WHAT ENGLAND OWES TO PRINCE ALBERT.
The Prince’s Study of our Laws and Constitution—Two Misconceptions Outlived—His Versatility—First Speech an Anti-Slavery One—His Appreciation and Judicious Criticism of Art—Scientific Side of his Mind—As an Agriculturist.
It will not be undesirable at this stage of our narrative to interpose a summary compendium of some indications of the manner in which Prince Albert, or the “Prince Consort,” as he was designated by Royal Letters Patent, after 1857, discharged the high, onerous, and important duties to which his position called him. If the conduct and career of a husband be an integral and large part of a woman’s life, it is tenfold more so in the case of a woman who is also a queen, and especially a queen-regnant in and by her own right. The large and enlarging breadth of mind which the Prince soon began to display; the abundant tenderness of heart, which found at once indication and exercise in the admirable and diverse modes in which he advanced all agencies of public utility and associated benevolence; the excellent mode in which, equally as a father and a husband, he evinced the warm glow of domestic virtue which animated his bosom, and the absolute and much-wanted scientific and artistic lessons which he taught more than any other man, during his life in England, to the somewhat uncouth people of whom he became a part—all these, and other elements of character and conduct, indirectly increased the growing esteem in which the Queen was held, on her own merits, by her people; for we might have had to look forward to a different national future, so far as a national future can be moulded in the sense of either making or marring, had the “father of our future kings” been other and lesser than what he was. Such a man as the Prince Consort must necessarily have wielded a very large and weighty influence upon the character of the royal lady whom he married. The history of her life, therefore, even if it were traced within narrower limits than those within whose compression our task must be discharged, would be insufficiently delineated without the introduction of such episodical but most relevant matter as that to which this chapter is briefly dedicated.
Almost the first task which the Prince Consort undertook when he came amongst us was to set himself to an assiduous study of our laws and institutions. He secured the services of a most competent instructor in themes so important to one who stood so near the throne, in the person of the late Mr. William Selwyn, Q.C. Mr. Selwyn was a sound jurist, and under his guidance the Prince read such works as Blackstone, De Lolme, Hallam, Bentham, and Mill. He proved himself an apt student, for he had the capacity for study eminently developed; and, besides, his position was one of singular difficulty and delicacy. He stood so near to the throne, amongst a people, too, traditionally jealous of aliens, and especially of aliens in high places, that any utterance he might be called upon to make would be considered as almost, if not quite, emanating from the throne itself. Although a certain cabinet intrigue, and one rare expression of his own—not so much unguarded in itself, as wanting in explicitness, and capable of a certain misconstruction—did, on two several occasions, provoke in certain quarters something approaching to national disfavour, he soon outlived the misconception; and the universal sentiment of the people came round to the conviction that the Prince was faithful and loyal to the constitution to which he had sworn fidelity; nay more, that he had fairly caught, apprehended, and absorbed into his being the very genius and spirit of the English race.
PRINCE ALBERT S FIRST SPEECH.
The first speech the Prince made in England was at an anti-slavery meeting; the last at the opening of an international statistical congress. The former was delivered during the first summer of his married life. It is so brief, and it gives, as it were, so thoroughly the key-note of his character, that our readers will thank us for giving it entire:—
I have been induced to preside at the meeting of this society from a conviction of its paramount importance to the great interests of humanity and justice. I deeply regret that the benevolent and persevering exertions of England to abolish that atrocious traffic in human beings (at once the desolation of Africa and the blackest stain upon civilised Europe) have not as yet led to any satisfactory conclusion. But I sincerely trust that this great country will not relax in its efforts until it has finally, and for ever, put an end to a state of things so repugnant to the spirit of Christianity and the best feelings of our nature. Let us, therefore, trust that Providence will prosper our exertions in so holy a cause, and that (under the auspices of our Queen and her Government) we may, at no distant period, be rewarded by the accomplishment of the great and humane object for the promotion of which we have this day met.
We have already remarked the wide range of Prince Albert’s endeavours, study, devotion, and consequent usefulness. He presided at dinners of the Literary Fund, and of the Royal Academy; at the Trinity House most frequently, and at many agricultural meetings. Two of the best and most pregnant with good of his addresses, were delivered at the meetings of associations designed respectively for the better housing of labourers, and in behalf of the large and sorely tempted class of domestic servants. Now he presided at the Bicentenary of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy; again at the two hundredth anniversary of one of our most illustrious regiments of Foot Guards. On art, as all were prepared to expect, he delivered ripe words of wisdom at the Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square, and in laying the foundation in the capital of his wife’s Stuart ancestors of a new National Gallery for her Scottish subjects. Against the expectation, and to the loudly expressed surprise of all, save those who knew him thoroughly, he made a most admirable survey of the sciences and their uses, at one of the last meetings held ere his death, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Of art he was a judicious critic, as well as a munificent patron. It was at his special wish and option that the savant Lyon Playfair was made one of his Equerries; and that a residence in Hampton Court Palace was put at the disposal of Michael Faraday.
How much of mingled love for art and artists, and at the same time of criticism most kindly and sagacious, is to be found in these brief sentences, extracted from his great speech at the Royal Academy dinner:—
An unkind word of criticism passes like a cold blast over their tender shoots, and shrivels them up, checking the flow of the sap, which was rising to produce, perhaps, multitudes of flowers and fruits. But still criticism is absolutely necessary to the development of art, and the injudicious praise of an inferior work becomes an insult to superior genius. In this respect, our times are peculiarly favourable when compared with those when Madonnas were painted in the seclusion of convents; for we have now on the one hand the eager competition of a vast array of artists of every degree of talent and skill, and on the other, as judge, a great public, for the greater part wholly uneducated in art, and thus led by professional writers who often strive to impress the public with a great idea of their own artistic knowledge, by the merciless manner in which they treat works which cost those who produced them the highest efforts of mind or feeling.