The Washington critic., 1888-03-10
THE MARRIAGE OF COUSINS.
Royal Maiadics as Traccabie 60 Com
sanguineous Alliances.
lJuhp y. Perry in the Cincinnati CONNER.

ClHl tHHelte'I
Popular opinion, sustained at least
by the older medical authorities, holds
that closely consanguineous marriages
are generally prejudicial to their of
spring. So strong has been this con-
viction that several States, Ohio among
the number, have added first cousin
ship to the already prohibited nearer
degrees. The different
sovereigns of Europe are very mod
crate in addressing each other as
cousins, for they are very nearly
brothers and sisters and their de-
scendants are trying, if possible, to
make the relationship still closer.
Thus Queen Victoria, the child of
parents certainly not farther apart
than second cousins, married her
cousin german. Her eldest daughter
the Crown Princess of Germany,
married her own second cousin, and
her second son, Prince Henry. is be-
trothed to his cousin Irene, of Hesse,
q daughter Of the lamented Princess
Alice. A son and daughter of the
Prince of Wales are also to be married
to their cousins on their mothers
side, the children of the reigning
house Of Greece. These alliances,
however, close, and doubly injurious
by having been preceded by many
more of the same kind, do not com
pare with the revolving marriages so
frequent among the Spanish and Ne
apolitan Bourbons, in Portugal, and
occasionally in Germany.
In the last named country, for ex-
ample, Prince Albert's father mar
ried his niece for his second wife. In
Portugal Joseph L., having only
daughters. who would forfeit their
right to the succession by espousing
| foreigner, found husband for his
eldest in his brother Pedro. Reasons
of state might seem to palliate this
step, but there could be no excuse for
marrying the eldest son by this union,
at 10, to his aunt, his mothers sister,
the Princess Barbara, who had
reached the matured age of 81.
Fortunately for the wretched youth
he died of smallpox a few years later.
The Austrian Philips had set the
evil example in this direction to their
Bourbon successors on the Spanish
throne. Philip Ill, half imbeclle,
was the child of Philip II. by
his niece and Charles H., the grand.
son of the former, and last Austrian
monarch of the Peninsula, was the
offspring of a similar marriage by
Philip ". He was half stupid, half
insane during most of his miserable
life, and quite lunatic in his closing
years. Nearly one hundred years ago
Thomas jefferson wrote in very
slashing, yet hardly exaggerated,
style of the existing situation of royal
Europe. George III. was, as he said,
mad; the Queen of Portugal was ditto;
Paul of Russia was such raving ma
MAC that the State could only be saved
by assassinating him; there was i'm
becility in Denmark and Sweden,
and, in short, clear heads were rare
exceptions in the abodes of royalty.
Things are not much better now
Victoria has certainly been off her
mental balance at times; her youngest
son, the late Prince Leopold, suffered
much during his brief life from an
abnormally tender skin, the Princess
of Wales is scrofulous and rheumatic
her sister, the Duchess of Cumber-
land, is positively insane; the father
of the present Emperor of Austria
was imbecile; the Emperor 8
wife has betrayed symptoms for
which eccentricity is a mild term
the late and the now nominally
reigning King of Bavaria was crazed
from childhood; Nicholas of Russia,
VINO was hardly sane in all respects,
has left several descendants whom it
would be charitable to style demented,
for the alternative is to reckon them
as savages; and the category might
easily be heightened. Carlotta, daugh-
ter of the late Leopold of Belgium,
may possibly have been crazed by
lunacy there is no doubt.
We have thus far chiefly betowed
our attention on the mental effects of
the continual intermarriages Of royal
personages, but the physical are none
the less apparent. The late Sir
George Cornwell Lewis partly based
his obstinate denial of the possibility
of centennarianism on the fact that
no monarch had lived to see one hun
dred years. Indeed no potentate of
the first or second magnitude had
ever passed ninety up to the present
German Emperor's time. The near
est approach to an exception was
Prince Charles, a cadet of the House
of Hesse Darmstadt, who died in 1885
in his 95th year. Royal personagef
ought to reach advanced age on the
average, for they are as free from
care as the proverbially long-liveC
British nobility, but they lacl
in their pure blood. A fright
full eruption and epilepsy ar,
the two-fold inheritance of the Bour
bons, brought in by the marriage o
Charles III. of Spain, with a SaxoI
, princess. Scrofula and perhaps in
, sanity were introduced into the reign
ing house of England by the mothe
of George ILL.,, princess Of SAKE
Gotha; the late King of Hanover,
blind man, was the offspring of tn
Duke of Cumberland and his mother
niece; the hideous Hapsburg lip ha
, come down from marriage wit
Margaret Maultasch in the fourteent
century, and is priced as distinctly
mark of blood, very much on tn
same principle as the fox in the fabl
rejoiced in his amputated tail.
The dying Crown Prince of Pru ssi
= may have brought upon himself hi
: troubles, through his misconduct, a
unfriendly French critics affirm, bu
: this charge, if true, does not accour
: for the shrunken arm and defectiv
I: hand of his first-born son, Neithe
! can such an influence be alleged
i explain the undeniable fact that jul
: in proportion as the continental ari
tocracy have followed the wickedl
absurd matrimonial policy of the
rulers, have mental and physical di
eases increased among them. Th
Y Spanish grandees, especially, hay