reign dependence,
ascribed all the existing abuses to the predominance of the Danish
element, and in a series of vehement articles attacked the Danish
actors, managers, and all who were in any way responsible for the
unworthy condition of the national stage. In return he reaped, as might
have been expected, an abundant harvest of abuse, but the discussion he
had provoked furnished food for reflection, and the rapid development of
the Norwegian drama during the next decade is, no doubt, largely
traceable to his influence.

The liberty for which he had yearned so long, Bjoernson found at the
International Students' Reunion of 1856. Then the students of the
Norwegian and Danish Universities met in Upsala, where they were
received with grand festivities by their Swedish brethren. Here the poet
caught the first glimpse of a greater and freer life than moved within
the narrow horizon of the Norwegian capital. This gay and careless
student-life, this cheerful abandonment of all the artificial shackles
which burden one's feet in their daily walk through a bureaucratic
society, the temporary freedom which allows one without offence to toast
a prince and hug a count to one's bosom--all this had its influence
upon Bjoernson's sensitive nature; it filled his soul with a happy
intoxication and with confidence in his own strength. And having once
tasted a life like this he could no more return to what he had left
behind him.

The next winter we find him in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of
creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance,
the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain _naive_ self-assertion
and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the
polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital. There was
a general expectation at that time that a great poet was to come, and
although Bjoernson had as yet published nothing to justify the
expectation, he found the public of Copenhagen ready to recognize in him
the man who was to rouse the North from its long intellectual torpor,
and usher in a new era in its literature. It is needless to say that he
did not discourage this belief, for he himself fervently believed that
he would before long justify it. The first proof of his strength he gave
in the tale "Synnoeve Solbakken" (Synnoeve Sunny-Hill), which he published
in an illustrated weekly, and afterward in book-form. It is a very
unpretending little story, idyll