THE MAXIMS OF QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN. Descartes, who gave
her lessons in philosophy, said of Queen Christina of Sweden—the only child of the great Gustavus Adolphus—that she was made more in the image of God than mostmen. This sentence is quoted in a little book called- The Maxims of a Queen, Selected and Translated by Una Birch (John Lane, Is.); and after such a criticism by such a tutor the maxims themselves are a little disappointing. Many of them are some- what commonplace, and one wonders whether even three hundred and fifty years ago they can have been new. "Custom makes us insensible to almost everything" and "Over sympathies and antipathies the reason has no power" are truly philosophic state- ments which were well known long before Christina was born. A few of the sententious . sayings quoted, however, are both in- teresting and original. "Nature seldom makes a hero, and Fortune does not always proclaim those she makes," is a criticism of life well worth thinking over. The following, again, is terribly true; "We should never believe anything we have not dared to doubt." One more is worth quoting, if only as foreshadowing the moral standpoint of an over-tolerant age : "We must pardon everything to men of great spirit and great heart, for to have great spirit and great heart is to have merit."
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