either mental or physical attributes. His outward look and bearing
betokened him as far more fit to be lifted in triumph on the shoulders
of his battle-heroes, a real and visible Man, than to play a more or
less cautiously inactive part in the modern dumb-show of Royalty. Well-
built and muscular, with a compact head regally poised on broad
shoulders, and finely formed features which indicated in their firm
modelling strong characteristics of pride, indomitable resolution and
courage, he had an air of rare and reposeful dignity which made him
much more impressive as a personality than many of his fellow-
sovereigns. His expression was neither foolish nor sensual,--his clear
dark grey eyes were sane and steady in their regard and had no tricks
of shiftiness. As an ordinary man of the people his appearance would
have been distinctive,--as a King, it was remarkable.

He had of course been called handsome in his childhood,--what heir to
a Throne ever lived that was not beautiful, to his nurse at least?--and
in his early youth he had been grossly flattered for his cleverness as
well as his good looks. Every small attempt at witticism,--every poor
joke he could invent, adapt or repeat, was laughed at approvingly in a
chorus of admiration by smirking human creatures, male and female, who
bowed and bobbed up and down before the lad like strange dolphins
disporting themselves on dry land. Whereat he grew to despise the
dolphins, and no wonder. When he was about seventeen or eighteen he
began to ask odd questions of one of his preceptors, a learned and
ceremonious personage who, considering the extent of his certificated
wisdom, was yet so singularly servile of habit and disposition that he
might have won a success on the stage as Chief Toady in a burlesque of
Court life. He was a pale, thin old man, with a wizened face set well
back amid wisps of white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its
working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His