shapes itself in his mind is a national and northern romantic ideal. It is a luminous image of stormily progressive and remodelling power, partly of a warlike, partly of a civilizing nature. All of the forms which Tegnér, in the course of years, has shown marked preference for delineating, have been invested with it. In one of his university addresses, for instance, he undertook to give a characterization of Luther. In order to accomplish this he places his hero in the point of view from which it is his wont to consider men of action. First he emphatically declares that every word and action of Luther bore the stamp of "overwhelming vigor." "There was something chivalrous, in fact, I might almost say, romantic, in his character, his every undertaking.... His action was like a battle completed, his word like one just begun. He was one of those mighty souls who, like certain trees, flourish only amid storms. His grand, adventurous life always seemed to me like a heroic poem, with its struggles and its final victory." We are all the more strongly impressed with the character of the orator from this very one-sided treatment of a many-sided theme when we note that Tegnér has therein presented determining qualities which, with slightly altered attributes, he can apply a few years later, almost word for word, to King Gustavus III. of Sweden, whose personality differs as widely as possible from that of Luther. Scarcely any proof is needed to show that between the sturdy Saxon reformer and the theatrical, Gallicized, and skeptical monarch there was no other bond of union than that which Tegnér's admiration created for both. Tegnér said of Gustavus, "In his nature there was not only something grand, but at the same time something chivalrous; lofty heroic power was displayed in him, not with shield and sword, but with the lightest drapery of grace. He was a grand, romantic, heroic poem, with all its adventures and fascinations, but at the same time with the tenderest effusions of the heart and the most wanton gambols of joy." Grandeur, strength, and adventurous romance, then, are the common fundamental qualities for both Luther and Gustavus; both are knights of chivalry, and the lives of both appear to Tegnér like a romantic epic poem. What else and what more could he say about Fridthjof? What else, in truth, has he said, when in his own characterization he called attention to the fresh life, the bold defiance, and the haughtiness of this hero and this heroic poem! In this tendency we have the deepest, firmest foundation on which his conceptions of heroic ideals gradually came to rest.