BRITAIN’S NEW KING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CV, Issue 12409, 24 January 1901, Page 3

BRITAIN’S NEW KING.

YOUTH AND EDUCATION.

Lord Mayor’s Day has brought with it many messages of high political import to the British people; but perhaps the most momentous of all these was the announcement, on this day of the year 1841, that Queen Victoria had given birth to her first son. At fhe Guildhall banquet that night the health of the Queen was drunk with a fervency which had never been felt before, seeing that she had; presented the nation with an heir male to the crown, and great was the jubilation all over the Empire. “Isit a boy?” asked the Duke of Wellington, who, as one of the great officers of State, had been waiting for the expected birth at Buckingham Palace. It s a Prince, your Grace,” replied the nurse, with an implied reprimand in her exultant tone, though, as a matter of fact, this was only as yet a courtesy title. It was more than three weeks before that of Prince of Wales, which is not an hereditary title, was conferred by royal patent on the baby who had been born into the world, as Duke of Cornwall with a silver spoon, so to speak, in his mouth, in the form of a right to an annual revenue of £60,000 a year from the Delectable Duchy. In circumstances of great ceremony the King of Prussia being chief sponsor—the Prince was christened in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on, Jan. 25, the birthday of Robert Burns, in compliment—accidental, no doubt—to the nation from which he had derived three of his other titles as Dukes of Rothesay, Earl of Garrick, Baron Renfrew, Great Steward of Scotland, and Lord of the Isles.

But, though the owner of many titles, the Prince, unlike most royalties, was made the bearertof only two names, Albert Edward —one derived from, his father - , and the other from his grandfather, the Duke of Kent. Soon after the birth of her second child (the Princess Royal had been her first) the Queen had written to her uncle, the King of the Belgians: “ I wonder very much who my little hoy will he like. You will understand how fervent are my prayers, and I am sure everybody’s must he, to see him resemble his father, both in body and mind.” EARLY DAYS. It soon became clear that, in the former respect, the Prince bore a very strong resemblance to his handsome father; while it was the anxious aim of his royal parents to give him such a training as should also extend! this similitude to his qualities of mind and heart. It is probable that no royal prince was ever educated with greater care than was the heir to the sceptre of the British Empire. It boded well for the future character of this royal heir that, when a year old, though plagued a little with his teeth, he stood “ strong upon his legs,” to quote his father’s own words, “ with a calm, clear, bright expression of

face.” He was, in fact, a very fine, healthy, affectionate child, possessing in a high degree the mens sana corpora sano. His childhood was passed in a state of the utmdst simplicity, nay, almost severity, tempered by the exercise of those domestic affections which have never found higher expression than they did in the family circle of the Queen, who was at once the pattern of a wife.and the perfection of,a mother. In fact, no man ever had a better example of every personal virtue and every family grace than was set the Prince of Wales by his parents. The first governess of the royal children was Lady Lyttleton (a sister of Mrs Gladstone), who had been Lady in Waiting i to the Queen; and she it was who had the mental and moral training of “ Bertie ’’—the pet family name for the Prince —until he was seven years old; though indeed the Queen herself—who had laid it down that, without interruption to the lessons, “they should be as much as possible with their parents” —was wont to hear her children say their prayers at her own knee. THE PRINCE’S TUTORS. Who should now educate the Prince of Wales was the momentous question which had already been discussed in a pamphlet; and after much anxious communion with themselves, and taking counsel of many others,, including the sagacious Baron Stockmar, the Royal parents • decided to act on the advice of the latter, who urged that the Prince’s education should be “truly moral and truly English,” while in sympathy with the spirit and changes of the time. “The Prince,” wrote Stockmar, “ should early be taught that thrones and social order have a stable foundation in the moral and intellectual faculties of man'; that by addressing his public exertions to the cultivation of these powers in his people, and by taking their dictates as the constant guides of his own conduct, he will promote the- solidity of his empire and the prosperity of his sub- ! jects.” In one word, it was decided to give the future monarch of England such a mental and moral training as should make him a model of a constitutional sovereign, true to the Christian religion yet in sympathy with all the various social, scientific and political movements of his time. The responsibility of forming such a character in “Bertie” first fell on Mr Henry Birch, an assistant master of Eton, who had' been captain of that school and had taken high honours at Cambridge; aud when, four years later.

Mr Birch gave place to Air Gibbs, Lady Canning -wrote from Windsor; “It has been a terrible sorrow to the Prince of Wales, who has done no end of touching things since he heard, three weeks ago, that he' was to lose him. He is such an affectionate, dear little boy; his notes and presents, which Mr Birch used to find on his pillow, were really too moving.” In fact, all the known incidents of the Prince’s infancy and boyhood pointed to his possession of a t thorougnly good, warm, and affectionate heart. Neither from Mr Birch, Ids first tutor, nor from Mr Gibbs, his second (who remained with him till 1858, when the Prince was in his seventeenth year) have we 'any testimony as to the manner in which he comported himself in his studios; but at anyrate we have it on the authority of Ms father that, at his examination by the Archbishop of Canterbury, lasting an hour, prior to Ms confirmation, “ Bertie acquitted himself extremely well.” “The Prince,” wrote his mother, “ bad -a very strong feeling about the solemnity of this act.” MANHOOD. On his next birthday, when he attained at once the age of eighteen and his legal j majority, the Queen wrote the Prince a let- j ter, announcing to him his emancipation j from parental authoritj' and control. “ She ! tells him',” wrote Mi’ Grevills, the distin- | guishedl diarist of the Victorian era, “ that he may have thought the rule they adopted for his education a very severe on®, but that Ms welfare was their only object; and well knowing to what seductions of flattery he would eventually be exposed, they wished to prepare and strengthen his mind against them; that he was now to consider himself his own master, and that they should ■ never intrude any advice upon him, although j always ready to give it him whenever he thought fit to ask it. It was a very long | letter, all in that tone; and it seems to j have made a profound impression on the j Prince, and to have touched his feelings ! to the quick. He brought it to Gerald Wei- i lesley in floods of tears, and the effect it j produced is a proof of the wisdom which dictated its composition.” j As a tangible proof of the Prince’s, email- | cipation from parental control, he was now assigned as a private residence the White j Lodge in Richmond Park, ■“ so as to bo \

HIS CAREER AS PRINCE OF WALES. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. (By C. LOWE, M.A.)

away from the world,” wrote his father, “ and devote himself exclusively to study, and prepare for a military examination. As companions for him we have appointed three very distinguished young men, of from twenty-three to twenty-six years of age, who are to occupy in monthly rotation a kind of equerry’s place about him, and from whose more intimate intercourse I anticipate no small benefit to Bertie” —the said distinguished young men being Lord VaUetoot, eldest son of Lord Mount Edgecumbe, a kind of moral Admiral Crichton; Major Teesdalei, a hero of Kars; and Major (Lloyd) Lindsay, a Crimean hero with a Victoria Cross. TRAVEL.

