The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1863-03-17 00:00:00

DORSET COUNTY EXPRESS
DORCHESTER. TUESDAY. MARCH 17. 1863.

THE ROYAL MARRIAGE.

The British are not a demonstrative people.
An absorbing love of industry is among the
first of their national virtues, and they do not
cast aside their ordinary pursuits, and devote
themse,ves with the unity of a single mind to
festivity and rejoicing, without there being
mnch more in the denroioqratiosi than meets the
eye. It is not, from the mere love of a holiday,
or of sight-seeing, that the people of our wide
empire, from the counsellors of the Crown to
the street-sweeper in the towns, the ploughman
in the country, and the shepherd on our colonial
prairies, can be induced to meet together in
festival mood. Yet such was the case on the
day when Albert Edward Prince of Wales was
united in the bond of holy wedlock with the I
Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Every town
was dressed in its gayest colours, in forests of I
flags, and wedding-peals were ringing at intervals I
at all our churches. Mothers carried their little I
children to hear the music, and kept them up all I
night to see the fireworks and bonfire, in hope I
that they would remember as long as they live I
that great wedding day. Men put away their I
tools for once on a week-day. and partook with
their wives and their friends of the roast-beef of
Old England, which had been pr‘vided for them
through the munificence of their richer neigh- I
boors, whilst their sons and their daughters were I
regaled with "the cup that cheers, but does not
inebriate," and all happy weddings that they
knew of, and all Ilse aueorlotes of the Royal
Family they bad over heard. were talked of once
more. From the time the Prince led the
Princess from the Royal yacht to the landing.
pier at Gravesend till they arrived at Osborne,
four days after, to spend their honeymoon, they
were greeted by the people dressed in wedding
favours and glad of heart. The Queen herself
in her youth never had inch • welcome, nor the
Qoeen'a husband, whose noble life is now among
the sacred memories of England. And yet of
the young Prince. just grown out of boyhood,
the people can little more than say that he is his
father's and his mother's eldest son, the heir to
the throne, a young man who has been educated
in all the purity f • domestic life, such as no
middle-class family in broad England cool,'
furnish a more perfect ex-tmple of. Of the
Princess hardly one knows more than that she is
the royal daughter of a house as remarkable for
the domestic virtues as for the glories of an
ancient and most heroic ancestry, and that she
is accepted by a just and faithful mother as a lit
wife for the son who hsa been trained to man-
hood with the most religions care, and with the
uttermost performance of the sacred trust to the
nation he may perhaps live to govern at some
future day. Bow then shall we account for a
Phenomenon so wholly unexampled in this or
any other country I The true secret lay in a
tniugled sentiment of loyalty, patriotism, and
contentment of the people, the root of whose
confidence is in the Queen. It is the blessing of
a quarter of a century of faultless rule that
made the sunshine of Tuesday's wedding festival.
At the beginning of the present reign the
English were a loyal people. but the memory
was fresh of kings towards whom was cherished
certainly by many of their subjects rather as •
beneficent superstition than as a deep natural
feeling. Even Her Majesty's imadiate pre-
decessor, though • popular king, identified him-
self en far with party as to be unable to efface
cuss jealousies and bickerinp of discontent.
The twenty-six years of Her Majesty's reign
lute* been years of remarkable sootal pe=zi
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