extraordinary man,
he will fill it when his turn comes. But if that son be, as, alas, he
most probably will be, like Umberto, quite ordinary, then let parental
love triumph over pride of dynasty: advise your boy to abdicate at the
earliest possible moment. A great king--what better? But it is ill
that a throne be sat on by one whose legs dangle uncertainly towards the
dais, and ill that a crown settle down over the tip of the nose. And
the very fact that for quite inadequate kings men's hands do leap to
the salute, instinctively, does but make us, on reflection, the more
conscious of the whole absurdity. Even than a great man on a throne
we can, when we reflect, imagine something--ah, not something better
perhaps, but something more remote from absurdity. Let us say that
Umberto's father was great, as well as extraordinary. He was accounted
great enough to be the incarnation of a great idea. 'United Italy'--oh
yes, a great idea, a charming idea: in the 'sixties I should have been
all for it. But how shall I or any other impartial person write odes to
the reality? What people in all this exquisite peninsula are to-day the
happier for the things done by and through Vittorio Emmanuele Liberator?

The question is not merely rhetorical. There is the large class of
politicians, who would have had no scope in the old days. And there are
the many men who in other days would have been fishing or ploughing, but
now strut in this and that official uniform. There passes between me and
the sea, as I write--how opportunely people do pass here!--a little man
with a peaked cap and light blue breeches and a sword. His prime duty
is to see that none of his fellow peasants shall carry home a bucket of
sea-water. For there is salt in sea-water; and heavily, because they
must have it or sicken, salt is taxed; and this passing sentinel is to
prevent them from cheating the Revenue by recourse to the sea which,
though here it is, they must not regard as theirs. What becomes of
the tax-money? It goes towards the building of battleships, cruisers,
gunboats and so forth. What are these for? Why, for Italy to be a Great
European Power with, of course. In the little blue bay behind Umberto,
while I write, there lies at anchor an Italian gunboat. Opportunely
again? I can but assure you that it really and truly is there. It has
been there for two days. It delights the fishermen. They say it is
'bella e pulita com' un fiore.' They stand shading their