Читать книгу The Principal Speeches and Addresses of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort - Prince Consort consort of Victoria Queen of Great Britain Albert - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The following work contains, with some few trifling exceptions, the speeches and addresses delivered by His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. It is published at the express desire, and under the sanction, of Her Majesty.

It has been thought that this publication will not only be a worthy tribute to the Prince’s memory, but that it will have a deep interest for a large circle of readers. There will be those who were personally attached to the Prince, and who will be |Those who will be interested by the speeches.| glad to have a record of these speeches, upon which he bestowed so much care and thought. To the statesman, to the man of science, and to those who care for the social well-being of the people, these speeches will be interesting, as coming from one who himself was a master in those three great branches of human endeavour. And, lastly, to the general student of literature they will |Peculiarity of the Prince’s position.| possess a high value from the peculiarity of the position of the man who uttered them. Every free and great nation has had, during its best times, a long line of distinguished orators; and, perhaps, the British nation, from its large enjoyment of freedom, may defy the world to compete with it in masterpieces of oratory. The names of |Great Britain fertile in orators.| Somers, Bolingbroke, Chatham, Burke, Fox, Pitt, Plunket, Grattan, Canning, Sheil, O’Connell, and Macaulay, fill the mind with pictures of attentive listeners, leaning forward, hushed to catch every accent of a great orator speaking upon some great theme. But in every age there will be such men as long as England is a great and free nation. We have them in our senate now; and we feel that there are men living amongst us who are fully worthy to take high places in the illustrious roll of British orators. But, without claiming for the Prince Consort any peculiar gift of oratory, it may fairly be maintained that the world has far more chance of hearing speeches similar to those of even |Rarity of speeches like those of the Prince.| the most renowned among the orators just mentioned, than speeches like his; for they were, in their way, unique. It must be a fortunate country indeed, that, even in an extended course of its history, should have two such men, so placed, as the deeply-lamented Prince Consort.

Now, why were these speeches unique? In the first place, the man who spoke them had not only a scientific and an artistic mind (which is a rare combination), but he was full of knowledge and of suggestive views upon almost every subject. But that was not all. The expression of this knowledge |The drawbacks upon the Prince in speaking.| and of these views had to be compressed and restrained in every direction. He was a Prince, and so close to the Throne that he could not but feel that every word he uttered might be considered as emanating from the Throne. He was not born in the country, and therefore he had to watch lest any advice he gave might be in the least degree unacceptable, as not coming from a native. He had all the responsibilities of office, without having a distinct office to fill. At all points he had to guard himself from envy, from misconstruction, and from the appearance of taking too much upon himself. His was a position of such delicacy and difficulty that not one of his contemporaries would presume to think he could have filled it as well as the Prince did. And all this difficulty, and all this delicacy, must have come out in fullest relief before him when he had to make any public utterance.

|Eloquence much furthered by absence from restraint.| It is said, and with some truth, that almost anybody might appear witty who should be inconsiderate and unscrupulous in his talk. The gracious reserve that kind-hearted men indulge in, tends to dim their brilliancy, and to lessen their powers of conversation. What is true of wit is true also of wisdom. In considering the speeches of the best speakers, and comparing them one with another, careful account must be taken of the degrees of freedom of speech which the speakers respectively enjoyed. Often a man gains great credit for eloquence and boldness, when the credit is largely due to his having no responsibility, or to his careless way of ignoring what he has. Such considerations as the above should be continually in the mind of any reader of the Prince Consort’s speeches, who may wish to understand them thoroughly, and justly to appreciate the speaker. It has been said that speech is silver, and silence is golden; and if there be anything more precious than gold, it may well be applied to describe that happy mingling of freedom of thought, with a due reserve in the expression of that thought, which ought to mark the speeches of men in an exalted position. They cannot afford to make a speech, however good it may be in the main, that has one needless witticism in it, or the slightest touch of exaggeration, or the least indication of party prejudice.

Of the Prince’s speeches, as of much of his life, it may be said that the movement of them was graceful, noble, and dignified; but yet it was like the movement of a man in chain armour, which, even with the strongest and most agile person, must ever have been a movement somewhat fettered by restraint.

