The relations with Russia were not the best during the latter part of King Oscar’s reign. The Russian claims on the harbors at the bay of Varanger were repeated in 1847, and when deliberations for a settlement were opened, in 1851, Russia showed a tendency to take possession of the desired places. In the conflict between Russia, on one hand, and Turkey, supported by England and France, on the other, Sweden sided with the latter, especially after Russia had failed to recognize an alliance of neutrality under arms formed by Sweden-Norway and Denmark. In 1855 Sweden entered an agreement with France, promising not to cede any territory to Russia in case of a conflict. In 1856 peace was made at Paris; the only favor won by Sweden was a pledge made by Russia not to fortify the archipelago of Aland. King Oscar was a very hard worker and also fond of the pleasures of life. His health was injured through illness, in 1857, and he never recovered. The premature death of his second son, Prince Gustavus, a talented composer and highly popular, had a disastrous influence on him. King Oscar I. died July 8, 1859, after a long illness, beloved by the two nations who, during his reign, had enjoyed the happiest epoch of their history. Romanticism in literature had an important second blossom during the reign of King Oscar I. and his successor. With the exception of Runeberg and Almquist, it offers no name of the very first rank. But Runeberg, the Homer of the North, does not belong to Sweden alone, and Almquist, the only great Romanticist, had made his appearance during the preceding epoch. Charles John Ludvig Almquist was a genius of great versatility and exceptional endowment. He wrote with equal force in all branches of literature; besides the poet, dramatist and prosaist, being a good philologist and well versed in a number of practical pursuits. He anticipated the ideas of which George Sand became a champion, and wrote charming peasant idyls long before Auerbach and Bjœrnson. His most important work is an ambiguous creation, conceived somewhat in the form of Boccaccio’s “Decamerone,” but much larger, and containing productions in every imaginable artistic form. It is called _Tœrnrosens bok_ (The Book of the Wild Rose). Almquist has not, like Bellman and Tegnér, crystallized the Swedish national character in a lyrical form, but he remains, in spite of glaring defects, the most versatile and supremely gifted genius of Swedish literature.