sharpness of vision was, she well knew, spying
out her weak places and gauging her misdoings?
For we cannot for a moment accept Sir Lascelles
Wraxall's theory, and account her innocent in
her relations with Struensee;* every incident
related and every induction to be drawn, point
but to one thing; and whatever the political
basis, whatever the greater worth of the Dano-
Germanic alliance against that of the Russian,
and the zeal of the physician-minister for his
own ideas and his own views of statecraft, the
question between the man and woman remains
the same for both and all concerned.
Unhappily for the half-mad, half-bad king, who,
when Struensee dismissed honest old Bernstorff,
had not a friend left. Given up to Struensee
and the queen, he was now simply a puppet and
a prisoner, with two black children—a boy and
a girl—for his only companions, and Enevold
Brandt, whom he hated, for his valet, chamberlain,
pedagogue, and master—Enevold Brandt,
whom Holck had exiled and Struensee restored.
In truth, Christian's condition was pitiable
enough. Grant that he was mad, still the manner
of life to which his wife and the minister doomed
him was infamous. No one paid him the smallest
respect, and once an impudent page even drove
him into a corner, saying, "Mad Rex, make me a
groom of the chamber." He was compelled to
make personal appointments of men specially
distasteful to him; and on one occasion, in revenge
for having been made to sign an appointment as
chamberlain for a man he hated, he made one of
his stove-heaters a chamberlain; again, another
time, he gave out that his dog Gourmand
was a "Conference Councillor," and proposed
his health, which the rest were obliged to
acknowledge as de rigueur. This was to express
his disgust at certain fault-finding and scolding
which he had to submit to in council, showing
that, as barking was the rule of the day there,
Gourmand could bark as well as any of them,
and so was quite as efficient a conference
councillor. His chief amusement was smashing china
and beheading the garden statues: in which
odd play Moranti, his black boy, assisted him.
For a change, he would roll on the ground with
the boy, biting and scratching him, or would fling
papers, furniture, books, glass, ornaments,
anything he could find, over the balcony down into
the court-yard: once wishing to fling the boy and
dog Gourmand after the rest. In public he was
treated with contempt by his keeper, Brandt,
who in private bit and beat him—he said by the
king's own desire; and, indeed, the whole
treatment of this unhappy wretch, during the reign
of Struensee, was as damaging to the queen's
repute as it was disgraceful and degrading.

* Life and Times of Her Majesty Caroline Matilda,
Queen of Denmark and Norway. By Sir C. F.
Lascelles Wraxall, Bart.

The queen, influenced by Struensee, who,
however, was loyally well intentioned in this, brought
up her son on the wildest principles of " hardening"
—a kill or cure system indeed for a delicate
child. His food was of the simplest and
poorest kind, and what we should call innutritious,
and always cold; he had a cold bath
twice or thrice a day; he was kept in a cold
room without a fire, dressed lightly in thin silk,
and went about barefoot, although he was
a delicate baby of not quite three years old.
His playmate and companion was a little fellow
of his own age, called " little Karl," the natural
son of a surgeon, who was allowed to fight with
him and master him if he could, no one being
suffered to assist or prevent. The queen was
so severe with him, that when the attendants
wanted to frighten him into good behaviour,
they used to threaten to take him to his mother,
which generally succeeded. Struensee' s
coadjutor, the physician Berger, got a few of the
more extreme rules relaxed; and, owing to his
representations, this royal baby was allowed to
wear shoes and stockings, to be rather more
warmly clad, to have his rice boiled in broth
instead of water, to have meat soup for dinner
twice a week, and to have his room slightly
warmed in the morning.

And now popular feeling began to take a very
decided tone, and the ministry knew that the
evil hour which has to come to all misdoers,
was drawing near. The queen and the favourite
dared not show themselves in public; the guards
were doubled at the palace, and various unusual
precautions were taken; the most abominable
satires and caricatures were printed and circulated,
or stuck or scrawled on the walls; half in
jest and half in earnest; the queen and the
ministers would speculate on their future lives,
and what they should do when the crash came
and they were forced to fly—they foresaw
nothing worse; and all this while the indignation
of the people and the anger of the European
courts became louder and deeper, and of
more ominous intensity and fierceness. Anonymous
letters were sent to Brandt, advising him
to put himself out of danger by ranging himself
on the king's side, and against the minister;
and he and Struensee had misunderstandings,
even to the extent of the former proposing a
kind of coup d'état to Falckenskjold, one of the
government, beginning and ending in the arrest
of Struensee, and the transfer of the queen to
himself; and then the great plot was arranged,
headed by Juliana Maria and Prince Frederick
her son, the king's half-brother.

The favourite's treatment of this young man
had been most impolitic. Insulted, neglected,
irritated, his rank and near relationship with
the king ignored or remembered only to fix
a deeper sting, no wonder that he put
himself at the head of a party determined to rid
the country of a group of adventurers who
had lost their heads when they had gained the
top round of the ladder, and whose so-called
reforms were neither popular nor understood,
besides being nullified by the poison of the
scandals attached to them. When a forged
document was shown to Juliana Maria (at
least, Sir Lascelles Wraxall says it was forged),
wherein it was set forth how that the king was to
be forced to abdicate, and how that the queen
was to be declared regent with Struensee as