much to his grief at parting from Lund. Still living contemporaries of Tegnér have, furthermore, communicated to me an occurrence which served as an essential motive for his contempt for humanity, especially his contempt for woman. He discovered that a very distinguished lady, with whom he was captivated, had yielded to the advances of a wholly unpolished, boorish man. Did it so greatly shock him who was himself faithless to find faithlessness everywhere, that he gave way completely to weariness of life? Did he simply tell himself that he was scorned because he was old and almost gray, and was he cast into a state of despair because the happiness of youth was at an end for him? Was he so agitated at finding animal passion where he had honored the crown of female culture and beauty, that in his morbid condition this indignation at a single individual grew to universal loathing of life? I cannot decide the question. I can only see that the bitter melancholy bored, in the once so trusty ship of his destiny, the hole through which the black waters of misanthropy and of insanity rushed in and deluged everything. During the shipwreck he wrote the melancholy lines:-- "For thee, mankind, with praise I am o'erflowing, God's image, thou, of true and perfect plan! And yet two lies betray thy record glowing,-- The one is woman hight, the other man. From songs of old were truth and honor flowing, They best were sung when cheating erst began. Thou child of heav'n! One truth thou ownest now,-- The mark of Cain, deep branded on thy brow. "A fiery mark, by God's own finger given, Why did I never heed the sign before! This smell of mould beneath yon starry heaven Doth poison vernal bloom for evermore; And by the grave alone the smell is given, Tho' wardens strict may guard the marble door. Alas! corruption is the soul of life, No pow'r can crush it; ev'rywhere 'tis rife." The state of discord into which the soul of Tegnér sank during the latter part of the time when "Fridthjof" was in the course of progress, has left its traces even in this cheerful and harmonious poem. One of the last-written cantos is that which bears the title "Fridthjof's Return." Its contents, by way of exception, are not modeled after the old Norse poem. Fridthjof returns home, learns that Ingeborg has been persuaded to become King Ring's wife, and in the first burst of his indignation exhausts himself in a stream of wrath at the faithlessness of the beloved object of his affections. No critical reader can fail to see how nearly related the following outburst is to the just-cited strophes of "The Ode to Melancholy."