BOOKS.

THE LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.*

Mn. THEODORE MARTIN was entrusted by Her Majesty with the task of writing the Life of the Prince Consort, and the first portion of the work—the life of the Prince from childhood to 1848—has been completed, has been given to the public, and excites a strong and justifiable hope that the next portion will fill a volume of most unusual interest. The first portion, a few pages towards the close excepted, does not. Mr. Martin has in many respects.

* The Life of H.R.H. the Prince Contort. By Theodore Martin. Vol. I. London Smith, Elder, and Co. 1875. performed his task exceptionally well. He writes with dignity and grace, he values his subject, and treats him with a certain courtly reverence, yet never once sinks into the panegyrist, and while apparently most frank—so frank, that the reticent English people may feel the intimacy of his domestic narratives almost painful— he is never once betrayed into a momentary indiscretion. The almost idyllic beauty of the relation between the Prince Consort and the Queen comes out as fully as in all previous histories of that relation,—and we have now had three,—as does also a good deal of evidence as to the Queen's own character, hitherto always kept down and, as it were, self-effaced in publications written or sanctioned by herself ; but Mr. Martin has either- been reluctant to use, or failed to use, the great mass of material in his hands for the elucidation of the inner character of the Prince. The stream of the narrative flows on unbrokenly. We see something of the ohild at Rosenau, with his abiding love for his elder brother, his habit of study, and his self-restrained, cautious, and high-purposed temperament ; we read long extracts from the Queen's Journal, And whole masses of Baron Stockmar's letters, most of them lectures somewhat in the Sandford-and-Merton style, their peda- gogic tone relieved only by their courage in advice or admoni- tion; but of Prince Albert as a man, an individual with separate tastes, habits, and ways of thought we see, till the end of the long, and we fear we must add, somewhat tedi- ous volume, next to nothing, or at all events, nothing -to be considered in any degree new. We perceive that he was fond of his brother ; that he was penetrated through life by the idea of duty; that he had a full sense of his responsibility as virtual King Consort, that his position, at first an irksome and hampered one, was gmdtmlly made easy to him by his complete conquest of his wife—one may say this, for the Queen herself says it much more energetically and frankly than we do—and that though a bold rider, he was by nature a melancholy, low- strung man, with a feeble pulse, prompt at the call of duty, but inclined to weariness of duty ; given by taste to art studies, to -country solitude, and to reflection on somewhat abstract poli- tics ;—we see all this, but of the intellectual man, of his opinions, or purposes, even of his artistic character, we see, till the end of the volume, far too little. No one with any idea of Prince Albert will gain from the first three-fourths of this volume any further idea of his per- sonality, unless, indeed, it be from the fact that it gradually inspired most English statesmen—the exception seems to have been. Lord Palmerston, though that is never clearly stated—with a very unusual confidence and regard. That Prince Albert did in some way win this regard is now certain, and that he won it by his capacity and character may be taken as fully proved ; but -of the way in which he showed this capacity we have, in the first portion of the "Life," little evidence, less than in Baron Stock- mar's book, where the Prince's plan for reforming the preposterous Abuses in the Royal household is given much more clearly and Ably than in this, which adds to that account only the name of the gouvernante with whom it was, years before the reform was fully -accomplished, necessary for the Prince to contend :— "A mistake, it was soon found, had also been committed in not establishing the Prince from the first as Private Secretary of the Queen, and placing the internal arrangements of the Royal household under his immediate control. These functions had, since the Queen's accession, been to a great extent discharged by the Baroness Lehzen, her Majesty's former governess, and they invested her with powers which, however discreetly used, were calculated to bring her into col- lision with the natural head of the household. It is due to this lady to say, that genuine affection for her Majesty, -who for so many years had been the object of her care, and who was attached to her by ties of gratitude and regard for kindness and counsel in her girlhood, when they were most needed, very probably blinded her to the obvious truths, that her former influence must, in the natural course of things, give way before that of a husband, especially of a husband so able and so deeply loved, and that, in the true interests of her Royal pupil, she should herself have been the first to desire that the offices she had hitherto filled should be transferred to the Prince. The painful situation in which he found himself through this not having been done is indi- cated by a passage, quoted in The Early Years, from one of his letters

to Prince von Lowenstein so early as May, 1840 In my home life 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.'"

