Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive SketchesVarious
History
Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches
Various
Historic buildings -- United States; Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
The climate of Denmark is damp like that of England, and its verdure
quite as beautiful. Copenhagen is prettily situated, and contains as
many objects of interest as any city of the size in Europe. It has fine
palaces, a military and a naval academy, admirable hospitals, an
extensive public library, a valuable collection of Northern antiquities,
a good gallery of pictures, and fine public walks. The vicinity of the
capital, although level, is highly cultivated, and affords a number of
charming residences. The most pleasant of these are situated on the
Strandvei, a road which runs along the shore of the Baltic to the
Dyr-Hange, a fine park well stocked with deer, which is a favorite place
of resort during the summer season to the Danes, who enjoy out-of-door
life as much as the inhabitants of a Southern clime. Many of the houses
which stand at intervals along the pleasant Strandvei are rented by
their proprietors to foreigners. Of one of those occupied by Mr. Wheaton
and his family, we engrave a cut, from a view painted by an artist of
the country. It stood, and still stands, at some distance from the road,
with a green lawn before it, and surrounded by lilacs, laburnums and
beech-trees, whose white bark and light green leaves give a peculiar
character to the scenery of Denmark. From the windows of the house the
blue waves of the Baltic, studded with every variety of sail, may be
seen, and in clear weather the opposite coast of Sweden is discernible.
The road is enlivened by the brilliant equipages of the Royal family and
nobility, by the Holstein-wagen, long open carriages which contain ten
persons, two only being seated abreast, and much used for parties of
pleasure, and by the women from the neighboring fishing villages, with
their green petticoats and red boddices, carrying large baskets of fish
to the city.
At the time of Mr. Wheaton's arrival in Denmark, Count Schimmelmann
occupied the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. This nobleman was
possessed of great talents and worth, and for nearly thirty years was
employed in the service of his government. Although a great part of his
income was derived from his estates in the Danish West Indies, it was
chiefly by his influence that the emancipation of the negroes was
effected. He was a generous patron of art and science, and one of the
earliest friends of Niebuhr. By such a man Mr. Wheaton could not fail to
be appreciated; and although the business transacted between them was of
a delicate, and to the Danish government, which had been greatly
impoverished by the war, of a trying nature, these meetings were always
pleasant to both. The negotiations were terminated in 1831, by the
signature of a convention, by which the American government obtained
nearly all it had demanded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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