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?
A gentleman who was a witness of the scene assured me, likewise,
that if the people of property had taken half as much pains to
extinguish the fire as to preserve their valuables and furniture, it
would soon have been got under. But they who were not immediately
in danger did not exert themselves sufficiently, till fear, like an
electrical shock, roused all the inhabitants to a sense of the
general evil. Even the fire-engines were out of order, though the
burning of the palace ought to have admonished them of the necessity
of keeping them in constant repair. But this kind of indolence
respecting what does not immediately concern them seems to
characterise the Danes. A sluggish concentration in themselves
makes them so careful to preserve their property, that they will not
venture on any enterprise to increase it in which there is a shadow
of hazard.
Considering Copenhagen as the capital of Denmark and Norway, I was
surprised not to see so much industry or taste as in Christiania.
Indeed, from everything I have had an opportunity of observing, the
Danes are the people who have made the fewest sacrifices to the
graces.
The men of business are domestic tyrants, coldly immersed in their
own affairs, and so ignorant of the state of other countries, that
they dogmatically assert that Denmark is the happiest country in the
world; the Prince Royal the best of all possible princes; and Count
Bernstorff the wisest of ministers.
As for the women, they are simply notable housewives; without
accomplishments or any of the charms that adorn more advanced social
life. This total ignorance may enable them to save something in
their kitchens, but it is far from rendering them better parents.
On the contrary, the children are spoiled, as they usually are when
left to the care of weak, indulgent mothers, who having no principle
of action to regulate their feelings, become the slaves of infants,
enfeebling both body and mind by false tenderness.
I am, perhaps, a little prejudiced, as I write from the impression
of the moment; for I have been tormented to-day by the presence of
unruly children, and made angry by some invectives thrown out
against the maternal character of the unfortunate Matilda. She was
censured, with the most cruel insinuation, for her management of her
son, though, from what I could gather, she gave proofs of good sense
as well as tenderness in her attention to him.
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