"Huzzah! religion is Jesuit hight And Jacobin every human claim; The world is free and the raven is white; Long life to the Pope and him we'll not name! I'll go to Germany, famed in story, There sonnets I'll write to our age's glory. "Thou'rt welcome, New Year, with thy lies and deceit, Thy mysteries, murders, and dubious worth! A ball from thy arquebus now would be sweet, I trust thou wilt fire on our earth. Her brain is aglow, she is restless and dreary, One shot, and she need no longer be weary." This public expression of opinion strictly corresponds to Tegnér's private letters of the same period. In 1813 he writes:--"Whoever fancies that Europe can be free helped by Russians and their consorts, or that the success of the Cossacks is of advantage to Sweden, may be right, but his views and mine widely differ. I was born and I grew up in hatred of the barbarians, and I hope, too, to die in the same frame of mind, untainted by modern sophistry." In 1814 he gives vent to still greater dejection, as follows: "Who can believe in the restoration of European equilibrium; or rejoice at the victory of absolute worthlessness over power and genius?" In 1817, finally, with marvellous accuracy, he characterizes the spiritual reaction, in the following words: "Politics is the main essential; the inner revolution of the tendency of thought is on the whole political; the religious and scientific transformations we are experiencing, are both more or less chance results and reactionary processes, and are, therefore, without significance or permanence. When the masonry of a house is completed, the scaffolding falls away. It is true that these results at the first glance appear serious enough; but does not their exaggerated and caricature-like nature, the hair-splitting tendency of science, and the monastic flavor of religion, betray conclusively that they are merely a reaction against the former practical and freethinking spirit? Does it not seem now as though people were both profound and pious out of spite, and because twenty years ago it was deemed boorish to be either? ... The most important thing of all would doubtless be a change of base in religious dogmas, for religious movements when genuine, are also practical; but what reason have we to conclude that such a change exists among the majority, except as a fashion and a grimace, and with many perhaps from still worse motives?"