Ixxxiv RICHARD CLEASBY. 1840,41.

mission om gunstig Tilladelse til at erholde til Laans og Afbenyttelse i Huset af de Arna Magnæanske
Membraner fra en til to ad Gangen, da jeg skal være ansvarlig for samme (og) clrage den yderste
Omhue for deres vedbörlige Conservation medens de ere i min Værge.'

The purport of this letter being to obtain from the Commission the loan, in his
lodgings, of certain MSS. in that splendid collection, which he proposed to borrow two
or three at a time. It need scarcely be said that the Commission complied with the
foreigner's request with a liberality which, alas! seldom or never has its parallel in
English libraries.

On the Qth of November he writes: ' P. G. Thorsen, under-librarian of the Uni-
versity Library, drank tea with me : a nice unassuming young man.' This is the
Thorsen now so well known as the writer on Runic stones. On the 3Oth he paid
Gislason 40 dollars for the month of November, and ' the carpenter Möhring for a
polished wooden stand for the boxes containing my Icelandic Alphabet, 8 dollars/

On the 22nd of December we find the following entry: ' Thank God the shortest
day is past. Took Gislason and his friend Petersen to dine with me at the Skydeban,
and we drank a toast to Balder and one to Iceland's prosperity.'

On the 3ist of December he paid Gislason 40 dollars for the month of December.

The winter of 1841 was very cold in the North ; the Sound was frozen over, so
that sledges came over from Sweden. On the 13th of February Cleasby writes :

' Yesterday evening a movement took place in the ice in the Sound, so that to-day a ship or
two came up to Copenhagen—after its having been firmly frozen over between five and six weeks.'

A few days before he had remarked ' the first solitary song of a chaffinch.' On
the 18th of March Cleasby received, a polite letter from the Arna Magnæan Com-
mission, accompanied by a present of several works printed at their expense.

'The sign-'ures to the letter were Orsted, Wchrlauff, Engletoft, F. Magnusen, Ram, and
Kolderup Rosenvinge, all of whom I thanked.'

On the 2 ist he writes: 'Dined with Kolderup Rosenvinge; met the Stifts-Probst Tryge and
the young Professor of Philosophy, Martensen, and had a famous dose of philosopho-theological
discussion interestingly conducted. The Probst rather accusing Protestantism of a degree of one-
sidedness, and thinking that there were points in Catholicismus which it might adopt; and that
perhaps a sort of union might be accomplished. The philosopher, on the contrary, arguing correctly
that irenical attempts were altogether vain with the Catholic Church.'

During these months the payments of 40 dollars to Gislason continue, and on the
29th Cleasby writes:

' On the evening of the 2Qth of March, in consequence of a note from Etatsraad Rafn of the
25t^u inst., a meeting took place at his dwelling, consisting of the same persons as that on the I4th
of October, which see ; viz. Finn Magnusen, Professor Petcrsen, Gislason, Sivertsen, Rafn, and
myself, on the subject of the orthography to be used in the edition of Islendinga Saga about to be
edited by the Old Nordisk Selskabet. The letter from Rafn was accompanied with two proof-
sheets of Ari Frodi's Islendinga-book, and the commencement of the Landnama-book, to my utter
astonishment printed totally at variance with the agreement which had been entered into at the
meeting of the I4th of October; the Islendinga-book especially, after no kind of system whatever,
with the retention of certain forms and rejection of others of the MS., of the most capricious nature ;
which is the more blameworthy, as a precise copy of this MS. is to be given which will satisfy
every want of learned research ; and the other might have been printed in conformity with the rest