TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PRINCE OF W A T.ES IN GERMANY.
THE journey of the Prince of Wales to Coburg appears to create considerable sensation in Germany,—at least, if we may judge from the many comments in the newspapers of the Vaterland. The time when Kings of Great Britain used annually to visit Hanover, that they might hunt the wild boar, and for awhile forget, in the shade of their ancestral oaks, the cares of English statecraft and the whirl of conflict between Whigs and Tories, Protestants and Catholics, Churchmen and Dissenters,is now leftso far behind as-tO have lost all apparent connexion with the present day ; and modern newspapers, therefore, cannot see an intelligent heir-apparent tread the soil of their country without guessing at some deep motive which must have brought him. So now in every Teutonic organ of the Fourth Estate, we have discussions on the great question—" What is the Prince of Wales doing here in Germany? "He is," answer some, "visiting his relatives!" but " Ach, mein Gott ! nein," rejoin others ; "how can this be the case, since his relations are all persons of no estate and far beneath his notice. Let the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha pass, and then look at the remainder. There are the Lemingens, his nearest relatives on the maternal side, with a nee aspera ter- rent ' on their coat-of-arms, but not a square mile of freehold land of their own. Prince Ernest Leopold Victor, head of the house, is at at the best but a Bavarian Reichsrah ; and the branches of the family are mere Counts by rank, and lieutenants, equerries, and chamberlains by profession. No, no ; this pre- tended visit of his Royal Highness to the poor German rela- tions is clearly but a diplomatic veil to hide deeper purposes." Whereupon others, the wisest of the tribe, explain with know- ing confidence "the real purport of the journey." Duke Ernest II., reigning Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, has been married al- most twenty years and yet has no offspring. The heir-pre- sumptive of the Diledom is Prince Albert, Consort of the Queen of Great Britain ; and, after him, his eldest son the Prince of Wales. Is it not highly probable nay certain, that the preli- minary arrangement about this future heritage is the object of the visit paid by the British Crown Prince ? Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, we all know, is a fine piece of territory, well worth "annexing" to the numerous other possessions of the Queen of the Seas. An area of 800 square miles, with some 150,000 inhabitants, mines of iron, copper, alum and marble, manufactures of hardwares, linen, and woollen fabrics, and a public revenue of nearly two millions of florins—not to speak of a public debt, so much valued by the Eng- lish, of more than four millions—are things not to be despised in these our days of annexation and incorporation. They are things which, to a dead certainty, would bring about a diplomatic war were they located, at the demise of the owner, near the confines of a certain federal republic. Depend upon it, therefore, England wants Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and the journey of the Prince of Wales has no other object but to make matters smooth for the forthcoming annexation. "Necesse est qui mare tenet, eum rerum potiri." Such is the conclusion at which our Teutonic brethren, the learned and far-seeing members of the Fourth Estate, arrive in their printed debates.
To the English reader these conclusions, based as they are on exceedingly weak premises, look decidedly odd; one cannot help smiling at the expense of the learned propounders. Yet, trivial as they may be, they carry with them some instruction, and give us an insight into our own affairs not less than into the views en- tertained about us by a neighbouring people. Above all, they teach us two things, both characteristic of our time. First, they illustrate the overweening tendency of the continental press and in some degree also the press of our own country, to watch with gaping curiosity every movement of any distinguished personage, and to prognosticate stupendous events as old astrologers did from the movements of the heavenly bodies. Not a king, prince, min- ister, ambassador, or even consular-agent, can leave his ordinary place of residence, without setting at once a thousand pens in mo- tion, and directing the eyes of half the civilized world to trace the prints of his footsteps. The idea that even kings and prime Min- isters, besides being important figures in the political machinery of the State, are also, and before all, human beings, with simple human aspirations and desires, and that they may consequently wish now and then to change their abode, and to look about with their own eyes in God's great world,—such an idea, simple and natural though it is, does not seem to enter for a moment into the mind of one-half of the "able editors" of .Europe. With them kings are kings, and nothing else ; and, if the royalties move about, it is at their own risk, and with the cer- tain penalty before them of having their movements interpreted in the columns of an able journal, to the great delight of the most discerning public. Let some other paper less "able," or less imaginative than the first, contradict the profound supposition, and hint that a given king or minister may possibly travel merely for recreation, and the journal will most likely be regarded as -supplying the surest confirmation of the original story ; the doubting contradictor being set down as the secret agent of "a foreign Government," paid for the express purpose of misleading public opinion. There have been hundreds of instances of this within the last few years, nay, within the last few months and weeks. A notable case in point occurred only about eight or ten days ago, and must
