the continental powers, who took arms against France, displayed the spirit and the constancy of Gustavus, Buonaparte would long ere this have closed his career, and France have been reduced to that state of weakness which alone is compatible with the safety and tranquillity of Europe. Upon his own constancy Gustavus could calculate, and upon the firmness of England,-and with England for her ally, Sweden was secure against France, if Russia had not interfered. The conduct of Alexander could not have been foreseen, foresight may be as effectually baffled by the capriciousness of folly, as by the deepest schemes of political wisdom. This besotted prince announced to his subjects, that, after a war which had covered the Russian arms with immortal glory, he had concluded a treaty of eternal peace with Sweden. Te Deum was performed upon this occasion in all the churches of the Russian dominions, and Romanzoff, who had negociated the peace, was made fieldmarshal-general, and chancellor of the empire, which is the first civil dignity of the state.

The negociations between Sweden and Denmark were soon terminated. Neither party was in a siDec. 10. tuation to annoy the other; and things being precisely as they were before the war, nothing more was required than to draw up articles in form, declaring that they were to continue so, and decreeing perpetual peace between the Kings of Denmark and Sweden. Thus terminated a war by which Denmark had neither lost nor gained; but which, by the mispolicy of Gustaus, had proved most injurious to vweden; for by alluring him to attempt the conquest of Norway, it

served to divide his force, and operating thus as a diversion in favour of Russia, it occasioned the loss of Finland. While it lasted it occasioned great privations in Norway. The industrious and unoffending people of that country, whom it might have been thought their climate, their mountains, and their distance from the scenes of revolution, would have preserved in peace even amidst this universal convulsion, were cut off from all commerce, though it was upon commerce that they in great measure depended both for food and cloathing. No British articles were permitted to enter the country; the consequence was, that not a new coat was to be procured for the men in any part of the kingdom, and that the women were actually in want of pins and needles. Tobacco became scarce, and the failure of this luxury was more loudly complained of than any other privation. Corn was sold on the coast at an extravagant price; in the interior it was not to be purchased. When our government understood the distress of the Norwegians, with a humanity which might put the enemies of Great Britain to shame, it permitted vessels laden with provisions to pass, and after Sweden and Denmark had concluded peace, granted licences for Swedish ships trading to Norway. This was not the only instance in which England mitigated as far as possible the evils of a state of warfare.

An English privateer commanded by Baron Hompesch, (a man who had more than once furnished matter for a court of justice by his actions) landed upon one of the Feroe Islands, and committed some depredations upon the poor inhabitants. The crew of another privateer took possession of Iceland, de

claring the governor and garrison prisoners. The governor came to England, and the English ministry, as soon as they received authentic intelligence of what had been done, issued a proclamation, in which, not withstanding the war with Denmark, they declared that the Feroe Islands, Iceland, and the Danish settlements in Greenland, were to be considered as holding the same relations to this country as before the war. Their intercourse with the mother country was not to be molested, and they were only required to distinguish their vessels by a red lion in the Danish flag.

Before our ships retired, upon the approach of winter, from the Baltic, they had in the course of the year captured 90 Russian vessels, and 340 Danes. Thus did Denmark experience the power as well as the generosity of Great Britain. In the capital itself, the ordinary supply for the shambles fell so short, that horses were regularly slaughtered, and their flesh sold in the market at four-pence and five-pence per pound. The Danish court, meantime, received a pregnant hint of the ultimate designs of their ally; they were called upon to supply trigonometrical surveys of Sleiswick and Holstein to the war depot at Paris; the requisition was complied with, and that unfortunate court furnished information to be one day used by France against themselves. They discovered also in the royal family itself a melancholy example of the effect of those French manners, which, wherever they have prevailed, have poisoned the very sources of private and public virtue. The wife of the hereditary prince (a daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburgh,) was detected in an adulterous intercourse with a Frenchman,

by name Dupuis, ballet-master at Copenhagen, who gave her lessons in singing. The intrigue was suspected, and spies were set, who watched him into her apartment at a late hour of the night, and out of it at four in the morning. An express was immediately dispatched to the hereditary prince, who was absent at the time; the guilt was manifest, and the princess did not attempt to deny it; it is said that, for the sake of saving her paramour, she declared that she had been the seducer. More mercy was shown than had been displayed at the same court upon a former occa sion, when justice might boldly have been challenged by the victims of a foul conspiracy. The Frenchman was merely banished from Denmark, and ordered never to return on pain of death. With this sentence he was escorted to Lubec, and then left at liberty to teach music wherever he pleased, and boast of his adventures at Copenhagen. The princess was sent under a guard to Nyborgh; her family were informed of her guilt, and measures taken for divorcing her.

The negociations between France and Sweden were protracted till the ensuing year; but this excited no uneasiness, for the latter power had already conceded every thing in her treaty with Russia which Buona parte could require. Switzerland was chosen for the abode of Gustavus, now called Count Gottorp, and towards the end of December he and his family were liberated from their confinement at Gripsholm. The ar rangements for their departure were made with such secresy, that nothing was known concerning it an hour before it took place. Relays of sixteen horses had been ordered at every stage as far as Carlscrona, in the name of General Skoldebrand, and the

coach which carried the King, Queen, and their son, travelled night and day: the princesses were not hurried in this manner, no danger being apprehended from them. Gustavus, it was said, had lately appeared impatient of confinement, and shown marks of much dejection. He was landed at Stralsund, and from thence proceeded toward Switzerland. During his imprisonment a letter of consolation was addressed to him by the head of the Bourbon family. "I never," said that prince, "felt the weight of my own misfortunes press so sorely upon me as on this occasion, when, in the absence of all power, I find myself reduced to express my sentiments in ardent but ineffectual wishes. Still I have not lost the hope that that Providence to whom your Majesty addressed yourself from the beginning, will display itself in the relief of you and your family, and at that moment I know the power to pardon will be the first of the attributes of the crown which you will think of exercising. Awaiting that happy day, I protest, as a King, against the violence offered to the sacred person of Gustavus IV., not only on account of my own indivi.

dual feelings of friendship towards him, but also because this outrage is a fresh application of principles destructive of all authority, and subversive of all social order."

