For instance, the popular conception of Edward of England is that of an affable gentleman, with a fondness for pageantry and show, and tastes that lead him to the race-track rather than to the library. Most of us believe William of Germany to be a cocky little chap, of tireless energy, who makes all knowledge his province in the intervals of being photographed and changing his uniforms, and who pays personal attention to the fireworks that invariably illumine his progress.
We consider Oscar of Sweden to be a man of scholarly tastes, who would rather write books than rule, and too modern in his ideas to make a regal figure on the throne. We think of the aged Emperor of Austria as a pathetic figure, a man of naturally kindly disposition, after a long life into which has entered almost every element of tragedy and unhappiness, ending his career an object of obloquy to many of his subjects.
A pathetic figure also, to our minds, is young Alfonso of Spain, upon whom are visited the sins of his fathers, who was born literally in a cabinet meeting, and in all the twenty years of his life has scarcely been out of sight of his mother or one of his guardians, and who begged in vain for only one day to himself, incognito, during his recent visit to Paris, as the greatest possible boon.
We know of the personal attributes of several other monarchs—that Carlos of Portugal is as likely as any of his contemporaries to meet the fate of Henry I of England; that Leopold of the Belgians is not to be mentioned in polite society; that Victor Emmanuel of Italy is a serious young man who believes that his first duty is to his country instead of to himself.
Mystery Enshrouds Czar and Sultan.
With the foregoing sovereigns we find evidence as to their habits and disposition in the same direction. Of the Czar, however, as of Abdul Hamid of Turkey—who is described by one set of biographers as a high-minded and scholarly recluse, and by others as a sodden and fear-shaken sensualist—we have two pictures at variance with each other in almost every particular. It may prove interesting, therefore, under existing conditions, to compare some recorded impressions of Nicholas II, as made by him upon various persons who have been brought into contact with him.
In the World of To-Day, for January, William T. Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews, of London, one of the ablest and best-known journalists of his time, and who recently had a personal interview with the Czar, writes of him thus:
The question as to his intelligent grasp of the facts of the situation with which he has to deal is one upon which those who are admitted to the intimacy of his councils can speak with authority. It is one, however, upon which those who have never heard him speak are often the most confident.
I can speak with some assurance on this matter, although it is one on which it ought not to be necessary to speak at all. But I have seen many men, crowned and uncrowned, in the course of a tolerably long and varied journalistic career. I have had four opportunities of talking with Nicholas II. Altogether I have spent many hours alone with him. Our conversation never flagged. It did not turn upon the weather, but upon serious topics both at home and abroad, in which I was intimately concerned and intensely interested.
Hence I have at least had ample materials for forming judgment, and few people have had more of the experience of contemporaries necessary to compare my impressions. I have no hesitation in saying that I have seldom in the course of thirty years met any man so quick in the uptake, so bright in his mental perception, so sympathetic in his understanding, or one possessing a wider range of intellectual interest.