TRAVELLING NOTES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2343, 10 July 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

TRAVELLING NOTES.

(By a Colonial.)

I have seen a good many of tho Royal Family in my visit; the Queen twice, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the young Prince and Princesses, the Duke ot Connaught. Beatrice and Battenburg, and a crowd of other stalagmites. None of thorn look fools, but none of them are extraordinary in limb, face, or mind. A good, conservative writer, writing carefully, and cramping himself as much as possible, puts down the cost of Royalty at twelve hundred thousand pounds a year, I have looked at them near and afar off; have added and multiplied the good and benefit of them; have enlsirgenecl the bump of loyaltv to meet the strain, but have come to the conclusion that they aren't worth the money—" a fair day's pay for a fair day's work," is good Liberalism, but it is impossible for any one to work equal to such wages. 1 tried, when 1 saw the Queen for the first time, to feel awe-stmuk, weaknee'd and reverential, but the feeling wouldn't come. Here was the head of the greatest Empire that had ever existed, but reality killed imagination : " familiarity breeds rudery." I could think of her as nothing but an honourable and intelligent woman; the glory and grandeur wasn't there. The Eastern potentates managed things better, the Russians put their Czar before the Creator, The Prince of wales is not at all a sleepy individual; he has a cheerful, yet a thoughtful face, and I think in no station of life would he have been afailute, I noticed him, on one occasion, in his box at the Princess Theatre in Oxford Street (this used to be a familiar spot to the Prince in his young and salad days) that in answer to a question from the Princess he turned abruptly to her and frowned down on her while he spoke, I think there is a good deal of the old Adam yet about him; but perhaps if he were too good and too high and mighty he wouldn't be so popular as he is. The three leading persons are of course the Queen, the Prince, and the Prinoess. They operate on the crowd this way: The Queen is cheered for loyalty and her position; the Prince is cheered as a lark; and as if the crowd expected to hear him orack a joko; and the Princess, as a lady and as if each person had a personal admiration and regard for her. The Princess is abovo the average height; her expression is a mixture of dignity and archness; she stands erect rather than haughtily; carries heisel f too stiffly for grace; her costume is inclined to neatness more than to dressiness ; aud she is always more ready to smile than to frown.—The Yeoman,