The foremost composers of orchestral music have been mentioned above. Sweden maintains her reputation as being the country of song through the compositions by Hedenblad, Kœrling, Svedbom, Sjœgren and Arlberg, while Sœderman has brought the form of the ballad, based on national folk music, to the highest development. The royal opera of Stockholm recently moved into new and elegant quarters erected on the site of the old opera house built by Gustavus III. It possesses, in Caroline Œstberg, Mathilde Linden, Arvid Œdman, C. F. Lundquist and J. Elmblad, dramatic singers of high rank, while Sweden, in Louise Pyk, Mathilde Grabow Taube and Solomon Smith, owns concert singers of great eminence. The international firmament of song has two Swedish stars of considerable magnitude in Sigrid Arnoldsson-Fischhoff, a colorature songstress, and Ellen Nordgren-Gullbrandson, a Wagner singer. The greatest actor is Emil Hillberg, a noble creator of Ibsen and Strindberg rôles, while the country recently lost its ablest comedian in the death of Knut Almlœf. Sweden of to-day offers an attractive picture of a country in a high degree cultured and prosperous, but no country or period is entitled to reap only benefits or enjoy undisturbed happiness. No progress is obtained without struggle and relapses, and a good must give way for something better. Beneath a surface generally smiling and serene formidable religious and social forces are in motion. The Swedish state church is divided into two camps, which resemble a high and a low church, out of which the whole may come forward strengthened and rejunevated. The various sects are not all satisfied with the degree of liberty they enjoy. A shallow materialistic movement of anti-religious tendencies, which styled itself Utilitarian, caused some sensation in the latter eighties and early nineties, more through the somewhat too severe manner in which it was suppressed than through any of its own merits. There are agitators for a separation of state and church who are opposed by some of the stanchest friends of a constitutional monarchy. A separation of educational and church affairs seems desirable. The yeomen have regained the predominant position in political life which was theirs in the time of the ancient Teutonic communities, using their power in a way which is not always beneficial to the other classes or the state at large. The great class of country population, which has been in vain striving to rise to the privileged class of landowners, if even on the smallest scale, have emigrated in vast numbers. The emigration, which has given America at least 1,200,000 inhabitants of Swedish birth or parentage, is one of the most astounding phenomena of the century. It has, to a large extent, subsided, but may be revived if the pressure for social improvement is found of no avail. The workingmen are resolved to gain a representation and are striving to attain the introduction of general suffrage.