THE BOY KING.
"ALLONS, Messieurs," said Don Luis de Hero, when he had successfully negotiated with Cardinal Mazarin the
Paix des Pyrenees,—" allons rendre graces a Dieu ; nous etions perdus, l'Espagne est sauvee." Such also we may suppose to have been the exclamation of the conspirators who so cleverly devised and effected the Bourbon Restoration in Spain. There are no bounds to the egotism of party : each flatters itself that it possesses the secret of what is grandly styled " regenera- tion," or at least spares no words which imply the existence of conscientious belief. The leading idea assumed to govern the recent transformation-scene on the Madrid boards is the salvation of Spain by the Army. No doubt Monk, had he not been a somewhat stolid person, without the least touch of Southern theatricality, might have made a similar exclamation when he brought back the Second Charles. But the restored Stuart did not save England ; happily she saved herself by the aid of William the Dutchman. Indeed, no Restoration in modern Europe has been successful, either as regards Royal proprietors who haughtily claimed " their own," or the nations which, with more or less willingness, admitted the claim. The restored French Bourbons neither saved Trance nor themselves ; the restored Italian Princes have suffered a like fate ; the restored Bonapartes,—saviours par excellence, indeed, almost a professional caste in that line,—far from saving, actually ruined France, so far as it is possible for a family to ruin a State. And now we are asked to believe that a youthful Spanish Bourbon, whose reinstated family have kept such a precarious hold on Spain since 1814, will, by virtue of his birth and blood, and that ability which we all so readily discern in Princes, found anew a once famous Monarchy, and fill its frame afresh with the vigour of its prime ! Were one needed, could we have a more striking proof of that elasticity of the human mind, which, if often exhausted, springs up again triumphant with each new generation? The men are gone whom Ferdinand VII. disgusted with his treachery, cruelty, and worthlessness ; gone, also, are those who, forty years ago, may have seen in Isabella the rising star of a brighter day ; and they have carried their ex- perience of illusions into the grave. Here is, again, a full- grown generation once more saluting a Bourbon, as full of belief as ever that grapes can be plucked from thistles and figs gathered from thorns.
It is all very natural and very human. To the Spaniard he is not a Bourbon ; he is the descendant of that Alfonso who wrote his name on the pages of history and in the rhymes of ballad-makers more than eleven hundred years ago ; and this is much to a people the intensity of whose pride is only equalled by the depth of their superstition. Moreover, why should not miracles be worked in Spain, and a great man spring from a debilitated house ? Why should not Alfonso XII., when he attains the vigour of manhood, rival or surpass the best among those who have borne his name ? No answer can be given to the question, except that the presumption is against the pro- bable evolution of a phenomenon so extraordinary. He is a young, unknown, untried quantity, bearing a remarkable label, which may cover and indicate boundless possibilities ; but the Spaniards have to take everything on trust. None can say that Alfonso XIL may not revive the class of hero- kings who both govern and reign, and who constitute the almost unique consolation of Mr. Carlyle when he peers through the clouded vistas of the irrevocable past. He may be the " man on horseback," not melodramatic, but real this time ; the "man of destiny," whom it delighteth the people to honour,—so long as he is successful. But there exists not one single reason whereon to build a belief so fascinating ; the cloud-rapt towers of Spanish hope must rest on the fathomless abyss of Spanish faith. Herein lies the pungent interest excited by the opening scenes in this new romance of Royalty ; it is the beginning of a voyage of discovery whereof the goal is peaceful, firmly fixed, progressive government ; one which shall bring back in other shapes the lost " wealth of the Indies ;" lift up Spain to the coveted political status outwardly indicated by the title, " Great Power ;" encircle the yellow-and-red flag with a halo of new glory, and send it abroad fluttering to every wind on every sea. Alas there would be some hope that the prospective splendours visible to enthusiastic
seers were real, and not a laughing mirage, if Alfonso XII. had given some proof that in mental calibre he bears any resemblance to an Alexander, a Louis XIV., a Napoleon Bonaparte, or even a William Pitt, all of whom made youth illustrious. The Don Luis of to-day may cry out that " Spain was lost and is saved 1" and we may admire them for their courage in trying once more to solder the links which bound the new world to the old ; but with the cheers which greeted Amadeo and hailed the Republic still ringing in our ears, it is hard to place any confidence in the justness of a prophetic exclamation, so frequently uttered, so rarely fulfilled.
