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.

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