and Frenchy generation will persist in call ing boulevards, along the river's bank; and wheeled vehicles and trotting horses begin to spin along the shore. The elephant, how ever picturesque, cannot contend for speed with such as these, and shakes his solemn head and waves his trunk disdainfully, as fogies will who see the changes which a rapid generation introduces with such reckless haste and inconsiderate extravagance.

The days of old Siam, indeed,-the days of the good old elephant on shore, and of the paddling canoe by water; the days which seemed as if they had come down to us unaltered from the "golden prime of good Haroun al Raschid," were already numbered when their late majesties, the first and second kings (the fathers of the two young gentlemen whose partnership in royalty succeeds to the goodwill and fixtures of the late concern, dissolved by death), began to deal with nineteenth-century science, and to manifest a fondness for the civilization of the Occident. People with the scantiest raiment, or, if raiment there must be, then with flowing robes and graceful scarfs and brilliant colors and innumerable jewels; little children with no costume but a yellow dye, with which their fond parents loved to decorate them, and necklaces of gold and precious stones shining only less brightly than their flashing eyes; bald-headed priests, with orange-colored drapery upon their comfortable bodies, with lazy fans to screen the shaven scalp or hide their holy eyes from vanity,-such forms as these must stand aside when the electric telegraph and the steam engine come. The stovepipe hat, symbol of science and the useful arts, the graceless pantaloons, nay, even the very swallow-tail itself, are not far distant. The reigning first king has been upon his travels to Singapore and to Calcutta, and has arrayed himself in store-clothes. An English governess instructed him. Occidental tailors have had at him. And he likes it; and has ordained a decree that whosoever will array himself in such a proper costume shall thenceforth be privileged to stand upright in the royal presence. The good old times, when, if the

king should introduce you to his wife, she would come scrambling on all-fours to take your hand, and make you feel as if you were saluting an amiable crocodile, are evidently almost over.

The late first king, of whom, with his queen, the engraver has given a striking portrait, was for many years a priest,-not so much because his disposition for a life of pious contemplation made him choose that life, but rather because a considerable unpleasantness. between him and his kinsman who had usurp

A YOUNG PRINCE ROYAL.

ed the throne made it safe for him to find asylum in the monastery. In his retirement, however, he made good use of his long opportunity for study; he became an accomplished scholar, not only in the sacred literature of his order, but, through the instruction of the missionaries, in the Western languages and sciences, to some extent. When the death of the usurper brought him from the priesthood to the throne of the first king, and his younger brother (whose tastes were even more practically and experimentally scientific than his own) to the dignity of second king, a new order was at once inaugurated in the realm. It was in the reign of these kings that the treaties with Great Britain and with the United States were negotiated and the kingdom thrown open to the commerce and exploration of the West.

The two present kings are children of the last two. The sovereign, who had lost so many years of royalty in the monastery, after he laid off his orange-colored scarf for the purple and jewels of the throne begat sons and daughters. He was a learned and able and greatly married man. The interesting group of little ones, who with difficulty crowded within the focus of the camera for their photograph, are a few of his children. They are in their ordinary costume: how they may appear when they are prepared for state occasions may be seen from the young prince, with clothing embroidered with gems, and with the golden crown on his uncomfortable little head, as the engraving shows him.

It is the present first king who has made

THE REIGNING FIRST KING.

THE REIGNING SECOND KING (GEORGE WASHINGTON).

He was

illustrious his administration by the abolition of slavery in his realm, and by the public works of great magnitude which he has undertaken. His cousin, the second king, is the son of that agreeable gentleman, the late second king, the friend of foreigners, in whose palace an English or American visitor could find a generous and refined hospitality, and a degree of intelligence and culture to which kings' houses, even in Christian countries, have not always been accustomed. fond of waiving ceremony and inviting guests to visit him in a friendly and familiar way; would give you tea and coffee for your lunch, and ask you, in the conventional fashion, whether you would take cream and sugar; would chat with you (if you knew enough to keep up your end of the conversation) about the latest improvements in firearms or the most recent scientific discovery; or would discuss with you the comparative merits of the dictionaries (with a strong preference for Webster), or the literary characteristics of Sir Walter Scott. He died lamented by a multitude of friends in his own land and in foreign countries, to whom he had endeared himself by his enlightened and generous spirit. His brother, the first king, followed him not long after, in some sense a martyr to science; the fever which carried him off having been contracted in the jungle of the peninsula of Malacca, to which place (within the limits of his own kingdom) he had gone with a large retinue for the astronomical study of the great solar eclipse. The present second king bears the name George Washington, by the bestowal of which his father wished to testify his admi

ration for the great character of the American patriot.

The splendor of the court ceremonial which is observed on state occasions is in a high degree imposing. There are temples with great gates of ebony, inlaid with pearl, that are thrown open only once or twice a year when the king comes to visit them. There are corridors of grotesque or stately images; there is the enormous statue of Buddha recumbent, of solid masonry, as long as a church steeple, covered over from head to foot with plates of purest gold; there are the splendid audience halls, in which the architecture of Siam and that of China is combined, with strangely picturesque and still more strangely beautiful results; there are the grand processions of the royal elephants, the royal boats, the royal troops, the actresses and dancers, the purses scattered for the crowd to scramble after; there is the golden canopy under which, in jeweled splendor, stands or sits the king; and, most impressive and extraordinary of all, there

is, or was (until the present king in part abolished it), the absolute prostration of all human beings, in silent and obsequious reve. rence, in the presence of their sovereign. No one was exempt except the foreign visitors, of whom it was required that they should show the same respect and be governed by the same etiquette which was demanded in the country from which they came. But queens and princes, noblemen gray-haired and corpulent, the prime minister and all his counselors, must bow in abject reptile attitude, in servile silence, while the king was present. To be sure, they were at liberty each one to take it out of his subordinates when no one of superior rank was by; and so the various ranks of life were hedged about by their distinctive ceremonies; but, all together, they must grovel when the lord of the whole realm appeared.

Something of the same splendid and ostentatious ceremonial is observed even after the king's majesty has become defunct. When