It numbered full
fifty members, amongst them most of the men of that generation who
afterwards distinguished themselves in Denmark. The later known
politician, Octavius Hansen, was Speaker of the Meetings, and even then
seemed made for the post. His parliamentary bearing was unrivalled. It
was not for nothing he was English on the mother's side. He looked
uncommonly handsome on the platform, with his unmoved face, his
beautiful eyes, and his brown beard, curled like that of Pericles in the
Greek busts. He was good-humoured, just, and well-informed. Of the
numerous members, Wilhelm Thomsen the philologist was certainly the most
prominent, and the only one whom I later on came to value, that is, for
purely personal reasons; in daily association it was only once in a way
that Thomsen could contribute anything from his special store of
knowledge. One day, when we had been discussing the study of cuneiform
inscriptions, the young philologist had said, half in jest, half in
earnest: "If a stone were to fall down from the Sun with an inscription
in unknown signs, in an unknown language, upon it, we should be able to
make it out,"--a remark which I called to mind many years later when
Thomsen deciphered the Ancient Turkish inscriptions in the Mountains of
Siberia.
A great many political lectures were given.
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