Tall, Pretentious Warehouses Crowded Down To The Water's Edge, Like Bullies At A Public Show Elbowing To The Foremost Rank, Orderly Streets Stretched In Quiet Rows At Right Angles With Each Other, And Pretty Villas With Green Cinctures Sloped Away Towards The Hills.

In the midst rose the king's palace, the largest wooden edifice in Europe, while the old grey cathedral - stately

And grand, in spite of the slow destruction of the elements, the mutilations of man's hands, or his yet more degrading rough-cast and stucco reparations - still towered above the perishable wooden buildings at his feet, with the solemn pride which befits the shrine of a royal saint.

I cannot tell you with what eagerness I drank in all the features of this lovely scene; at least, such features as Time can hardly alter - the glancing river, from whence the city's ancient name of Nidaros, or "mouth of the Nid," is derived, - the rocky island of Munkholm, the bluff of Lade, - the land-locked fiord and its pleasant hills, beyond whose grey stony ridges I knew must lie the fatal battle-field of Sticklestad. Every spot to me was full of interest, - but an interest noways connected with the neat green villas, the rectangular streets, and the obtrusive warehouses. These signs of a modern humdrum prosperity seemed to melt away before my eyes as I gazed from the schooner's deck, and the accessories of an elder time came to furnish the landscape, - the clumsy merchantmen lazily swaying with the tide, darkened into armed galleys with their rows of glittering shields, - the snug, bourgeois-looking town shrank into the quaint proportions of the huddled ancient Nidaros, - and the old marauding days, with their shadowy line of grand old pirate kings, rose up with welcome vividness before my mind.

What picture shall I try to conjure from the past, to live in your fancy, as it does in mine?

Let the setting be these very hills, - flooded by this same cold, steely sunshine. In the midst stands a stalwart form, in quaint but regal attire. Hot blood deepens the colour of his sun-bronzed cheek; an iron purpose gleams in his earnest eyes, like the flash of a drawn sword; a circlet of gold binds the massive brow, and from beneath it stream to below his waist thick masses of hair, of that dusky red which glows like the heart of a furnace in the sunlight, but deepens earth-brown in the shadow. By his side stands a fair woman; her demure and heavy-lidded eyes are seldom lifted from the earth, which yet they seem to scorn, but the king's eyes rest on her, and many looks are turned towards him. A multitude is present, moved by one great event, swayed by a thousand passions, - some with garrulous throats full of base adulation and an unworthy joy, - some pale, self-scorning, with averted looks, and hands that twitch instinctively at their idle daggers, then drop hopeless, harmless at their sides.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 130 of 151
Words from 68502 to 69002 of 79667