The accession of a
new king, Oscar I, in 1844, had been followed by a sense of renewed
national security; the peasants were satisfied that the fresh reign
would be favorable to their rights and liberties; and the monarch showed
every inclination to leave his country of Norway as much as possible to
its own devices. The result of all this was that '48 left no mark on the
internal history of the country, and the fever which burned in youthful
bosoms was mainly, if not entirely, intellectual and transcendental. The
young Catiline from Grimstad, therefore, met with several sympathetic
rebels, but found nobody willing to conspire. But what he did find is so
important in the consideration of his future development that it is
needful briefly to examine it.
Norway had, in 1850, been independent of Denmark for thirty-six years.
During the greater part of that time the fiery excitements of a struggle
for politic existence had fairly exhausted her mental resources, and had
left her powerless to inaugurate a national literature. Meanwhile, there
was no such discontinuity in the literary and scientific relations of
the two countries as that which had broken their constitutional union.
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