The principal elements that go to compose a great oration had often to be modified largely in these speeches of the Prince. Wit was not to be jubilant,—passion not pre-dominant,—dialectic skill not triumphant. There remained nothing as the secure staple of the speech but supreme common sense. Looked at in this way, it is wonderful that the Prince contrived to introduce into his speeches so much that was new and interesting.

|The leading idea of the speaker.| After reading continuously the speeches of any remarkable man, we generally seek to discover what is the leading idea of his mind—what is the string on which his pearls of rhetoric, or of fancy, have been strung. And if we were asked what is this leading idea with the Prince, we might safely reply—the beauty of usefulness.

|His speeches exhaustive.| |Speech at the Servants’ Provident Benevolent Society.| Not that there are not many minor characteristics of an admirable kind which it may be well to point out, and to illustrate by examples. His speeches, though short, are singularly exhaustive of the subject. As an instance, take his speech at the Servants’ Provident Benevolent Society. “I conceive,” he said, “that this Society is founded upon a right principle, as it follows out the dictates of a correct appreciation of human nature, which requires every man, by personal exertion and according to his own choice, to work out his own happiness, which prevents his valuing, nay, even feeling satisfaction at, the prosperity which others have made for him. It is founded on a right principle, because it endeavours to trace out a plan, according to which, by providence, by self-denial and perseverance, not only will the servant be raised in his physical and moral condition, but the master also will be taught how to direct his efforts in aiding the servant in his labour to secure to himself resources in case of sickness, old age, and want of employment. It is founded on a right principle, because in its financial scheme there is no temptation held out to the servant by the prospect of probable extravagant advantages, which tend to transform his providence into a species of gambling; by convivial meetings, which lead him to ulterior expense; or by the privilege of balloting for the few prizes, which draws him into all the waste of time and excitement of an electioneering contest.”

Another striking instance of this exhaustiveness, and also of his generosity of feeling, |Speech at the dinner of the Royal Academy, 1851.| is to be seen in those passages of his speech at the dinner of the Royal Academy in 1851 where he speaks of criticism. “Gentlemen,” he said, “the production of all works in art or poetry requires in their conception and execution not only an exercise of the intellect, skill, and patience, but particularly a concurrent warmth of feeling and a free flow of imagination. This renders them most tender plants, which will thrive only in an atmosphere calculated to maintain that warmth, and that atmosphere is one of kindness towards the artist personally as well as towards his productions. An unkind word of criticism passes like a cold blast over their tender shoots, and shrivels them up, checking the flow of the sap which was rising to produce perhaps multitudes of flowers and fruit. But still criticism is absolutely necessary to the development of art, and the injudicious praise of an inferior work becomes an insult to superior genius.

“In this respect our times are peculiarly unfavourable when compared with those when Madonnas were painted in the seclusion of convents; for we have now on the one hand the eager competition of a vast array of artists of every degree of talent and skill, and on the other, as judge, a great public, for the greater part wholly uneducated in art, and thus led by professional writers who often strive to impress the public with a great idea of their own artistic knowledge, by the merciless manner in which they treat works which cost those who produced them the highest efforts of mind or feeling.

“The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence.”

How thoroughly the Prince here feels with the artist! At the same time, how he demands the highest order of criticism! What discernment is shown in the comparison between our own time and other times as regards the peculiar circumstances of criticism! And, in the last paragraph, how justly he points out what are the dangers to High Art in the present period! Indeed, this speech, taken as a whole, may claim to be one of the best that have been delivered in our time.

|The Prince’s desire to get at principles of action.| |Speech on laying the first stone of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.| Again, another characteristic in the Prince’s speeches is the evident desire in them to get at the law, or the principle, upon which the matter in question should be settled. As an instance of this I would adduce the following extract from his speech when laying the first stone of the Birmingham and Midland Institute: “Without such knowledge we are condemned to one of three states: either we merely go on to do things just as our fathers did, and for no better reason than because they did so; or, trusting to some personal authority, we adopt at random the recommendation of some specific in a speculative hope that it may answer; or, lastly, and this is the most favourable case, we ourselves improve upon certain processes; but this can only be the result of an experience hardly earned and dearly bought, and which, after all, can only embrace a comparatively short space of time and a small number of experiments.

“From none of these courses can we hope for much progress; for the mind, however ingenious, has no materials to work with, and remains in presence of phenomena, the causes of which are hidden from it.

