is however an act as little to be justified as that with which his enemies reproach the ex-emperor. Catherine, with provocations equal to the gaolers of Buonaparte, with political temptations as strong as those which seduced the latter, wisely abstained from confining or murthering her royal guests, although the crime might have thrown all Sweden into her hands. There is not in all Europe, at the present day, a single monarch who might not, five years back, as reasonably have anticipated the dreadful banishment inflicted on the great conqueror of Europe, as that it should ever be his fate. The example sets aside the finest qualities of the human mind; oppresses the fallen, and violates the law of honour and of nations; as a precedent it is highly dangerous; and some of those princes by whom it has been adopted, or their descendants, may as bitterly rue the shortsighted policy that led to the incarceration of Buonaparte, as that great man certainly must have regretted his treatment of the Bourbons of Spain. Great moral principles are seldom, if ever, violated with impunity.'

Setting aside its want of grammar, this is fully equal to any thing in Mr. Hobhouse or Sir Robert Wilson! It does not however strike us that the laws of hospitality and nations were as much violated by the confinement of Buonaparte, as they would have been by the detention or murder of Gustavus the Fourth and the Duke of Sudermania, (the royal guests alluded to;) nor have we heard that this great man,' as he is called, ever testified any very vehement symptoms of regret for his treatment of the Bourbons, or of any one else, after having injured and oppressed them; but Mr. Brown says he must have done so, and though this is not a very logical mode of argument, it certainly is one not easily disputed.

The notes of this work are so contrived as to present, as it were, the concentrated essence of Mr. Brown's opinions upon several momentous questions. There is a very choice one on the Copenhagen expedition, in which the severe blow which the author's feelings suffered by so wanton an aggression' is very pathetically depicted. The Swedes too, by his account, were equally shocked, though they blamed us for not retaining possession of Zealand. Now without looking farther than to the enmity which prevails between the two countries, we beg leave to doubt the former part of this statement, though we can well imagine there were a few old crab trees' at Stockholm who bewailed the transaction, as some of ours did at home. That the king was hearty in our cause also was a sufficient reason with many to conspire against it--and that he was so there can be no question, (in spite of Mr. Brown's insinuations respecting his distrust of the intentions of Great Britain,) or he would not have exposed himself, as he did, to the risk of invasion both by the Russians and Danes.

This fidelity on his part however was not lost sight of by the British

British government. With a degree of good faith and alacrity which merits the warmest commendation, such succours as could be spared were sent out, under the command of Sir John Moore, to our tottering ally in his utmost need; and they (as is well known) might have proved of essential service, had not his strange conduct entirely frustrated the scheme. The whole of this transaction, however, is unnoticed by Mr. Brown, and the name of Sir John Moore is not even mentioned in the book.

The greater part of the first volume is taken up with details of the Danish court and the unhappy queen Matilda; they have been already touched upon by every traveller who has visited Copenhagen since her melancholy catastrophe, and have formed the outline of more than one romance. When he crosses the water Mr. Brown, if not more original, becomes at least more amusing, and though the character of Gustavus the Third has been often drawn more ably, and always with more decency of language, it certainly forms the best part of the book. We doubt indeed whether this profligate although able monarch would have received such severe measure at Mr. Brown's hands, had he not, with many very good men, had the misfortune to differ from his present biographer on the merits of the French revolution. In the opening of that portentous event, the sentiments of the people of Sweden, as might be expected, were much at variance with those of their sovereign. 'It was in vain,' says Mr. Brown,' that knowing his subjects to be a religious race, the king denounced the French to them as a nation of atheists;' (by what term could they have been more fitly denominated?) the infection had spread too far, the cause of freedom had become too popular, and there cannot be a more damning proof of the dangerous nature of the doctrines which were afloat, and of the tendency of the new light which has such beauty in the eyes of Mr. Brown, than the statement which he subjoins as the opinion of several officers of long standing and great experience in the Swedish service,' that if the king had not been cut off by Ankarstrom, the very army he was assembling with the view of invading France, in Normandy, and marching direct on Paris, would have hoisted the standard of revolt and destroyed the monarch whom once they adored.'

