MENTAL AND MORAL HEREDITY IN ROYALTY. 507 



acters; three of these are children, two are grandchildren and one is a 

 great-grandchild of Peter the Great. Thus in this arrangement we see 

 the principle of heredity which calls for a closer resemblance among 

 those more closely related in kin. 



Of Ivan's children, Catharine was as good as the Empress Anne was 

 inconsistent, vindictive, cruel, passionate and sentimental. Catharine 

 married average stock, but her daughter, Anne, was passionate, 

 indolent, capricious and weak. Anne married the excellent but 

 mediocre Anton Ulric, of Brunswick, which family we have already seen 

 to be full of virtue and literary tastes, so that the next generation brings 

 one parent and three grandparents free from the taint. 



We now get just what we might expect, in spite of the fact that 

 the five children were all taken when infants and for political reasons 

 imprisoned for thirty-six years. Ivan the eldest was almost an imbecile 

 and showed occasional symptoms of insanity.* This imbecility might 

 be attributed to the imprisonment, which was extremely severe, but the 

 other four children help us out. The following is taken from Coxe, a 

 very accurate historian: 



Elizabeth, the youngest sister, was a woman of high spirit and elegant 

 manners. On being released she wrote a letter of thanks to the empress so 

 well expressed as to excite admiration how she could have obtained sufficient 

 instruction during her long confinement. 



The other children were mediocre and in no way peculiar. " They amuse 

 themselves with reading, playing billiards and cards, riding and walking. 

 They walk much about the town and in the environs, and drive out in carriages ; 

 the princes frequently ride and particularly Alexis, who is very fond of that 

 exercise, and said to be an expert. They not infrequently pay visits in the 

 country and dine with the neighboring families."! 



Thus among five children exposed to a very unusual environment 

 from infancy we find a result showing little influence other than should 

 be expected from heredity. Three were mediocre representing the ma- 

 jority of the strain, one was an imbecile, corresponding to the combined 

 influence of his mother and great-grandfather, Ivan, and one was spir- 

 ited and cultivated in spite of it all, and rose very nearly as high as 

 any of the immediate ancestors. Of course such remarkable circum- 

 stances must have modified the characters of the four normal ones, at 

 least to some noteworthy extent, such as raising one of the sons above 

 the absolute mediocrity in which we find them; but I do contend that 

 even these deviate very little from what is to be expected from the prin- 

 ciples of heredity as we usually expect them to act. 



Alexis, Peter the Great's son by his first wife, Eudoria Lapookin, 

 was a very poor specimen. 



* Coxe, ' Travels,' III., p. 51. 

 t Coxe, ' Travels,' V., p. 19. 