“But these laws of nature, these divine laws, are capable of being discovered and understood, and of being taught and made our own. This is the task of science: and whilst science discovers and teaches these laws, art teaches their application. No pursuit is therefore too insignificant not to be capable of becoming the subject both of science and art.”

|Condense-ness of the Prince’s speeches.| Contrary to our feeling in reading most speeches, we are always sorry when the Prince has ended, and we want more to have been said by him; and yet, if we look attentively at any of the speeches, we cannot but see that so much has been said that we must acknowledge ourselves somewhat unreasonable in wishing to have had any more. His speech on laying the foundation stone of the National Gallery at Edinburgh affords a notable instance of this. It is so short that you feel inclined to clamour for more; and yet, when you read it attentively, you find that enough has been said to make up what would have been a long and telling speech in Parliament. Happily the Prince’s absence from the parliamentary arena freed him from that tendency to needless amplification which is the besetting sin even of the best speakers in the present day.

The sympathetic nature of the Prince, which enabled him to feel so largely and deeply for all classes of men, visible throughout his speeches, is nowhere better seen than in his speech at the Bicentenary Festival of the Sons of the Clergy. How rarely, by any one, has a just tenderness for the Clergy been shown in ampler and in nobler terms than in the following extract:—

|Speech at the Bicentenary Festival of the Sons of the Clergy.| “Gentlemen, the appellation of a ‘money-making parson’ is not only a reproach but a condemnation for a clergyman, depriving him at once of all influence over his congregation; yet this man, who has to shun opportunities for acquiring wealth open to most of us, and who has himself only an often scanty life income allotted to him for his services, has a wife and children like ourselves; and we wish him to have the same solicitude for their welfare which we feel for our own.”

In estimating the Prince Consort’s speeches, it is to be recollected that for the most part they treat of topics of an abstract character, and seldom take up what is merely personal as their subject, which, however, is always the most interesting to mankind.

This could not be avoided from the position of the Prince; but it is much to be regretted, for whenever he did speak of something personal, he was particularly successful.

For instance, if we were called upon to furnish for history the main characteristics of Sir Robert Peel’s mind, we could not refer to any description of that eminent statesman which would at all compete with that given by the Prince Consort in the speech that he made at the dinner to which he was invited by the Lord Mayor of York.

“There is but one alloy,” the Prince said, “to my feelings of satisfaction and pleasure in seeing you here assembled again, and that is, the painful remembrance that one is missing from amongst us who felt so warm an interest in our scheme and took so active a part in promoting its success, the last act of whose public life was attending at the Royal Commission: my admiration for whose talents and character, and gratitude for whose devotion to the Queen and private friendship towards myself, I feel a consolation in having this public opportunity to express.

“Only at our last meeting we were still admiring his eloquence and the earnestness with which he appealed to you to uphold, by your exertions and personal sacrifices, what was to him the highest object, the honour of his country; he met you the following day together with other commissioners, to confer with you upon the details of our undertaking; and you must have been struck, as everybody has been who has had the benefit of his advice upon practical points, with the attention, care, and sagacity with which he treated the minutest details, proving that to a great mind nothing is little, from the knowledge that in the moral and intellectual as in the physical world the smallest point is only a link in that great chain, and holds its appointed place in that great whole which is governed by the Divine Wisdom.

“The constitution of Sir Robert Peel’s mind was peculiarly that of a statesman, and of an English statesman: he was liberal from feeling, but conservative upon principle; whilst his impulse drove him to foster progress, his sagacious mind and great experience showed him how easily the whole machinery of a state and of society is deranged, and how important, but how difficult also, it is to direct its further development in accordance with its fundamental principles, like organic growth in nature. It was peculiar to him, that, in great things as in small, all the difficulties and objections occurred to him first; he would anxiously consider them, pause, and warn against rash resolutions; but, having convinced himself, after a long and careful investigation, that a step was not only right to be taken, but of the practical mode also of safely taking it, it became to him a necessity and a duty to take it: all his caution and apparent timidity changed into courage and power of action, and at the same time readiness cheerfully to make any personal sacrifice which its execution might demand.”

|The Prince’s careful preparation of his speeches.| The foregoing are some of the principal characteristics of the Prince’s speeches. It remains only to be said that he thought over them with the greatest care and anxiety. His respect for his audience, and also for his own position, made him always endeavour to give the best thought he could to whatever subject he was treating. He looked upon every occasion he had for speaking as affording him an opportunity of saying something that might be useful for his fellow-countrymen; and he toiled to make that something worthy of him, and worthy of them.

|The Prince’s speech at the Trinity House, June 9, 1855.| The Editor of these Speeches has thought it best to give them without any introductory comments or explanations. One speech, however, brought forth so much misrepresentation, that, in reference to that circumstance, some comment may fitly be made upon it. I allude to the speech which the Prince delivered at a dinner at the Trinity House on the 9th of June, 1855. It is an admirable speech, and in it the Prince spoke out more of his whole mind than perhaps in any other. Let us recall the circumstances. We had met with much disaster in the Crimea. The sickness and death of her soldiers had touched most deeply the heart of the Queen; and the Prince, who was a patriot if ever man was, felt for his country the tenderest anxiety. Now, let us look at the speech. In every line of it may be seen the Prince’s intense anxiety to gain support for the Government, and unity of resolve amongst the people.

