THE QUEEN AND

HE Queen and Prince Albert! What familiar words are these! For how many years this conjunction of names was the most customary and the most pleasing that met the eye and ear. They were mingled together in the converse of the hour, in the thoughts and words of men, in aspirations of loyalty and goodwill, in the supplications of the solemn liturgy. The royal pair almost seemed to live a charmed life. There was almost something superhuman in the greatness and the happiness that belonged to them. How rich and affluent was that blent existence! Not alone that they were the highest in estate and rank, but there was affluence of thought, of feeling, of taste, of knowledge, and of principle. In the inscrutable wisdom of the Most High-inscrutable but doubtless full of mercy and meaning-the blameless Prince' was called away to still higher rank and estate, the affluence of the better things to come.' But the names of the Queen and Prince Albert are never to be dissociated. She and her people have lavished on his memory all the wealth of monument and device. Her Majesty has gone still further, and in the present volume she raises a monument of unique interest and importance which will take its place among the classics of literature. Such a work as this is unique in our own language or in any other language. Horace Walpole wrote of royal and noble authors, but it would never have entered Walpole's cold and

The Early Years of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. Compiled under the direction of Her Majesty the Queen, by Lieut.-General the Hon. C. Grey.' London: Smith and Elder, 1867.

PRINCE ALBERT.*

narrow mind to conceive of such a work as this. It is both a biography and an autobiography. It is a biography of Prince Albert; it is also an autobiography, the Queen's life written by the Queen herself. We might most fitly entitle our paper "Victoria and Albert.' The lives are synchronous. From the first the princely boy is led to think of his royal cousin across the narrow seas as his future bride. For him she is 'the Flower of May.' Again and again there are points of contact in their lives, and then the marriage, so fair in the sight of heaven and earth, so infinitely blessing and blessed. There are many persons who could not understand the character of Prince Albert while he was living; there are some few who cannot understand it now he is gone. We should be sorry indeed if the case were otherwise. should be sorry if the selfish and ignoble could comprehend that character and career so pure and stainless and serene. Even ordinary men, who are susceptible of being dazzled by brilliant qualities, who are attracted by wandering stars and meteoric fires, shrink from

We

The pure severity of perfect light.' In the exquisite unison and balance of faculties, in the sublime selfrepression and self-abnegation, in the unwavering instincts of duty and religion, in the calm judicial tone of thought, in the unvarying devotion to intellectual labours, there almost appears something cold and austere, something removed from ordinary sympathies and ordinary experience; but this volume shows us that his character was essentially most human, affection

ate almost to morbid sensitiveness, keenly alive to every social and domestic feeling, reflecting every passing emotion of his profound and many-sided nature. We say deliberately that history hardly presents us with so perfect an example; examples the most nearly approximate to his are but to be found in his own Saxon ancestors, in our English Alfred, in St. Louis of France. We do not propose to criticise this volume; it belongs to a region separate and beyond criticism. There are persons who can 'botanise upon a mother's grave,' and there are persons who will read this book as they would read an ordinary critical or historical work. Even tried by such a standard as this the work will challenge and meet criticism and hold its own in any comparisons with contemporary biography, or biography far removed from being contemporary. But this is not the right mode in which such a work ought to be met -not the kind of test which we should wish, for ourselves or our readers, to be applied. We welcome the Queen's work as her gift to her loving people, as admitting them to a share in her sorrows and her memories, and our feelings can be only those of the deepest loyalty to our royal lady, and an earnest desire that we may be able to realize something of the mental and spiritual lineaments of our lost Prince.

When the Prince's bill of naturalisation was before the English parliament there were some ignorant sectarians who complained that the Prince was not styled a Protestant, and inquired if he really was such. These persons must have been strangely ignorant both of contemporary and past history. Had they never heard of the heroic ancestor of Prince Albert's, the friend and deliverer of Luther, who risked and lost his dominions against Charles V. in defence of the reformed doctrines? He, when the news was brought to him as he was playing at chess in his castle that he was to die, protested against the injustice of Charles, trusted that his wife would not yield her besieged fortress, and then challenged his adversary to

continue the game, and won it. Another ancestor, the Elector Frederick the Wise, magnanimously refused the crown of Germany, and was the means of conferring it upon that very Charles V.

