HUMBERT'S POPULARITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 304, 14 February 1879, Page 19

HUMBERT'S POPULARITY.

It is said to have been one of the vulgar resources of the Humbert party in Italy to spread ten thousand rumours of intended assassination during the progress of the son of Victor Emmanuel and his wife through the dominions which they have stolen (or accepted, knowing them to have been stolen) from others. The wildest follies have been uttered and believed in. "King Humbert," says the Daily News, "looked haughty." Well, perhaps so ; but when we think of him we are reminded of Noah Claypole, and of Dickens 1 shrewd remark, that "it is difficult for a large headed, small eyed person of lumbering make and heavy countenance to look haughty under any circumstances." Thinking over the past history of his house, Humbert must have felt exceedingly haughty and noble at his late entrance into Rome, especially as he knew that, " Eighteen thousand soldiers were in tha garrison, and guards of public security vigilant in plain clothes at every Btreet corner" to protect him from the people who love him so much. The correspondent of the Daily News employs a very ominous phrase in speaking of the late clumsy farce. He talks of " Praetorian devotion" to the usurper. Does he forget that the old Roman history which supplied him with those unlucky words relates how the Prajtorian guards were wont to raise to the purple one of their own fellows to-day and to slaughter him to-morrow 1 We have a telegram from Paris which tells us much more correctly than all the romancing nonsense of the irreligious party how very popular the Savoyard

must be — Soldiers and gendarmes arc echeloned at intervals of iifty metres aloug the whole route to be taken by the royal procession. Ac Naples 300 arrests have been made. The Government, it is stated, is in possession of proofs that there exists a vast association whose object is to contrive the denth of the King. It is said that the sum of 2,500,000 lire which was recently stolen from the bank is in the hands of the International. — Universe.