THE COURT.
The incidents of the year affecting royalty were few. On the 27th of August her majesty, consort, and several of the royal children, left the marine residence at Osborne, Isle of Wight, for Balmoral, in the Scottish Highlands. The royal progress was marked by the usual manifestations of loyalty. On the 7th of October the court left Balmoral. Two accidents occurred on the railway to the train in which her majesty travelled; the first on the journey to Edinburgh, when, after leaving Forfar, the axle of a carriage-truck became heated by friction, and some delay occurred, which caused alarm at Edinburgh. It gratified the inhabitants of the Scottish capital that her majesty and suite took up their brief abode at Holyrood Palace. Between Glasgow and Edinburgh, while the train was driven at the rate of thirty miles an hour, one of the feeding pipes from the tender to the engine burst with a loud explosion; the train was obscured in steam, and came to a stand at Kirkliston, where it was obliged to remain until assistance arrived from Edinburgh. During these accidents the composure and courage of the queen struck all observers with astonishment. It had been arranged that Liverpool should be visited by the royal travellers; and a magnificent reception was prepared for them. Her majesty was not, however, favoured upon the occasion with that beautiful weather which generally smiles upon her voyages, journeys and public appearances in her great cities. One of the most gloomy and rainy days ever known at Liverpool frowned upon the loyal efforts of its inhabitants. This did not repress their enthusiasm. A vast concourse filled the streets, and made the most hearty demonstrations of welcome to their queen. From Liverpool the court proceeded to Worsley Hall, the mansion of the Earl of Ellesmere. This was probably, the most remarkable of all her majesty’s previous journeys. The queen and suite embarked at Liverpool, in barges, and proceeded by the Bridgewater Canal to Worsley. While at Worsley, only a few miles from Manchester, her majesty paid a visit to that great city. On no occasion, even in the metropolis, was so vast a multitude of persons collected to see the queen; and, probably, on no occasion was she ever welcomed in a provincial city with so prodigal an expenditure and splendid a display of loyalty. Manchester and Salford were both traversed in their great principal thoroughfares by the royal procession, attended with military pomp, and many persons of very great eminence in the nation were in her suite. The profuse expenditure, displayed in flags and decorations, attracted the notice of the royal lady so much, that she expressed her regret that the citizens of Manchester should have gone to so great an expense on her account. A large public pleasure-ground in Salford, set apart by public subscriptions for the recreation of the people, and designated Peel Park, in honour of the free-trade champion, lay in the route taken by the royal cortège. In that park one of the most extraordinary fights was presented to her majesty ever witnessed by a monarch—eighty thousand Sunday-school children, of all religious denominations, were assembled to see their queen. The bringing together of such a mass of young persons, and the arrangements for placing them in a proper position to see and to be seen, was a work of anxiety and toil of which those only can form a conception who took part in it. Much of the credit of the occasion was due to the late Robert Needham, Esq., solicitor, of Manchester, who, with extraordinary toil, from the effects of which he never recovered, arranged and carried out the vast work. The writer of this history was present on the occasion, and can never forget the spectacle, which partook of the sublime and the affecting. Together with the vast host of children, dressed in holiday array, and with the fair and open countenances for which the children of Saxon Lancashire are remarkable, there were their teachers and ministers, and in the rear a vast multitude consisting of the parents and friends of these children, and of the religious congregations whose zeal and liberality provided instruction for their juvenile charge. There were fourteen tiers of galleries around the chief carriage-way of the park. These tiers were so arranged that the cortège, passing along the road, could see at once the whole array, and the children from every tier see the queen and her attendants. As her majesty entered the park, the whole host raised their voices and began the national anthem. For a few moments the effect was sublime; it was, however, only during the first verse. The boys of the Irish Roman Catholic schools burst the limitations of their orders, and of their positions, and raised a tumultuous shout, which was caught up in an instant by the other children, and almost as soon by the vast multitudes who filled the park. The author of these pages has witnessed many public entries of royal persons into great cities, and many, especially, in the great metropolis of these islands, but never were sounds or scenes presented to his senses so imposing and inspiring as on that occasion. The queen was evidently much affected, and the great Duke of Wellington, who was in her suite, and was an object of nearly as hearty demonstrations as even her majesty, showed emotion, and was heard to say that he had never witnessed so interesting a scene. The young members of the royal household were naturally objects of intense interest to the multitude of children, and they, by their greetings and eager expression of countenance, showed how much they felt the excitement which such a multitude of young persons was calculated to inspire in princes and princesses of their own age. Probably, when many more years have run their course, and some of these royal children shall sit on thrones, they will remember a lesson profitable to royalty—the loyal spirit of the juvenile population of Manchester, and of all that population, in the year 1851. Doubtless the same virtues which, on the part of their royal parents, commanded respect and affection, will characterise those scions of the royal house of England, who already tread with early, but no uncertain step, the path of honour and goodness in which their queenly exemplar and teacher has conducted them. The great Manchester demonstration was followed by illuminations so general and so costly that her majesty and her suite were represented as taking an interest in them, such as pyrotechnical displays did not usually excite. From Worsley the queen and a portion of her suite proceeded to Windsor.
On the 18th of November the court received, by electric telegraph, intelligence of the death of the King of Hanover, her majesty’s uncle, in the 81st year of his age. He had never been regarded as kind to her majesty when Princess Victoria; and had been by far the most unpopular prince in the family of George III. A considerable party among the Tories, both in England and Ireland, gave rather open expression to their desire that the Duke of Cumberland (King of Hanover), rather than the rightful claimant, the Princess Victoria, should come to the throne on the decease of William IV. Great indignation was excited at the time by the supposed existence of a conspiracy to effect this object, for the success of which there could have been no hope, so thorough was the detestation of the people to the Duke of Cumberland, and so generous their recollections of the Duke of Kent, and their feeling to his only child—their rightful sovereign. Whatever might have been the feeling of her majesty on these matters, she commanded the court to go into mourning upon her uncle’s decease.