1848

DEATH OF LORD MELBOURNE.

157

hearing the news, 'do I deplore the loss of one who was a most kind and disinterested friend of mine, and most sincerely attached to me. He was indeed, for the first two years and a half of my reign, almost the only friend I had, except Stockmar and Lehzen, and I used to see him constantly, daily. I thought much and talked much of him all day.' The latter years of Lord Melbourne's life, since his withdrawal from public life and London society, were known to have been tinged with the melancholy, from which not even a vigorous mind, richly stored with the knowledge of books and men, can secure a companionless old age. He had been doomed to feel what Gibbon tells us even he dreaded in anticipation that domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which grows more painful as we descend into the vale of years.' Knowing this to have been the case, the feeling under which the following entry was made by the Queen in her Journal, two days later, will be at once understood:

'I received a pretty and touching letter from Lady Palmerston, saying that my last letter to poor Lord Melbourne had been a great comfort and relief to him, and that during the last melancholy years of his life we had often been the chief means of cheering him up. This is a great satisfaction to me to hear.'

There were few who were not, like the Prince, heartily glad to say good-by to the year 1848,-few, however, who had the same cause to wish it at an end. Jeremy Taylor, in a well-known passage, says:-'If we could, from the battlements of heaven, espy how many poor men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread; how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war; how many orphans are now weeping beside the graves of their parents, by whose life they were enabled to eat; how many mariners and pas

158

REFLECTIONS ON CLOSE OF THE YEAR. 1848

sengers are at this present in a storm, and shriek out because their keel dashes against a rock or bulges under them, how many there are that weep with want, or are mad with oppression, or are desperate from a too quick sense of a constant infelicity; in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of these evils.'

The poet-preacher speaks but of what might be seen at any hour of any day by one who could take in at a glance what is passing upon our globe. What would he have pictured as the feelings of one whose constant duty it was to watch the pitiable spectacle which well nigh every day of the now closing year had presented of human suffering and bereavement, of want and havoc, of hate and delusion and civil strife, of baffled patriotism, of intolerable wrong, of noble purposes sullied by ignoble hands, of the madness, and destruction, and death which had ravaged so large a section of Christian Europe? To maintain this watch the Prince had deemed to be his duty in the interests of the great kingdom with which his destiny had connected him. Many momentous problems had been raised, the solution of which, eagerly as he desired it, he was not to see. But he had faith in the ultimate purposes by which the progress of the world is overruled. He had faith that what is right may be delayed, but cannot be prevented; that surely, however late, comes the hour of retribution to selfishness and wrong; and, however glad, perhaps, in his moments of weariness he might have been to be out of the noise and participation of the evils' of the time, he turned -with a heart grateful for the good the year had brought to England and to her palace-home, and not unhopeful of the future to do what in him lay to help forward the prosperity and well-ordered freedom of his fellow-men.

6

CHAPTER XXXI.

ALREADY the days were beginning to be too short for the vast amount of work which the Prince had to crowd into them. He held it to be one of the duties of the Sovereign, whose other self he was, that she should be, if possible, the best informed person in her dominions as to the progress of political events and the current of political opinion, both at home and abroad. That our Constitution demands a passive indifference on the part of the Sovereign to the march of political events, was in his view a gross misconception. Nowhere,' he states in a private memorandum written in 1852, 'would such indifference be more condemned and justly despised than in England. Why,' he continues, are Princes alone to be denied the credit of having political opinions based upon an anxiety for the national interests, their country's honour, and the welfare of mankind? Are they not more independently placed than any other politician in the State? Are their interests not most intimately bound up with those of their country? Is the Sovereign not the natural guardian of the honour of his country? Is he not necessarily a politician?' Ministries change, and when they go out of office, lose the means of access to the best information which they had formerly at command. The Sovereign remains, and to him this information is always open. The most patriotic Minister has to think of his party. His judgment therefore is often insensibly warped by party considerations. Not so the Con

160 PRINCE'S ACCURACY OF OBSERVATION.

1849

stitutional Sovereign, who is exposed to no such disturbing agency. As the permanent head of the nation, he has only to consider what is best for its welfare and its honour; and his accumulated knowledge and experience, and his calm and practised judgment, are always available in Council to the Ministry for the time without distinction of party.

The extent and accuracy of the Prince's information on every subject of political importance impressed all with whom he came in contact. Ministers of State found him as familiar as themselves with the facts immediately connected with the working of their own departments. Ambassadors returning from their legations were struck to find how completely he had at command every significant detail of what had happened within the sphere of their special observation.' Diplomatists proceeding for the first time to some Foreign Court learned, in an interview with the Prince, not merely the exact state of affairs which they would find awaiting them, but very frequently had the characters of the Sovereigns and statesmen with whom they would have to deal sketched for them with a clearness and precision which they afterwards found of the utmost practical service.

This mastery of details could only be gained by great and systematic labour, in itself quite sufficient to absorb the energies of a busy man. But to the claims of politics had to be added those, which science and art, and questions of social improvement, were constantly forcing upon the Prince's attention. An extensive correspondence also took up much time, and thus a comparatively small portion of every day was left for that domestic and social intercourse for which

1 For example, Lord Normanby returning to his post at Paris, after a hasty visit to England, writes to his brother Colonel Phipps (2nd April, 1849): I was very much struck, during the conversation with which the Prince honoured me, by the accurate recollection he retained of the small details of the many great events of the last year, and by the correct judgment which he had formed upon that sound foundation.'

1849

HIS ACTIVE HABITS.

161

He

the Prince was, by his quick observation and natural brightness of spirits, peculiarly fitted, and in which he delighted to throw off for the time the weight of graver cares. was habitually an early riser. Even in winter he would be up by seven, and dispose of a great deal of work before breakfast, by the light of the green German lamp, the original of which he had brought over with him, and which has since become so familiar an object in our English homes. The Queen shared his early habits; but before Her Majesty joined him in the sitting-room, where their writing-tables stood always side by side, much had, as a rule, been prepared for her consideration,―much done to lighten the pressure of those labours, both of head and hand, which are inseparable from the discharge of the Sovereign's duties.

In the following letter to the Dowager Duchess of Coburg, we have a picture of the Prince stealing a quiet moment to send a few welcome words to the old home, before the rest of the world had begun to stir :—

'It seems a long time since I wrote to you, and this idea brings all at once into conjunction pen, ink, and paper, and my villanous hand (villanous, but greatly in request), and here I sit at my writing-table in the stillness of the morning, before the noisy bustling world is awake, in order that I may converse with you. That it is not hard for me to concentrate my thoughts upon you for this purpose, you will readily believe.

'These are the days in which last year all the tidings of evil burst in upon us. The French Revolution, the arrival of the fugitives, and Brandenstein with the woeful news from Gotha. Poor good Grandmama! I cannot thank Heaven sufficiently that it did not suffer her to survive the year that is gone: it would have made her too unhappy.

'Here everything goes on its quiet course, quiet in com