It is possible, without eliminating much, to trace the steady growth of temperamental art during a quarter of a century in successive stages of five years. True to first impelling motives, the art of the factory has never turned back. The modern movement known as _l'art nouveau_, which swept across Europe with its meaningless swirls and curves, left no trace on the work of the Royal Copenhagen Factory. Rich in the possession and eager in the fulfilment of its own original conceptions, it had no need of extraneous impulses, and has remained unstirred by ephemeral art movements. The illustrations in this chapter are arranged chronologically as far as possible, and it will be seen that the subjects become as Danish as the ballad of King Christian. The gallery is rich in its dreamy suggestiveness, the ceramic record of reposeful scenes luxuriating in luscious somnolence--the sea, the sand-dunes, the wild swans, and geese, and mallards, the wood with its deer and wild life, the secluded lake with its denizens, the meadows, and the cattle of the farm lands. [Illustration: DESSERT PLATE. With perforated border and rim decorated with scale design in blue, and having national Danish pattern in centre.] There has been a process of fermentation going on in modern Danish pictorial art, and its influence is seen on the porcelain produced at the royal factory. It is new because it is everlastingly old--the worship of Nature. There is in modern Copenhagen porcelain the tender, dreamy melancholy of the old Danish ballads. It is like some magic story told in the twilight. Everything is silent, nebulous, steeped in fragrant yet pathetic memories. There is a subtle and refined introspection, an æsthetic yearning akin to sadness. Every Dane remembers Jacobsen's whimsical visionary Mogens, who hums softly to himself the refrain--"_I Längsel, I Längsel jeg lever!_" (Longing, longing I live!). This tristful ideality is a note in literature not far to seek. The Danish poets have reflected Nature's moods with throbbing ecstasy, tinged with sombre forebodings. It comes with unexpected pathos as an ending to Christian Winther's poem _En Vandrer_ (A Wanderer), who, after a pilgrimage through woodland glades of summerland, exclaims at the sight of the cloud-capped mountains in the distance-- _Og--naar de er bestegne Imorgen--ak!--hvad saa?_ (And when they are climbed, to-morrow, alas! what then?) The outlook of the Copenhagen potter-artists reflects the genius of inspired vision. The face of Nature is transfigured. This interpretation links poesy and pensive art indissolubly together in these ceramic poems palpitating with sensitiveness.