Sweden apart, the condition of a parish priest is in itself
sufficiently happy: in Sweden, then, much more so. There he enjoys
summer and winter pure and unalloyed by any tedious interruptions: a
Swedish spring, which is always a late one, is no repetition, in a
lower key, of the harshness of winter, but anticipates, and is a
prelibation of, perfect summer,--laden with blossoms,--radiant with the
lily and the rose: insomuch, that a Swedish summer night represents
implicitly one half of Italy, and a winter night one half of the world
beside.
I will begin with winter, and I will suppose it to be Christmas. The
priest, whom we shall imagine to be a German, and summoned from the
southern climate of Germany upon presentation to the church of a
Swedish hamlet lying in a high polar latitude, rises in cheerfulness
about seven o'clock in the morning; and till half past nine he burns
his lamp. At nine o'clock, the stars are still shining, and the
unclouded moon even yet longer. This prolongation of star-light into
the forenoon is to him delightful; for he is a German, and has a sense
of something marvellous in a starry forenoon. Methinks, I behold the
priest and his flock moving towards the church with lanterns: the
lights dispersed amongst the crowd connect the congregation into the
appearance of some domestic group or larger household, and carry the
priest back to his childish years during the winter season and
Christmas matins, when every hand bore its candle. Arrived at the
pulpit, he declares to his audience the plain truth, word for word, as
it stands in the Gospel: in the presence of God, all intellectual
pretensions are called upon to be silent; the very reason ceases to be
reasonable; nor is anything reasonable in the sight of God but a
sincere and upright heart.
* * * * *
Just as he and his flock are issuing from the church the bright
Christmas sun ascends above the horizon, and shoots his beams upon
their faces. The old men, who are numerous in Sweden, are all tinged
with the colors of youth by the rosy morning-lustre; and the priest, as
he looks away from them to mother earth lying in the sleep of winter,
and to the churchyard, where the flowers and the men are all in their
graves together, might secretly exclaim with the poet: "Upon the dead
mother, in peace and utter gloom, are reposing the dead children. After
a time, uprises the everlasting sun; and the mother starts up at the
summons of the heavenly dawn with a resurrection of her ancient
bloom:--And her children?--Yes: but they must wait awhile."
At home he is awaited by a warm study, and a "long-levelled rule" of
sunlight upon the book-clad wall.
The afternoon he spends delightfully; for, having before him such
perfect flower-stand of pleasures, he scarcely knows where he
should settle. Supposing it to be Christmas-day, he preaches again:
he preaches on a subject which calls up images of the beauteous
eastern-land, or of eternity. By this time, twilight and gloom
prevailed through the church: only a couple of wax-lights upon the
altar throw wondrous and mighty shadows through the aisles: the angel
that hangs down from the roof above the baptismal font is awoke into a
solemn life by the shadows and the rays, and seems almost in the act of
ascension: through the windows, the stars or the moon are beginning to
peer: aloft, in the pulpit, which is now hid in gloom, the priest is
inflamed and possessed by the sacred burden of glad tidings which he is
announcing: he is lost and insensible to all besides; and from amidst
the darkness which surrounds him, he pours down his thunders, with
tears and agitation, reasoning of future worlds, and of the heaven of
heavens, and whatsoever else can most powerfully shake the heart and
the affections.
Descending from his pulpit in these holy fervors, he now, perhaps,
takes a walk: it is about four o'clock: and he walks beneath a sky lit
up by the shifting northern lights, that to his eye appear but an
Aurora striking upwards from the eternal morning of the south, or as a
forest composed of saintly thickets, like the fiery bushes of Moses,
that are round the throne of God.
Thus, if it be the afternoon of Christmas-day: but if it be any other
afternoon, visitors, perhaps, come and bring their well-bred, grown-up
daughters; like the fashionable world in London, he dines at sunset;
that is to say, like the _un_-fashionable world of London, he dines at
two o'clock; and he drinks coffee by moonlight; and the parsonage-house
becomes an enchanted palace of pleasure gleaming with twilight,
starlight, and moonlight. Or, perhaps, he goes over to the
schoolmaster, who is teaching his afternoon school: there by the
candlelight, he gathers round his knees all the scholars, as if--being
the children of his spiritual children--they must therefore be his own
grandchildren; and with delightful words he wins their attention, and
pours knowledge into their docile hearts.
All these pleasures failing, he may pace up and down in his library,
already, by three o'clock, gloomy with twilight, but fitfully enlivened
by a glowing fire, and steadily by the bright moonlight; and he needs
do no more than taste at every turn of his walk a little orange
marmalade,--to call up images of beautiful Italy, and its gardens and
orange groves, before all his five senses, and as it were to the very
tip of his tongue. Looking at the moon, he will not fail to recollect
that the very same silver disk hangs at the very same moment between
the branches of the laurels in Italy. It will delight him to consider
that the AEolian harp, and the lark, and indeed music of all kinds, and
the stars, and children, are just the same in hot climates and in cold.
