colonies has been the imperial authority | secondly, because ministers wish the govexpressed and exercised through the free ernor to be a figurehead, and not a man choice of governors by the Colonial Office, with a policy of his own. Colonial minisand this bond is now materially relaxed. ters are human, and they can hardly help It will henceforth be impossible for the wishing for governors with colorless charcolonial minister to appoint a governor, acters, who will be very pleasant to everywhether in Australia, Canada, or the Cape, body, and will not detract in any way from without previous communication " with ministers' credit or even overshadow them the government of the colony, and as that in society. Strong governors will find is a party government, it will have a strong themselves by degrees tabooed and reinterest in vetoing particular men and sug- stricted to the crown colonies, which gesting others. It will be found much less neither are nor can be objects of the hightroublesome in practice to allow a colony est ambition, while they are from climatic to submit names; and the governor so considerations, and the great difficulty of chosen will feel that he derives his ap- educating children in them, avoided by the pointment from a kind of informal elec- most experienced men. The change will tion by the colonists themselves. He will lower the tone of the whole service, which therefore seek favor in the colony, and will see its prizes greatly diminished, if become a colonial officer, and the royal or not in value, at least in the certainty with central authority will be, pro tanto, weak- which they can be attained, and which ened, the Colonial Office having no longer will be taught in the most practical manner freedom in giving its rewards. There will, that to gain reputations, and thereby make in fact, hardly remain any official tie with enemies is not the quickest or the most the mother country at all except the ap- successful road to advancement. The peal to the Judicial Committee of Privy ablest will be laid aside, as they are in Council, and that cannot stand long against presidential elections, both in America the growth of colonial jealousy fostered by and France, in favor of those who are the every local barrister. When that has dis- least disliked. Ordinary Englishmen are appeared there will remain no semblance hardly aware how good this colonial serof authority except the seldom used royal vice is, or how valuable an instrument veto on legislative acts, and the colonies will be injured by any change which will, in fact, have become protected States greatly impairs either its hopefulness or in an unusually strict, but not mutually its freedom in administering the colonies equal, alliance with Great Britain. We entrusted to it to the best advantage of shall have the expense of defending them, their populations. and they all the profit of being defended. Thirdly, the service will also be impovThat may be a good development or a bad erished by another cause, the intrusion but it is a development in the direc-into its prize appointments of persons who tion of State rights only, and is fatal, until in England possess distinction either totally new policies have been adopted, to political or social. The first objection of any scheme whatever of imperial federa- the Queensland government to Sir H. tion. There will be but one flag, as at Blake is, no doubt, that he is an Irishman present, but that will be the only symbol and a Unionist, but the second is that he of a united empire visible to all eyes in was only a police magistrate without any the colonies. distinction at all, except that of having Secondly, the blow to the colonial ser- won the confidence of his superiors. The vice will be much more severe than is colony desired a man, the ministry said, imagined. We have before explained and was entitled to a man, who might have that the Colonial Office will lose its power entered a Cabinet, or have been entrusted of keeping up a regular flow of promotion, with a great English department. Such but the injury to the service will go men are not often willing to exile themdeeper than this. Able governors with selves in mature life after a long struggle characters, wills, and conspicuous histo- to attain political position at home, but it ries will soon be at a discount. The is well understood that persons of rank colonial governments will henceforward will be accepted as their equivalent. watch the service, and their natural dispo- They, if they cannot help in governing, sition will be to veto any striking individ- can at least help in giving colonial society uality; first, because he is sure to be that tone and distinction for which En"unaccountable" to some class or other, glishmen who are growing rich instinct- for instance, a very philanthropic gov-ively sigh. Nowhere is the value of a title ernor of Jamaica would arouse much trep- higher than in a colony, and peers and idation among Queensland planters—and, | eldest sons will be the most acceptable

one,

difficult, not to say impossible, as the fit training of a modern king. So much has to be attempted, and, in this special instance, so much in so short a time, that the task may well seem overwhelming. Everything must be finished, after some fashion or other, within the next fourteen years; for once crowned, a king can be trained only by the work of his life, or by some dominant minister who may never arise, or arising, may wish nothing less than to inake his pupil capable of doing without him. The little king will, fortunately, not be oppressed from the first, like his cousin of Austria, by the neces

candidates for governorships. There is no particular objection to that, for the poorer peers are as able as any other class, and make, for example, fair governors in India, but they will interfere greatly with the prospects of the regular servants of the office, who are expected to work hard in unpleasant climates, and so earn their promotion. Their character as a corporation is one of the guarantees of the empire, and in abandoning Sir H. Blake, Lord Knutsford has, we fear, suffered it to be lowered. There may have been no alternative in the present condition of opinion, and the announcement has been made in the most decorous and gentle-sity of thinking in five languages; but he manly way, but it is impossible to avoid feeling that Sir T. McIlwraith, the Queensland premier, has succeeded in weakening considerably the ties which bind the free colonies to Great Britain, and in reducing perceptibly the hopefulness of the valuable class who depend upon a just exercise of its patronage by the Colonial Office.

From The Spectator.

