MENTAL AND MORAL HEREDITY IN ROYALTY. 81 



ter, energy and abilities. Besides, we find Wolfgang of Palatine, 

 1569, the great grandfather, a man of great distinction in his day. 

 As Catherine, the mother of Charles and sister of the great Gustavus 

 Adolphus, was intellectual and energetic, we have here in starting the 

 new dynasty a selection of by far the better members of the family. 



Charles X., himself, was a rather remarkable character, being a 

 man of the greatest enterprise and, as a commander, showed the family 

 brilliancy in a striking degree. His measures were in general entirely 

 just, his only noteworthy weakness being his passionate temper.* 



The only child of Charles X. was Charles XI., who became king of 

 Sweden in his turn and began to exercise his power in 1692. He seems 

 to repeat the character of his father almost exactly. 



Charles was chaste, temperate, economical, vigilant and active, a patron 

 of letters, severe yet not implacable, prone to anger but easily softened. If 

 we consider the interior administration of affairs, Charles XI. was one of the 

 wisest monarchs who ever sat upon the throne of this kingdom. To him Sweden 

 stands indebted for many excellent regulations which still subsist.f He 

 promoted manufacture, commerce, science and arts, subverted the power of the 

 senate, and when he died, left a flourishing kingdom to his son Charles XII. t 

 He died aged forty-two, lamenting, it is said, upon his death bed, as the only 

 reproach to his memory, the natural violence of his temper, which he had not 

 sufficiently corrected. 



Charles XI. married Ulrica Eleonora, a virtuous and intellectual 

 princess. She was a daughter of Frederick III. of Denmark, and sole 

 representative among six children of that little group of brighter lights 

 forming Denmark's highest intellectual wave, and centered about 

 Christian IV., her greatest king. 



From this union sprang two daughters, in no way remarkable, 

 beside one son, born in 1682, who, as Voltaire says, 'became as Charles 

 XII. perhaps the most remarkable man who ever existed upon this 

 earth, who united in himself all the great qualities of his ancestors, 

 and who had no fault or misfortune except in having them too greatly 

 exaggerated.' Invincibly obstinate from childhood, the only way of 

 moving his will was through his sense of honor. Charles was inordi- 

 nately ambitious from youth, his only desire being to imitate the 

 career of Alexander the Great. When only eighteen years old an oppor- 

 tunity was given him to display his 'extraordinary martial genius' in 

 his unequal contest against three of the most powerful monarchs in 

 Europe. Peter the Great, of Eussia ; Frederick IV., of Denmark, and 

 Augustus, King of Poland, thinking on account of the youth of 

 Charles to divide his kingdom between them, formed a league against 



* Coxe, ' Travels,' IV., 34. ' Ency. Brit.' 9th ed. 



fCoxe, 'Travels, IV., 39. 



% Lippincott's ' Biog. Diet.' 



Schloetzer's ' Briefwechsel,' I., 147. 



VOL. LXII. 6. 



