Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/271

seem as much the result of birth and breeding as the product of the most carefully conducted racing stable?

 

Evidence from Denmark.

The royal house of Oldenburg from which the kings of Denmark are descended covers, from Frederick II. to the daughter of Frederick IV., three centuries and ten generations. Including in each generation not only the reigning sovereign, but also his brothers and sisters, the number of names brought into this family is thirty-seven. In order to get the necessary material for heredity study, there have been added in each generation all the ancestors of every child back to the great-grandparents, so the number brought together in this group is raised by 132, or 169 represents the total.

With the exception of the first two kings, this period of Danish history covers what is known as the 'Age of Absolutism,' 1670-1848. A good idea of the sovereign rights at this time and the general characteristics of the rulers may be gathered from the following quotation:

Although the Royal Law conferred so absolute a power on the king, a power such as was perhaps not vested in any other sovereign in Europe, the autocrats of the Oldenburg dynasty—good-natured, upright and not more than ordinarily gifted as they were—exercised the prerogative, on the whole, with moderation and leniency, and the country had often reason to be thankful for the advantages secured to it during this period, especially when among the royal councillors were to be found men of talent and capacity.

Good-natured, upright and not more than ordinarily gifted is a fair estimate for our thirty-seven members of the Oldenburg family taken as a whole. There are not more than three or four exceptions to this among them all. In other words, the Oldenburgs show no great mental and moral variations. Do the characteristics of the other 132, who, united with the male line, are the formers of the breed, warrant us in saying that this result is only what we might expect from the direct inheritance of the traits of these progenitors? It will be seen that the characteristics of these outsiders who represent the maternal side amply bear out such a belief.

In the pedigree of the Oldenburgs there is no Hapsburg, Bourbon or Romanhof insanity, or moral depravity. There is no Orange or Hohenzollern genius. In searching out the quality of the maternal blood as it was introduced all down the line, one finds no distinguished ancestry and few peculiar characters of any sort. Two of the queens had brilliant gifts of mind, one being also extremely unprincipled in her political actions. Aside from this there is little of interest in the ancestry. Frederick II., 15341588, was a headstrong and arbitrary ruler with too great a fondness for strong drink, but otherwise was not strange in any way and is not a striking figure in Danish