Christiania Is Certainly Very Pleasantly Situated, And The Environs
I Passed Through, During This Ride, Afforded Many Fine And
Cultivated Prospects; But, Excepting The First View Approaching To
It, Rarely Present Any Combination Of Objects So Strikingly New, Or
Picturesque, As To Command Remembrance.
Adieu!
LETTER XIV.
Christiania is a clean, neat city; but it has none of the graces of
architecture, which ought to keep pace with the refining manners of
a people - or the outside of the house will disgrace the inside,
giving the beholder an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of taste.
Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than
Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a
characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the
period when they were erected; but size, without grandeur or
elegance, has an emphatical stamp of meanness, of poverty of
conception, which only a commercial spirit could give.
The same thought has struck me, when I have entered the meeting-
house of my respected friend, Dr. Price. I am surprised that the
dissenters, who have not laid aside all the pomps and vanities of
life, should imagine a noble pillar, or arch, unhallowed. Whilst
men have senses, whatever soothes them lends wings to devotion; else
why do the beauties of nature, where all that charm them are spread
around with a lavish hand, force even the sorrowing heart to
acknowledge that existence is a blessing? and this acknowledgment is
the most sublime homage we can pay to the Deity.
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