Of the more material achievements of his reign there is little space to speak. The best record of his life is to be found in the present condition of the country--_si monumentum requiris circumspice_. His furtherance of the petroleum industry, of the export of grain, timber and other agricultural produce, the building of the great bridge over the Danube at Tchernavoda, and the extensive harbor at Constanza, the network of railways, the immense system of fortifications defending the capital, and the line Fokshani-Galatz--all these and much more are mainly his work. Little is yet known of the action of King Charles in the last crisis of his life. It is a strange coincidence that just as the Franco-German war of 1870-71 brought him into conflict with the Francophil tendencies of his subjects and led to his offer of abdication, so the present war should again have engendered rumors of his abdication on account of his alleged antagonism to the national desire for the acquisition of Transylvania and the Southern Bukovina, which are peopled by more than 3,000,000 Hungarian and Austrian Rumanes. The Rumanian people felt that the hour for the liberation of their kindred had struck. Russia is understood to have invited Rumania to occupy the desired territory. But King Charles, who brought and kept Rumania within the orbit of the Triple Alliance, was, as a Hohenzollern and a German Prince, averse to hostile action against the German Emperor and the Emperor Francis Joseph. It is, moreover, stated that he was bound by his word of honor never to take the field against a Hohenzollern cause. The late King Charles married, in November, 1869, Princess Elizabeth of Wied, the gifted "Carmen Sylva," whose brilliant literary and artistic talents have gained her a worldwide reputation. The only child of the marriage, the infant Princess Marie, died in 1874--a bereavement that ever left a note of sadness in the lives of her parents. THE NEW KING. King Ferdinand, who now succeeds his uncle on the throne of Rumania, was born in August, 1865, and, like his predecessor, is a Hohenzollern and a Roman Catholic. Among his near relatives are the King of the Belgians and his namesake, Tsar Ferdinand of the Bulgarians, who are both first cousins, and his niece, Queen Augustina Victoria, the consort of Dom Manoel. Through his mother, the Princess Antonia, who was born an Infanta of Portugal, King Ferdinand is kin with all the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, to which his consort, the new Queen Mary, belongs as daughter of the late Duke of Edinburgh. Her Majesty is thus first cousin to King George and to the Czar, as also to Princess Nicholas of Greece. Her three sisters are married respectively to the Grand Duke Cyril of Russia, Prince Ernest, the eldest son of the mediatized Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, and to the Infante Alfonso d'Orleans of Spain.