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•TESTIMONY OF ULRICA, QUEEN OF SWEDEN. 227
•doubt <;oiTld be •entertained as to the truth of the three wonderful occurrences
she had heard coticerning Swedenborg and his communication with the spirits
of the departed. The^?-5^ of these occurrences was that relating to the Queen ;
the second was that respecting the mislaid receipt, which the Dutch Ambassador
at the Court cf Sweden, the husband of Madame de Marteville, had received in
paymejrt of a certain sum, which after his death the creditor again demanded.
This mislaid Teceipt was recovered through the information which Swedenborg
obtained from the departed husband. It was from having heard this report, and
from the sensation it created in Stockholm, that the Queen was chiefly induced
to examine Swedenborg’s case herself, and to ascertain by her own experience
whether he had the power of conversing with departed spirits or not.- The
third remarkable occurrence was that respecting the fire at Stockholm, which
Swedenboi’g, who had recently arrived at Gottenburg from London, announced
at the time it broke out to the company where he was ; and consequently along
time before the news of its ravages could arrive in Gottenburg, there being about
300 English miles distance between the two places. In two or three days
letters arrived in Gottenburg from Stockholm, informing the inhabitants of the
lire, stating when it began and when it was extinguished ; thus confirming, to
the great astonishment of all, the truth of Swedenborg’s announcement. Kant,
in this letter, gives a circumstantial account of this latter occurrence, and says,
* tlmt it is beyond the possibility of doubt.’*
* See Documents concerning Swedenborg, &c., pages 124-133. It is important that
the reader should know, that the dates in Kant’s letter, have lately been proved by Dr.
Tafel, of Tubingen, to be quite erroneous. The real date of the letter could not be 1758,
because Dr. Tafel has proved from documents that cannot be disputed, that all these three
remarkable occurrences happened after the year 1758. For, 1. The husband of Madame
de Marteville died April 25th, 1760, consequently after the date of Kant’s letter. 2. It is
well known that the Queen put Swedenborg to the test after the occurrence about the
lost receipt, being moved chiefly by the report of that extraordinary event to have a per-
sonal interN-iew with Swedenborg respecting his alledged wonderful gift. And 3, the fire
•at Stockholm took place the 19th of July, 1759, and not in 1756, as stated in Kant’s letter.
All these facts Dr. Tafel has proved in his recent •’
Supplement to the Documents con-
cerning Svvedeuborg," from Newspapers, Gazettes, and other documents which record tlie
events of that time, and consequently the fire in question, and also the death of the Count
de Marteville. The question now is, whether these dates were written or printed by
mistake, or whether, in. the editing of Kant’s entire works, many years after that letter
was written, these dates were falsified of design. The fact is, that in 1766 Kant published
a small woi-k entitled the " Dreams of a Gkost-secr illustrated hy Dreams of Metapyhsics,^*
in which Swedenborg and the reports concerning him are the principal objects of his at-
tack. In that work he constantly spells E. S.’s name viYong (Sckwedenierg), and proves
that he knew nothing concerning him but from hearsay reports. Moreover, in this work
he alludes to the anecdote respecting the Queen of Sweden, and states that it could not
be disputed ; he also says that it occurred in 1761, which is a proof from Kant himself, that
the date of the letter to Madame de Knobloch (1758) is incorrect. And in this work,
page 88, the right date of the fire (1759 instead of 1756) is put. Now this letter was
written subsequently to 1766, or after Kant’s work above alluded to had appeared, and
the proper date of it is shown to be 1768 instead of 1758. It is probable that by mistake
the 5 might have been printed instead of 6, and that in the date of the fire, 1756, the 6
might have crept in instead of the 9. If so, nobody is involved in the falsification of the
said dates. This letter, however, together with the works of Kant, is said by the editor,
Borowski, in 1804, very soon after Kant’s death, " to have been strictly revised and cor-
rected by Kant himself," and if so the suspicion cannot but arise that Kant was privy to
the alteration in these dates. It is probable that, as his work, " The Dreams of a Ghost-
seer illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics^’’ had excited some attention in the literary
world, and had added somewhat to the fame of Kant, he saw, that should this letter, in
which he expresses himself as so firmly convinced of the ti-uth of the three remarkable oc-
currences recorded of the Queen, the mislaid receipt, and the fire at Stockholm, appear
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