The Express.
London, England, 1867-07-26 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, JULY 26, 1867.

save them, but was too late. The remainder were
at lest received and imprisoned, after having been
left a long time in the water exposed to a
burning sun.

It would be well if this atrocity could be traced
to some accidental and limited cause, but unfor-
tunately it is in perfect harmony with what
is continually taking place throughout the
country ; so that the Consuls have felt
compelled to declare that "in presence of
" the notorious persecutions to which the
" Jews of this country are exposed, we con-
" eider it our bounden duty to protest with
" energy, in the names of the Governments we
" represent, against this act of barbarism, and to
"throw before the civilized world the whole re-
" aponsibility of it on you, the Prefect, and on
" the superior authorities."
Facts like these go far to explain the wonderful
tenacity of life which the Ottoman Government
displays in spite of terrible abuses and organic
weakness of the most alarming kind. It is be-
cause the Christians of European Turkey are such
as they are that the Turk is able to maintain his
ground as the only representative of the autho-
rity which is needed to restrain their habitual and
savage intolerance.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE
PRINCE CONSORT.

This morning was issued the volume which has
been some time announced, entitled "The Early
Years of his Royal Highness the Prince Consort.' •
The work was originally compiled under the
Queen's direction solely for private circulation
amongst the members of her own family, or such
other persons as, from the relations in which they
had stood to her Majesty or to the Prince
Consort himself, would naturally be inte-
rested in the story of his early days.
The present volume is prepared, under the
superintendence alluded to, by Lieutenant-General
the Hon. C. Grey ; but others which are to follow
will be edited by Mr. Theodore Martin. The
translation of the Prince's letters are, with a few
merely verbal corrections, by Princess Helena.
The possibility of a marriage between the Queen
and the Prince was, it seems, fondly looked for-
ward to by the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg from a
very early period, and the Prince used to relate
that " when he was a child of three years
old his nurse always told him that he
should marry the Queen ; and that when he
first thought of marrying at all he always thought
of her." As the children grew up this idea was
warmly encouraged by the King of the Belgians,
from whom, indeed, the Queen first heard of it ;
but the idea of such a mamage met with much op-
position, and the late King William IY. did every-
thing in his power to discourage it. No less than
five other marriages had been contemplated for
the young Princess; and the King, though he
never mentioned the subject to the Princess
herself, was especially anxious to bring about an
alliance between her and the late Prince Alex-
ander of the Netherlands, brother to the present
King of Holland. In his anxiety to effect
this object he did everything he could, though in-
effectually, to prevent the Duke of Coburg's visit
to England in 1836, when he came over with his
sons and spent nearly four weeks at Kensington
Palace with the Duchess of Kent. Queen Ade-
laide, in later years, said to the Queen that if she
had told the King that it was her own earnest
wish to marry her cousin, and that her happiness
depended on it, he would at once have given up
his opposition to it, as he was very fond of and
always very kind to his niece. It was then that
the Queen and Prince met for the first time, and
her Majesty thus records her impressions of the
visit ;
The Prince was at that time much shorter than his
brother, already very handsome, but very stout, which be
entirely grew out of afterwards. He was moat amiable,
natural, unaffected, and merry—full of interest in every-
thing, playing on the piano with the Princess, his cousin—
drawing ;in short constantly occupied. He always paid
the greatest attention to all he saw, and the Queen remem-
bers well how intently he listened to the sermon preached
in St. Paul's, where he and his father and brother accom-
panied the Duchess of Kent and the Princess there on the
occasion of the service attended by the children of the
different charity schools. It is indeed rare to see a prince
not yet 17 year► of age bestowing such earnest attention on
a sermon.