But the Prince had also been brought to this stage of his development by methods of education other than those of mere books and tutors; for by the time he had reached his eighteenth year, he had also seen a good deal of the world—in its external aspects at least; and what so effectual as travel and variety of scene for opening and expanding the mind? He had been repeatedly to Balmoral, where he had struck Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, as “ a pleasing lively boy,” and thus learned to love the scenery of Scotland; he had been taken by his parents to various other parts of the : United Kingdom, and accompanied them to Ireland on the occasion of the Queen’s , first visit to the “ distressful country ” when the Cove of Cork, where she landed, was re-named Queenstown. The enthusiastic ret ception .accorded to his Royal mother by the ' people of Ireland made a deep impression ■ on the susceptible mind of the Prince of Wales, who then conceived towards the : Irish a warm attachment, which subsequent visits only served to intensify. FIRST PUBLIC DUTIES, j Having thus, as Earl of Dublin (for that I is also one of his. titles), shown himself to | and been cheered to the echo by the warm- | hearted Irish, the Prince, soon thereafter . iri the same year (1849), may be said to ! have made Ms first official bow to the Engi lish people by figuring with his eldest sisI ter, the Princess Royal, at the rid© of his I father at the opening of the new London I Coal Exchange. 11l herself with the chic-ken-pox, the Queen had deputed her eight-year-old son and heir to represent her at the ceremony, -which, was a very grand affair. The royal party went to the city from Westminister by water in the. ancient manner, the royal barge being rowed by six and twenty watermen. All London bad j turned out to see and acclaim the little j Prince and his pretty sister, who, said Lady | Lyttelton, “ behaved very well, civilly and j nicely.” A speech was made by some pomi pous, periwig-pated city magnate, who addressed the little Prince as the pledge and promise of a long race of kings, so that it was no wonder “ that poor Princey did nob seem to guess at all what he meant.” “ A yellowhaired laddie, very like his mother, with' a good deal of fun in Mm ” —was another lady eye-witness’s opinion of,the Prince on Ms first appearance of Ms at a public function in England. Bub Ms next was to be a much greater and grander one—no less than the opening of the Crystal l Palace Exhibition, in Hyde Park, which had been the work of Ms father. Nothing in all the. Queen’s journal

is so fine - —-bearing witness, as it does, of having come straight from the, heart—as her Majesty’s description of this epochmarking ceremony, when “ Albert led me in; having, Vicky in. Ms hand, and Bertie holding mine.” It had been hoped of this event—perhaps the Prince himself had been encouraged by Ms father to share the hope —that it would inaugurate a lasting era of peace and goodwill among the nations. But about three years later the youthful HenApparent was destined to receive a rude awakening from any dreams of this kind in which he may have been taught to indulge when, standing on the throne for the first time beside Ms parents —not ini the House of Lords, as has been erroneously stated! by a recent writer, but at Windsor Castle —he listened to the addresses of both Houses of Parliament, in reply to the Queen’s message announcing the outbreak of hostilities between England and Russia. Within three short years the Prince had witnessed the opening of a inillemal Exhibition and the outbreak of the Crimean War—a stem lesson to Mm of the mutability of all human affairs. In the course of this war the boy Prince took the liveliest interest, and accompanied his parents to Chatham to visit some of the wounded from the East; while to the

patriotic fund for those wounded! he contributed; a which fetched 55gs. IN PARIS. Further experience of a different kind was in store for him when he and his eldest sister were taken to Paris with their parents, in the month preceding the fall : of Sebastopol, to return the visit of the Emperor and Empress of the French of the previous year. Queen. Victoria had been the first English sovereign to enter Paris since the time, of Henry VI., while the name of the Prince of Wales had been more or less a familiar sound to the people of France from the days of Grecy—where the Black Prince added to his arms the ostrich-feather crest and motto, “ Ich Dien,” now so well known to us—and of Poictiers, where he had taken a French King and led him in captive bond's to London. But it was in very different circumstances that our present Prince of Wales first made his entry into Paris, whereof, as a boy of fourteen, he was smitten with a love that has never left him. it was a gay and even a grand time—was this eight days’ visit, which made a very deep impression on the Prince’s mind. “You will be pleased to hear,” wrote the Prince Consort to Stockmaf, “how well both the children behaved. They have made themselves general favourites, especially the Prince of Wales, qui est si genital.” And ' again to the Duchess of Kent: “ I am bound to praise the children greatly. They behaved extremely well and pleased every - body. The task was no easy one for them, but they discharged it without embarrassment, and with natural simplicity.” The Prince returned home with a liking for the French Emperor so strong as to make him remain leal and true to the Man of Destiny in the days, of his adversity and fatal illness after the debacle of''Sedan. Walking tours in the West of England 1 and Ireland filled up the intervals between the Prince’s Studies, while he also spent a holiday—always with a Governor and carefully selected companions—at Kosiigswinter on the Rhine. Among those who ministered to his instruction was that perfervid and high-minded patriot, Charles Kingsley, the author of “Westward Hod” who, by the Queen’s special desire, delivered a course of lectures on English History to the Heir Apparent. On has eighteenth birthday, after his confirmation, his emanicipation from parental control, and the assignment to him of the White Lodge in Richmond Park as a .private residence, he had received the Garter and the rank of colonel in the army; and at was with these new dignities still fresh upon him that lie started on what used to be called the Grand Tour—an indispensable duty in the old clays for a man of birth and position. He, had got as far as Rome, and visited the Pope, when ho received orders from heme to leave the City of the Seven Hills and repair to Gibraltar, as war was now impending between Austria, on one side, and France and Italy, on the other; and it would never have done for the Heir Apparent to appear to be mixed up with this international strife, just as, ,

mmmM

at home, he had ever been enjoined to hold himself aloof from all political partisanship.

From the Rock he travelled home through Spain and Portugal, and presently found himself installed *in Hoiyrood, the palace of his Scottish ancestors, as a matriculated student of the University "of Edinburgh, where, among other things, he attended the chemistry lectures of Prcfessor Lyon (now Lord) Playfair, in their practical relation to manufactures; while his intellectual studies he relieved by occasionally drilling with the 16th Hussars. “ They all speak highly of him,” wrote the Prince Consort, of his son’s preceptors in the “.grey metropolis of the North,” “and; he seems to have shown zeal and goodwill.” On leaving Edinburgh be was entered at Christ Church, Oxford, where, with equal zeal for Ms studies, he managed to live a more enjoyable life, taking part in, all the “Varsity” sports, and often riding to hounds; and by the time he had completed his pleasurable time on the Isis he was voted “ the most perfect production of Nature.” 1 ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. “ Prom Canada,” wrote the Prince Con-. sort to Stockmar in August, 1860, “we have the best'possible accounts. Bertie is generally pronounced the perfection of nature.” Bub what had taken “Bertie” to Canada? In the character olf a tourist he. had already seen a great part of the Old World, hut it was more than the mere curiosity of an intelligent traveller which prompted Ms departure for the New one. The fact is that now, in his nineteenth year, he had been entrusted! with the first of those missions which have enabled the Prince of Wales to be rightly regarded as a very useful and important part of the macbisjery df the British State —missions, that is to say, which, while ostensibly private and personal in their aim, were at the same time calculated to produce great political impressions and results. The offer of Now South Wales, in 1885, to send a contingent of her loyal sons to. help ns in fighting our Egyptian, battles was by no means the first instance of colonial devotion to old Mother England. During the Crimean, war the Canadians had also, of their own free will and offer, fitted out a regiment for our service in. the Bast, and in return for this favour they had begged that the Queen would visit their Dominion. If had been found as inexpedient to complj with this request as with the alternative demand that her Majesty should appoint one of her sons—-istill all in their teens—'Gover-nor-General of Canada.; but in lieu thereof the Queen had promised that, when the Prince of Wales was old enough, he should be started off on a visit to the Dominion, and the time had mow- coma for the fulfilment of this most gratifying pledge. IN CANADA. ' Under the charge of the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and with an appropriate suite, the Prince embarked on board the frigate Hero which was escorted! by the Ariadne —and) after a very boisterous voyage reached Newfoundland on July 25, 1860. He was received with a tremendous outburst of popular enthusiasm. The Prince’s tour through Canada was one long triumphal procession., and popular enthusiasm reached its climax when, in the name of his Royal mother, he laid the last stone of the great Victoria Railway bridge over the St Lawrence at Montreal. At Kingston and Toronto the Orangemen had tried to get him to pass under the arches adorned with their political symbols and mottoes, but here again the Prince gave it to be distinctly understood that he could not allow Ms name to be associated with party purposes —a policy to which he has ever adhered with) remarkable tenacity and tact. No serious incident seemed to mar the complete success of the Prince s progress, and the only thing in the nature of what might be called a pleasant little contretemps was when, at a ball in Quebec, H.R.H. tripped and fell with his partner — the article recording the accident being headed—“Honi soit qui mal y pens©!” He visited Niagara under the most picturesque conditions, tie Falls being illuminated at night by Bengal lights placed between them and the rock over which they tumble, making them look alternately like a mass of incandescent silver and a seething lurid river of blood. He has repeatedly declared that this was one of the finest sights he ever saw. Next day, in the presence of the Prince and thousands of spectators, Blondiu, the tight-rope artist, walked across the Falls bn stilts with a man on Ms back; but when the famous funambulist offered, to do the same service for the Prince, tie latter shook his head with a smile. AMERICAN RECEPTION OF THE PRINCE. Yet triumphal as had been the Prince’s progress in Canada, it was nothing to the reception which awaited him in America, Whence he now repaired ; and! it was perhaps this aspect of tour which was the most significant. To be welcomed effusively by the subjects of his mother in the Dominion was only natural; but to be frantically acclaimed, by the people of the United States who had emancipated themselves from the rule, or the misrule, of Ms great grandfather, George 111. —was that not a convincing proof, if ever there was one, that blood is thicker than water, and that there is a federation and a solidarity between all the members of the British race stronger than could be effected by treaties and conventions? On first hearing of the Prince’s intended visit to Canada, President Buchanan had written to the Queen offering him a cordial welcome at Washington should he be pleased to extend his visit to the United States, while a similar invitation came from the City of New York. In both cases the replies were affirmative, with the addition that, from the moment of his quitting British soil, the Prince would drop Ms Royal title and state, and simply travel as Baron Renfrew, so as to he able, as a private gentleman-, to employ the small amount of time at Ms disposal in studying the ordinary life of the American people, “in whose extraordinary progress,” as the Prince himself said before leaving Canada, “ every Englishman feels a common interest.”

