The news was received with great enthusiasm throughout the country, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had thousands of letters and telegrams of congratulation not only through official sources at home and abroad but from many of Her Majesty’s humblest subjects all over the world. Punch celebrated the event in some verses beginning—
Huzza! we’ve a little Prince at last,
A roaring Royal boy;
And all day long the booming bells
Have rung their peals of joy.
And the little park guns have blazed away,
And made a tremendous noise,
Whilst the air has been filled since eleven o’clock
With the shouts of little boys.
At the moment of his birth the eldest son of the Sovereign became Duke of Cornwall. This dukedom was the first created in England. It was created by King Edward III. by charter, wherein his son, Edward the Black Prince, was declared Duke of Cornwall, to hold to himself and his heirs, Kings of England, and to their first-born sons; and it is in virtue of that charter that the eldest son of the Sovereign is by law acknowledged Duke of Cornwall the instant he is born.