SAD STORIES OF THE DEATH OF KINGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 953, 25 April 1889, Page 31

SAD STORIES OF THE DEATH OF KINGS.

" Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings," says one of Shakespeare's characters. The invitation is ' appropriate to this time, though not so appropriate as the time of Richard 11. ' KINGS AND PRINCES WHO COMMITTED ,

SUIOIDE.

Eoyal suioide has in recent times become comparatively rare.' A savage monarch whom we woreted at Magdala blew out his brains in the agony ' of bis misfortune. In this respect King Theodore unconsciously displayed the spirit of Frederick the Great, who carried about with him in the Seven Years' war a pill which would, if necessary justify his boast that he would never be taken alive. His luck, however, was better than that of the ill-fated King of Abyssinia. Nearly two years ago the King of Bavaria voluntarily sought oblivion in the Lake of Sfcarnberg. Of his insanity there was even less doubt than there has been of that of other princes who have trifled with lives that were not their own. Prince Rudolph's death by his own hand is as mysterious as it is necessarily sudden. It has been observed by Buckle and others that military men commit suicide oftener than other classes. Certainly there has been no little suicide among Continental officers lately. That in the cold law of averages a royal victim should' be counted in would probably not have surprised the author of the " History of Civilisation."

THE SURPBISES OP DEATH.

Although the Emperor Frederick's death from cancer so soon after his father died was in the end quite anticipated* the first revelation of the prospect of that death was distinctly a surprise^ More akin to the event of this week waß the Prince Imperial's death, not in the nature of its violence, of course, but in the facts that he did die by violence, and that the news came upon everybody with appalling suddenness, and that in him were centred the hopes of a dynasty. That event again recalls the death, by a fall from his carriage, of Louis Philippe's son, the Duke of Orleans, in 1842. Though unlike those two princes the Duke of Albany was neither heir. nor pretender, his death also produced by its suddenness the same peculiar sensation or shock. Hardly less sudden than in all these cases was the blank caused by the death of the Prince Consort. The Princess Alice's death ranks with all of these in tragic interest and above most of them in pathos. Napoleon Ill's disappearance from the map of Europe practically occurred 'at Sedan. That surrender took away the breath, perhaps, more than 1 any event which can be recalled in modern reminiscence. His death, 1 as has been somewhere said, was after this but an anti-climax. The sad fate in Mexico of Prince Rudolph's uncle, the Maximilian, is linked in association with the unfortunate Napoleonic name.

MODERN ASSASSINATIONS.

Of modern assassinations none equals in daring and horror, or in its paralysing effect, upon the civilised world, the murder of the Czar Alexander 11. ' The names of twb t Presidents of the United States who have succumbed to the' violence of the assassin within the memory cf the present generation will at once leap to the reader's mind, as well as that of our own Indian Viceroy, Lord Mayo, and of that brave English general the hero of L'ucknow, who, though he did not die by the assassin's hand, was almost as suddenly lost to his country. If we include' among cur vanished eminences all who have had the eyes of the world turned for the moment upon them, the name of Lord Frederick Cavendish will not be forgotten. His violent end made the public hold their breath as much as any of the sad events here recorded. Nor can it ever be forgotten in the lives of the present generation how the world in thrilling suspense awaited the issue of that wonderful Nile expedition, which came within'ibouch of Kharfc ly

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