It was probably in the early part of 1838 that
the King of the Belgians, in wilting to the Queen,
tint mentioned the idea of such a marriage. Both
the Prince and his father seem to have objected
from the first to the proposal that a few years
should elapse before the marriage should take place,
he being then 18 years of age. "I am ready," ho
said to King Leopold, " to submit to this delay if
I have only some certain assurance to go upon.
But if after waiting perhaps for three years I
should find that the Queen no longer desired the
marriage, it would place me in a very ridiculous
position, and would to a certain extent ruin all the
prospects of my future life." The Queen says she
never entertained any idea of this, and she after-
wards repeatedly informed the Prince that she
would never have married anyone else. She ex-
presses, however, great regret that she had not
after her accession kept up her correspondence with
her cousin as she had done before it. " Nor can
the Queen now," she adds,

Think without indignation against herself of her wish
to keep the Prince waiting for probably three or four years,
at the risk of ruining all his prospects for life, or until she
might feel inclined to marry ! And the Prince has since told
her that he came over in 1839 with the intention of telling
her that if she could not then make up her mind she must
understand that he could not now wait for a decision, as
he had done at a former period when this marriage was
first talked about. The only excuse the Queen can make
for herself is in the fact that the sudden change from the
secluded life at Kensington to the independence of her
position as Queen regnant, at the age of 18, put all ideas of
marriage out of her mind, which she now most bitterly
repents. A worse school fora young girl, or one more
detrimental to all natural feelings and affections, cannot
well bo imagined than the position of a Queen at 18 with-
out experience, and without a husband to guide and sup-
port her. This the Queen can state from painful expe-
rience, and she thanks God that none of her dear daughters
are exposed to such danger.

In October, 1839, the visit to England was paid
which decided the fate of the young Prince's life.
Prince Albert was accompanied by his brother, and
both were charged with a letter from the King of
the Belgians to the Queen, in which he recom-
mended them to her kindness. "They are good
and honest creatures deserving your kindness, and
not pedantic, but really sensible and trustworthy.
I have told them that your great wish is that they
should be quite unbefangen (quite at their ease)
with you. lam sure that if you have anything to
recommend to them they will be most happy to
learn it from you."
The volume then proceeds to describe the recep-
tion given by the Queen to the Princes, and the way
of life at Windsor during their stay. They arrived
on the 10th October, and on the 14th the Queen
told Lord Melbourne that she had made up her mind
to the marriage. The courtier statesman expressed
his great satisfaction. An intimation was given to
the Prince that the Queen wished to speak to him
next day. On that day, the 15th, the Prince had
been out hunting with his brother, but returned at
12, and half an hour afterwards obeyed the Queen's
summons to her room, where he found her alone.
After a few minutes' conversation on other sub-
jects the Queen told him why she had sent for him ;
and we can well understand," writes General
Grey, " any little hesitation and delicacy she may
have felt in doing so, for the Queen's position
making it imperative that any proposal of marriage
should come first from her, must necessarily appear
a painful one to those who, deriving their ideas
on this subject from the practice of private life,
are wont to look upon it as the privilege and hap-
piness of a woman to have her hand sought in
marriage instead of having to offer it herself."
The Queen herself says that the Prince received
her offer " without any hesitation, and with the
warmest demonstrations of kindness and affection."
The Queen told him to fetch his brother Ernest,
which he did. In a letter to the King of the
Belgians, which is given, the Queen announces
what had occurred, stating that she loved the
Prince more than she could say, and that ho
seemed to have great
, tact, " a very necessary thing
in his position. The King, in reply, said that
when he learned this decision be had almost the
feeling of old Simeon, " Now latest Thou Thy
servant depart in peace." From Prince Albert's
own letters we learn something more of this in-
teresting interview. In a letter to his grandmother
he writes :

The Queen sent for me alone to her room a few days ago,
and declared to me in a genuine outburst of love and affec-
tion (Ergusse von Herslichkeiti mid Liebe) that I had
gained her whole heart, and would make her intensely
happy (übergiucklich) if I would make her the sacrifice of
sharing her life with her, for she said she looked on it as a
sacrifice ; the only thing'which troubled her was that she did
not think she was worthy of me. The joyous openness of
manner in which she told ine this quite enchanted me,
and I was quite carried away by it. She is really most
good and amiable, and I am quite sure Heaven bee not given
me into evil hands, and that we shall be happy together.

