IN THE STATE OF DENMARK 123 



mop-like head, began to declaim a long and pompous 

 tune; the congregation took it up with a startling 

 burst into existence, but remained seated. The 

 Danish hymn-books naturally gave no clue to its 

 significance, and even the tune, which might have 

 possessed some dignified nationality, was so long- 

 drawn-out as to be meaningless. It was indeed amaz- 

 ingly slow, loud, and dogmatic, and the organist swung 

 to and fro in sympathy with the lagging rhythm, and 

 the organ-blower dived with increasing abandon, and 

 the old men around us soared to the high notes, or 

 their vicinity, like sopranos. 



There followed more prayers and more hymns, and 

 the preacher ascended his high pulpit and read the 

 Creed, recognisable by its metre and by the notable 

 fact that the congregation rose and joined in it. The 

 sermon was a well-gestured piece of oratory, and the 

 preacher's face was picturesque and Elizabethan in its 

 setting of white ruff ; he was listened to with flattering 

 attention, except for a little boy, who yawned lament- 

 ably, and went through long wriggling contests with 

 his guardian, and one of the dotard sopranos, who 

 devoted himself to a minute and distressing toilet 

 of the face and whiskers, on a principle borrowed from 

 the household cat. 



One would say that the Danes must impose a strong 

 reserve on their public religious feeling. They say 

 of themselves that they are not eminently devout, and 

 indeed their service does not tend that way, mixed 

 as it is of cold conventions of ritual and the even 

 colder independence of the congregation. Yet the 

 reserve of religious feeling must be somewhere; it 

 must be more than a frigid consent that has preserved 

 the unimpeached Protestantism of Scandinavia. 



