The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1882. CURRENT NOTES. REGAL.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 581, 7 February 1882, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1882. CURRENT NOTES. REGAL.

We have been accustomed to associate Royalty with grandeur. In our childhood's years we always fondly imagined that Kings and Queen's were in tho habit of fitting down to dinner with about forty pounds weight of gold and jewel* on their head in the shape of a crown, while a sceptre of equal weight kept one hand i'uly occupied. Their robes were of ermine and minever and cloth of gold, and cloth of silver, and even their underclothing at tho very least, consisted of that exquisite material which the Princes in the Fairy tales are sent off to procure, :md of which the mo t enormous quantities pass with ease thictfghthe tiniest rinue. It is true that that dreadful potentate, Hoky poky wlnkoy wxrni the. King , of the Cannibal Islands, had been heard of by us, and that we. did not thmk he was quite as particular about his clothing as the ordinary run of Monarchs, but at any rate he was always enveloped in a mantle of honor and grandeur, and ordered the cooking of a thousand prisoners for the benefit of his favorite wiv s and warriors, from a throne " rich with barbaric gold and pearl." In later days too we looked on Kings as symbols of power and grandeur, and if occasionally a doubt nroße aB to whether there was not n trifle of humbug in some of it, we thought that at any rate such doubts had to pierce through a veil of radiant splendour, Judge, thvu, 'what a shock our nerves received when we heard of a King, who resided in our adopted country, letting off squibs in the streets of Auckland, and yelling with delight at the firing of a big gun. There is none of " the divinity that doth hedge a King" about that. Oh, shades of Potatau and Tβ; Wheoro ! turn ye not in your graves at the behaviour of your degenerate descendant ? Jb is true that, like many an ancient monarch, he patronised " The Pirates," but that was the only regal act he performed. There is one thing certain, and that is, that the halo erstwhile surrounding the Maori monarch has been rent in twain ; that instead of a bloodthirsty savage, determined to preserve the A.n<cati line at the expense of-the lives of all his followers, he proves to be rather a weakminded and ambiguous personage, fond of gunp-iwder. it ir- tr»\ 1n , .!, in i\\e

h;i('!Vi'(KS shape of CT:u;k.ers ;ai,t iii-iii\ cartridge. Pur us bis glory is dimmed for evermore. He once excited in our heart a sort of Kellyish interest, wiien, in the wild fastnesses of the land of his fathers, and surrounded by a few devoted followers, he dared the power of a mighty nation ; but Ichabod, the txhry is departed ! and not even the pen of a hundred Croumbie Browns could throw much of a halo around him again, as far as we are, ooiKu'i'HevL Verily, in our eyes the kingdom has vanished, for evermore, and, slightly altering the worls of the. great Maori setM , , we might say, not " The potato is cooked," but " The' successor of Potatau is cooked,"