We weary a little, we confess, of the Court record, of journeys, and visits, and readings, and long for evidence to prove, what we have always maintained, that Prince Albert was something besides the husband and lover of the Queen,—a singularly thoughtful and studious politician.

There is some evidence, however, on this point in the volume before us. There is no question in English politics so difficult or so much debated as the position which England should assume in Europe if she intervenes at all in Continental affairs, and none upon which the Prince Consort has given so clear, or in our judg- ment so wisely moderate an oph..ion. This letter, addressed to Lord John Russell on September 5, 1847, is the letter of a statesman, and a statesman of the first class :—

" Our policy towards Italy has hitherto been a passive or negative one, on general principles of European policy, preferring Austrian supremacy to French supremacy. We now enter upon an independent line, and one which will not admit of our remaining passive any longer. It is therefore desirable that the first step, which will give the impulse and direction to the rest for times to come should be the right one; I mean one based upon the principles of justice and moderation, and intel- ligible to all Europe. I think further, that this is the right moment and opportunity for correcting a great many misapprehensions existing about the object of English policy in general, and of setting this in its true light before the world as an explanation of the past, and a declar- ation for the future which will enable all Governments and nations to understand what they have to expect from us. My notion is this :- England has, by her own energies and the fortunate circumstances in which she has been placed, acquired a start in civilisation, liberty, and prosperity over all other countries. Her popular institutions are most developed and perfected, and she has run through a development which the other countries will yet in succession have to pass through. Eng- land's mission, duty, and interest is, to put herself at the head of the diffusion of civilisation, and the attainment of liberty. Let her mode of acting, however, be that of fostering and protecting every effort made by a State to advance in that direction, but not of pressing upon any State an advance which is not the result of its own impulse. Civi- lisation and liberal institutions must be of organic growth, and of national development, if they are to prosper and lead to the happiness of a people. Any stage in that development missed, any jump made in it, is sure to lead to confusion, and to retard that very development which we desire. Institutions not answering the state of society for which they are intended must work ill„ even if these institu- tions should be better than the state that society is in. Let England, therefore, be careful (in her zeal for progress) not to push any nation beyond its own march, and not to impose upon any nation what that nation does not itself produce ; bat let her declare herself the protector and friend of all States engaged in progress, and let them acquire that confidence in England, that she will, if necessary, defend them at her own risk and expense. This will give her the most powerful moral position that any country over maintained."

The Prince held thin opinion, be it remembered, not as a mere counsel of perfection, but as one on which England should be pre- pared to act, and wrote on August 29, 1847, when Austria was threatening Italy with occupation, these words to Lord John Russell :— "What is it we apprehend ? That Austria mightbe tempted to commit an open assault upon her neighbour, in order to prevent her carrying out her political changes, should advice and remonstrance not succeed in stopping them. Is it the right remedy on our part for pre- venting this palpable breach of the laws of nations and the complica- tions arising out'of it, to urge the Pope to defy Austria, and not to let himself be intimidated? Or will it not be more to the purpose, and certainly more honest and friendly, to address ourselves to her, and to

say We have no hand in what is going on in Italy; though we think the Italians are acting wisely, we have not lent them any assist- ance. But we consider that every independent State has a perfect right to manage its own internal affairs, and that if Sovereign and people in a State are united in their determination to introduce certain reforms, and another State attempts an armed invasion to stop these reforms, merely because it considers them dangerous to the mainten- ance of its own established system of government, we shall look upon that act as an act of aggression upon the independence of the other State, which Europe and the Powers who signed the Treaty of Vienna cannot look upon with indifference.'"

