A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe

Edward VII 1841-1910, King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, was eldest son and second child of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. Their first-born child, Victoria, Princess Royal [qv.], was born on 21 Nov. 1840.

I.

Birth, 9 Nov. 1841
The prince was born at Buckingham Palace at 10.48 a.m. on Tuesday 9 Nov. 1841, and the birth was duly recorded in the parish register of St. George's, Hanover Square. The conservative prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, who had just come into office, with the duke of Wellington, the archbishop of Canterbury (William Howley), and other high officers of state, attended the palace to attest the birth. No heir had been born to the reigning sovereign since the birth of George IV in 1762, and the event was the signal for immense national rejoicings. The annual feast of the lord mayor of London took place the same evening, and the infant's health was drunk with abundant enthusiasm. A special thanksgiving service was arranged for the churches by the archbishop of Canterbury, and the birth was set as the theme of the English poem at Cambridge University for the next year, when the successful competitor was Sir Henry Maine. The child was named Albert Edward—Albert after his father, and Edward after his mother's father, the duke of Kent. In the family circle he was always called Bertie, and until his accession his signature was invariably Albert Edward. He inherited according to precedent the titles of Duke of Cornwall and Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland, but by his parents' wish he was gazetted in addition as Duke of Saxony, his father's German title. The innovation was adversely criticised by Lord Palmerston and his friends, who disliked the German leanings of the court. On 4 Dec. 1841 he was further created, in accordance with precedent, by patent under the great seal, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
From the outset it was his mother's earnest hope that in career and character her son should be a copy of his father. On 29 Nov. 1841 she wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium, Our little boy is a wonderfully strong and large child. I hope and pray he may be like his dearest papa (Letters, i. 456). A week later she repeated her aspirations to her kinsman: You will understand how fervent are my prayers, and I am sure everybody's must be, to see him resemble his father in every, every respect both in body and mind (Martin, Life of Prince Consort). From the boy's infancy to his manhood Queen Victoria clung tenaciously to this wifely wish.

Baptism and sponsors, 25 Jan. 1842.
The prince was baptised by the archbishop of Canterbury on 25 Jan. 1842 at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The boy's grand-uncle, the duke of Cambridge, seventh son of George III, and his great-aunt, Princess Sophia, daughter of George III, were the English sponsors. The princess's place was filled through her illness by the duke of Cambridge's daughter Augusta, afterwards grand duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The other sponsors were members of German reigning families. At their head came Frederick William IV, king of Prussia, who was present in person with Baron Alexander von Humboldt, the naturalist, in attendance upon him. The king much appreciated the office of godfather. He was chosen instead of the queen's beloved counsellor and maternal uncle, King Leopold of Belgium, for fear of giving offence to her difficult-tempered uncle, King Ernest of Hanover, but the plan hardly produced the desired effect of conciliation. The other German sponsors were absent. They were Prince Albert's stepmother, the duchess of Saxe-Coburg, who was represented by Queen Victoria's mother, the duchess of Kent; Prince Albert's widowed kinswoman, the duchess of Saxe-Gotha, who was represented by the duchess of Cambridge; and Prince Albert's uncle, Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, who was represented by Princess Augusta of Cambridge. The Queen specially asked the duke of Wellington to bear at the ceremony the sword of state.
Gifts and orders, which were always congenial to the prince, were showered on his cradle by foreign royalty. The king of Prussia, whose baptismal offering was an elaborate gold shield adorned with figures cut in onyx, conferred on him the Order of the Black Eagle. The Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, Emperor Francis Joseph's uncle, made the infant quite proud with his present of the Grand Cross of St. Andrew on 18 June 1844. Louis Philippe sent him a little gun on his third birthday.

Views of his education.
The lines which the education of the heir-apparent should follow became his parents anxious concern very soon after he was born. Baron Stockmar, Prince Albert's mentor, whose somewhat pedantic counsel carried great weight in the royal circle, was from the first persistent in advice. Before the boy was six months old, the baron in detailed memoranda defined his parents' heavy responsibilities. He warned them of the need of imbuing the child with a truly moral and truly English sentiment, and of entrusting him to the care of persons morally good, intelligent, well-informed, and experienced, who fully enjoyed the parental confidence (6 March 1842). After due consultation and deliberation Lady Lyttelton was installed as head of Queen Victoria's nursery establishment in April 1842. Her responsibilities grew with the rapid increase of the queen's family. She held the post till 1851, and inspired the prince with the warmest affection.

Melbourne's advice.
In 1843 an anonymous pamphlet—Who shall educate the Prince of Wales?—which was dedicated to Queen Victoria, bore witness to the importance generally attached to the character of the prince's training. The anonymous counsellor restated Stockmar's unexceptionable principles, and Prince Albert sent a copy to the sententious baron. An opinion was also invited from Lord Melbourne, the late prime minister, in whom the queen placed the fullest confidence (19 Feb. 1843). He laid stress on the real position and duties which attached to the rank of heir-apparent and on the political temptations and seductions to which previous heirs-apparent, notably George III's eldest son, the prince regent (afterwards George IV), had succumbed. Melbourne recalled the tendency of English heirs-apparent to incur the jealousy of the reigning sovereign and to favour the party in opposition to the sovereign's ministers. Without Lord Melbourne's reminder Queen Victoria was well aware that her uncle George IV was a signal object-lesson of the evil propensities to which heirs-apparent were liable. Nor did she forget that she herself, while heir-presumptive to the crown, had suffered from the jealous ill-will of King William IV (Queen's Letters, i. 580).
In the result Lord Melbourne's hints and Stockmar's admonitions decided Queen Victoria and her consort's educational policy. Stockmar, tackling the question afresh, on 28 July 1846 deduced from the spirit of revolution abroad the imperative need of endowing the child with a sense of the sacred character of all existing institutions, a sound faith in the Church of England, a capacity to hold the balance true between conservative and progressive forces, and a sympathy with healthful social movements. With the utmost earnestness the boy's parents thereupon addressed themselves in Stockmar's spirit to the task of making their son a model of morality, of piety, of deportment, and of intellectual accomplishment, at the same time as they secluded him from any active political interest. Their effort was not wholly beneficial to his development. Yet, whether or no the result were due to his parents' precautions, the country was spared in his case, despite occasional private threatenings, any scandalous manifestation of the traditional rivalry between the sovereign and the next heir to the throne.

Early familiarity with German
English, French, and German governesses soon joined the royal household. German the prince spoke from infancy with his father and mother, and he habitually conversed in it with his brothers and sisters (Bunsen's Memoirs, ii. 120). He always retained through life a full mastery of all the complexities of the language. To his many German relations he spoke in no other tongue, and to his grand-uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium, and to that monarch's son and successor, King Leopold II, with both of whom he was through youth and manhood in constant intercourse, he talked in German preferably to French. Yet French, too, he learned easily, and acquired in due time an excellence of accent and a width of vocabulary which very few Englishmen have equalled.