This has been asserted before, and we do not doubt the factwe are only surprised at the author's perversion of intellect in blaming Gustavus for endeavouring to oppose some barriers to a torrent which had already shaken the very foundations of his throne. The Swedish army however was saved, by the desperate resentment of Ankarstrom, from the eternal disgrace which would have fallen upon them had this black act of treachery been consummated. On the 16th March, 1792, the king was mortally wounded in the

Opera

Opera House at Stockholm, and expired after lingering a fortnight in torment. The opening of the chest at Upsal in which his papers were deposited, with the injunction that they should remain untouched for fifty years, may perhaps disclose some curious facts connected with the fate of this versatile monarch; meanwhile, as it is at all times both interesting and instructive to observe the deportment in critical emergencies of those who have played important parts in the transactions of the world, we subjoin the striking scene which ensued on the night the king was wounded, as given by Mr. Brown from a Swedish manuscript, which he considers authentic.

'The king's surgeons having examined the wound, and the direction in which the pistol had been fired, saw at once how small was the chance of their royal patient's recovery. During this operation, which was excruciatingly painful, the king displayed that intense fortitude which few mortals ever possessed in a higher degree. As the surgeon applied his probe, the king thought his hand shook; suppressing the sense of pain, he said with a firm voice," Do not suffer your sorrow to affect your hand! Remember, sir, it is not possible I can survive if the balls are not extracted." The surgeon paused a moment, as if to collect all his courage, and extracted a ball and some slugs. On his way from his palace to the Opera House a few hours before, Gustavus stepped lightly down the broad flights of granite stairs to the vestibule below. He was now carried slowly back, stretched on a litter borne on the shoulders of grenadiers, whose slightest motion gave him inexpressible pain-like the palace itself, the grand stair-case is of stupendous dimensions. The massive balustrades are composed of polished marble; the broad steps of hewn granite, and the ornaments of colossal propor tions finely drawn and executed, are in strict conformity to the vast and beautiful outline of this grand edifice. The king's unwieldy statecoach, with a triple row of guards on either side, might, apparently, have ascended. Although the portals were closed as soon as the king had entered, and none but courtiers and soldiers admitted, and, even those not without selection, the whole of the colossal stairs were crowded to excess. Not a few of the ministers were clad in state dresses, and most of the courtiers and household officers still had on the fanciful robes worn at the fatal masquerade. This great diversity of splendid costume, the melancholy state of the king, stretched on the bier, lying on his side, his pale face resting on his right hand, his features expressive of pain subdued by fortitude, the varied countenances of the surrounding throng, wherein grief, consternation and dismay were forcibly depicted; the blaze of the numerous torches and flam beaux borne aloft by the military; the glitter of burnished helmets, embroidered and spangled robes, mixed with the flashes of drawn sabres and fixed bayonets; the strong and condensed light thrown on the king's figure, countenance, litter and surrounding group; the deep dark masses of shade that seemed to flitter high above, and far below the principal group, and the occasional illumination of the vast and magnificent outline of the structure, formed, on the whole, a spectacle more

grand,

grand, impressive and picturesque than any state or theatrical pro cession, in the arrangement of which the tasteful Gustavus had ever been engaged. In the midst of excruciating agonies his eyes lost not their brilliancy, and his finely expressive features displayed the triumph of fortitude over pain. Terrible and sudden as was this disaster, it did not deprive him of self-possession; he seemed more affected by the tears that trickled down the hard yet softened features of the veterans who had fought by his side, than by the wound which too probably would soon end his life. As the bearers of the royal litter ascended from flight to flight he raised his head, evidently to obtain a better view of the grand spectacle of which he formed the principal and central object. When he arrived at the grand gallery level with the state apartments, he made a sign with his hand that the bearers should halt, and looking wistfully around him, he said to Baron Armfelt, (who wept and sobbed aloud,)" How strange it is I should rush upon my fate after the recent warnings I had received! my mind foreboded evil; I went reluctantly, impelled, as it were, by an invisible hand!-I am fully persuaded when a man's hour is come, it is in vain he strives to elude it!" After a short pause he continued, " Perhaps my hour is not yet arrived. I would willingly live, but am not afraid to die. If I survive, I may yet trip down these flights of steps again, and if I die-why then, enclosed in my coffin, my next descent will be on my road to the mausoleum in the Ridderholm church."'—vol. ii. p. 168.

