the coinage, regulating the weights and measures, repairing the public roads, and setting up mile-posts and sign-posts. While holding the place of chief of the police department of Copenhagen, he also organised a good system of lighting the streets, established an efficient night-watch and a fire-brigade, and gave plans for the construction of better fire-engines than any that had yet been in use. He was at a later period named Chancellor of the Exchequer and an assessor of the Supreme Court of Justice, and was engaged for seven years in compiling a great land-book, in which all land was taxed in accordance with a certain mode of measurement known by the name of the Hartkorn Standard. This land-Dook was made the basis for the code of laws and the mode of assessing taxes established by Christian V. in 1684.

The bigotry of the king and of the court clergy was the means of depriving Denmark of the labours of many thousands of Huguenots, who, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, petitioned for leave to settle in the country. This was sternly refused, and hence these industrious men carried their skill to other lands, where no obstacles existed to the profession of the doctrines of Calvin. The condition of the peasants had been made so much worse by the creation of numerous countships and baronies, which gave the holders full power over the serfs upon their lands, that many of the younger men left the country. At length a law was passed decreeing that all Bonder who did not marry and remain settled on the estate to which they belonged should be taken as soldiers, while any peasant who left his master's service without leave might be sent to the hulks to work in irons for a year. The consequence of these cruel measures was that the poor fell into a state of dependence, scarcely better than slavery, while the land was only half-cultivated and the owners became in time impoverished.

PART IV.

"THE TYPE-QUARREL."

Frederick IV., 1699-1730.-On the death of Christian V. in 1699, after a reign of nearly thirty years, his eldest son was

proclaimed king under the title of Frederick IV. This prince, who in the latter part of his life showed great capacity for ruling, and considerable practical knowledge of all the details. of government, had been so neglected by his father in his childhood and youth, that he had not even been taught to spell or to express himself correctly, and had never been permitted to take any part in public affairs until within a few days of Christian's death, when the old king, either because he was too feeble to resist, or because he repented of his unworthy conduct to his son, summoned him for the first time to take his place at the council-board. Frederick was then more than twenty-eight years of age, and his first measure after his coronation was to plunge the kingdom into an unnecessary war with Sweden by seizing upon the territories of Duke Frederick IV. of Gottorp, the near kinsman and close ally of the young Swedish king, Charles XII. The Danish king had probably trusted to the youth and inexperience of his cousin, Charles XII., but in this expectation he was soon undeceived, for although the young Swedish king was scarcely eighteen at the time, and had previously seemed to be wholly taken up with bear-hunting and other daring pursuits in which he took special delight, he, on the first news of Frederick's invasion of Gottorp, collected troops and ships, made a rapid descent on Sjælland, and in person advanced to the assault of Copenhagen. These prompt and unexpected measures had the effect of inducing King Frederick to make a hasty peace with his namesake in Holstein-Gottorp, to whom he assured the independent sovereignty of his duchy and the payment of a large sum of money for the expenses of the war. In this short and inglorious war, the Danish king had had to contend with a far more powerful foe than his still untried cousin. This was William of Orange, who, as king of England and Stadtholder of Holland, exerted an overwhelming weight on the politics of Europe at this time, and who had sent a large fleet of English and Dutch ships into the Baltic to co-operate with his ally, the Swedish king. King William's threats of bombarding Copenhagen, unless Frederick IV. at once concluded a peace with Charles XII., had therefore had a great share in bringing hostilities to a sudden close.

Holstein-Gottorp.-The death of Duke Frederick IV. of Gottorp, in 1702, was the means of exciting new causes of difference between the Danish crown and the duchy. This was mainly due to the ambition and craft of Count Görtz, one of the members of the council of regency, who, together with the widowed duchess, Hedvig Sofia, sister of Charles XII., ruled the state during the minority of the young Duke Carl Frederick. This man, whose aim was to separate the province entirely from Denmark, and who afterwards, as prime minister to Charles XII. of Sweden, did all in his power to bring about the ruin of the Danish monarchy, had roused the anger of Frederick by causing certain public notices, which referred to the joint government of the king and duke, to be issued in the name of the latter only. He had still more offended the king by having the duke's name printed in the same type as his own, instead of letting the royal signature, as was usual in such cases, be struck off in larger letters. This frivolous cause of strife, known as the "type-quarrel," gave rise to many other differences, and led in the course of time to open war between the parties, which ended, after the peace between Sweden and Denmark in 1721, in the entire subjugation of the duchy of Holstein-Gottorp, which, in accordance with a royal decree of that year, was again re-united to the Danish crown-lands, after having been separated from them since the year 1386, when it was given by the regent, Queen Margaret, to Count Gerhard VI. of Holstein as an hereditary fief.