Episodes of childhood
Childhood and boyhood were wholly passed with his parents, sisters, and brothers in an atmosphere of strong family affection. His eldest sister, Victoria, whose intellectual alertness was in childhood greatly in excess of his own, was his inseparable companion, and his devotion to her was lifelong. His next sister, Alice (b. 25 April 1843), and next brother, Alfred (b. 6 Aug. 1844), soon joined in the pursuits of the two elder children, but the tie between the prince and Princess Victoria was closer than that between him and any of his juniors. The children's time was chiefly spent at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, but there were frequent sojourns at Claremont, Esher, the residence of King Leopold, and at seaside resorts. The prince stayed as a baby with the duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle (Nov. 1842), and several times in infancy at the Brighton Pavilion, the royal residence which was abandoned by the queen in 1845, owing to the pertinacity of sight-seers. In the same year Osborne House in the Isle of Wight became the regular seaside home of the royal family, and was thenceforth constantly visited by the prince.
In 1846 he and the rest of the family made a first yachting excursion from Osborne, paying a first visit to Cornwall, which was his own appanage. Next year he made a tour through Wales, the principality which gave him his chief title. In the autumn of 1848 he paid his first visit to Scotland, staying at Balmoral House, then a hired shooting lodge. The Scottish visit was thenceforth an annual experience. The future Archbishop Benson saw the royal party at their first Braemar gathering (15 Sept. 1848), and described the little prince as a fair little lad of rather a slender make with an intelligent expression. A like impression was made on all observers. Pretty but delicate looking was Macaulay's description of him when the child caught the historian's eye as he stood shyly holding the middle finger of his father's hand at the christening of his third sister, Princess Helena, at Windsor on 26 July 1846 (Lord Broughton's Recollections, vi. 181).

First visits to Ireland, 1849-53
In 1849 he made his first acquaintance with another part of his future dominions. He accompanied his parents on their first visit to Ireland. Queen Victoria on her return commemorated the Irish people's friendly reception of her and her family by creating her eldest son by letters patent under the great seal, Earl of Dublin (10 Sept. 1849). Her father had borne the same title, and its revival in the person of the heir-apparent was a politic compliment to the Irish capital. The visit to Ireland was repeated four years later, when the royal family went to Dublin to inspect an exhibition of Irish industries (Aug. 1853). In later life no member of the royal family crossed the Irish Channel more frequently than the prince.

A tutor appointed, 1819.
Meanwhile his education was progressing on strict lines. In the spring of 1849 Henry Birch, an undermaster of Eton, a young, good-looking, amiable man, according to Prince Albert, was after careful inquiry appointed his first tutor. Birch held office for two years, and was succeeded by Frederick W. Gibbs, a barrister, who was recommended to Prince Albert by Sir James Stephen, then professor of history at Cambridge. Gibbs filled his post till 1858. Other instructors taught special subjects, and with M. Brasseur, his French teacher, the prince long maintained a cordial intimacy.
Endowed with an affectionate disposition, which was readily moved by those about him, he formed with most of his associates in youth of whatever age or position attachments which lasted for life. Very typical of his fidelity to his earliest acquaintances in all ranks was his lifelong relation with (Sir) David Welch (1820-1912), captain of the Fairy and Alberta, Queen Victoria's earliest royal yachts. The prince made his first sea voyage in Welch's charge when little more than seven, and thenceforth until the prince's death Welch belonged to his inner circle of friends. They constantly exchanged hospitalities until the last year of the prince's life, nearly sixty years after their first meeting. Prince Albert's vigilance.

Impatience of study
The prince's chief tutors performed their functions under the close surveillance of Prince Albert, who not only drafted elaborate regulations for their guidance and made almost daily comments on their action, but in the name of the queen and himself directly addressed to his son long written exhortations on minutest matters of conduct. To his religious training especial care was attached, and a sense of religion, if of a rather formal strain, soon developed in permanence. But to his father's disappointment, it was early apparent that the prince was not studious, that books bored him, and that, apart from progress in speaking French and German, he was slow to learn. It was difficult to interest him in his lessons. The narrow range of books at his disposal may partly explain the defect. History, the chief subject of study, was carefully confined to bare facts and dates. Fiction was withheld as demoralising, and even Sir Walter Scott came under the parental ban. In the result the prince never acquired a habit of reading. Apart from the newspapers he practically read nothing in mature years. He wrote with facility and soon corresponded voluminously in a simple style. By his parents' orders he kept a diary from an early age, and maintained the habit till his death, but the entries were invariably brief and bald. At the same time he was as a boy observant, was quick at gathering information from talk, and developed a retentive memory for facts outside school study.

Youthful amusements
His parents meanwhile regarded the drama, art, and music as legitimate amusements for their children. The prince showed some liking for drawing, elocution, and music, and was soon introduced to the theatre, visiting Astley's pantomime as early as 24 March 1846. From 1848 to 1858 he attended all the annual winter performances at Windsor, where Charles Kean and his company provided the chief items of the performance. As a boy he saw at Windsor, too, the younger Charles Mathews in Used up and the farce of Box and Cox (4 Jan. 1849). To the London theatres he paid frequent visits. In 1852 he heard Meyerbeer's Huguenots at the Opera House in Covent Garden. In the spring of 1853 he witnessed more than once Charles Kean's revival of Macbeth at the Princess's Theatre. In 1855 he witnessed at Drury Lane a pantomime acted by amateurs for the benefit of Wellington College, in which his father was deeply interested, and he showed the utmost appreciation of the fun. In 1856 he saw Mme. Celeste in pantomime at the Adelphi, and was a delighted spectator of some old farces at the same house. The early taste for drama and opera never left him.

Amateur acting
The royal children were encouraged by their father to act and recite, and George Bartley the actor was engaged to give the prince lessons in elocution. He made sufficient progress to take part in dramatic entertainments for his parents' amusement. In Jan. 1853 he played the part of Abner to the Princess Royal's Athalie in some scenes from Racine's tragedy. Next month he played Max in a German piece, Die Tafelbirnen, his sisters and brother supporting him, and on 10 Feb. 1854 he in the costume of Winter recited lines from Thomson's Seasons.

Progress in drawing
As a draughtsman he showed for a time some skill. Edward Henry Corbould [qv.] gave him instruction. For an art exhibition in the spring of 1855 in aid of the Patriotic Fund for the benefit of soldiers' families during the Crimean war, he prepared a drawing called The Knight, which sold for fifty-five guineas. Opportunities for experiment in other mechanical arts were provided at Osborne. There a Swiss cottage was erected in 1854 as a workshop for the prince and his brothers. The prince and his brother Alfred during the Crimean war were busy over miniature fortifications in the grounds.

Companions of youth
The gravest defect in Prince Albert's deliberate scheme of education was the practical isolation which it imposed on the prince from boys of his own age. Prince Albert to a greater extent than the queen held that members of the royal family and especially the heir-apparent should keep aloof from their subjects, and deprecated intercourse save in ceremonial fashion. He had a nervous fear of the contaminating influence of boys less carefully trained than his own sons. There were always advisers who questioned the wisdom of the royal policy of exclusiveness, and Prince Albert so far relented, when his eldest son was a child of six or seven, as to invite a few boys whose parents were of high character and good position to play with the prince in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Among these child associates were Charles Carington (afterwards first Earl Carrington and Marquis of Lincolnshire) and Charles Lindley Wood (afterwards second Viscount Halifax). Some seven years later the practice was continued at Windsor, whither a few carefully chosen Eton boys were summoned to spend an occasional afternoon. Besides Charles Wood, there now came among others George Cadogan (afterwards fifth Earl Cadogan) and Lord Hinchingbrooke (afterwards eighth earl of Sandwich); but the opportunities of intercourse were restricted. Prince Albert, who was often present, inspired the boy-visitors with a feeling of dread. The young prince's good-humour and charm of manner endeared him to them and made most of them his friends for life, but owing to his seclusion from boys' society he was ignorant of ordinary outdoor games, and showed small anxiety to attempt them. This want was never supplied. Subsequently he showed some interest in croquet, but ordinary games made no appeal to him, and he betrayed no aptitude for them. The only outdoor recreation which his parents urged on him was riding. He was taught to ride as a boy, and as a young man rode well and hard, possessing good hands and an admirable nerve, while at the same time he developed a genuine love of horses and dogs.

