es of the grand staircase, where whole families crept from the cold,
and every little nook is boarded up as a retreat for some poor creatures
deprived of their home. At present a roof may be sufficient to shelter
them from the night air; but as the season advances, the extent of the
calamity will be more severely felt, I fear, though the exertions on the
part of Government are very considerable. Private charity has also, no
doubt, done much to alleviate the misery which obtrudes itself at every
turn; still, public spirit appears to me to be hardly alive here. Had it
existed, the conflagration might have been smothered in the beginning, as
it was at last, by tearing down several houses before the flames had
reached them. To this the inhabitants would not consent; and the prince
royal not having sufficient energy of character to know when he ought to
be absolute, calmly let them pursue their own course, till the whole city
seemed to be threatened with destruction. Adhering, with puerile
scrupulosity, to the law which he has imposed on himself, of acting
exactly right, he did wrong by idly lamenting whilst he marked the
progress of a mischief that one decided step would have stopped. He was
afterwards obliged to resort to violent measures; but then, who could
blame him? And, to avoid censure, what sacrifices are not made by weak
minds?

A gentleman who was a witness of the scene assured me, likewise, that if
the people of property had taken half as much pains to extinguish the
fire as to preserve their valuables and furniture, it would soon have
been got under. But they who were not immediately in danger did not
exert themselves sufficiently, till fear, like an electrical shock,
roused all the inhabitants to a sense of the general evil. Even the fire-
engines were out of order, though the burning of the palace ought to have
admonished them of the necessity of keeping them in constant repair. But
this kind of indolence respecting what does not immediately concern them
seems to characterise the Danes. A sluggish concentration in themselves
makes them so careful to preserve their property, that they will not
venture on any enterprise to increase it in which there is a shadow of
hazard.

Considering Copenhagen as the capital of Denmark and Norway, I was
surprised not to see so much industry or taste as in Christiania. Indeed,
from everything I have had an opportunity of observing, the Danes are the
people who have