Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/187

Rh in purity of life.' "Spain might still have regained the lofty station she once held in the rank of kingdoms if at the succession of Philip IV. a wise and energetic monarch had ascended the throne."

By his marriage with his niece, Maria Anne, he succeeded in having two degenerates, Prosper, who had convulsive fits from his birth and died young, and Charles II., who became king.

Charles was the last of the Spanish-Austria line and in him all its weaknesses were combined. Feeble in mind and body, he was grossly superstitious and so ignorant that he did not know the names of some of his own towns and provinces.

By his marriage with Elizabeth, who was a great-granddaughter of Ferdinand I., and consequently partially of the same tainted stock, Philip IV. had one licentious weakling out of three children. This child, Don BalthazaDon Balthazar [sic], the subject of the famous Velasquez recently acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was so dissipated that he brought himself to his grave before he had reached his seventeenth year. Another of the three, Maria Theresa, who married Louis XIV., was extremely stupid.

Charles V. did not have any posterity and the war of the Spanish succession deluged Europe with blood, but the Austrian House did not reach its end through any sterility caused by inbreeding, for in spite of the inbreeding it is noteworthy that they had large families, quite as large as elsewhere. Many of the children died in infancy, but the wives were not sterile. It can not be argued that inbreeding was a cause of the large percentages of early deaths, since we have also to deal with the question of insanity and neuroses. All sorts of mental and physical defects, such as are known to be frequently found in families with an insane diathesis, may have been the cause.

This completes the study of what may be conveniently classified as two groups. First (a) the old Castile, Leon and Aragon, families; second, (b) the Hapsburgs in Spain. Let us first review the characteristics of the former. This subgroup (a) contains 97 names. The character and ability of the 97 have been found in 63 cases with sufficient fullness for the purpose in hand. The other 34 must be marked 'obscure.' They are valuable in a negative way. There were about 39 of the total who had very marked ability, evidently considerably above the average of kings and queens and such as should place them in grades 7 to 10 of the standard here used. This percentage of over one in three is a high one, but the most striking fact is that out of the thirty actual sovereigns on the thrones of Castile, Leon and Aragon, no less than twenty-two are of this group. This