"To you, my Councillors of State, I first address myself. May God enlighten you, and fill you with wisdom to promote the welfare of my people. You, too, my brave Noblemen, I commend to the divine protection. Continue to prove yourselves the worthy successors of those brave Goths whose bravery humbled to the dust the pride of ancient Rome. To you, Ministers of Religion, I recommend peaceableness and piety; be yourselves examples of the virtues which you preach, and abuse not your influence over the minds of my people. On you, the Burghers and Peasants, I entreat the blessing of heaven; may your industry be rewarded by a prosperous harvest, your stores be plenteously filled, and may you be crowned abundantly with all the blessings of this life. For the prosperity of all my subjects, absent and present, I offer my warmest prayers to heaven. I bid you all a sincere—it may be an eternal farewell." The whole assembly was in tears, the king himself was weeping, but after a few moments he said, in a natural voice, the words of the Psalm which he was accustomed to say aloud before entering on any new undertaking. We give only the closing part, upon which he seemed to lay most emphasis: "Oh, satisfy us early with Thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children, and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it." He set apart the first Friday of July, August and September as days of fasting and for prayer for the nation and for the army. In about ten days after this, at the beginning of June, he embarked at Elfsnabbe, surrounded and cheered by a concourse of weeping relatives and friends, but sent forward with their blessing and best wishes. CHAPTER IX. GUSTAVUS IN GERMANY. A continued southwest wind kept the fleet from making progress, and the ships were obliged to return to port. Their provisions ran out and had to be renewed from seaport towns. On account of contrary winds, it took five weeks to make that short distance. The landing took place on June 24th, 1630, the one hundredth anniversary of the day on which the Augsburg Confession had been presented to Charles V., Emperor of Germany, in the presence of the leading ecclesiastics and ruling princes and dukes of all Germany. Gustavus looked upon this as a good omen, for his coming was at a time when all those principles set forth in that Confession were endangered.