But the Americans themselves would have none of tMs. As one of their popular writers remarked, a mere “Baron Renfrew” would not do for them'. They were not going “ to he shabbed off by any other title than ‘His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,’ a real up-and-down and out-and-out Prince, of the right stuff, too.—For there is mot a living being more sincerely loved by our .people than his Royal mother,” etc. Though the Prince’s visit was a private one, it presently assumed a public character of the hugest proportions. At Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit and St Louis the crowds wMch pressed to catch a glimpse of him were so vast that he sometimes could not get to his hotel; while one lindividiual remarked that the curiosity to see Mm. could not have been greater “ if the distinguished visitor had been George Washington come, to life again.” “He is decidedly a popular character with us,” said the other writer above quoted, “ and may consider himself a lucky lad if he escapes a nomination for President before h© readies his homewardbound fleet.”

Half a million spectators acclaimed him on his arrival in New York, where he was the guest of the Mayor, andi 5000 of the leading people were invited to meet him at a hall, where the crush was so great that the floor gave way. But the significance of his tour culminated at Washington where the Prince was a. guest of the President, who accompanied him on a visit to the tomb of Washington at Mount Vernon, “There was something,” wrote the “Times” correspondent, “grandly suggestive of historical retribution an the reverential awe of the Prince of Wales, great grandson of George IH., standing hareheaded at the foot of the coffin of Washington. Por a few -moftienta the party stood mute and motionless, and the Prince then proceeded to plant a chestnut by the side of the tomb.; It seemed

when the E<oyal youitiu closed in the earth around the little germ, that he was burying the last faint trace of discord between) us and our brethren in the West.” And yet within little more than a year of this significant event, which was followed by a warm exchange of complimentary letters between, President Buchanan and 1 the Queen, Great Britain and the United States were on the very verge of war. And there is little doubt, moreover, that they would have gone to war but for the fact that our emphatic and somewhat minatory despatch to the Government of Washington as to the federal boarding of the British mail steamer Trent, and the seizure of Messrs Slidell and Mason., the Confederate Envoys to Europe, was toned down in such a judicious manner by the Prince Consort as to respect the sensitiveness of the Washington Government, build it a golden bridge of retreat, and cause it to cheerfully liberate the captured Southern passengers. THE DEATH OP THE PRINCE CONSORT.

This was the Prince Consort’s last, as it was in a sense his greatest, service to the country ofj his adoption; and) within, little more than a year after baring Iris head in historical reverence before the tomb of Washington, the Prince of Wales was standing convulsed with grief at the open grave of his own father, whose illness had been aggravated by a visit to see how his eldest' son was getting on with his studies, which had now been resinned at Cambridge,, varied by vacation exercise with the Ist Grenadier Guards at the Curragh.

ENGAGEMENT AND MARRIAGE When, ih the summer of 1860, the Prince of Wales had landed in Newfoundland, the most frequent expression among the rough but warm-hearted fishermen, who went quite wild with enthusiasm at the sight of him, was, “ God bless his pretty face, and send him a good wife!” This was in the summer of 1860 ; and in the autumn of the following year the fervent wishes ,of these fisher-folk had reached the first stage of their fulfilment. In September, 1861, the Prince, at the invitation of the King of Prussia, went over to .attend the manoeuvres on the Bbine. Bub a desire to study the military art in the best schools was not the primary motive for the Prince’s trip to Germany. Love, more than war, was at the bottom of Ms visit. He had gone forth to look at Prussian soldiers, and found a Danish bride. It has been said that marriages are made in Heaven, and that of the Prince of Wales was practically settled in, a church—which is, perhaps, the next thing to it. This church was the cathedral of the fine old Bhenish city of Spires, where the heir to the English throne, strolling in like any ordinary tourist, met and was introduced to a lovely girl of seventeen, Alexandra, daugh-' ter of the Duke of Holstein, heir-presump-tive to the crown of Denmark.

But the meeting was not altogether of an accidental kind. It was, in fact, in the nature of a pre-arranged experiment. It is said that the Prince had seen a photograph of the Princess Alexandra, and desired 1 to make the acquaintance of the lovely original. At any rate, it had been arranged that he should meet the Princess Alexandra with a view to marriage, should the interview result in mutual attachment; hut, despite every precaution to ensure secrecy, the project got wind, and was discussed in the Press both of the Continent and England, much to the annoyance of the Court, seeing that the situation would have been a very awkward one for the Princess had the proposed meeting chanced somehow to belie its promise. A ROYAL WOOING. But, happily for all, it did nothing of the kind, for it appears to have been love at first sight on both sides; and the interview at Spires was followed next day (Sept. 25) at Heidelberg by another, which took place, if I am not misinformed, in a shop into which the lovely Princess had gone to buy. a pair of gloves. How different, to be sure, was this wooing by our Prince Of Wales, from that of his predecessor, Baby Charles,” when, with Buckingham and others, he repaired to Madrid to sue, but in, vain, for the hand of the Infanta of Spain! “We hear nothing but good accounts of

tie Princess Alexandra,” wrote the Prince Consort (who was to die three-months later), “ and the young people seem to have taken a warm liking for each other.”

