FLOREAP SVENSKA.
VIRST impressions on the minds of the susceptible 1 may be as naive as they are vivid, but they have a certain interest of their own. In that belief, at least, I will sp ak of Sweden as of a country that I have just discovered.
Imagine Merionethshire sunk breast-high in the sea and you will have the Gothenburg archipelago : afforest the mountains of that same county and all but drown them and you will get the islands and lagoons of Stockholm : uproot half Venice from its piles and perch it upon granite cliffs and you will get a fair notion of the capital itself. Next figure to yourself a race of men, rather taller and fairer and healthier-looking than the English, graced with the hospitality of Americans, the efficiency of Germans and the manners of Southern France ; imagine all the girls fresh and frank-eyed and upstanding, every fourth woman worth turning round to look at, and you have an idea of the Swedish people.
No doubt in the Gothenburg Exhibition just opened there has been a benevolent censorship as to what should be placed in the national shop-window—and the window- dressing is a triumph—but there is scarcely a thing in this whole display that is- second-rate in design or con- ception or anything not honestly executed.
Happy in so many things, Sweden is now attaining high distinction in her buildings through the labours of a brilliant band of architects, amongst whom Messrs. Bjerke and Ericson stand high. It is these two who have created the. beautiful architectural framework that holds the Exhibition—a work of ingenuity and happy fantasy that suits its purpose to a miracle and that charms the visitor into a mood of sympathetic appreciation on the instant, carrying him along in interest and eagerness through a hundred halls and galleries and past a thousand exhibits.
As to the " style " of the Exhibition buildings, both past and future have been seen through keen and humorous eyes, and have been here realized with great ingenuity and constructive ability, the materials being of the simplest sort—timber and plaster, canvas and paint. The net result is such as one might have expected from the improbable co-operation of Mr. Norman Wilkinson, Sir Robert Lorimer and Mr. Roger Fry, and is extremely exciting and almost entirely delightful.
The ceramics, glassware, fabrics, ironwork, printing and furniture are such as to make an Englishman go humbly, whilst the quality of modern Swedish sculpture must surely cause that catch in the breath—that sharp stab of pleasure—that is the disconcerting effect of a new revelation of beauty. As to Swedish architecture nowhere, perhaps, has a modern municipality so realized and risen to its duties as have. the city fathers of Stockholm, where their majestic Town Hall is only the latest and greatest of a hundred new buildings, each one of which is architecturally notable - and an ornament to the already beautiful city.
Two- great hill-top churches have lately added their fine profiles to Stockholues fretted sky-line. On every quay, too, and in every street and square, new shops and banks and blocks of offices or flats show how clean. vigorous, imaginative, yet logical, is the present cast of Swedish architecture. In Stockholm the housebreaker is " Death, the Friend," for nothing is destroyed which is fit to survive with honour, and the gaps that he makes are at once filled with new buildings more fit and more beautiful than the old. I do not know what may have been torn down on the water front to make way for the new Town Hall, though even had it been the Doge's Palace I should have been disposed to acquiesce in its demolition if no other site had been found possible. Epitomizing and crowning as it does the renaissance of the Swedish arts and building crafts in the national vein, Professor Ostberg's great masterpiece is alone enough to make Stockholm artistically important and one of those capitals that every enlightened traveller must henceforth see.
Civic pride and a love of fine buildings are doubtless, reinforced in Sweden by the belief that beautiful cities attract travellers and commerce as bright flowers entice the pollen-bearing, honey-taking bee, wherein the Swedes are surely wiser than the English. It is dispiriting to reflect that ships set out daily from Stockholm for such grim and inchoate ports as Hull and Newcastle, which to many Swedes must represent " England." Yet they appear to like and respect us, certainly they entertain us with the most generous hospitality; they speak our language excellently, yet with diffidence. Finally, so intimate is their knowledge of our industrial and political developments, so lively their interest in our literature and• general culture, that one has none of the feeling with them, of talking to a foreigner save that a slightly different angle of view and a native eagerness of mind make intercourse peculiarly stimulating.
Of such engaging neighbours (the North Sea is crossed in some forty hours) we surely do well to make real
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