himself abandoned absolute rule and given a Con- | stitution to Denmark, and who so well realised his own motto, "The love of the people is my strength." Soon after the departure of King George from his happy Danish home to assume the cares of sovereignty, occurred other events big with importance, not only as affecting his royal parents, but as involving the fate of Denmark itself. The first of these was the death of Prince Ferdinand, the uncle of the King; and afterwards the death of Frederick VII himself, which last event occurred suddenly at his palace, at Glucksburg, near Flensborg, on the 15th November, 1863. On the following day Prince Christian was proclaimed King of Denmark from the balcony of the palace of Christiansborg by the title of Christian IX. In the temper of the times it was an anxious moment to succeed to the Danish throne. On the part of the German population of the duchies, the cry was for German unity and separation from Denmark. The death of Frederick vii opened up a new phase in the Schleswig-Holstein question. The storm which had been gathering for years at once burst forth. Countenanced and supported by the Duke of Saxe Coburg and other German princes, Prince Frederick of Augustenburg asserted his claim to Holstein, while King Christian had also to incur the active opposition of the Holstein deputies to his succession to the duchies.

A word on the relation of the duchies to Denmark will be needful to make clear the position of King Christian on his accession to the throne. The kingdom of Denmark consisted of Denmark proper, its various dependencies, and the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. The Danish kings of the Oldenburg line-who had ruled in Denmark for over four hundred years, and which line ended on the demise of Frederick VII-were also dukes of the duchies. Holstein and Lauenburg belonged to the Germanic Confederation, and the late King Frederick VII, like his predecessors, held these duchies as a member of the Germanic body, just as England formerly held Hanover. Schleswig, on the other hand, did not belong to Germany, but to Denmark; and, as Duke of Schleswig, Frederick VII held that duchy subject to himself as King of Denmark. The law of succession to the Crown of Denmark, when it became hereditary in 1660, was settled in the female line of Frederick III, the then reigning king, after the exhaustion of his male heirs. In virtue of the family arrangements already referred to, recognised by the London treaty and the Danish law, Prince Christian's title to the Crown of Denmark proper was established and secured. As respects the duchy of Schleswig, the rights of succession were variously construed; but as to Holstein, females were excluded, and the elder branch was undoubtedly represented by the Duke of Augustenburg; and after it came the Glucksburg family. Prince Christian had therefore no claim apart from the London treaty to take the place of Frederick VII as Duke of Holstein. The duchy by the ordinary course of succession fell to the Duke of Augustenburg. But as the great powers deemed it important in 1852, in the interests of Europe, to preserve the integrity of Denmark, and as the Duke had thrown himself out of reckoning by heading the unsuccessful revolt of the Germans of Holstein in 1849 against Denmark, he consented for himself and his family for a pecuniary consideration to forego his claims to Holstein. Thus the London treaty of 1852, and the law of 1853, secured to Prince

Christian the right to succeed not only to Denmark proper and its dependencies, but also to the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. The high contracting powers-England, France, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden-agreed (so runs the treaty), "In default of male issue in the direct line of Frederick III of Denmark, to recognise in his Highness the Prince Christian of Schleswig-HolsteinSonderburg-Glucksburg, and his descendants male sprung in direct line from his marriage with her Highness the Princess Louise, born Princess of Hesse, the right to succeed to all (à la totalité) the States actually united under the sceptre of his Majesty the King of Denmark."

But for the ferment of the times, when the treaty took effect, arising from national antipathies, and the mutual jealousy of Austria and Prussia, King Christian IX would, in all probability, have ascended the throne in peace, and ruled over an entire Denmark. As it was, neither Austria nor Prussia, struggling for the leadership in Germany, could afford to ignore the outcry for union on the part of the Germans of the Danish duchies. Prussia having determined to interfere, Austria must needs join her, and thus the Prince of Augustenburg, who had, notwithstanding the renunciation of is still living father, asserted his claim to Holstein, was soon swept aside by the combined invasion of the duchies by the forces of the two great German powers.