Early public functions
Meanwhile the prince's presence at public ceremonies brought him into prominent notice. On 30 Oct. 1849 he attended for the first time a public function. He then accompanied Prince Albert to the City to open the Coal Exchange. His sister, princess royal, accompanied him, but the queen was absent through illness. The royal party travelled in the royal barge from Westminster to London Bridge. On 1 May 1851 he was at the opening of the Great Exhibition, and was much impressed by the stateliness of the scene. With his tutor and his brother Alfred he frequently visited the place in the next few months, and in June 1854 he attended the inauguration at Sydenham of the Crystal Palace, into which the exhibition building was converted. He accompanied his parents to the art treasures exhibition at Manchester, staying at Worsley Hall with Lord Ellesmere (29 June-2 July 1857). He was twice at Eton (4 June 1853 and 1855) and once at Harrow (29 June 1854) for the speech days, but solely as an onlooker. More important was his first visit to the opening, on 12 Dec. 1854, of a new session of parliament, which was called in view of public anxiety over the Crimean war. That anxiety was fully alive in the royal circle. With his parents the prince visited the wounded soldiers in Brompton Hospital, and was at his mother's side when she first presented the V.C. decoration in Hyde Park (July 1857).

First visit to Paris, 1855
To the Crimean war, which brought his mother into alliance with Napoleon III, emperor of the French, the youth owed a new and more interesting experience than any that had yet befallen him. In August 1855 he and his eldest sister accompanied their parents on their glorious visit to Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie at the Tuileries. It was the boy's first arrival on foreign soil. At once he won the hearts of the French people. His amiability and his delight in the attentions paid him captivated everybody. Prince Albert wrote to Stockmar with unusual lightness of heart how his son, qui est si gentil, had made himself a general favourite. The impression proved imperishable. Frenchmen of every class and political creed acknowledged his boyish fascination. Le petit bonhomme est vraiment charmant, wrote Louis Blanc, a French exile in England, who as he wandered about London caught frequent sight of the boy; il a je ne sais quoi qui plaît et, aux côtés de ses parents, il apparaît comme un vrai personnage de féerie. This early friendship between the prince and France lasted through his life, and defied all vicissitudes of his own or of French fortunes.

Faraday's lectures, 1856.
While the prince's general demeanour gratified his parents, they were not well satisfied with his progress. He was reported to be wanting in enthusiasm and imagination, and to be subject to fits of ill-temper, which although brief were easily provoked. Prince Albert earnestly sought new means of quickening his intelligence. The curriculum was widened. In January 1856 the prince and his brother Alfred attended Faraday's lectures on metals at the Royal Institution; and William Ellis was summoned to the palace to teach the prince and his eldest sister political economy. Ellis, like all the royal tutors, noted the superior quickness of the girl, and failed to move much interest in the boy. At the end of August 1856, a fortnight's walking tour was made with his tutor Gibbs and Col. William Henry Cavendish, groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria and a first cousin of the duke of Devonshire. Starting from Osborne, the party slowly travelled incognito through Dorset, for the most part on foot, putting up at inns without ceremony. But the secret of the prince's identity leaked out, and the experiment was spoilt by public curiosity.

Lord Granville's protest against mode of education
Prince Albert did not conceal his anxiety over his son's backwardness. He invited the counsel of Lord Granville (22 Jan. 1857). Granville frankly advised his being mixed up with others of his own age away from home. He ridiculed as futile the visits of Eton boys to the Castle for a couple of hours. Never out of the sight of tutors or elderly attendants, he was not likely to develop the best boyish characteristics. A foreign tour with boys of his own age was suggested, and at some future date a voyage through the colonies and even to India.

At Königswinter, 1857
The Princess Royal's marriage, 25 Jan. 1858.

Confirmation, 1 April 1858.
Home again at the end of October, he enjoyed in the winter his first experience of hunting, going out with the royal buckhounds near Windsor. He found the sport exhilarating, and soon afterwards tried his hand at deer-stalking in Scotland. In January 1858 the festivities in honour of his elder sister's marriage with Prince Frederick of Prussia absorbed the attention of his family. The prince attended the ceremony at St. James's Palace dressed in highland costume (25 Jan.). He felt the parting with the chief companion of his childhood, but corresponded incessantly with his sister and paid her repeated visits in her new home. The close relations with the Prussian royal family which had begun with his baptism were thus greatly strengthened. On 1 April 1858 he was confirmed at Windsor by the archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird Sumner. ‘Bertie,’ wrote his father, ‘acquitted himself extremely well,’ in the preliminary examination by Gerald Wellesley, dean of Windsor. His mother described ‘his whole manner’ as ‘gentle, good and proper,’ epithets which well expressed his attitude towards religion through life. A few days later he made a short pleasure tour with his tutor to Ireland. It was his third visit to that country. He now extended his knowledge of it by going south to Killarney and leaving by way of Cork.

In residence at White Lodge, 1858.
A further trial of the effect of absence from home was made in May. It was decided that he should join the army, and on 5 May 1858, with a view to preparing him for military service, he was sent to stay at White Lodge in Richmond Park, the unoccupied residence of the ranger, the duke of Cambridge. A sort of independent household was there first provided for him. In view of the approach of manhood, his parents redoubled their precautions against undesirable acquaintances, but after careful investigation three young officers, Lord Valletort (the earl of Mount Edgcumbe's son), Major Christopher Teesdale [q.v.], and Major Lindsay, afterwards Lord Wantage [q.v.], were appointed to be the prince's first equerries. For their confidential instruction, Prince Albert elaborated rules whereby they might encourage in the prince minute care of his ‘appearance, deportment, and dress,’ and foster in him good ‘manners and conduct towards others’ and the ‘power to acquit himself creditably in conversation or whatever may be the occupation of society.’

Parental admonition on seventeenth birthday, 9 Nov. 1858.
Already at fifteen he had been given a small allowance for the purchase of hats and ties, for which he carefully accounted to his mother. Now he was advanced to the privilege of choosing his own dress, and the queen sent him a formal minute on the sober principles which should govern his choice of material. To neatness of dress he always attached importance, and he insisted on a reasonable adherence to laws of fashion on the part of those about him. To the formalities of official costume he paid through life an almost exaggerated attention. This quality was partly inherited from his grandfather, the duke of Kent, but was greatly stimulated by his parents' counsel. Gibbs was in chief charge at White Lodge, and intellectual society was encouraged. Richard Owen the naturalist was several times invited to dine, and Lord John Russell, who was residing at Pembroke Lodge, was an occasional guest. The talk ranged over many topics, but was hardly calculated to interest very deeply a boy under seventeen (Life of R. Owen). He spent some time rowing on the river, and attended his first dinner-party at Cambridge Cottage, Kew, the residence of his great-aunt, the duchess of Cambridge, but all was too strictly regulated to give a youth much satisfaction. His sojourn at White Lodge was interrupted in August, when he went with his parents to Cherbourg, and renewed his acquaintance with the emperor and empress of the French. On 9 Nov. 1858, his seventeenth birthday, one purpose of his retirement to Richmond was fulfilled. He was made a colonel in the army unattached and at the same time was nominated K.G., though the installation was postponed. The date was regarded by his parents as marking his entry on manhood. Among their gifts was a memorandum signed by themselves solemnly warning him of his duties as a Christian gentleman. Gibbs, too, retired from the prince's service, and his precise post was allowed to lapse.

