126 The American Naturalist. [February, 
we say that Peter III repeated every vice of his grandfather's 
without any of his virtues we shall have said almost enough ; 
he was a drunken, madly vain, dissolute savage, and after be- 
ing dethroned, was assassinated by the orders of his wife, 
Catharine II. 
Paul I was not unlike Peter III in his general characteris- 
tics, and he too was assassinated. Alexander I, the rival of 
Napoleon, presents the greatest of contrasts to the Romanoffs 
we have hitherto seen; he inherited the excellent qualities of 
his mother, Catherine the Great, whilst he was a stranger to 
her vices. Like Joseph II of Austria, he was too enlightened 
for his environment; his schemes for good were frustrated ; 
his noblest hopes for his country disappointed ; a deep melan- 
choly settled on his spirits, and like Joseph II he welcomed 
death.? 
The character of Alexander I was nearly repeated in that 
of Alexander II, his nephew, the “Tzar Liberator.” As we 
survey the men of the Romanoff family in the present century, 
though we find many of its collateral members showing an 
undesirable atavism, yet the actual wearers of the Russian 
crown, with all their mistakes, must be credited with the 
honest intention of doing their best for their people. In short 
the final result shows that a ruling family may have a worse 
ancester than a drunken epileptic, who was at the same time 
a man of supreme genius! Unfortunately the race, once so 
strong, has been tainted through the female side with con- 
sumption, which promises to play worse havoc in two genera- 
tions than epilepsy or drunkenness in two hundred years. 
I can offer here only a slight and imperfect sketch of the 
lives on which a more fortunately situated enquirer might 
work. I have alluded only to the best known direct lines of 
succession, but a wide field of interest lies before the student 
who will follow the ramifications of European royal families 
through the female side. There have been constant inter- 
marriages between the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons. Per- 
haps it is not too far-fetched to ascribe the superior abilities of 
1«¢T am dying,” said Joseph II, when his benevolent schemes for the good of 
Hungary had beea utterly frustrated, ‘‘My heart must be made of stone not to break.” 
