192 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE SECKET OF ATAVISM. 



By F. L. OSWALD. 



THE laws of Nature reveal themselves most plainly in the ex- 

 tremes of their manifestations, and a month ago the remark of 

 an American press correspondent must have called the attention of 

 thousands to a suggestive curiosum of hereditary influences. 



" This city is decked with voluntary bunting in honor of the 

 Czar," he writes from Wiesbaden; " and it is certainly a remark- 

 able fact that the most amiable of the Romanofl^s should be the son 

 of a narrow-minded despot, while whole-souled Kaiser Friedrich, 

 the modern Titus, the idol of his countrymen, was guilty of being 

 the father of the most unpopular prince who perhaps ever succeeded 

 to a hereditary throne." 



At first glance the coincidence does look like an altogether ex- 

 ceptional freak of chance, but, on second thought, one is surprised to 

 find the alleged portent recall analogies far too numerous to be 

 classed with the exceptions that confirm a rule. 



Peter the Great, a more absolute autocrat than the first Napoleon, 

 was the son of the dawdler Alexis, a puppet in the hands of his tutor 

 Morouzoft", and of favorites of the Buckingham type, a holiday 

 prince not wholly adverse to administrative reforms, but with no 

 more backbone than a man of straw. 



Witty, skeptical Frederick the Great, the worshiper of Voltaire 

 and the Muses, a genial host, but a political Iscariot and a shocking- 

 husband, was the undoubtedly legitimate son of an illiterate rufiian, 

 a miser and bigot whose only redeeming traits w^ere his conjugal 

 fidelity and his temptation-proof loyalty as a vassal of his Kaiser. 



And even slander-mongering Fouche did not question the legiti- 

 macy of the Duke of Reichstadt as the son, if not the primogenitus, 

 of the Corsican demigod. The poor youngster, it is true, was saddled 

 with Austrian tutors, selected by the Cultus Minister, with no special 

 reference to modern culture ; but decided talents would have asserted 

 themselves in spite of such handicaps, and Dr. Hentzen, an intelli- 

 gent and impartial observer, admits that the young exile was " mod- 

 est, rather good-natured, but hopelessly indolent and incurious — 

 indifferent alike to the marvels of Nature and art. But for a love of 

 good cheer, not always distinguishable from gluttony," he adds, 

 " one might suppose that he was pining away and had turned from 

 earthly to hyperphysical hopes." 



Indolent, good-natured, and gluttonous — the son of the man who 

 would " dine on the wing of a chicken, and on that frail support fly 

 through Europe in a cloud of blood and fire! " 