Col. Bruce governor, 10 Nov. 1858.
But there was no real change in the situation. His parents relaxed none of their vigilance, and a more complete control of the prince's affairs and conduct than Gibbs had exercised was now entrusted to a governor, Colonel Robert Bruce. The colonel fully enjoyed Prince Albert's confidence; his sister, Lady Augusta, was a close friend of the queen and was lady-in-waiting of his grandmother, the duchess of Kent. At the same time Charles Tarver was formally installed as instructor in classics.

Visit to Rome, Jan.-April 1859.
For the next four years the prince and Col. Bruce were rarely parted, and Col. Bruce's wife, Catherine Mary, daughter of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, usually assisted her husband in the strict discharge of his tutorial functions. The first incident in the new régime was a second foreign expedition of more imposing extent than the first. Travel was proving attractive, and his parents wisely encouraged his taste for it. During December a short visit, the first of many, was paid to his married sister at Potsdam (December 1858). Next month he with Colonel and Mrs. Bruce started from Dover on an Italian tour. Stringent injunctions were laid on Bruce by his parents to protect the prince from any chance intercourse with strangers and to anticipate any unprincipled attempt of journalists to get into conversation with him. The prince was to encounter much that was new. He travelled for the first time under a formal incognito, and took the title of Baron of Renfrew. On leaving England he presented colours to the Prince of Wales's royal (100th) Canadian regiment, which was in camp at Shorncliffe (10 Jan. 1859), and delivered to the soldiers his first speech in public. The duke of Cambridge was present and pronounced it excellent. From Dover he crossed to Ostend to pay at the palace of Laeken, near Brussels, a first visit to his grand-uncle, King Leopold I. The king's influence over him was hardly less than that which he exerted on the boy's mother and father. Passing through Germany, the party made a short stay at Berlin, where Lord Bloomfield gave a ball in his honour. It was the first entertainment of the kind he had attended, and he was ‘very much amused’ with his first cotillon. He reached Rome near the end of January and settled down for a long stay. King Victor Emanuel was anxious to offer him hospitality at Turin. But Queen Victoria deemed King Victor's rough habit of speech, of which she had some experience at Windsor in 1855, an example to be avoided, and the invitation, somewhat to Cavour's embarrassment, was declined. At Rome the prince was soon busily engaged in seeing places and persons of interest. Attended by Bruce, he called on the Pope, Pius IX, and talked with him in French. The interview ‘went off extremely well,’ Queen Victoria wrote to King Leopold (15 Feb. 1859), and the pope interested himself in the endeavour to make the visit to Rome ‘useful and pleasant’ (Queen's Letters, iii. 411). Of duly approved English sojourners the prince saw many. He impressed Robert Browning as ‘a gentle, refined boy’; he was often in the studio of the sculptor John Gibson, and an introduction there to Frederic Leighton led to a lifelong intimacy.
The outbreak of war between Italy and Austria in April hastened the prince's departure at the end of three months. H.M.S. Scourge carried him from Civita Vecchia to Gibraltar, where he was met by the royal yacht Osborne. From Gibraltar he passed to Lisbon, where he was entertained by Pedro V, king of Portugal. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were attached to the Portuguese royal house by lineal ties and sentiments of affection. King Pedro's mother, Queen Maria, had been a playmate of Queen Victoria, and his father, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, was a first cousin of both Queen Victoria and her consort. With Portugal's successive monarchs the Prince of Wales was always on friendliest terms. The prince only reached home in June, after six months' absence, and was then formally invested K.G. with full ceremony. On 26 June Prince Hohenlohe, the future chancellor of Germany, dined at Buckingham Palace, and learned from the prince's lips something of his travels. The young man gave the German visitor an impression of good breeding, short stature, and nervous awe of his father.

At Edinburgh, 1859.
Prince Albert was not willing to allow his son's educational course to end prematurely. An academic training was at once devised on comprehensive lines, which included attendance at three universities in succession. A beginning was made at Edinburgh in the summer of 1859. Holyrood Palace was prepared for his residence. His chief instruction was in science under the guidance of Lyon Playfair, whose lectures at the university on the composition and working of iron-ore the prince attended regularly. He showed interest in Playfair's teaching, visiting with him many factories to inspect chemical processes, and proved his courage and obedient temper by dipping at Playfair's bidding in one of the workshops his bare arm into a hissing cauldron of molten iron by way of illustrating that the experiment could be made with impunity (Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1877-86, ii. 27). At the same time Leonhard Schmitz taught him Roman history, Italian, German, and French. For exercise he paraded with the 16th lancers, who were stationed in the city, and made excursions to the Trossachs and the Scottish lakes. But the stay in Edinburgh was brief.

At Oxford, Oct. 1859.
On 3 Sept. the prince consort held a conference there with the youth's professors and tutors to decide on his future curriculum. The Edinburgh experience was proving tedious and cheerless. The prince mixed with none but serious men advanced in years. The public at large was inclined to protest that now when it seemed time to terminate the state of pupilage, there were visible signs of an almost indefinite extension. ‘Punch’ voiced the general sentiment in a poem entitled ‘A Prince at High Pressure’ (24 Sept. 1859). But Prince Albert was relentless, and in October the prince migrated to Oxford on conditions as restrictive as any that went before. The prince matriculated as a nobleman from Christ Church, of which Dr. Liddell was dean, on 17 Oct.
It was the first recorded occasion on which a Prince of Wales had become an undergraduate of the University of Oxford. Tradition alone vouches for the story of the matriculation in 1398 of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V¾Prince Hal, with whom the new undergraduate was occasionally to be linked in satire hereafter. No other preceding Prince of Wales was in any way associated with Oxford. But Prince Albert's son was not to enjoy any of an undergraduate's liberty. A special residence, Frewen Hall, a house in the town, was taken for him. Col. Bruce accompanied him and rarely left him. Prince Albert impressed on Bruce the boy's need of close application to study, and of resistance to social calls, as well as the undesirability of any free mingling with undergraduates. Herbert Fisher, a student of Christ Church, was on the recommendation of Dean Liddell appointed his tutor in law and constitutional history. He did not attend the college lectures, but Goldwin Smith, professor of modern history, with three or four chosen undergraduates, waited on him at his residence and gave him a private course in history. The text-book was the ‘Annals of England,’ by W. E. Flaherty (1855), and the professor only partially compensated by epigram for the dryness of the work. By Prince Albert's wish, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, then professor of ecclesiastical history, gave him some religious instruction, while Dr. Henry Acland, his medical attendant, occasionally invited him to social gatherings at his house. With both Stanley and Acland the prince formed very friendly relations. He saw comparatively little of the undergraduates. He confirmed his acquaintance with Mr. Charles Wood. At the same time fox-hunting was one of his permitted indulgences, and the recreation brought him into touch with some young men of sporting tastes, to a few of whom, like Mr. Henry Chaplin and Sir Frederick Johnstone, he formed a lifelong attachment. He hunted with the South Oxfordshire hounds, of which Lord Macclesfield was master, and he saw his first fox killed near Garsington on 27 Feb. 1860, when he was presented with the brush. Hunting was his favourite sport till middle age. The discipline which Col. Bruce enforced prohibited smoking. But the prince made surreptitious experiments with tobacco, which soon induced a fixed habit.
The prince remained in residence at Oxford with few interruptions during term time until the end of the summer term 1860. He was summoned to Windsor on 9 Nov. 1859 for the celebration of his eighteenth birthday, which was reckoned in royal circles a virtual coming of age. His parents again presented him with a carefully penned exhortation in which they warned him that he would henceforth be exempted from parental authority, but that they would always be ready with their counsel at his request. As he read the document the sense of his parents' solicitude for his welfare and his new responsibilities moved him to tears. But the assurance of personal independence lacked genuine significance. In the Easter vacation of 1860 he paid a first visit to his father's home at Coburg, and made ‘a very good impression.’ He pleased his parents by the good account he brought them of ‘dear’ Stockmar's state of health (Letters of Queen Victoria, iii. 5; 25 April 1860). On his return home he found (Sir) Richard Owen lecturing his brothers and sisters on natural history, and he attended once (23 April 1860). In London at the opening of the long vacation he enjoyed the first of his many experiences of laying foundation stones. He performed the ceremony for the School of Art at Lambeth.