And when the post-boy, that rides in with news from Italy, winds his
horn through the hamlet, and with a few simple notes raises up on the
frozen window of his study a vision of flowery realms; and when he
plays with treasured leaves of roses and of lilies from some departed
summer, or with plumes of a bird of paradise, the memorial of some
distant friend; when, further, his heart is moved by the magnificent
sounds of Lady-day, Salad-season, Cherry-time, Trinity-Sundays, the
rose of June, &c., how can he fail to forget that he is in Sweden by
the time that his lamp is brought in; and then, indeed, he will be
somewhat disconcerted to recognize his study in what had now shaped
itself to his fancy as a room in some foreign land. However, if he
would pursue this airy creation, he need but light at his lamp a
wax-candle-end, to gain a glimpse through the whole evening into
that world of fashion and splendor, from which he purchased the
said wax-candle-end. For I should suppose, that at the court of
Stockholm, as elsewhere, there must be candle-ends to be bought of the
state-footmen.
But now, after the lapse of half a year, all at once there strikes upon
his heart something more beautiful than Italy, where the sun sets so
much earlier in summertime than it does at our Swedish hamlet: and what
is _that_? It is the longest day, with the rich freight that it carries
in its bosom, and leading by the hand the early dawn blushing with rosy
light, and melodious with the carolling of larks at one o'clock in the
morning. Before two, that is, at sunrise, the elegant party that we
mentioned last winter arrive in gay clothing at the parsonage; for they
are bound on a little excursion of pleasure in company with the priest.
At two o'clock they are in motion; at which time all the flowers are
glittering, and the forests are gleaming with the mighty light. The
warm sun threatens them with no storm nor thunder-showers; for both are
rare in Sweden. The priest, in common with the rest of the company, is
attired in the costume of Sweden; he wears his short jacket with a
broad scarf, his short cloak above that, his round hat with floating
plumes, and shoes tied with bright ribbons: like the rest of the men,
he resembles a Spanish knight, or a Provencal, or other man of the
south: more especially when he and his gay company are seen flying
through the lofty foliage luxuriant with blossom, that within so short
a period of weeks has shot forth from the garden plots and the naked
boughs.
That a longest day like this, bearing such a cornucopia of sunshine, of
cloudless ether, of buds and bells, of blossoms and of leisure, should
pass away more rapidly than the shortest,--is not difficult to suppose.
As early as eight o'clock in the evening the party breaks up; the sun
is now burning more gently over the half-closed sleepy flowers: about
nine he has mitigated his rays, and is beheld bathing as it were naked
in the blue depths of heaven: about ten, at which hour the company
reassemble at the parsonage, the priest is deeply moved, for throughout
the hamlet, though the tepid sun, now sunk to the horizon, is still
shedding a sullen glow upon the cottages and the window-panes,
everything reposes in profoundest silence and sleep: the birds even are
all slumbering in the golden summits of the woods: and at last, the
solitary sun himself sets, like a moon, amidst the universal quiet of
nature. To our priest, walking in his romantic dress, it seems as
though rosy-colored realms were laid open, in which fairies and spirits
range; and he would scarcely feel an emotion of wonder, if, in this
hour of golden vision, his brother, who ran away in childhood, should
suddenly present himself as one alighting from some blooming heaven of
enchantment.
The priest will not allow his company to depart: he detains them in the
parsonage garden,--where, says he, every one that chooses may slumber
away in beautiful bowers the brief, warm hours until the reappearance
of the sun. This proposal is generally adopted: and the garden is
occupied: many a lovely pair are making believe to sleep, but, in fact,
are holding each other by the hand. The happy priest walks up and
down through the parterres. Coolness comes, and a few stars. His
night-violets and gillyflowers open and breathe out their powerful
odors. To the north, from the eternal morning of the pole, exhales as
it were a golden dawn. The priest thinks of the village of his
childhood far away in Germany; he thinks of the life of man, his hopes,
and his aspirations: and he is calm and at peace with himself. Then all
at once starts up the morning sun in his freshness. Some there are in
the garden who would fain confound it with the evening sun, and close
their eyes again: but the larks betray all, and awaken every sleeper
from bower to bower.
Then again begin pleasure and morning in their pomp of radiance; and
almost I could persuade myself to delineate the course of this day
also, though it differs from its predecessor hardly by so much as the
leaf of a rose-bud.