f the unknown, and on the other hand gave to the unreal--to folk
tale and fairy lore and local superstition--the effectiveness of
convincing fact. "Selma Lagerloef," says the Swedish composer,
Hugo Alfven, "is like sitting in the dusk of a Spanish cathedral ...
afterward one does not know whether what he has seen was dream or
reality, but certainly he has been on holy ground." The average
mind, whether Swedish or Anglo-Saxon, soon wearies of heartless
preciseness in literature and welcomes an idealism as wholesome as
that of Miss Lagerloef. Furthermore, the Swedish authoress attracts
her readers by a diction unique unto herself, as singular as the
English sentences of Charles Lamb. Her style may be described as
prose rhapsody held in restraint, at times passionately breaking
its bonds.

Miss Lagerloef has not been without her share of life's perplexities
and of contact with her fellowmen, it is by intuition that she
_works_ rather than by experience. Otherwise, she could not have
depicted in her books such a multitude of characters from all parts
of Europe. She sees character with woman's warm and delicate
sympathy and with the clear vision of childhood. "Selma Lagerloef,"
declared the Swedish critic, Oscar Levertin, "has the eyes of a
child and the heart of a child." This naivete is responsible for
the simplicity of her character types. Deep and sure they may be,
but never too complex for the reader to comprehend. The more varied
characters--as the critic Johan Mortensen has pointed out--like
Hellgum, the mystic in "Jerusalem," are merely indicated and
shadowy. How unlike Ibsen! Selma Lagerloef takes her delight, not in
developing the psychology of the unusual, but in analyzing the
motives and emotions of the normal mind. This accounts for the
comforting feeling of satisfaction and familiarity which comes over
one reading the chronicles of events so exceptionable as those
which occur in "Jerusalem."

In one of her books, "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils," Miss
Lagerloef has sketched the national character of mart Swedish people
in reference to the various landscapes visited by the wild goose in
its flight. In another romance, "Goesta Berling," she has interpreted
the life of the province at Vermland, where she herself was born
on a farmstead in 1858. A love of starlight, violins, and dancing,
a temperament easily provoked to a laughing abandon of life's
tragedy characterizes the folk of Vermland and the impecunious