THE TRAINING OF KINGS.

must learn two, Spanish and French, and will probably from the first use his mother's tongue besides. There is a theory growing in England that such an obligation is a pure advantage; and so it is as far as the mere knowledge of languages is concerned; but it may be gravely doubted whether it conduces to strength of thought, whether the mind is not confused rather than benefited by the multiplying of its instruments. We do not find that children born in border lands, or in India, or in the great houses of Russia, excel in thinking; while the mark of the royal THE Occasional, though, we are happy caste, which is very cosmopolitan in reto see, the infrequent telegrams from spect of language, is want of originality. Madrid about the king of Spain seem, we Learning the etiquettes is, fortunately, no fancy, to most readers to have in them burden, for the courts have decided by a something a little pathetic. The strange- happy inspiration that etiquettes worry ness and separateness of the position of least those who always observe them, and the only child who in all modern history that an observance of forms, if it is only has been born a king, excites even in for- so constant as to escape notice, does not eigners a sympathy which in Spain itself impair simplicity of character. The wor is so deep as to be a powerful factor in all ship paid to royalty, if it begins with political combinations. A monarch in the birth, is hardly perceived, and no more measles, a king crying for his toys, the inflates the character than do the etipossessor of the last Bourbon throne hold-quettes which, in all private houses where ing audiences from his nurse's lap, these startling incongruities, though they provoke a smile, awaken also a sentiment of pity. The contrast between the loftiness of the position and the powerlessness of its holder is so great, that it arouses the natural protecting instinct of grown-up mankind; and republicans of the kindlier sort, while detesting thrones, catch themselves wishing better luck than usual to this occupant of the Spanish one. He is a sovereign, but a baby too. He has need of good wishes, if they are of any use; for although he has the advantage of an able mother, who displays the freedom from fidget characteristic of her house, every member of which seems to believe that Hapsburgs are part of the economy of nature, there is nothing which is so

there are servants, constitute such an im passable and separating wall. Still, a king of Spain should be a trained soldier, a politician of ability, well read in history at least, a competent critic of the arts, a man familiar with social questions, and, besides, a stately gentleman; and how to make him all these things almost before his life has really commenced, must be a rare perplexity. Something may be done, no doubt, by the regular device of substituting tutors for books, living dictionaries for dead ones, and pouring into the mind results without the processes by which they are usually attained; but the system is "the royal road," and speed is purchased by the sacrifice of mental discipline, and by the reduction of opportunities for mental effort. The position helps

supplied every defect and carried him to the top of the world, was insight into men, a faculty which, unhappily, is incommunicable. In truth, it is very difficult, with all aid from the lights of history, to think out what manner of mind one would desire an ideal king to possess. The judicial

a little, for a lad-king, unless incompetent | week declaring that his ideal is his grandby nature, or made frivolous by surround- father, whose chief royal faculty, which ings, can hardly fail to "take an interest in his soldiers, in the governing men around him, in his subjects, and in the great topics which cannot be kept, even when that is intended, out of courts. You learn rapidly what you care about, and we know that Louis XIV. became, under no other pressure, a sort of professor of roy-mind, it is suggested, self-controlled, open alty, and that his great-grandson, also a child-king, was spoiled by the inherent tendency of his character towards vice, rather than by want either of capacity or knowledge. (It is curious to remember that Louis XV. was almost throughout his reign a working king, and never fell into the hands of any minister.) Still, the difficulty of the task of training must be enormous, as great as if we had to make of a lad, while still under age, a fair soldier, a good barrister, and a competent manager of estates; and in the absence of special gifts, we should be inclined to anticipate failure. Nature smiles at us all with the irony of absolute power, and the next king of Spain may be a great man, able to make a deep impression on history; but if he is, it will be by virtue of that power of governing which of all powers seems to be the most independent of education, and which historians even now hardly define or describe. It lies somewhere in the nature rather than the mind, though all successful rulers have clearness of insight, a perception of the relation between their means and their ends this, no doubt, is affected by training, though mere training will not give it and the gift of understanding the powers as well as the characters of those about them, a variety of insight by no means common. Women, who usually understand character, constantly make egregious mistakes in their marriages through their misreading of their favorites' powers.

The difficulty of training kings must be indefinitely increased by the want of a clear ideal. No one that we can recollect has defined successfully what a modern king should be like-in mind, we meanand this failure is not confined to the philosophers. Princes themselves, as they appear in memoirs, are either without ideals, or set before themselves some one king as a model for imitation. Victor Emmanuel, one of the most successful kings of our time, never, it is said, ceased to consider his father his political exemplar; and all who can read may hear the German emperor at least three times a