Why does he dwell upon the power of despotism? Not that he delights to praise despotism, but that he wishes us to see that we have an antagonist whose power we must not venture to underrate. Why does he speak of “constitutional government being under a heavy trial”? Not that, for a moment, he seeks to decry constitutional government; but because he loves it, is devoted to it, partakes that trial which |Despotism strong in war.| he points out, and seeks only so to consolidate free government that it may maintain its pre-eminence. How well-chosen are the words he used on the occasion referred to, when he says, “We are engaged with a mighty adversary, who uses against us all those wonderful powers which have sprung up under the generating influence of our liberty and our civilization, and employs them with all the force which unity of purpose and action, impenetrable secresy, and uncontrolled despotic power give him.”

Is it any new thing to say that despotism is naturally strong in the field, and in the movements of great armies? From the days of Philip of Macedon, down, through those of Louis the Fourteenth, to the Empire of the First Napoleon, has it not been the object of great men in free countries so to consolidate free governments as to give them that force and unity which should enable them to meet the despot in the field upon something like equal terms—equal terms, not as regards men (for freemen always fight well), but as regards organization, which has so much to do with superiority in military affairs?

|Danger from want of organi-zation.| It seems a needless labour to make any defence of this speech, and a labour somewhat open to the censure conveyed in the proverb that excuse is but a form of accusation; but really the justification in this case is so complete, that it does not come within the meaning of the word “excuse.” Every lover of this free country must perceive that its only danger of being worsted in some great contest is a momentary inferiority as regards organization; and we should feel much gratitude to any one who, in an exalted position, has the loving boldness to point out what are our dangers. The Prince asked for confidence in the Government. England gave that confidence, and the cause was won.

|The fearful mischief of flattering a nation.| Perhaps the greatest injury that men highly-placed can do their countrymen is to flatter them, and to hide from them any point of weakness that there may be in the nation. We smile at flattery when addressed to private persons, and think it no great harm; but it swells into a mischief of gigantic magnitude when addressed to a nation by those who enjoy its confidence.

We have not far to look for instances of nations being brought to the brink of ruin because they have not had public men to tell them stern truths as to the inefficiency of their means, and the unwisdom of their ends. All honour, then, to the man who has the courage, at a critical moment, to tell his countrymen where their peril really lies, and what difficulties they must be prepared to overcome.

|A view of the Prince’s character.| It may, perhaps, be not unwelcome to the reader, and not inappropriate to the subject, that, as an addition to this Introduction, I should attempt to give some view of the character of the Prince, having had some opportunities of observing him closely during the last year or two of his life, and having since heard and carefully compared what those who knew him best could tell of him. Such an attempt to depict the Prince’s character may be useful to the future historian, who has to bring before himself some distinct image of each remarkable man he writes about, and who, for the most part, is furnished with only a superficial description, made up of the ordinary epithets which are attached, in a very haphazard way, to the various qualities of eminent persons by their contemporaries. We really obtain very little notion of a creature so strangely-complex as a man, when we are told of him that he was virtuous, that he was just, that he loved the Arts, and that he was good in all the important relations of life. We still hunger to know what were his peculiarities, and what made him differ from other men; for each man, after all, is a sort of new and distinct creation.

It is a great advantage, in estimating any character, to have a clear idea of the aspect of the person whose character is drawn. There are, fortunately, many portraits of the Prince Consort which possess considerable merit; still there is something about almost every countenance which no portrait can adequately convey, and which must be left to description.

|A description of the Prince’s personal appearance.| The Prince had a noble presence. His carriage was erect: his figure betokened strength and activity; and his demeanour was dignified. He had a staid, earnest, thoughtful look when he was in a grave mood; but when he smiled (and this is what no portrait can tell of a man) his whole countenance was irradiated with pleasure; and there was a pleasant sound and a heartiness about his laugh which will not soon be forgotten by those who were wont to hear it.

He was very handsome as a young man; but, as often happens with thoughtful men who go through a good deal, his face grew to be a finer face than the early portraits of him promised; and his countenance never assumed a nobler aspect, nor had more real beauty in it, than in the last year or two of his life.

