He encourages international congresses of every kind to come to Sweden; he helps the universities and the cause of education throughout his kingdom; he feels his father’s interest in Hedin’s travels through central Asia, but he can give no creative impulse after his father’s grand fashion.  Oscar was the man of ideas, the vitalizer of projects literary, musical, dramatic and scientific.  He made Stockholm the capital of the whole intellectual world.  Gustave is very courteous, affable in a dignified way, impressive as he opens the Riksdag in royal ermine.  He has commenced his reign in simplicity, rising at eight, breakfasting on coffee and rolls, reading the morning papers until ten, and reviewing the military with a conscientious assiduity.  His note is repose both in manner and in speech, in striking contrast with the late Oscar, who was majestic in the very way he had of eating cold meat at supper, and whose height of six feet three towered, almost without the drooping heaviness of age, till his seventy-ninth year.  Notwithstanding the adverse comparison with his parent, one has but to see Gustave’s face, with its determination and refinement, to feel a certain assurance as to Sweden’s future.

It is a curious fact that there has been such a dearth of girls in the Swedish royal family, the only princess of the house being the Crown Princess of Denmark, a daughter of the late King Charles XV.  The present queen has only sons:  Crown Prince Gustavus Adolphus, wedded to Margaret of Connaught; Prince Wilhelm, who was recently married to the Russian Princess Marie Palvona, and Prince Erik, now about twenty years of age.  The present Crown Prince and Princess are seemingly perpetuating the tradition, as their first child is a lusty little son.

Queen Victoria is said to be endowed with an instinct for business of every kind far finer and more efficient than that of her husband, and it is to be regretted that her health is so frail that she is obliged to spend much time outside her husband’s realm, and the duties of her royal dignity devolve upon her daughter-in-law, the Crown Princess.  It is very satisfying to the Swedish people that by a strange play of circumstances, the claims of the extinct House of Vasa,—­the last direct descendant of which passed away a few days after King Oscar, in the person of Carola, Dowager-Queen of Saxony, and daughter of the deposed King Gustavus Adolphus IV of Sweden,—­are again restored, and that the reigning House of Bernadotte and the ancient House of Vasa have become joined through the present Crown Prince.  It is something to consider, too, that Adolphus V is the first of the Bernadotte dynasty in whose veins, through his mother, Sophie of Nassau, there flows royal blood.[k]

CHAPTER XII

CHARITABLE AND BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS