D. C. Danielssen. 



43 



When we consider that Danielssen took up so many branches 

 of work, and pursued them with such an unusual amount of zeal 

 and energy, we should imagine that the man who could carry on 

 such comprehensive work, must necessarily have been a very strong 

 man. And so he was, as far as intellectual powers of work were 

 concerned, but as to physical strength, he was quite the reverse. 

 Danielssen was rather short of stature, he was slender and thin. 

 In his youth he suffered not only from hip-disease, but also from 

 tuberculosis, from which however he recovered, and repeatedly from 

 hæmoptysis; but weak as his body was. his energy and capacity 

 for work was all the more wonderful. Danielssen worked in the 

 time of good health with great ease, and was distinguished by a very 

 marked intuitive power, the divinatory power of a poet as has 

 been said by a biographer, both in his extensive professional work 

 as a physician, and also as a man of science. This power often 

 led him to very daring conclusions, but was, especially in his 

 younger days, held in check by a well developed critical sense. In 

 later years, however, this boldness in drawing conclusions may 

 now and then have proved stronger than his critical power and on 

 some occasions misled him. 



In his public career and in the work for his own special aims, 

 Danielssen possessed the power of taking a large view of a question, 

 without losing himself in details; he was able to look beyond 

 such difficulties of the moment as often weakened the courage of 

 others, and to work on energetically and determinately for the 

 object in view, even if it appeared to other people too distant to 

 seem attainable. And in thus following up a purpose, he set about 

 his task with all-comprising energy, leaving nothing untried that 

 could forward his aims, with ingenuity as to means and — it must 

 also be said — without too much consideration in one direction or 

 the other as to the use he made of them. 



Taking, as he did, a share in so many public affairs, Danielssen 

 was, as a necessary consequence, often obliged to appear as a 

 speaker — in the Storting (Parliament), in the town-council — at in- 

 angurations and unveilings, at banquets and on numerous other 

 occasions. This constant practice made him a tiuent speaker, and 

 though he had no very marked gifts in that direction, he would 

 on any question about which he was specially interested, animate 

 his speeches with a glow of persuasive eloquence, which was sure to 

 carry his audience with him, and which even in his later years, when 

 the common council was his usual forum, sometimes gave quite an un- 