Nor can we agree with the popular judgment on the Prince's plan for the revival of Germany. He drew up in 1847 a Memo- randum for submission to the King of Prussia, which lacked merit only in this, that he had underrated the pride and obstinacy of the reigning German Houses. He advised that every German Prince should grant a Constitution—advice fulfilled last week by the vote of the Reichstag, compelling the Mecklenburg dynasty, the only absolute one, to establish a Parliament—that Austria, if she could not be expelled from the Bund, should be neutralised within it; and that a Parliament should be called at Frankfort, with control over commerce and inter-State affairs and foreign affairs, and with the charge of slowly building up a central Administration —advice which, if we substitute Berlin for Frankfort, and Bismarck plus Parliament for Parliament alone, has been exactly followed. The Prince's idea did not approve itself to Stockmar, who had not seen the Memorandum, and who had, like all men deep in the confi- dence of Kings, a contempt and hatred for the caste, though he loved individuals in it; but the correspondence brings out perhaps the finest trait yet observed in the character of the Prince Consort. He was supposed, while alive, to be very tenacious of etiquette, and somewhat frigid in his intercourse with inferiors ; and Mr. Martin hints that he was a littlewanting in personal attention to those about him, especially towards women of high rank. But when he was sure of his correspondent's good faith he could stand advice. The Earl of Portland never was ruder to William HL than Baron Stockmar was on this occasion to his "beloved Prince,"

whom he told, without circumlocution, that he knew nothing about the matter, and that he was too much of a Prince to under- stand it, and with some circumlocution that the German people wanted to be rid of their dynasties :-

"The The question arises, Does your Royal Highness possess the requisite knowledge for dealing with the subject thoroughly and to purpose ; and also such a standing-point as will enable you to give a practical application to your theoretical views ? To speak frankly, I feel bound to answer both these questions in the negative. You left the Father- land eight years since, and when you were very young. How could you have gained a thorough insight into things as they are, or into the country's present and immediately pressing wants? The bare possi- bility of such knowledge was denied you ; and conversations with Prince Charles (Leiningen) could furnish you with only very limited, and probably very one-sided results. Not that, in my doubts as to your qualifications for this task, I am likely to overlook the fact that, -with the great advances you have already made in the knowledge of the general political condition of Europe, you would be in a position to form a correct judgment on German affairs both at home and abroad (for my opinion is precisely the reverse). All I doubt is the existence of an intimate knowledge of these affairs, while at the same time I dread your committing the mistake, which you might easily do, of applying to Germany the standard (a just one, in its place) with which your intimate acquaintance with Anglo-European relations has made you familiar, without due regard to the peculiar characteristics of the German people. With this doubt as to your proper qualification, on the score of intimate knowledge of the facts, goes the further apprehen- sion that the standing-point which, as a German Prince, you cannot fail to adopt in considering it, will present the subject to you in a cross light, and thereby lead you to distorted views and conclusions. In dealing with the German question, your Royal Highness can scarcely look at it from any other point of view than that of a German Prince • and, however acute and accurate your observation of all details may be still they cannot possibly be seen by you but in the colours of German -dynastic interests. And it is just this colouring which makes me be- lieve it improbable your Royal Highness should rightly grasp and appreciate the actual present condition and wants of the German people; and still less that you are able to frame any practicable scheme which will meet the exigencies of the case."

The Prince sent back a reply cordially thanking the Baron for his letter, and acknowledging "the weight of his reasons as to his own [the Prince's] qualifications for calling such a plan into existence," and requested Herr Bunsen, then Prussian Ambassa- dor, to recall the courier who carried the Memorandum. The request arrived too late, but the fact that it was made is con- clusive evidence of the Prince's readiness to consider advice, even when offered in the frankest, not to say the bluntest possible tone. We expect fortitude of that kind in Premiers, but not in Princes. 'The following will be less clearly understood, but it shows great breadth of view. The reigning Grand Duke of Coburg had com- plained of his peasantry for marking their liberation by giving up their distinctive costume, and the Prince writes "My uncle is-right in his regret that Radical tendencies and modern reforms bring all things to one level (Alles nivelliren), destroy much national and local individuality, mould everything upon one last (alles iiber einen Leist schlagen), and thereby prepare the way for French absorption, against which a national character is the strongest safe- guard. But he forgets that epochs have a physiognomy, as well as countries and peoples, and that the transition from one epoch to another, though it may destroy what we formerly regarded as individual and essential, does not at the same time necessarily destroy nationality. It is so even with the matter of dress. The alteration of the Coburg peasant's dress (the men's, for example,) will seem, as far as feelings go, to be a decline of individuality, but what gave that costume indi- viduality was only the fact, that it dates from the last century ; then, however, it was universal, and simply a copy of the dress of the upper classes, and this dress of the upper classes is what the peasantry of the present day are bent on assuming at once."

