158 STRAY-AWAYS 



of shining apples, and its flaunting challenge made 

 five minutes with a kodak a vanity and a humiliation. 



At the other side of the canal was Thorwaldsen's 

 Museum, a depressing piece of architecture of the 

 nature of a mausoleum, topped by a green copper 

 dome. Behind it were the staring ruins of a palace 

 burnt down a few years ago; beyond these, again, a 

 round tower with a spiral ascent coiling outside it 

 to the summit. Catherine of Russia drove up it 

 once in a coach and four — a hideous feat, that should 

 have atoned for many crimes. Near it, from the 

 Dutch Renaissance of the Exchange, rose a spire 

 more eccentric even than the tower, and infinitely 

 more graceful, formed of dragons, who stood on their 

 fore-legs with their tails writhed into one slender 

 column, and their heads ravening towards the four 

 points of the compass. To the sepulchral museum of 

 Thorwaldsen we addressed ourselves, and contem- 

 plated the large dingy frescoes that make its exterior 

 ridiculous, without discovering whether the very 

 muscular men, carrying vague blocks and bundles, 

 were the builders of the Pyramids, or an allegorical 

 procession of trade guilds to the shrine of Thorwaldsen. 

 My cousin had committed herself fluently to allegory 

 when the guide-book coldly mentioned that they 

 represented the removal of Thorwaldsen's works to 

 the museum. It seemed hardly the moment that one 

 would have selected out of a lifetime, and it was 

 painfully obvious that frescoes do not thrive in the 

 Copenhagen climate. 



We passed on into the spacious corridors and halls 

 where the multitude of Thorwaldsen's creations is set 

 forth, from the Lion of Lucerne, and the giant statues 

 of Schiller and Poniatowski, to cameos, and tiny busts 

 of ringleted ladies. He lived no more than seventy 

 years, and yet found time to release this company of 



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