The Prince of Augustenburg, whom the conspirators had chosen to be the founder of a new dynasty, arrived in Sweden soon after the departure of the deposed King. He was welcomed at Gottenburg with illuminations, and as much external rejoicing as if the revolution which had been effected had given any real cause of joy to the Swedes. But the prospect of affairs was gloomy. Charles XIII. was seized towards the end of November with what was said to be a cramp and giddiness in the head, but believed to be apoplexy: he recovered; still his health was precarious, and in case of his death the new crown prince had but a poor security for the succession. The better part of the Swedes desired to see the son of Gustavus restored to his rights: and the unthinking multitude, not having experienced the immediate benefit from change which they expected, began to be dissatisfied with a revolution that had disappointed their impossible hopes.

THE Czar Alexander boasted of his gains in the war with Sweden; he had gained also by the peace of Tilsit, which made over to him part of the spoils of Prussia as his reward for deserting the King of Prussia, to whom he had sworn eternal friendship upon the tomb of Frederick. Duped as he was by French flattery and French intrigue, it never occurred to him that all his acquisitions, whether in Finland or Poland, were only held by him as tenant at will under Buonaparte; his weak understanding was dazzled by the apparent success of his new system of policy, and that success consoled him for the breach of faith which he had committed, the good name which he had irreparably forfeited, and the injury which not only his subjects but his own revenue also sustained from the interdiction of commerce with England. In 1807, the custom-house dues at Petersburg and Cronstadt amounted to 4,982,460 roubles; in 1808, only 918,055. The ships trading to Russian ports exceeded 5000 in 1805; after the war with England, they

fell short of one; and the exchange on Hamburgh, which had fluctuated from 23 to 24, fell in 1808 to 15 and 16. There was, in fact, no part of Europe where the preposterous measures of the Corsican for destroying the trade of Great Britain produced greater evil. The exports of Russia consisted in great part of perishable commodities, and when England was not allowed to purchase them, they lay rotting in the warehouses. It was a common saying among the populace at Petersburg, that their tallow would find its way to England in spite of the government, because it turned into maggots, and they were thrown into the sea.

Alexander, however, acted in subservience to the Corsican as zealously as if, instead of ruining the mercantile part of his subjects, he had been encouraging industry and promoting the civilization of his empire. The custom-house officers at the various ports were removed on suspicion of favouring the trade with England, and their places filled by men whom the agents of France recommended as

trust-worthy. The discontent excited by these measures was general, and, in spite of all the restraints of a despotic government and a tyrannical police, it was notorious also. Rumours of disturbance, insurrection, and even of revolution, frequently reached us from the continent: these reports were often false and always exaggerated, but they indicated the state of public feeling in the commercial parts of Russia. One of these rumours which came with better marks of authority than the rest was, that an attempt had been made to assassinate the grand duke Constantine in the streets. Our newspapers imputed this to popular resentment, supposing that Constantine was a decided favourer of the alliance with Buonaparte, but in this they erred; the campaign of 1807 had cured him of his predilection for France. Whatever other defects there might be in his character, he was not deficient in national spirit and a regard for the honour of his country. That honour, he felt, had been injured by the manner in which his brother had apparently been beaten into the peace of Tilsit; and the present system of the court of Petersburgh, governed as it was by French influence, was as little agreeable to him as to the people.

Part of Buonaparte's plan was to waste the force of Russia in continual wars. A double purpose had been answered by the war with Sweden, in which Alexander weakened himself by fighting the battles of France; and when it no longer suited the purposes of the Corsican to employ his infatuated ally in this quarter, he found a new enemy for him on the side of Turkey. The relations between these two semi-barbarous empires are such that this could at any time be

effected. France had pursued the same policy at a more important crisis, when, during the campaign in Poland, Buonaparte was twice baffled in battle by the Russians. Notwithstanding the unprovoked attack of the French upon Egypt, and the signal service which Great Britain had rendered to the Porte by conquering and expelling an enemy whom all the means of the Ottoman empire would have been insufficient to subdue, France, by the superior skill of her diplomatists, had at that time acquired a preponderating influence at Constantinople. War was declared against Russia, her armies were thus diverted from the proper scene of action, and England, endeavouring to procure a peace for her ally the Czar, after an attempt equally miserable in plan and execution, found herself involved in a war with Turkey, for a quarrel in which she had no concern.

General Sebastiani was the minister at the Porte, who, by his address, baffled both our negociations and our arms, and persuaded the Turkish government to renounce an old and faithful ally for the treacherous friendship of France. He wished to introduce a new system of tactics into the Turkish army. In this too his influence with Sultan Selim was successful, but the attempt was fatal to that prince. The Janizaries, a body of men who, from the beginning of the last century, have been as formidable to their own government as they formerly were to Christendom, were disgusted at any innovation which diminished their importance. A Russian fleet was at this time blockading Constantinople, and the distress which this occasioned made the people mutinous; they joined with the Janizaries; an insurrection broke out, and the Ulema, with the Mufti at their head, took