King Christian forced to take arms, there ensued the unequal contest gallantly maintained in 1864 by Denmark against her formidable adversaries. As the King appeared on the field of active operations in this ruinous war, he is thus described by the "Times" correspondent:

"Christian IX is evidently bent on winning the hearts of his subjects. No one he has ever seen is allowed to escape recognition. He has a winning smile, a fair and benevolent countenance, not by any means deficient in shrewdness and intelligence. He is not much above the middle size; his figure is rather slender and truly elegant; his bearing is that of a private gentleman, and with but little of the grandeur and stateliness that the vulgar are apt to associate with the outward look of royalty. He wore the uniform of a general officer of the highest ranka long overcoat, with shoulder-straps, and a foraging cap, the common garb of most officers in campaign. The King's features are good, fine, and regular; the face rather sharp and lean; the complexion fair and clear; the eyes, so far as I could see at a little distance, light blue; the hair chestnut; the moustache and whiskers, which are rather bushy, of a dark brown. I am told the King is about forty-six; were I to judge from appearances, I should have thought him at least ten years older."

From the same pen we have another notice of the King, as well as a glimpse of the Queen, on the occasion of the celebration of Constitution day, on the 5th of June in the same year, in the Deer Park-the favourite playground of the Copenhageners :

"There is something to me unspeakably touching," says the writer, "in the sight of that young, modest, affectionate, royal couple, who have come to the throne at an epoch of so much trial and peril for the Danish monarchy, and who take as little of the pomp and pageantry of their new station upon themselves as if they sighed for the domestic bliss on which the cares of a tempest-tossed State have so rudely trespassed. The King preserves, in the midst

of his newly-acquired greatness, all the easy grace, the courteous simplicity, which belong to a thoroughbred gentleman. It would be waste of breath to say of the Queen that she is 'every inch a lady.' Old enough to be a grandmother, she yet preserves all the freshness of matronly beauty-a melancholy beauty, you would say, in its happiest moments. There is in both of the handsome countenances of this royal pair a look of anxious care, a touch of sadness, conveying very plain hints of the share both of them take in the sorrows and fears by which the country is distracted, and making irresistible appeal to the sympathics of all beholders."

After the capture of Alsen by the Germans, King Christian became convinced that further resistance was hopeless, and having effected a change of his Ministers, they at once, and in view of inevitable sacrifice, proposed a suspension of arms. Then followed the Vienna Conference, with the view of finding some basis for the establishment of peace. Germany, directed by Bismarck, insisted not only on the surrender of Holstein and Lauenburg, but also of Schleswig. That Holstein and Lauenburg, being German, and peopled by Germans, in origin and language, must be given up, was foreseen by Denmark; but Schleswig was Danish, and to Schleswig Denmark clung. It is true the German-speaking population had crossed the Eyder from Holstein, and that in the southern portion of the duchy a population of a mixed character prevailed, still of its 300,000 inhabitants two-thirds were purely Danish and enthusiastic in their loyalty to the Danish King. To consent, therefore, to give up to alien rule this attached and loyal people was the bitter cup which King Christian had to drink. After the separation of Danish Schleswig from Denmark had been decreed, a deputation from the inhabitants came to Copenhagen to present a farewell address to the King. His reply was couched in the touching terms of sincere sorrow. The King said:-"You have told me how bitterly you grieve to be separated from Denmark and the Danish royal house, and I pray you to believe that it has also been most painful to me to be placed under the necessity of relinquishing the ancient Danish crown land of Schleswig, united for centuries to Denmark. Of all the cares and sorrows which have been heaped upon me during my brief rule, nothing has more depressed my mind, nothing weighed more deeply upon my heart, than my separation from the brave, faithful, and loyal Schleswigers, who have upon so many difficult occasions constantly given the most brilliant proofs of fidelity and devotion to Denmark and the Danish royal house; who have cherished no dearer or more zealous wish than to remain united with the kingdom under my sceptre. But, my friends, we must all bow to the will of Providence, and I will pray to the Almighty that he may give both to you and to me the requisite strength and endurance to bear the bitter pangs of separation. My best wishes for your future welfare will always be with you. May God bless and preserve you all! "

Such reverses and sacrifices could not, however, befall without a large amount of national irritation. Blame, however, unjustly fell upon King Christian, with a consequent loss of popularity. The Danes were inclined to attribute to their King their national misfortunes. In the midst of this state of feeling the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Copenhagen the first time after their marriage, and they were but

coldly received; and yet no patriotic Dane among them had more poignantly felt the calamities of her country than the Princess of Wales. The Princess Dagmar, whose marriage to the Cesarewitch did not take place till November, 1866, shared immediately with her royal parents in all the anxieties and trials of the time, and by her gracious and condescending kindliness helped to sooth the wounded susceptibilities of the Copenhagen populace.

