en. 22.] AND SCANDINAVIA. 165 



Mr Martin is an E.A. of London ; his forte seems 

 to be caricature-painting, for his landscapes are daubs. 

 One of his pupils is a most wonderful drawer of figures, 

 but nothing in landscape. * Mr Belanger is a most ex- 

 cellent landscape-painter, both in oil and water colour. 



The manners of the people in this capital are ex- 

 tremely dissolute, particularly of the people of fashion. 

 The instances of profligacy about Court almost exceed 

 belief in so northerly a situation. The women of 

 fashion carry on their amours in the most scandalous 

 and public manner. Madame de L , whose hus- 

 band is minister at the Hague, lives openly with 

 Baron d'E . Her sons, two of the most fashion- 

 able young men in Stockholm, are very intimate with 

 the baron, and with the minister too. She is daugh- 

 ter of the late Count J . On her husband com- 

 plaining to him soon after his marriage, he asked 

 him, " Have you any paper, any writing, any title- 

 deed, by which to plead exemption from the common 

 lot of husbands " ? This kind of instance might be 

 multiplied to an endless extent. This profligacy 

 seems to descend to the lower orders. Their manners 

 are growing corrupted too. While we were at Stock- 

 holm several instances happened : a man killed his 

 wife because she would not assist him in corrupt- 

 ing his own daughter. Three men were hanged for 



* This Martin cannot be David Martin, the portrait-painter, cele- 

 brated for the picture of Lord Mansfield, which he afterwards engraved, 

 as he died in 1797. Nor can it be John Martin, celebrated as the 

 author of ' Belshazzar's Feast,' and others of the like character, for he 

 was only ten years old at the period. 



