ence sake, is kept midway out at sea, and has to be fetched by a cockle-shell. The postilion too, tells his horses to "stande "-not to staac-" stille,” he constantly inquires the "vay," no longer "vei;" and begs to know if we start tomorrow in the "forenoun," or the "atternoun,"--very bad Danish, "quite incomprehensible the Jutlanders," so folks told me in Copenhagen, but very like the English language. Well, we get over the ferry, and walk on some mile and a half on the straight road, and are hallooed back again. Who ever would have imagined that woody path to the right? And now it is eleven o'clock and twilight, and all the world asleep. We drive over a bare waste; ought to pass through the villages of Tweed and Kirby, so pronounced at any rate. We stop, knock up the people in the village, tap at one casement; no answer; on till the tenth; a voice replies; by this time. the nine others are awake-all heads out at once, half asleep, directing, or more probably misdirecting, our steps-such a chatter-might as well have disturbed a hen-house. "Turn to the right:" some eight different paths diverge like the points of a star. Here's a puzzle ; of course go wrong; are received at the entrance of a farm-yard by a furious watch-dog; turn again; we wander, benighted-no sign, no post through the land. See, there's the fiorde: we approach it-no such thing: a long line of mist rising along the valley from the Mose, but the road is good; two miles we rattle along at a merry pace; all wrong again-'tis a herregaard. "Oh!" exclaims the postboy, "if I had only turned my stocking inside out we should never have lost the way."

* Tvede and Kærby.

A Jutland remedy. We are at last in the bon chemin ; half-past one o'clock, no watchman to tell it though, nothing but sleepy ruminating cows and frightened tethered sheep under our very carriage-wheels. Those most uncomfortable creatures, the larks, are already up and about, swelling their voices in praise of early morn till ready to burst. Rising with the lark in Jutland must be never going to bed at all. The heavens-twilight long since over become rosy-tinted, betokening the sun's early arrival. We now enter a forest-all beech and heather-the fiorde in sight. We drive along the heights above: how calm, how beautiful! A small capped snow-white tower- 'tis Mariager - nestling among the trees; below lies the little village. We rattle down the hill-side, knock up the Gjæstgiver and his myrmidons: by five o'clock (sun long ago up and about) we are in bed and asleep. N.B. Never go wandering after nightfall among unknown cross-roads in Jutland.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The village of Mariager - Story of Sir Hem and Sir Sem-Poor Mary's well- A black stork - A Jutland plain-Sea of barrows — Wicked Baroness of Lindenborg.

MARIAGER.

Sunday, 26th.-WHEN I rose from my bed this morning and gazed from the attic window on the scene below, it seemed, had we searched all Denmark over, we could not have selected a calmer, quieter spot to pass our Sunday than the small village of Mariager. Our inn is of the humblest description: whitewashed walls, but cleanest of beds; a better breakfast, tea and all, could not have been served us at the Clarendon, on prettier porcelain or finer linen. The landlord gathers us his finest roses to decorate our table, set out in the village ball-room, an indispensable necessary in these dance-loving lands.

How pretty, too, is the cloister church of Mariager rising from among the trees, distinguished from her village sisters by her high-arched lancet windows and stately gable; she reminds me of some fair lady, who, like La Vallière, has retired secluded from the world, to seek consolation and that peace which this world affordeth not, in solitude, meditation, and prayer. She is still grande dame, even in her adversity. The people, too, respect her, poverty-stricken though she be; they have planted and trailed a natural archway of limes,

under which you approach her cemetery. The village runs down to the waterside, and possesses there a wee harbour all of its own, where two or three Norwegian vessels unload their planks upon the jetty. Not far removed is the small bathing establishment, and over the little custom-house floats the Danish flag.

Very quiet and composed is the village of Mariager on this Sabbath morn: a few peasants in their Sunday's best, patterns of rustic neatness, are now on their way to church. A stuhlwagen drives by laden with six Jutlanders, sober old-fashioned folks; beside the driver sits a musician, with distended cheeks, playing most vigorously on the flageolet. A wedding or something must be going on: we go and see, and meet a return christening, a small baby, well wrapped and nigh suffocated in a coloured blanket. As we enter the churchyard we meet the stiff-ruffed parson, who calls his "deacon" to accompany us. Deacon, an Old Mortality, knows all the tombstones by heart, and is anxious to display his knowledge. Well-worn knight and ecclesiastic, whose inscriptions will soon be trodden away, and become things of the past, like the families in whose houses they were erected-most of them slain at the battle of Aalborghuus *-lie here interred.

Very English do they sound to our astonished ears: the Hogs, Broks, Lockes, Lawson, Galt, and Benzon; the list closing with good Bishop Crump (crooked), last Roman Catholic prelate of Aalborg, who, the Reformation once declared, ousted from his diocese (stift), retired to Mariager or its whereabouts, and lies buried among his relatives, not far removed from

* 1534.

Sir Otto Crump and his noble and high-born lady Dame Anna Locke. While deciphering his epitaphium on the carved stone, thinking how calm and quiet must have been his end, removed far from this world's strife in placid Mariager, Old Mortality opens wide a gate, and there before my eyes lay extended the worthy Bishop, all dust and bones past corruption. By his side lay the bodies of two cloistered nuns-I trust no facetious inuendo of the early Reformers—and in the same sepulchral chamber lie bundled together old crucifixes, figures of saints, and objects of papistic times, placed aside until again wanted.

This convent church, whitewashed and slated, rising from her leafy frame, would have inspired the muse of some poet of the last century--Gray, Goldsmith, or the like. But here am I gossiping about Mariager, and quite forgetting her early history. "Early history!" you reply; "no doubt about that; some establishment of fat monks or idle nuns, all in honour of the Virgin— trust them to choose a good situation! plenty of fish, plenty of game in the forest hard by: they knew well what they were about, forsooth!"

But Mary the Virgin had nought to do with this foundation. Mary, a virgin, and a luckless one too, endowed with two hearts ("La femme à deux cœurs," of which I have heard say, is no novelty),-hers was a sad history. It was long, long ago there lived on the banks of the deep blue fiorde we now gaze upon a youthful damsel, before-mentioned Mary, the fairest, the richest in all North Jutland: she had suitors, as you may imagine, in plenty-all Jutland at her feet-but