lead him to the race-track rather than to the library. Most of us believe
William of Germany to be a cocky little chap, of tireless energy, who
makes all knowledge his province in the intervals of being photographed
and changing his uniforms, and who pays personal attention to the
fireworks that invariably illumine his progress.

We consider Oscar of Sweden to be a man of scholarly tastes, who would
rather write books than rule, and too modern in his ideas to make a regal
figure on the throne. We think of the aged Emperor of Austria as a
pathetic figure, a man of naturally kindly disposition, after a long life
into which has entered almost every element of tragedy and unhappiness,
ending his career an object of obloquy to many of his subjects.

A pathetic figure also, to our minds, is young Alfonso of Spain, upon
whom are visited the sins of his fathers, who was born literally in a
cabinet meeting, and in all the twenty years of his life has scarcely been
out of sight of his mother or one of his guardians, and who begged in vain
for only one day to himself, incognito, during his recent visit to Paris,
as the greatest possible boon.

We know of the personal attributes of several other monarchs--that Carlos
of Portugal is as likely as any of his contemporaries to meet the fate of
Henry I of England; that Leopold of the Belgians is not to be mentioned in
polite society; that Victor Emmanuel of Italy is a serious young man who
believes that his first duty is to his country instead of to himself.

Mystery Enshrouds Czar and Sultan.

With the foregoing sovereigns we find evidence as to their habits and
disposition in the same direction. Of the Czar, however, as of Abdul Hamid
of Turkey--who is described by one set of biographers as a high-minded and
scholarly recluse, and by others as a sodden and fear-shaken
sensualist--we have two pictures at variance with each other in almost
every particular. It may prove interesting, therefore, under existing
conditions, to compare some recorded impressions of Nicholas II, as made
by him upon various persons who have been brought into contact with him.

In the _World of To-Day_, for January, William T. Stead, editor of the
_Review of Reviews_, of London, one of the ablest and best-known
journalists of his time, and who recently had a personal interview with
the Czar, writes of him thus:

The question as to his intelligent grasp of the facts of the
situation with which h