some favorites.

Nothing would gratify me

more than a visit to Europe."

And Colonel Burr begged her to come; he consulted physicians; he arranged to have her received by Mrs. Prevost; he set aside for her use four hundred guineas of the money available for his own expenses. All this he explained to Mr. Alston; "Gampy" would be educated with the children of General Bentham, "incomparably the best educated children I have ever seen;" he had "provided for her reception at every port at which she may probably land. we have provided a small house for her. It is probable that her fate will be determined within six or eight months. If she survives, I shall return with her to the United States. I have now discharged my duty; it remains for you to fulfill yours. It would be as insulting as unnecessary to address anything to your feelings, as to claim your sympathy with mine."

They did not get on together, those two. And Theodosia did not come.

4

And in December the Colonel went to Scotland, to secure access to Lord Melville.

In the coach there was "a very pretty, graceful, arch looking girl about eighteen." She was "reserved and distant," but during a tête à tête breakfast at the first relay she was "all animation, gayety, ease, badinage," and the other passengers were "kept three quarters of an hour cooling in the coach." Leaving Oxford, the "only article of any interest was a pretty, comely little brunette," who, upon her arrival

at her destination, was handed in by him "at a very respectable farmhouse." At Stratford there was a barmaid. At Birmingham, the Colonel missed his stage, because he got drunk-he was drinking a good deal now, all the time. "Still at Birmingham. Full of contrition and remorse. Lost my passage. Lost or spent twenty-eight shillings and a pair of gloves. What business had I to go sauntering about the streets of a strange place alone and unarmed. Truly I want a guardian more than at fifHowever, in order to redeem the twentyeight shillings, "I will take passage outside."

teen."

He had a splendid time at Edinburgh. He was entertained by Lord Justice Clerke, and Lord and Lady Hope, and Sir Alexander McKenzie, and the Baron Hepburn; he was waited upon by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and given the freedom of the library; he was introduced to Sir Walter Scott, and Madame Bruce, and Judge Hume, and Mr. Jeffery of the Edinburgh Review; and he fell in love with the Duchess of Gordon. "I lead a life of the utmost dissipation," he informed Mr. Bentham. "Driving out every day and at some party almost every night. But in the midst of folly and dissipation, some little, little thing has been accomplished in the way of business." He found things "good and cheap here, and the peculiarities of the Scots and Scotesses amuse me greatly." At all events, "the time passed at Edinburgh was a continued round of dissipation, dinners, suppers, balls, routs. Edinburgh is the most hospitable and social place I have been. They meet to amuse and be amused, and they succeed.'

He had to borrow money to pay his tavern bill and engage his return passage in the coach. But he could always find means to purchase a toy for "Gampy." In Gravesend, for instance, in March, 1809, "this silly thing," he wrote him, "is the best I can get in this dirty little place for my boy. You and Grandpassa may puzzle at it for a month. .

I wish you would beat that cross little mother of [yours] for me. The great ugly thing, she never writes me a word about you, no more than if you were a dead dog-beat her I say and tell her it's for Gampis."

5

And in London there was trouble.

A claim, first, on the part of bookseller White, for an unpaid bill; so that Colonel Burr hid himself, under his Kirby alias, in James Street, in the house of a certain Dunn, huckster. And when the matter was at last adjusted amicably, it was the Government again. At about midnight, on April 4, 1809, the Colonel's room was invaded by four worthies, bearers of a warrant from Lord Liverpool, who seized all his belongings and papers, and hustled him off to the Alien Office. Mr. Reeves did what he could, and Colonel Burr was finally taken by one of the government messengers to his home in Stratford Place. There he remained in close confinement for three days, during which he spent most of his time playing chess with his host and with his host's pretty young Welsh wife. "They have got everything," he complained. "No plots or treasons, to be sure, but what is worse, all my ridiculous journal, and all

my letters and copies." However, at the end of the three days, Lord Liverpool apologized for his action and the prisoner was released.

But in the same breath Lord Liverpool informed him that his further presence in England would be embarrassing to the Government, which proposed to provide him with transportation to some other locality. The place selected was Heligoland. Colonel Burr was not slow to guess at the influence behind Lord Liverpool. "Mr. Jefferson," he wrote, “or the Spanish Junto, or probably both, have had influence enough to drive me out of this country." He had, he told Theodosia, "the honour of being a state prisoner as a dangerous alien; an attempt, probably, to conciliate the Government of the United States.' But Heligoland must be avoided, and in the end, owing to the efforts of the Swedish Minister, the authorities consented to issue a passport for Sweden.

"The mail coach," the Colonel notified Mr. Mallet, "will take me. . . to Harwich, whence I shall embark . . . for Gottenburgh, in obedience to the sentence of ostracism declared by the benign Lord Liverpool." Behind him, he left a good many unpaid debts.

CHAPTER II

PRUNES AND VERMICELLI

I

COLONEL BURR was now to spend some nine months in Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Nine months of social festivities, of association with artists and scholars, of precarious existence on borrowed funds, and, above all perhaps, of indiscriminate gallantries.

At Stockholm there were Madame de Castre, the singer, and the Countess de Gyllanstolp a hard name, he thought, for such a beautiful woman. At Copenhagen there were other ladies. At Altona, near Hamburg, there was Janiva, the daughter of his landlady, with whom he drank champagne, and who frequently "filled up the evening" for him. At Weimar-where he met Mr. Wieland and Mr. Goethe-he had an affair with a lady of the court. "De Reizenstein is a sorceress," he recorded. “Another interview, and I might have been lost, my hopes and projects blasted and abandoned"—those precious projects! So he fled to Gotha, where he had another affair, with the Princess Louisa who