of them were acquisitions essential for her national well-being, and when once gained were gained for all time. The more showy rewards of the peace of Westphalia on the contrary, though they mark the zenith of the political glory of Oxenstjerna, were in no way the best gifts which Sweden received at his hands. They contained in themselves the fruit of future contests. Like the battles of Creci and Poitiers and the peace of Bretigni, the battles of Breitenfeld and Wittstock and the peace of Westphalia covered the conqueror with military glory at the cost of a hundred years of war. [Sidenote: =Christina of Sweden.=] In this long drama of dull warfare, the reign of Christina is a short but picturesque interlude. Alone among Swedes and almost alone among sovereigns, she loved to live a life of culture among men of culture. She was not a student, but a master of classical literature, not the patron of men of letters, but herself a member of the sacred band. It is therefore easy to exaggerate the importance of her reign as an epoch in the civilisation of her country. The learning and the culture which gathered round Christina at Stockholm fixed no roots in the country, answered to no demand even in the university. It was a pure exotic, called into existence by the strange accident that Sweden had a cultured queen. It died on her abdication. It was personal and artificial not national and spontaneous, as unlike the great outburst of English literature under Elizabeth with which it has sometimes been compared, as the bouquet of the theatre to the flowers of the Alps. The men of letters themselves formed, it is to be feared, an unwelcome and unpopular element in the half barbaric court. To the rough nobles they were but a côterie of the queen’s friends, a clique with whom she liked to live, a sort of superior race of pet animals which Sweden had to feed and maintain in order to please the queen. But the very fact that some of the most intellectual minds of the day were content to endure the cold and discomforts of Swedish simplicity, and the hardly concealed dislike of a barbarous and homely people, rather than lose the distinction of being numbered among the friends of Christina, is no mean tribute to her character and her mind. To be with her, to be received into her friendship, to listen to her conversation, to take part in her studies, this was the attraction which made Stockholm for the moment the Athens of the north. [Sidenote: =Character of Christina.=]