On September 18, 1774, Mr. N. W. Wraxall, junior, arrived at Celle. This gentleman had, at an early age, obtained a profitable employment in the East Indies, and had even attained some dignity; he, however, threw up his post for motives which may be made known hereafter but do not belong here, and returned to England. He was very ambitious, and that ambition had been fostered by the fact that, having in his youth ransacked the muniments of Bristol, he had discovered that one of his ancestors was bailiff of that city in the thirteenth century; but the difficulty was, to what object would he turn that ambition: he was unknown and friendless, while, at the same time, the _res angusta domi_ warned him to be up and stirring. There was but one way of acquiring fame and popularity: in those days, authorship was more respected, as being rarer, than it is among ourselves. Mr. Wraxall, therefore, determined first to make a tour, and then print an account of it, and, for this purpose, resolved to visit a but little known part of Europe, and thus add novelty to his descriptions. With this purpose he set out for the North, ran through Denmark, a portion of Sweden and Russia, and, on his homeward route, thought there would be no harm in going a little out of his way to visit the Queen of Denmark: he had learned something about her sad fate while in Copenhagen, and this had excited a wish to know more, literary capital being left out of the question. On September 18, then, Mr. Wraxall waited on Baron Seckendorf, chamberlain to the queen, who presented strangers. The "Private Journal" shall tell us how he fared:--