Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 308: New Series, Saturday, November 24, 1849Various
General
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 308: New Series, Saturday, November 24, 1849
Various
Periodicals
After breakfast, I took a walk around the town, and very much enjoyed
the views almost everywhere presented, but particularly one from a
noted place within a gentleman's pleasure-grounds. Frederickshald
appears to me a more pleasing and interesting place than the
guide-books allow. In the little park alluded to I found a private
cemetery, containing the graves of eight adults and three infants.
Each grave is a well-defined heap, with turf sides and ends, but a top
of bare earth, on which is laid a single wreath; all the rest of the
ground bare earth. Such is a prevalent style of sepulture in the north;
it has a neat and pretty effect. One likes to see a grave well-defined.
That smoothing of the ground, introduced in some of the improved modern
cemeteries of England, is not, I think, an approvable step. We desire
the 'mouldering heap,' so affectingly significant of what is below, and
so associated with all our old literary ideas upon the subject.
After receiving a lesson in Norwegian money from my intelligent
landlord, Mr Stein, and so many civilities of various kinds, that I
felt ashamed of the small bill which I had to pay, I set out on the
way to Christiania, returning for some miles along the way by which
I had come from Westgaard. As we drove out of the town, I was, as a
stranger, honoured with a sufficient quantity of observation by the
people. To add to the fracas produced by the carriage, a foal came
clattering along by our side, apparently under a filial mistake as
to one of our horses. Presently a cart was heard making a furious
rattle along the stones behind us, as if still further to make my poor
equipage an object of public attention. It was the mamma of the foal,
who, having missed her progeny in the market-place, was now anxious to
recover the lost one: there she came, with mouth distended, and eyes
glaring, the whole aspect expressing the utmost excitement, and saying
as plainly as words could have spoken it, 'What's all this?--taking
away my child!' The whole was so vividly like human affairs, that I
felt inclined to stop and apologise for our unintentional concern in
the elopement; but Quist settled the matter more summarily by a smart
application of his whip to the haunches of our undesired attaché. It
may be remarked that in Norway the foal is often allowed to accompany
its parent, even in coach-travelling. I have seen it come the whole
stage, never missing any opportunity afforded by a pause of our machine
to come up and indulge in the mode of nutrition appropriate to its age.
Horses are altogether less under strict rule in the north than with
us, and it appears to me as if they consequently were more _natural_
in their conduct. For one thing, they are eminently social with one
another. In the course of a long stage over a thinly-peopled country,
if we come at length to a park where a horse is feeding, even I could
almost say though out of sight, our own pachyderms are sure to get
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