"Even in the midst of the keenly-felt distress and humiliation," says a writer, "occasioned by the loss of Schleswig and Holstein-when with the natural instinct of men tried by adversity the Danes were disposed to lay upon their King the blame of his illfortune, the sight of the tall, graceful, and elegant figure and fair countenance of the Princess Dagmar, as she walked on the lawn at Bernstorff, or under the great beech-trees of the Deer Park, or waited on the platform of the railway-station at Fredericksborg in the midst of the Copenhagen pleasure-seekers, the ease and affability with which she bestowed smiles and words, and her gracious sympathy with the respectful yet delighted multitude, had no little influence in disarming unjust prepossessions and winning back wavering loyalty."

It is well known that Prussia and Austria quarrelled over the booty unjustly wrenched from Denmark. Then ensued the Austro-Prussian War, in which Prussia, aided by her needle-gun, came off victorious. By the treaty of Prague, concluded on the 12th November, 1866, Prussia engaged to Austria to restore North Schleswig to Denmark-" so far as the population by free voting may prove themselves in favour of such a step." Until this day Prussia has not complied with this engagement, and has refused to relinquish her hold of the Danish province. King Christian, however, as appears from one of his speeches on opening the Rigsdag, looks forward to the day when the political situation will allow of the return of the Danish Schleswigers to their own Denmark.

In July, 1874, the King, accompanied by his son, Prince Waldemar, paid a visit to Iceland, to which a Constitution had just been accorded on the thousandth anniversary of its connection with Denmark. Although Frederick VII, when Crown Prince, had visited Iceland, Christian IX was the first Danish monarch who had set foot on its shores. His reception was of the most cordial character. It was at the time said-and with truth-that Iceland never received a more welcome visitor; his dignified bearing, his ready affability, his wonderfully winning manners and unassuming simplicity, were qualities which won for him the heart of the whole people. The Faroe Islands, another of the Danish possessions, were also visited by his Majesty during the same trip.

Since the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales, there has been frequent intercourse between the royal families of Denmark and England. In 1863, shortly after the marriage, the Prince and Princess Christian and the Princess Dagmar visited England, and spent a short time at Sandringham. In 1864 the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Copenhagen, and in 1867 their Danish Majesties returned the visit to Marlborough House. Again, in 1868, when the Prince and Princess of Wales set forth on their Eastern tour, they took Denmark by the way. The Princess of Wales had the pleasure of spending her birthday, the 1st of December of that

year, with her royal parents in Denmark. In the morning of the day, in the Palace of Fredericksborg, the Princess received the felicitations of her friends, and in the evening, at a large dinner-party, the King proposed the health of his eldest daughter, and said that it was six years since he had the pleasure of having her with him on her birthday, and that when he looked back on the anxious time of her severe illness in the previous year, he could not be sufficiently thankful to Almighty God for being able to have her now sitting by his side almost completely recovered. In the following year occurred an event fraught with interest to the royal pair-the marriage of their son, the manly and accomplished Crown Prince of Denmark, to Louisa, Princess Royal of Sweden, daughter of the late King Charles xv. This was another happy union, and one which tended to bind more closely the friendly ties which had long existed between the royal houses of Sweden and Denmark. Charles xv of Sweden was the bosom friend of the late King Frederick VII of Denmark, and both monarchs were enthusiastic upholders of the idea of Scandinavian unity.