The ease and audacity with which Alfonso has entered on his " duties" will surprise no one who remembers that Pre- tenders, from their cradles, are ever posing on imaginary thrones, and rehearsing the habits and attitudes of grown-up kings. Hence, when the news arrived that he had been chosen by the military chiefs, he showed no excitement, and talked with the assurance of a born inheritor of kingship. He took as matters of course the honours and attentions which the French Govern- ment bestowed, and his behaviour at Barcelona and Valencia could not have been more business-like had he never quitted a palace, studied at Sandhurst and Vienna, and travelled through society incognito as " Covadonga." Having been born and bred while the Napoleonic comet flamed athwart the European sky, it is natural that he should reflect the airs and graces of a capti- vating exemplar. Thus if, as in duty bound, he went to Mass at Barcelona, he also laid the first stone of an Institute, thereby showing a delicate perception of the rival claims advanced by the Church and Science. The first decrees he was to sign on entering Madrid suggest a nicely " divided allegiance,"—for one will authorise the payment of arrears to the Priests, the other the settlement of the Foreign Coupons. Perhaps, now that he has created the Virgin a Captain-General, he will found a Univer- sity. Like all chiefs who hope to succeed in these latter days, he qualifies his Conservatism with the epithet of " Liberal ;" and like another conspicuous person, while venerating " that illustrious Prince " the Roman Pontiff, he studies " the spirit of the age." Moreover, a certain Bonapartist affla- tus seems to have possessed him, for did he not exclaim, he, a youth of seventeen, " I know the wants of Catalonia," with all the assurance, if not the sincerity of a juvenile democrat who knows a remedy for every ill? Perhaps, when he reaches Madrid, and finds himself among her citizens, he may give a new application to the famous words uttered by the late French Emperor in the recesses of rural life,—" Here I breathe freely." Whether the imitative apti- tude displayed by Alfonso XII. is a good or bad sign, it shows at least in what school he has most studied, and on what materials he has drawn to shape his ideal of kingship. Rough contact with harsh actualities and deadly opposites may develope a different kind of power, but at present he seems given over to that histrionic view of the whole duty of man which the examples of a Napoleon and a Disraeli have done so much to enforce.
It may be otherwise ; and Spain will be a fortunate nation if the youngster to whom she has committed so large a share in her destinies falsifies the promise of his spring, and turns out a sagacious, powerful leader. The evils against which he is summoned to fight have at least the merit of reality. Some of them—for example, debt and discredit in the world of finance, bigoted intolerance and a somewhat truculent turbulence among the people, and insubordina- tion, besetting alike officers and soldiers, in the Army —can only be overcome, if at all, by the aid of time. In like manner, nothing save the lapse of years well employed in multiplying communications can fuse into one State the mountain-severed provinces of Spain, and double by facilitat- ing her industrial and agricultural energies, now imprisoned in almost separate cells. But there is an enterprise which Alfonso XII. must at once undertake and complete, either by himself or his deputies,—he is bound to overthrow Don Carlos, a pretender who carries pretension to the height of sublimity ; he is bound to restore peace in the North, and recover the transferred loyalty of the hardiest and manliest races within his dominions. The Carlist leader shows, by his language, that he intends to fight, that he is enraged at the preference displayed for his cousin, and that his selfish arro- gance knows no abatement. With this obstruction to all possible improvement Don Alfonso must grapple, and must succeed in the contest ; and until that has been done, he can take no solid steps towards achieving any of the wonders so freely promised in his name. Here, then, is a reality which cannot be conjured away by histrionic methods, but must be demolished by hard blows. A King of Spain cannot brook a rival near his throne, and the touchstone of initial success will be found in the rapidity and firmness with which the Carlist insurrection is conclusively knocked on the head. Not until that has been done can the saving virtues of the specific ad- ministered to Spain be tested, and its merits displayed to all the world for the encouragement of youthful adventurers, and the grim satisfaction of such among us as may secretly cherish a belief in the advent of an Heroic Age.
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