DIURGAERDEN.

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Diurgaerden is a large piece of land made into a garden by our Lord himself.  Come with us over there.  We are still in the city, but before the palace lie the broad hewn stone stairs, leading down to the water, where the Dalkulls—­i.e., the Dalecarlian women—­stand and ring with metal bells.  On board! here are boats enough to choose amongst, all with wheels, which the Dalkulls turn.  In coarse white linen, red stockings, with green heels, and singularly thick-soled shoes, with the upper-leather right up the shin-bone, stands the Dalkull; she has ornamented the boat, that now shoots away, with green branches.  Houses and streets rise and unfold themselves; churches and gardens start forth; they stand on Soedermalm high above the tops of the ships’ masts.  The scenery reminds one of the Bhosphorus and Pera; the motley dress of the Dalkulls is quite Oriental—­and listen! the wind bears melancholy Skalmeie tones out to us.  Two poor Dalecarlians are playing music on the quay; they are the same drawn-out, melancholy tones that are played by the Bulgarian musicians in the streets of Pera.  We stept out, and are in the Diurgarden.

What a crowd of equipages pass in rows through the broad avenue! and what a throng of well-dressed pedestrians of all classes!  One thinks of the garden of the Villa Borghese, when, at the time of the wine feast, the Roman people and strangers take the air there.  We are in the Borghese garden; we are by the Bosphorus, and yet far in the North.  The pine-tree rises large and free; the birch droops its branches, as the weeping willow alone has power to do—­and what magnificently grand oaks!  The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees, beautiful to the painter’s eye; splendid green grass plains lie stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close past, as if it were a river.  Large ships with swelling sails, the one high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied numbers.

Come! let us up to Bystroem’s villa; it lies on the stony cliff up there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur:  we see from here the whole tripartite city, Soedermalm, Nordmalm and the island with that huge palace.  It is delightful, the building here on this rock, and the building stands, and that almost entirely of marble, a “Casa santa d’Italia,” as if borne through the air here in the North.  The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but heavy:  there is nothing genial.  Round about stand large marble figures by Bystroem, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity.  Madonna is encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the weeping Cupid, one thinks of a pose arranged by a ballet-master.