for it in either case. Like many another popular
novelist, he varnished them with the particular tint of excellence or
depravity that might suit his purpose, stuffed their heads with bran and
their bellies with sawdust, but troubled himself little about what lay
beneath the epidermis. There was something _naive_ and juvenile in his
view of life which appealed to the large mass of half-educated people;
and the very absence of any subtle literary art tended further to
increase his public. Many of his books, notably "The Youth of Valdemar
Krone" (_Valdemar Krone's Ungdomshistorie_), "The Swedes at Kronborg"
(_Svenskerne paa Kronborg_), have achieved an extraordinary success. The
former deals with contemporary life, while the latter expurgates and
embellishes history after the manner of Walter Scott. Two subsequent
novels, "The Family Nordby" and "Johannes Falk," are, like all of
Ewald's writings, pervaded by a robust optimism and a warm Danish
sentiment, which in a large measure account for their popularity with
the public of the circulating libraries.

A lesser share of the same kind of popularity has fallen to the lot of
an author of a much higher order--Wilhelm Bergsoee (born 1835). His
voluminous novel "Fra Piazza del Popolo" (1860) made a sensation in its
day, and "From the Old Factory" (1869), which constructively is a
maturer book, is likewise full of fascination. The description of the
doings of the artistic guild in Rome, which occupies a considerable
portion of the former work, is delightful, though intermingled with a
deal of superfluous mysticism and romantic entanglements which were then
held to be absolutely indispensable. "In the Sabine Mountains" (1871),
the scene of which is laid in Genazzano during the struggle for Italian
independence, is a trifle too prolix; and its effect is lessened by the
old-fashioned epistolary form. Signor Carnevale, the revolutionary
apothecary, is, however, a very amusing figure, and would be still
better if he were not caricatured. The tendency to screw the characters
up above the normal--to tune them up to concert pitch as it
were--interferes seriously with the pleasure which the book otherwise
might yield.

The conception of art as something wholly distinct from and above nature
animates all Bergsoee's productions. The theory of fiction which R. L.
Stevenson has so eloquently propounded has found an able practitioner in
him. For all that, I am indebted to Bergsoee's two Ital