INTERESTING HEMINISCENCES. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) London, February 10.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 353, 23 March 1889, Page 6

INTERESTING HEMINISCENCES. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) London, February 10.

The hold which what Mr Bradlaugh contemptuously calls tha " monarchical sentiment" still hao o\er a pi eat portion of mankind is well illustrated by the stir which the Crown Prince of Austria's sudden death has created, not merely in his father's dominions but throughout Europe. The young man must, to most people, have been a meie name, and yet his death has excited an amount of interest and a How of sympathy which many of the greatest i and noblest statesmen, poets, and artists leave the world without e\oking. In England, say? the " Daily News," the Crown Prince was fairly well known. A signal honour was paid to him by her Majesty when, in 1887, he came over to attend the Jubilee celebration in Westminster Abbey. His name then stood first among the recipients of Jubilee honours as having been made a Knight of the Garter. This was an extra appointment to that order. The Archduke Rudolph was one of four Crown Princes, who, together with the King of Saxony and other illustrious personages outside the immediate tamily circle of the Queen, were seated in the sacranum on the memorable Jubilee Day. The Crown Prince made a stay of several days on that occasion. Among other public appearances which made hio face and figure familiar t& many people was his attendance at a ball in support of the Austro - Hungarian Aid Society in the HOtel Metropole. Among those to whom the news of the Prince's death will he a painful surprise in this country no one is likely to be more shocked than ' the Prince of Wales, who, in recent years, has been intimately' associated with him. On the Continent last year the two princes weie much together. The German Emperor's visit to Vienna was scarcely over before the Crown Prince had lefty the banquetting hall to ■keep tryst with the Prince of Wales in Transylvania, where a bear-shooting expedition had been projected. The Prince of Wales was one of the guests at his friend's wedding in May, 1881, to the Princess Stephanie, daughter of the King of the Belgians. This was' the occasion of great rejoicings in Vienna, although it has since been well understood that the proverb touching marriages in that particular month has not been without some measure of verification in this case. Not only was thi« event celebrated by the splendours of pageantry in the Austrian capital. Its date was made memorable in many other lives as being the occasion i of a proclamation of an amnesty to many prisoners, of many benefactions, and of the foundation of valuable scholarships for Austrian students. The Crown Prince, it will be observed, was at the time of his death on a sporting expedition. He is known to the readers of public journals more for h,is ardent love of the chase than for any other characteristic which may, perhaps, have procured him distinction or notoriety in private. Re had the reputation of beingagood linguist. Like other Royal personages in the present day, he embarked on the enterprise of authorship. Besides taking a leading part in the production of a work on the Austro-Hun-garian Monarchy, he undertook personal reminiscences of travels. These are written with much directness of purpose and simplicity of diction, but testify to his powers of observation and description. They chiefly illustrate, however, his love of sport. He is keenly alive to the charms of Eastern scenery, and his imagination is fired with the thoughts of the past, till the present asserts itself overpoweringly in the opportunity for jackal hunting, pelican shooting, or tracking the lynx. He amasses information with great care, and in interesting detail from "his friend Brugsch Pacha ;" gives it due prominence in the book, and then proceeds with his sporting adventures. Overawed by antiquities, he says, " Here I will let Brugsch Pacha speak," and then joyously takes up the pen to de pict the pleasures of the chase. His own impressions of the sights explained by Brugsch Pacha are not, however, by any means omitted. He has a sportsman's interest in questions of race, and has his theories on the descent both of Egyptian dogs and of Egyptian men. He is permitted to witness the turning dervishes and the howling dervishes at their eccentric ceremonies. He inquires their descent ; notes that they all speak Turkish ; that none of them, are Arabs. " Several of these horrible sects," he adds, " sprang up in the , days of Islam — nob where its l cradle 'eboad among the intellectully highly-gifted Arabians, but in the

north among the natives of Asia Minor and Mongolian tribes. Tho Osmanli in Asia and Europe wore fitting recipients for such degrading superstitions." In his interesting tour in Egypt and Palestine he was accompanied by his uncle the Grand Duke of Tuscany, by General Count Waldburg, by Abbot Mayer, Major yon Eschenbacher, Count Joseph Hoyes, and Herr Pausinger, the artist, whose illustrations adorn the Crown Princo's book. There are not wanting in tho&o writings of his at all events indications of culture and of capacity for reflection ; but tho charm of outdoor lifo, of sunny skies, and Nature's lovelier aspects is most conspicuous. On seeing these dancing dervishes his concluding comment i& : "I will not deny that I was glad to see again tho sun and the laughing sky and the stir of the street, and to escape from the cold, dungeon-like dreary hall of tho mo-.que, and the sickly, degenerate fancies of its inhabitants." The sight of Corfu reminds him of Homer. "In younger days, when reading 'The Odyssey,'" he say?, U I formed a picture of these islands which experience has since confirmed ; green isles washed by the litjhtblue waves under a heaven of deepest blue, and gilded by laughing sunbeams." These inmost dispositions aio further indicated by his observations on the mountains of Albania : "To me the mountains of the south aie far more attractive than the Alps of Central Europe. Their forms, their warmer light, and the contrasts between snow, deep-blue sky, and southern vegetation aio more interesting than the uniformity of the pino woods with the dull, leaden, sightless sky above." The same almost morbid hankering after a difleienr climate from that in which his lot was cast seems to animate him to the end of his travels. When returning to Vienna ho comments sadly on the heavy clouds thatcoverthe sky, and, turning his thoughts back to tho scenes of his tiavel, concludes "Hail to thee, thou golden, glorious, sunlit East !"