TO-DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20663, 19 April 1929, Page 6

TO-DAY IN HISTORY

APRIL 19. Born: Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, naval commander, 1757. Died: King Robert IL, of Scotland. Dundonald Castle, 1390; Philip Melancthon, German scholar, Wittemburg, 1560; Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, poet, Lord Treasurer of England, 1608; Queen Christina of Sweden, Rome, 1689; Jean Gallois, critic and scholar, 1707; Nicolas Saunderson, blind scholar and mathematician, Boxworth, 1739; Dr Richard Price, mathematician, London, 1791; George, Lord Byron, poet, Missolonghi, 1824; John Came, writer, Penzance, 1844; Professor Robert Jameson, naturalist, Edinburgh, 1554. QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN. Gustavus Adolphus, the heroic king of Sweden, was succeeded at his death by his daughter Christina. This princess, having reigned as gloriously as her father had fought, having presided at the treaty of Westphalia which gave peace to Germany, astonished Europe by abdicating at the age of twenty-seven. It was certainly a strange event yet one that might not have been discreditable to her, if she had not bad the weakness to repent of it. The. design of Queen Christina in quitting the Swedish throne was that she might have freedom io gratify her taste for the fine arts. She knew eight languages; she had been the disciple of Descartes, who died in her palace at Stockholm. She had cultivated all the arts in a climate where they were then unknown. She wished to live amongst them in Italy. With this view she resolved also to accommodate her religion to her new country and became a Roman Catholic.

Self denying and self repudiating acts do not always leave the character the sweeter. It is fully’ admitted that Christina was not improved by descending into private life. There remains one terrible stain upon her memory, the murder of her equerry Monaldeschi, which she caused to be perpetrated in a barbarous manner in her own presence, during her second journey in France. During the thirty-five years of her exqueenship, her conduct was marked by’ many eccentricities, the result of an almost insane vanity.