"Now my time will not be long:" nor was it, for he did not long survive his cousin.

I am not going to enter into the defence of this monarch, and have Vertot brought up against me, and the "Nero of the North" thrown in my teeth; still, after what I have read in the Danish historians, I am of opinion he has been blackened more than necessary; added to which he had one great crime in the eyes of the sixteenth century-his leaning towards the Reformed faith. The Emperor Charles V., in speaking of him, said, "If our brother-in-law, against our counsel and will, change his religion, so also will we change our affection and support towards him." Another writer declares him "to have been a Protestant at heart, though he dare not profess the faith openly."

Christian was neither flesh nor fowl-Catholic or of the Reformed faith-an object of suspicion to both parties: had it not been for his "grand connexion" the Emperor, he would in all probability have declared himself, and have taken his seat among the Protestant potentates of Europe.

I have already alluded to the volume of King Christian II.'s Correspondence, lately published at Copenhagen, from letters preserved in the archives of Bavaria, dating from the year 1519 to 1531. There are many therein—interesting as regards his negotiations with England and the sister kingdom of Scotland-in which figures a certain Dr. Alexander Kingome, who signs himself your "humblest of Chaplains.". Kingome was a Scotchman by birth, and employed as an emissary to procure aid from King Henry VIII. of England. After a time the answer arrived, worded in most elegant Latin. Dr. Kingome was received at Richmond by

the King's Grace, at the same time and in the suite of that learned man Sir Thomas More, and in the presence of Cardinal Wolsey, by the splendour of whose retinue he appears to have been greatly struck. Bluff King Hal is sorry, very sorry, that his approaching war with Scotland prevents him from rendering the assistance his brother the King of Denmark requires; his hands are fully occupied: and later the great Cardinal writes a letter himself to explain the reason why his royal master cannot spare the "one ship" he prays for. If our English Sovereign could afford no help to poor harassed Christian, advice costs nothing; so he writes a letter in his own hand, advising him on no account to irritate his people by raising money in the country he might have as well advised a starving mendicant to live generously.

The negotiations with Scotland proved quite as unsatisfactory as those with her sister kingdom: indeed more so, for the English declined to afford him aid point blank, while the Scotch were everlastingly promising, and intriguing about something, and never performing their promises after all. I find a most civil letter from the Chancellor of Scotland, regretting that the King of Scots is too occupied by his approaching war with Eng-land to go to his cousin's assistance; and then come promises and disappointment about help from the exiled Duke of Albany. It is at last settled that Robert Barton, with the well-known Andrew, his brother, is to equip a fleet to come to his aid, in conjunction with Robert Falconer. Then there's a spoke in the wheel-a riot in Edinburgh, and the arrival of an envoy, Magnus Bille, from King Frederic, Christian's uncle, and Falconer proves faithless. King James V., through his secretary

Hepburn, now writes his cousin word to take refuge in Scotland.

Then writes Kingome :-"James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrew, would so much like to be made a cardinal; if King Christian could only procure his election. through the Pope and his brother-in-law the Emperor, much good might ensue." But Christian's interest is at a low ebb in those quarters; he is suspected of hankering after "Luthers lære ;" and the Regent Margaret has her eyes open and looks somewhat askant; so his faithful spouse Elizabeth writes him word. As soon as matters appear to be coming round, they are all afloat again.

In the year 1526 dies Queen Elizabeth, and she is hardly buried when it is proposed, in a letter from the faithful Kingome, that Christian should, as a "coup d'état," espouse a half-sister of King James V., then only fifteen years of age, daughter of our English Princess Margaret Tudor and her husband the Earl of Angus, whom she married, hated, and tried to get divorced from. But this marriage never came off; and, what is worse, help never came from Scotland.

Christian had, however, on his side, shuffled just as much; for when in earlier days his cousin, the King of Scots, applied to him for aid against the English, he pleaded, as an excuse, it would interfere with his coronation.

There must have been jolly doings in this city of Kallundborg in former times, if you judge from the colossal drinking-cup now preserved in the Museum of Copenhagen, before the quaffing of which no man could be admitted as "brother" into the Guild of St. Knud.

At some three miles distance from Kallundborg is situated the village of Refsnæs, the barest promontory of the island of Zealand-a scene of desolation now, but once the hunting-grounds of the Denmark sovereigns. It was here, while engaged in the pursuit of a stag, that Prince Valdemar, son of Valdemar II., met with a fate similar to that of our King William Rufus. Four gigantic masses of granite, now no longer to be found, once marked the spot. The event is thus described in the ancient ballad of 'Dronning Leonora :'— "Leonora the Queen in childbirth Her young life lost,-and died. Alas! alas! alas!

She came to Denmark from Portugal.
She travels forth to God's joyful hall;

She rejoices with saints, and the choir of angels,

But her body lies in St. Benedict's earth.

Court holds her lord in Kallundborg.

He thought with time to kill his grief;

Hardly had months gone nine

The lord was willing to console his mind."

In fact, having grieved for nine months, he has had enough of it, and determines to amuse himself: "Saddle me," he exclaims, "Swedefux!"-and off he goes a-hunting. So hard he rides from dawn till night, that when he arrives at Refsnæs scarce a squire has been able to follow him. The beaters drive the deer and hare with shouts into the forest; a hart starts forth; Sir Eskiol draws his bow, the stag shall be his prey; the shaft pierces the prince's breast-he falls to the ground from his charger, and says to this world a long good night. Horror-struck, the attendants rush to his aid too late; he is dead. The affrighted waters of the Belt recede

from the strand; the porpoises and fishes raise a loud lament—even the rocks grieve. When the King hears the fatal news, it shoots through his heart like a spear; he wrings his fingers till they crack, and then curses Refsnæs. "Hereafter shall no hare or hart be foundno tree shall henceforth live. On Refsnæs, where flourished oak and beech, henceforth shall grow the thorn and the brier

"With sorrow they conveyed him to Ringsted,

Saint Benedict's church received the prince, 1231."

The curse of Valdemar was well fulfilled: no hare of the royal forest now exists; one solitary hawthorn, loaded with snow-white flowers, twisted and gnarled like those in Woodstock Park, alone attests the existence of the former hunting-fields. Well too might King Valdemar, and Denmark as one man, lament the death of the heir-apparent (already elected in his father's lifetime), sole offspring of good Queen Dagmar, for three more vicious sovereigns than his half-brothers, sons of Berengaria, never ascended the Danish throne.

"Oh Denmark, had you known your grief,
You would have wept tears of very blood."

SLAGELSE.

Five miles to Slagelse, where we first dine, and then proceed in the cool of the evening by rail to Copenhagen. Stagelse is a tidy little town, once of considerable ecclesiastical eminence. The ancient proverb runs-" Roskild ringen, og Slagelse møgagen, fik aldrig ende" (the ringing at Roeskilde and manuring at Slagelse

1231. Valdemar, Leonora, and her child, were all buried at Ringsted.