In Canada, July-Sept. 1860.
A formidable journey was to interrupt his Oxford undergraduate career. In July 1860 he carried out a scheme long in his parents' minds, which exerted on his development a far more beneficial effect than any likely to come of his academic training. During the Crimean war the Canadian government, which had equipped a regiment of infantry for active service, had requested the queen to visit Canada. She declined the invitation, but promised that the Prince of Wales should go there as soon as he was old enough. When that decision was announced, the president of the United States, James Buchanan, and the corporation of New York, both sent the queen requests that he should visit America. The queen very gradually overcame maternal misgivings of the safety of an English prince among American republicans. The American invitations were at length accepted, with the proviso that the American visit was to be treated as a private one. In any case the projected tour acquired something more than a merely colonial interest. An impressive introduction to public life was thus designed for the heir to the English throne. A large and dignified suite was collected. The prince was accompanied by the duke of Newcastle, secretary of state for the colonies, by the earl of St. Germans, lord steward of the royal household, and by Col. Bruce, his governor. Major Teesdale and Capt. Grey (d. 1874), son of Sir George Grey, went as equerries, and Dr. Acland as physician. Young Lord Hinchingbrooke, one of the Eton associates, was to join the party in America.
Leaving Southampton on 9 July 1860 in H.M.S. Hero, with H.M.S. Ariadne in attendance, the prince reached Newfoundland on the 23rd. The colonial progress opened at St. John's with processions, presentations of addresses, reviews of volunteers, levees, and banquets, which were constant features of the tour. Thence they passed to Halifax and Nova Scotia (30 July). On 9 Aug. he landed on Prince Edward Island, and on the 12th, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the governor-general of the Canadas, Sir Edmund Head, boarded the royal vessel. On the 20th the prince made a state entry into Quebec, the capital of French Canada. He stayed at Parliament House, which had been elaborately fitted up for his residence, and a guard of honour of 100 men was appointed to form his escort through the colony. At Montreal on 1 Sept. he opened the great railway bridge across the St. Lawrence; and passing thence to Ottawa, he there laid the foundation stone of the Parliament building. On the way to Toronto, the capital of upper Canada, the only untoward incident took place. Strong protestant feeling in the upper colony resented the enthusiasm with which the French Roman catholics of lower Canada had welcomed the prince, and the Orange lodges resolved to emphasise their principles by forcing on the prince's notice in their street decorations the emblems of their faith. At Kingston on Lake Ontario the townsfolk refused to obey the duke of Newcastle's direction to remove the orange colours and portraits of William III from the triumphal arches before the royal party entered the town. Consequently the royal party struck the place out of their itinerary and proceeded to Toronto, where a like difficulty threatened. Happily the Orangemen there yielded to persuasion, and the reception at Toronto proved as hearty as could be wished.

At Washington, 5 Oct. 1860.
Leaving Canada for the United States, the prince made an excursion to Niagara Falls (17 Sept.), where, somewhat to his alarm, he saw Blondin perform on the tight rope, and at the neighbouring village of Queenstown (18 Sept.) he laid the crowning stone on the great monument erected to the memory of Major-general Sir Isaac Brock [q.v.], who was slain in the American war of 1812. Crossing Detroit river, he touched United States soil at Detroit on 19 Sept.; there he was met by Lord Lyons, minister at Washington. At once scenes of extravagant enthusiasm belied all fears of a cool reception. Short stays in Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg preceded his arrival at Washington (3 Oct.), where President Buchanan (an old man of seventy-seven) received him at the White House with friendliest cordiality. A crowded levee at White House was given in his honour. With the president he visited on 5 Oct. Mount Vernon, Washington's home and burial place, and planted a chestnut by the side of the tomb. Such a tribute from the great-grandson of George III was greeted by the American people with loud acclamations of joy, and England was hardly less impressed. ‘The Prince of Wales at the Tomb of Washington’ was the subject set for the English poem at Cambridge University in 1861, and the prize was won by Frederic W. H. Myers. Going northwards, the prince stayed at Philadelphia (7 Oct.), where he heard Madame Patti sing for the first time. At New York (11 Oct.) he remained three days. A visit was paid later to the military school at West Point, and proceeding to Boston he went over to Cambridge to inspect Harvard University. At Boston he met Longfellow, Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He embarked for home in H.M.S. Hero from Portland in Maine on 20 Oct. and arrived after a bad passage at Plymouth on 15 Nov., six days after completing his nineteenth year.

Effect of the American tour.

The general verdict.
Everywhere the prince's good-humour, courteous bearing, and simple delight in novel experiences won the hearts of his hosts. ‘Dignified, frank, and affable,’ wrote the president to Queen Victoria (6 Oct. 1860), ‘he has conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people.’ The tour differed in every regard from his previous trips abroad. It was originally planned as a ceremonial compliment to the oldest and most important of English colonies on the part of the heir to the throne travelling as the reigning sovereign's official representative. No British colony had previously received a like attention. Canada accorded the prince all the honours due to his royal station. In the United States, too, where it was stipulated by Queen Victoria that he should travel as a private person under his incognito of Baron of Renfrew, the fiction went for nothing, and he was greeted as England's heir-apparent no less emphatically than in British North America. The result satisfied every sanguine hope. It tightened the bond of affection between Canada and the mother country at the moment when a tide of public sentiment seemed setting in another direction, and it reinforced the sense of unity among the British American colonies, which found expression in their internal union of 1867. On the relations of the United States and England the effect was of the happiest. On 29 Nov. 1860 Sir Charles Phipps, who was high in the confidence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, gave expression to the general verdict in a letter to Dr. Acland. ‘The success of the expedition has been beyond all expectation; it may be reckoned as one of the most important and valuable state measures of the present age, and whether we look to the excitement and encouragement of loyalty and affection to the mother country in Canada, or to the soothing of prejudice and the increase of good feeling between the United States and Great Britain, it seems to me impossible to overrate the importance of the good results which the visit promises for the future.’
On the youth himself the tour exerted a wholly beneficial influence. The duke of Newcastle noticed in the prince a perceptible intellectual development. The journey left a lasting impression on his mind. If at times in later reminiscence he associated Canadian life with some want of material comfort, he always cherished gratitude for the colonial hospitality, and never lost a sense of attachment to the American people. His parents felt pride in the American welcome, and a year later, when Motley, then American minister at Vienna, was passing through England, he was invited to Balmoral, to receive from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert expressions of their satisfaction. Some American publicists were inclined to attribute to the heartiness of the prince's reception Prince Albert's momentous diplomatic intervention in behalf of the north over the affair of the Trent. When the American civil war broke out next year, Prince Albert on the eve of his death powerfully discouraged English sympathy with the revolt against the authority of the government at Washington, which had given his son an ovation.

