regardless of geographical, ethnical, or historical affinities; and that the integrity of any nation capable of independence ought ideally to be safeguarded against attacks from without, and the right acknowledged of any part of such nation, forcibly cut loose from the mother-stem, to cherish a hope of, and by fair means work for, a reunion.

However, this may be debatable ground. In the meantime the burden of proof respecting Denmark as an intellectual dependency rests with the Germans. So far no evidence has been forthcoming. The best-informed among them concede the impossibility of furnishing it, the contention itself being untenable.

Nothing in reality could be farther from the truth. In a brief glance at the various aspects of the national culture of the Danes, let us first look at —

1. The language.— Here the analogy from Holland-which, by the way, has never shown any pronounced anxiety to join its fortune with that of the Prussian household- will be found to be no analogy at all, because, while Dutch sustains a similar relation. to German as, say, Portuguese to Spanish, Danish can with no more right be regarded as a branch of German than English could be classed as a Romance language on account of the Latin elements it contains.

True, the two are akin. Both spring from the same Gothic parent-stem. Many roots they have in common. A direct descendant of Old Norse, Danish was more than the other Scandinavian idioms exposed to Germanic influences owing to adjacency of territory and close commercial relations. This propinquity has naturally left its mark on the vocabulary of the language. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it was as yet in its swaddling-clothes as a literary medium, the indifference of a semi-German court and a foreign-bred aristocracy caused it to be swamped by a flood of German and French importations. Although this current was dammed before it had wrought irremediable havoc, it goes without saying that the elements thus absorbed during its formative stages became so deeply ingrained in its very organism that later attempts at

eradication have proved an extremely arduous task. Anglo-Saxon purifiers of the English tongue will appreciate this difficulty. While the weeding-out process is continually going on, led by able linguists and men of letters, German loan-words still abound, clad in Danish garb and naturalized. It would thus be futile to deny that the Danish language is indebted to its German neighbor; but it is not the indebtedness of a child to a mother or even an older sister; rather that to a midwife and a nurse.

The two are akin. But between modern High German and Danish, as it is today spoken and written by the educated classes, there is a wide gulf of differences in form and structure, in sound and genius. The Danish sentence construction is simple and direct as in English, not involved and labored like the German. Danish is rounded and smooth, with a tendency to slur and a strong predilection for soft consonants; German is rugged and pebbly, inclined toward hardness, harshness. In consonance with the national character of the two peoples, Danish is supple and conversationally easy-lyrically tender; German stiff and majestic, rhetorically ponderous-epically stirring. In the armory of dialectics Danish supplies the rapier of irony, German the war-club of pathos. Danish has been called the most subdued language in the world; the very core of German is robustness and force. German is an Alpine torrent, Danish a serene brook. The storm-swept pines of the Black Forest breathe through the German's songs; the lyre of the Dane is tuned by the balmy breeze from the beech woods of his low, green isles.

Which of the two offers the better vehicle for the expression of thoughts and feelings, in verse and prose, must remain a matter of individual taste. In any comparison allowance must be made for the national equation. Either is indissolubly wedded to, and must be seen in the light of, at the same time that it reflects, the national character which forged it. No touchstone has as yet been discovered for testing the relative merits of different languages as bearers of culture other than the degree of adequacy to which the products of culture have found utterance in them and through their medium been made accessible to all who master them. But the Dane who should venture the asser

tion that his mother-tongue is fully the equal of German in that respect would probably not be sharply criticised by anyone familiar with the literatures in both.

2. The literature.-In drawing parallels in the literary field it must be remembered how seriously handicapped is the author writing in a language understood by but a few million people. Beyond the narrow confines of his native state known, if at all, through translations only, in whose approximations the essence of his stylistic individuality—so intimately bound up with the medium of expression - is always volatilized and often entirely lost, he enters the arena under conditions making a full appreciation next to impossible. Taking due account of this fact, it may well be questioned whether, aside from the three great language areas English, French, and German- any nation, irrespective of size, has ever unfolded a more prolific and variegated, yet withal original and strong, literary activity than this little people numbering barely two million and a half. True, Denmark has not produced a Shakespeare. Neither has Germany. But Oehlenschläger, the greatest literary genius of the North, though inferior to Goethe in versatility and depth, has created works which in poetic qualities and mastery of language will bear comparison with those of the Weimar statesman-poet. The playwright Holberg, who in the eighteenth century became the founder of the Danish stage, has no rival in Germany in dramatic force and caustic wit.

