limaçon of the staircase. Matters have changed for the better since the sad tragedy occurred in the sister-tower. Talk of good old times-in books if you will: but let us thank our stars we didn't live in them!

It was dark when we arrived at the little sea-side town of Nysted. "Maribo and Saxkjøbing are pleasant places," says the proverb, "but Nysted surpasses them both." We shall see to-morrow.

NYSTED.

Nysted resembles other small Danish towns. When you gain the sea-side, a long double avenue of trees conducts you to the ancient château of Aalholm, a huge red brick pile of buildings, with massive square towers, dating from Queen Margaret's days, thanks to Marsk Stig and Skipper Clemens, a rarissima avis in Denmark. Here resided her brother-poor halfbegotten little Christopher-Duke of Lolland, whose effigy in alabaster we have seen in Roeskilde cathedral, all broken to pieces, the Danish Government too poor or too stingy to afford the cement necessary for sticking him together. Some authors declare that he was poisoned at Queen Margaret's wedding, but there is no truth in the story: in those uncomfortable days no one was allowed to die peaceably without suspicion.

The castle" over-rumplet" (taken by surprise) in 1534-is now the property of the Count of Raben, but is seldom inhabited: the gardens, kept in the true Lolland style, are well worthy of a visit.

Such black coal-scuttle bonnets as the women wear here! of carton, like the Fionese; not japanned, tea

tray fashion-sober black, ugly enough to frighten you. Now we make for Strandbye, the ferry-station to Falster, a five minutes' passage. Really Lolland and Falster so nearly join, it seems quite ridiculous their being separated.

CHAPTER LI.

Island of Falster Queen Sophia and the parson's wife- How she rules her household - The lady who could not die- Molesworth's account of swan-shooting- Familiar spirits and other superstitions of the island-Island of Møen-The strong-minded Dorothea The bathing-place of Liselund — The chalk klints and beauty of the scenery The Klint King - Bacchanalian harvest-home.

ISLAND OF FALSTER.

NYKJØBING.

August 29.-WE land on the small pier of Nykjøbing, stop to breakfast, and then drive through the island on our way to Møen.

There is nothing to see in Falster-no herregaards. More exclusive than Lolland, the island, until some years since, was a royal possession, the usual jointure and residence of queens.

In the small town of Nykjøbing dwelt good Queen Sophia, the widowed mother of Christian IV., glad to retire from the court of her son, whose morals ill accorded with the principles of his right-thinking mother. Here too she died.

In the church hangs her pedigree-pedigree of the house of Mecklenburg, with portraits of each member from the earliest days.

When Queen Sophia ruled over the island she did much good, encouraging industry, and employing in her manufactures many hundred people. There still stands an oak between Vaalse and Nykjøbing which

CHAP. LI. QUEEN SOPHIA AND THE PARSON'S WIFE.

313

goes by the name of "Præste Kongen, from a wager laid by the parson's wife with the queen that she would spin a thread out of a pound of flax so fine it should reach from her parsonage to the palace gate. The lady proceeded on her way till her flax was expended at the house which bears her name. Queen Sophia was a good ménagère, and kept her maids as well as her men in order, not sparing the whip when they deserved

correction :

"Linde Herre skal have Eege svenne,"

"A maître de tilleul, domestique de chêne,"

was her motto. She died the richest queen in Europe; and though Christian IV. honoured and loved his mother, yet to judge from his correspondence he was quite alive to the advantages to be derived from his inheritance.

Scarcely is she on her death-bed when the king writes word "they must take care to look after her keys."* He writes to his sister Augusta to send down the jeweller to value the queen's effects; orders mourning for the children, who are to travel to Vordingborg to receive the "widowed queen's coffin:" they are to wait for the corpse and get something to eat at

* Many of good Queen Sophia's people lie buried in the church of Nykjøbing. Such a " maîtresse femme" as was Queen Sophia! Such rules and regulations, such modesty and virtue among her maids! such propriety among her men! Mrs. Øllegaard Penz, her noble housekeeper-her place not then, as now, a sinecure-at the end of eleven years' service died, worn out by her troubles and domestic cares, and even now, after the lapse of two centuries and more, she can't rest quiet in her grave. She fidgets and fusses about the château of Fredskov, rattles the keys, opens and shuts the drawers, rings the bells, winds up the clocks, and dusts, dusts away, and will dust-so folks say-in sæcula sæculorum, so disgusted is she at the degeneracy of all Danish housemaids.

the ferry-house; the cook-boy can accompany them and take what is necessary. Christian appears to have been in good humour with his succession, for he presented his mother's maid who cooked his soup with ten rose nobles.

One letter, dated the latter end of the year 1631, is as follows:-" Apothecary Peter, Apothecary Peter, fill your satchel full of rotulen, musk, and amber, and other spices, as good as you can get them, and bring it here at once.Frederiksborg."

What could this be for? Nothing less than the necessary medicaments for the embalmment of Queen Sophia.

You will find many old acquaintances in these portraits; among them the queen of Christian I., here ungagged; old Joachim of Brandenburg, holding a drawn scimitar in hand, looking like some vindictive Blue beard, right in the face of poor Protestant Elizabeth. She was quite right to run away; by his very look, he'd have bricked her up. The palace of Queen Sophia has disappeared; gone most likely to build up something else. If a royal Danish brick could only speak, what tales it could tell of the sights it has witnessed from the days of Thyre Danebod downwards, picked out from the Danevirke for the erection of some château fort, and so handed down to the present century !

We leave to the left the village of Torkildstrup, named after the heathen Thorkild-the first man, say the Danes, who pretended the earth turned round.

We passed in the distance a church-spire, concerning which there runs a tale:-Many years ago dwelt in the island of Falster a rich and noble dowager, who had neither son nor daughter to inherit her golden treasures.