HEREDITY OF MENTAL TRAITS 13 



much alternative heredity is seen on a close analysis 

 of all the family members, especially evident in the 

 different types of moral character. In fact, much the 

 same picture is seen here as among their close cousins, 

 the Spanish, Hapsburg- Bourbons. Since the middle 

 of the nineteenth century the Saxe-Coburg and best 

 Orleans blood has eliminated the insane and abnormal 

 types, but has not introduced any ancestry containing 

 great ability. 



The early Romanoffs in Russia show a cruel, 

 passionate, violent, and often epileptic type. This 

 was absent in the Czars Michael and Alexis, appeared 

 in Peter the Great, his brother Ivan and sister Sophia, 

 and in two of his children, but not in his daughter 

 Anne. The children of another Anne, who had her- 

 self inherited the Romanoff eccentricities and had 

 married the excellent though mediocre Anthony Ulric 

 of Brunswick, are especially interesting, as they show 

 what the outcome may be after a very exceptional 

 environment. All the children were taken when 

 infants and for political reasons imprisoned for 

 thirty-six years. Ivan, the eldest, was almost an 

 imbecile, and showed occasional symptoms of in- 

 sanity. This imbecility might naturally be attri- 

 buted to the imprisonment, which was extremely 

 severe ; but the characteristics of the other four 

 children make one suspect alternative heredity pure 

 and simple, " 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 