Of such a stock came Prince Albert, and he inherited these ancestral qualities of courage and magnanimity. In consequence of their fidelity to their convictions the elder branch of the great Saxon family the Ernestine, lost their inheritance, and the Saxon throne passed to the younger, the Albertine branch. The Coburg family, through the magnificent alliances which they have formed, have become the most powerful family in Europe, a late amends for the deprivation of the sixteenth century. The common grandmother of Prince Albert and of the Queen was the DowagerDuchess of Coburg-Saalfeld, who always acted a mother's part towards the Prince, and looked earnestly forward to a marriage between the two, but died before the event happened. He was unfortunate in not knowing a mother's care, for his own mother was first separated and then divorced from his father, and died young, after a sad, lingering illness. The place of his birth was Rosenau, a summer residence of the Duke's, about four miles from Coburg, to which our own royal family have always been deeply attached, and the Dowager Duchess lived a little way out of the town on the other side. Although the Queen was a very young girl when her grandmother died, she perfectly recollects her, and describes her as 'a most remarkable woman, with a most powerful, energetic, almost masculine mind, accompanied with great tenderness of heart and extreme love for nature.' Certainly these qualities have been reproduced in her grandchildren, the Queen and the Prince; and her son Leopold, the King of the Belgians, conspicuously recalls many of her greatest qualities. Between King Leopold and his nephew and niece, the tenderest confidence and affectionalways existed. He, more than any other person, brought to pass the marriage, and to a degree, which was

perhaps hardly understood in his lifetime, he was to the last a most powerful influence in the affairs of the English court and of the nation. The earliest to the interesting appendices in this volume is also the most important one, and is entitled 'Reminiscences of King Leopold,' consisting almost entirely of a memoir written by the King himself at the request of Queen Victoria in 1862. This is deeply interesting, especially in the notices of the English royal family, and some abridged extracts will be a fit prelude to further remarks on the Queen and Prince Albert.

'Without meaning to say anything unkind of the other branches of the Saxon family, ours [to which the Queen and the Prince belonged] was more truly intelligent, and more naturally so, without affectation, or anything pedantic about it.'

'It was in January, at Berlin, that Prince Leopold received the invitation of the Prince Regent to come to England, and also an explanation from Lord Castlereagh. He left in fearfully cold weather for Coburg. He caught an inflammatory cold which detained him, to his great dismay, at Coburg, receiving the most pressing letters from England to hasten his arrival. It was painful to be quite unable to set out, and only in February could he leave Coburg. At Calais he was detained by stormy weather. In London he found Lord Castlereagh, with whom he went to Brighton, to be presented to the Prince Regent, who received him graciously, though suffering from gout. He spoke about the Princess Charlotte and his plans about her. There were no formal fiançailles, but the marriage was declared as being fully decided. Claremont, the property of Mr. R. Ellis, was selected by Prince Leopold, after having seen other places. In September the Prince and Princess established themselves there. Unfortunately the season was uncommonly rainy. The Orleans family came to Claremont and were visited at Twickenham. The Princess's health was liable to be a little deranged. Her nerves had suffered much during the last few years.

She improved, however, visibly, at Claremont. From March there began to be hopes. The Princess's health was in a satisfactory state. She gave up, however, walking too much, which proved pernicious. November saw the ruin of this happy home, and the destruction at one blow of every hope and happiness of Prince Leopold. He has never recovered the feeling of happiness which had blessed his short married life.

'The Duke of Kent had offered his hand to the Princess of Leiningen, but her position as guardian of her children created delays. Princess Charlotte, who loved tenderly her uncle, the Duke of Kent, was most ardently desirous of this union, and most impatient to see it concluded. The Regent was not kind to his brother [the Duke of Kent]. At every instant something or other of an unpleasant nature arose. The Duke and Duchess resided repeatedly at Claremont. Prince Leopold made in August an excursion to Scotland and through various parts of England. He received everywhere the most enthusiastic welcome. The Regent was not pleased with this journey. 1820, Prince Leopold was at Lord Craven's when the news arrived that a cold which the Duke got at Salisbury, visiting the cathedral, had become alarming. Soon after the Prince's arrival the Duke breathed his last. The Duchess, who lost a most amiable and devoted husband, was in a state of the greatest distress. It was fortunate that Prince Leopold had not been. out of the country, or the poor Duke had left his family deprived of all means of existence. The journey to Kensington was most painful, and the weather, at the same time, very severe. King George III. died almost at the same moment as his son. King George IV. showed himself at the first moment very affable to Prince Leopold.'

This affability did not continue after Prince Leopold had visited Queen Charlotte, and after the proceedings against her had been given up-an issue to which Prince Leopold's call had contributed. The King was furious, and particularly