“To this place, and to this circle it was,” says Mr. Böttiger, “that Lars Gustaf and Esaias Tegnér betook themselves one beautiful summer afternoon in July, 1797. They had traveled in a carriage over the road on which the owner of the mills had been obliged, twenty years before, to bring his wife home upon a pack-saddle; but they left the coach behind them and now came on foot at their leisure through the forest. Suddenly there burst upon their gaze the loveliest prospect. On a point of land, extending out into the water thickly set with islands, and encircled with birch and fir, lay like a beautiful promise the pleasant garden sloping in terraces to the sea, girded with the setting sun and covered with shady trees. ‘Who knows what dwells under their branches,’ perhaps the poet-stripling was already asking, with quickened pulses. _We_ know what dwelt beneath them. It was his good fortune he was coming here to meet; it was amidst this smiling and magnificent nature that his talents were destined to develop, his powers to be confirmed, his wit to grow; it was over the threshold of this patriarchic tabernacle that his knowledge was to be brought to ripeness, and his heart find a companion for life. “What here in the first room attracted his attention was the big book-cases. He found them richly supplied not only with Swedish, English, and French works, but also Greek and Roman authors of every sort. With greedy eyes he fixed himself especially by the side of a folio, on whose leathern back he read: _Homerus_. It was Castalio’s edition, printed in Basel in 1561. Here was an acquaintance to make. He made it immediately, and in a manner of which his own account is worthy of being told:—