The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

66 SCANDINAVIA.the Dane, awaiting the day when his oppressed country shall again stand in need ofhis stout arm. This is also the famous castle of Hamlet, which thus lives in deathlesssong, though we look in vain from its "platform" for Shakspere's "dreadfulsummit of the cliff, that beetles o'er his base into the sea." The events told by thepoet are fancy's theme, but here the mind still bodies them forth, and thecastle halls seem still to echo those sublime utterances that can never die.The current of the Sound sweeps by.Elsinore, which is the natural limit of thetwo seas, and which the Danish kings took care to fortify, in order to enforce duesFig. 29. Kronbokg Castle, from the Sound.from all vessels passing to and fro. Till the middle of the present century thistribute was universally submitted to, but in 1855 the United States refusedpayment of the tax, and in 1857 it was redeemed for the sum of £3,494,000,payable by sixteen nations in proportion to their traffic. About 50,000 vesselspass yearly in front of Elsinore, 4,000 to 0,000 stopping for supplies.Bbskitde, capital and most populous city of Denmark before Copenhagen,