ht of popular meetings,
torchlight processions of students and passionate appeals to local
sentiment. Trivial causes, such as those which we have chronicled
earlier, might seem to lead up to a division, but that division was
really inherent in the growth of the two men.

Ibsen, however, was not wholly a gainer at first even in genius, by the
separation. It cut him off from Norway too entirely, and it threw him
into the arms of Germany. There were thirteen years in which Ibsen
and Bjoernson were nothing to one another, and these were not years of
unmingled mental happiness for either of them. But during this long
period each of these very remarkable men "came into his kingdom," and
when there was no longer any chance that either of there could warp the
nature of the other, fate brought them once more together.

The reconciliation began, of course, with a gracious movement from
Bjoernson. At the end of 1880, writing for American readers, Bjoernson
had the generous candor to say: "I think I have a pretty thorough
acquaintance with the dramatic literature of the world, and I have not
the slightest hesitation in saying that Henrik Ibsen possesses more
dramatic power than any other play-writer of our day." When we remember
that, in France alone, Augier and Dumas _fils_ and Hugo, Halevy and
Meilhac and Labiche, were all of them alive, the compliment, though a
sound, was a vivid one. Sooner or later, everything that was said about
Ibsen, though it were whispered in Choctaw behind the altar of a Burmese
temple, came round to Ibsen's ears, and this handsome tribute from
the rival produced its effect. And when, shortly afterwards, still in
America, Bjoernson was nearly killed in a railway accident, Ibsen
broke the long silence by writing to him a most cordial letter of
congratulation.

The next incident was the publication of _Ghosts_, when Bjoernson, now
thoroughly roused, stood out almost alone, throwing the vast prestige
of his judgment into the empty scale against the otherwise unanimous
black-balling. Then the reconcilement was full and fraternal, and Ibsen
wrote from Rome (January 24, 1882), with an emotion rare indeed for him:
"The only man in Norway who has frankly, boldly and generously taken
my part is Bjoernson. It is just like him; he has, in truth, a great, a
kingly soul; and I shall never forget what he has done now." Six months
later, on occasion of Bjoernson's jubilee, Ibsen telegraphed: "My thanks
for the work