In the character of Ankarstrom, and in his conduct during his last moments, a striking similarity may be traced to the wretched Bellingham; the same fanatical satisfaction at the perpetration of the crime, the same presumptuous confidence of pardon from the Almighty. That, as Mr. Brown observes, this dreadful selfdelusion is by no means peculiar to Sweden is sufficiently clear, as well from the case to which we have adverted, as from other in'stances of more recent date, where criminals, condemned for the worst of crimes, have exhibited, in their last moments, a most disgusting mixture of hardened guilt and confident security.

With the explanation given of it by Mr. Brown we comprehend why, as he says, 'the gallows saves many a soul,' should be a common expression; but that many instances should occur in Sweden of honest and respectable persons' committing crimes with a view to place themselves in a predicament where they may fairly be entitled to the aid of clergy, and thereby ensure their future salvation, can only be credited by those who believe, with Sir John Sinclair, that the inhabitants of a certain salubrious valley in Norway frequently quit it from a premature apprehension of the pains and penalties attendant on longevity.

On the death of the king, his brother the Duke of Sudermania succeeded as regent. Economy, according to Mr. Brown, now took the place of profusion, and a stop was put to the strong measures adopted by Gustavus to check the revolutionary spirit so ra

pidly gaining ground. The moderation, however, displayed in the new councils does not appear to have reconciled the parties which now predominated in Sweden; nor is it surprising, when we examine them, that the late king should have considered that no ordinary means were likely to be effectual in obtaining that object.

'In the year 1792 there were two parties in Sweden actively at work. The one was composed of General Baron Armfelt and his partizans, whose object it was to throw Sweden into the arms of Russia; the other consisted of men more formidable by their talent than numbers, who conceived that Sweden was too poor a country to maintain a monarchical government and a large standing army. They were for adopting a government similar to that adopted in the United States, and to endeavour to do without a king or hereditary nobles. A gentleman named Thorild wrote a work entitled "The Liberty of Reason developed to the Regent of the Swedish Nation." The author addressed it to the regent, and called upon him to remove the shackles imposed by kings and regents on human freedom, and dwelt with enthusiasm on the happiness Sweden might enjoy under a virtuous and frugal republican system. This happened on the 21st December; in the evening the pamphlet was suppressed, and the author taken into custody."'"

This proceeding, as might be expected, excited a considerable ferment in the town, and we find the regent, in spite of the gentleness and moderation of his councils, threatened with the fate of his brother. The next day the cause was heard. "Thorild conducted his own defence, and this with so much spirit and eloquence,' says Mr. Brown, that the spectators caught the enthusiasm inspired by his bold sentiments; and certain passages of his speech' (which, we conclude, were those indicating resistance to all legitimate authority) were loudly applauded. It ended in his release, and his being escorted home by a large concourse of citizens, shouting liberty for ever, Thorild for ever.'

Of the military and naval details of this reign, as given by Mr. Brown, we cannot say much, for in truth there is nothing to be said. From a work entitled Scandinavian Letters,' published in 1796, which we have long known and which we believe to be authentic, he has extracted upwards of twenty pages containing the details of the naval campaign of 1790; these are peculiarly interesting, as the chief sufferers on the Russian side were Englishmen in the service of the empress; and more daring intrepidity, and unavailing gallantry have never been displayed than by the Captains Marshall and Dennison on this occasion.

We have already remarked on the licence in which Mr. Brown indulges in speaking of public characters. Excepting that ingenious, tasteful, and scientific nobleman the Chevalier Edlercrantz,' who, as a soi-disant poet, philosopher, playwright, and inspector, would hardly venture to offend a brother savant, and 'the

corpulent,