第47章 LETTER XVIII(1)

The distance from Elsineur to Copenhagen is twenty-two miles;the road is very good,over a flat country diversified with wood,mostly beech,and decent mansions.There appeared to be a great quantity of corn land,and the soil looked much more fertile than it is in general so near the sea.The rising grounds,indeed,were very few,and around Copenhagen it is a perfect plain;of course has nothing to recommend it but cultivation,not decorations.If I say that the houses did not disgust me,I tell you all I remember of them,for Icannot recollect any pleasurable sensations they excited,or that any object,produced by nature or art,took me out of myself.The view of the city,as we drew near,was rather grand,but without any striking feature to interest the imagination,excepting the trees which shade the footpaths.

Just before I reached Copenhagen I saw a number of tents on a wide plain,and supposed that the rage for encampments had reached this city;but I soon discovered that they were the asylum of many of the poor families who had been driven out of their habitations by the late fire.

Entering soon after,I passed amongst the dust and rubbish it had left,affrighted by viewing the extent of the devastation,for at least a quarter of the city had been destroyed.There was little in the appearance of fallen bricks and stacks of chimneys to allure the imagination into soothing melancholy reveries;nothing to attract the eye of taste,but much to afflict the benevolent heart.The depredations of time have always something in them to employ the fancy,or lead to musing on subjects which,withdrawing the mind from objects of sense,seem to give it new dignity;but here I was treading on live ashes.The sufferers were still under the pressure of the misery occasioned by this dreadful conflagration.I could not take refuge in the thought:they suffered,but they are no more!a reflection I frequently summon to calm my mind when sympathy rises to anguish.I therefore desired the driver to hasten to the hotel recommended to me,that I might avert my eyes and snap the train of thinking which had sent me into all the corners of the city in search of houseless heads.

This morning I have been walking round the town,till I am weary of observing the ravages.I had often heard the Danes,even those who had seen Paris and London,speak of Copenhagen with rapture.

Certainly I have seen it in a very disadvantageous light,some of the best streets having been burnt,and the whole place thrown into confusion.Still the utmost that can,or could ever,I believe,have been said in its praise,might be comprised in a few words.

The streets are open,and many of the houses large;but I saw nothing to rouse the idea of elegance or grandeur,if I except the circus where the king and prince royal reside.

The palace,which was consumed about two years ago,must have been a handsome,spacious building;the stone-work is still standing,and a great number of the poor,during the late fire,took refuge in its ruins till they could find some other abode.Beds were thrown on the landing-places of the grand staircase,where whole families crept from the cold,and every little nook is boarded up as a retreat for some poor creatures deprived of their home.At present a roof may be sufficient to shelter them from the night air;but as the season advances,the extent of the calamity will be more severely felt,I fear,though the exertions on the part of Government are very considerable.Private charity has also,no doubt,done much to alleviate the misery which obtrudes itself at every turn;still,public spirit appears to me to be hardly alive here.Had it existed,the conflagration might have been smothered in the beginning,as it was at last,by tearing down several houses before the flames had reached them.To this the inhabitants would not consent;and the prince royal not having sufficient energy of character to know when he ought to be absolute,calmly let them pursue their own course,till the whole city seemed to be threatened with destruction.Adhering,with puerile scrupulosity,to the law which he has imposed on himself,of acting exactly right,he did wrong by idly lamenting whilst he marked the progress of a mischief that one decided step would have stopped.He was afterwards obliged to resort to violent measures;but then,who could blame him?And,to avoid censure,what sacrifices are not made by weak minds?