THE DUKE OF MANCHESTER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3053, 8 April 1881, Page 2

THE DUKE OF MANCHESTER.

The writer of "Passing Notes" in the Otago Daily Times says that some pleasant illustrations of the extraordinary glamour which attends historic titles and hereditary rank occurred to the Duke of Manchester during his recent wanderings in Queensland. At a banquet given in his honor in an upcountry township the Mayor, who presided introduced the guest of the evening as " His Grace the Duke of Edinburgh." Contiguity

to a Duke had so flustered the civic magnate that his tongue refused to do its office. During the evening the Duke related an instance hardly so flattering to his vanity. It seems that His Grace has formed the ambition of becoming a Queensland squatter, and has been riding through the back districts on the look out for " country." Ho Baid : —" He admired the country to such an extent that he had determined, if possible, to become one of themselves — (groat applause)—in fact, to be a squatter. By the by, talking of squatters reminded him of an incident that occurred whilst he was riding between Jimbour and Cumkillenbah. Mr Punch told the story, though not quite correctly. He stopped for a drink of water at the house of a man named McFie, who asked if the Duke was not coming by with Mr Bell. On being assured that he was the Duke, McFie shook his head dubiously, and said. 'Go on, you're only joking; ancl despite all his (the Duke's) protestations, McFie would not be convinced •until Mr Bell arrived and certified to his indentity; whereupon McFio walked round him, and said in despair, " Blest if you couldn't go oil the way to the Barcoo and they would tako you for nothing else but a b bushman." This excited his ambition, nnd he felt that though he could not hope to be a bushman, he would like to be a squatter. (Great laughter and cheers.") The simplicity of the Duke's taste in preferring squatting life in Queensland to the splendour of his own " guilded halls " is to be commended, but that is not tho moral for which I give this extract. The disgust of McFie at finding a Duke of Manchester indistinguishable from a bushman is in the highest degree instructive. It had not occurred to McFie, apparently, that ducal frandeur is mainly an affair of clothes. Tot being familiar with such dignitaries he expected to find in a duke the stamp of natural nobility which Hamlet attributed to his murdered father :—

The front of Jove himself, An eye like Mara, to threaten and command, A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give tbe world assurance of a man. That the Duke, when in a bushman's rig, should show no sign of natural superiority, but look the bushman all over, was a revelation to MoFie. He was disillusionised, and didn't even pretend to conceal his contempt. The histoi'y of democratic revolutions is simply this incident writ large.