The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-05-31 00:00:00

LL) e :',itottrbtiby aosersJer

n. 1.1 U HUAI , M.Y 31 1884.

pRINCES AND THE PEOPLE.
A FEW weeks ago, when the death of the
Duke of Albany was the all-absorbing topic
of public conversation, the question was
asked in many a circle, "Who is there to
succeed him in tile line of practical philan-
throphy he had laid down for himself ?"
The Prince of Wales was out or the question,
for his duties as Heir-Apparent to the
Throne are so many and so onerous that,
strive as he might, he could not add the
peculiar fauetions assumed by his lamented
brother to those with which he 1--,as already
to cope. The Dike of Elm burgh, by reason
of his haing command of a fleet, and the
Duke of Connaught because of his duties
with the army of India at Meerut, were
equally disabled from taking up the vacant
position ; and but a few days since all would
have agreed, though they would have agreed
With regret, that the place which might be
' said to have been created by the Prince
Consort, and to have been most worthily
filled by the Duke of Albany, was likely to
remain unoccupied for many a year. Sud-
denly, and without any premonition on the
part of even those likely to be best informed
on such matters, thcre has stepped forward
a nephew of the depacted prince, and one in
Fhe direct line to the throne of England,
ready to take up the mantle worn in other
years by his grandfather and his uncle.
Time runs so rapidly in these days that the
general public have found it difficult to
realise that the eldest son of the Prince of
Wales is now over twenty years of age, and
that in a very short time Prince Albert
Victor (or Prince Edward as he is called in
the Royal circle, and as he is likely to be
best known to history) will be entitled to be
seated in the House of Peers, and to have
provided for him an establis4ment of his
own. This is the Prince who is destined
not merely to follow his father in the path
of doing his best to serve and to please the
people over whom, in all human likelihood,
he will one day be called upon to reign, but
also his uncle in the way of using his utmost
endeavour to elevate them. The cause for
which Prince Victor pleaded was that in
which so many worthy workers are engaged;
and although, looked at from one point of
view, the success of that cause would benefit
only a limited area of the East-end of Lon-
don, looked at from an ,ther, it will be seen
to have its good effects for the whole of the
struggling masses of the country. The idea
at the root of the effort with which his
Royal Highness has connected himself is
that which of late years has become increas-
ingly common---that social position, like pro-
perty, has its duties as well as its rights.
Starting from this point, a number of Cin-
bridge men have decided to establish them-
selves in the East of London, and there,
amid all the squalor, and the sorrow, and
the pain of a vast and evergrowing popula-
tion, to create in some sort an oasis which
shall bear the good fruit of culture, and thus
assist to rouse to some conception of a higher
form of existence those whose surroundings
are so aptly calculated to drag them down.
At the first sight such an idea is apt to be
regarded
as chimerical, and so much con-
tempt has of late years been poured upon
"culture" because of the vanity or the
vagaries of some who have professed to be
its most ardent votaries, .that this feeling is
not altogether unjustifiable. But,
,upon
closer inspection, it will almost certainly be
found that much can be done by personal
intercourse to brighten the lives of many
of those who, under the present conditions,
are condemned to pass their ex;stence in one
dreary never-ending round of toil. It has
become the proud privilege of the English
Royal Family to take the lead in more than
one movement desi.ned for the upraising of
the masses; and although that with which
Prince Victor, in the few graceful words
he spoke at Cambridge, definitely connected
himself, cannot claim to vie in importance
with • some of these, it yet possesses poten-
tialities with which care, mingled with the
enthusiastic energy for which university
men are famous, may yet result in a very
considerable amount of good work being ef-
fected in the East End of London.