The character is written in the countenance, however difficult it may be to decipher; and in the Prince’s face there were none of those fatal lines which indicate craft or insincerity, greed or sensuality; but all was clear, open, pure-minded, and honest. Marks of thought, of care, of studiousness, were there; but they were accompanied by signs of a soul at peace with itself, and which was troubled chiefly by its love for others, and its solicitude for their welfare.

|The originality of the Prince.| Perhaps the thing of all others that struck an observer most when he came to see the Prince nearly, was the originality of his mind; and it was an originality divested from all eccentricity. He would insist on thinking his own thoughts upon every subject that came before him; and, whether he arrived at the same results as other men, or gainsaid them, his conclusions were always adopted upon laborious reasonings of his own.

|The quickness of his intellect.| The next striking peculiarity about the Prince was his extreme quickness—intellectually speaking. He was one of those men who seem always to have all their powers of thought at hand, and all their knowledge readily producible.

|His merits in conversa-tion.| In serious conversation he was perhaps the first man of his day. He was a very sincere person in his way of talking; so that, when he spoke at all upon any subject, he never played with it: he never took one side of a question because the person he was conversing with had taken the other: and, in fact, earnest discussion was one of his greatest enjoyments. He was very patient |His tolerance of contra-diction.| in bearing criticism and contradiction; and, indeed, rather liked to be opposed, so that from opposition he might elicit truth, which was always his first object.

|Fond of wit and humour.| He delighted in wit and humour; and, in his narration of what was ludicrous, threw just so much of imitation into it as would enable you to bring the scene vividly before you, without at the same time making his imitation in the least degree ungraceful.

|His love of freedom.| There have been few men who have had a greater love of freedom, in its deepest and in its widest sense, than the Prince Consort. Indeed, in this respect he was even more English than the English themselves.

|His sense of duty.| A strong characteristic of the Prince’s mind was its sense of duty. He was sure to go rigidly through anything he had undertaken to do; and he was one of those few men into whose minds questions of self-interest never enter, or are absolutely ignored, when the paramount obligation of duty is presented to them. If he had been a sovereign prince, and, in a moment of peril, had adopted a form of constitution which was opposed to his inclination or his judgment, he would still have abided by it strictly when quiet times came; and the change, if change there was to be, must have come from the other parties to the contract, and not from him. He was too great a man to wish to rule, if the power was to be purchased by anything having the reality, or even the semblance, of dishonour. It is not too much to say, that, if he had been placed in the position of Washington, he could have played the part of Washington, taking what honour and power his fellow-citizens were pleased to give him, and not asking, or scheming, for any more. He must have sympathized much with the late Duke of Wellington, whose main idea seemed to be to get through life justly and creditably, taking the full measure of responsibility put upon him, and not seeking to have his soul burdened with any more. Such men are absolutely of a different order of mind from the commonplace seekers after power and self-glorification.

The Prince, as all know, was a man of many pursuits and of various accomplishments, with an ardent admiration for the |The Prince gradually gave up some of his favourite pursuits.| beautiful both in Nature and in Art. Gradually, however, he gave up pursuits that he was fond of, such as the cultivation of music and drawing; not that he relished these pursuits less than heretofore, but that he felt it was incumbent upon him to attend more and more to business. He was not to employ himself upon what specially delighted him, but to attend to what it was his duty to attend to. And there was not time for both.

|The Prince’s aversion to prejudice and intolerance.| Another characteristic of the Prince (which is not always found in those who take a strict view of duty) was his strong aversion to anything like prejudice or intolerance. He loved to keep his own mind clear for the reception of new facts and arguments; and he rather expected that everybody else should do the same. His mind was eminently judicial; and it was never too late to bring him any new view, or fresh fact, which might be made to bear upon the ultimate decision which he would have to give upon the matter. To investigate carefully, weigh patiently, discuss dispassionately, and then, not swiftly, but after much turning over the question in his mind, to come to a decision—was his usual mode of procedure in all matters of much moment.

|The Prince’s delight in the good deeds of other persons.| There was one very rare quality to be noticed in the Prince,—that he had the greatest delight in anybody else saying a fine saying, or doing a great deed. He would rejoice over it, and talk about it, for days; and whether it was a thing nobly said or done by a little child, or by a veteran statesman, it gave him equal pleasure. He delighted in humanity doing well on any occasion and in any manner.

