The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-07-27
KING OF SPAIN In TRAINING
HIS MAJORITY WILL COME IN
1909.
Young AIphonso's Education ana
Preparation for Governing.

On the occasion of the fourteenth
birthday Of the young king of Spain
May II, 1900, Spaniards have begun tC
realize that the minority Of their sover-
eign Is fast drawing to a close. as the
posthumous son of Alphonso II vii
come of age, under the present consti-
tuition of the monarchy, on May II, 1902
When the late Senior Canovas del Cas-
tillo framed the constitution of 1876
with the assistance of the first Cortes
of the restoration, he contemplated fix
ing the majority of future sovereigns at
the age of eighteen, and he reconsidered
his decision chiefly because the then
reigning sovereign, Alphonso XII, had
been restored to the throne of his an
cestors by the military pronunciamento
of Marshal Martinez Campos in Deem
Der, 1874, at the age of seventeen. and
bad perfectly played his part. There
We're preeedents, besides, in the past of
Spain. One king, Don Jaime I Ql Con-
qustador) was declared Of age at elev-
Ell by the Cortes held at Mouzon.
Three kings succeeded at thirteen years
old, one at fourteen, two al fifteen, one
at sixteen and two at twenty The
present kings grandmother, the ex-
| Queen Isabella. was declared of age at
thirteen in 1843 by the Cortes to put an
end to the regency of the widow Of
King Ferdinand VII, Dona Christina
Naples, which had lasted ten years.
The present regency has lasted already
more than fourteen years, as Dona Ma
ria Christina of Hapsburg became a
widow and regent at the end of Novem-
| har 1Q2E ri ty before tba
birth of her son, Alphonso XIII.
It cannot be denied that the widowed
queen has devotedly and CALAMITY done
her duty to the state and her adopted
country. She had made herself Won
| derfully respected by the people, and
no foreign ruler can ask more. She has
done so especially by her irreproachable
| conduct as a woman and by the int1ex-
ibe way in which she has maintained
| the tone and morality Of the Spanish
court. The breath Of SANDER has new
er sulled royalty since the reigns of
| government passed into the hands of
| the Austrian widow Of Alphonso XII,
when she was only x-and-twenty.
Her subjects Of all classes, her enemies.
the Carists and republicans have new
er challenged her devotion to her chill
dren, and particularly to the son whom
she has had to watch and attend so af-
fectionately and so anxiously through
several severe illnesses in his infancy
and childhood. 1t Is said that she has
been rewarded in the way that mothers
naturally appreciate most, by an extra
ordinary affection and confidence on
the part of the still delicate-looking boy
prince, whom she has so carefully
reared in the traditions of the house Of
Bourbon, mingled with not few Of
the ideas and traditions of the Haps-
burgs,
After looking to his health, she has
slowly developed his tastes for out
door exercises and athletic sports in the
hours of the day not occupied by a very
broad range of studies. Some of those
who approach royalty even express
fear that the precocious interest the in
quiring disposition, of their young king
have been too much used by bis many
professors to cram him with classics,
sciences. logic, metaphysics, literature,
history and mathematics. He has
shown so much aptitude for foreign
languages that he talks and writes be-
sides his paternal Spanish and his ma
ternal German, English, French and
Italian. He Is said to be very fonl of
music, and singularly enough, equally
$50 of German classical music and of
the sprightly, gay, popular Spanish
melodies and guitar tunes. The queen
regent has shown that, like her prede-
cessors, she Is convinced that king of
Spain must be, above ALL Catholic
and soldier. She secured for him as
godfather Pope Leo XIII, who has
showered on his royal godson and on
his mother marks of sympathy and re-
gard, which have sadly displeased and
disappointed the partisans of the pre-
tender Don Carlos, and of his son, Don
Jaime, still plentiful in many provinces
of Spain, in the ranks of the rural and
cathedral clergy, and, above all, in the
religious orders Of both sexes. She
brought her son up and his sisters, the
princess of the Asturias and the Infan-
ia Maria Theresa as stanch Catholics.
She gave him as confessor her own
spiritual adviser. the Jesuit father,
Montana, and Alphonso XIII has been
confirmed and taken his first commun-
ion in the chapel royal at the palace.
He is a regular communicate several
times a year.
The military training of the king be-
gan directly General Sanchis was
placed at the head of his staff of pro-
fessors, and the colonel of artillery,
Loriga, and two other officers, detailed
to initiate him to soldering. A select
band Of young mobiles of about his own
age We're drilled with him, and later on
by his majesty, In the Casa de Campo
a large and picturesque royal domain
outside Madrid and during the summer
months in the grounds of the palace of
Miramar at San Sebastian. This train /
ing was tested for the first time short /
ly before Alphonso Kills fourteenth
birthday in Madrid. The queen regent, !
with the war minister. General Azcar-
raea, and all the generals of her mill
tary household, the professors of her |,
son, accompanied the king to the bar !
racks, where a crack regiment of caza- /
dores Is Quartered with the first regf-
ment of the line styled Immemorial
del Rey," the lineal successor of the ia
nous 'tercios of Flanders of Charles
V. AIphonso XII wore on this occasion, !
as he does at levee,, drawing rooms. /
and all state ceremonies, the uniform |
of the infantry cadet school of Toledo,
dark blue tunic, red trousers and the
shake. Round his neck hung
the toison dor, or Spanish golden fleece,