[Mr. Fairbairn having presented the Address of the Executive Committee,
His Royal Highness returned the following reply—]
Gentlemen of the Executive Committee,—
I thank you most sincerely for your kind address.
The expressions of loyalty and attachment to the Queen which it conveys will, I feel certain, be most gratifying to her.
I have with pleasure accepted your invitation to preside at the inaugural ceremony of an undertaking which I have watched with the deepest interest from its first conception; and I may now be allowed to congratulate you upon the success which has so far crowned your labours.
The building in which we are assembled, and the wonderful collection of those treasures of art, as you so justly term them, which it displays, reflect the highest credit upon you. They must strike the beholder with grateful admiration, not only of the wealth and spirit of enterprise of this country, but also of that generous feeling of mutual confidence and goodwill between the different classes of society within it, of which it affords so gratifying a proof.
We behold a feast which the rich, and they who have, set before those to whom fortune has denied the higher luxuries of life—bringing forth from the innermost recesses of their private dwellings, and intrusting to your care, their choicest and most cherished treasures, in order to gratify the nation at large: and this, too, unhesitatingly, at your mere request, satisfied that your plans were disinterested and well matured, and that they had the good of the country for their object.
This is a gratifying sight, and blessed is the country in which it is witnessed. But not less so is the fact which has shown itself in this as in other instances, that the great and noble of the land look to their Sovereign to head and lead them in such patriotic undertakings; and when they see that the Sovereign has come forward to give her countenance and assistance to the work, that they feel it a pleasure to co-operate with her and not to leave her without their support—emulating thus, in works of peace, the chivalric spirit which animated their forefathers in the warlike times of old.
You have done well not to aim at a mere accumulation of works of art and objects of general interest, but to give to your collection, by a scientific and historical arrangement, an educational character,—thus not losing the opportunity of teaching the mind, as well as gratifying the senses. And manifold are the lessons which it will present to us! If art is the purest expression of the state of mental and religious culture, and of general civilization, of any age or people, an historical and chronological review given at one glance cannot fail to impress us with a just appreciation of the peculiar characteristics of the different periods and countries the works of which are here exhibited to us, and of the influence which they have exercised upon each other.