74 
TRAVELS 
I will farther obferve, before I quit this fubjedl, that this mode of 
drefs gives to the Swedifh court an air of magnificence and gran¬ 
deur, more {hiking than all the party-coloured glare that you meet 
with in other places; in the fame manner as the imagination de¬ 
rives more pleafure from contemplating a military corps in the 
plaineft uniform, than from the fight of an equal alfemblage of 
men apparelled in richer clothes of different hues and fafhions. 
This court-drefs, which may be confidered as the national uni¬ 
form, was finally eftablifhed by Guftavus III. 
At the fame time that the moft rigid obfervance of particular 
forms is exacted by the Court of Stockholm, within what we may 
call its own precincts, there is no country where the king and 
princes mix more familiarly with the people than in Sweden. This 
makes the contrafl the more ftriking; for it is a very different 
thing to be admitted to the private fuppers given by the king, and 
the other branches of the royal family, and to ftand as a fpectator 
at the public exhibition at court. The king gives fuppers in a 
domeftic and friendly way, twice, and fometimes three times a 
week. On opera days thefe parties are at the royal apartments in 
the opera-houfe : on other days, at an elegant palace called Haga, 
or the Hague, not quite a Swedifh mile diftant from the north- 
gate of Stockholm, fituated on the border of a lake in the midfl 
of a wood : this was the favourite refidence of his late majefty. 
It was in a fmall pavilion, in a corner of the gardens of Haga, 
where the king is faid to have formed the plan of the revolution 
in 1772; and that fpot is (till much vifited by the curious, as 
being 