The mutual attachment thus formed was but deepened when in September of the following year the princely lovers met at Laeken, the country seat of the King of the Belgians—where the Queen had also stopped on her way to Germany; and her Majesty herself was so favourably impressed with the Princess 'Alexandra that she at once gave her consent to the betrothal, though this was only officially announced two months later, on the eve of the . Prince’s coming of age. The announcement met with, universal and' indeed enthusiastic approval. Apart from the personal and political aspects of the union, which were all that coiftd be desired, it was felt that the marriage would have the effect of dispelling the gloom, which had communicated itself from the Court to the country ever since the death of the Prince Consort, and produced a dull stagnation in certain circles of trade and social life. The House of Commons accurately expressed the feeling of the whole nation when, with scarcely a dissentient voice, it voted the Prince of Wales a yearly income of £40,000, with £IO,OOO for the separate use of the Princess—a sum which, with £60,000 of revenue from the Duchy of Cornwall, a colonel’s pay of £ISOO, and other miscellaneous trifles, enabled the betrothed couple to contemplate the pleasant prospect of. commencing life on an income of considerably over £IIO,OOO a year. Tbe engagement lasted about six months an unusually long period for couples of such exalted station—and the interval was spent in active preparations for the wedding. Among other tilings, the royal bridegroom may be said to have put the finishing touch to the edifice of his rank by taking his seat, in circumstances of great pomp and ceremony, as a peer of the realm in the House of Lords—'the business before it, curiously enough, on that historic occasion, being an address from the Crown announcing the Prince’s approaching marriage. THE COMING OP THE BRIDE AND THE WEDDING. A month later—March 7, 1863—the royal bride —the “ Sea King’s daughter from over tbe sea”—arrived in tbe Thanles, on board the Victoria and Albert, which had been escorted across from Flushing by a British squadron of,warships, and at Gravesend she was greeted with such an outburst of popular enthusiasm as almost shamed the Laureate’s lordly behest to the nation:

“Welcome her, thunders of fort and of fleet! Welcome her, thundering cheer of the street! Welcome her, all things youthful and sweet! 'Scatter the 'blossom under her feet!'’

Three days later—March 10—the royal wedding was celebrated with great splendour in Sfc George’s Chapel, Windsor, this being the first ceremony of the kind which had taken place in that historic fane' —with its “bannered depths of minster gloom" since The time of Henry I. The wedding presents had been gorgeous and. costly beyond all precedent—the diamond necklace offered to the Princess by the city of London alone cost £IO,OOO, —and for bridesmaids the beautiful Princess had eight daughters of Dukes, Marquises and Earls. The storied chapel was on© Sciniilatfeg, blaze of uniforms and jewels, the number of wedding guests being 900 of the highest rank and station in the land. The Queen herself, still in the deepest mourning, took no part in the brilliant ceremony, which she simply watched from the privacy of the royal closet. The Prince of Wales wore a General’s uniform, with the mantle of this Garter and gold collar and jewel of that order, and the decorations of the Golden Fleece and the Star of India, his chief supporters being his brother-in-law, the Crown Prince of Prussia, and his uncle, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha., " Two. things struck , me much,V.; wrote;

Dr Norman M’Leod, who was present, “ one wais the whole of the royal Princesses weeping, though concealing their tears,an their bouquets, as they saw their bro ther, who was but to them their “ Bertie,” and.their dead father’s son, standing alone waiting for Ms bride. The other was the Queen’s ,express-, sion as she raised her eyes to Heaven, while her husband’s chorale was sung. She seemed to be with Mm alone before the tlirone of God.” The ceremony wajs described by the Bishop of Oxford as “ the most moving' sight I ever saw—the Princess of Wales calm, feeling, self-possessed. The Prince with more depth of manner than ever before.” Tiro gorgeous, touching ceremony wais succeeded, by a. wedding breakfast in St George’s Hail, and then the royal couple left for a brief honeymoon at Osborne. The occasion bad been observed as a national holiday, and the illuminations that night throughout the kingdom, notably at Edinburgh, with its magnificent natural aptitude for pyrotechnic display, were totally beyond the power of ordinary words, and would have needed ai pen of fire dipped in rainbow hues. Such a day of papular rejoicing had never before, been -seen: as that on which the entire nation celebrated the coming into its midst of the—

“ Blissful bride of a blissful heir, Bride of the heir of the Kings of the Sea.” On their return it was noticed that the royal couple looked the very picture of happiness; indeed, the Prince of Wales would have been an extra ordinary mortal bad bo not been fascinated by the charms of his lovely young wife. I saw a great deal of her,” wrote Dean Stanley, who was one of the first guests at Sandirnghaim during the Easter following the royal marriage, “ and can truly say that she is as charming and beautiful a creature as ever passed through a fairy tale.” It was at the side of Ms blooming brido that the Prince of Wales had figured at what was, perhaps, the greatest popular pageant over witnessed in the streets of London; and in the next greatest demonstration of the kind the same royal couple again formed the central figures. Tire Prince’s, bringing borne of his bride bad stirred the stolid British nation to an unprecedented display of loyal- sentiment; but even the intensity of this feeling was' surpassed, nine years later, when the nation ones more came out in its millions -to celebrate the rescue of its beloved Prince from hire clutches of a rival bride—net,of Denmark, this time, but of Death. Those only who lived through the two events could have any adequate idea of the intense feeling of Ipyalty, curiously latent -at ordinary times, which binds the British people to their ruling house as with- the bonds of an ever-growing love. THE PRINCE’S HEALTH. In the eighth year of his married life—which bad already, been blessed with two, sons and three daughters—the nation .was; thrown into a state of -alarm on hearing that the Prince of Wales was suffering from typhoid fever; and popular attention,' which had hitherto been monopolised by: the course of the war betewen France and Germany, was now exclusively concentrated on the progress of the conflict between the universal enemy and , the Heir to cur Crown. . This was exactly ten. years after the Prince Consort had fallen a- victim to ' the malady to which his eldest son, now equally threatened to be-, come a prey. The Prince and Princess, itr appeared, had been staying with Lord and. Lady Londesborough, near Scarborough,' and it was there, beyond doubt, that ha had caught the contagion, as the Prince’s groom and Lord Chesterfield, who were also; there, had'likewise been stricken with the same illness. The Prince sickened: in London, but insisted on going to Sandringham,where ho was exclusively nursed by his wife and Ms -sister, Princess Alice (of Hesse-' Darmstadt), who happened to be in England on a visit. If the Princess had been popular before, she became doubly so new, when it, became known that she was tending her husband .with such self-sacrificing devotiom

Presently the Prince’s state became very) critical, a fact which was madiei .appa.Knit to the nation,, even more so than, by the medical bulletins, from the hurrying of the Queen herself to tire sick-bed of her eldest son. The whole nation, the whole Empire, was plunged into a fever of alternate hope and fear. In every town crowds waited. anxiously for the newspapers containing’ the latest news of the royal sufferers condition, and the Government found it ex- 1 pedient to. forward the bulletins to every telegraph office in the tlnited Kingdom..; Never, even in the days of the Crimean; War and the Indian Mutiny, had news of battle been more- anxiously awaited and scanned than were these bulletins of the momentous fight that was known to he raging in the Prince of Wales’s sick room at Sandringham.

At length, on Dec. 1, the Prince recovered consciousness, and as this had been, the birthday of the Princess of Wales, so it Also became the birthday of renewed hope to tbe British people. But this rally was soon followed .by another, relapse, for, though ■ the fever had spent itself, the Prince’s strength had also been used up.: Still, the natural strength of his constitution enabled him to-'fight tho good , fight ivith dogged' English pluck, and the notion heaved a deep sigh of relief on hearing that the Princess had written to the Vicar of Sandringham, “My husband, thank God, being somewhat better, I am coming to church, I must leave, I fear, before the ser-' vice is concluded, that I may watch by ibis, bed-side. Can you not say a few words, in the prayer in the early part of the sendee that I may join with you in prayer for my husband before I return to him?”

