If gossip had to name King Christian of Denmark "the father-in-law of all Europe," King Oscar was surely "the friend of all the world."

Oscar was the man of ideas, the vitalizer of projects literary, musical, dramatic and scientific.

There were many things against such a marriage, for Prince Oscar was the second son of the king, and the very fact that the reigning House of Norway and Sweden was one of the most youthful of the royal houses of Europe made it all the more necessary that its scions should intermarry with the members of the ancient reigning houses.