Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/247

Rh conditions for intellectual life, but the most important thing, life itself, was wanting. The eighty years’ peace had in this respect exerted an unfavorable influence; interest for all great things had relaxed, and the minds of men were wrapped up in little things. But with the beginning of the new century there was a complete change. The great misfortunes by which the country was visited and the glorious battle with the English fleet on the 2nd of April, 1801, from which the weak Danish ships came out unconquered, roused the people from their slumber; grand thoughts were conceived and were diffused by their originators among the whole people, who from that moment rapidly qualified themselves to receive and appreciate them; in short, the prolific intellectual development, which still continues without abatement, began. Its foremost representative is Oehlenschläger.

was born in Copenhagen, November 14, 1779. His father belonged to a family, the members of which had for many generations been organists and schoolmasters, and was a German both in language and feeling. His mother was the daughter of a plain Copenhagen citizen, and had also received a German education. The year after Adam’s birth, his father, who was an organist at the church belonging to the small palace of Frederiksburg, was appointed a deputy superintendent of the palace (Slotsforvalterfuldmægtig), with free rooms for himself and family out there. Here the future poet grew in happy though modest circumstances, which could not fail to have a favorable influence on his vivacious and susceptible mind. The palace was as a rule occupied only during the summer, and then it teemed with gentlemen in gorgeous uniforms, and with pretty, handsomely dressed women. During the remainder of the year the boy, his sister and their playmates had as it were the whole palace, with its halls adorned with pictures, and with its park and gardens at their exclusive disposal as their play-ground. The place was quiet and isolated, and yet it was the source of a multitude of impressions that stamped