particular, for one coming freshly
from the grace and sweetness, the delicate, cultivated warmth of
Copenhagen. The political conditions which led to the writing of _The
League of Youth_ are old history now. There was the "liberal" element in
Norwegian politics, which was in 1868 becoming rapidly stronger and more
hampering to the Government, and there was the increasing influence of
Soeren Jaabaek (1814-94), a peasant farmer of ultra-socialistic views,
who had, almost alone, opposed in the Storthing the grant of any
pensions to poets, and whose name was an abomination to Ibsen.

Now Bjoernson, in the development of his career as a political publicist,
had been flirting more and more outrageously with these extreme ideas
and this truculent peasant party. He had even burned incense before
Jaabaek, who was the accursed Thing. Ibsen, from the perspective of
Dresden, genuinely believed that Bjoernson, with his ardor and his energy
and his eloquence, war, becoming a national danger. We have seen that
Bjoernson had piqued Ibsen's vanity about _Peer Gynt_, and nothing
exasperates a friendship more fatally than public principle grafted on
a private slight. Moreover, the whole nature of Bjoernson was gregarious,
that of Ibsen solitary; Bjoernson must always be leading the majority,
Ibsen had scuples of conscience if ten persons agreed with him. They
were doomed to disagreement. Meanwhile, Ibsen burned his ships by
creating the figure of Stensgaard, in _The League of Youth_, a frothy
and mischievous demagogue whose rhetoric irresistibly reminded every
one of Bjoernson's rolling oratory. What Bjoernson, not without dignity,
objected to was not so much the personal attack, as that the whole play
attempted "to paint our young party of liberty as a troop of pushing,
phrase-mongering adventurers, whose patriotism lay solely in their
words." Ibsen acknowledged that that was exactly his opinion of them,
and what could follow for such a disjointed friendship but anger and
silence?

The year 1869, which we now enter, is remarkable in the career of Ibsen
as being that in which he travelled most, and appeared on the surface of
society in the greatest number of capacities. He was enabled to do this
by a considerable increase in his pension. First of all, he was induced
to pay a visit of some months to Stockholm, being seized with a sudden
strong desire to study conditions in Sweden, a country which he had
hitherto professed to dislike. He