King Christian has a civil list of £55,555; the heir-apparent to the Crown has in addition an allowance of £6,666, settled by law of March 20th, 1868. The present Constitution of Denmark is embodied in the charter of 5th June, 1849, granted by Frederick vII. The 5th of June (Constitution day) is observed each year by popular rejoicings throughout the entire kingdom. The Constitution was modified in some respects in 1855, and also a Constitution for the whole monarchy was framed and passed in 1863, during the lifetime of the late King, but it had not been confirmed by him at the time of his death. Almost immediately on his accession, King Christian gave his royal sanction to the new law. The alacrity of the act gave great satisfaction, and rendered his Majesty very popular for the time being at Copenhagen. After the close of the war, a still newer Constitutional law was passed, which obtained the royal sanction on the 28th of July, 1866: according to which, the executive power is vested in the King and his responsible Ministers. The right of making and amending laws is in the National Assembly, or Rigsdag, acting in conjunction with the sovereign. The Rigsdag meets annually for two months, and consists of the Landsthing and the Folkething, the former being the Senate, or Upper House, and the latter the House of Commons. The Landsthing consists of 106 members; of these, twelve are nominated by the Crown for life, the rest are elected indirectly by the people for a term of eight years. The 101 members of the Folkething are returned for a term of three years, in direct election, by universal suffrage. All men of good repute beyond the age of thirty are eligible for election as members both of the Upper and Lower House.

The King, according to the Constitution, must be a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is declared to be the religion of the State.

The personal virtues, upright intentions, and popular public acts of the King and Queen of Denmark have surmounted every prejudice, and won for them the respect and affection of their subjects. Since the loss of the duchies his Majesty has sought to develop the internal resources and institutions of his country. The army and navy have been thoroughly reorganised; several railways have been constructed, and agriculture and commerce steadily promoted.

Denmark, though a small country, maintains an honourable place among European nations. Its population is alike brave, honest, and high-hearted, and in its interests, feelings, affections, and popular institutions, it has much in common with England. Denmark has the goodwill of England; every one must wish for the ancient and renowned kingdom a continuance of moral and material progress under the wise and mild sway of its present monarch.

VE

THE OLD LOTTERIES.

J. II.

sometimes hear the question asked, Whether the gambling spirit is more or is it less prevalent among our population of the present day than it was among their predecessors? There would seem, if the history of the human family has been correctly recorded, never to have been a time when gaming in some form or other was not a favourite source of excitement; and never to have been a people, who have a history at all, who did not indulge in it. It is said to be carried to the greatest extreme among the oriental nations, some of whom make no scruple of staking everything they possess upon the cast of the die-who will venture the loss of their wives and children, and even their own personal liberty, rather than sit down content under losses they may have incurred. Englishmen have never been quite so insane as that, but thousands of Englishmen have been utterly ruined through yielding to the fascinating excitements of gaming; and, spite of all the warnings of the moralist and the miserable example of innumerable victims, we continue to be a gambling people. Witness our racing establishments, our betting-houses, running matches, and the various modes and methods by which one covetous man's money is transferred to another covetous man's pocket. For it is covetousness that is at the root of all gambling, as of every other species of theft, seeing that what the gambler seeks is to become possessed of money without the trouble of earning it.

Down to the first years of the fourth George, or thereabouts, the views entertained of gambling by the generality of Englishmen were materially different from those entertained at present. The vice was hardly recognised as a vice, but was rather declaimed against as an imprudence. Gaming-houses were common, not only in London, but in all the fashionable towns of the provinces; gambling was carried on in private houses to an extent now quite unknown; gambling clubs and subscription rooms, where deep play was the rule rather than the exception, abounded; and the habit was so general that it was indulged in by nearly all classes at their social parties and assemblies. As if to give the opportunity of cultivating gaming to the entire community, the Government of the day virtually patronised it in the form of the State lotteries, which for nearly a couple of centuries were made to yield a considerable revenue to the Crown. The Government sanction, of course, had a moral effect; the common people could hardly look upon that as a vicious and destructive practice to which their legislators directly encouraged them, and in which they were daily invited to participate whenever they stirred abroad or took up a newspaper; for the

lottery contractors were notoriously the most active and indefatigable promoters of their own interest the world had ever seen. Never was a mission carried out with such perseverance and pertinacity as that which called upon all classes and conditions of men to get rich at the expense of their fellows. The flaming placards and amusing jocular designs of the Lottery Office blazed upon every wall and struck the eye from every point of vantage throughout the kingdom. A deluge of handbills, fly-leaves, and circulars inundated the land with the starting of every new scheme, and the public interest in the "wheel of fortune" was kept at the enthusiastic pitch, whatever else was allowed to lapse into forgetfulness or neglect. Even during that terrible revolutionary war that culminated in Waterloo, the State lotteries filled the popular mind, and if they sank in interest for a time at the news of some great battle or triumph, they recovered their lost ground when the stirring excitement had passed away.

