icksborg Castle, with a
diamond ring,--

"Lord keep me innocent: make others great."

One has only to study for a moment the serene and beautiful face of
the Queen, as exhibited in Rosenborg Palace, to feel entire
confidence in her innocence.

If you come to Elsinore the guide will show you what is called
Hamlet's grave, located in a small grove of trees, where some cunning
hands long ago erected a rude mound of stones. Shakspeare, who had a
royal way of committing anachronisms, made Hamlet live in this place
after the introduction of gunpowder, whereas, if any such person ever
did exist, it was centuries earlier and hundreds of miles farther
north upon the mainland, in what is now Jutland. However, that is
unimportant. Do not leave Elsinore without visiting Ophelia's fatal
brook! To be sure it is not large enough for a duck to swim in, but a
little stretch of the imagination will overcome all local
discrepancies.

Far back in Danish legendary story, a time when history fades into
fable, it is said there was a Hamlet in northern Denmark, but it was
long before the birth of Christ. His father was not a king, but a
famous pirate chief who governed Jutland in conjunction with his
brother. Hamlet's father married the daughter of a Danish king, the
issue being Hamlet. His uncle, according to the ancient story, did
murder Hamlet's father and afterwards married his mother; and this
was the basis of Shakspeare's grand production.

The great, gloomy-looking castle of Kronborg, which has stood
sentinel here for three centuries, would require two thousand men and
more to defend it in time of war, but modern gunnery has rendered
it, for all offensive purposes, of no account. The Sound, which at
Copenhagen is about twenty miles wide, here narrows to two, the old
fort of Helsingborg on the Swedish coast being in full view. Thus the
passage here forms the natural gate to the Baltic. There are
delightful drives in the environs of Elsinore presenting land and sea
views of exquisite loveliness, the water-side bristling with reefs,
rocks, and lighthouses, while that of the land is picturesque with
villas, groves, and cultivated meads.

CHAPTER III.

Gottenburg. -- Ruins of Elfsborg. -- Gustavus Adolphus. -- A
Wrecked Monument. -- The Girdle-Duellists. -- Emigration to
America. -- Public and Private Gardens. -- A Kindly People. --
The Goetha Canal. -- Falls of Trollhaetta. -- Dainty Wild-Flowers.
-- Water-ways.