CHARLES II OF ENGLAND

the son of Charles I, lived 1630-1685. In 1660 he was placed on his father's throne. He was an unprincipled, unchaste man. His court was under the influence of the most profligate, licentious noblemen in the kingdom. He has left a reputation for depravity and worthlessness, and utter neglect of opportunity not surpassed in the annals of Europe.

CHARLES EDWARD STUART may be named a little out of place. He lived 1720-1788, chiefly in France. He was the grandson of James II, the last male Stuart on the throne of England. Though living abroad he assumed the title of king, and was called the Pretender. In 1745 he landed in Scotland with a little French money and 1,500 muskets. The Highlanders, encouraged by the Jacobites, chiefly Catholic, everywhere flocked to his standard. He advanced to within 100 miles of London, winning the battles of Prestonpans and Falkirk, but he was defeated finally in the famous battle of Culloden. He escaped with difficulty to the Highlands. A reward of $150,000 was offered for his betrayal but the Highlanders were loyal. Through the management of the dauntless Flora McDonald, he lay in hiding until a ship bore him away to France. France and Spain settled a pension on him. His rights to the throne, so far as the rule of succession went, were unquestioned, but his moral and his political and religious views were not acceptable to the nation.

CHARLES XII OF SWEDEN lived 1682-1718. He came to the throne when fifteen, and showed so wholesome and boyish an interest in books, games, and hunting that his neighbors thought to rob him of a part of his inheritance. The Poles, the Danes, and the Russians combined to cut off provinces for their own benefit. The Danes were the first to find that they had mistaken the temper of the young lad. He adopted a plain manner of living--forbade wine on his table, dressed comfortably in a fur coat and large boots, and enjoyed sleeping on the ground wrapped in a soldier's cloak. When he had a breathing spell he turned his attention to the Russians, defeating an army of 80,000 men that were laying siege to one of his cities. The Poles and Saxons came next. For a time Sweden was the foremost military power in Europe and military men called him the madman of Europe. Very possibly success may have turned his head. In 1707 he led an army of 43,000 Swedes against Moscow, and after a campaign of two years, conducted in a hostile country altogether too far from home and supplies, he was defeated disastrously. He fled to Turkey for protection. He stirred up the Turks to make war on Russia, and brought Peter the Great to the verge of destruction. By a sudden change of Turkish sentiment his efforts came to naught, and he escaped from the Turks in disguise. Returning to Sweden he busied himself getting the affairs of his country out of the confusion into which they had fallen. In 1718 he was killed by a cannon ball while besieging the city of Frederikshald. His characteristics are not inaptly set forth by the circumstances of his death. It is said he fell with his hand on his sword, and with a picture of his great ancestor, Gustavus Adolphus, and a prayerbook in his pocket. Charles was scholarly, ambitious, and brave. He did not have the resources behind him with which to maintain his conquests. Dr. Samuel Johnson mentions his as a striking example in his Vanity of Human Wishes.

Charleston, South Carolina, the metropolis of the state. It is situated on a peninsula at the head of a landlocked harbor, six miles long and half as wide--one of the finest in the Union. The Ashley and the Cooper rivers sweep by, one on either hand, giving a water front on three sides. By building jetties so that the tides race out and in through a narrow channel, a bar across the ocean entrance has been scoured away to a depth of thirty feet. The water at the city is forty feet deep. The harbor is defended by Fort Moultrie at the entrance, and by Fort Sumter on an island in the middle of the bay. The former was the scene of Sergeant Jasper's gallant exploit; the latter was the fortification against which the first gun of the Civil War was fired.

A settlement was begun in 1670. Fifteen years later a colony of Huguenots built a church. The old Huguenot families of Charleston correspond to the Dutch families of colonial New York. When the Revolutionary War came, Charleston was the third seaport in the colonies. It was outspoken for the American cause. A British fleet was beaten off in 1776 by Fort Moultrie, then a palmetto log fort. In 1780 the city was taken by Sir Henry Clinton, who made it his base of operations in the south. Charleston was the first American port to send cotton to Europe. The earliest shipment was sent in 1784. In 1865 the public buildings and shipping were burned to prevent their falling into the hands of General Sherman. In 1866 one of the heaviest earthquake shocks ever known in the United States reduced the city to a wreck, killing half a hundred people, and damaging buildings to the extent of over $8,000,000.

Notwithstanding its checkered history the city is growing rapidly. The last census gave a population of 55,807, of which 31,622 were negro. Its commerce is increasing rapidly and bids fair to exceed the figures before the Civil War, when $17,000,000 worth of cotton alone was exported annually. Among the present exports are rice, cotton, turpentine, lumber, fertilizers, fruits, and vegetables. The city has a monopoly of the long, staple, Sea Island cotton, the finest in the world.

The leading manufacture of the city is that of fertilizers from the inexhaustible deposits of phosphate found in the vicinity. Rice is milled; leaf tobacco made into cigars and plugs; cotton is baled; oil is pressed from cotton seed; bags are woven; and baskets and crates for fruit are manufactured in enormous numbers. The city is built of brick. Mansions are set back from the street in beautiful gardens. The finest public buildings are the postoffice and custom house, the most interesting is an imposing old city hall with a fine historical museum. St. Michael's church was built in 1761. It has a fine chime of bells. Many places of interest are to be found in the vicinity. The Isle of Palms is one of the handsomest seaside resorts in the world.

The United States has been liberal in its dealings with Charleston. In addition to jetties, a postoffice costing $500,000 and a custom house costing $3,000,000, not less than $10,000,000 is being expended on a naval station seven miles up the Cooper.

See South Carolina