CopenhagenAndItsEnvirons_A

13 The Religion o f the Country is Lutheran; but Education is compulsory. Poor parents pay a nominal sum w eekly for the education of their children at the Government schools; so that almost all the lower class can read and w rite, more or less. Confirmation, too, is compulsory. Until that rite has been received, the youth o f both sexes are, as it w ere, in statu pup illa ri; bu t, once received, they jump from children to be men and women. Certificates o f Baptism , Confirmation, and Vaccination, are a sine qua non to the entering on service, apprenticeship, matrimony, etc. The O ld-Danish is now nearly a dead language in its own Country, as is O ld-English among ourselves. But the Old-Northern character o f the Danish is still abundantly evid en t, and the best and most expressive, the most national and tuneful, o f all its words are O ld-Northern. Notwithstanding, how ever, the difference o f the elements by which the two languages have been modified, — the one by the Norman, the other by the German, — the English and Danish m ay still be considered sister- members o f the Gothic group. The Danish language, then, is by no means difficult of acquirement by an Englishman, still less so by a Scotchman, or an inhabitant o f the Northern part of England. all Creeds and Sects are now tolerated.