This is surely very uncommon. We meet with people who can say fine sayings, and even do noble actions, but who are not very fond of dwelling upon the great sayings or noble deeds of other persons. But, indeed, throughout his career, the Prince was one of those who threw his life into other people’s lives, and lived in them. And never was there an instance of more unselfish and chivalrous devotion than that of his to his Consort-Sovereign and to his adopted country. That Her reign might be great and glorious; that his adopted country might excel in art, in science, in literature, and, what was dearer still to him, in social well-being, formed ever his chief hope and aim. And he would have been contented to have been very obscure, if these high aims and objects could in the least degree have thereby been furthered and secured.

|The Prince’s love of his birthplace.| This love of his adopted country did not prevent his being exceedingly attached to his birthplace and his native country. He would recur in the most touching manner, and with childlike joy, to all the reminiscences of his happy childhood. But, indeed, it is clear that, throughout his life, he became in a certain measure attached to every place where he dwelt. This is natural, as he always sought to improve the people and the place where he lived; and so, inevitably, he became attached to it and to them.

A biographer who has some very beautiful character to describe, and who knows the unwillingness that there is in the world to accept, without much qualification, great praise of any human being, will almost be glad to have any small defect to note in his hero. It gives some relief to the picture, and it adds verisimilitude. This defect (if so it can be called) in the Prince consisted |The Prince’s shyness.| in a certain appearance of shyness which he never conquered. And, in truth, it may be questioned whether it is a thing that can be conquered, though large converse with the world may enable a man to conceal it. Much might be said to explain and |The causes of it.| justify this shyness in the Prince; but there it was, and no doubt it sometimes prevented his high qualities from being at once observed and fully estimated. It was the shyness of a very delicate nature, that is not sure it will please, and is without the confidence and the vanity which often go to form characters that are outwardly more genial.

The effect of this shyness was heightened by the rigid sincerity which marked the Prince’s character. There are some men who gain much popularity by always expressing in a hearty manner much more than they feel. They are “delighted” to see you; they “rejoice” to hear that your health is improving; and you, not caring to inquire how much substance there is behind these phrases, and not disinclined to imagine that your health is a matter of importance which people might naturally take interest in, enjoy this hearty but somewhat inflated welcome. But from the Prince there were no phrases of this kind to be had: nothing that was not based upon clear and complete sincerity. Indeed, his refined nature shrank from expressing all it felt, and still less would it condescend to put on any semblance of feeling which was not backed up by complete reality.

|The Prince’s tempera-ment.| It is very difficult to describe a man’s temperament, especially when it is of a somewhat complex nature, as was that of the Prince. It was a buoyant, joyous, happy temperament. It made his home and his household glad. To use a common expression, but a forcible one, he was “the life and soul of the house.” Moreover, the Prince’s temperament was very equable, not subject to sudden elations or depressions. To illustrate, however, the complexity, before alluded to, of men’s temperaments—beneath this joyousness of the Prince, deep down in the character, there was a vein, not exactly of melancholy, but certainly of pensiveness, which grew a little more sombre as the years went on. It was a pensiveness bred from much pondering upon the difficulty of human affairs, and upon the serious thing that life is.

|A division of mankind into two classes.| The writer of this Introduction has often, in his imagination, divided men into two great classes, which seem to him separated by a wide gulf of thought and feeling. The one class is, if it may be so expressed, on the side of humanity: the other is opposed or indifferent to it. This essential difference of character is not necessarily the effect or the concomitant of virtue or of vice, of hopefulness or despondency, of a love of justice or a proneness to injustice; and it has still less to do with any of the intellectual qualities. But it depends upon the presence or the absence of a large and loving nature, where the lovingness takes heed of all humanity. The Prince was pre-eminently one of the first class. He wished for success to all honest human endeavour. No love of criticism, no fondness for paradox, no desire to exalt his own opinion, made him waver in his yearning for the |The Prince’s sympathy for work.| good of humanity. This caused his intense sympathy with all human work, from that of the artisan to that of the statesman. We have in this age used the word “philanthropy” till we are tired of it, till it has |The Prince a philan-thropist.| become a mawkish word with us; but still there is something very beautiful corresponding to that word, and that was what the Prince possessed. We all recognize in our respective spheres the distinction I have drawn above between these two classes. We all know, for instance, when any public or private disaster happens, who will really grieve over it and endeavour to retrieve it; and who will make it a subject for vain comment, pretended lamentation, or boasting censure. And a nation, like a man, would |The Prince helpful in times of trouble.| have come to the Prince when in real trouble, and have found in him one whose sole thought would have been, “what can now be done for the best?” For he was, as I said before, pre-eminently on the side of humanity, and all that touched other men, touched him, too, very nearly.

