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GRAD IBUHR DL 703 .H57 1852

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD-STREET.

Buhr/Grad

42081531 Spaul 08/19/05

PREFACE.

THE life of Gustavus Vasa, though it has been separately treated by several Swedish authors, has never yet, I believe, been presented to the English reader as a distinct subject. This certainly has not been because the subject is deficient either in interest or importance, nor is it that there have not existed of late years ample and accessible materials for its development, but chiefly perhaps because the number of English writers acquainted with the Scandinavian languages is still comparatively few, and that the unoccupied fields which those languages have opened to them are many and extensive.

It will not, I hope, be deemed superfluous, if I explain the manner in which the present work had its beginning.

The early interest which I had taken in Gustavus Vasa from Voltaire's introduction to Charles the Twelfth,' and which had been confirmed from other sources, was revived and much increased by the following remarks of Mr. Laing on Geijer's history of the Swedes.

"The second and third parts give the history of Gustavus Vasa and his successors down to the death

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