Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/28

 xxii Sterling, speaks of 'the miscellany of social faces round him, of his "kindly advice to the young," and of the "frank and joyous parties" at the Knightsbridge house, a "sunny islet" in the literary London of that age.

Dasent next proceeded to Stockholm as secretary to Sir Thomas Cartwright, the British Envoy to the Court of Sweden, having been recommended to him by his old tutor Jacobson as a young man of great promise and ability.

In these days of rapid railway travelling, when the Swedish capital has been brought within fifty hours of London, it is interesting to read the description given by him in his MS. diary of the dangers and difficulties attending a journey to northern Europe during the bitter winter of 1840-41.

After taking leave of his mother, on New Year's Day 1841, he, the only cabin passenger in the ship, embarked on the City of Hamburg, lying off the Tower Stairs, and reached Cuxhaven on the 4th of January, posting the seventy miles on to Hamburg in twenty-nine hours!

Thence the Copenhagen diligence crawled at a snail's pace through Holstein till a heavy fall of snow compelled him to take to a sledge, "escorted," the diary tells us, "by a band of the most savage peasantry it is possible to conceive." The Danish capital was not reached till the 14th of the month; and here he learnt from Sir Henry Wynn, to whom he brought letters of introduction, that he had missed the diligence for Stockholm by a day. In spite, however, of the extreme cold then prevailing, Dasent, whose impetuous nature was always impatient of delay, again resorted to an open sledge contrary to Wynn's advice, and reaching Elsinore he bargained for a boat to carry him to Helsingborg.