There is great keenness and a good deal of bonhomie and humour in the Prince's sketch of the late King of Prussia, the weak Prince who rejected the Crown of Germany offered him at Frankfort :— " The King lets himself be misled by similes which captivate his fancy, which he (=lies out only so far as they suit his purpose, and which frequently by no means reflect the true state of things, but satisfy because they are clever and suggestive (geistreich). This makes close discussion with him impossible Then the King runs another risk in this, that he adopts subjective feelings and opinions as the motive principle of his actions, and then not only acts upon them, but also desires that, as these feelings and opinions are dear and sacred to him, they should be the same to everybody else, no matter whether they are not even affected by them in the slightest degree or not, nay, although to carry them into effect would operate a probable injustice. To this class belong those feelings of piety towards the late King, which only the son can feel, and those favourite maxims, which have a special truth for him, springing as they do out of certain favourite studies and lines of thought. Herein is to be found the key to his strange address from the throne. It is a purely subjective Bradenburg, Hohenzollern, Frederick-Wilhelmish opinion."

His religious belief is not so distinctly outlined as it must be whenever a complete history of the Prince's life comes to be written, but it is evident that the Prince was a Broad Churchman of the Hampden type ; that bigotry was the one thing which made him bitter ; that he disbelieved in the utility of dogma, but that he did not, as so many Germans do, replace it by a mere religion of goodness. His faith appears to have been—subject always to further revelations—that the religi- ous emotion is essential to elicit the only true cult, that of goodness based upon the persistent sacrifice of self.

It is curious to trace in these letters perhaps the first authentic hints the British public has yet had of the character of the Queen, which, except as regards her domestic affections, is not known, as it will be one day, to the bulk of her people. The terrible explosion of the year 1848 overwhelmed the Prince, and found the Queen just recovering from a confinement, yet her Majesty writes on April 4, 1848, to King King Leopold of Belgium, a curious little morsel of self-criticism. "From the first, I heard all that passed ; and my only thoughts and talk were politics. But I never was calmer and quieter, or less nervous. Great events make me calm ; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves." There is keenness, too, and a trace of sub-humour in the Queen's sketches of the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, who seems to have been nearly as formidable a personage to her Majesty as to the majority of mankind :— " I will now (having told all that has passed) give you my opinions and feelings on the subject, which I may say are Albert's also. I was extremely against the visit,,fearing the gene and bustle, and even at first I did not feel at all to like it ; but by living in the same house together quietly and unrestrainedly (and this Albeit, and with great truth, says, is the great advantage of these visits, that I not only see these great people, but know them), I got to know the Emperor and he to know me. There is much about him which I cannot help liking, and I think his character is one which should be understood, and looked upon for once as it is. He is stern and severe, with strict principles of duty which nothing on earth will make him change. 'Very clever I do not think him, and his mind is not a cultivated one. His education has been neglected. Politics and military concerns are the only things he takes great interest in ; the arts and all softer occupations he does not care for ; but he is sincere, I am certain—sincere even in his most despotic acts—from a sense that it is the only way to govern. He is not, I am sure, aware of the dreadful cases of individual misery which he se often causes; for I can see, by various instances, that he is kept in utter ignorance of many things which his people carry out in most corrupt ways, while he thinks he is extremely just. He thinks of general measures, but does not look into details • and I am stun much

never reaches his ears, and, as you observe, how can it?

"He is not happy, and that melancholy which is visible in the counten ance made us sad at times." ["I dont know why," says Her Majesty's Journal, "but I can't help pitying him; I think his immense power weighs heavily on his head."] "The sternness of the eyes goes very much off when you know him, and changes according to his being put out (and he can be much embarrassed) or not, and also from his being heated, as he suffers from congestion in the head. He never takes a drop of wine, and eats extremely little. Albert thinks he is a man in- clined to give way too much to impulse and feeling, which makes him

act wrongly often. His admiration for beauty is very great. But he remains very faithful to those he admired twenty-eight years ago."

