THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, LUND, SWEDEN. (_Where the letters are preserved._) ] Palmblad, as we have mentioned, prefaced his extracts with a brief introduction, which it is well to examine in detail, since this is practically the only medium through which the existence of the correspondence has hitherto been known. W. F. Palmblad was a man of considerable literary repute, a professor of the University of Upsala, and a zealous antiquarian. But he lacked one quality indispensable to the historian—accuracy; he was too ready to jump to conclusions without first verifying his facts from contemporary records. He examined the manuscript letters when they were at Löberöd in the possession of the Count de la Gardie, and learned their history from their owner, which was amply verified from the family records. He then made an examination of the correspondence which can only be regarded as cursory, took out a few extracts here and there, and prefaced them with an introduction, in which he declares his firm belief in the genuineness of the letters, but by his inaccuracies unconsciously does damage to the very point he labours to prove—inaccuracies which one or two subsequent writers have seized upon as proofs of the spuriousness of a correspondence they have never seen. Later, it is true, another authority, Count Schulenburg-Klosterrode, who also believed in the genuineness of the letters, in _Die Herzogin von Ahlden_, endeavoured to set Palmblad right on certain points of chronology and cypher, but a false impression had been given of the correspondence which it was not easy to eradicate. Even in his description of the appearance of the letters Palmblad is inaccurate. He speaks of postmarks, but there are none visible; he describes the Princess’s letters as written “in an elegant hand, on very fine, gilt-edged paper”. It is a mere detail; but the paper is not gilt-edged, and is the ordinary letter-paper of the day; while as for the “elegant hand,” which would convey the idea of a sloping Italian penmanship, the Princess’s letters are in two distinct handwritings, and in each case written in rather a bold hand for a woman, certainly the reverse of “elegant”. The professor has also made mistakes about the cypher, especially the cypher in numbers; and in the extracts he publishes he has muddled men, women, and places in a hopeless manner, and this makes nonsense. His extracts, which are taken mainly from Königsmarck’s letters, are chiefly made up of the racy anecdotes, which for reasons already given I do not quote. The professor has collected every one of these anecdotes (not many in all), and gives them as a fair specimen of the whole. Doubtless this course avoided chronological and other difficulties; but to quote them to the exclusion of other and more important matter is to give a false impression of the correspondence and the man.