bend with silent, serious thoughts before the mouldering remains in the coffin here—­those of St. Bridget and her daughter St. Catherine; but even of these the remembrance will be extinguished.  There is a tradition amongst the people, that in the time of the Reformation the real remains were carried off to a cloister in Poland, but this is not certainly known.  Vadstene, at least, is not the repository of St. Bridget and her daughter’s dust.

Vadstene was once great and glorious.  Great was the cloister’s power, as St. Bridget saw it in the prospect of death.  Where is now the cloister’s might?  It reposes under the tomb-stones—­the graves alone speak of it.  Here, under our feet, only a few steps from the church door, is a stone in which are carved fourteen rings:  they announce that fourteen farms were given to the cloister, in order that he who moulders here might have this place, fourteen feet within the church door.  It was Boa Johnson Grip, a great sinner; but the cloister’s power was greater than that of all sinners:  the stone on his grave records it with no ordinary significance of language.

Gustavus, the first Vasa, was the sun—­the ruling power:  the brightness of the cloister star must needs pale before him.

There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene’s rich palace which he erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister.  At a far distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored image.

We now stand before it in daylight.  Not a pane of glass is to be found in it; planks and old doors are nailed fast to the window frames; the balls alone still stand on the two towers, broad, heavy, and resembling colossal toadstools.  The iron spire of the one still towers aloft in the air; the other spire is bent:  like the hands on a sun-dial it shows the time—­the time that is gone.  The other two balls are half fallen down; lambs frisk about between the beams, and the space below is used as a cow-stall.

The arms over the gateway have neither spot nor blemish:  they seem as if carved yesterday; the walls are firm, and the stairs look like new.  In the palace yard, far above the gateway, the great folding door was opened, whence once the minstrels stepped out and played a welcome greeting from the balcony, but even this is broken down:  we go through the spacious kitchen, from whose white walls, a sketch of Vadstene palace, ships, and flowering trees, in red chalk, still attract the eye.

Here where they cooked and roasted, is now a large empty space:  even the chimney is gone; and from the ceiling where thick, heavy beams of timber have been placed close to one another, there hangs the dust-covered cobweb, as if the whole were a mass of dark grey dropping stones.