Elsewhere her Majesty says that the anxiety of the Emperor to be believed was "very great," an anxiety habitual with men so ruses, and comments on his eyes, which had a trick of showing the whites, and were anything but the "mild eyes" which took in poor Mr. Sturges and the Quaker deputation. And, finally, even if the Queen did not herself entirely frame her letter to the Queen of the Belgians, daughter of Louis Philippe, upon the Spanish Marriages, her acceptance of its tenor is no slight evidence of mature political judgment. The King of the French had broken his word, personally pledged to her Majesty, and his daughter, of course, sought to explain away his perfidy. The Queen replied on 27th September, 1846, eighteen months before the fall of the Royal intriguant, in terms of which the cool hauteur and even, menace will not escape attention :-

"My dear Lonise,—I have read and re-read with the greatest attem- tion the King's explanation of the recent events, and his statement of the motives which have governed the course of the French Government in regard to this unhappy Spanish affair, and I am deeply pained to have to declare that the perusal of his letter has in no way altered the opinion which I had previously formed, nor the pain I feel that these events should have occurred to trouble our cordial understanding—an understanding which was so useful and so precious The one simple fact which governs this whole affair, is that the King declared that he would not give one of his sons to the Queen of Spain, and that on this declaration he based the right to limit the Queen's choice to the family of the Bourbons descendants of Philip V. We disputed and denied this right ; still we consented to the choice being so re- stricted, and oven promised to recommend it to Spain ; and to this we have most scrupulously and religiously adhered, without swerving one hair's-breadth. What the King desired has taken place ; the Queen married a descendant of Philip V., and of his descendant's just that one whom he knew we regarded as the least eligible. The same day the King gives his son to the heiress presumptive to the Crown, not only without previous concert with us, but contrary to the pledge which he gave me at Eu last autumn, when with the question of the marriage of the Queen he for the first time mixed up that of the marriage of the Infanta. This pledge was, 'that he would not think of this mar- riage, so long as it was a political question, and not until the Queen

was married and had children.' 'I have, then, thoroughly con- sidered the whole matter by myself, and looking at it with no eyes but my own, and I cannot possibly admit that the King is released from Ida pledge. Nothing more painful could possibly have befallen me than this unhappy difference, both because it has a character so personal, and because it imposes upon me the duty of opposing the marriage of a prince, for whom, as well as for all his family, I entertain so warm a friendship. My only consolation is, that as what is proposed cannot be carried out without producing grave complications, and without even exposing to many dangers a family whom I hold in high regard, they may even yet retrace their steps, before it is too late.'" Everything in this volume tends to raise the character of the Prince, and if in the next Mr. Martin will be a little less and a little more reticent—will give us more of the Prince's mind and less of his domestic affections—he will make of the whole what the Queen desires, a monument of her husband which will help to secure him in English history a place that cannot be finally secured until that place has been scanned, as it never has been yet, by an inexorably just, but nevertheless slightly hostile eye. Mr. Martin says, and we fully believe, that such an eye would discover nothing to the Prince's discredit, but at least it would ascertain why up to the hour of his death the Prince was so deeply distrusted not only by the English aristocracy—which was merely offended by a pride of caste visible even to Baron Stockmar—but by the masses of the English people, who, as they show in the case of the Princess of Wales, are notanstinctively hostile to the "foreigner." Was the cause mere insularity, or was it as in the case of William Ill., a well-founded* suspicion that the man who served them so well never loved or liked them, that outside his own household, his heart was with his own people, that Windsor was no more a compensation for Rosenau than it had been for Loo, and that everything except the welfare of England was subordinate to a desire for the prosperity of the House of Coburg' It would be no discredit to the Prince if such were the ease, for there can be no question of his utter fidelity to England, but it would explain much that has always puzzled those who, like ourselves, hold him to have been the greatest, except William HI., acqui- sition ever made by the British Court.