danger of barbarism lay in every
direction save that of keeping close to the tradition of Denmark, from
which all that was witty, graceful and civilized had proceeded.

Accordingly the theatre, at which exclusively Danish plays were acted,
in the Danish style, by Danish actors and actresses, was extremely
popular with the conservative class, who thought, by attendance on these
performances, to preserve the distinction of language and the varnish of
"high life" which came, with so much prestige, from Copenhagen. By the
patriotic party, on the other hand, the stage was looked upon with grave
suspicion as likely to undermine the purity of national feeling.

The earliest attempt at the opening of a National Theatre had been made
at Christiania by the Swede, J. P. Stroemberg, in 1827; this was not
successful, and his theatre was burned down in 1835. In it some effort
had been made to use the Norwegian idiom and to train native actors, but
it had been to no avail. The play-going public liked their plays to be
Danish, and even nationalists of a pronounced species could not deny
that dramas, like the great historical tragedies of Oehlenschlaeger,
many of which dealt enthusiastically with legends that were peculiarly
Norwegian, were as national as it was possible for poems by a foreign
poet to be. All this time, it must be remembered, Christiania was to
Copenhagen as Dublin till lately was to London, or as New York was
half a century ago. It is in the arts that the old colonial instinct of
dependence is most loath to disappear.

The party of the nationalists, however, had been steadily increasing in
activity, and the universal quickening of patriotic pulses in 1848 had
not been without its direct action upon Norway.

Nevertheless, for various reasons of internal policy, there was perhaps
no country in Europe where this period of seismic disturbance led to
less public turmoil than precisely here in the North. The accession of
a new king, Oscar I, in 1844, had been followed by a sense of renewed
national security; the peasants were satisfied that the fresh reign
would be favorable to their rights and liberties; and the monarch showed
every inclination to leave his country of Norway as much as possible to
its own devices. The result of all this was that '48 left no mark on the
internal history of the country, and the fever which burned in youthful
bosoms was mainly, if not entirely, intellectual and transcendental. The
young Cat