The government, whose members had been the champions of parliamentary reform, was soon disregarded by the triumphant party, while its old opponents never forgot it. The earlier advisers of the king retired one by one when they saw their influence in the Riksdag vanish. King Charles himself took the defeat of the army bills deep at heart. His health commenced to fail in 1871, and when his faithful consort died, in the same year, having exposed her own health in her attempts to improve the condition of the king, the latter grew worse. After a trip abroad for his health, King Charles XV. died at Malmœ, September 18, 1872, deeply mourned by the two nations. In the following year his youngest brother Nicolaus August, duke of Dalecarlia, died, leaving only two of the children of Oscar I., Oscar Frederic, duke of East Gothland, and Princess Eugenie. The history of Charles XV. carries the principal traits of his character. His sweeping reforms in social, political and economical matters, and his great plans for the future, even if sometimes immature, or high-strung, were always characterized by loftiness of purpose. A typical Swede both in his merits and his faults, this was the secret of the immense popularity of King Charles, which always followed him, although he never sought it. The philosopher Christian Jacob Bostrœm is the most popular of Swedish thinkers and the first who founded a national system and school of philosophy, idealistic and rational, and in strict opposition to the system of Hegel. Bostrœm was born in Pitea, in 1797, was the teacher of the sons of Oscar I., and succeeded the able philosopher Samuel Grubbe, a talented follower of Hœijer, as professor of philosophy at the University of Upsala. Bostrœm was a highly fascinating and suggestive teacher, while he neglected his literary production, which is neither exhaustive nor quite representative of his philosophy. He exerted a considerable influence by his outline of a philosophical state, which pleased the conservatives, while a much more widespread and lasting impression was produced by his criticism of the doctrines of a hell and a devil. A whole literature sprang into life, discussing vehemently the existence or non-existence of the fiend. To this literature and the works and writings of Bostrœm is to be credited the spirit of religious tolerance which characterized life and literature during the reign of Charles XV. It fostered in the cultured few a leaning toward Unitarianism or Theosophy, while it gave rise to a shallow materialism and religious indifference in the less cultured classes and individuals.