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THE University is under the joint control of fifteen dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Opened in 1868. Located at Sewanee, Tenn., on the plateau of the Cumberland Mountains, 2,000 feet above the level of the sea. Sewanee has a national reputation as a health resort.

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THE literature of modern Scandinavia was, like that of modern Germany, slow to emerge from the intellectual darkness of the Middle Ages. In Italy the new dawn of letters came with the close of the thirteenth century; in England, with the close of the fourteenth; in France, with the close of the fifteenth; and in Spain, with the close of the sixteenth. But the figure that stands upon the threshold of modern German literature is that of Lessing, who lived in the eighteenth century; and the writer who ushers in the literature of modern Denmark is Holberg, who was a boy of sixteen when the seventeenth century rounded to its close. Both in Germany and in Scandinavia, indeed, the Reformation had been followed by a period of intellectual ferment, but the energies thus liberated found their chief vent in theological and political discussion. The historians of Danish literature speak of this period as the age of learning, but it was an age which left humanism clean out of the question, and even its learning was of the narrow scholastic type. The dawn of the eighteenth century found Danish theologians busily discussing such questions as whether a human being might be changed into a pillar of salt by natural means, or whether God might have come to earth, had he so willed, in the form of a sponge or a frog.

Into the world thus busied, which was destined during his lifetime and largely owing to his activity to undergo so complete an intellectual transformation, Ludvig Holberg was born on the 3d of December, 1684. His birthplace was

Bergen, then a busy Hansa town; and this accident has led the Norwegians, overzealous for their particular section of Scandinavian soil, to claim him for their own, and to dispute his title as the "Father of Danish Literature." The facts are, of course, that Norway and Denmark were politically one until 1814; that, up to this time, they had-as they still have, nearly-a common language; and that the literatures of the two countries were practically inseparable. Copenhagen was the intellectual center of the kingdom, and nearly all the literature produced, whether by Danes or Norwegians, there saw the light, and for that reason is properly described as Danish literature. Since 1814 there has arisen what may fairly be called a Norwegian literature, although a large part of it has been written in the Danish language and printed in Copenhagen. As for Holberg, he saw Norway for the last time in 1705, and all the associations of the years of his fame were with the Danish capital. So we may safely call him a Danish writer, while recognizing the fact that he was a Norwegian by birth, and the still larger fact that he wrote for all the Scandinavian countries and made for himself the greatest name in all Scandinavian literature. Even in Sweden, with its different form of speech, his name was cherished and his books were widely read, as is shown by a pretty story which Scheibe, his friend and German biographer, tells us. The story runs that a distinguished Danish scholar, traveling in Sweden, reached Stockholm at the same time as the news of Holberg's death. He had occasion to send for a shoemaker, who, on coming and learning that his patron was a Dane, burst forth into a lament: "Ah, sir, your great man is dead!" The Dane was surprised that a common workingman should be so affected by the news, and asked the shoemaker what he knew about Holberg. "Should I not know him?" replied the man. "If you will go home with me, you will find all of your Holberg's writings in my house. They are my favorite books; I read them morning and night."

The principal authority for the facts of Holberg's life, except for the closing years, is a sort of autobiography,

originally published in his "Opuscula Latina," and translated into Danish with the title "Trende Epistler" (Three Epistles), under his own supervision. An English translation of this work was published early in the present century, but it is, of course, no longer obtainable, and our extracts are retranslated from the standard Danish version. This little volume is one of the most readable of the author's works; it is candid and concise, and mingles jest with earnest in an altogether delightful fashion. The touch of the writer of satirical comedy is frequently seen, and the author describes his own foibles with the same sort of good humor that goes to the creation of the types immortalized in "Den Danske Skue-Plads," or collection of his plays.

From this autobiography we learn, first of all, that Ludvig was the youngest of twelve children, and that he was left an orphan at the age of ten. Until he was eighteen he went to school in Bergen, and was then sent to Copenhagen for an examination. Being without the money needful for university study, he soon returned to Norway, where he became tutor in the family of a clergyman at Voss, a village near Bergen. One of the conditions imposed upon him was that he should preach in his employer's place when the latter was unable to attend to his duties. The student thus spent a year in "flogging children and converting peasants," being rather more successful in the latter than in the former task. "The peasants . . . thought me such a success as a preacher that they compared me with Master Peter, of blessed memory, one of their former priests, whom they considered a second Chrysostomus.' Perhaps our amateur theologian won the gratitude of his hearers by the unusual brevity of his sermons. At all events, he says elsewhere: "I was in my youth once reproached by a priest because a sermon I had given in his presence was only a quarter of an hour long, but I maintained that, allowing for the tautologies and unnecessary repetitions of his discourse, our sermons were of equal length." Having saved a little money from his year's work, he went to Copenhagen again, studied French and Italian, got a second-class in philosophy and a laudabi