The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-20 00:00:00

THE DEAD DUKE-A PICTURE.

(From the Times.)
Death has knocked at the door of a Royal palace.
After a long life, though an ordinary reign, the oldest
Sovereign in Europe has been summoned to his ac-
count, and Ernest, King of Hanover, now sleeps with
his fathers. In these days the demise of a German
Crown would in itself be no unimportant subject of
comment, but in the case before us we are invited to
considerations of more intimate attraction than the
tortuous politics of allied Cabinets or the constitutional
prospects of foreign States. Ernest, King of llanover,
was also Duke of Cumberland, and under this familiar
title his life was chiefly passed and his reputation vir-
tually earned. For more than GO years he was an
English Prince' filling no- undistinguished position in
the eyes of the British people. Sa rapidly do gene.
rations pass away and succeed, that this once remark-
able name is now perhaps nearly forgotten, and it is to
a chapter of past history that we must turn for the
character of a man who but last week was amongst us
still.

If we measured our observations by the charitable
canon of the proverb, the remarks we could now offer
would be scant indeed, for the good to be said of the
royal dead is little or none. Though born of a father
who-styled himself a Berkshire gentleman, and who
was as truly an English Sovereign as had ever worn
a crown, Prince Ernest partook neither in disposition
nor sympathies of that character by which our coun-
trymen are distinguished, nor could we convey a
better idea of the portrait before us than by describing
it as that of a bad German prince of the last century.
He was wholly German ; German in feature, German
in tastes. German in principles, and German in man-
ners. His ideas were never assimilated to the consti-
tutional temperature of English opinions. He
regarded the people as they might have been
regarded by a Landgrave of Hesse, and contem-
plated his own position as it might have been con-
templated by a Prince of Hohenzollern. In our
own days we have not to look far to discover
that Germany can produce princely scions as vir-
tuous and as accomplished as those of any age or
country, but in former times it was otherwise, and at
those Courts which were so rudely swept by the re-
volutionary hurricane the prevailing type was that
which found but too faithful a reproduction in the
Duke of Cumberland. Of all the sons of King
George the Third be was the One of whom least good
could be said or hoped by a people most loyally
anxious to hope and say all. At the period, indeed,
when ordinary considerations were absorbed in a na-
tional struggle, when constitutionalism was little dis-
cussed, and public opinion but imperfectly formed, the
manly stature, undaunted bearing, and notorious in-
trepidity of young Prince Ernest found a certain fa-
vour in the eyes of volunteers and militiamen ; but,
when thews and sinews ceased to be appreciated, and
brute courage became less marketable, the fame of the
Royal Duke declined. That he would have fought
for English independence as unflinchingly as any
Dragoon in the ranks, and carried to the terrible con-
test an obstinacy which no dangers could subdue, were
points of common notoriety ; but with these qualities of
stubbornness and valour his royal virtues may be said
to have terminated. As. time wore on, and as the
advance of intellect brought with it the agencies of
political progress, the opinions and habits of the Duke I
of Cumberland became more and more opposed to the
spirit of the age. His Royal Highness never con-
cerned himself to disguise his sentiments, to restrain
his passions, or to conciliate the affections of those
who might possibly have been one day his subjects.
Relying on the victory which had been apparently
declared for absolutism, inflexible in his persuasions,
and unbending in his demeanour, the Duke treated
popular opinion with a ferocity of contempt which
could scarcely be surpassed at St. Petersburgh or
Warsaw. In his pleasures he asserted the license of
an Orleans or a Stuart, and although in this respect
he wanted not for patterns, yet rumour persisted in
attaching to his excesses a certain criminal blackness
below the standard dye of aristocratic debauchery.
It is but reasonable to presume that a man so uni-
versally obnoxious should have suffered to some ex-
tent from that calumny which the best find it difficult
to repel, and practical evidence was furnished in cer-
tain public suits that the probabilities against him
fell short of legal proof. The impartial historian,
however, will be likely to decide that there was little
in the known character of Prince Ernest to exempt
him from sore suspicion touching what remained
concealed.
Towards the close of the Duke's English career
an extraordinary concurrence of political circum-
stances procured for his Royal Highness a renewed
consideration in some classes of society, though the
same causes prejudiced his repstation still further
in the eyes of the public at large. When the descent
of the Crown to King William IV. had deprived the
old Tory party of that support which they had been
accustomed to seek in the person of the Sovereign,
the eyes of bigots, obstructives, and alarmists were
cast anxiously round for a new patron, and they found
their fittest representative in the Duke of Cumberland.
His fierce effrontery and his iniomitable stubborn-
ness were once more in request. All who believed
the British Constitution to be involved in the mainte-
nance of rotten boroughs and sinecures; all who
feared Cobbett or hated Brougham, all who thought
that concession was ruin, all who talked of dying
rather than yielding, and all who groaned at the
apostacy of a liberal King, tune' for countenance and
hope to the faithful Ernest. In him they discerned a
prince after their own hearts, tenacious of aristocratic
privileges, reckless of popular opinion, and prepared
by hereditary.courage and obduracy to dare the worst
which revolution might bring. We should raise a
arnile of incredulity on the reader's lips by alluding
to conspiracies which in those times of ferment were
conceived to have a real existence, but it must ever
be recognized among the greatest of England's bless-
ings, that qualities so repugnant to British feeling
were never united in one person with a lawful title to
the British Crown.
There was once a Duke of Cumberland, of whom
even worse things were said than of him who has
now expired ; and yet this sanguinary instrument of
party
buwtrcbatehr,,,, dthises"ceenudrseed ofulSticmoatltaenlyd,"toand " inhu-
manamid general and respectful mourning. Ihtisisgrav
pos-
sible that Ernest
..A.ugustus may experience a
somewhat similar reverse of notoriety. That the
Duke of Cumberland can be regretted by the
people of England is more than the most resolute
eulogist of royalty could venture to affirm ; but
Hanoverians may readily find matter for repining in
the loss of their King. It was a fortunate circum-
stance for all parties which transferred the departed
Prince from the British House of Peers to the here-
ditary kingdom of his ancestors. By this convenient
removal the Duke gained oblivion for his faults and
opportunities for his talents. He assumed a new ca-
pacity in a new scene,, and considerably less was
required of him under circumstances which enabled
considerably more to be given. The King of Ha-
nover bad outlived some of the vices of the Duke of
Cumberland, and Germans brought a less rigorous
judgment than Englishmen to the politics and morals
of their Prince. A bad English Peer made a re-
spectable German Sovereign. King Ernest was not
deficient in knowledge either of himself or others,
and the munificent flotation which he continued to
draw from the British Treasury enabled him, at our
expense, to exercise a liberality and forbearance ex-
ceedingly gratifying to his immediate subjects.
Above all, he possessed a resolute decision of charac-
ter v,hich, however unfortunately it may have ope-
rated under different conditions, appeared to extraor-
dinary advantage at the crisis of continental thrones.
Bewildered by the revolutionary din, and oscillating
ignominiously between fear and rage, resistance and
concession, the clique of crowned heads suffered
greatly by contrast with a Sovereign who at least
knew his own mind and was prepared to abide by his
s kinwg without ho
indeed,
ee,opinions. In the European convulsion, therefore,
King Ernest maintained the stability of his throne
damageare
computed on the continent, he was an able and even
fromand the
revolution
or a
popular Monarch, and his memory may find, per-
haps, in his ancestral dominions a sympathy which it
would be vain to bespeak for it in the scenes of his
re eaeftion his peopleA
.
manhood or the land of his birth.

