wed by some act of aggression. At length, however, the deputies
were admitted, and they returned sufficiently well satisfied with their
reception.

The King of Sweden then officially declared, "That all the arrangements
entered into with relation to Hanover had no reference to hint, as the
Swedish army was under the immediate command of its august sovereign."

The King, with his 6000 men, seemed inclined to play the part of the
restorer of Germany, and to make himself the Don Quixote of the treaty of
Westphalia. He threatened the Senate of Hamburg with the whole weight of
his anger, because on my application the colours which used to be
suspended over the door of the house for receiving Austrian recruits had
been removed. The poor Senate of Hamburg was kept in constant alarm by
so dangerous a neighbour.

The King of Sweden had his headquarters at Boetzenburg, on the northern
bank of the Elbe. In order to amuse himself he sent for Dr. Gall, who
was at Hamburg, where he delivered lectures on his system of phrenology,
which was rejected in the beginning by false science and prejudice, and
afterwards adopted in consequence of arguments, in my opinion,
unanswerable. I had the pleasure of living some time with Dr. Gall, and
I owe to the intimacy which subsisted between us the honour he conferred
on me by the dedication of one of his works. I said to him, when he
departed for the headquarters of the King of Sweden, "My dear doctor, you
will certainly discover the bump of vanity." The truth is, that had the
doctor at that period been permitted to examine the heads of the
sovereigns of Europe they would have afforded very curious craniological
studies.

It was not the King of Sweden alone who gave uneasiness to Hamburg; the
King of Prussia threatened to seize upon that city, and his Minister
publicly declared that it would very soon belong to his master. The
Hamburgers were deeply afflicted at this threat; in fact, next to the
loss of their independence, their greatest misfortune would have been to
fall under the dominion of Prussia, as the niggardly fiscal system of the
Prussian Government at that time would have proved extremely detrimental
to a commercial city. Hanover, being evacuated by the French troops, had
become a kind of recruiting mart for the British army, where every man
who presented himself was enrolled, to complete the Hanoverian legion
which was then about to be embodied. The English scattered gold by
handfu