Verner von Heidenstam is now foremost among the writers of his
country. His early works, _Endymion, Hans Alienus_, and others, raised
him to this rank, and his last two productions, _The Carolines_
(the companions of Charles XII) and _Saint Brigitt_, have more than
confirmed it. _Hans Alienus_ was, like Goethe's _Faust_, a work of
deep philosophical research into the problems of existence, the
purpose and significance of life, set forth in symbolical images and
explained by allegory. In the _Carolines_, a series of short stories
connected by the red thread of history which runs through them, he
gives a new conception, but a wonderfully graphic and striking one,
of Charles XII and his times. It is an epic, and yet so living and so
human a picture of the wild, iron-souled, quick-tempered hero, whose
"eyes flew around like two searching bees," and whose will was like
the steel of his sword; who had the heart of a lion and a "woman's
hatred for women," but for whom men shed their blood freely; who
"never grieved over a misfortune longer than the darkness lasted,"
and was "best loved by those who tried to hate him." His pictures are
drawn by a master hand, and with the intuitive coloring of genius.
_Saint Brigitt_ carries us back to medieval Sweden. Here, too, the
picture is lifelike, centered round the struggle of a high-minded
woman, who makes everything bend to her stern rule of holiness, her
thirst for sanctity, as Charles XII did to his inexorable policy and
thirst for dominion.

The psychological and the historical novel, the latter, in its modern
conception, akin to the former, since it is a study of the psychology
of historical characters and a historical epoch, is the form of
fiction at present most in vogue. It is in this form that such writers
as Tor Hedberg, Per Hallström, and Axel Lundegard have made their