The Prison-Life of the Countess Ulfeldt. 773 In the course of these observations we trust nothing has been set down in malice, and nothing distorted by blind feeling. The end will have been gained, if the discussion of the great question of the condition and purification of the Creeds of the Christian Church, has been helped forward in any degree, so as to lead to its being further taken up and continued. ENGLISH NONCONFORMIST. ART. VIII.-The Prison-Life of the Countess Ulfeldt. Leonora Christina Ulfeldt's "Jammers-Minde:" En egenhaendig Skildring af hendes Fangenskab i Blaataarn i Aareni 1663–1685. Kiobenhavn. 1869. אן N the long roll of the Scandinavian women, no nobler name stands recorded than that of Leonora Christina Ulfeldt. The daughter of a king, and espoused to the foremost man, next to the sovereign himself, in the realm of Denmark, she seemed destined to a life free from the troubles and anxieties which beset the path of mere ordinary mortals. From this height of earthly prosperity she was at once precipitated to the lowest depth of wretchedness; and the almost regal splendour of her position was exchanged for the squalor of a dreary prison. Yet her spirit was equal to the catastrophe, and she endured her long and terrible sufferings with a Christian heroism which has scarcely ever been surpassed. For nearly twenty-two years she was confined within the narrow limits of a miserable dungeon, the victim of a crowned, but cruel woman's unrelenting vengeance; and seldom did her courage threaten to give way before the injuries and insults heaped upon her inoffensive head. It was only very recently, however, that the true character and full measure of these injuries were really made known to the world. A work of fascinating interest was not long ago disentombed from the mouldering archives of the past, which pours a whole flood of fresh light on the sufferings endured by Leonora Christina, and puts us in possession of the most minute details of the weary years of her prison-life. It is in fact her autobiography, written during that melancholy portion of her existence, long neglected and forgotten, and now for the first time published by the express desire of one of her descendants, Count Waldstein Wartemberg of Austria. To this remarkable narrative we propose briefly to direct the attention of our readers; but ere we do so, let us give a short sketch of the writer's history until the date of her imprisonment, the time at which her autobiography begins. Leonora Christina was the daughter of Christian the Fourth of Denmark, by Christina Munk, with whom, after the death of his queen, he had contracted a morganatic marriage. Largely gifted with personal beauty and intellectual endowments, Leonora was given by her royal father in wedlock to Corfitz Ulfeldt, the representative of one of the most ancient and distinguished Danish families, who, while still a youth, had been dignified with the title of Count by the Emperor of Germany, and had since filled some of the chief offices in the Danish State. Ulfeldt's talents were undeniably great; but he seems to have been a man of the most ambitious aspirations, and nearly, if not altogether, devoid of settled principle. After his father-in-law's death, and during the earlier part of the reign of Frederick the Third, Ulfeldt, who was High Steward of the kingdom, played the most important part in State affairs, and possessed a power and influence little short of that enjoyed by Frederick himself. This influence he owed, not merely to his exalted rank, his great wealth, and his commanding intellect, but also to the ties of relationship that connected him with so many noble houses. Through his wife, he was of course the brother-in-law of the numerous sons of the deceased sovereign; of his own brothers and sisters there were still seven surviving; and thus he was, in one way or another, related to the most illustrious families of Denmark. The new monarch hated his allpowerful subject, of whom report affirmed-and perhaps not without reason-that he had secret designs upon the throne; and the queen, the haughty Sophia Amelia, cherished bitter personal hostility to Leonora, whose beauty and accomplishments so far surpassed her own. To remove him from the capital, Ulfeldt was despatched as ambassador to Holland; 1 The likeness of Leonora Christina prefixed to the present volume, and which is after an old oil-painting in Count Waldstein Wartemberg's posses sion, corroborates the report of her personal beauty. It is a queenly countenance, such as you would expect in the daughter of a man like Christian the Fourth of Denmark; marked by much firmness of expression Plots against her Husband. 775 but, on his return, occasion was taken to find fault with the manner in which he had discharged his duties when abroad; and a commission was appointed for the purpose of inquiring into the matter. Ulfeldt, deeply aggrieved at this, retired from the court the more readily because his Countess was now refused the marks of honour which she was before accustomed to receive as the daughter of King Christian the Fourth. Meanwhile, a certain Colonel Walton hit upon a clumsy and miserable artifice, by which he hoped to effect the hated noble's fall. He induced a woman of bad repute, named Dina Winhofer, to lay information that Ulfeldt and his wife were plotting the murder of the King by poison. As Dina however involved herself in so many contradictions that it was plain her story was untrue, she was condemned to death for her false accusation; but her prompter, Walton, was only banished from Denmark. Incensed at this lenient treatment of the chief criminal, and at the whole conduct of the court and government, Ulfeldt, along with his wife and children, privately forsook his native country; and the next time he trod its soil, it was as an enemy in the train of Charles the Fourth of Sweden. From the date of his departure from Copenhagen-to Ulfeldt's lasting disgrace be it recorded-he sought to compass the destruction of his fatherland