In man, character is the soul's expression. In architecture, character is the moral physiognomy o£ a building. As a portrait without character is but a vain shadow of the person represented, so a monument which does not appeal to the intelligence, which evokes no thought, is merely a pile of stones, a body without a soul. The soul of architecture is the thought it expresses.
Character tends towards beauty in man as well as in his works. If we glance at human society, we see faces which appear to be nothing more than a sketch. Parsimonious nature has given them only sufficient life to move in a narrow circle; they are mere individuals; they represent nothing but themselves. However, in the midst of the crowd, some men are noticeable for an abundance of vitality, whom favorable events have developed along their natural tendencies: they impersonate many individuals in one; their unity is equal to numbers; for good or evil, they have a character. In proportion as an individuality becomes more enriched, more pronounced, it attains character; in proportion as character loses its roughness it becomes beauty. This is also true of architecture.
Among the men nearest to the heart of the Danish people is Steen Steensen Blicher, who was born in 1782 on the border of the Jutland heath with which his name is so inseparably linked. The descendant of a line of country parsons, he was destined like them to the ministry, and while awaiting his appointment he supported his family by teaching and by farming.
When after years of hardship he finally obtained a parish on the Jutland heath, the salary was too small to support his large family. It was only during the very last years of his life that he was freed from harassing cares by the generosity of three friends, who, grateful for his literary work, paid off his debts.
While he was in college at Copenhagen he heard the lectures of the Norwegian Henrik Steffens, an interpreter of the German philosophic and romantic school. Steffens aroused a reaction against the formalism of the eighteenth century, and introduced romanticism into the North by his powerful influence over men like Oehlenschläger, Grundtvig, and Mynster in Denmark, and Ling and the "Phosphorists" in Sweden. Through these lectures Blicher became much interested in the Ossianic poems, of which he made an. Excellent Danish translation.