ersational artist. In no
country in the world is there such a conversational fury as in Denmark.
A people has, of course, to do something with its surplus energy; and as
political opposition is sure to prove futile, there is nothing left to
do but to talk--not only politics, but art, poetry, religion, in fact,
everything under the sun. At the time, however, when Albrecht, the hero
of "Without a Centre," plied his nimble tongue, the country had a more
liberal Government, and criticism of the Ministry was not yet high
treason. But centuries of repression and the practical exclusion of the
bourgeoisie from public life were undoubtedly the fundamental causes of
this abnormal conversational activity. There is something soft and
emotional in the character of the Danes, which distinguishes them from
their Norwegian and Swedish kinsmen--an easily flowing lyrical vein,
which imparts a winning warmth and cordiality to their demeanor.
Socially they are the most charming people in the world. Also in this
respect Albrecht is typical, and the songs in which he gives vent to his
lyrical moods have such a rapturous melody that they keep humming in the
brain long after the reader has closed the book. It almost follows as a
psychological necessity that a man so richly endowed with the gift of
speech is feeble and halting in action. Like Tourgueneff's "Rudin," who
suffered from the same malady, he gains by the brilliancy and novelty of
his speech the love of a noble young girl, who, taking his phrases at
their face value, believes his heart to be as heroic as his tongue.
Like him, too, he fails in the critical moment; nay, restrained by petty
scruples, he even stays away from the rendezvous, and by his cowardice
loses what by his eloquence he had won.

A second novel, "Common People," which deals with low life in its most
varied phases, shows the same admirable truthfulness and exactness in
the character drawing, the same refreshing humor and universal sympathy
and comprehension. "The Story of Thomas Friis" undertakes to show, in
the career of a Danish youth who is meant to be typical, the futility of
the vainglorious imaginings with which the little nation has inflated
itself to a size out of proportion to its actual historic _role_. In
"The Old Pharmacy" the necessity of facing the changed reality of the
modern world, instead of desperately hugging an expiring past, is
enforced in a series of vivid and vigorous pictures of provincial lif