Our author speaks with natural surprise of the small number of Roman Catholics he encountered in the Danish States. The Papists have no church or chapel throughout the kingdom; indeed, with the exception of the private chapel of the Austrian minister, no place of worship. We were aware that such was the fact a few years ago; we were scarcely prepared to find that Rome, who has been so busy in planting new shoots of her faith in every nook of the known world, is still content to have no recognition in Denmark. Heavy penalties are incurred by all who secede to the Romish church. In Sweden a change to Roman Catholicism is followed by banishment. This severity, we presume, must be ascribed to state policy rather than to a spirit of intolerance, for Jews and Christians of every denomination are permitted the freest exercise of their faith. Since the year 1521, the era of the Reformation in Denmark, the religion of the country has been Lutheran. The Danish church is divided into five dioceses, of which the bishop of Zealand is the metropolitan. His income is about a thousand a-year, whilst that of the other prelates varies from four to six hundred. The funds of the clergy are derived principally from tithes; but the parish ministers receive part of their stipend in the form of offerings at the three great annual festivals. Until lately, there existed much lukewarmness on all religious questions. Within the last ten or fifteen years, however, a new impulse has been given to the spiritual mind by the writing and preaching of several Calvinistic ministers, who have migrated from Switzerland and established themselves in Copenhagen. Their object has been to stop the recreations which, until their arrival, enlivened the Sabbath-day. They have met with more success in the higher classes than amongst the people, who now, as formerly, assemble on the green in front of the village church at the close of service, and pursue their several pastimes.
Mention is made in Mr Kohl's volume, of the churchyards and cemetries he visited in his hasty progress. Compared with those of his own northern Germany, the Scandinavian places of burial are indeed very beautiful. The government has long since forbidden any new interments to be made within the churches, and many picturesque spots have, in consequence, been converted into cemetries. In the immediate vicinity of Copenhagen there are several; but the essence of Mr Kohl's plan being want of arrangement, he makes no mention of them for the present. One of these cemetries, the _Assistenskirkegaard_, outside the city, has an unusual number of fine monuments, with no exhibitions of that glaring want of taste so frequently met with elsewhere. The village churchyards are bright, happy-looking spots, which, by their cheerful aspect, seem to rob the homes of the dead of all their natural gloom and desolation. Every peasant's grave is a bed of flowers, planted, watched, and cherished by a sorrowing friend. At either end of the seven or eight feet of mound rises a wooden cross, on which fresh wreaths of flowers appear throughout the summer, giving place only to the "eternals" which adorn the grave when snow mantles its surface. A narrow walk, marked by a line of box, incloses every mound; or, not unfrequently, a trellis-work, tastefully entwined of twigs and boughs. The resting-places of the middle classes are surmounted by a tablet, not, as in our churchyards, rigidly inclosed within impassable palisades, but standing in a little garden, where the fresh-blown flowers, the neatly trimmed beds, and generally the garden-bench, mark that the spot is visited and tended by the friends of those who sleep below. Hither widowed mothers lead their children, on the anniversary of their father's death, to strew flowers on his grave, to hang up the wreaths which they have wound; but, above all, to collect the choicest flowers that have bloomed around him, which must henceforth deck, until they perish, the portrait of the departed, or some relic dear for his sake. We have watched the rough work-worn peasant, leading by the hand his little grandchild, laden with flowers and green twigs to freshen the grave of a long-absent helpmate; and as we have remarked, we confess not without emotion, feeble infancy and feeble age uniting their weak efforts to preserve, in cleanliness and beauty, the one sacred patch of earth--we have believed, undoubtingly, that whilst customs such as these prevail, happiness and morality must be the people's lot; and that very fearful must be the responsibility of those who shall sow the first seeds of discord and dissension amongst the simple peasantry of so fair a land!