The lotteries of fifty years to sixty years ago consisted of all sorts of schemes. There were lotteries for the disposal of art collections (in one of these all Boydell's collection was got rid of), for the disposal of diamonds, jewellery, land, houses, life assurances, annuities, etc., etc. Most of the schemes, however, set forth lists of money prizes, in sums varying from twenty or forty pounds to twenty or forty thousand. That the poor might not be debarred from their share of the impending blessings, the lottery tickets were divided into fractional parts. Thus, a man who could not afford twenty pounds (for that or more was the price) for a whole ticket, could buy a half ticket, or a quarter ticket, or an eighth, or a sixteenth -the prices of which last, unless our memory fails us, varying from a guinea to thirty-one and sixpence. Of these sixteenths, thousands were sold in shares at public-houses, the shares being raffled by landlords among their customers, who clubbed their shillings together to make up a little go," in which all risked and shared alike; so that a man might possess the tenth part or the twentieth part of a sixteenth, and he might do that, as many did, five or six times over to give himself a better chance of winning the chance being, after all, as the reader may easily imagine, extremely small. The list of prizes was always printed at full length in enormously corpulent figures on the placards and handbills, and one might see on a dead wall or hoarding, at a full furlong's distance, or more, such pyramids of figures as the following the notes of admiration a foot long at least, and flaring up in bright scarlet:-

£ 500! 2,000!!

10,000!!!

20,000!!!! 40,000!!!!!

66

the whole emblazoned on a standard reared aloft by a bluecoat boy--who was always represented as the meekest of infants- the prizes being invariably drawn from the wheel by a boy from the bluecoat school. Of course nothing was ever said about the number of blanks, which, looking to the above large sums, must have amounted to hundreds of thousands to make the scheme remunerative. Still, every now and then a scheme would come out in which there were "all prizes and no blanks!"-the place of the blanks being supplied by merely nominal prizes, varying in amount from a half to a sixteenth of the price of the

ticket; such schemes, however, could not exhibit such monster prizes as are given above.

Among the millions of adventurers who invested in the lotteries every year, it was inevitable that a certain number should be winners, and not a few persons did really win large amounts, and stepped at once from comparative poverty to actual wealth, and to a respectable social position. Sometimes it would happen that the lottery would go off, leaving some of the grand prizes still in the wheel-a state of matters at which the people kicked a good deal, and were hardly satisfied with the explanation, which ran to the effect that as all the tickets had not been sold, it could not be expected that all the prizes should be drawn.

When a prize was gained by a dweller in a country town or village in a farming district, even though it were but a sixteenth, and it would seldom be more, the event was generally made the occasion of a grand demonstration, and that for reasons sufficiently obvious. First came the news to the lucky individual in an official letter, a document of most impressive appearance, red-taped, and sealed with the broad, mysteriously embossed lottery-office seal. Then, unless the winner chose to coach it up to London and claim the cash in person, which in those no-railway days he was seldom inclined to do (and the winner might be six or a dozen persons instead of one), the prize would be sent down by the mail or stage-coach in charge of an agent, who came with blasts of trumpets, with flags flying, and making as much clamour and display as possible, preparatory to delivering over the cash, which he would hand over at last, with due solemnity, all in solid gold, in the presence of as many witnesses as could be gathered together. Such payments, as a rule, would take place in a public-house, and the thousand or twelve hundred sovereigns or guineas would cut a grand figure glittering on a salver, or, wanting a salver, on a tea-tray, among twigs of laurel or evergreens. That such a scene should wind up with a general saturnalia, at which the guests all got tipsy at the expense of the fortunate individual, is no more than one might expect. If there should be a free fight and a scramble among the several claimants-well, whether you would expect that or no, it is a fact that it sometimes took place. The result to a poor man, say a small farmer or village artisan, of winning a lottery prize was far oftener calamitous than it was beneficial. He rarely had the prudence to deal with his newlyacquired riches as he should have done; and let him be as prudent as he would, unless he took to flight and carried his cash to some other quarter, he was sure to be haunted and pestered and sponged upon by his relatives and intimates until the winnings were all wasted away in treating and drinking, by which time he had generally acquired lazy and intemperate habits, and was most likely ruined for life.

