There is a wild recklessness in Tegnér's letters of 1825, never before detected in him. He is asked, for instance, about his colleagues, the theologians. They are "Hesekiel's cherubs with the heads of oxen, yet without wings." And the bishops? "Born or manufactured imbeciles." And the Apostle Paul himself? "Grecian sophistry engrafted on Judaic crudeness." What does he say about royalty? "The power is as absurd as it is abominable when it falls into the hands of trivially, helplessness, or stupidity,--look at the state calendars of Europe." And what about providence? "'Providence is a conception without the slightest support.' I know very well what Lessing and the other Germans have maintained: that the world's history is the universal doom of providence. That is a pretty poetic fancy, and I, too, could well give expression to it in verse; but I do not seriously believe it." It seems to me as though in all these despairing words regarding human worth and female fidelity, regarding kings and bishops, Christianity and history, I heard an under-current of that thrilling elegy, "The Ode to Melancholy":-- "Ho, watchman, tell! How late may be the hour? Will this dark night forever find no end? A blood-stained moon peeps forth from clouds that lower, In tearful mood the stars their presence lend. As though in league with old-time, youthful power, My mocking pulses through my veins the life-blood send. With ev'ry throb how boundless is the anguish, Alas! my torn and bleeding heart must languish!" XI. No feature better illustrates Sweden's stage of civilization in the lifetime of Tegnér than the manner in which science and religion were connected. The relations between State and Church were so intimate, I had almost said so naïve, that a professor, simply as such, was at the same time a priest, and the natural, the looked-for advancement for a capable professor in Greek, botany, or history, was that he should be--made a bishop. It was a kind of government household arrangement that was a vivid reminder of the private housekeeping in Molière's "Harpagon." The university teacher, whose desk in Lund was exchanged on Sunday for the pulpit in the country, was a sort of Maître Jacque with his vestment above his professor's coat, and was in a position to ask the State, in the event of any perplexity, a question similar to that of the celebrated servant of the miser, who said: "If you please, is it your coachman or your cook whom you are addressing? I am both."