THE TRAINING OF KINGS.
THE occasional though, we are happy to see, the infrequent telegrams from Madrid about the King of Spain seem, we fancy, to most readers to have in them something a little pathetic. The strangeness and separateness of the position of the only child who in all modern history has been born a King, excites even in foreigners a sympathy which in Spain itself is so deep as to be a powerful factor in all political com- binations. A monarch in the measles, a King crying for his toys, the possessor of the last Bourbon throne holding audiences from his nurse's lap,—these startling incongruities, though they provoke a smile, awaken also a sentiment of pity. The contrast between the loftiness of the position and the powerlessness of its holder is so great, that it arouses the natural protecting instinct of grown-up Snan- kind-; and Republicans of the kindlier sort, while detesting thrones, catch themselves wishing better luck than usual to this occupant of the Spanish one. He is a Sovereign, but a baby too. He has need of good wishes, if they are of any use ; for although he has the advantage of an able mother, who dis- plays the freedom from fidget characteristic of her House, every member of which seems to believe that Hapsburgs are part of the economy of Nature, there is nothing which is so difficult, not to say impossible, as the fit training of a modern King. So much has to be attempted, and, in this special instance, so much in so short a time, that the task may well seem overwhelming. Everything must be finished, after some fashion or other, within the next fourteen years ; for once crowned, a King can be trained only by the work of his life, or by some dominant Minister who may never arise, or arising, may wish nothing less than to make his pupil capable of doing without him. The little King will, fortunately, not be oppressed from the first, like his cousin of Austria, by the necessity of thinking in five languages ; but he must learn two, Spanish and French, and will probably from the first use his mother's tongue besides. There is a theory growing in England that such an obligation is a pure advantage; and so it is as far as the mere knowledge of lan- guages is concerned ; but it may be gravely doubted whether it conduces to strength of thought, whether the mind is not confused rather than benefited by the multiplying of its in- struments. We do not find that children born in border lands, or in India, or in the great houses of Russia, excel in thinking ; while the mark of the Royal caste, which is very cosmopolitan in respect of language, is want of originality. Learning the etiquettes is, fortunately, no burden, for the Courts have decided by a happy inspiration that etiquettes worry least those who always observe them, and that an observance of forms, if it is only so constant as to escape notice, does not impair simplicity of character. The worship paid to Royalty, if it begins with birth, is hardly perceived, and no more inflates the character than do the etiquettes which, in all private houses where there are servants, constitute such an impassable and separating wall. Still, a King of Spain should be a trained soldier, a politician of ability, well read in history at least, a competent critic of the arts, a man familiar with social questions, and, besides, a stately gentleman ; and how to make him all these things almost before his life has really commenced, must be a rare perplexity. Something may be done, no doubt, by the regular device of substituting tutors for books, living dic- tionaries for dead ones, and pouring into the mind results without the processes by which they are usually attained ; but the system is " the Royal road," and speed is purchased by the sacrifice of mental discipline, and by the reduction of opportunities for mental effort. The position helps a little, for a lad-King, unless incompetent by Nature, or made frivolous by surroundings, can hardly fail to " take an interest in his soldiers, in the governing men around him, in his sub- jects, and in the great topics which cannot be kept, even when that is intended, out df Courts. You learn rapidly what you care about, and we know that Louis XTV. became, under no other pressure, a sort of Professor of Royalty, and that his great-grandson, also a child-King, was spoiled by the inherent tendency of his character towards vice, rather than by want either of capacity or knowledge. (It is curious to remember that Louis XV. was almost throughout his reign a working King, and never fell into the hands of any Minister.) Still, the difficulty of the task of training must be enormous, as great as if we had to make of a lad, while still under age, a fair soldier, a good barrister, and a competent manager of estates; and in the absence of special gifts, we should be inclined to anticipate failure. Nature smiles at us all with the irony of absolute power, and the next King of Spain may be a great man, able to make a deep impression on history; but if he is, it will be by virtue of that power of governing which of all powers seems to be the most independent of education, and which historians even now hardly define or describe. It lies somewhere in the nature rather than the mind, though all successful rulers have clear- ness of insight, a perception of the relation between their means and their ends—this, no doubt, is affected by training, though mere training will not give it—and the gift of under- standing the powers as well as the characters of those about them, a -variety of insight by no means common. Women, who usually understand character, constantly make egregious mistakes in their marriages through their misreading of their favourites' powers.
The difficulty of training Kings must be indefinitely increased by the want of a clear ideal. No one that we can recollect has defined successfully what a modern King should be like—in mind, we mean—and this failure is not confined to the philo- sophers. Princes themselves, as they appear in memoirs, are either without ideals, or set before themselves some one King as a model for imitation. Victor Emmanuel, one of the most successful Kings of our time, never, it is said, ceased to consider his father his political exemplar ; and all who can read may hear the German Emperor at least three times a week declaring that his ideal is his grandfather, whose chief Royal faculty, which supplied every defect and carried him to the top of the world, was insight into men, a faculty which, unhappily, is incommunicable. In truth, it is very diffi- cult, with all aid from the lights of history, to think-out what manner of mind one would desire an ideal King to possess. The judicial mind, it is suggested, self-controlled, open to the teaching of evidence, incapable of rancour, unmoved by passion ; and no doubt there is in modern monarchy much of the judicial position, and a man who might be a good Judge would also make a good " constitutional " King. Sir Henry Maine would have reigned well in England, and successive Cabinets would often have felt it a relief to take his carefully concealed opinion. Unequalled influence and perfect irresponsibility would exactly have suited him, and so brought out his powers that in a long reign he would probably never have made a mistake. But then, there is only one monarchy of that sort, and if the King is to govern, to act quickly, to run risks, and to seize happy moments for adventure—all things necessary, say, to the three Emperors and the Kings of Italy and Spain—some- thing more than the judicial capacities would seem to be required. There was certainly something more in the Emperor Frederick, who was in many ways the most ideally kingly man of our time, but who was so because, be- sides so much else, there was a Hohenzollern bite in him, a possibility of sharp and angry action, which his biographers, Mr. Rennell Rodd included, are all tempted by their pity for his fate to overlook. The scholar does not do as the ideal, scholars not being necessarily efficient, though, as literary men are the distributors of fame, scholarly Kings are usually admired. We do not know that Sweden is much the happier because her King is a poet; fancy that there was more kingliness in the Emperor William than in his brother and pre- decessor; and would much rather see Queen Victoria reigning than Queen " Carmen." The wide-minded officer of engineers, the officer who is cultivated, and who may possess a certain loftiness of character, is a very good ideal, and has struck all Frenchmen in particular in a very curious way. But we are not sure that the best type of all is not the King himself, though he is so difficult to describe,—the man with a certain royalty of nature which is consistent with much or little ability, but is inconsistent with smallness of any kind, whether of view, or action, or temper. The man nearest that ideal in our cycle was probably Lord William Bentinek, though, like his great prototype, William In., he lacked the graciousness a King should have ; and Baron Ricasoli must have come very near it. So did Mazzini, strangely enough, though he was rather High Priest than King; and of all men living among us, so does Lord Hartington, though the last lacks something which we misdescribe in using the only word for it, pliability. On the whole, we should say, though we did not expect to do so, that the best ideal happens to have been a King, and that if Kings were makeable, the wiser part of the world would probably make one as like the Emperor Frederick as they could reach. But then, training a Bourbon into an Emperor Frederick is work not only for a Mentor, but for a Mentor who, when he cast his skin, revealed himself divine.
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