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counsels," said she, "we do not demand sixteen descents, but what is to be done. The abilities of Salvius would doubtless still be conspicuous, if he could deduce his origin from persons of family: he must then esteem it an honour that no other reproach can be made against him but the want of high birth. The assistance, however, of able men is required by us; if then the sons of rank possess talents, they will make their fortunes as well as those whose strong claims of merit must likewise supersede the ideal prerogatives of family."

[A. D. 1648.] The peace of Westphalia was at last accomplished, to the reciprocal satisfaction of the greater part of the interested powers. No one, however, was so violent in his expressions of anger against the promoters of it as Innocent X. for by that event all his ambitious views which he had formed, as sovereign Pontiff, of humbling the pride of the Protestants, were thwarted. As a public proof of his displeasure against the active part which Christina had taken in that important affair, he published a bull, in which he refused her the title of the Queen of Sweden, and caused his nuncio at Vienna to post it upon the gates of that city, but the Emperor ordered it to be torn down. Innocent prudently offered no second attack with his spiritual weapons against Christina.

Several advantageous proposals of marriage were now made to Christina, but her love of freedom prevailed over any temporary inclination she might have felt for that state. The King of Spain, Philip IV. was one of those who sought her hand, but he soon dropped his pretensions, on the consideration, that if his suit were successful, it would oblige him to abstain from treating the Protestants as heretics. The courtship paid to her by her cousin, Charles Gustavus, the Prince Palatin, was the most agreeable to the Swedish nation; but whatever was the motive, she soon came to the resolution of declining his proposals. In order, moreover, that a stop might be put to the importunate addresses which she received from her people, to fix her choice of a husband, she prevailed on the estates of Sweden to declare Charles Gustavus her successor : by this step she at once freed herself from any further troublesome applications on the part of her people to change her condition, ensured tranquillity to Sweden, and prevented all disputes with regard to the succession.

[A. D. 1650.] The excessive attachment shewn by Christina to men of genius and learning, urged her to seek the correspondence and society of the celebrated Descartes, who was put in the expurgatory index at Rome, for having believed the astronomical observations

on the movement of the earth, rather than the bulls of the Popes; and who was persecuted in Holland, for having substituted the true method of philosophizing in the room of the jargon of the schools. The precursor of Newton hesitated a long time whether he should accept her invitation, as he put his liberty at so high a price, that, according to his usual expression, all the kings of the world could not purchase it. The difference of climates, also, was another principal reason which deterred him from undertaking a voyage to Stockholm. In his letter upon this occasion to M. Chanut, the French ambassador in Sweden, and a most intimate friend, he observes, that a man born in the gardens of Touraine, and retired in a land where he had less of honey indeed, but perhaps more of milk, than in the promised land of the Israelites, could not easily resolve to quit it, in order to live in a country of bears, among rocks and ice.

After some further delays and excuses, the philosopher, however, thought proper to repair to the Swedish court: his reception there was such as must have gratified his utmost pride. The Queen exempted him from all the subjection and restraint which are imposed upon courtiers, as she presently found they were not suited to his temper or character. At five

in the morning she commenced her studies with him, for the first part of the day was invariably devoted to the improvement of her understanding. As the chief of a sect, Descartes expected all his opinions and his tastes to be adopted by his disciples: it did not therefore meet his approbation, that Christina should turn occasionally from philosophy to the study of languages: he could not, also, conceal his dislike at her being sur rounded with such a crowd of pedants, as led strangers to say, that Sweden would soon be governed by grammarians. So freely did he remonstrate with her on these two points, that he drew upon himself the resentment of Vossius, the instructor of the Queen in the Greek tongue, of whom our Charles the Second said, in derision of his incredulity and superstition, that he believed every thing except the Bible. Christina did not, however, so far comply with the application of Descartes as to abandon her Greek books, although she gave him such an obliging answer upon this subject, that he still retained hopes of her submitting in the end to his wishes. In the mean time she expressed such uncommon sentiments of regard for him, and heaped so many marks of her favour upon him, that, according to the scandalous reports of the times, the grammarians of Stockholm accelerated

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his death by poison: but science, we must believe, has too close a connexion with virtue, for the commission of atrocious crimes to be often found in the lives of scholars.

Christina now began to find that, as Queen of Sweden, more important tasks were allotted to her than those of studying the learned languages, and paying attention to learned foreigners. The embarrassed state of the public finances, occasioned by her indiscriminate liberality, paved the way for general discontent; and her imperious conduct in her family and court, together with her amorous propensities, rendered her both odious and disgusting in the eyes of good and reflecting men.

[1651.] These unpleasant circumstances seemed to have hastened her design of resigning the sceptre into the hands of her kinsman, Charles Gustavus, for we find that in this year she made a public communication of this intention to the senate. The united solicitations of her appointed successor and of her subjects, who still contemplated the daughter of the great Gustavus, in spite of all her imprudencies and excesses, with sentiments of affection and reverence, obliged her, however, to continue for some time longer the exercise of the royal authority.

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