TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THEBETROTHAL OF THE DUKE OF YORK. THE official announcement of the betrothal of the Duke of York, the ultimate heir to the Throne, to the Princess May of Teck, will be received throughout the country with a subdued approval. There is a fanciful feeling among the people, and especially among women, that a man should not marry the fiancee any more than the wife of his decease44rother ; but as that is purely sentimental, with no justification either in nature or religion or custom, it will speedily pass away. The notion that betrothal is a sort of marriage has no more place in England than the notion, immovable in some parts of the Continent, that a man should not marry his father's god-daughter, because they are in some sense close spiritual affines. For the rest, the marriage will, we believe, be eminently popular. The Princess May is greatly liked as a thoroughly good and bonny English girl of our home- ways and habits of life ; and there was apparent, from the moment of her great misfortune, a keen wish that she should be compensated for the grand prize snatched so suddenly and painfully from her hands,—a wish displayed in the most bizarre and barbaric way, it is true, but still honestly, in the thousand-and-one ridiculous sug- gestions for confirming to her the enormous mass of presents which had flowed in from all divisions of the Empire. The public will be heartily glad that the Duke of York has made the Princess his choice, and this as much for her sake as because it wished him not only well married, but married quickly. The Royal House was, and for that matter is, in an unfortunate position. There are dozens of Princes in the succession as descendants of George III., but there is only one Prince left, after the Prince of Wales, who can reign without introducing a new dynastic cognomen. After the death of the Duke of Clarence only two lives, those of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Fife, stood between the Throne and a change of dynasty, which, even in England, is a some- what serious matter. The little Lady Alexandra Duff, who, if the Duke of York died childless, must inevitably be one day Queen, is no doubt as directly a descendant of Cerdic as the Prince of Wales; and a Duff dynasty would be in just the same social position as the Tudor dynasty once was, the Duke, though the race sprang from nobodies, being at least the equal of Owen Tudor, ancestor of the ablest family that ever occupied the English Throne. For all that, a Duff dynasty does not strike the imagination, and would not be reverenced abroad; and the news that the Duke of York is to marry speedily with a lady of birth equal to his own, will therefore be received with pleasure and relief. Everybody who wants the. Monarchy at all, wants it to go on straight ; and as yet the number of those who do not want it at all is exceedingly limited. The increased feeling for the Empire, as distinguished from the Kingdom, though to be regretted in many ways, especially for the decline it has helped to make manifest in the ancient English patriotism, rather tends to improve the chances of con- tinuance for the Throne. The Empire would not adhere to a Republic, whatever the English proletariat might do ; and as the Empire nourishes England, the people are by no means willing to give it up, and so embark once more on an unknown and very wintry sea in search of new adventures.
The young couple are, it is said, sincerely attached to each other, and we heartily hope the statement, in itself probable enough, is actually true, for the English idea in that respect, though no doubt born of sentiment, has behind it a solid basis of reason. A Prince or Princess must occasionally submit to reasons of State, but nevertheless, a King without a wife he cares about is a very unhappy kind of being. He rarely comes in contact with other close relatives, who are usually married away all over the world, he can have no male intimate friends—the difference of grade being too violent, and the deep suspiciousness of Royalty as to the motive of courtiers' attachment being too incurable—and if he has female friends there is sure to be scandal, usually, though not always, justifiable. That does not matter much, politically, on the Continent, where monarchy is, to a great extent, independent of character, and where the feeling that virtue is rather a bourgeois kind of attribute still lingers; but a disreputable Court in England would soon be a Court shaking in every breeze. The people are as little prepared for a William HI. with his single mistress-counsellor, as for a George IV.; and William did not live under a, discharge of evening papers. Moreover, a Court which defies moral conventions, though it does not do the especial harm supposed, does do enormous injury. Neither Charles II. nor George IV. demoralised the people, which: remained what it always had been,—puritan in essentials, though smug in ways. But their example terribly corrupted the upper class, who, for the next half-century, if they are to exist at all, will have to walk circumspectly and straight. A well-behaved, honest Court is the best security here for the Throne, as we have seen all through Queen Victoria's reign ; and the best guarantee for that—the only guarantee, indeed, which works—is that the Queen shall be the King's closest friend. If that is to be the case in St. James's Palace, the people will esteem them- selves fortunate, and will preserve for another generation or two at least that "loyal passion for our temperate Kings" which has helped so greatly to preserve the people's unity of action. The Monarchy is only a standard, perhaps, though that is not precisely our own Opinion; but any arrangement. which reduces the chance that it will ever be smirched is a distinctly good thing.
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