The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-09 00:00:00

211 E PRINCE OF WALES.

Our young Heir-apparent is in the thoughts of
many to-day. Never had young Prince a more
auspicous birth-day, if the festival is to be judged
by the affection and happy anticipation it calls
forth. Our Prince is not, by character and train-
ing, likely to mistake the manifestations of this
great day of his life, nor to boast of the armour of
national loyalty which is investing him as if he had
already won victories by means of it, and made him-
self a noble fame by the use he had put it to. He
is modest and sensible enough to know very well
that it is in pure trust and lovingness that the
people bring him the tribute of their loyalty and
joy on his entering the region which, in his case,
lies between youth and manhood. It is a pecu-
liarity in his case—let us hope it will prove a pri-
vilege—that an interval of three years lies between
the ordinary state of minority and that of manhood.
Under certain circumstances of calamity to the
nation and its Royal family, it would have been ex-
pedient to avoid the evils of a regency by declaring
the heir to be of age at eighteen. As it is, he re-
mains under guardianship till one-and-twenty.
That is, he will not till then tale his seat in the
House of Peers, and his acts will be those of a
minor. It is impossible, however, that, under his
peculiar conditions, he can be regarded, or can re-
gard himself, as the boy under governance that
other youths of his ago are. If he, could, under
other circumstances, have been man enough to reign
in his own name, he must now be man enough to
show his quality by his life, his habits, pursuits,
and manners. The feeling of the nation is, in fact,
that he comes of ago to-day, the dry facts of the
case notwithstanding; and the curiosity, interest,
and enthusiasm throughout the country are vivid
accordingly. There is the strongest desire to know
what he means to do ; how he means to use his posi-
tion; how he regards the life that lies before him.
For the few who speculate from the evidences in
existence, there are multitudes who frame their ex-
pectations on their own notions and prepossessions.
It is pretty clear that the Prince of Wales is
exempt from the curse of most princes—listlessness,
from want of necessary occupation and natural in-
terests. Activity is the rule and habit of the Royal
household, happily for the children, who are trained
to work while they work, and play while they play.
We see nothing of indolence and its caprices in any
member of the family; and thus the dangers of
opening manhood are diminished to the lowest
point to the young Princes. If former Princes of
Wales had had such a training, and such a home as
ours of the present day, their worst sins and most
perplexing troubles might have been escaped. By
being accustomed to be employed and interested,
our Prince now has the power to choose among
various occupations, and to expand his life with a
diversity of interests. During the next three years
he w ill be indicating the direction in which his
abilities and tastes chiefly tend, and will be nick-
ing for himself a substantial existence under cir-
cumstances which debar him from the ordinary
devotion to a profession or career. He is to be in
some sense a soldier; he is, in some sense, a student;
he must be more or less devoted to the study of law
and government, and more or less actively inte-
rested in politics —the large, deep politics of all
human society. A long period of vigorous life, we
trust, lies before him, which he must fill up for
himself with duties and interests. his own welfare
and that of multitudes depend on whether he can
regard his occupations before coming to the throne
as no less imperative than those which press on a
ruling sovereign. If he can see that the prepara-
tion for the highest order of duties is as obligatory
as the duties themselves, his life will be blessed,
happen what may. He cannot pursue the military
profession like a young officer who has active ser-
vice in view ; but he can study the profession as a
man ought who is to be responsible to the State
for which the army exists. He cannot pursue the
law like a man who may one day be Lord Chancel-
lor; but he may bend his best faculties to appre-
hend its spirit and principles as one who is hereafter
to rule by and under the law. He cannot go through
a complete academical course at one University, and
feel himself a corporate member of it, like the Ox-
ford and Cambridge men who fill the learned pro-
fessions ; but he is already beginning to understand
their mode of life, and their views and interests.
More than that, there is nothing to prevent his
having the advantage over all the preceding Princes
of his race in a knowledge and love of literature
such as refines the mind, and enlarges the intell'etu al
capacity and sympathy of educated men. rile habit
of feeling amongst the uneducated children of rank
and fortune is easily and. 'widely understood ; and
especially that of Se7areigns ignorant of literature.
As there is no royal road to knowledge, so there is
no royal entrance to the region of serenity, trust
and enjoyment to which intellectual discipline and
accomplishment are the key. Hence the avoidance
of the society of scholars and authors by the vulgar
run of princes, who cannot bear the sense of infe-
riority, and eel, in the presence of accomplished
intellects, that their guests are in possession of a
wide World of great interests which they themselves
know nothing about, and who avoid the uncomfort-
able sensation by keeping literature and its votaries
at a distance. Widely different from this may and
will be our young Prince's habit of mind. His
father's comprehension of the nature of science and
interest in literature must have influenced his ideas
from infancy ; and he has been well introduced into
scholarship since he ceased to be a child. The way
is open before him—the opportunity, the leisure,
the freedom—to strengthen, solace, and delight his
mind with literature, if he is so disposed. That he
may be so is infinitely to be desired, firstfor his own
sake, that he may find the blessing of comradeship
in the realm of mind, and next, for the sake of the
nation, which has the closest interest in the expan-
sion of the mind of its rulers. For literature itself
and its professors it is of less consequence than for
the other parties concerned ; for their own life is
sufficient for them.
Besides these objects, there must always be en-
grossing interests in regard to the passage of events
at home and abroad. The great political movements
abrowl, the vast social progress going on at home,
which occupy us all, from year to year, must be of
surpassing interest to one who will sooner or later
bear his share in the one, and preside over the other,
and will have meantime his duties as a peer of the
realm. He may exercise a certain amount of admi-
nistrative power in his Duchy of Cornwall, ere long.
There are still other objects with which he might
fill up a busy, useful, improving, and diversified life,
not devoid of good old English amusements, ands
full, we may hope, in due course, of domestic at-
tachments. In the choice to which, from this day
forward, he must be tending, we shall see how much
we may hope and rejoice in for him and the great
nation whose welfare is closely bound up in his.
Thus far, all is bright and gladsome. It is a common
delight to the whole people to see the period of their
Sovereign's vigorous health and popular rule em-
ployed in the fit and careful training of her natural
successor. The stronger the promise of a long pre-
sent reign the finer is also the promise of a worthy
future one. Our Sovereign's throne is a great spec-
tacle to all nations, from its being the safest in the
world, fixed as it is on the firm basis of constitu-
tional liberty. Various fates seem to be lying in
wait for other thrones, within the present genera-
tion. Our hope and confident anticipation is that
our foundation will hold good through all tempests
abroad and transitions at home ; and one ground of
our security is that we have a Sovereign who un-
derstands at once the gravity and the cheerfulness
of constitutional government, and who brings up
her heir in a full sense of the same truth. The
popular emotion to-day means, throughout the
land, long life and a happy reign to mother and
son.--Daily Aretes.

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