One day as he returns from breakfast at Holland House, he finds a note on his table. It is from Lord Liverpool. The note is polite, bland, insinuating, flattering. It says, none the less, that “The presence of Colonel Burr in Great Britain is embarrassing to His Majesty’s Government, and it is the wish and expectation of Government that he remove.”
The note continues to the courteous effect that “passports will be furnished Colonel Burr,” and a free passage in an English ship to any port—not English.
Aaron replies to Lord Liverpool’s note, and says that having become, as his Lordship declares, “embarrassing to His Majesty’s Government,” he must, of course, as a gentleman “gratify the wishes of Government by withdrawing.” He adds that Sweden, now he may no longer stay in England, is his preference.
Aaron goes to Stockholm, and has trouble with the language but none with the inhabitants, who receive him with open hearts and arms. At once he is called upon to play the distinguished guest in highest circles, and does it with usual easy grace. He spends three months in Stockholm, and two in traveling about the kingdom. The excellence of the roads and the lack of toll-gates amaze him. Likewise, he is in rapture over Swedish honesty. He makes an admiring dash at the laws of the realm, and spreads on his journal:
“There is no country in which personal liberty is so well secured; none in which the violation of it is punished with so much certainty and promptitude; none in which justice is administered with so much dispatch and so little expense.”
Aaron attends the opera, and cannot say too much in praise of the Swedish appreciation of music. He exalts the sensibility of the Norsemen. Returning from the opera, he lights his candle and writes:
“What most interested me was the perfect attention and the uncommon degree of feeling exhibited by the audience. Every countenance was affected by those emotions which the music expressed. In England you see no expression painted on the faces at a concert or an opera. All is somber and grim. They cry ‘Bravo! bravissimo!’ with the same countenance wherewith they curse.”
From Sweden Aaron repairs to Denmark, and takes up pleasant quarters in Copenhagen. Here he goes in for science, ransacks libraries, and attends the courts. Studying the Danish jurisprudence, he is struck by that amiable feature called the “Committees on Conciliation,” and resolves to recommend its adoption in America.
Hamburg next. Here Aaron asks for passports into France. They are not immediately forthcoming, since under the Corsican passports are more easily asked for than obtained. While his passports are making, Aaron is visited by the learned Ebeling, and Niebuhr, privy counselor to the king.
Aaron takes six weeks and explores Germany.