The Red Cloud chief., 1881-06-23
Louis, King Of Bavaria.

Royalty in Munich is practically
represented by the Queen-mother-an
elderly lady Of almost bourgeois sim
| plicity. who may be met any tine after
noon in the streets of the capital. fol-
lowed at a short distance by n couple
Of Court lackeys. The foot passengers
salute her with cordial respect, and
carriagcs-by some uIwritten law Of
| Bavarian Court etiquette stop rs she
passes. Or she NAV be seen shopping
in her carriage in the dusk of a winters
evening. attended. as she leaves each
establishment, by its bare headed pro-
p~r.etor. with a couple Of lighted wax
candles i'm his hands. The actual mon
arch. leaving the prose Of nineteenth
century institutions. o! reformed and
constitutional mOnarchies, where the
sovereign is moro or less the mere
figure-head of a responsible popular
Ministry, lives an existence of ideal
royalty modelled on that OF Louis XIV.
His chateaus and his palaces are furn-
ished and adorned with a minute exact
ness. after the costly models left be.
hind him By that most magnificent Of
monarchs. The greatest artists and
sculptors of Bavaria and Of Italy are
constantly employed on these works Of
reproduction. As the French Louis had
literature to the other splcndors of his
reign, so the Bavarian Louis has n
Wagner. His ambition is that his
reign shall be celebrated by splendid
patronage bestowed on a new master of
melody, whom he believes destined to
rival. if not eclipse, the great and i'm
mortal composers whose musical pro-
duct:ons are craven impcrishably on the
hearts of each succeeding generation.
Though these are the passions Of the
young monarch's life Though the de-
sire 10 model his royal career after an
original of almost Oriental magnificence
and ~patriarchal simplicity, where he
would be the fountain OF wealth and
honor, the munificcnt patron Of art, the
sole rewarder Of the good, and punish
er of the bad, has no doubt received
many a rude and chilling shock before
the prosaic restraints of a constitution
al monarchy like that of Bavaria, over
awed as it is by the threatening bat
talions of Imperial G~ermany--he has
yet shown a firmness of character and
ri independence in which some more
matter-Of-fact among his brother SOW
ereigns have been wanting. He has
insisted on retaining his own post and
telegraph system. His bust, crowned
with laurel like a modern Caesar, and
not the Imperial double eagle. appears
still on the Bavarian BrietmarcEen;
though he has been forced of late years,
like the other petty sovereigns of Ger
many, to that sign of vassalage, the
merging Of his coinage in the Imperial
marck.
The King of Bavaria is a strange psy-
Geological study. A very Hamlet
among Princes. he seems, while the
sovereign of one of the most prosaic
people in Europe, to be living in a
dreamland of imaginary royalty as far
removed from the actualities of his
everyday existence as the distant ages
of feudalism. He was the only soyer-
eign who did not personally head his
armies in the field in the stirring CAM
of 1870. No one charged him
with co%wardice or want of patriotic
His soldiers bore often the
brunt of the battle, and returned to his
capital full OF glory-Once in charge of
thousand French prisoners about to
be interned in a Bavarian fortress. The
were feted by the city, thanked
and substantially rewarded by the
ll~ueen-mOther, who received them in
Dne of the stately galleries of the palace.
But the King was not there.-London