warders stand with bow and arrow on the walls,
reconnoitring over lake and fjord, over Brunkaberg sand-ridge. There
were the sand-ridge slopes upwards from Roerstrand's Lake they build
Clara cloister, and between it and the town a street springs up:
several more appear; they form an extensive city, which soon becomes
the place of contest for different partisans, where Ladelaas's sons
plant the banner, and where the German Albrecht's retainers burn the
Swedes alive within its walls. Stockholm is, however, the heart of the
kingdom: that the Danes know well; that the Swedes know too, and there
is strife and bloody combating. Blood flows by the executioner's hand,
Denmark's Christian the Second, Sweden's executioner, stands in the
market-place.

Roll, ye runes! see over Brunkaberg sand-ridge, where the Swedish
people conquered the Danish host, there they raise the May-pole: it is
midsummer-eve--Gustavus Vasa makes his entry into Stockholm.

Around the May-pole there grow fruit and kitchen-gardens, houses and
streets; they vanish in flames, they rise again; that gloomy fortress
towards the tower is transformed into a palace, and the city stands
magnificently with towers and draw-bridges. There grows a town by
itself on the sand-ridge, a third springs up on the rock towards the
south; the old walls fall at Gustavus Adolphus's command; the three
towns are one, large and extensive, picturesquely varied with old
stone houses, wooden shops, and grass-roofed huts; the sun shines on
the brass balls of the towers, and a forest of masts stands in that
secure harbour.

Rays of beauty shoot forth into the world from Versailles' painted
divinity; they reach the Maelar's strand into Tessin's[J] palace, where
art and science are invited as guests with the King, Gustavus the
Third, whose effigy cast in bronze is raised on the strand before the
splendid palace--it is in our times. The acacia shades the palace's
high terrace on whose broad balustrades flowers send forth their
perfume from Saxon porcelain; variegated silk curtains hang half-way
down before the large glass windows; the floors are polished smooth as
a mirror, and under the arch yonder, where the roses grow by the wall,
the Endymion of Greece lives eternally in marble. As a guard of honour
here, stand Fogelberg's Odin, and Sergei's Amor and Psyche.

[Footnote J: The architect Tessin.]

We now descend the broad, royal staircase, and before it, where, in
by-gone times, Oluf