The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-11-26 00:00:00

THE ENGAGEMENT OF THE DUKE

OF ALBANY.

A Court Circular of Monday's date, issued from Balmoral,
contained the subjoinea announcement :
"The Queen has received the intelligence of the
engagement of Prince Leopold Duke of Albany to
Princess Helene of Waldeck, which took place three
days ago at Frankfurt. The Princess is a younger
sister of the present Queen of the Netherlands, and
niece to the Queen of Sweden."

The Times has the following leader on the above announi

Lee-
an

meat :
The Court Circular of this morning contains
announcement which will be read with no little
interest throughout the country. The Duke of
Albany, the youngest son of the Queen, is about to
be married. The bride he has chosen for himself
is the Princess Helene of Waldeck, daughter of the
reigning Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont, younger sister
of the Queen of the Netherlands and niece of
the Queen of Sweden. The Princess was born in 1861,
and is therefore eight years younger than her future
husband. She comes Of a Protestant family already
closely allied to two of the reigning Houses of Europe,
and not unworthy to give a Princess to the Royal
Family of England. Of such a marriage there is little
to be said beyond the expression of a cordial hope that
it may prove to be a happy one. The days are
happily gone by, in England at least, when Royal
marriages were determined by reasons of State. It is
true that the choice of the Queen's sons has been more
or less limited by law and constitutional precedent,
but within these limits they have chosen for them-
selves, and chosen happily. The country has cordially
welcomed the brides of the Duke of Albany's elder
brothers, and has rejoiced to witness their domestic
happiness. It will welcome not less cordially the
Duke's own bride when she comes among us, and
will heartily bestow on the pair all the good wishes
which a happy marriage never fails to evoke.
The career of the Duke of Albany, though neces-
sarily less prominent and conspicuous than those of
his elder brothers, is nevertheless one which the
country has followed with peculiar interest and sym-
pathy. Delicate in health from his childhood, though
now we may hope enjoying the prospect of more
robust manhood, he has been to a great extent cut off
from the active and hardy training which his brothers
have enjoyed. But by the exercise of a sound discretion
on the part of his parents, seconded b,y his own natural
aptitudes and inclinations, the physical disabilities of
Prince Leopold have been turned to excellent account
in the more scholarly and intellectual turn given to
his education. Though be has travelled both in the
Old World and the New, it was impossible that he
should undertake the long and laborious journeys
which have given the Prince of Wales his wide know-
ledge of men and things. Still less was it possible
for Prince Leopold to undergo the training of the
Dukes of Edinburgh and of Connaught in the two
great warlike services of the country. Army and
Navy were alike closfed to him, but there still re-
mained open the less active, but not less useful,
nor, to a youth of his temperament and tastes, less
attractive career of study and intellectual pursuits.
The House of Hanover has certainly not been very
productive Of Princes of scholarly attainments.
George I. hated " boets and bainters." George
111. collected the noble King's Library now in the
British Museum, but his literary history is almost
comprised in his memorable interview with Dr.
Johnson. But the example and precept of the late
Prince Consort gave a new and salutary bias to
the intellectual training of his children. A scholar him-
self, with intellectual interests of really catholic
extent in art, in science, and in letters, he was
careful to widen arid broaden the education his
children received. His Ltimediate and direct in-
fluence on the training of Prince Leopold could
not, of course, be great, for the Prince was only
eight years old when his father died. But the
seed which he sowed has brought forth abundant
fruit, and it is no flattery to discern in the Duke
of Albany, in his own decided bias towards intel-
lectual pursuits and in the intelligent interest
he has always shown in all matters connected
with the spread of the higher education, a good deal
of the spirit of his illustrious father. Prince Leopold
went to Oxford, not merely because Oxford is a place
where princes and other youths, neither too
studious not yet entirely idle, may spend some of the
happiest years of their life in the free and joyous com-
panionship of young men of their own age, but
because its intellectual atmosphere, rather than its
social attractions, were specially congenial to his
nature. He went to study and to learn. Of the cur-
rent life of undergraduates he saw less than most men,
perhaps. His health forbade him to take part in their
pastimes and he had little taste for many of their
recreations. But he associated with his teachers
and became their friend and companion. He acquired
a love of books and a knowledge of the way. to use
them. Wherever, in the lecture rpoms of professors
and tutors, the best teaching of Oxford was to be
found, there Prince Leopold went to obtain it. He
went to Oxford a youth with strong intellectual inte-
rests and a praiseworthy love of learning, not, per-
haps, too common in princes. He left it a man of
culture, who had enjoyed familiar contact with all the
keenest minds of the University, and had striven, by
diligent study, to derive the fullest profit from the
intellectual advantages he had enjoyed.
So completely had Prince Leopold entered into
the intellectual hie of Oxford that he retained a
connexion with it, mole or less close, for some
time after his career as a student was ended. He
was not merely an ordinary student who passed a
year or two at Oxford and then went forth into
the world, but he remained as distinctively iden-
tified with letters and academical pursuits as one
of his brothers •is with the Navy and the other
with the Army. Though his delicate health has kept
him very much aloof from the excitements and
exactions of public life, yet his rare public appear-
ances have generally had for their occasion the ad-
vocacy of some intellectual movement, or of some
scheme of education. His treatment of these
subjects has never been merely perfunctory or
formal ; he has made it clear that he has thought
about them for himself, and that he has brought
to bear upon them an active, independent, and
well-stored mind. He is, in fact, a voice and not
merely an echo. He thinks and judges for himself,
and he has something of his father's gift of expressing
the results of his reflections in graceful and effective
language. To a young man of the temperament and
tastes of the Duke of Albany, endowed with all the
opportunities which his position secures for him. there
is clearly open a career of exceptional usefulness and
beneficence. It is no slight advantage to the com-
munity at large that learning and letters should have
their representative in a member of the Royal Family.
The influence of the Prince Consort in this direction
was vast, and its results have been felt in almost
every department of our national life. It is in the
power c. the Duke of Albany, as to all appearance it is
his ambition, to renew the tradition of that influence
and to carry it forward in many directions. All will
hope that the delicacy of his earlier years has now
been overcome and that a long life of happy activity
will enable him to manifest the fruits of diligent
study and of keen intellectual ardour. However this
may be, the universal feeling of the country will be
one of warm congratulation to the Duke himself on
his approaching marriage, of hearty welcome to his
bride, and of the best of good wishes for the future
happiness of both.