He Is Necessarily Content
To Regret His Araminta In The Gross, And To Omit The
Petty Details Of A Too Pedantic Sorrow.
The fact is, we are an eminently practical people, and
are easily taught to accept "the irrevocable," if not
without regret, at least with a philosophy which repudiates
all superfluous methods of showing it.
DECENT is the
usual and appropriate term applied to our churchyard
solemnities, and we are not only "content to dwell in
decencies for ever," but to die, and be buried in them.
The cathedral loses a little of its poetical physiognomy
on a near approach. Modern restoration has done something
to spoil the outside, and modern refinement a good deal
to degrade the interior with pews and partitions; but it
is a very fine building, and worthy of its metropolitan
dignity. I am told that the very church built by Magnus
the Good, - son of Saint Olave - over his father's remains,
and finished by his uncle Harald Hardrada, is, or rather
was, included in the walls of the cathedral; and though
successive catastrophes by fire have perhaps left but
little of the original building standing, I like to think
that some of these huge stones were lifted to their place
under the eyes of Harald The Stern. It was on the eve of
his last fatal expedition against our own Harold of
England that the shrine of St. Olave was opened by the
king, who, having clipped the hair and nails of the dead
saint (most probably as relics, efficacious for the
protection of himself and followers), then locked the
shrine, and threw the keys into the Nid. Its secrets from
that day were respected until the profane hands of Lutheran
Danes carried it bodily away, with all the gold and silver
chalices, and jewelled pyxes, which, by kingly gifts and
piratical offerings, had accumulated for centuries in
its treasury.
He must have been a fine, resolute fellow, that Harald
the Stern, although, in spite of much church-building
and a certain amount of Pagan-persecuting, his character
did not in any way emulate that of his saintly brother.
The early part of his history reads like a fairy tale,
and is a favourite subject for Scald songs; more especially
his romantic adventures in the East, -
"Well worthy of the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid."
where Saracens flee like chaff upon the wind before him,
and impregnable Sicilian castles fall into his power by
impossible feats of arms, or incredible stratagems. A
Greek empress, "the mature Zoe," as Gibbon calls her,
falls in love with him, and her husband, Constantine
Monomachus, puts him in prison; but Saint Olaf still
protects his mauvais sujet of a brother, and inspires "a
lady of distinction" with the successful idea of helping
Harald out of his inaccessible tower by the prosaic
expedient of a ladder of ropes. A boom, however, across
the harbour's mouth still prevents the escape of his
vessel. The Sea-king is not to be so easily baffled.
Moving all his ballast, arms, and men, into the afterpart
of the ship, until her stem slants up out of the sea, he
rows straight at the iron chain.
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