Internal state of Denmark:-The war in which Denmark was embroiled in common with the other northern powers between 1709 and 1720 belongs so much more to the history of Charles XII. of Sweden, who was the most prominent character in all the scenes of that stirring period, than to that of any other prince who took part in it, that it will be unnecessary here to enter into any details in regard to it. We will therefore turn at once to the events which belong to the internal rule of Frederick IV. of Denmark, whose economy, industry, common sense, and moral rectitude formed a striking contrast to the characteristics by which his father had been distinguished. By his careful reduction of all unnecessary

expenses in his court and in the various departments of the government, Frederick IV. succeeded in reducing to a very small sum the national debt left to him by Christian V., notwithstanding the cost of the long war and the outlay required for the erection of the palaces of Fredericksberg and Fredensborg and other public buildings, which the foolishly extravagant tastes of his queen, Louisa of Mecklenburg, had led him to incur. The reign of Frederick was visited by several public calamities, which called for the prompt and liberal aid of the state. In 1710 a frightful pestilence cut off 25,000 people in Copenhagen alone, and in 1728, a destructive fire laid waste two-thirds of the city, which cost the lives of many of the citizens and reduced to ashes many of the principal buildings, amongst others the magnificent University Library, with most of its rich stores of oriental manuscripts and other valuable works, while in 1717 an inundation had destroyed large tracts of the rich pasture lands of the Ditmarshers. In all these national nrisfortunes Frederick evinced the greatest liberality and sympathy towards the sufferers, and took means to relieve their distress to the utmost of his power. This king was the first sovereign who endeavoured to extend a knowledge of the Gospel to his heathen colonial subjects by organizing missions for their conversion and instruction. In 1705 the missionary Ziegenbalg was sent by him to the Danish trading station at Tranquebar in India to teach the Hindoos, and in 1721, as we have seen in Chapter VI., Hans Egede with his wife went to Greenland to preach to the natives, who, since the Black Death in 1350, had been apparently forgotten by the mothercountry. Frederick caused the town of Godthaab to be founded in 1721, and a Greenland trading company to be incorporated in 1723; and thus this long-neglected colony was reopened to the rest of the world.

This king's attention to his fleet was well repaid by the able body of seamen which the Danish navy possessed at the close of his reign; while the gallant deeds of his brave admiral, Peder Vessel, better known as "Tordenskjold (Thundershield), recall by their daring, success, and extraordinary character, the memory of those northern sea-kings of old, whose name like his own was a shield to their friends and a thunderbolt to their

foes. In accordance with the unwise policy of the poorer rulers of those times, Frederick let out his armies to other princes who needed and could afford to pay for foreign auxiliaries. Thus 12,000 Danes were lent to England for ten years to fight in the Spanish War of Succession, while 8,000 swelled the ranks of the Imperialists at the same time, and the money which they too often purchased with their lives was used by the king to pay off the arrears of an old debt due to Holland.

Frederick IV. tried to improve the condition of the peasantry by abolishing serfdom, but his measures in their favour lost much of the benefit they might otherwise have afforded by the organization of a country militia, which the great landowners were called upon to maintain at their own expense, and which they filled up by sending into the ranks any of their peasants whom they wished to get rid of or punish for insubordination. His measures for the education of the poorer classes were more immediately successful, and at Frederick's death, in 1730, free schools had been so generally opened in all parts of his kingdom, that no sovereign of those times numbered so large a proportion of educated persons amongst his subjects as the Danish king.