Tae Vaxisuep Pomrs or Yesterpay-Being Some Random Reminis conces of a British Diplomat.
(Hodder & Stoughton. 12s.
net.)
It is natural that the anonymous author of this book should find the world unfamiliar, and perhaps a little unattractive. For him, even more than for the rest of us, the landmarks are removed. The ear-hest diplomatic posts he filled (with the exception of a short special mission to Rome) were at Berlin, Vienna, Petrograd, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro successively. In the days of which ho writes those names represented empires _or monarchies; to-day all five are Republics. Vanished, too, like last year's snows are the brilliant scenes and picturesque figures of these pages; the past years have made drab what they have not coloured blood-red. Low as well as high has seen the change; we do not suppose that a page of the chapters on Russia holds good of to-day: Court, salon, church, have gone together.' So "The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday" has an historical interest quite out of proportion to the span it covers It pictures for us a society as extinct as the dodo. Till we learn to "unscramble eggs" we shall not see, again the rule of the "sixteen quarterings" in Vienna; nor will "The Angel of Death" and "The Angel of the Resurrection" escort tomb. the. bier of any future Tsar to his Yet all those" transformations might have been avoided had the author been able to end one of his paragraphs differently. It tells of an incident on the Potsdam lakes 1880, when Lady Ampthill, the wife of the British Ambassador, was teaching a certain young man—"quite a commonplace young man," we are told on another page—to' scull. She had explained to the novice that this was a very light boat, to be entered with extreme care William of Hohenzollern, who had never taken advice from anyone in his life, and was always convinced that he himself knew best, responded by jumping into at from the landing stage, ing it immediately, and throwing himself and" Lady Ampthill into 16 feet water. Prince William, owing to his malformation, was unable to swim one stroke, but Lady Ampthill, a very strong swimmer, managed, in spite of the weight of her clothing, to support him in the water for five minutes until help came and they were both rescued.
We hear very little else of the ex-Kaiser, but much of his father and grandfather—"'a kindly and very dignified old gentleman." The writer confesses to having seen only three sovereigns "who looker their parts' quite unmistakably" Alexander LI. of Russia, William I. of Germany, and Queen Victoria. Of the first of the three we are told that "when addressing junior members of the Diplomatic Body thera was something in his voice and a look in his eye reminiscent of the Great Mogul addressing an earth-form.""
A more genial glimpse of royalty is given in the chapter on Portugal, when the author had the felicity to hear Dom Fernando publicly addressed by his second wife (an American dancer): "Say, King, you just hurry up with those cigars!" But this was a comic opera court in almost the literal sense, for there were two kings This state of things (which always reminded me irresistibly of the two Kings of Barataria in Gilbert and Sullivan's " Gondoliers") had come about quite naturally. Queen Maria LI.
(Maria da Gloria) had married in 1836 Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, who was raised next year to the title of King Consort.
Maria LI. died in 1853, and was succeeded by Pedro V. During his son's minority King Ferdiriand acted as Regent, and Pedro, dying unmarried' eight years after, was succeeded in turn by his brother Luiz, also son of King Ferdinand.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.