KINGS AND EMPERORS AS HUSBANDS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3038, 22 March 1881, Page 4

KINGS AND EMPERORS AS HUSBANDS.

Miss Ann Brcwster, in a letter from Eome, writes: We have very erroncoue ideas in our country about the characters and positions of European sovereigns. Tho paragraphs floating around in our journals are amusing in their erron, and ono often •wonders where they como from. They seem to have been manufactured by some monarchy loving persons, who wish lo create a false opinion. The Queen of Italy is a free spending woman. She and herhusband are always ahead of their income in expenses. This is not so much extravagance as part of the profession of rank and royalty. Her private life, as is well known, has never been a happy one. King Humbert, like most of the royal men of Europe of this day, does not understand his wetter or trade according to the spirit of the times, any better than the kings of the past, for that matter. Our newspaper paragraphs represent the sovereigns of Europe as very virtuous, domestic men, when a virtuous domestic king is the exception, not. the rule. The King of Belgium and tho Emperor of Austria are probably the only sovereigns whose lives are honest as husband and fathers. Tho Emperor of Russia's outrageous infidelities broke the heart of as true, loving and gentle a wife as ever a man was blessed with. The prince of Wales ie a repetition of George IV. The Emperor of Germany and his Empress have lived apart many years. The Queen of Prussia —as the Empress Augusta was in early life —was too spirited a woman to submit to her husband's open infidelities, and too strong, mentally and physically, to go down into the grave for them. Early in their married life ehe resented the treatment she so seriously that a decorous but no less positive separation was the result. The famous war telegrams of IS7O, so cleverly caricatured by Punch—

"Thank God.my dear Auguster, We've had (mother burster. Ten thousand French have gone below, Thank God from whom all blessings flow."

—were clever mamifactures of BismarckEvery one know that tho King and Queen of Prussia only spoke and met on public occasions, when they were obliged to as is the case now. Her Imperial Majesty has not been her husband's "dear Augusta" since the first years of her married life of royal misery, and her successor's chance is no better. The wife of Victor Emanuel, the mother of King Humbert, died brokenhearted, and the married life of Margaret of Savoy, Queen of Italy, has been a dreary, desolate one, so far as husband-love and devotion are concerned.