By merely looking at these books, their bindings and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in spirit, and longs to be out in the free air—­and we are there; by Upsala’s ancient hills.  Thither do thou lead us, remembrance’s elf, out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark’s church stands—­the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes gained in the war against the Danes.  We follow the broad high road:  it leads us close past Upsala’s old hills—­Odin’s, Thor’s and Freia’s graves, as they are called.

[Footnote Q:  A Gothic translation of the Four Evangelists, and ascribed to the Moesogothic Archbishop Ulphilas.]

There once stood ancient Upsala, here now are but a few peasants’ farms.  The low church, built of granite blocks, dates from a very remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple.  Each of the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands.  Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up.  The old housewife, from the peasant’s cot close by the hill, brings the silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead.  The wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden, and for the heart’s constant thoughts—­young love!

Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! and years after, when the same wanderer again stood here, she, the blooming rose, had been laid in the earth; the spring roses had strown their leaves over her coffined clay; the sweet music of her lips sounded but in memory; the smile in her eyes and around her mouth, was gone like the sunbeams, which then shone on Upsala’s hills.  Her name in the greensward is grown over; she herself is in the earth, and it is closed above her; but the hill here, closed for a thousand years, is open.

Through the passage which is dug deep into the hills, we come to the funereal urns which contain the bones of youthful kindred; the dust of kings, the gods of the earth.

The old housewife, from the peasant’s cot, has lighted half a hundred wax candles and placed them in rows in the otherwise pitchy-dark, stone-paved passage.  It shines so festally in here over the bones of the olden time’s mighty ones, bones that are now charred and burnt to ashes.  And whose were they?  Thou world’s power and glory, thou world’s posthumous fame—­dust, dust like beauty’s rose, laid in the dark earth, where no light shines; thy memorials are but a name, the name but a sound.  Away hence, and up on the hill where the wind blows, the sun shines, and the eye looks over the green plain, to the sunlit, dear Upsala, the student’s city.

SALA.

* * * * *

Sweden’s great King, Germany’s preserver, Gustavus Adolphus, founded Sala.  The little wood, close by, still preserves legends of the heroic King’s youthful love—­of his meeting here with Ebba Brahe.