e southern climate.

_Oxenstiern_.--The Swedes too gross! No, madam, not even the Russians
are too gross to be refined if they had a prince to instruct them.

_Christina_.--It was too tedious a work for the vivacity of my temper to
polish bears into men. I should have died of the spleen before I had
made any proficiency in it. My desire was to shine among those who were
qualified to judge of my talents. At Paris, at Rome I had the glory of
showing the French and Italian wits that the North could produce one not
inferior to them. They beheld me with wonder. The homage I had received
in my palace at Stockholm was paid to my dignity. That which I drew from
the French and Roman academies was paid to my talents. How much more
glorious, how much more delightful to an elegant and rational mind was
the latter than the former! Could you once have felt the joy, the
transport of my heart, when I saw the greatest authors and all the
celebrated artists in the most learned and civilised countries of Europe
bringing their works to me and submitting the merit of them to my
decisions; when I saw the philosophers, the rhetoricians, the poets
making my judgment the standard of their reputation, you would not wonder
that I preferred the empire of wit to any other empire.

_Oxenstiern_.--O great Gustavus! my ever-honoured, my adored master! O
greatest of kings, greatest in valour, in virtue, in wisdom, with what
indignation must thy soul, enthroned in heaven, have looked down on thy
unworthy, thy degenerate daughter! With what shame must thou have seen
her rambling about from court to court deprived of her royal dignity,
debased into a pedant, a witling, a smatterer in sculpture and painting,
reduced to beg or buy flattery from each needy rhetorician or hireling
poet! I weep to think on this stain, this dishonourable stain, to thy
illustrious blood! And yet, would to God! would to God! this was all the
pollution it has suffered!

_Christina_.--Darest thou, Oxenstiern, impute any blemish to my honour?

_Oxenstiern_.--Madam, the world will scarce respect the frailties of
queens when they are on their thrones, much less when they have
voluntarily degraded themselves to the level of the vulgar. And if
scandalous tongues have unjustly aspersed their fame, the way to clear it
is not by an assassination.

_Christina_.--Oh! that I were alive again, and restored to my throne,
that I might punish the insolence of this hoary traitor