On the 20th of April, Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg was married to Princess Clementine of France, the youngest daughter of Louis Philippe. On the following day, the 21st, the Queen's uncle, the Duke of Sussex, who had long been infirm, and for a little time seriously ailing, died at Kensington Palace, at the age of seventy years. The body lay in state there on the 3rd of May, all persons in decent mourning being admitted to witness the sight. Twenty-five thousand persons availed themselves of the permission. On the following morning, the funeral of the first of the Royal Dukes, who was buried by daylight and not in the royal vault at Windsor, took place. There was a great procession, a mile in length, beginning and ending with detachments of Horse and Foot Guards, their bands playing at intervals the "Dead March in Saul," in acknowledgement of the military rank of the deceased. The hearse, drawn by eight black horses, was preceded and followed by twenty-two mourning-coaches and carriages, each with six horses, and upwards of fifty private carriages, one of these containing Sir Augustus d'Este, the son of the dead Duke and of Lady d'Ameland (Lady Augusta Murray). [Footnote: The Duke of Sussex made a second morganatic marriage, after Lady d'Ameland's death, with Lady Cecilia Buggin, daughter of the second Earl of Arran, and widow of Sir George Buggin. She was created Duchess of Inverness. She survived the Duke of Sussex thirty years.] The Duke of Cambridge acted as chief mourner. The cortege passed along the High Street to Kensal Green Cemetery, where Prince Albert, Prince George of Cambridge, and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whose son was about to become the husband of Princess Augusta of Cambridge, awaited its arrival. The service was read by the Bishop of Norwich in the cemetery chapel, and the coffin was deposited in the vault prepared for it. It was observed of Prince Albert that "he seemed to be more affected than any person at the funeral."
An old face, once very familiar, had passed away: a young life had dawned. In the interval between the Duke of Sussex's death and funeral, five days after the death, on the 24th of April, 1843, a second princess was born. The Queen was soon able to write to King Leopold that the baby was to be called "Alice," an old English name, "Maud," another old English name, and "Mary," because she had been born on the birthday of the Duchess of Gloucester. The godfathers were the Queen's uncle, the King of Hanover, and Prince Albert's brother, by their father's retirement, already Duke of Coburg. The King of Hanover came to England, though, unfortunately, too late to be present at the christening, so that one likes to think of the Princess, whose name is associated with all that is good and kind, as having served from the first in the light of a messenger of peace to heal old feuds. The godmothers were the Princess of Hohenlohe and Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester.
In the illustration Princess Alice is given as she represented "Spring" in the family mask in 1854.
On the 18th of May, 1843, the prolonged contest between the civil and ecclesiastical courts in Scotland reached its climax—in many respects striking and noble, though it may be also one-sided, high-handed, and erring. The chief civil law-court in Scotland—the Court of Session—had overruled the decisions of the chief spiritual court—the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland—and installed, by the help of soldiers, in the parishes, which patronage had presented to them, two ministers, disliked by their respective congregations, and resolutely rejected by them, though neither for moral delinquencies nor heretical opinions. The Government, after a vain attempt to heal the breach and reconcile the contending parties, not only declined to interfere, but asserted the authority of the law of the land over a State church.
