VICTOR EMMANUEL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 108, 22 May 1875, Page 14

VICTOR EMMANUEL.

Justin McCarthy, the celebrated novelist and literatteur, in a recent number of the ' Galaxy,' draws the following portrait of the King of Italy — " I have before me now a silver coin picked up in Savoy soon after Italy became a kingdom. Now, the head displayed on that coin is not of a kingly mould. The mint has flattered its royal master much less than is usual with such portraits. There is the coarse, bull-dog cast of face ; there are the heavy eyebrows, the unshapely nose, the hideous moustache, the receding forehead, and all the other beauties and graces of the r bloat king's' countenance. Certainly the face of the coin is not bloated enough, and there is too little animalism displayed in the back of the head. But it gave, when it was issued, as fair idea as a little piece of silver could well give of the head and face of Europe's most ill-favored sovereign. " Some fifteen years ago, King Victor Emmanuel visited England. He was everywhere welcomed with a cordiality of interest and admiration not often accorded to a foreign king. He was not then nearly so bloated and burly as he is now ; but even then, how marvellously ill-favored he was ! How rough and coarse-look-ing; how unattractive in manner; how brusque and uncouth in gester and bearing j how liable to fits of stolid silence ; how utterly devoid of grace and dignity ! His huge straw-colored moustache projecting about half a foot on each side of his face, was as unsightly a piece of manly [decoration as ever royal countenance displayed. " Victor Emmanuel is a man of gross habits and tastes addicted to coarse and ignoble immoralities. ' The manners of a moss trooper,' was the anything but flattering description which my friend, John Francis Maguire, gave, in one of his parliamentary speeches, of King Victor Emmanuel. All things considered, this was not a bad description. Moreover, it was mildness, it was a compliment, nay, it was base flattery when compared -with the hideous accusations publicly and distinctly made against Victor Emmanuel by one of Garibaldi's sons, not to speak of other accusers, and privately whispered by slanderous gossip all over Europe. He absolutely wants all the elements of greatness.