508 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Never was the birth of any prince more unfortunate to himself, to his 

 parents and to his country. All persons however join in condemning the 

 imprudence and obstinacy of Alexis which seems to have warped his judgment 

 and at times to have transported him to a degree of insanity. Alexis was 

 extremely dissolute and preferred the company of the lower classes. When 

 twenty-six, worn out by continual drunkenness, he demanded permission to 

 retire to a convent, bvit changed his mind and escaped to Vienna. 



He was retaken and tried. He died soon after, probably murdered 

 by his father's orders, though some historians contend he died, as 

 Peter claimed he did, by an apoplectic fit. 



By Peter's second marriage with Catharine he had two daughters, 

 Elizabeth and Anne. They were as different as possible. Elizabeth, 

 the notorious empress, was very inconsistent, being indolent, dissolute, 

 cruel and pious.* Anne, on the contrary, was serious-minded, culti- 

 vated and virtuous, f The latter married Charles Frederick, Duke of 

 Holstein, an inferior sort of man of undistinguished parentage, and 

 the only son, Peter III., was as bad as the worst of them, being weak, 

 dissolute, violent and headstrong. Alexis, the imbecile son of Peter 

 the Great, married Charlotte, an 'angelic' daughter of the good House 

 of Brunswick already referred to, and by this marriage we see two chil- 

 dren, one good and one bad. Natalia, the daughter, was sweet tem- 

 pered, remarkably bright and energetic, while Peter, the son, who 

 became Peter II., in spite of the best education, gave up all study and 

 political work and confined himself to hunting and shooting. He had 

 a 'somewhat unstable mind,' but his character showed none of the 

 cruelty and degeneracy of some of the others of the family. Peter III. 

 married Catherine of Anhalt-Zerbst, who became the notorious 

 empress Catherine II. As we do not know who was the father of 

 Paul, owing to the licentiousness of Catherine, the remaining division 

 of the so-called Eomanhofs down to the present day had best be 

 studied as another group. 



The great variation in the characters of the early Romanhofs is 

 better explained by the presence of the neurosis than by any other 

 cause, since this has been shown to account for it. 



If we consider the rudeness of the times to be the cause we can not 

 see just why the first three of the Czars, Feodor, Michel and Alexis, 

 were so prudent, mild and virtuous, or why the subsequent neurosis 

 appears more frequently in those closely related to the height of its 

 manifestation in the generation of Peter the Great. In modern 

 Spain a condition similar from the heredity standpoint can be studied 

 under several different environments in no way like that of early Russia, 

 yet the variation in character in the royalty of modern Spain is quite 



* Lippincott and Coxe, ' Travels,' II., pp. 302-306. 

 t Bruce's ' Memoirs,' pp. 100-197. 