Presently that, prayer of the devoted Princess was answered ; for, on the annE veirsary of his father's death, which, was gravely, feared would prove the limit of his own life, the Prince rallied again, this time for good, and one of the next bulletins recorded, to the infinite joy of the that he had 1 enjoyed a quiet and refreshing sleep, and, by Dec. 25, all 1 danger was over. ' . ”

A GREAT TRAVELLER. Of tbe Prince of Wales it may . truly be said that he has been the greatest traveller of his time. He has seen everything and! everyone that is worth seeing and knowing, and what is more, everyone has seen him. : Ho has been the'guest of all the rulers of. Europe, and been welcomed by the people, of ail capitals, and there is not a single; European country which he has not visited. In fact, it may be said that the only parts, of the civilised world that he has not s-eoni are South America, South Africa, and Ansi tralasia, though even there his sons have taken his place as the itinerant representatives of the Queen. EGYPT AND TURKEY, : But of all the foreign tours which the’. Royal couple.- enjoyed together, certainly; the greatest and most memorable was. that; which, in the early months of 1869, took; them from Denmark, via Berlin, Vienna; and Italy, through Egypt to Suez, Constantinople and the Crimea, and home by’: Athens. In Egypt, which the Prince him-'-self now visited for the second time, the' Royal party (including the Duke of Sutherland) were entertained in the most magnifi- : cent manner, and the voyageiip the Nile was replete with all kinds of interest. They' inspected all the works of the still unfinished-. Suez Canal, with M. de Lesseps himself as their guide, and the Prince opened the’ sluices of a dam which let the waters of; the Mediterranean into tire dried up Bitter ; Lakes. But splendid as had been tbe reception of the Royal party at Cairo, it was out-shadow- .- edi by 'that which awaited thom at Constan-! tinople, and which recalled the splendours; and gorgeous hospitalities of the “Arabian,; Nights.” The great and epoch-marking' event.of the visit was a State dinner offered, by the Sultan to the) Prince and Princess—' the first banquet ever given to Christians: by the Father of tho Faithful. Moreover, as a very special favour, the Princess and one of her ladies were admitted to theharem, where they remained for an hour : and a half chatting with the fair houris in • the Temple of Turkish bliss, while the Frincotsmokeda friendly pipe with the Pali-;

shall himself outside. On leaving Stamboul the royal party proceeded to Sebastopol, where, under the care of a Russian General, as Veil as Dr (now Sir) W. H. Russell, the picturesque historian of the Crimean war, they visited the ever-memorable battle fields which had been the graves of about 100,000 men.

As Dr Russell had, been the chronicler of . this Eastern tour of the Prince and Princess of Wales, so he also was to prove the most eloquent and authoritative historian' of the next great journey undertaken by the Heir to the Crown —his historic visit to the Indian Empire of his royal mother in the winter of 1875-6 — a visit which extended over six, months, andi brought home to millions of our darker fellow-subjects, in a personal and pleasant manner, the reality .of British rule. The Prince himself had long cherished the idea of doing in Hindostan what he had already done in Canada, and his wish—“the dream, of. his life,” as he said—found a veiy warm supporter in Mr Disraeli, now at the helm, of power, who regarded the Prince’s tour as bnt a step preliminary to his own secret ambition of posing by the side of Warwick —nob asa“Kingmaker,” but as a “ Kaiser-i-Hind-maker,” that is to say, of procuring the proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India. THE INDIAN TOUR. It was at once seen that the Prinw’s visit to her Majesty’s dominions in the East, if properly managed, would; be am, event of vast political import for the future of our relations to India, and Parliament voted a sum of £60,000 for his personal expenses (he had, for one thing, to take £40,000 worth of presents with him wherewith to return the offerings of native chiefs) as well as £52,000 for naval outlay in connection with the voyage, while the Indian, Treasury was asked to contribute £30,000 towards the cost of the Prince’s reception. The Prince was accompanied by a very carefully selected suite, which was headed by Sir Barfcle Frere, whose name was a household word to the natives of India, and included the Duke of Sutherland, the Earl of Aylesford, Lord Carrington, Colonel Owen Williams, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Suffield, Colonel Ellis, Sir Dighton Probvn, Canon Duckworth (as Chaplain), Sir Joseph Fayrer (as physician), while Mr S P. Hull was attached as artist to the suite, and Dr W. H. Russell (the “Times” correspondent) was appointed honorary private secretary ,to the Prince,'in order that, in addition to his journalistic duties, he might act as historiographer of the tour. It is needless to say that all the great London dailies were also represented by special correspondents, who sent Home detailed and glowing accounts of the most gorgeous progress which had ever been made by the heir to any crown, or, indeed, by any csowned head. ROYAL PASTIMES. x The Prince of Wales comported himself well in India with his rifle, with which he brought down bucks, elephants “man-eaters,” or tigers, and he also “got his spear ” at pig-sticking, the finest of all Anglo-Indian pursuits. For H.R.H. is a typical Englishman in his love of, and, it may be added, his excellence at nil kinds of field sports, especially shooting, to which he took very early, so that at the age,of fifteen he was said to be • the best shot in his family. From the Thuringian Forest his father had brought with him,to England a considerable passion for the chase, and at Balmoral the boy Prince used to accompany him in his deer-stalking expeditions among the glens and corries of “dark Lccbnagar.” To such a pitch of excellence did the Prince at last carry his stalking skill that he once made a -ag of seven stags in one day in Mar Forest, the property of his son-in-law, the Duke of Fife, while, with a single shot, he slew the “King of the herd” of famous wild cattle in Chillingham Park, and at Bhuripore, in India, he brought' down, a nylghau at one hundred and fifteen yards. An excellent and long-en'during deerstalker, the Prince can also hold his own with the best on the : grouse moors of the Highlands, while he has made some astonishing records at covert-shooting in England. His own estate of Sandringham is, for its size (8000 acres), "one of the finest sporting properties in the Kingdom, and one of Lis chief pleasures is to entertain shooting parties there. In the season of 1885-6 the total hag was 16,131 head, including , 7252 pheasants, of which ten thousand are annually reared at Sandringham; and the results of a day’s slaughter are generally distributed: between hospitals, private friends, tenants, employees and London tradesmen connected with the Royal household. The Prince himself has sliot all over England, and has probably a bigger slaughter record than any other man in the Kingdom. THE PRINCE AS FARMER. But shooting is by no means the Prince’s only pastime in the country. He has also paid considerable attention to the practical aspects of farming, and, as President of the Royal Agricultural Society, he takes Ms duties veiy seriously. “It is impossible,” he once said, “for any British gentleman to live at • his country place ■without taking an interest in - agriculture, and in all those things which concern the farmers of this great country.” Indeed, in many respects, the Prince of Wales resembles his great grand-father, George 111., who was familiarly known os “Farmer George,” on account of bis rural tastes and. amusements. It was by farming and the management of his property that Bismarck trained himself for the management of an empire, and it also bodes well for the future kingship of the Prince of Wales that he has already proved so excellent a ruler of his own land, which is now in a very different condition from what, it Was when first he bought it, and, indeed, a model estate from every'point of view. The Allotment Act was practically anticipated by the Prince of Wales, in the treatment of his own tenants, who are, perhaps, the most contented class of men of their lei no in the whole Kingdom. If, when he comes to the throne, the Prince only satisfies Ms subjects half as well .as he has pleased Ms tenants, he will prove even a more successful and popular king than his ancestor, “Farmer George.” Moreover, like the good farmer and country squire that ,he is, the Prince has always had a genuine love for hunting those foxes, which, for want of hounds, he has been compelled to shoot in Denmark. When studying at Oxford, he always hunted with Lord Macclesfield’s pack, and, indeed, there are few packs in England with which he has riot hunted. But, though a fearless and eager rider, the Prince has never become specially identified with the hunting field, and in recent years, owing, perhaps, to increasing weight, he has rarely been seen at the covert side, save, perhaps, when there is a meet at' Sandringham, the most popular in all Norfolk, when their Royal Highnesses show themselves patterns of rural hospitality.

