The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 16, 1900, Page 13

THE SUNDAY CALL. " INTERESTING PEN SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER F VICTOR EMMWANUEL 111, 5k LS By &iiliam J. D. Croke, LL.D. | ( 2 results studles of efforts of his at Victor Em- yprehension These they ar it they may exist y find his s. His own erely that he shall have remembered well 111 h hcient in- ble memor his twelfth year education daily with the cold bath, aud cup of broa— if he had not tarried xomewhat In rising, fn which event this was withheld: had his leszon, and went out on horseback, whatsoever the weather might be. His training, that is, the formatfon of his character, was chiefly thereafter in the hands of a terrible man—Colonel Osio, a lear; dler—and who in consequence was or acted the part of both pedant and martinet. Two storles illustrate the mas- ter and the bo i ricordi,” the former v said one day to the poor Prince, “‘che tanto 11 figlio’d’'un re quanto 11 figlie d'un calzolals, quando e un asino.e un asino.” (Remember that when a King's son is a donkey he ig just as‘much a don- key as a shoemaker's son.) On another occasion Professor Morandi, the literary tutor, remonstrated with this man of rigiil will. Though the Prince was suffering from o cold, be was being compellad by the colonel to take usual morning ride. To the professor's protests the disciplin- arian replied: ‘“‘And if one day war broke out, would not the Prirce have to ride even though he had a cold?’ So on ail through. the day, year in year out, physi- cal athletics alternated with mental. Even his diversions were so devised tq be instructive I have sald. He was taught to.discover amusement in Kkindergartea plans of military, strategy rot up in gar- dens, in natural history made real by NEW KING OF BEATEN BY specimens animate and photography, in num these dive teloped into an exalted branch of cultur mamismatics. He is the gre; colle of medals and coins in ant and probably in the world, such intelligence that he tive numismatist, so much so that he has contemplated, if not begun, a folio corpus Italicorum memmorum. This is a strange and strong and specially royal teaching of universal history, as the learned c ¥ It arose out of his boyish curi a coln of the late Pope Pius IX, or as an other version has it, out of his Interes over some colns of ancient Rome Not his diversions only were turned to inteliectual profit, but even his pains One day the, King, his father, was de- tained with the Cabinet M 1 er for signing of decrees; the dinner was ¢ ferred; the Crown Prince began positi ly to suffer the pangs of hunger. “Mother, I am. hu * he ecried. He was only 13 year: of His mother took the “Divine Comec opened it at the thirty-third canto of the “In- ferno,” and gave It to the Prince to read The part opened was the story of th starvation of Count Ugolino and his chil- dren in the dungeon tower of the Gua- landi. Under these methods Victor Emmanuel was avle to speak French and English, as well as Italien, with perfect correctness at 12; was eurly busfed in the reading of books in all tkree languages suited to nis spectal avocation; engaged in the ar- dent pursuit of literary, historical, geo- graphical and mathematical studies, and in the cultivation of the phys constitutional law, politic German, the which language he began to acquire while he was completing his mastery of French and English. The most democratic reader will ses at a glance the relation which exists be- tween such studles and the business of Kkingeraft, but which bears still more nearly, with the exclusion of constitu- tioral law, in the case of military theory and practice, gecgraphy and history. The Prince is a soldler, as all Kings are nowa- days, and In the speclalized way that modern Buropean sovereigns must be. He has resided a year in his titular city of Naples, giving proof of activity and effi- clency as general in command of the Tenth Army Corps. Of geography and history he is described as nothing less than an encyclopedia. But is his imagination fired with the visions of expansion which a familiarity with geography brings, or with the phan- tasmagoria of the past in history? Un- happily, no; for he is devold of fantasia. says his instructor for five and a half years in Italian literature, Deputy Mo- . W”\‘]Ifih‘a«' Vi RECEPTION | 7 ITALY TREADS THE PATH -OF POPULARITY HIS FATHER. writes the ap- peara kes to de- scribe, m describing it. He giv shape, the color, the sound, the sme! he s he counts L] His sim- a traveler. the precipice O ofelh: W the vers like those of ast cemetery and he s, ple, being in taking racious and con- nsequently as the ng, and f a more romantic toward fancy than have as is destr- east something of ental of Arles” Imagination through ion, to be actually ow easily in he rule a ire distre: ¢ means of savin d. Tte late mon- was his cultcre, of modern roy- of imagina- rosity and beneficence from year's end end. T have been at pains in arithmetic, a d I find that his exceeded those of some Sover-