The Economic Functions of Vice | Page 5

taint of the Bourbon blood. In his grandmother it showed itself in a repulsive cutaneous disease which she tried to ameliorate or cure in a truly Bourbonish way, by having her underclothing previously worn by a nun of high repute for piety.
Alfonso's XIII.'s father burned himself out at the age of 28. His aunts and kinsmen all had some one or more of scrofula's varied physical degradations and deformities, and went out from time to time like ill-made candles.
Though the hopes of his race and the peace of his country depend upon Alfonso's life, all the care given him in his boyhood could do no more than slightly mitigate the ancestral blight.
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A FEW years ago the people of Holland were threatened with a most serious calamity. Depraved heredity, unwise sexual selection, or some other primal cause had resulted in the production, as the Prince of Orange the Crown Prince of an individual of a weak, inferior, and depraved nature. His was such a nature as on a throne becomes a fountain of numberless oppressions and evils, and rarely fails to goad the unhappy subjects into rebellion, attended with the usual frightful loss of life and property and vast sorrows. Fortunately he had destructive vices. The appetite for these led him to Paris. A few years of riot and debauchery sapped away the dangerous life of "Lemons," as his worthless boon-companions named him, and he died as the fool dieth. The only harm he was able to do was the indirect damage of a bad example, and the good people of the Netherlands were rid of a possible Louis XV. at no greater cost than that of some years of extravagant life in the French capital. His father's evil excesses and penchant for pretty ballet-girls left as his only successor a young not over-strong girl, who thus far has failed to produce an heir to the throne, to the deep disappointment of such of her people as love royalty. Holland will, therefore, in all probability, glide into a republic without the usual sanguinary convulsions attending such transitions.
IT is the story of the Ages old when the Pyramids were yet young ; new to every generation. Hannibal's victorious army found the " soft delights of Capua" far more deadly than Roman swords. That famous "Winter in Capua" wrecked the invaders, saved Rome, and ruined Carthage.
IN conspicuous contrast to the royal and aristocratic families just alluded to are the houses of Hohenzollern and Savoy.
A thrifty burgher of Nuremberg, eager to get into the landed aristocracy on any terms, foreclosed a mortgage on a stretch of most unpromising sand and swamp around Brandenberg. It was of so little worth as to be frequently spoken of as "the sandbox of the Holy Roman Empire." The Hohenzollerns attacked this uninviting problem with real German thrift and tenacity. They resolved to make their swamps and sand barrens productive like the rich lands of their neighbors.
Flinching from no drudgery themselves, they would allow none of their people to do so. Every Hohenzollern son and daughter was brought up to unsparing hard work, severe economy, plain food and coarse clothing, with a rigid code of morals.
At the time when the example of Louis XIV. was debauching every German princeling into having a showy court with a pretentious palace and a tinseled retinue, all wrung from the poor peasantry, the King of Prussia was running his court after the manner of a close-fisted, land-gaining German farmer.
Cabbages that could not be sold were served on the royal tables in order to save a few thalers for the support of the army, and add to the war chest.
The shabby appointments of the palace were the derision of Europe. The common people of Prussia had, however, a much larger share of what their labor produced than those of any other part of Europe. The King not only set a good example in making the most out of everything, but he personally carried lessons of industry and frugality into his people, high and low.
There were occasionally black sheep in even such a sternly regulated family, but as a general rule the sons and daughters married strong, clean mates, and strictly maintained the family traditions. A provision against the wayward princelings was made by which their possessions passed into the main house if they fell below the standard.
So the Hohenzollerns grew, and Prussia grew from a despised sandbarren to be one of the Six Great Powers of Europe, and is now the head of the mighty German Empire.
We do not have as full history of the House of Savoy, but we have enough to know that in much the same way, at the same time, and by much the same moral discipline, it arose from the lordship of a little stretch of mountain