The opposing voices were hushed by the healthy taste for all that was genuine which has almost everywhere been preserved by the great reading-world, but the rapidity of the success was dependent on the circumstance that the ruling Scandinavian party took the new poetry under its protection and proclaimed the poet's fame abroad with a flourish of trumpets. In those days the adherents of the national liberal party of the three Scandinavian countries were favorably inclined to the peasant in literature. People loved the peasant in the abstract; the real, concrete peasant was yet unknown to them. They had granted him the right of suffrage, they had felt convinced that he would continue throughout all time to permit himself to be guided by those "who had conferred on him the gift of freedom," and they lived in hopes that he would never use this "freedom" for any other purpose than to elect and honor his city benefactors. For this reason the peasant at that time was still called by the organs of the great cities the healthy pith of the people; in him was seen the scion of the knights of antiquity; he was celebrated in song and addressed in flattering terms. Works of fiction which glorified his life with extreme delicacy, and at the same time in a new and elevated style, were sure of an enthusiastic reception in Denmark, especially when they originated in one of the sister-countries, which stood almost nearer to the heart of every true Scandinavian than his own fatherland. The blasé citizen of Copenhagen had, moreover, the same predilection for the peasant novels of Björnson that in the past century had been cherished for pastoral romances and pastoral plays. The world had now become too critical to desire shepherdesses with red crooks, and lambs with red silk ribbons about their necks; but a substitute was found in the Norwegian lads and lasses, whose emotional life was as thoroughly refined and deep as that of a student or a young lady of the higher circles.