THRONDHJEM. 
341 
while the old grey cathedral—stately and grand, in spite 
of the slow destruction of the elements, the mutilations 
of man’s hands, or his yet more degrading rough-cast 
and stucco reparations—still towered above the perish¬ 
able wooden buildings at its feet, with the solemn pride 
which befits the shrine of a royal saint. 
I cannot tell you with what eagerness I drank in all 
the features of this lovely scene—at least, such features 
as Time can hardly alter—the glancing river, from 
whence the city’s ancient name of Nidaros, or “ mouth 
of the Nid,” is derived,—the rocky island of Munkholm, 
the bluff of Lade,—-the land-locked fiord and its pleasant 
hills,—beyond whose grey stony ridges I knew must lie 
the fatal battle-field of Sticklestadt. Every spot to me 
was full of interest,—but an interest no ways connected 
with the neat green villas, the rectangular streets, and 
the obtrusive warehouses. These signs of a modern 
humdrum prosperity seemed to melt away before my eyes 
as I gazed from the schooner’s deck, and the accessories 
of an elder time came to furnish the landscape;—the 
clumsy merchantmen lazily swaying with the tide, dark¬ 
ened into armed galleys with their rows of glittering 
shields,—the snug, bourgeois-looking town shrank into 
