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service as Major in the artillery;1 Major Henry Primrose
(Primroos), son of Hans Primrose of Stockholm, who was
ennobled in 1653 on t^le Ioth °f August, and died as
Governor of Johannsborg, near Norrköping, in 1668.2
IV.
The Period of Charles XII.
No two other nations can boast of so large an element
of romance in their history as the Scottish and the
Swedish nations. The reader often forgets that he has
facts before him, and not the most poetically fanciful or
barbarously frightful imaginations of an overwrought
brain. Think of the amount of mystery that enters into
the life of Mary Queen of Scots; of the death-feuds
of the Highland clans; of the wanderings of the
Pretender. In Swedish history what can be more romantic
than the adventurous youth of Gustavus Vasa, and the
imprisonment, madness, and poisoning of King Erik XIV. ?
Whole periods in the life of Gustavus Adolphus—I here
especially allude to his “Brautfahrt” (“search for a bride ”)
in Germany—are still shrouded in mystery, and now we
come to the most romantic King of all, the stubbornly
brave, fiery, and thoughtless Charles XII.—not a man
who would have been, like Gustavus Adolphus, equally
great in the tranquil times of peace, had he ever known
them ; not a lovable, wise man like Gustavus Vasa, whom
the cruel persecutions of his youth did not render bitter
and revengeful; but a remarkable man all the same, with
something of meteoric rapidity and demoniac splendour in
1 Ennobled in 1692 as Canonhjelm. Many of the Cahuns are
connected with the great Swedish gun-foundry at Falun.
2 His coat-of-arms shows three red roses on a shield quartered by
a blue fesse.
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