him be 200 thalets." We visited the park, extensive and English-like, and the gardens running down to the lake side, its orchard, and the sward as green as a polished emerald. From the blue waters of the lake rises a small, very small, island, like those we keep for swans to build their nests on. Around the edges was planted a garland of that large creeper, with a leaf the size of a catalpa, so commonly seen running over summer-houses in England. It grew luxuriantly, its tendrils running down and floating in the limpid waters; then from the centre of this trailing border rose a pyramid of hollyhocks-red, yellow, white, and rose-coloured-dancing and nodding in the breeze: some stand stiff and stately, scarcely reflected in the lake below; whilst others, Narcissus-like, bend forward, longing to catch a glimpse of their golden and roseate petals in the pure mirror.

Langeland is termed un vrai jardin. Well, it may be one, for what I know-its villages, its hop-gardens, its orchards are prosperous, the wild vine is in full luxuriance and flower, its churches in good repair-all tells of a resident landlord who does his duty in that station of life in which he is placed-but somehow I don't care for fertility when travelling; we have enough of hedges and ditches in England; all is prosperous, and, like Alexander Selkirk's complaint of his beasts,

"Their tameness is shocking to me."

So we returned to our hotel, and the next morning drove over to the ferry, where we re-embarked for Lolland.

*Aristolochia sipho.

CHAPTER L.

Island of Lolland - Yule-feast of Olaf Hunger - Wendish families from Rugen - Royal ordinances - Lutheran clergy-Sir Edward the Pedagogue Priest - Shell of the Swedes - Mr. Ursins and our Prince George Birthplace of Erik Glipping — The Curate of Helsted and the mother's curse-Tale of Sir Otto Rud and King John - Revelations of St. Bridget - The ill-behaved nuns of Maribo-Grave of Eleanor Ulfeld- King Charles "forgets" the loan - Eleanor in captivity and death — The bricked-up lady of Hardenberg.

ISLAND OF LOLLAND OR LAALAND.*

The

August 17th.-THE Danes had told us it was a nasty passage over to Taars, and advised us to steam from Korsør,-which advice was gratefully received, but we followed the bent of our own inclinations. wind was really favourable; in four hours' time we were landed at Taars, and then had to wait that neverending hour till the horses were procured and ready.

Womankind is admirable in travelling; it rises early and bears fatigue, is easily contented at the inns with bed and board; it will do and put up with anything, except "wait." What are we to do? A whole hour, and those horses never come; infamous!-write to the postmaster, &c. &c. So, for very peace sake, we (for the family is now increased by the arrival of the Philistines, or, in plain English, a black-and-tan terrier called Vic, and two schoolboys from Harrow) throw up a barricade at once against all possible grumblings; we undress, we

*The Danes spell it either way.

swim out to sea, and remain floating in the water; if any one approaches us are "just coming out," and so the hour glides by, the horses arrive, and we scramble out, dress, and reappear just in time to escape scolding, and not keep people waiting.

According to Helvaderus, a chronicler of early date, the flat fertile island of Lolland was first populated some 2000 years after the world's creation by men from Jutland; and at as early a period as the seventh century did a wandering apostle of the true faith, Wilibrod by name, preach Christianity to the Pagans of this remote region, without success, however, it appears; for it was not until Harald Blue-Tooth tacked on Lolland to his new-founded diocese of Odense, that Christianity can be said to have been there established even in name. Not that the introduction of the new faith profited the inhabitants much; indeed, how could it? a creed forced upon a people by fire and sword, while they still clung in their inmost hearts to the worship of Thor, Odin, and other Scandinavian heroes, whose bloody deeds and wild traditions were more in accordance with the barbarous fierceness of the age than the milder tenets of Christianity.

Terrible were the sufferings of the unhappy islanders during the succeeding century, from plague, pestilence, and famine. Thousands are said to have perished from hunger alone, as well as from the devastations of the epidemic. So great was the scarcity, the bareness of the land, that it is related when King Olaf Hunger (famine was his name) himself sat down on one Christmas Eve to keep the Yule-feast together with his Court, there was no bread, no, not one wheaten loaf served on the royal table. A very dull Christmas, with such poor

fare, he must have had of it. Still, among these scourges of famine and plague, churches rose in the land. Three still exist, founded within that unlucky century.

Many of the names still to be met with in the sister isles of Lolland and Falster will sound strange to those accustomed to the Danish tongue-Kramnitze, Tillitze, Corselitze; these are of Wendish origin, Wendish names brought over by the settlers from the heathen isle of Rugen. No sooner did the Christian faith get hold among the people than down came the Wends upon the islanders; they burned, they pillaged and laid wastejust as the Northmen themselves did on our English coasts-till Prince Prislav sat down comfortably in Lolland, with his Wendish followers and his royal bride, and ended his existence. Later her towns were burnt by Marsk Stig, and his pirate-band came in for a good share of the black pest (Digerdoden). Lolland was given in dower, pawned, and taken out again. In certain years there was great plenty-all provisions wondrous cheap; but, as those years followed fast on some great calamity, it may be safely supposed that butter, corn, and fish were cheap, simply because there was nobody to eat them.

The kings appear to have been most exacting, and their lords spiritual, the bishops of Odense, more irritating still. Such laws against the chase! No peasant allowed to keep more than one dog, or to slay even a fox detected in the robbing of his hen-roost. Still, some of the ordinances were of good effect, particularly as regards the fertilisation of the land: by one of these, in the year 1446, every peasant as well as every child in Lolland is forced to plant thirty hop-plants, six grafted pear and apple trees, before the

Volborg-Day, which answers to our St. John's, under a penalty of three silver marks. This command may appear somewhat arbitrary, but it was issued after a year of excessive cold, during which the hop-gardens and orchards of the island had greatly suffered. But to make up for these annoyances, in the year 1399 the waters of the Baltic froze so hard the islanders skated over to Lubec on the solid ice.

To the fearful pest of 1565 upwards of 13,000 men fell victims: among them were numbered twenty-eight parsons, all men of singular learning-so say the chroniclers at least-though I doubt if the loss was great. These early reformed priests were only Lutheran by courtesy; they took so unkindly to the "starched ruff” their diocesans of Odense found it necessary to impose a heavy fine on those who still persisted in the wearing of Catholic vestments; and as for their wives, they dizened themselves out so in gold, velvet, and damask stuffs, that the bishops, losing all patience, issued such sumptuary laws on the subject of their dress as soon settled the business.

I have been dipping to-day into an old book written upon the islands of Lolland and Falster in the earlier part of the last century-one of those works, like our own county-histories, useful as books of reference, full of dry statistics, mingled with queer anecdotes, genealogies, and what not. Among other matters is a short notice of the life of each Lutheran parish-priest from the Reformation downwards. The memoirs of these simple pastors of the reformed faith are interesting, though many of the anecdotes related are absurd, and have a tendency to turn the clergy into ridicule. No one could cite them as shining lights of the Church,

(