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254
COPENHAGEN.
Chap. XVI.
Catholic relics, altarpieces, and carvings: — two St.
Georges and the Dragon, large as life (one of which is
by Briiggeman); armour and shields, battle-axes,
two-handed swords, more jewellery, more carvings, painted
missals, parchment deeds, seals of abbeys and kings;
Runic almanacs and monkish calendars; more censers,
with, tliis time, intelligible Runic characters; chalices
of fine workmanship. The ivory portable altar of
Christian I., presented, in 1474, by him to the Pope. It
represents the life of St. Olaf; and a most disturbed life
his must have been, too, for everybody seems knocking
or cutting off everybody else’s head. In more recent
times the Pope returned this offering to Frederic IV.
when he visited Italy, as being more valuable to him as
a relic of his ancestor.
We now enter the great salle; but, before examining
its contents, let us admire the tapestry, a chronological
gathering of the kings of Denmark, beginning with
whom I can’t exactly say, for one part is missing (burnt,
as everything is sooner or later in Denmark), and
another part is at Frederiksborg Castle; but it ends
with Christian IV., represented as a boy, with the Castle
of Kronborg and Elsinore in the background. I love old
tapestry, and delight to examine it, and to make out
all the kings, arrayed in their crowns and sceptres,
looking so natural in the open air. Erik the Pomeranian,
evidently en retraite in Gothland, his crown all
topsyturvy in the mud; Christian II., looking very miserable,
his crown off, too, and his sceptre broken in two, cracked
by a blow from his uncle and neighbour Frederic I.
Nothing like this sort of thing to make you study
history. And then these hangings were the work of
two Scotch brothers, of the name of King, who settled
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