THE EMPEROR OF BRAZIL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6068, 26 October 1887, Page 3

THE EMPEROR OF BRAZIL.

(T.-ut/i.) *\ Q\he good Emperor of Brazil ages apace***. This ,i- less seen in the whitened beard i than ixi the weight of hia step and in his ' apparent mental fatigue. Yet he is as active as if he never knew what chronic liver complaint was, or as though the heat> of the* tropica, where he was born, bred', and goc old, was not debilitating. He is up betimes in the morning, and goes to bed late, because sleep has greatly gone from h.m. When he walks the big •frame s&ems to him a burden. But the diseased liver does not appear to have altered for the worse his naturally serene temper. The over ocean potentate has been to see Pasteur operate at his Institute, and to a sitting, of tho Academy of fc.cie_.ce_. In both cases he had to cut his visits short. Thia bounteous ! and wisdom-loving JHmperor has Burely as ! good aright — if not abetter — to be dubbed Great as his famous homonym of Eussia. The Russian Peter had behindhim a nation of agile-minded Slavs, whose intellects were kept from becoming slack hy their climate. Before their hot summers had time to enervate them cold winters came to lash them into action. Peter of Brazil had no fine homogeneous race to act on,, but mongrel one., with a black brood behind them, which had come straight from African savagery. The climate waa bad for everything but snakes and vegetation. There was no intellectual stir whatever in Brazil beyond what was generated by the Emperor, a few European doctors and some German naturalists. They formed the medium by which the spirit of Europe quickened the big tropical Empire. The Russian Peter left nothing to time if by an effort of his will he could force on the accomplishment of any result; he wanted. He was of ten a tyrant in trying to make what he planted bear flower and fruit in his day. The over ocean Peter has exercised a mild sway. All sorts of institutions — political and of public utility — which have taken deep ! root, already flourish under it. A gontle- ' man in the Emperor's suite tells me that ; he believes there is no other country, I unless in Eussia., where children of the class termed outcast are so well cared for as in Brazil. What the Emperor could not do was to get anything approaching his ideal of huroHn. dignity into the heads of hiß wealthy subjects. They like flaunting show, and must be "in the fashion.*" Now, the fashion always means for them social showiness. As they are half negro, their ideas of high " respectability " are akin to those which, under the stimulus of Britißh trade in cast-off and other clothing, have sprung up on the Congo coast. A coloured gentleman there. is proud to go and bake himself on Sunday in an iron chapel, dressed in a crush hat, patent leather boots, a stiff-breasted shirt, an ulster, and staring tweed trousers. Past experiences of the unfitness of these garments for a climate of torrid heat do not deter him. If he has to take off the boots and ulster in the church, and to carry them home in his arms, he has at least the satisfaction of letting the other dark gentlemen of the neighbourhood see that ho has a European wardrobe for Sunday wear. The Brazilians belonging to " the upper ten " go in for old world fashions in this Gahomey way. Their imitative rage came in with the advent of the Comte d'Eu, who was followed by young Orleanist noblemen. When the Duke of SaxeCoburg. married the Princess Leopoldine, heiress-presumptive to the Imperial Crown, hia father-in-law's Court was brought into relation with stylish young Austrians. Their ways were new at Eio. Dom Pedro is a fatherly old gentleman, and never thinks how he is dressed, and had no idea, when he was last in Europe, that he was not correct when he went to courtly balls in a black cravat. " Style " with the husband of the young Princess became the thing at Botofogo — the fashionable outskirts of Eio. Botofogo was the headquarters of the newcomers. What waß done there became the one topic in the town and country house. "That's as it is at Botofogo," was an answer to every objection in matters of taste. It was the equivalent of the " It's English, you know," of the American dude. Thß advent of the stylish young Europeans was a spoke in the wheel of progress which the Brazilian Peter the Great has constructed and set going. Dom Pedro has brought up his Saxe-" Coburg grandchildren — one of whom a Augustus, is now with him— in his own ideas. They are of Botofogo, as a man is a horse who is born in a stable. But they are not likely to alter things there when they are all grown up. Prince Augustus is a nice, but rather over taught youth. He will be, at best, but a faded copy of his grandfather. I have a suspicion that the Bulgarians have been advised to ask Augustus to reign over them if they fail to get his uncle, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg. As the former has passed the greater part of his lifo over ocean Eußsia can't object to bim on the score that he is too Austrian. He went on a tour in North America not long ago, and had a narrow escape of being blown up by dynamite in a river steamer. Nobodj was ever able to solve the mysterj jof this iniquity, the Prince being inoffensive, and, at any rate, toe much a stranger in the United States to have enemies there. The reporters interviewed him agood deal ; but before he talked to them he asked his governor's leave, although nearly a young man. They found his conversation colourless, and thought he had a German pastiness of complexion. They were struck with two things in him in his excursion up the Hudson Eiver. He looked thoroughly aristocratic, and paid no attention to anything to which his mentor did not call his attention. Peter of Brazil is an exception to the Galton theory of inherited capacity. If great himself, he is the son of a Peterkin, who remained a childish sort of person to the end of his life, enjoying nothing better when he was an old potentate retired from business, than a game of blind man's buff, Timeout of mind the Kings of Portugal were men of personal distinction. But as much could not be said of those who reigned from the time the wife of one of them turned the Spaniards out of the country until the whole Portuguese Court fled from before Napoleon to Brazil. One can't think how that tropical empire could have got on without its present ruler. I think I never met anyone who gives me more the idea of power held in reserve and ready to act strongly and quietly without fuss or fever than this Emperor. He is a man of thought, and all his life he has been swayed by a sense of duty. I don't suppose he would have been a great success as a business man, notwithstanding his capacity to plod and his methodic habits. He would, born in a private Btation, have been an eminent savant, or a first-rate curator cf some Botanical Gardens. His patience is without limit. Intellect is such a rarity in Brazil that ho would have small enjoyment in his life there if he did not busy himself greatly with public duties and scientific studies. He feels as if he came to another world when he comes to Europe. He does a deal of thinking, and likes to listen rather than to talk ; but his conversation can be delightful. On Friday he passed nearly an hour with President Grevy, who received him with what state he can afford, and, although he did not go further than the door pf the first saloon on the ground floor suite at the Elysee to meet him, he saw the Emperor back to his carriage.