• " The early Years of his Royal Highness the Prince
Consort." Compiled under the direction of her Majesty
the Queen, by Lieut.-General the Hon. C. Grey. Smith,
Elder, and co. 1867.

Since that moment Victoria does whatever she fancies I
should wish or like, and we talk together a great deal
about our future life, whirl she promises me to make as
hippy as pomible.

In another letter to a college friend he says :
You know how matters stood when I last saw you here.
After that the sky was darkened more and more. The
Queen declared to my uncle of Belgium that she wished
the affair to be considered as broken off, and that for four
years she oould think of no marriage. I went, therefore, with
the quiet but firm resolution to declare on my part that I
also, tired of the delay, withdrew entirely from the affair.
It was not, however, thus ordained by Providence, for on
the second day after our arrival the most friendly demon-
strations were directed towards me, and two days later I
was secretly called to a private audience, in which the
Queen offered me her hand and heart. The strictest
secresy was required. Ernest alone knew of it, and it
was only at our departure that I could communicate my
engagement to my mother.

Many interesting passages from the Queen's
jouvaal are then given relating to the announce-
ment of the marriage to the Privy Council and the
parliament, and the preliminary arrangements.
After the Prince returned to Germany the Queen
corresponded constantly with him. The Queen
seems to have been indignant at the time with the
proceedings in parliament relative to the grant
which was ultimately voted to the Prince.
But the Prince himself, it is said, soon
understood the nature of our political parties,
and that " the proceedings in parliament were
only the result of high party feeling and were by
no means to be taken as marks of personal disre-
spect or want of kind feeling towards himself."

After the marriage, which took place on the 10th
February, 1840, the separation from his father,
who returned on the 28th, was deeply felt by the
Prince. "He said to me," the Queen records in
her journal, " that I had never known a father,
and could not therefore feel what he did. His
childhood had been very happy. Ernest (the here-
ditary prince, who remained for some time in Eng-
land after his brother's marriage) he said was now
the only one remaining here of all his earliest ties
and recollections, but that if I continued to love
him as I did now, I could make up for it all. Ho
never cried, he said, in general, but Al-
vensleben and Kolowrath (they had accom-
partied the Duke to England, and now left '
with him) had cried so much that ho was
quite overcome. Oh, how I did feel for my
dearest, precious husband at this moment ! Father,
brother, friends, country—all has he left, and all
for me. God grant that I may be the happy per-
son, the most happy person to make this dearest,
blessed being happy and contented ! What is in
my power to make him happy I will do."
The remaining chapters treat of the formation of
the household, the settlement of precedence, and
a general description of the mode of life which was
led, with its well-regulated division of duties and
amusements. The editor states that there were
not wanting some who would have gladly kept
Prince Albert permanently estranged from all
public business, and " not only so, but who
would have denied him even in the domestic
circle that authority which in private families
properly belongs to the husband, and without
which it may be added there cannot be true
comfort or happiness in domestic life." Tho
Prince himself early saw the necessity of his
asserting and claiming that authority. "In my
home life," he writes to Prince Lowenstein, in May,
1840, " I am very happy and contented ; but the
difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity
is that I am only the husband, and not the master
in the house.' Pursuing this delicate topic,
General Grey remarks :
Fortunately, however, for the country, and still more
fortunately for the happiness of the royal couple them-
selves, things did not long remain in this condition.
Thanks to the firmness, but, at the same time, gentleness
with which the Prince insisted on filling his proper position
as head of the family, thanks also to the clear judgment
and right feeling of the Queen, as well as to her
singularly honest and straightforward nature ; but
thanks, more than all, to the mutual love and perfect
confidence which bound the Queen and Prince to each
other, it was impossible to keep up any separation or
difference of interests or duties between them. To those
who would urge upon the Queen that, as Sovereign, she
must be the head of the house and family, as well as of
the State, and that her husband was after all but one of
her subjects, her Majesty would reply, that she had so-
lemnly engaged at the altar to " obey" as well as to " love
and honour" ; and this sacred obligation she could consent
neither to limit nor refine away.

