of James's winter in this castle, he mentions with complacency there being no such thing as a quarrel between the Scotch and the Danes all the time, a circumstance the more wonderful, says he, 'since it is hard for men in drink, _at which they were continually kept_, long to agree.' After all, Cronberg is only a great quadrangular palace in the centre of a set of ordinary fortifications. The casemates in the walls are usually, however, a subject of curiosity, in consequence of a legend thus related by a native writer:--'For many ages the din of arms was now and then heard in the vaults beneath the Castle of Cronberg. None knew the cause, and there was not in all the land a man bold enough to descend into the vaults. At last a slave who had forfeited his life was told that his