The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-16 00:00:00

DENMARK,

A letter from Copenhagen, dated June 12, says :
—Those fidgetty English tourists, who do not know
what to do with themselves at this season, can
do no better than come aid spend their summer
months on the Oresund. There can hardly be a
greater pleasure in these bright days, which begin
to be deliciously warm even in Denmark, than to
steam up and down the Sound by the Horatio,
Ophelia, or Hamlet. Those three little steamers
ply between the two coasts from Malmo to Copen-
hagen, and hence 'eo Elsinore and Helsingford, morn-
ing and eveneing. The shores on either side are
somewhat. tame and lowly, and will not bear com-
pariso'd with the rugged sublimity of some of the
gr.eat Mediterranean straits. But the scenery has
a charming homeliness of its own, nevertheless. The
two countries, politically sundered for so many
centuries, woo each other most tenderly, and as you
approach Elsinore the Danish and Swedish head-
lands overlap each other as if in loving embrace,
and the beholder is at a loss to tell where his eye
rests on a Scanian and where on a Zealandian land-
scape. The vegetation on either side is luxuriant
beyond belief, and the magnificent timber spreads
its drooping branches down to the very surface of
the tideless waves. The Lake of Geneva, where
it contracts itself into the narrow channel of the
Rhone, has not purer waters than are to be
seen in these ever•flowing currents; and nowhere
is the sight of white, glittering sails more animated
and enlivening than in this silent highway of
the Baltic. The steamers that waft you along
are clean and comfortable, the traffic is carried
on with all speed and in the best order, and the
company getting in and out at every station is
the best looking, most interesting, and sociable
you may wish to travel with. lam sure only
to see the rosy cheeks and golden hair of the
hundreds of well-dressed Danish girls on their
way to and from the different watering-places on the
Sound is a treat well repaying any trouble it may
cost a Londoner to come all the way from his dingy
Thames and from the coal begrimed wharfs of
Gravesend-reach.
Whatever cloud may rise on the political horizon
of Denmark, the sky on the Oresund is, and
has been for weeks, as bright as the brightest
in the south. These Danes are a buoyant and
sanguine race ; in the worst plight they hope for the
best, and while the London Conference is disposing
of them with prolonged armistice, schemes of parti-
tion or personal union, they seem only to think that
summer and sea-bathing wait for no man. They live
by the day, the twenty-hour solstitial day, and put off
the cares of the future for that gloomy winter
season which may be better fitted for sackcloth and
ashes. This short spell of genial, warm weather
is the Danish carnival. It is the season in which
they indulge in those quiet, rational amusements
which best become their sedate nature and the
thorough civilisation peculiar to them. Sea-bathing
is with them the greatest luxury. The streets of
Copenhagen are empty. The whole population,
from the King to the humblest trader, are out for

a dip.
Such watering-places as the Sound everywhere
affords are not to be sought in Great Britain either
on the German ocean or on the Atlantic coast, The
influence of the Gulf Stream is not felt within this
inland channel, and the water is as deliciously ice.-
cold as the stoutest nerves can desire, the maids
under feet as soft as velvet, free from all gravel and
shingle, and the diver can be seen fathoms deep in
the transparent element as distinct as if he were
floating in air. Bathing-houses or machines are
hardly needed. Yet just look out for the loneliest
nook anywhere along shore; you step from the green
sward into the rippling waves ; you flounder in the
water or bask in the sun on the grass with alter-
nate enjoyment. Your whole being becomes as am-
phibious as the country itself, a country truly
weer-unzsehlungen, where land and water clasp each
other in the closest embrace.

Who shall number the multitude, men, women,
and children, who are sure, this blessed Sunday, to
plunge from the margin of the Klamsenborg strand
on the skirts of the gorgeously verdant Deerpark
From which of the hundreds of tidy villas along the
Sound shall not the fair inmates issue forth i❑ their
tong-flowing gowns, metamorphosing for a few
minutes a nymph into a syren ? From Copenhagen
to Elsinore every village on the coast is a watering-
place ; every country house is a bathing-house.
Yet, if the whole sound is a bathing establishment,
no doubt Elsinore is its capital. There is hardly
anything in the world, I believe, that will bear
comparison as a Bade-Anstalt with the Marien-
lyst, a short half-mile beyond the Queen of the
Sound, just beyond the glacis of the Kronborg.
From the glacis of old Hamlet's castle there
stretches along shore a wide, long meadow, smooth
and green as a billiard table, so wonderfully level
with the sea that you wonder by what invisible
law it is held in obedience to the fiat that parted
land from water at the beginning of the world, On
your left, as you look up to the Cattegat, you have
fine, swelling knolls, with such masses of green
foliage as all the parks of old England can searcely
match—masses of foliage so rife with blossoms at
this period of the year that green can scarcely be
described as the prevalent hue. In the midst of
that foliage is a maze of winding walks, where, ii
you can get an Eve to wander with you, you may
fancy yourself a very Adam in Eden ; and here and
there in the thickest bowers you come upon snug
country seats, the flowery gardens of which seem to
be cultivated no less for your especial enjoyment
than for that of their fortunate owners. Every gate
is invitingly open : every labourerat work has a smile
and a greeting God-day for you. The Danes are a
people who know but little about fencing and paling,
nothing about locked doors or barred windows. Their

privacy needs no other protection than the discretion
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of the passer-by. How they manage it I know not ;
but they seem to have no fear of tramps or pick-
pockets, and the noxious vermin somehow cannot
flourish in the land. Ido not remember whether ]

_ -
ever mentioned it before; but it is a fact that years
ago some gentlemen from Scotland•yard were in-
vited to this country to organise a kind of metro-
politan police at Copenhagen, and creditably did they
acquit themselves of their task ; but the men who
were enlisted in that service are daily sending in
their resignation, as they are ashamed of and dis-
gusted with, an employment which in this wonder-
fully inoffensive community has turned out a weari-
some sinecure. Thieves, it would seem, cannot thrive
in the land, and thief-takers cannot prosper with-
out them. I have been assured that some of the
gentlemen of the London and Paris swell-mob, al-
lured by this Arcadian security, have been tempted
to try their luck in the virgin soil of Denmark;
but, somehow, the air does not agree with them,
and they had to slink away, awed, as it were, by
that guileless confidence that seemed to blunt even
while
it defied their cunning. Somehow, it was like
trying the sharp edge of a sword on a feather bed.
Knavery ccu!d make no breach on this apparently