A MAD KING.
The Paris correspondent of the Sydney Morning Serald furnishes the following royal craze :—^President Grevy is not the only votary of brick arid mortar, or, rathsr, of freestone and other building materials more aristocratic. Jthan brick. That absurd dreamer, the King of Ba- _^. vaiia, who has. already, loaded Mraself !ii. With debts in building palaces beyond the _il. power of of his Civil List to pay for, is now busy with the erection of three more of these costly fantasiesj situated in beau- • > tiful, out-of-the-way 'regions, on the shore of a lake, on the bank of a river, and on the top of a mountain to which all the building materials, workmen, &c, have to v, , , be wound up, at an enormous expense, by 'a funicular railway constructed to that end. The statesmen who, while their j King is deep in Wagnerian operas, Nic- ] belungen lays, romances, and dreams of all kinds, do their best to keep the little kingdom from falling to pieces, are now. ~~ actually considering the advisability of ■■■ putting constitutional manacles on the 1 Royal wrists by the appeintment of a Regent. The King's brother is almost an idiot, and not to be thought of for the post, which will, it is said, be probably given to one of his cousins, who in that case, if he played his cards with any intelligence, would stand a good chance of succeeding to the throne of the most diligent beer-drinking people of. Europe; as that other little country, Switzerland, is ; proved by recent statistics to consume more brandy per head of its population than any other country under the sun. It Bays little in favor of the moralising effect on the human mind of the most sublime scenery of this hemisphere, that " brandy has come to be an integral portion of the daily rations of the Swiss peasant and working-classes, to such a degree as to be causing a deterioration of the human race, made evident by the fact that the number of men available for military service is diminishing from year to year.
A MAD KING.
Grey River Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 5334, 31 October 1885, Page 4
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