“We can find no other explanation, and that which we have ventured to give is the more probable, as it is stated that his Swedish Majesty has up to a short time ago been addicted to habits better calculated at times to stimulate feelings, for instance, of vain glory than to sharpen the judgment, and that under such influences he has sometimes made statements which it would have been better to have left unmade. Be that as it may, the unfriendly sentiments of the King towards Germany are a fact, and if Sweden were still the dreaded power that enforced the Peace of Altranstädt, if she were still in a position to compel obedience to the pair of top-boots that Charles XII. once set up in the Prime Minister’s chair, it would be possible to conceive situations in which one would have good ground for regarding the North with anxiety, while the main front faced towards the West. As things have turned out, however, this is happily not the case. The top-boots of the last century have given way to a constitutional _régime_, and the Swedes have become peaceful agriculturists, sailors, and trades people, who would not plunge into a ruinous conflict for the sake of anybody’s French sympathies or longings for military glory, and who would know how to protect themselves by constitutional methods, if any attempt were made to translate such dangerous sympathies and longings into action. Let us consider the present Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, whose appointment to that post might be quoted in refutation of our complaint if it had not been mainly a necessary satisfaction given to the peaceful disposition of the Swedish people, the majority of whom are friendly to Germany. Count Platen, who has been in office since last autumn, was born at Stralsund, where his father was Governor in the time of the Swedes, and has been many years at sea. He is a man of frank and straightforward character, very popular in the country, in which he is one of the largest landed proprietors. He entertains no hostile feelings whatever towards Germany, but is, on the contrary, very well disposed towards us.