Once, indeed, tie Prince had rather, a narrow escape. 'As the guest of the French Emperor he was attending a stag bunt ah Compiegne, and as he was galloping along one of the grassy glades of the forest, a star rushed out from one of the cross-paths and knocked him and his horse completely over. Though much braised and shaken, he was no‘ hurt, so, without saying anythig to alanr those about him., he was quick to remount and hunt to the end of the day. YACHTING. Assiduous as a soldier, the Prince of Wale? is no less ardent as a sailor, and he is quit' as proud of his rank as Admiral of the Flee' as he is of his title of Field-Marshal. Hr is the commodore of three yacht clubs, and he it. was who instituted the challenge cup for British and American yachts, which hears his name. No one in all England'hadone more than the Prince of Wales, by .en couragement and precept, to recover th America Cup, and as he is the chief patron so also he is the main pillar of. aquatic spor in this country. The Regatta Week r. Cowes,' after “glorious Goodwood,” form the official close of the London season, an the Prince of Wales never by any chance;

misses being then in the Solent, where his burgee, like the snowy plume of Henry of Navarre, may ever be seen streaming in the forefront of the fight. With his schooner Hildcgarde, in 1877, he won the coveted Queen’s Gup, which is, annually presented by her Majesty to the Royal Yacht Squadron (of which the Prince is Commodore); while in 1880 he again secured this “ Holy Grail ” of the Sea with Ms cutter Formosa, and he has repeatedly won it with his famous cutter Britannia,” which enabled Mm to “ rule the waves ” wherever he flew his colours from Plymouth Sound to the Solent, and from Cannes to the Olyde. Nor is the Prince a yachtsman of the purely ornamental and cutter-owning type. For on great racing occasions he generally goes on board himself, and can hold his own at steering with the best of skippers. THE TURF. From the racers of the deep to the racers of the turf the transition is natural; and at Newmarket the Prince is just as well known as he is at Cowes. On all the oMef racecourses of. the kingdom his colours are familiar—as, indeed, they well may be so in the case of a man who has deserved so well of Ms country as the Prince of Wales in the impetus he has given to the breeding of horses by the starting, many years ago, of a thorough-bred, a half-bred and a shire horse stud. H.R.H. has been a member of the Jockey Club for thirty years, but it was not till 1877 that the Princess went to Newmarket to see her husband’s colours carried for the first time, though not triumphantly, by Alep, a pure-bred Arab. Five years later, however, he won the Household Brigade Cup at Sundown with -Pairplay. In 1880 Lord Marcus Beresford was entrusted with the control of the Prince’s racing stable, and to Ms able management may be attributed most of the successes which now began to be recorded for the Royal colours, though H.R.H. himself is held to be just as shrewd a judge-of horse-flesh as he is of men. His Derby Day dinner at Marlborough House, with its £20,000 worth of silver plate, is more than one of the chief social functions of the season.; it has come to be a kind of national institution. But it was not till 1896 that his own guests, fifty in number, were able to drink the health of their princely entertainer as the winner of ,the Derby with Persimmon.

A PRINCE OF WORKERS. His working role has been a working role of the noblest kind. Doubtless, like the German Crown Prince, he has been kept aloof from the political councils .of his' Royal mother and her Cabinet. He was not entrusted with those'confidential services, as private adviser to, .and practical ' 00-workra with, her Majesty, which had-beta fulfilled by the Prince Consort. But in most other respects, he had to step into- the shoes of his deceased father as the performer of public functions, the more so as his grief-stricken mother practically withdrew-into private life ■after the death of her deeply-adored husband. As Mr Gladstone once said in Parliament, “ circumstances have tended to throw upon the Prince of Wales an unusual amount of public duty, and every call has been honourably and devotedly met.”

The mere enumeration, of the functions at which the Prince has thus figured at this call of public duty would fill volumes—reviews attended, exhibitions opened, founda-tion-stones laid, meeting’s presided over, journeys undertaken,' statues unveiled, dinners eaten and speeches made, buildings and public works inaugurated, factories inspected, receptions held, and a thousand and one other functions performed.. But with all his public labour, the Prince, perhaps/has been most conspicuous as a patrou, organiser and opener of exhibitions, which may be said to have been the creation of his father. As a boy of ten, at the side of his Royal parents, lie had witnessed the inauguration of the first “ wtorld-fair ” in Hyde Park, and his imagination was fired with the ambition of continuing the . work which Ms father had begun. Soon after Ms marriage we,find him connected with minor enterprises of a similar kind —like the South London Industrial Exhibition, which, he opened in 1865, and later on with great shows at Leeds, Nottingham, Liverpool, and a .score of other towns. NATIONAL EXHIBITIONS.

{But his work in this respect on the grand scale may Ke said to have begun with the Vienna Exhibition in 1873. Here he was cMef British Commissioner,' and, if, as one writer has said, the British department was ready much in. advance of nearly.all the others, and tho English show, on the whole, one of the most striking features -of‘the Exhibition, tbis was largely due' to the per--sonal work and enthusiasm of the Prince of Wales. For whatever the Prince- -undertakes he does with his whole heart. None of Ms positions of this kind have ever been sinecures; and above all things Ms habit of,mind is that of a business man. As chairman of a meeting he has few equals. A stickler for etiquette,'said one who knew Mm well, he conducts the proceedings in a perfectly business-like manner, and although he never betrays any consciousness of being bored, bis influence works for brevity.

If the Vienna Exhibition of 1873 was for the Prince a great success, that of Paris, in. 1878, was a perfect triumph. ■ As President of the British- Commission, H.R.H. was indefatigable in his efforts to promote' the monster show. He paid several visits to Paris during its preparatory stage; and spent weeks in his country’s department examining, arranging, suggesting, altering, deciding ; and when it was ail over.,he. and his colleagues were entertained a-t -a grand banquet by the British exhibitors, who- felt, as they said, “ very deeply indebted for his personal exertions.” On. the same occasion he was equally complimented by. the French Minister of Commerce; and when the Prince replied in French, congratulating France on the great success of her monster “ worldfair,” he fairly carried by storm the hearts of the Parisians.

But tlie Prince achieved equal popularity with the. Londoners for the open-air entertainment —the first of its kind—which he provided for them in connection, with the series of South Kensington Exhibitions of his promotion, commencing with the “Fisheries” in 1883, and culminating in what was called the “ Colinderies ” (short for'Colonial and Indian). The “Fisheries” (which was followed by an equally successful “ HeaYheries ”) resulted in a clear profit of £15,000, of which two-thirds were devoted to relieve the orphan families of fishermen. As for the “ Colinderies,” which also resulted in a net surplus of £35,000, it was opened by the Queen herself ’ in the Albert Hall, to the accompaniment of a special ode, written by Lord Tennyson, set to music by Sir A. Sullivan, and- sung by Madame Albani; and when the Prince, in his opening address, referred to “ a similar ceremony (the first Exhibition of .1851), presided over by your Majesty hut a few paces from this spot five and thirty years ago,” the Queen burst into tears and embraced the son who had walked so' worthily in.the footsteps'of his father, “Albert the Good.”' As a matter of fact, the Prince of Wales, through his energetic promotion of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, had given an impetus to the Imperial idea which now became the dominant note in the music of our foreign policy, and avhich shortly after wards found architectural expression in Ltat magnificent Imperial Institute, whereof the idea emanated from the Heir to the Throne, as a fitting means of commemorating rte Jubilee of his Royal mother and prompt ng die federation of the British bmp're over the Royal Commission of noblemen, and gentlemen formed to promote the interests if Great Britain and the colonies at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. A CHAMPION OF THE DISTRESSED. It may almost he said of the Prince of Vales that he has been a king before hi? line—a roi des gueux, or King of the leggars, seeing that he has ever done so. inch to champion the cause of the distressd. As he once declared, “the time has come when class can no longer stand j