Once more the representatives of the Scotch clergy and laity, of all shades of opinion, met, as their forefathers had done for centuries, in the Assembly Hall, in Edinburgh, in the month of May. Then, after the usual introductory ceremonies, the moderator, or chairman, delivered a solemn protest against the State's interference with the spiritual rights of the Church, declared that the sovereignty of its Divine Head was invaded, and, in the name of himself and his brethren, rejected, a union which compelled submission to the civil law on what a considerable proportion of the population persisted in regarding as purely spiritual questions. Four hundred and seventy ministers of one of the poorest churches in Christendom had appended their names to the protest. Churches, manses, livings were laid down, the mass following their leaders. Among them, though many a good and gifted man remained with equal conscientiousness behind, there were men of remarkable ability as well as Christian worth; and there was one, Dr. Chalmers, with a world-wide reputation for genius, eloquence, and splendid benevolence. The band formed themselves into a procession of black-coated soldiers of a King—not of this world—marched along the crowded streets of Edinburgh, hailed and cheered by an enthusiastic multitude, and entering a building temporarily engaged for the purpose, constituted themselves a separate church, and flung themselves on the liberality of their portion of the people, on whom they were thenceforth entirely dependent for maintenance. And their people, who, with their compatriots, are regarded among the nations as notably close-fisted and hard-headed, responded generously, lavishly, to the impassioned appeal. All Scotland was rent and convulsed then, and for years before and after, by the great split in what lay very near its heart—its church principles and government. These things were not done in a corner, and could not fail to arouse the interest of the Queen and Prince, whatever verdict their judgment might pronounce on the dispute, or however they might range themselves on the constitutional side of the question, as it was interpreted by their political advisers—indeed, by the first statesmen, Whig or Tory, of the day.
Six years later, Sir Edwin Landseer painted the picture called "The Free
Kirk," which became the property of her Majesty.
The Royal Commission on the Fine Arts, at the head of which was Prince Albert, in view of the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament, had an exhibition of prize cartoons in Westminster Hall during the summer of 1843. Great expectations were entertained of the effect of such patronage on painting in its higher branches. Many careful investigations were made into the best processes of fresco painting, of which the Prince had a high opinion, and this mode of decoration was ultimately adopted, unfortunately, as it proved, for in spite of every precaution, and the greatest care on the part of the painters—some of whom, like Dyce, were learned in this direction, while others went to Italy to acquire the necessary knowledge—the result has been to show the perishable nature of the means used, in this climate at least, since the pictures on the walls of the Houses of Parliament have become but dim, fast-fading shadows of the original representations. In the early days of the movement the Prince, in order the better to test and encourage a new development of art in this country, gave orders for a series of fresco paintings from Milton's "Comus," in eight lunettes, to decorate a pavilion in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Among the painters employed were Landseer, Maclise, Leslie, Uwins, Dyce, Stanfield, &c. &c. Two of them—Leslie and Uwins—record the lively interest which the Queen and the Prince took in the painting of the pavilion, how they would come unannounced and without attendants twice a day, when the Court was at Buckingham Palace, and watch the painters at work. Uwins wrote, that in many things the Queen and her husband were an example to the age. "They have breakfasted, heard morning prayers with the household in the private chapel, and are out some distance from the Palace, talking to us in the summer-house, before half-past nine o'clock—sometimes earlier. After the public duties of the day, and before the dinner, they come out again, evidently delighted to get away from the bustle of the world to enjoy each other's society in the solitude of the garden…. Here, too, the royal children are brought out by the nurses, and the whole arrangement seems like real domestic pleasure."
The square of the Palace, with a park on either hand, and its main entrance fronting the Mall, has green gardens of its own, velvet turf, shady trees, shining water—now expanding into a great round pond, like that in Kensington Gardens, only larger—now narrowing till it is crossed by a rustic bridge. These cheat the eye and the fancy into the belief that the dwellers in the Palace have got rid of the town, and furnish pleasant paths and pretty effects of landscape gardening within a limited space.
But the Palace has a public as well as a private side. The former looks out on the parks and drives, which belong to all the world, and in the season are crowded with company.
The great white marble staircase leads to many a stately corridor, with kings and queens looking down from the walls, to many a magnificent room with domed and richly fretted roofs, ball-room with a raised dais for court company, and a spot where royal quadrilles are danced, banqueting-room, music-room, white, crimson, blue, and green drawing-rooms, crimson and gold throne-room. There are finely-wrought white marble chimney-pieces with boldly-carved heads, angelic figures, and dragons in full relief. There are polished pillars of purple-blue, and red scagliola, hugs china vases—oriental, Dresden, unpolished Sevres—and glittering timepieces of every shape and device.