From the first the Queen, acting on the advice
of Lord Melbourne, communicated all foreign de-
spatches to the Prince. He described his own ob-
ject as having always been to sink his individual
existence in that of the Queen, and so unreser-
vedly did she throw herself on his support that
when suddenly bereaved of it, her Majesty patheti-
cally said " that it would now be in fact the begin-
ning of a new reign." It is stated in the work that
the Queen up to the period of her marriage had
indulged in strong feelings of political partisan-
ship, her sympathies being with the Whigs, but
under Prince Albert's influence this feeling was
gradually extinguished. The Prince on his marriage
determined to stand clear from all political
parties. Lord Melbourne, it is asserted, pressed
the Queen to take the same course. He told the
Prince that " he thought the time was come when
her Majesty should have a general amnesty for the
Tories ;" and on another occasion, in speaking of the
Tories, against whom the Queen was very irate,
Lord Melbourne said, " You should now hold out
the olive branch a little."

The Prince disliked the dirt and smoke, and still
more the late hours of London, and the Queen
records of herself that she soon began to share
his love of the country. In an entry in her journal
written in 1840, she says :
I told Albert that formerly I was too happy to go to
London and wretched to leave it, and now, since the
blessed hour of my marriage, and still more since the
summer, I dislike and am unhappy to leave the country,
and could be content and happy never to go to town.
This pleased him. The solid pleasures of a peaceful, quiet,
yet merry life in the oonntry,with my inestimable husband
and friend, my all in all, are far more durable than the
amusements of London, though we don't despise or dislike
these sometimes.

As years went on this preference for the country
on the part of the Queen grew stronger and
stronger "till residence in London became posi-
tively distasteful to her." Her Majesty says in
a note that it was also injurious to her health, as
she suffered much from the extreme weight and
thickness of the attnmphere, which gave her the
headache. Residence in London was, in fact, "only
made endurable by having her beloved husband
at her side to share with her and support her in the
irksome duties of court receptions and state ceremo-
nials." The Prince, however, was always anxious
that the Queen should spend as much of her time
as she could in London, though the sacrifice to him
was so great.
General Grey, commenting on the beauty of the
domestic life of the royal family and the freedom
of Prince Albert from the vices of former genera-
tions of the royal family, observes :—" Above all,
he has set an example for his children from which
they may be sure they can never deviate without
falling in public estimation, and running the risk
of undoing the work which he has been so instru-
mental in accomplishing."
When the Princess Royal waa born, " for a
moment only," the Queen says, " was he disap-
pointed at its being a daughter and not a son.
During the time the Queen was laid up his care
and devotion," the Queen records, "were quite
beyond expression." He was content to sit by her
in a darkened room, to read to her or write for
her. A memorandum by her Majesty says :

No one but himself ever lifted her from her bed to her
sofa, and he always helped to wheel her on her bed or sofa
into the next room. For this purpose he would come in-
@tautly, when sent for, from any part of the house. As
yean went on, and he became overwhelmed with work
(for his attentions were the some in all the Queen's subse-
quent confinements) this was often done at much inconve-
nience to himself, but he ever came with a sweet smile on
his face. "In short." the Queen adds, " his care of her was
like that of a mother, nor could there be a kinder, wiser,
or more judicious nurse."

The volume closes with the first year of her Ma-
jesty's married life : the next will probably com-
mence with an account of the Princess lto
christening, in the beginning of 1841. The edition
is a favourable specimen of English printing. Type,
paper, and binding are good. Two engravings
by William Holl, of Prince Albert at the age of
four, and Prince Albert at the age of twenty, are
beautifully executed.