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160 LETTERS.
in the periodical ‘Heimdal’ did not give me any more favorable
or higher ideas than of many other ephemeral, pretty, poetical
effusions, of which that periodical has issued baptismal certificates.
But how shall I be able to describe to you the deep impression of
true delight and warm interest which the first perusal of your
work made upon me, whilst reading it in a single night. Full of
this impression, I hastened on the following day to Franzén, anx-
ious to express to him the gratitude which I felt for the veracious
testimony which he had given to the younger sister of his Muse,
and telling him that I would willingly make a pilgrimage of many,
many miles with naked feet, in order to behold the features and
listen to the voice of her who, in a manner so living, so tender, so
witty, and so affecting, takes us by storm in every line of her
splendid poetry.
““¢Uuglaublich! Wie! Ein solches Madchen hatte mein hand
und ich, und ich erfahr’ es heute zum ersten Mal ?’
“ So exclaimed Don Carlos, and still he found himself deceived !
I know, however, for certain, whom I ean trust. An artful, co-
quettish beauty, such as Eboli, may perhaps, during a few moments
of conversation, act a character foreign to herself; but a poetess,
such as she who has written these ‘ Sketches,’ is ‘herself alone ;’
she is, whether in the playfulness or in the earnestness of her
genius, and in all other circumstances of life, genuine, innocent,
and true to her soul’s inspirations.
““See here, my noble. benefactress! my candid confession of
faith. I am proud that our literature can boast of sucli an author-
ess; but it is humiliating to our critics, that the first volume of
your work should have vegetated amongst them in silence for
more than two years, and that not one amongst them all should
have discovered the high lineage and innate wealth of the modest
stranger. But then you have restricted yourself to ‘every-day
_ life,’ and it is not there where these gentlemen try to discover the
realms of poetry, but rather among the stately palaces of the
great. I am acquainted with the choicest literature of most coun-
tries, but I defy them all to produce, in the genre which you have
chosen, more beautiful or truer pictures, not only of reality, but
also of the ideal world which lives and breathes within us. No-
body in our country, either man or woman, has, as far as I am
aware, hitherto understood living events more thoroughly, with
the penetrating eye of genius, nor drawn with a more masterly
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