to the teaching of evidence, incapable of rancor, unmoved by passion; and no doubt there is in modern monarchy much of the judicial position, and a man who might be a good judge would also make a good "constitutional " king. Sir Henry Maine would have reigned well in England, and successive Cabinets would often have felt it a relief to take his carefully concealed opinion. Unequalled influence and perfect irresponsibility would exactly have suited him, and so brought out his powers that in a long reign he would probably never have made a mistake. But then, there is only one monarchy of that sort, and if the king is to govern, to act quickly, to run risks, and to seize happy moments for adventure - all things necessary, say, to the three emperors and the kings of Italy and Spain - something more than the judicial capacities would seem to be required. There was certainly something more in the emperor Frederick, who was in many ways the most ideally kingly man of our time, but who was so because, besides so much else, there was a Hohenzollern bite in him, a possibility of sharp and angry action, which his biographers, Mr. Rennell Rodd included, are all tempted by their pity for his fate to overlook. The scholar does not do as the ideal, scholars not being necessarily efficient, though, as literary men are the distributors of fame, scholarly kings are usually admired. We do not know that Sweden is much the happier because her king is a poet; fancy that there was more kingliness in the emperor William than in his brother and predecessor; and would much rather see Queen Victoria reigning than Queen "Carmen." The wide-minded officer of engineers, the officer who is cultivated, and who may possess a certain loftiness of character, is a very good ideal, and has struck all Frenchmen in particular in a very curious way. But we are not sure that the best type of all is not the king himself, though he is so difficult to describe, the man with a certain royalty of nature which is consistent with much or little ability, but is inconsistent with smallness of any kind, whether of view, or

action, or temper. The man nearest that ideal in our cycle was probably Lord William Bentinck, though, like his great prototype, William III., he lacked the graciousness a king should have; and Baron Ricasoli must have come very near it. So did Mazzini, strangely enough, though he was rather high priest than king; and of all men living among us, so does Lord Hartington, though the last lacks something which we misdescribe in using the

only word for it, pliability. On the whole, we should say, though we did not expect to do so, that the best ideal happens to have been a king, and that if kings were makable, the wiser part of the world would probably make one as like the emperor Frederick as they could reach. But then, training a Bourbon into an emperor Frederick is work not only for a Mentor, but for a Mentor who, when he cast his skin, revealed himself divine.

The tremendous strength which these animals are capable of putting forth cannot be realized until it is seen. The keeper says that any one of the elephants has the strength of a dozen horses. When they exert this power they suggest some enormous engine which has become endowed with life instead of moving mechanically by steam power. Whenever any heavy weight is to be moved about the arsenal the elephants are employed. The keeper has a short hook which he uses like a spur, directing the animal by a touch on the trunk. Last week a frame building was to be removed to another part of the grounds. It was a small two-story structure partly filled with grain and implements, making a weight of twelve or fifteen tons. With some difficulty the workmen raised the huge mass on rollers. The elephant Jennie was then brought up to push. She would place her great head against the structure and brace herself; then the building would strain and creak and move on as rapidly as the rollers could be placed in position. Jennie and her keeper would follow it up, and she would bend her head to give the building another push when the foreman shouted " Ready! The crowd which collected to watch the spectacle cheered their admiration, and Jennie would reply with a trumpet-like snort of pleasure at their appreciation.

ELEPHANTS AT WORK. For a fortnight | but by putting forth a small portion of their the employés about the arsenal in Central enormous strength, they can readily snap the Park have been occupied with the preparation massive links of iron. of the winter quarters of the animals in the menagerie. The tank in the lion-house has been enlarged, so that it will afford room for the hippopotami, which begin to find their outdoor bath unpleasant of a keen, frosty morning. The prairie dogs are getting ready to retire for the winter, the black bears are becoming sluggish, and the polar bears correspondingly active when a sharp northwest wind blows and the sky and the air are wintry. The most active animals in the course of these preparations have been the elephants. Three young elephants which have been in the menagerie during the summer were secured by Director Conklin for four years. They are the property of Cole, the old circus proprietor, and were with Barnum's animals last year in Bridgeport when the big fire destroyed so large a portion of the collection. These animals escaped uninjured, though badly scared by the conflagration. These elephants were taken about twenty years ago, when they were only a few years old, and have passed most of their lives in captivity. Their ages are about twenty-five years each, which in the elephant's career is the full period of youth. The two males, Tom and Billy, are the largest, but Jennie, the female, is by far the most intelligent and tractable. The keeper of the elephants says that she knows everything that is said to her; she will follow him about, if permitted, like an immense Newfoundland dog. The elephants average in weight nearly five thousand pounds apiece, and their sides have become round and fat during the summer NOTWITHSTANDING the considerable diffifrom eating great quantities of fresh Central culties which have been met with in the digPark grass. In the winter these animals are ging of a canal to connect the Obi with the kept in a large outer building in the mena-Yenisei, and the want of money for the comgerie, but during the summer they remain pletion of the undertaking, the work of conalmost all the time in the open air, and have necting the two great arteries of navigation in become acclimated and able to endure ex- Siberia is still advancing. In the summer of tremely severe weather without taking cold. the present year a boat fifty-six feet long and The only way of tethering these enormous fourteen feet wide, taking three and a half animals is by fastening a heavy chain around feet of water, was drawn from the Obi into the ankle of one foot and attaching the end of the Yenisei with a load of forty tons of flour. the chain to a staple deeply imbedded in the The two rivers are six hundred and thirty ground. This answers all ordinary purposes, | miles apart.

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