The Princess Royal's marriage, 25 Jan. 1858.

Confirmation, 1 April 1858.
Home again at the end of October, he enjoyed in the winter his first experience of hunting, going out with the royal buckhounds near Windsor. He found the sport exhilarating, and soon afterwards tried his hand at deer-stalking in Scotland. In January 1858 the festivities in honour of his elder sister's marriage with Prince Frederick of Prussia absorbed the attention of his family. The prince attended the ceremony at St. James's Palace dressed in highland costume (25 Jan.). He felt the parting with the chief companion of his childhood, but corresponded incessantly with his sister and paid her repeated visits in her new home. The close relations with the Prussian royal family which had begun with his baptism were thus greatly strengthened. On 1 April 1858 he was confirmed at Windsor by the archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird Sumner. ‘Bertie,’ wrote his father, ‘acquitted himself extremely well,’ in the preliminary examination by Gerald Wellesley, dean of Windsor. His mother described ‘his whole manner’ as ‘gentle, good and proper,’ epithets which well expressed his attitude towards religion through life. A few days later he made a short pleasure tour with his tutor to Ireland. It was his third visit to that country. He now extended his knowledge of it by going south to Killarney and leaving by way of Cork.

In residence at White Lodge, 1858.
A further trial of the effect of absence from home was made in May. It was decided that he should join the army, and on 5 May 1858, with a view to preparing him for military service, he was sent to stay at White Lodge in Richmond Park, the unoccupied residence of the ranger, the duke of Cambridge. A sort of independent household was there first provided for him. In view of the approach of manhood, his parents redoubled their precautions against undesirable acquaintances, but after careful investigation three young officers, Lord Valletort (the earl of Mount Edgcumbe's son), Major Christopher Teesdale [q.v.], and Major Lindsay, afterwards Lord Wantage [q.v.], were appointed to be the prince's first equerries. For their confidential instruction, Prince Albert elaborated rules whereby they might encourage in the prince minute care of his ‘appearance, deportment, and dress,’ and foster in him good ‘manners and conduct towards others’ and the ‘power to acquit himself creditably in conversation or whatever may be the occupation of society.’

Parental admonition on seventeenth birthday, 9 Nov. 1858.
Already at fifteen he had been given a small allowance for the purchase of hats and ties, for which he carefully accounted to his mother. Now he was advanced to the privilege of choosing his own dress, and the queen sent him a formal minute on the sober principles which should govern his choice of material. To neatness of dress he always attached importance, and he insisted on a reasonable adherence to laws of fashion on the part of those about him. To the formalities of official costume he paid through life an almost exaggerated attention. This quality was partly inherited from his grandfather, the duke of Kent, but was greatly stimulated by his parents' counsel. Gibbs was in chief charge at White Lodge, and intellectual society was encouraged. Richard Owen the naturalist was several times invited to dine, and Lord John Russell, who was residing at Pembroke Lodge, was an occasional guest. The talk ranged over many topics, but was hardly calculated to interest very deeply a boy under seventeen (Life of R. Owen). He spent some time rowing on the river, and attended his first dinner-party at Cambridge Cottage, Kew, the residence of his great-aunt, the duchess of Cambridge, but all was too strictly regulated to give a youth much satisfaction. His sojourn at White Lodge was interrupted in August, when he went with his parents to Cherbourg, and renewed his acquaintance with the emperor and empress of the French. On 9 Nov. 1858, his seventeenth birthday, one purpose of his retirement to Richmond was fulfilled. He was made a colonel in the army unattached and at the same time was nominated K.G., though the installation was postponed. The date was regarded by his parents as marking his entry on manhood. Among their gifts was a memorandum signed by themselves solemnly warning him of his duties as a Christian gentleman. Gibbs, too, retired from the prince's service, and his precise post was allowed to lapse.

Col. Bruce governor, 10 Nov. 1858.
But there was no real change in the situation. His parents relaxed none of their vigilance, and a more complete control of the prince's affairs and conduct than Gibbs had exercised was now entrusted to a governor, Colonel Robert Bruce. The colonel fully enjoyed Prince Albert's confidence; his sister, Lady Augusta, was a close friend of the queen and was lady-in-waiting of his grandmother, the duchess of Kent. At the same time Charles Tarver was formally installed as instructor in classics.

Visit to Rome, Jan.-April 1859.
For the next four years the prince and Col. Bruce were rarely parted, and Col. Bruce's wife, Catherine Mary, daughter of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, usually assisted her husband in the strict discharge of his tutorial functions. The first incident in the new régime was a second foreign expedition of more imposing extent than the first. Travel was proving attractive, and his parents wisely encouraged his taste for it. During December a short visit, the first of many, was paid to his married sister at Potsdam (December 1858). Next month he with Colonel and Mrs. Bruce started from Dover on an Italian tour. Stringent injunctions were laid on Bruce by his parents to protect the prince from any chance intercourse with strangers and to anticipate any unprincipled attempt of journalists to get into conversation with him. The prince was to encounter much that was new. He travelled for the first time under a formal incognito, and took the title of Baron of Renfrew. On leaving England he presented colours to the Prince of Wales's royal (100th) Canadian regiment, which was in camp at Shorncliffe (10 Jan. 1859), and delivered to the soldiers his first speech in public. The duke of Cambridge was present and pronounced it excellent. From Dover he crossed to Ostend to pay at the palace of Laeken, near Brussels, a first visit to his grand-uncle, King Leopold I. The king's influence over him was hardly less than that which he exerted on the boy's mother and father. Passing through Germany, the party made a short stay at Berlin, where Lord Bloomfield gave a ball in his honour. It was the first entertainment of the kind he had attended, and he was ‘very much amused’ with his first cotillon. He reached Rome near the end of January and settled down for a long stay. King Victor Emanuel was anxious to offer him hospitality at Turin. But Queen Victoria deemed King Victor's rough habit of speech, of which she had some experience at Windsor in 1855, an example to be avoided, and the invitation, somewhat to Cavour's embarrassment, was declined. At Rome the prince was soon busily engaged in seeing places and persons of interest. Attended by Bruce, he called on the Pope, Pius IX, and talked with him in French. The interview ‘went off extremely well,’ Queen Victoria wrote to King Leopold (15 Feb. 1859), and the pope interested himself in the endeavour to make the visit to Rome ‘useful and pleasant’ (Queen's Letters, iii. 411). Of duly approved English sojourners the prince saw many. He impressed Robert Browning as ‘a gentle, refined boy’; he was often in the studio of the sculptor John Gibson, and an introduction there to Frederic Leighton led to a lifelong intimacy.
The outbreak of war between Italy and Austria in April hastened the prince's departure at the end of three months. H.M.S. Scourge carried him from Civita Vecchia to Gibraltar, where he was met by the royal yacht Osborne. From Gibraltar he passed to Lisbon, where he was entertained by Pedro V, king of Portugal. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were attached to the Portuguese royal house by lineal ties and sentiments of affection. King Pedro's mother, Queen Maria, had been a playmate of Queen Victoria, and his father, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, was a first cousin of both Queen Victoria and her consort. With Portugal's successive monarchs the Prince of Wales was always on friendliest terms. The prince only reached home in June, after six months' absence, and was then formally invested K.G. with full ceremony. On 26 June Prince Hohenlohe, the future chancellor of Germany, dined at Buckingham Palace, and learned from the prince's lips something of his travels. The young man gave the German visitor an impression of good breeding, short stature, and nervous awe of his father.

