A Royal Referee.

Hastings Standard, Issue 211, 4 January 1897, Page 4

A Royal Referee.

King Oscar, of Sweden and Norway, whose virtues have long been sounded far beyond the confines of his own kingdom, has secured some additional fame in the outside world by his selection as referee in the constitution of the Arbitration Court for the Venezuela and British Guiana boundary. His Majesty is no commonplace monarch, who owes all bis distinction to the accident of birth. Ho was a doctor of philosophy before he was a king, and his people claim that he is the best instructed sovereign of his day. He is now in bis sixty-eighth year, but he bears himself like a much younger man. He travels much in the united kingdoms of which he is the ruler, and he does not fear that familiarity with his presence and his voice will bring him into contempt. He knows, it is said, all the leading men of the two countries by sight, and he can talk with Norwegian and Swede and with most foreigners with almost equal freedom. His training as a naval officer has helped these linguistic acquirements ; and his early rovings have not unsettled him for literary pursuits. He is praised as an orator, and be once had some reputation as a poet, it is said that he is quite a match for h:s generals and admirals in knowledge of their professions, and that he stills derives the keenest enjoyment from the study of scientific subjects, lie displayed a warm and liberal interest in Dr. Nanseii's Arctic; expedition, and was among the first to congratulate the intrepid explorer upon his success. He is the son of Oscar 1., and of Josephine of Leuchtenberg, who was the daughter of Beauharn-ais, the stepson of Napoleon. His wife, whom he married in l<S-37, is the sister of the present Grand Duke of Luxemburg, and his sons are now all men. The Crown Prince married a grand daughter of William 1., and Prince Oscar, the second son, made a romantic marriage with Miss Ebba Muuck, an English young lady, which involved his renunciation of any claims to the succession to the Swedish crown. It is extremely fortunate from ever}' point of view that a man of such marked abiiity should have been selected to assist in the constitution-of a tribunal which may be the forerunner of a permanent Court of Arbitration between Great Britain and the United States.