and detail of the problem before him, but once he has come to a
conclusion, he pursues his path without looking to the right or left.

Gustavus is fifty years old, tall, rather dark, quite unassuming, and
is essentially democratic, while seeming the opposite, whereas Oscar
was aristocratic, although he made much of the people. Like all other
Swedish kings, Gustavus adopted a motto when he ascended the throne;
it is "With the People for the Fatherland"--not inappropriate in view
of his inheritance of a problem clamoring for solution, the extension
of the suffrage and a more direct representation of the people in both
the upper and lower houses of the Riksdag. The new king, who possesses
an uncommon amount of energy, may probably be depended upon to
accomplish this reform.

There is neither pride of an objectionable type, nor any tendency to
tyranny, nor one strain of arrogance in the new king. He may not be
able to draw upon such ripe culture or upon such fine talents as the
monarch who preceded him, yet the Swedes have no fear that his love of
truth and justice will not outweigh this deficiency and probably make
him a more practical ruler. As for the French descent of the Swedish
royal house, neither the present nor the late king have ever been
ashamed of their ancestry, or forgotten that the first Bernadotte on
their throne was one of Napoleon's greatest marshals.

Never will Gustavus V be able to give to words or actions that
brilliantly original and kingly tone for which his late father was so
admired everywhere. That, to the mind of all beholders, is to be the
drawback of his reign, for he is the merest mortal; where his father
was the luminous angel. Where Oscar would have been finely eloquent,
Gustavus shows himself merely sensible. Oscar's temper was heated,