At Edinburgh, 1859.
Prince Albert was not willing to allow his son's educational course to end prematurely. An academic training was at once devised on comprehensive lines, which included attendance at three universities in succession. A beginning was made at Edinburgh in the summer of 1859. Holyrood Palace was prepared for his residence. His chief instruction was in science under the guidance of Lyon Playfair, whose lectures at the university on the composition and working of iron-ore the prince attended regularly. He showed interest in Playfair's teaching, visiting with him many factories to inspect chemical processes, and proved his courage and obedient temper by dipping at Playfair's bidding in one of the workshops his bare arm into a hissing cauldron of molten iron by way of illustrating that the experiment could be made with impunity (Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1877-86, ii. 27). At the same time Leonhard Schmitz taught him Roman history, Italian, German, and French. For exercise he paraded with the 16th lancers, who were stationed in the city, and made excursions to the Trossachs and the Scottish lakes. But the stay in Edinburgh was brief.

At Oxford, Oct. 1859.
On 3 Sept. the prince consort held a conference there with the youth's professors and tutors to decide on his future curriculum. The Edinburgh experience was proving tedious and cheerless. The prince mixed with none but serious men advanced in years. The public at large was inclined to protest that now when it seemed time to terminate the state of pupilage, there were visible signs of an almost indefinite extension. ‘Punch’ voiced the general sentiment in a poem entitled ‘A Prince at High Pressure’ (24 Sept. 1859). But Prince Albert was relentless, and in October the prince migrated to Oxford on conditions as restrictive as any that went before. The prince matriculated as a nobleman from Christ Church, of which Dr. Liddell was dean, on 17 Oct.
It was the first recorded occasion on which a Prince of Wales had become an undergraduate of the University of Oxford. Tradition alone vouches for the story of the matriculation in 1398 of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V¾Prince Hal, with whom the new undergraduate was occasionally to be linked in satire hereafter. No other preceding Prince of Wales was in any way associated with Oxford. But Prince Albert's son was not to enjoy any of an undergraduate's liberty. A special residence, Frewen Hall, a house in the town, was taken for him. Col. Bruce accompanied him and rarely left him. Prince Albert impressed on Bruce the boy's need of close application to study, and of resistance to social calls, as well as the undesirability of any free mingling with undergraduates. Herbert Fisher, a student of Christ Church, was on the recommendation of Dean Liddell appointed his tutor in law and constitutional history. He did not attend the college lectures, but Goldwin Smith, professor of modern history, with three or four chosen undergraduates, waited on him at his residence and gave him a private course in history. The text-book was the ‘Annals of England,’ by W. E. Flaherty (1855), and the professor only partially compensated by epigram for the dryness of the work. By Prince Albert's wish, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, then professor of ecclesiastical history, gave him some religious instruction, while Dr. Henry Acland, his medical attendant, occasionally invited him to social gatherings at his house. With both Stanley and Acland the prince formed very friendly relations. He saw comparatively little of the undergraduates. He confirmed his acquaintance with Mr. Charles Wood. At the same time fox-hunting was one of his permitted indulgences, and the recreation brought him into touch with some young men of sporting tastes, to a few of whom, like Mr. Henry Chaplin and Sir Frederick Johnstone, he formed a lifelong attachment. He hunted with the South Oxfordshire hounds, of which Lord Macclesfield was master, and he saw his first fox killed near Garsington on 27 Feb. 1860, when he was presented with the brush. Hunting was his favourite sport till middle age. The discipline which Col. Bruce enforced prohibited smoking. But the prince made surreptitious experiments with tobacco, which soon induced a fixed habit.
The prince remained in residence at Oxford with few interruptions during term time until the end of the summer term 1860. He was summoned to Windsor on 9 Nov. 1859 for the celebration of his eighteenth birthday, which was reckoned in royal circles a virtual coming of age. His parents again presented him with a carefully penned exhortation in which they warned him that he would henceforth be exempted from parental authority, but that they would always be ready with their counsel at his request. As he read the document the sense of his parents' solicitude for his welfare and his new responsibilities moved him to tears. But the assurance of personal independence lacked genuine significance. In the Easter vacation of 1860 he paid a first visit to his father's home at Coburg, and made ‘a very good impression.’ He pleased his parents by the good account he brought them of ‘dear’ Stockmar's state of health (Letters of Queen Victoria, iii. 5; 25 April 1860). On his return home he found (Sir) Richard Owen lecturing his brothers and sisters on natural history, and he attended once (23 April 1860). In London at the opening of the long vacation he enjoyed the first of his many experiences of laying foundation stones. He performed the ceremony for the School of Art at Lambeth.

In Canada, July-Sept. 1860.
A formidable journey was to interrupt his Oxford undergraduate career. In July 1860 he carried out a scheme long in his parents' minds, which exerted on his development a far more beneficial effect than any likely to come of his academic training. During the Crimean war the Canadian government, which had equipped a regiment of infantry for active service, had requested the queen to visit Canada. She declined the invitation, but promised that the Prince of Wales should go there as soon as he was old enough. When that decision was announced, the president of the United States, James Buchanan, and the corporation of New York, both sent the queen requests that he should visit America. The queen very gradually overcame maternal misgivings of the safety of an English prince among American republicans. The American invitations were at length accepted, with the proviso that the American visit was to be treated as a private one. In any case the projected tour acquired something more than a merely colonial interest. An impressive introduction to public life was thus designed for the heir to the English throne. A large and dignified suite was collected. The prince was accompanied by the duke of Newcastle, secretary of state for the colonies, by the earl of St. Germans, lord steward of the royal household, and by Col. Bruce, his governor. Major Teesdale and Capt. Grey (d. 1874), son of Sir George Grey, went as equerries, and Dr. Acland as physician. Young Lord Hinchingbrooke, one of the Eton associates, was to join the party in America.
Leaving Southampton on 9 July 1860 in H.M.S. Hero, with H.M.S. Ariadne in attendance, the prince reached Newfoundland on the 23rd. The colonial progress opened at St. John's with processions, presentations of addresses, reviews of volunteers, levees, and banquets, which were constant features of the tour. Thence they passed to Halifax and Nova Scotia (30 July). On 9 Aug. he landed on Prince Edward Island, and on the 12th, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the governor-general of the Canadas, Sir Edmund Head, boarded the royal vessel. On the 20th the prince made a state entry into Quebec, the capital of French Canada. He stayed at Parliament House, which had been elaborately fitted up for his residence, and a guard of honour of 100 men was appointed to form his escort through the colony. At Montreal on 1 Sept. he opened the great railway bridge across the St. Lawrence; and passing thence to Ottawa, he there laid the foundation stone of the Parliament building. On the way to Toronto, the capital of upper Canada, the only untoward incident took place. Strong protestant feeling in the upper colony resented the enthusiasm with which the French Roman catholics of lower Canada had welcomed the prince, and the Orange lodges resolved to emphasise their principles by forcing on the prince's notice in their street decorations the emblems of their faith. At Kingston on Lake Ontario the townsfolk refused to obey the duke of Newcastle's direction to remove the orange colours and portraits of William III from the triumphal arches before the royal party entered the town. Consequently the royal party struck the place out of their itinerary and proceeded to Toronto, where a like difficulty threatened. Happily the Orangemen there yielded to persuasion, and the reception at Toronto proved as hearty as could be wished.