aloof from class, and that man does his duty best who works most earnestly in bridging over the gulf between different classes, which it is the tendency of increased wealth and increased civilisation to -widen.” As his maiden speech in the House of Lords had been about the condition of the poor, so, perhaps, the public office to which he devoted most pains was his membership of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes. At the sittings of this Commission he was a diligent attender, and for the purpose of the inquiry he visited slums in Sfc Pancras and Holborn. the condition of some dwellings in wMch he described as perfectly disgraceful. His patronage and the prestige of his name have been sought for, nor sought in. vain, for almost all the great benevolent movements of the time; and perhaps the crowning effort of his noble-hearted philanthropy was/ his initiation of the London Hospital Fund to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of M's

mother—-a fund which, in less than a year, swelled to considerably over a quarter of a million sterling. A MULTIPLICITY OF LABOURS. Perhaps I cannot convey a better idea of the multiplicity and severity of the Prince’s public labours than by quoting what was said of him by the “Times” on the occasion of his visit to Ireland in 1868, which was but a type of hundreds of others of the same kind in other parts of the United Kingdom: “ There were presentations and receptions, and receiving and answering addresses, processions, walking, riding and driving, in morning and evening, military, academic and medieval attire. The Prince had to breakfast, lunch, dine and sup, with more or less publicity, every twenty-four hours. He had to go twice to races, with fifty or a hundred thousand people about him ; to review a small army and make a tour in the Wicklow mountains, of course everywhere receiving addresses under canopies and dining in state under galleries full of spectators. He visited and inspected institutions, colleges, universities, academies, libraries, and cattle shows. Ho had to take a very active part in assemblies of from several hundred to several thousand dancers, and always select for Ms partners the most important personages. . . . He had to listen to many speeches sufficiently to know when and what to answer. He had to examine with respectful interest pictures, books, antiquities, relics, manuscripts, specimens, bones, fossils, prize beasts and works of Irish art. He had never to be unequal to the occasion, however different from the last, and whatever his disadvantage as to the novelty or dulness of the matter and scene.” AN UNOFFICIAL AMBASSADOR. Numerous have been the errapds, half personal, half diplomatic, which have carried the l Prince into foreign parts—to all the chief capitals of Europe as the bearer of congratulations or of condolence to the relatives of fellow sovereigns of his royal mother. As the most typical and beneficent of all these foreign missions, take the Prince’s attendance at the funeral of the late Russian Emperor, Alexander 111., in the winter of 1894-5, when the role which he played at St Petersburg struck all Europe as an international triumph- of the highest kind for the policy of England and her future relations with the Empire of the Tsats. France was certainly the country most perturbed by the apparent results of the Prince of Wales’s mourning mission to Russia, and these results were well summed up by the St Petersburg correspondent of a Paris journal when he wrote: “No other Prince in the world, perhaps, likes Ms ease better than the heir to the English throne, yet see the terrible task undertaken! by him for more than a fortnight, from Livadia to the day of the funeral of Alexander 111., accompanying the Russian family twice a day to the religious ceremonies solemnised before the open coffin of the late Emperor, and after each service mounting the steps of the catafalque behind the Empress and Nicholas 11. to kiss the brow of the august deceased. His attitude was not less remarkable in the private circle of the Anitchkoff Palace. There ho endeavoured, after each of these sad ceremonies, to effect a consoling re-action against grief, being affectionate towards all, and even going the length of playing with the children. ■ This- attitude was certainly deliberate, but who can say that it was not sincere? Hew could it ‘help being highly appreciated, and how could it help bearing fruit? The Russian Royal family, particularly the Emperor Nicholas and the Empress, are deeply grateful for it. Ties have been formed in these days of mourning, and they have assumed a political character which will perhaps last longer than is imagined, and which, as the first result, have inspired the two countries with a dedesire to live on friendly terms.”

THE NEW KING’S HOME LIFE.

It is one of the drawbacks of a position like that of the Prince of Wales that his life belongs less to himself than to his nation, and that its private aspirations must be, to a great extent, merged in its public claims. Yet, in spite of all his varied existence before the public eye, the Prince was by no means unfamiliar with those home pleasures which are the blessed lot of the private individual; and it has come to be known that his family life has been of an exceptionally happy character—streaked, like all lives, with a copious mixture ot the joys and sorrows which are the' common lot of humanity, and also blown upon, like most exalted lives, by the breath of that reckless, malevolent gossip which gathers, up its baseless calumnies from the gutter. , Marlborough House was the Prince’s official residence, in London, where he and the Princess spent the season; but his private house, his “ Englishman's Castle,” was Sandringham, where he generally passed the winter, apart from many a. week-end snatched from the fatigues of London-—to which Mr Gladstone once alluded as a Jdace “where the Prince could exercise hospitality, where he could follow rural pursuits, and where he might acquire and cherish a love of home, and comorm to that truly British standard to which we all like to see our Sovereigns and royal personages conform.” THE ROYAL CHILDREN. If, at Marlborough House, the Prince of Wales was Heir to the Throne, at Sandringham he and the Princess were but members of that English aristocracy who take pleasure, in leading the country life which has been truly said to be the finest of all possible kinds of life. Here, or at Marlborough House,, were born to the Princely pair the six children which blessed their uniontwo sons and four daughters, one of whom died in infancy; and never were children brought up with greater strictness and simplicity. In the case of the hoys, Princes Albert Victor and George, they were sent to sea at a comparatively tender age, after spending their two years as cadets on the Britannia, and dedicated, like any other British boys, to our “ first fine of defence,” as became the sons of the " Heir of the Kings of the Sea,” and the “Sea-King’s Daughter from over the sea.” We had already had one naval Sovereign, in the person of William IV., and the nation was pleased with the prospect of the Crown being again worn by a sailor King. A certain delicacy of health in the two young Princes had been one of the determining causes of their assignment to the sea, but it said much for the good sense and self-sacrifice of their royahparents that they were thus placed on exactly the same footing as other cadets, and taught the rules of the services in the strictest manner. Their father had ever been a great traveller, but ho had never gone round the globe as his sons were to do ; and the published account of their long craise in the Bacchante frigate, during which they visited every British colony -save Canada and New Zealand, jpoke volumes—-to be correct, two volumes—for their intelligence and powers of observation. It must be oWned that, in thus sending his two sons on such a mission round the world, the Prince of Wales did much to strengthen the colonial feeling of

loyalty to the Mother Country, and minister to the flams of that Imperial idea- of which he‘has ever been so ardent a'chainpion. And as it was good sense which dictated the sending of Ms two sons to sea, so it was also the same quality, in a very high degree, which determined Mm to accept a Scottish peer, in lieu of a German princeling, as the husband of Ms el-deet daughter. But in the year (1838) previous to the marriage of the Princess Louise to the Duke of Fife, the Prince- and Princess themselves had celebrated their own silver wedding, a celebration wMch would have assumed very festive dimensions indeed but for the death, the day before, of the old German Emperor. Even, however, .as it was, their Royal Highnesses were the recipients of some magnificent presents from all parts of the Empire, as well as congratulations- from the entire Press of tho United- Kingdom; and even tho Queen did what she had never dome be-fore-dined with her son and daughter^n-