|His aversion to flattery.| The Prince had a horror of flattery. I use the word “horror” advisedly. Dr. Johnson somewhere says that flattery shows, at any rate, a desire to please, and may, therefore, be estimated as worth something on that account. But the Prince could not view it in that light. He shuddered at it: he tried to get away from it as soon as he could. It was simply nauseous to him.

|His aversion to vice.| He had the same feeling with regard to vice generally. Its presence depressed him, grieved him, horrified him. His tolerance allowed him to make excuses for the vices of individual men; but the evil itself he hated.

|Low motives odious to him.| What, however, was especially repugnant to the Prince was lowness. He could not bear men to be actuated by low motives. A remarkably unselfish man himself, he scarcely understood selfishness in others; and, when he recognized it, he felt an abhorrence for it. The conditions that the Prince drew up for the prize that is given by Her Majesty at Wellington College are very characteristic of him. This prize is not to be awarded to the most bookish boy, to the least faulty boy, to the boy who should be most precise, diligent, and prudent; but to the noblest boy, to the boy who should afford most promise of becoming a large-hearted, high-motived man.

|The Prince’s religious feelings.| The Prince was a deeply religious man, yet was entirely free from the faintest tinge of bigotry or sectarianism. His strong faith in the great truths of religion coexisted with a breadth of tolerance for other men struggling in their various ways to attain those truths. His views of Religion did not lead him to separate himself from other men; and in these high matters he rather sought to find unity in diversity, than to magnify small differences. Thus he endeavoured to associate himself with all earnest seekers after religious truth.

|Some men acquire knowledge without loving it.| It must have occurred to every observer of mankind to notice that there are persons who acquire knowledge without loving it. They have read all the noblest works in literature without being profoundly touched by any of them. They may be excellent classical scholars, and yet they do not seem to love their Horace or their Virgil. Their minds are not penetrated with a sense of the beauty of these authors. They do not see that an idea has been expressed once and for ever, in the choicest language, by these masters of expression: whereas, some humble student perceives all this; and Virgil, Horace, and Ovid belong to him. The same thing occurs in science; the same in law; the same in medicine. You see men who know all about their art, or their science, but who do not seem to love it. They are not led up to all nature by it. It is with them a business, rather than a science or an art. Such was not the case with the Prince. He was singularly impressed with the intellectual beauty of knowledge; for, as he once remarked to Her who most sympathised with him, “To me, a long, closely-connected train of reasoning is like a beautiful strain of music. You can hardly imagine my delight in it.” But this was not all with him. He was one of those rare seekers after truth who carry their affections into their acquisitions of knowledge. He loved knowledge on account of what it could do for mankind; and no man of our time sympathized more intimately with that splendid outburst of Bacon, where the great Chancellor exclaims,—

|Bacon on knowledge.| “Knowledge is not a couch, whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale; but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man’s estate. But this is that which will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets—Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.”

|The Prince’s care for the poorer classes.| It was with a feeling similar to that expressed in the foregoing passage that the Prince would comment, for instance, upon an improvement in manufacture, as bearing, especially, upon the health and strength of the poorest classes. It was for “the relief of Man’s estate” that this amiable Prince delighted most in the extension of the bounds of knowledge.

|How the Prince acquired knowledge.| It is always a subject of interest to endeavour to find out how men who have been remarkable for knowledge have found time and opportunity, in this busy, anxious, hurried world, to acquire that knowledge. And in the case of the Prince it is especially difficult to answer the question. But the truth is, that, much as the Prince read books (and in early life he had been very studious), he read men and Nature more. He never gave a listless or half-awake attention to anything that he thought worth looking at, or to any person to whom he thought it worth while to listen. And to the observant man, who is always on the watch for general laws, the minutest objects contemplated by him are full of insight and instruction. In the Prince’s converse with men, he delighted at getting at what they knew best, and what they could do. He would always try to get from them the mystery of their craft; and, probably, after the Prince had had an interview with any person of intelligence, that person went away having learnt something from the Prince, and the Prince having learnt something from him. Such men, who are always on the alert to gain and to impart knowledge, deserve to know; and their knowledge soon grows to be beyond book-knowledge, and enters into a higher sphere, as being the result of delicate and attentive observation made by themselves, and for themselves. This is how I account for the Prince’s remarkable acquisition of much and various knowledge.