by every means in his power. Entering into the service first of Queen Christina, and afterwards of her successor, Charles, he contributed, by his suggestions and advices, to kindle the SwedishDanish war of 1657-58, which brought such numerous evils upon Denmark. Yet, even in his adopted country, Ulfeldt became the object of suspicion, which went so far at last that a commission was nominated to inquire into his public and private procedure. By this commission he was acquitted; but before their judgment was pronounced he had fled from Sweden, under the false impression that the sentence would be unfavourable. With a strange infatuation he returned, accompanied by his wife, to Copenhagen, where, immediately after his arrival, they were taken into custody and banished to the island of Bornholm. Here they were at first treated with much severity; but in the end they received their freedom, after Ulfeldt had given his solemn promise to undertake about the chin and mouth, but in the upper part by true feminine softness, with a broad brow and large loving eyes. nothing that could injure the sovereign or the State, never to leave the country without the King's license, and also to surrender a portion of his property. But the man's daring and ambitious spirit would give him no rest; he sought and received permission to visit Spain, and, instead of repairing thither, took up his abode in Amsterdam, from which place it was reported that he carried on a traitorous correspondence with the Elector of Brandenburg and the governments of France and Holland. The Elector himself partially communicated the real or supposed fact to the Danish Cabinet; but, as no positive proof of its existence ever saw the light, it may reasonably be doubted if there were any real foundation for the charge. Be this as it may, Ulfeldt had too many enemies at the Court of Copenhagen, who were eager to embrace so favourable an opportunity of effecting his destruction; and we need not, therefore, be surprised at the doom pronounced upon him in 1663. He was condemned to lose honour, lands, and life; and, as the latter part of the sentence could not be meanwhile put in force, a large reward was offered to anyone who should arrest him. His residence in Copenhagen was demolished, and where it stood a column was erected" to the eternal disgrace and shame of the traitor Corfitz Ulfeldt," which column was only removed in the year 1841. His children suffered with their father; they were deprived of their nobility, of all share in their father's large possessions, which were forfeited to the Crown, and they were compelled to wander helplessly in foreign lands. Ulfeldt himself, pursued as an outlaw from one country to another, forsaken by all except his children, died the year after his condemnation in a boat on the Rhyne, and was secretly buried by his sons under a tree by the river's brink. Such was the tragic end of Ulfeldt, a man whose genius, alike brilliant and versatile, might have vastly benefited his native land had it been controlled by the salutary sway of unspotted honour and unswerving principle. Throughout the entire course of Count Ulfeldt's varying fortunes, Leonora Christina was a faithful and devoted wife. We have already styled her a noble Christian heroine; and we are therefore now prepared to hear the interrogation, How can this statement be reconciled with the fact that there was so much which was reprehensible, nay, positively guilty, in the career of him to whom she was espoused? It is a question which answer. Her Complicity in the Count's Intrigues. 777 is perfectly fair and legitimate, and merits a straightforward We reply then, first, that the actual transgressions of Ulfeldt, which it is by no means our wish in the slightest degree to soften down, were transgressions rather against the King and Queen of Denmark than against the land over which they reigned. It was the intense feeling of personal injury which especially prompted Ulfeldt to become a traitor to his country's cause. Belonging as he did to the race of ancient Danish nobles who were being supplanted, during the reign of the third Frederick, by an invading host of German aristocrats, he had all the patriotic feelings that in general characterised the former class; and so, when he drew his sword against his fatherland—a proceeding which, of course, in any circumstance we cannot but condemn-it may well be supposed that the sense of personal injury and insult was mainly, if not altogether, the motive influence. Secondly, it must be borne in mind that some of the worst sins laid to Ulfeldt's charge rested on such slender testimony that they may be dismissed from consideration as incapable of solid proof; for example, the alleged crime which led to the final doom pronounced upon him, and for which there was no evidence ever produced in open court at all. And thirdly, although Leonora Christina was her husband's deeply-devoted companion, cleaving fast to him through good and bad report, are we quite sure that he made her his confidant with regard to those political intrigues and entanglements in which he was almost perpetually involved? We are much inclined to respond, and respond strongly, in the negative; for Leonora Christina's whole character, so faithfully photographed in the book now under notice, forbids us to believe that a woman, distinguished by her high sense of honour and her noble Christian principle, would, however profoundly attached to a husband, have applauded, or even allowed to pass without censure, a course of conduct such as Ulfeldt well-nigh systematically pursued. But we must now come to the work which specially forms the subject of these pages-Leonora Christina's narrative of her dreary and protracted prison-life. Corfitz Ulfeldt's last male descendant had two daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, was married to an Austrian nobleman, Count George Christian Waldstein. Every memorial of the Ulfeldt family which appertained to her she left to her younger and favourite son, |