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 4

1.And the Prince had very good health. At any rate he had begun with a fine constitution. Every one of the chief organs of life was well developed in him, with the exception of a heart that was not quite equal to the work put upon it; so that he mostly had but a feeble pulse. It was upon the nervous energy that this constant stress of work, and this striving after excellence in everything, must have told, as such demands do tell upon all men of that high nature.

The man who insists upon having a good reason for everything he thinks and does, has set himself a task which it requires almost superhuman energy to master. With a boundless appetite for knowledge, the Prince declined to be superficial in anything; and whatever question was brought to him, he set to work at it with a resolution to give his best attention to solve it. All men, when they find such a mind to lean upon, delight to bring their difficulties to it; and in the Prince’s case his extraordinary good nature and prompt sympathy forbade him to ignore any question which interested his fellow-men. I cannot help thinking that, but for this peculiarity in his nature—a peculiarity which, regret it as we may, we cannot but love and admire—he would have lived for many years longer, to be, as he had always been, the worthiest and ablest supporter of the Throne, and the foremost advocate of all that held out a promise of increasing the welfare of the people.

It may here be well to remind the reader that the Prince was only forty-two years of age when he died; and that the sagacity and prudence for which he gained a just renown, were manifested at an age when many other men, even of the brightest sort, are far from showing maturity of judgment. This early death, too, makes the great amount of knowledge that he had acquired all the more extraordinary. And, altogether, we may say that seldom has there been compressed into a life more of thought, energy, and anxious care, than was crowded into his. His death appears especially premature at a period when we are accustomed to have great soldiers, lawyers, and statesmen distinguishing themselves, and almost showing new faculties, after they have reached the threescore years and ten so pathetically spoken of by the Psalmist. If the Prince had lived to attain what we now think a good old age, he would inevitably have become the most accomplished statesman and the most guiding personage in Europe—a man to whose arbitrement fierce national quarrels might have been submitted, and by whose influence calamitous wars might have been averted.

So subtly are men constituted, and so difficult is it, even from a careful enumeration |The gentleness of the Prince.| of their qualities, to get at the result of their nature, and to understand the men themselves, that it would be possible, notwithstanding all that has been justly said in praise of the Prince, that he might still have failed to be a very loveable character. You meet with people against whom nothing in dispraise can well be urged, and for whom high-sounding panegyrics might justly be written, who yet are not pleasant, amiable, or loveable. It was not so, however, with the Prince. The mere enumeration of his high qualities and his good tendencies would fail to give a just representation of his peculiarly gentle, tender, and pathetic cast of mind. Indeed this kind of character is rather German than English, and had always been much noted as a prevailing character in the Prince’s family. Though eminently practical, and therefore suited to the people he came to dwell amongst, he had in a high degree that gentleness, that softness, and that romantic nature, which belong to his race and his nation, and which make them very pleasant to live with, and very tender in all their social and family relations.

|The abiding youthfulness of men of genius possessed by him.| Finally there was in the Prince a quality which I think may be noticed as belonging to most men of genius and of mark. I mean a certain childlike simplicity. It is noticed of such men that, mentally speaking, they do not grow old like other men. There is always a playfulness about them, a certain innocency of character, and a power of taking interest in what surrounds them, which we naturally associate with the beauty of youthfulness. It is a pity to use a foreign word if one can help it, but it illustrates the character of such men to say that they never can become “blasés.” Those who had the good fortune to know the Prince, will, I am sure, admit the truth of this remark as applied to him; and will agree in the opinion that neither disaster, sickness, nor any other form of human adversity, would have been able to harden his receptive nature, or deaden his soul to the wide-spread interests of humanity. He would always have been young in heart; and a great proof of this was his singular attractiveness to all those about him who were young.

One gift that the Prince possessed, which tended to make him a favourite with the young, was his peculiar aptitude for imparting knowledge. Indeed, the skill he showed in explaining anything, whether addressed to the young or the old, ensured the readiest attention; and it would not be easy to find, even among the first Professors and Teachers of this age, any one who could surpass the Prince in giving, in the fewest words, and with the least use of technical terms, a lucid account of some difficult matter in science which he had mastered—mastered not only for himself, but for all others who had the advantage of listening to him.

The one of his children who was most capable of judging of what his conduct had been to all his children as a father and a friend, speaks thus of him:—

“But in no relation of life did the goodness and greatness of his character appear more than in the management of his children. The most judicious, impartial, and loving of fathers, he was at once the friend and master, ever by his example enforcing the precepts he sought to instil.”

The Prince’s marriage was singularly |The Prince’s marriage.| felicitous. The tastes, the aims, the hopes, the aspirations of the Royal Pair were the same. Their mutual respect and confidence went on increasing. Their affection grew, if possible, even warmer and more intense as the years of their married life advanced. Companions in their domestic employments, in their daily labours for the State, and, indeed, in almost every occupation,—the burthens and the difficulties of life were thus lessened more than by half for each one of the persons thus happily united in this true marriage of the soul. When the fatal blow was struck, and the Prince was removed from this world, it is difficult to conceive a position of greater sorrow, and one, indeed, more utterly forlorn, than that which became the lot of the Survivor—deprived of him whom She Herself has described as being the “Life of Her Life.”

To follow out his wishes—to realize his hopes—to conduct his enterprizes to a happy issue—to make his loss as little felt as possible by a sorrowing country and fatherless children:—these are the objects which, since his death, it has been the chief aim and intent of Her Majesty to accomplish. That strength may be given her to fulfil these high purposes, is the constant prayer of her subjects, who have not ceased, from the first moment of her bereavement, to feel the tenderest sympathy for her; and who, giving a reality to that which in the case of most Sovereigns is but a phrase, have thus shown that the Queen is indeed, in their hearts, the Mother of her people.

|How the Prince was mourned for.| It is a matter of history that, at the untimely end of the Prince, the sorrow of the whole nation went with him to his grave. That was due to his great public qualities: but, within a narrower circle, the endearing qualities of his nature called forth a deeper anguish and a more abiding affliction. Never was there a man more mourned by his family, by his friends, by those of his household, and by all persons who had come into contact or connection with him. This is perhaps the most favourable trait, the most undeniable proof of goodness and of greatness of heart, that can be brought forward of any man; for though we read upon tombstones of the undying regret of family and friends, it is in reality given to few amongst the sons of men to leave a blank in the lives of many other persons, which refuses to be filled up—a fond and passionate regret which may be soothed, but which, in their devoted hearts, can never be effaced.

NOTE.

It must be obvious to the reader of this Introduction that the writer has received the most valuable and important aid from those who, by their constant intercourse with the Prince Consort, could best appreciate the high qualities which shone forth in his domestic life—from persons in the Royal Household who saw him daily—from Members of the Royal Family—and especially from the Queen Herself. To Her Majesty the writer is indebted for a view of the Prince’s character in which a loving and profound appreciation is combined with the most earnest desire for exact truth and faithfulness. There is not any one who could have been cognizant of all the various traits of the Prince enumerated in this Introduction, unless he had been instructed by Her, who alone saw, with the full light of a complete affection, into the whole beauty and merit of the character of this remarkable Man.

London,

October, 1862.