law at Marlborough House. THE MARRIAGE OF . PRINCESS LOUISE. - In the following spring (1889) her Majestv spent four days at- Sandringham, when she witnessed, for the first time since her widowhood, a private theatrical performance by Sir Henry Irving and his Lyceum Company ; and soon thereafter the nation learned with complete satisfaction that the Queen had given her consent to the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Earl (soon to become’ Duke) of Fife—a blameless nobleman, who bad been a frequent guest at Sandringham, who was the only bachelor at whose house the Princess of Wales had ever been entertained, and who had, on first taking Ms seat in the-House- of Lords, been introduced by the Heir to the Throne himself. The favour which tho Prince of Wales had shown the Duke of Fife’s suit was another striking proof of that good sense and keen perception of the spirit of the time which had -ever kept him from doing anything out of harmony with the popular wish and instincts. The nation bad become somewhat sick of royal alliances with poverty-stricken German princelings; and though the Queen herself had set an example of the new departure by allowing one of her own daughters to wed the Marquise of Lome, still that daughter stood in a very remote line of succession to tiro throne, whereas it was quite possible, as things then stood, that the progeny of the Duke of Fife might come to wear the Crown. But this was a contingency .which came to be marked 1 by remoteness three years later, when Prince Albert Victor, later the Duke of Clarence, was betrothed I—an 1 —an equally popular engagement —to the Princess May of Teck, and there was thus'opened up the prospect of direct succession to the throne in three generations. On re term ino- from their cruise in the “ Bacchante the Royal 'brothers had been separated, Prince George remaining on board ship to work Ms way up to naval command, and Prince Albert Victor, as tbe_ eider of the two, coming ashore to acquire those graces and accomplishments, impossible of atcainmertt on the deck of a ship, winch were indispensable to a Prince standing in direct succession to the throne. Accordingly, he was sent’to Cambridge to acquire some -tincture of polite letters, and during his residence there Ms coming of age was celebrated at Sandringham- by the biggest bouse party and the greatest festivities the district"had ever seen; be was attached to Ms father’s own fine regiment, the 10th Hussars, and other regiments, in order to griift tlio cUisiiiiij soldier on. tlie devoted sailor; he was sent to make the intelligent tour of India, -as his father had done before Mm, after which, he came back to be created Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and be initiated by Ms father into- all the ceremonial duties of his position. He came home to do all this, to live only two years longer, and to die in • circumstances of peculiar distress-fulness; , For he had but shortly before falling ill become betrothed to Princess May of Teck, and the nation had at once to sympathise with Ms . sorrowing bride and his heart-broken parents. DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CLARENCE. It was only now, perhaps for the first time that these bereaved parents realised to the full the deep hold they had taken on the national heart. Touching messages of condolence reached them, not only from every capital of Europe, but also- from every corner of the British Empire. Hitherto, to be sure, the Prince of Wales had had more than his share of gr.efs which fall to tire lot of men- By the ■death of his adorable, father, of an infant child, of a beloved sister (Princess Alice), of a favourite brother (Duke of Albany), of a devoted brother-in-law (Emperor Frederick), and other near -and dear relatives, he had already been repeatedly reminded that a Prince can enjoy no -immunity from the sorrows of a peasant; but the death of Ms eldest son, to whom be and the Princess were most tenderly attached, in such peculiarly painful circumstances, was a blow which he. needed all his well-known pluck and. fortitude to recover from. “If sympathy at such a moment is of any avail,” said their Royal Highnesses, in reply to the words of condolence which had poured -in fre-m every part of the globe, “the remembrance that their grief has been shared by all classes will be a lasting consolation to their sorrowing hearts, and if passible will make them more than ever attached. to their dear 'country.” THE DUKE OF YORK.

Uno avulso, non deficit alter. About a year before the fatal illness of ' the Duke of Clarence, his parents had been seriously alarmed by the illness of his ■ brother, to whose sick bed they had hurried home from Livadia, in the south of Russia, where-they had been staying with -the Czar; and now again all eyes were turned towards the Duke of York. It was' generally felt that there was only one way out of - the situation created by the death of the Duke of Clarence —as far as 1 the succession to the crown was concerned; and, perhaps, this way had been pointed out, or at any rate it had been parallel, by the marriage of the Princess of Wales’s sister, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, to the Russian Grand Duke, afterwards Alexander 111., 'who, when stepping into the place of his elder brother, the Czarevitch deceased, had also taken over Ms matrimonial engagement. There was a feeling throughout the nation that tho Duke of York would likewise do well to act on this.precedent, and the belief of the country was not belied by the event. For in -the summer of 1835, the Duke and Princess May were weddedl in circumstances of great popular -pomp and rejoicing, the streets of London repeating the spectacle they had presented when the Prince of Wales' first “ brought home hi-s bonny bride,” and when the Queen drove in Jubilee State to Westminster Abbey. Three years later the Prince bad the satisfaction of seeing his youngest daughter, Princess Maud, married to Prince Charles of Denmark.

It is interesting'to note how frequently, since the Duke of York’s marriage, the Prince’of Wales has associated him with himself in the performance of his public duties, while the constant companionship of father and son, both in Norfolk and in London, is a striking proof of their perfect attachment to one another. At Sandringham they cycle and shoot together; in town they go to the same ceremonies, dinners and smoking concerts —the latter, by the way, a form of entertainment of which the Prince of Wales may claim to be the inventor —and, in fact, the Prince has taken his sole surviving son. in training for the life that awaits him, much in the same thorough way as when he devoted himself to the ceremonial development of Prince “Eddy,” the Duke of Clarence, iffact, there is no mere united or mutually devoted family in the Kingdom than that of the Kingdom’s Heir. Their life is well reflected in that‘of the tenants on the estate of Sandringham, as to whom, as Lord Randolph Churchill once informed the House of Commons,, the Prince himself “ has desired that -the 1c- 1 of every man, woman and child dwelling on the Sandringham Estate should he, in

eveiy sense of the word’, a happy lot. To promote this result every farm-building has been restored .or rebuilt; one hundred new cottages have been erected; 200 -acres have been planted; fifteen miles of new road have been made; and churches, schools and clubs have been set c-n foot and supported. And as the Prince has thus become a pattern landlord, so- be has also been a devoted husband and a model parent. As rvir Stead has written; — “The popular idea of tho Prince as a man of pleasure has obscured the less generally known side of Ms character, which is revealed when he is in the' family circle. His worst enemies will admit that the Prince’s greatest failings arise from too great kindness of heart. However far -short of an ideal standard he may fall in some respects, he is in other matters quite a devoted family man'. His brothers and sisters are most affectionately attached to hint. His terider- ’ ness to -his wife during her illness, his constant attention to her wants, the pains which’ he takes to keep her informed of all that is likely to amuse her, and the interest which he always takes in the welfare of the children —these are all strangely at variance with ’the popular conception which has gone abroad.” AN IDEAL HOME. All those who have gone as guests to H.R.H.’s Norfolk home came away perfectly charmed with the aspects of family life as there presented. Not by any means so grand a place as -some of ’the “ stately homes of England,” Sandringham has, nevertheless, a snugness and cosiness which are lacking to some more magnificent mansions ; arid its domestic life is of the utmost simplicity, or at least naturalness, well befitting the country home of the “.first gentleman in England.” After , Sandringham, ‘Abergeldie, with its splendid Highland scenery and bracing air, has, perhaps, the, most attractions for their Royal Highnesses, unles-s, indeed, their love of Deeside is divided by their liking for the woods and lawns of Fredenborg -and Bernstorff in Denmark, which have witnessed so many autumn gathering's, of all who are connected with the family of the Princess of Wales, who, with all her attachment to the country of her adoption, still cherishes a warm affection for the homes of her childhood.