THE LIFE OF 7.9.319 HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE CONSORT BY THEODORE MARTIN WITH PORTRAITS VOLUME THE SECOND THIRD EDITION LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE [All rights reserved] ΤΟ THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. MADAM, I have now the honour to place in Your Majesty's hands the second portion of the narrative of the Life of his Royal Highness the Prince Consort. In another volume I hope to complete the work. In writing the Life of the Prince, I have felt that I must write what would be in some measure a history of the time. The duties of his position, as the Prince understood them, made it incumbent upon him to be ever on the watch where the welfare of Your Majesty's kingdom was concerned. The interests of England, abroad as well as at home, were not more dear to Your Majesty than they were to him. To help, so far as in him lay, to uphold these interests, and to keep England true to her great name, and worthy of her great inheritance, was with the Prince, as with Your Majesty, the dearest object of his ambition. Seeking no personal triumph, he was content, and more than content, with strengthening the hands, while lightening the labours, of the Sovereign in whose life his own was merged. But this could only be done by taking an active part in her peculiar toils, and by devoting, like her, his best energies to that day-by-day observation of every social and political movement, which he conceived to be the function of the Head of a State, and in an especial degree of the Constitutional Monarch, whose study is, in the words of our Liturgy, to preserve her people in wealth, peace, and godliness.' The events which make history were thus the atmosphere in which the Prince lived. It was upon them his mind was most constantly at work, it was with them that his correspondence chiefly dealt. His story, therefore, could not be told without at the same time telling the story of these events. To show how they acted upon his mind, and how in turn his influence re-acted upon them, has been my aim. This could not be done without at the same time affording glimpses of what each day brings to Your Majesty in the way of active supervision of the business of the State. In going through the voluminous records of State and other papers compiled by the Prince for the use of Your Majesty and himself, which it has been my duty and privilege to examine in the execution of my task, nothing has impressed or touched me more, than the indications on which I everywhere came, of how the minds and hands of Your Majesty and the Prince had worked together upon the multiform and difficult questions which were constantly presenting themselves for consideration. Only a faint idea can be given in any work like the present of the weighty character and the wide range of the topics, which engaged the thoughts of Your Majesty and the Prince during the eventful years of which this volume treats. Still, it cannot but be well, that Your Majesty's subjects should learn something of the noble activity which then reigned within the Palace ;—how not a day, scarcely an hour passed, which did not leave its record of some good work done, some sagacious counsel tendered, some worthy enterprise encouraged, some measure to make men wiser or better devised or helped |