The soldiers around them,
in the garrison; they commonly, it is natural to conclude, go out
more confirmed and more expert knaves than when they entered.
It is not necessary to trace the origin of the association of ideas
which led me to think that the stars and gold keys, which surrounded
me the evening before, disgraced the wearers as much as the fetters
I was viewing - perhaps more. I even began to investigate the
reason, which led me to suspect that the former produced the latter.
The Norwegians are extravagantly fond of courtly distinction, and of
titles, though they have no immunities annexed to them, and are
easily purchased. The proprietors of mines have many privileges:
they are almost exempt from taxes, and the peasantry born on their
estates, as well as those on the counts', are not born soldiers or
sailors.
One distinction, or rather trophy of nobility, which I might have
occurred to the Hottentots, amused me; it was a bunch of hog's
bristles placed on the horses' heads, surmounting that part of the
harness to which a round piece of brass often dangles, fatiguing the
eye with its idle motion.
From the fortress I returned to my lodging, and quickly was taken
out of town to be shown a pretty villa, and English garden. To a
Norwegian both might have been objects of curiosity; and of use, by
exciting to the comparison which leads to improvement. But whilst I
gazed, I was employed in restoring the place to nature, or taste, by
giving it the character of the surrounding scene. Serpentine walks,
and flowering-shrubs, looked trifling in a grand recess of the
rooks, shaded by towering pines. Groves of smaller trees might have
been sheltered under them, which would have melted into the
landscape, displaying only the art which ought to point out the
vicinity of a human abode, furnished with some elegance. But few
people have sufficient taste to discern, that the art of
embellishing consists in interesting, not in astonishing.
Christiania is certainly very pleasantly situated, and the environs
I passed through, during this ride, afforded many fine and
cultivated prospects; but, excepting the first view approaching to
it, rarely present any combination of objects so strikingly new, or
picturesque, as to command remembrance. Adieu!
LETTER XIV.
Christiania is a clean, neat city; but it has none of the graces of
architecture, which ought to keep pace with the refining manners of
a people - or the outside of the house will disgrace the inside,
giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of taste.
Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than
Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a
characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the
period when they were erected; but size, without grandeur or
elegance, has an emphatical stamp of meanness, of poverty of
conception, which only a commercial spirit could give.
