358 Noriuay and the Norwegians 



intelligence they compare favourably with the small 

 proprietors of other countries. It is true that they are 

 not very energetic; and that, though (like the Irish, 

 with whom we have more than once compared them) 

 the Norwegian peasant proprietors interest themselves 

 a good deal in politics, they have no very extended 

 political views, and they have never been able for many 

 hundred years — perhaps never in the course of their 

 history — to form any wide political combinations. But 

 if Ibsen in Peer Gynt gives a poor and unlovely picture 

 of the Norwegian peasant, what a picture does Zola 

 give of the French one in La Tcrre ! 



On the other hand, it cannot be said that the aboli- 

 tion of titles, and the social equality of all citizens in 

 the eye of the law have had the effect of bringing about 

 a real feeling of equality, or of obliterating the mean 

 ambitions which belong to small communities. On the 

 contrary, there are few places (outside Russia) in which 

 the smaller government offices are more sought after for 

 the sake of the distinction which they confer than they 

 are in ISrorway, or where ofhcial titles of distinction, 

 such as chamberlain {kammcrherre), are more the 

 objects of petty striving and petty jealousy. This state 

 of feeling produces the narrow bureaucracy which is 

 characteristic chiefly of tlie town communities of 

 Norway ; and it is this which is the subject of endless 

 animadversion and satire iu Ibsen's social dramas. 



