Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/278

264 she had taken to prevent any inconveniences that might result from her determination, and concluded with fixing upon the 16th of June, as the day on which she proposed resigning the crown and sovereignty to her cousin.

When the time arrived, which she expected with as much eagerness as other princesses have wished for their coronation, she was astonished that the states proposed to fix her residence in Sweden, as it was her design to live where she pleased, in countries where the sciences had made greater progress. This difficulty however she removed, by pretending her health made a short residence at Spa necessary. She then divested herself of all authority, resigning the crown to Gustavus, and dismissed the assembly with a pathetic oration, which drew tears from all the hearers.

Such was the extraordinary manner in which Christina resigned her crown, at the age of twenty-seven, after a reign equally glorious to herself and to Sweden, whose reputation was never at so high a pitch as under her government. In other countries the arts languished during tedious bloody wars; under Christina they flourished by the force of her own example.

No prince, after a long imprisonment, ever shewed so much joy upon being restored to his kingdom, as Christina did in quitting hers. When she came to a little brook, which separates Sweden from Denmark, she got out of her carriage, and, leaping to the other side, cried out in a transport of joy; "At last I am free, and out of Sweden, whither I hope I shall never return." She took with her whatever she had collected as curious and valuable, leaving her palace bare. After dismissing her women, she laid by the habit of her sex; "I would become a man," said she; "yet I do not love