We went down the stone stairway, worn deeply by the tread of generations, into the lower regions, where lie whole rows of dead kings turned to dust, coffins tucked away on shelves and in niches, reminding me of the Bible words: “All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.” What’s the glory, though, of such a resting-place, it is hard to say. Their dust is no better than that of other men. Their names, even among kings, have ceased to be distinguished from other names. No man could go among these walks of tombs, these shelved kings, and pick out one or another, and say who is who. And if he could, I do not see that it would be any particular satisfaction to the quiet gentleman on the shelf. If the visitor should say, “Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms?” no answer would come back from the tomb. We did not set foot within the gates of his majesty, the King of Sweden, and this neglect was much to the disgust of some of our Swedish friends, who consider the royal residence a marvel of architectural grandeur and beauty. We could not see it, even when they pointed to its magnificence with the same exalted opinion of its splendor that possessed the Jews in sight of their temple. The Lion’s Staircase, rising from the water’s edge and leading to the main entrance, adorned with two bronze, and therefore quiet, lions, presents a grand front to the palace, and within the same interminable suites of apartments, and the same gaudy furniture, and the same sort of pictures and statuary, with nothing that has a title to any distinction above what is common in all palaces. The picture-gallery has some five hundred paintings, some by Van Dyck, Paul Veronese, Domenichino, and others equally well known to fame, and the sculpture gallery boasts a sleeping Endymion, and a few other gems; but we are out of the enchanted zone, and must not expect to be charmed with the brush or the chisel in Sweden. We shall find Thorvaldsen when we come to Denmark. But the royal library has 75,000 volumes, and if it had the library that Queen Christina sent to the Vatican at Rome, it would be still a greater wonder, and then would be increased if the ancient collection made by Charles X., and consumed by fire in 1697, had been preserved. The _Codex Aureus_, a Latin manuscript of the gospels, dating in the sixth or seventh century, “is written in Gothic characters of gold, on folio leaves of vellum, alternately white and violet.”