The "golden age" of Danish literature, covering the last decades of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, like that of Germany coincided with a period of political distress and economic depression. To the generations of brilliant writers, of the then prevailing romantic school, which sprang up in those years, inspired by national ideals and extending over the whole range of literary categories, belong, besides that of Oehlenschläger, such names as Ewald and Baggesen, Grundtvig and Ingemann, Heiberg and Hertz, Hauch and Paludan-Müller, Steen Blicher and Goldschmidt, Aarestrup and Christian Winther names all of which would be classed among the best in the literature of any country.

Of all Danish authors the most widely known is, however, Hans Christian Andersen, not so much because of the especial greatness of his genius - Denmark has produced greater poets –— as owing to its peculiar quality, rendering his works in an eminent sense cosmopolitan and his place in the world-literature one of absolute uniqueness. His fairy-tales have been translated into a score of languages and are read by every American child.

In more recent years the novelist J. P. Jacobsen has revealed to the reading world the polish and pliability of the Danish language as a literary tool. No writer has handled it with greater skill, none with such infinite tenderness. linguistic as well as literary milestones. latable, foreigners have learned Danish solely in order to read him; while in Germany several prosaists of the younger school are admittedly influenced by his style.

His two volumes are Being utterly untrans

The songs of Drachmann, "the bard of the sea," reverberate throughout the sea-encircled plains of Denmark, and far beyond. Modern Germany can point to no lyricist of his talent or originality.

Georg Brandes, the æsthetician, whose fervent enthusiasm, the astounding sweep and penetrating keenness of whose lucid intellect, and whose unswerving devotion to his cause in the face of thirty years' ruthless opposition have left their indelible imprint upon the present generation, not only of writers, but of all spiritually interested men and women, in Scandinavia and in ever-widening circles in other lands; who has liberated, in that he has liberalized, literary and, through reaction, to an appreciable degree political - Denmark from the bondage of conservatism and stagnation is universally recognized as the greatest living critic. It is to be regretted that so few of his works have been translated into English. His William Shakespeare, however, is found on the shelves of every student of the Stratford sage. Brandes, while freely acknowledging his indebtedness to the literature and philosophy of the Germans - with whom his works are extremely popular, and who have made - like repeated attempts to appropriate him as one of their own modern Danish writers generally, does not conceal his preference for French spirit and French belles-lettres.

In this connection probably the Norwegians Björnson and Ibsen ought to be mentioned. Norway may, in a sense, be said to belong to the Danish culture area. The cultural development of the two nations, after their political separation in 1814, has followed closely parallel lines; the literary language of Norway is still prevailingly Danish, and the works of her leading authors are published in Copenhagen, which remains the intellectual center of Scandinavia. Excepting Tolstoi and Zola, no littérateur of today enjoys a wider international reputation than the two great Norwegians. Everybody in America has heard of them, and multitudes have read one or another of their books. In Germany Ibsen especially has exerted a powerful influence upon contemporary thought and fiction, which is being ungrudgingly admitted on all sides.

3. Science. In the domain of science Denmark has always kept pace with the world's progress, and in not a few instances has contributed notably to its advancement. The University of Copenhagen holds high rank among European institutions of learning, both as a professional school and as the home of scholars eminent in original research. Of names too many for enumeration a few only of the most prominent must be mentioned. It was the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe upon whose observations Kepler based his laws; it was the Dane Ole Römer who first measured the velocity of light; it was the Danish physicist Oersted who discovered electro-magnetism, thereby paving the way for Morse's telegraph. The sciences of geology and archeology were founded in Denmark by Steno (Steensen) and Worsaae, respectively. In recent years the introduction by a Danish scientist of the ecological method has revolutionized the study of botany. Rasmus Rask has been called the father of comparative philology; after him Madvig attained world-wide fame for his work in the classical languages. Among philosophers Kierkegaard, Martensen, and Höffding are known in America. Around the name of the first-mentioned—a strikingly original thinker- a whole literature has of late years grown up in Germany.

The fine arts. Here it is sufficient to remind of the fact that