THE EARLY YEARS OF PRINCE CONSORT.

West Coast Times, Issue 649, 23 October 1867, Page 3

THE EARLY YEARS OF PRINCE CONSORT.

Wo take the following review of Queen Victoria's book from the Express, London evening paper, of 26th July : —

This morning was issued the volume which has been for some time announced, entitled " The Early Years of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort."* The work was originally compiled under the Queen's direction, solely for private circulation among tho members of her own family, or such other persons as, from the relations in which they had stood to her Majesty or to the Prince Consort himself, would naturally be interested in the story of his early days. The present volume is prepared, under the superintendence alluded to, by Lieutenant-General the Hon. C. Givy ; but others which are to follow will be edited by Mr Theodore Martin. The translation of the Prince's letters are, with a few merely verbal corrections, by Princess Helena. The possibility of a marriage between the Queen and the Prince was, it seems, fondly looked forward to by the Dowager Duchess of Coburg from a very early period, and the Prince used to relate that " when he was a child of -three years old, his nurse always i told him that he should marry the Queen; and that when he first thought of marrying at all, he always thought of her." As the children grewupthis idea was warmly encouraged by the King of the Belgians, from whom, indeed, the Queen first heard of it ; but the idea of such a marriage met with much opposition, and the late King William IV. did everything in his power to discourage it. No less than five other marriages had been contemplated for the Princess ; and the King, though he never mentioned the subject to the Princess herself, was specially anxious to bring about an alliance between her and the late Prince Alexander of Netherlands, brother to the present King of Holland. In his anxiety to effect this object he did everything he could'though ineffectually, to prevent the Duke of Cobufg's visit to England in 1536, when he came over with his sons, and spent nearly four weeks at Kensington Palace with the Duchess of Kent. Queen Adelaide, in later years, said to the Queen, that if she had told the King that it was her own earnest wish to marry her cousin, and that her happiness depended on it, he would at once have given up his opposition to it, as he was very fond of and always very kind to his niece. Il was then that tho Queen and Prince met \ for the first time, and her Majesty thus | records her impression of the visit :. — " The Prince was at that time much shorter than is brother, already very handsome, but very stout, which he entirely grew out of afterwards. He was most amiable, natural, unaffected, and merry — full of interest in everything, playing on the % piano with the Princess, his cousin — drawing ; in short, constantly occupied. He always paid the greatest attention to all he saw, and the Queen remembers well how intently he listened to the sermon preached in St. Paul's, when ho and his father and brother accompanied the Duchess of Kent and the Princess there on the occasion of the service attended by the children of the different charity schools. It is indeed rare to see a- Prince not yet seventeen ycais of age bestowing such earnest attent'on on a sermon."

It was probably in the early part of 1838 that the King of the Belgians, in writing to the Queen, first mentioned the idea of such a marriage. Both the prince and his father seem to have objected from the first to the proposal that a few years should elapse before the marriage should take place, he being then eighteen reJh of age. "I am ready," he said to King Leopold, '' to submit to delay if I have only some certain assurance to go upon. But, if after waiting, perhaps, for three years, I should find the Queen no longer desired the marriage, it would place me in a very ridiculous position, and would to a certain extent ruin all the prospects of my future life." The Queen says she never entertained auy idea of this, and she afterwards repeatedly informed the Prince that she would never have married anyone else. She expresses, however, great regret that she had not after her accession kept up her correspondence with her cousin as she had done before it. " Nor can the Queen now," she adds, "think without indignation against herself of her wish * " The Early Years of His Royal Highness tho Prince Consort." Compiled under tho direction of her Majesty the Queen, by Lieut. - G-eneral the Hon. C. Grey. Smith, Elder, ana Co. 1867. (Continued In page 4.J