|The Prince’s care for the labouring classes.| If any man in England cared for the working classes, it was the Prince. He understood the great difficulty of the time as regards these classes; namely, the providing for them fitting habitations. He was a beneficent landlord; and his first care was to build good cottages for all the labouring men on his estates. He had entered into minute calculations as to the amount of illness which might be prevented amongst the poorer classes by a careful selection of the materials to be used in the building of their dwellings. In a word, he was tender, thoughtful, and anxious in his efforts for the welfare of the labouring man. His constancy of purpose in that, as in other things, was worthy of all imitation. He did not become tired of benevolence. It was not the fancy of a day for him. It was the sustained purpose of a life.

|What he sought for in Art.| The Prince’s love of Art must be spoken of separately, for it was something peculiar to himself. He saw through Art into what, in its highest form, it expressed—the beautiful. He cared not so much for a close representation of the things of daily life, as for that ideal world which Art shadows forth, and interprets to mankind. Hence his love for many a picture which might not be a masterpiece of drawing or of colouring, but which had tenderness and reverence in it, and told of something that was remote from common life, and high and holy.

Joined with this longing for an interpretation of the ideal, there was in the Prince a love of Art for itself—a pleasure in the skilful execution of a design, whether executed by himself or others. He was no mean artist, and his knowledge of Art stretched forth into various directions. But this was not the remarkable point. There have been other Princes who have been artists. It was in his love of Art—in his keen perception of what Art could do, and of what was its highest province—that he excelled many men who were distinguished artists themselves, and had given their lives to the cultivation of Art.

|Skill in organization.| Again, there was the Prince’s skill in organization, that almost amounted to an art, which he showed in all the work he touched, and in everything he advised upon.

It may, therefore, justly be said that the Prince approached the highest realms of Art in various ways, which are seldom combined in any one person: in his fondness for what is romantic and ideal, in his love of skill and handicraft, and in his uniform desire for masterly organization.

|What the Prince did for agri-culture.| In distinguishing the various branches of Art which the Prince devoted himself to, and loved to further, Agriculture must be particularly mentioned, not only on account of the great interest he took in it, and of the practical skill he brought to it, but because of the felicitous results which followed upon his enterprises in this department. As regards works of High Art, it is not much that the wisest Prince, or the most judicious patron, can do to further them. They depend upon the existence, at any particular period, of men or women of genius; and the production of such works lies in a region which is beyond and above the patronage even of the most judicious patrons. But it is not so with Agriculture; and the Prince might fairly lay claim to having himself done much towards that improvement in agriculture which, happily for this country, has been so marked and so rapid within the last twenty years. Men are always much influenced by what their superiors in station do. And that the Prince should have been one of the first persons in this country to appreciate the merits of Deep Drainage, to employ Steam Power in cultivation (a power which does not require to be fed when it is put by in its stable after the day’s work), and to apply the resources of Chemistry to Practical Agriculture, ensured the welcome consequence that there would be many followers where the foremost man of England was anxious and ready to lead the way. That, with a large breadth of the lands of Great Britain partially tilled, or scarcely cultivated at all, the British Nation should not unfrequently have to expend twenty or thirty millions of money in foreign corn, is a reproach against our practical sagacity, in which the Prince at least can have no share of the blame.

|The Prince too much interested in too many things.| It has been said that, if we knew any man’s life intimately, there would be some great and peculiar moral to be derived from it—some tendency to be noted, which other men, observing it in his career, might seek to correct in themselves. I cannot help thinking that I see what may be the moral to be derived from a study of the Prince’s life. It is one which applies only to a few amongst the highest natures; and, simply stated, it is this—that he cared too much about too many things.

|His craving for perfection.| Moreover, everything in which he was concerned must be done supremely well if it was to please and satisfy him. The great German, Goethe, had the same defect, or rather the same superabundance. He would take inordinate pains even in writing a short note, that it should be admirably written. He did not understand the merit of second-best; but everything that was to be done must be done perfectly. It was thus with the Prince. In the choice of a jewel, in the placing of a statue, in the laying out of a walk, in the direction of a party of pleasure, his reasoning mind must be satisfied; and he longed that everything that was to be, should be the best of its kind.

|Strain upon the health.| Now men of this nature, with an abiding aspiration towards what is beautiful, and such an inordinate appreciation of what is reasonable, require also to have an extraordinary stock of health,^[1] otherwise they make extravagant demands upon their powers of thought and attention, and thus upon the primary elements of life.