Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - LII - Olsker
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chap. LU.
HAMMERSHUUS.
339
taken at the town of Allinge, in the act of embarking
on board a fishing-boat, by Governor Fuchs, who was
afterwards stabbed by their son Christian, in the streets
of Brussels, to revenge his father’s imprisonment. When
separated from her husband, Eleanor consoled him with
these well-known lines—
“ Rebus in adversis, facile est contemnere mortem,
Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest.”
There is an old Danish proverb—as well as the
French one*—when “ qvinde taler Latin,” &c.—when
a woman talks Latin, no good will come of it;
which in Eleanor’s case was carried out. Later
Ham-mershuus fell into decay, was not, for a wonder, blown
up by the Swedes in the seventeenth century, but got
half pulled down for its materials in the eighteenth,
at the period when everything was destroyed, from a
downright spirit of Vandalism. The beauty of a ruin
consists not in its extent, but rather in the manner of its
fall; and Hammershuus, like Julius Cæsar, and Iphigenia
in Aulis, in the Greek play, has had the good taste to
fall 11 gracefully.” It stands on an isolated hill formed
by nature. On one side it overlooks the waters of the
Baltic—the Swedish coast for a background; on the
opposite side a natural ravine, at the foot a stream
of running water. At the period of its might and
power this rivulet, dammed up, rendered approach by
this side impossible. Whichever way the eye turns’
you gaze enraptured with the beauty of the site: the
bright sparkling sea, and its long line of purple coast,
* Soleil qui luiserne au matin.
Enfant qui boit du vin.
Femme qui parle Latin,
Font toujours mauvaise fin.
Z 2
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