THE PARKS.—Yesterday the ornamental waters
in the parks and Kensington-gardens were frozen over, the
ice being in some parts nearly half an inch in thickness.
In consequence of the immense number of persons who
visit the parks during the frosty weather, and the many ac-
cidents which occur by the breakage of the ice, the Royal
Humane Society have placed drags against a number of
trees, in such a position as can be used by any person in
case of emergency. Should the cold weather continue, it is
the intention of the society to erect tents in all the parks,
which will be fitted up with the necessary apparatus to re-
store life, so that those who may unfortunately get im-
mersed in the water, may be immediately conveyed to them,
and placed under the care of the men employed by the
society.
AMERICAN FIRE-ARMS IN THE EXHIBITION.—
The following parties have obtained the sanction of the
Lords Commissioners of the Treasury to receive samples for
their own use of Colonel Colt's revolver pistols from the
American department of the Great Exhibition of the Works
of Industry of All Nations in Hy park, viz.c—Lieutenant-
Colonel Gordon, of the Grenadier Guards; Lieutenant-
Colonel Inglis, of her Majesty's 32d Regiment, about to pro-
ceed to India; and Mr. G. Douglas, who is about to proceed
to Australia; and their Lordships have directed the proper
authorities at the Exhibition Building to permit their delivery
for the desired purpose.
REDUCTION OF THE NUMBER OF STEAM-BOATS
1 ABOVE AND BELOW LONDON-BRIDGE.—Now that winter
may be said to have commenced a great number of the steam-
boats which used to run during the fine season to Richmond,
Putney, Battersea, Cremorns. gardens, and Vauxhall, have
been laid up in ordinary for this year, as well as those to
Greenwich, Woolwich, Gravesend, Margate, Ramsgate, &c.
During the time of the late Exhibition in Hyde-park the
Thames never presented such a flotilla of loaded steamers,
and no doubt the companies reaped a golden harvest.
A SHOWMAN'S ORATION.—Ladies and gentlemen,
there is Daniel in the den of lions. These are the lions and
that is Daniel, who you will easily distinguish from the lions
by kityiDg it bLii cyttoin 4411)011ii Wader 114