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4 i4 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
9. THE GENERAL SUBJECT: SUMMARY OF IMPRESSIONS.
FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLAND
AND SWEDEN. THE NOBILITY ALOOF FROM MUCH OF
NATIONAL LIFE. THE CLERGY AND THE KING CON
TROL RELIGION. TWO-FOLD RESULT: (i) THE
CHURCH RELATIVELY INDEPENDENT OF THE STATE ;
(2) IT HAS CLOSE CONNECTION WITH THE UNIVERSI
TIES. NEED FOR MORE SPIRITUAL TRAINING OF THE
CLERGY. THE DIACONATE. VALUE OF THE EPISCO
PATE TO SWEDEN. DIVISION OF DIOCESES AND
CLOSER RELATION TO THE PEOPLE NEEDED.
Having said thus much on the special subject, I must now
attempt a short general summary of the impressions which
I have formed from a study of this history.
I have several times remarked upon the difference
between England and Sweden in certain fundamental social
and political conditions which have affected its history in
the past, and still continue to do so. Sweden, unlike
England, was a settled rather than a conquered country.
Its civilization is founded on a community of small free
holders. Like England, it never accepted Roman law,
but, unlike England, it never had a feudal system. The
result has been that the nobility have formed a body with
interests easily detachable from, and often in opposition to,
those of the rest of the community. They have been
naturally prominent in time of war, just as they were in
the Viking Age, but in time of peace they have tended to
stand somewhat apart from the general development of the
country. Where they have governed, as in the Union
period and the
"
time of freedom," things have not pro
gressed favourably. There have, of course, been frequent
and striking exceptions of public-spirited noblemen, and
the names of Per Brahe, founder of the University of
Finland, and Jacob Gustaf De La Gardie, founder of many
Bell and Lancaster elementary schools and a normal school
for teachers 88
in the first quarter of the last century, and
38
See Cornelius: Hist., 291.
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