be still in the recollection of all. Bishop Monrad, Prime Minister of the little kingdom of Denmark, had to make a journey to Paris for the express and avowed purpose of fetching home his wife and children, whom he had left in the French capital some two months before, on suddenly quitting his ambassadorial post. If ever there was an obvious, unpolitical, and thoroughly human object in view, it was in M. Monzad's journey ; and we might have ex- pected Lat the newspapers would for the nonce have let alone the poor man, who besides being a most respectable paterfamilias, had the misfortune of filling the post of Prime WriniPter in a small. state. But the " able " editors of the continent were not to be_ deprived of their mystery. No sooner had it got wind that Bishop Monrad was preparing to start for Paris, than suddenly the news was spread abroad that an important political alliance, offensive and defensive, was on the point of being concluded between Den- mark and France, and that the Danish Premier himself was to carry the important document for signature to the French capi- tal. This was at the very, time when Denmark had so scurvily entertained the proposal of the French Government, for a remis- sion of export duty on fish cured. by French fishers on Danish soil, that France broke off the negotiations in disgust! The bash- ful suggestion made by a little over-cautious Berlin paper, that perhaps it might be true after all that Madame Monrad and the little Monrads were waiting at Paris for papa, was received with a perfect storm of hisses by almost the whole of the central Euro- pean press. A monstrous notion that a Prime Minister, a politi- cal leader, a personage of the highest influence, should attend to such vulgar things as fetching home a wife and seven small chil- dren! The notion of such an escapade was declared preposterous ; and the Berlin paper was unanimously voted a dunce, and eke a "spy." So, forth it went through the whole of Europe, repeated by the thousand-tongued press, including the daily organ of the great British Conservative party, that France and Denmark had / been wedded to each other, through the instrumentality of a Minister-Bishop, in close bonds of political unity.
But we have a second lesson to deduce from the gossip about our Prince of Wales. It is the rather startling discovery that German writers, with all their cosmopolitan learning and their polyglot studies, know nothing whatever about the essential cha- racter of English royalty as at present constituted. They seem to be perfectly unaware that a century of national liberty has al- tered the qualities of the monarchs of Great Britain, as much as those of the people, and made the one as different as the other from the equivalent social order on the continent. It is the com- plete, ignorance of this simple fact which brings about such striking blunders as those concerning the fancied disinclination of the British "Crown Prince," to visit his "poor relatives." What a pity that the able scribes of the Vaterland, who believe such fictions, and propagate them, cannot pop their learned heads for a week into Windsor Park, or the old town of Oxford, or, in the autumn season, into the modest royal mansion on the hill; of Balmoral ! If they could but manage it, they would soon know the family of Queen Victoria better ; though, perhaps, they might afterwards think not quite so much of their own reigning families. Could they but learn the simplicity which attends true , greatness —the family feeling which has reconciled royalty to humanity, they might wonder less.
This ignorance of living British life in its very highest spheres, however, is one for which we must not be too severe on ordinary German newspaper writers, since it is a want which they share with far more exalted persons ; in fact, with some of the most dis- tinguished thinkers of Europe. A notable instance of this we gather from the recently published correspondence of the great Alexander von Humboldt with Varnhagen von Ease. It becomes clear from this correspondence that the author of Cosmos,—one of the noblest, the most unprejudiced as well as deepest intellects which the age can boast,—did' yet with all his knowledge little understand England and English institutions. At least, he did not understand them till he got a glimpse of them with his own eyes. It was then, and only then, that he burst forth in complete astonishment, as we find recorded inVarnhagen's diary : "Hum- boldt spoke to me very highly (sehr shon, literally, very beauti- fully) of England. At the Court, the greatest splendour ; but yet the mode of life simple and natural, the conversation easy, and the manners exceedingly friendly and full of kindness, even among ladies and gentlemen of opposite parties." How charac- teristic this sentence, in particular the even (Boger in the original, which expresses almost more than even) of foreign views entertained about England and English life, and by a man like Humboldt ! That all are not Humboldts we may guess ; and that very many do not allow the "even," who will wonder after this ?
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