The same demoralising influence has been notorious in Continental countries, and nowhere more than in the States of the Church, where the Holy Father, heedless of the moral or social welfare of his subjects, largely replenished his coffers by lotteries. It is not to be supposed that results such as these were not recognised and duly appreciated. Widespread and general as was the gambling spirit, and though it had infected the clergy and even dignitaries of the church as well as the laity, there was yet always a class in opposition to it, a band of sternly

faithful crusaders against the State lotteries, who saw in them a machinery for national demoralisation, and refused to look at them in any other light. They were long in the minority, but they wrote and talked and preached against the evil with indefatigable perseverance, and it was doubtless owing in great part to their influence, together with the growth of a better moral feeling, that the lotteries fell into disfavour, and were finally abolished by Act of Parliament in 1826.

It was about the year 1819 that the writer, then a growing lad, purchased his first and only lottery ticket. How it was that I became inoculated with the sudden desire of becoming, as I fancied, enormously rich all at once, I cannot at this distance of time recall. I was bitten, it may be presumed, by the universal mania, or may have been lured by the example of some friend or companion. At any rate, I laid out most of my savings in a sixteenth, which I bought of one of Bish's agents in Bath, where I then resided. No sooner did I possess the ticket than I began to nourish a secret conviction that it would turn up a prize-perhaps the grand prize of £20,000. So strong did this conviction become in a day or two that, at the cost of much inconvenience and some privation, I visited the agent a second time, and was fortunate enough to secure another sixteenth of the same number, though the payment for it left me with empty pockets. Two months had to elapse before the lottery would be drawn, and during all that time I underwent various changes of mood, and was so engrossed with the subject that it was rarely out of my thoughts; sanguine one day, and mistrustful the next, and never at rest, I had small enjoyment of the interval, which seemed as though it would never come to an end. On the morning of the eventful day I rose early, after a night of little sleep and troubled dreams, and sallied forth for a stroll. Along the Gravel Walk, the Crescent Fields, and across the High Common, I made my way as far as Weston, doing my best not to think of my lottery ticket, and what it would bring me. Then I returned and retraced my steps homeward. As I was returning down the Gravel Walk I caught sight of old Tucker, the bill-sticker, in the act of affixing a placard to

the dead wall which fronted the entrance to the walk. I was hardly near enough to read the bill as he spread it on the wall, and I stood still to take a more steady view. What were my feelings when I plainly distinguished the words and figures, "Number 5595 (the very number of which I held twosixteenths) a prize of £20,000," the reader must imagine, for I cannot describe them. For a moment or two, it may have been minutes, I could not stir a step, and had the feeling that I must sink into the ground. Eights in twenty, two and four over; eights in forty, five-two thousand five hundred pounds"-that delightful calculation was running in my head, and had repeated itself a score of times before I had recovered nerve enough to run forward and read the whole placard, which old Tucker had by this time done with. Alas! for my grand expectations! The bill, on further perusal, merely stated that Messrs. Bish had sold in the last lottery the number 5595, which had come up a prize of £20,000, and that they had still a quantity of lucky numbers to dispose of in the present lottery, the drawing of which, the public were respectfully informed, was to be deferred until that day month. Poor me! I felt like poor Humpty-dumpty knocked off his wall, and knew that all the king's horses and all the king's men could never set me up again; for of course I knew that by nothing short of a miracle could the same number out of hundreds of thousands come up a grand prize twice following. That day, I well recollect, was a very grey day to me, but I recovered my spirits ere long, and, by way of making the best of the affair, I put my two sixteenths up to a raffle among my shopmates and fellow-apprentices, and succeeded in disposing of them without loss. As a matter of prudence I said nothing about the extraordinary coincidence of the numbers, nor was it noticed by any of the members of the raffle. The probabilities were not considered. So it happened that I lost nothing, for which I was thankful, and I have since been no less thankful that I won nothing; for I am morally certain that if that £2,500 had come into my possession in my teens it would have proved a curse, situated as I then was, and not a blessing.

LOTTERY for 1791.