PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE.
The zeal which Albert, Prince Consort, evinced in furthering good works,—his sympathy with the wants of the poor, their bodily health and comfort, and their intellectual and moral culture,—will long endear his memory to the grateful people of the country of his adoption.
It was a characteristic of his genius that he would never consent to take the lead in any movement until he had, as far as possible, satisfied himself of its proper object and practicability. That he fully understood and appreciated the requirements of the age, is evident from the following passage in one of his manly Addresses:
“Whilst formerly the greatest mental energies strove at universal knowledge, and that knowledge was confined to the few, now they are directed on specialities, and in these again even to the minutest points; but the knowledge acquired becomes at once the property of the community at large; for, whilst formerly discovery was wrapped in secrecy, the publicity of the present day causes, that no sooner is a discovery or invention made, than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts. The products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our disposal, and we have only to choose which is the best and the cheapest for our purposes, and the powers of production are intrusted to the stimulus of competition and capital. So man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and sacred mission which he has to perform in this world. His reason being created after the image of God, he has to use it to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs His creation, and, by making these laws his standard of action, to conquer nature to his use; himself a Divine instrument. Science discovers these laws of power, motion, and transformation; industry applies them to the raw matter, which the earth yields us in abundance, but which become valuable only by knowledge. Art teaches us the immutable laws of beauty and symmetry, and gives to our productions forms in accordance to them.” Again: “To the human mind nothing is so fascinating as progress. It is not what we have long had that we most prize. We highly prize new accessions; but we enjoy almost unconsciously gifts, of far more value, we have long been in possession of. This is our nature; thus we are constituted. It is not surprising, therefore, that we should have a peculiar relish for new discoveries. The interest of discovery, however, is not permanent. For a time we are dazzled by its brilliancy; but gradually the impression fades away, and at last is lost entirely in the splendour of some fresh discovery which carries with it the charm of novelty. When we reflect upon this, we cannot help perceiving in how very different a state the world would be from what it is if mankind in the beginning had been in the possession of all the knowledge we now have, and there had been no progress ever since.”
There is no royal death within memory of the present generation which has caused such grave and regretful reflection as the sudden manner in which the Prince Consort was taken from our beloved Sovereign and her family, at the close of the year 1861. The nearest approach to the public sorrow upon this melancholy occasion was the universal sympathy expressed on the loss of the Princess Charlotte, in 1817, when the mother and offspring were at once swept by the hand of death into the same grave! Put widespread as was the lamentation of the people for their hopes being thus crushed, it differed in this respect from the sorrow for the Prince Consort,—that in the one case expectation was blighted, but in the other realisation was extinguished when the fruits of superior intelligence were fast ripening into the maturity of true greatness.
Since the death of the Prince the country has learned the full extent of its loss by this sad event. Yet it was plainly asserted in the Leader newspaper, ten years ago, that the Prince was “becoming the most popular man in England;” and the reader was assured that the above paper was written to put the Prince’s “position and his services in the point of view in which we may comprehend him, and be grateful to him.” This statement was unheeded at the time it was made; but, in the year following, other journalists had discovered that the Prince had some voice in English foreign policy,—a charge which was admitted to be true by Ministers in Parliament. Public attention was then turned in an entirely different direction, and the Prince resumed his powerful popular position. Yet his weighty influence, as we have said, was not fully made known until recently. We have seen but one acknowledgment of the service of the well-informed and far-seeing writer in the Leader, and to this was not attached his name. We therefore add, in justice to the memory of a man of rare talent, and the right spirit of independence, which is the best characteristic of a public journalist, that the writer in question was the late Mr. E. M. Whitty, who reprinted the above in The Governing Classes of Great Britain.