At Washington, 5 Oct. 1860.
Leaving Canada for the United States, the prince made an excursion to Niagara Falls (17 Sept.), where, somewhat to his alarm, he saw Blondin perform on the tight rope, and at the neighbouring village of Queenstown (18 Sept.) he laid the crowning stone on the great monument erected to the memory of Major-general Sir Isaac Brock [q.v.], who was slain in the American war of 1812. Crossing Detroit river, he touched United States soil at Detroit on 19 Sept.; there he was met by Lord Lyons, minister at Washington. At once scenes of extravagant enthusiasm belied all fears of a cool reception. Short stays in Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg preceded his arrival at Washington (3 Oct.), where President Buchanan (an old man of seventy-seven) received him at the White House with friendliest cordiality. A crowded levee at White House was given in his honour. With the president he visited on 5 Oct. Mount Vernon, Washington's home and burial place, and planted a chestnut by the side of the tomb. Such a tribute from the great-grandson of George III was greeted by the American people with loud acclamations of joy, and England was hardly less impressed. ‘The Prince of Wales at the Tomb of Washington’ was the subject set for the English poem at Cambridge University in 1861, and the prize was won by Frederic W. H. Myers. Going northwards, the prince stayed at Philadelphia (7 Oct.), where he heard Madame Patti sing for the first time. At New York (11 Oct.) he remained three days. A visit was paid later to the military school at West Point, and proceeding to Boston he went over to Cambridge to inspect Harvard University. At Boston he met Longfellow, Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He embarked for home in H.M.S. Hero from Portland in Maine on 20 Oct. and arrived after a bad passage at Plymouth on 15 Nov., six days after completing his nineteenth year.

Effect of the American tour.

The general verdict.
Everywhere the prince's good-humour, courteous bearing, and simple delight in novel experiences won the hearts of his hosts. ‘Dignified, frank, and affable,’ wrote the president to Queen Victoria (6 Oct. 1860), ‘he has conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people.’ The tour differed in every regard from his previous trips abroad. It was originally planned as a ceremonial compliment to the oldest and most important of English colonies on the part of the heir to the throne travelling as the reigning sovereign's official representative. No British colony had previously received a like attention. Canada accorded the prince all the honours due to his royal station. In the United States, too, where it was stipulated by Queen Victoria that he should travel as a private person under his incognito of Baron of Renfrew, the fiction went for nothing, and he was greeted as England's heir-apparent no less emphatically than in British North America. The result satisfied every sanguine hope. It tightened the bond of affection between Canada and the mother country at the moment when a tide of public sentiment seemed setting in another direction, and it reinforced the sense of unity among the British American colonies, which found expression in their internal union of 1867. On the relations of the United States and England the effect was of the happiest. On 29 Nov. 1860 Sir Charles Phipps, who was high in the confidence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, gave expression to the general verdict in a letter to Dr. Acland. ‘The success of the expedition has been beyond all expectation; it may be reckoned as one of the most important and valuable state measures of the present age, and whether we look to the excitement and encouragement of loyalty and affection to the mother country in Canada, or to the soothing of prejudice and the increase of good feeling between the United States and Great Britain, it seems to me impossible to overrate the importance of the good results which the visit promises for the future.’
On the youth himself the tour exerted a wholly beneficial influence. The duke of Newcastle noticed in the prince a perceptible intellectual development. The journey left a lasting impression on his mind. If at times in later reminiscence he associated Canadian life with some want of material comfort, he always cherished gratitude for the colonial hospitality, and never lost a sense of attachment to the American people. His parents felt pride in the American welcome, and a year later, when Motley, then American minister at Vienna, was passing through England, he was invited to Balmoral, to receive from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert expressions of their satisfaction. Some American publicists were inclined to attribute to the heartiness of the prince's reception Prince Albert's momentous diplomatic intervention in behalf of the north over the affair of the Trent. When the American civil war broke out next year, Prince Albert on the eve of his death powerfully discouraged English sympathy with the revolt against the authority of the government at Washington, which had given his son an ovation.

At Cambridge, Jan. 1861.

Kingsley's lectures.
The prince's career in England pursued its normal course. He returned to Oxford in November for the rest of the Michaelmas term, and in December the queen paid him a visit there. At the end of the year he left Oxford for good. Next month his protracted education was continued at Cambridge. As at Oxford, a private residence, Madingley Hall, was hired for him. The Cambridge house was of more inspiring character than Frewen Hall; it was an old and spacious country mansion, four miles from the town, ‘with large grounds and capital stables.’ Col. Bruce and his wife took domestic control, and under their eyes the prince was free to entertain his friends. He entered Trinity College, while Dr. Whewell was Master, on 18 Jan. 1861. A set of rooms in the college was placed at his disposal, but he did not regularly occupy them. Joseph Barber Lightfoot [q.v.] was his college tutor, and when in 1897 the prince visited Durham, of which Lightfoot was then bishop, he recalled the admiration and regard with which Lightfoot inspired him. History remained his main study and was directed by the professor of history, Charles Kingsley. The prince attended Kingsley's lectures at the professor's own house, together with some half-dozen carefully selected undergraduates, who included the present Viscount Cobham, and George Howard, ninth earl of Carlisle [q.v.]. The prince rode over thrice a week to the professor's house and each Saturday Kingsley recapitulated the week's work with the prince alone. He was examined at the end of each term; the course finally brought English history up to the reign of George IV. Kingsley was impressed by his pupil's attention and courtesy, and like all who came into contact with him, bore him thenceforth deep affection.

At the Curragh, Aug. 1861.
In 1861 there began for the court a period of gloom, which long oppressed it. On 16 March the prince's grandmother, the duchess of Kent, died; and he met his first experience of death at close quarters. He first attended a drawing-room on 24 June 1861 in the sombre conditions of official mourning. But more joyful experience intervened, before there fell on him the great blow of his father's premature death. In the summer vacation he went for a fourth time to Ireland, at first as the guest of the lord-lieutenant, the eighth Earl of Carlisle; but his chief purpose was to join in camp at the Curragh the second battalion, grenadier guards. For the first time in his life he was freed from the strict and punctilious supervision of his veteran guardians and mentors. The pleasures of liberty which he tasted were new to him. A breach of discipline exposed him to punishment, and he grew impatient of the severe restrictions of his previous career. His mother and father came over in August to a review of the troops in which he took part. ‘Bertie,’ she wrote, ‘marched past with his company, and did not look at all so very small’ (Letters, 26 Aug. 1861). With his parents he spent a short holiday in Killarney, and then for a second time he crossed the Channel to visit his sister, the Princess Royal, at Berlin (Sept. 1861). After accompanying her and her husband on a tour through the Rhenish provinces, he witnessed at Coblenz the military maneuvres of the German army of the Rhine.

Prospects of marriage.

First meeting with Princess Alexandra at Speier, 24 Sept. 1861.
This German tour had been designed with an object of greater importance than mere pleasure or change. The prince was reaching a marriageable age, and the choice of a wife was in the eyes of King Leopold, of Stockmar, and of the youth's parents a matter of momentous concern. It was inevitable that selection should be made from among princely families of Germany. Seven young German princesses were reported to be under the English court's consideration as early as the summer of 1858 (The Times, 5 July 1858). Fifth on this list was Princess Alexandra, eldest daughter of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, next heir to the throne of Denmark, which he ascended on 15 Nov. 1863 as Christian IX. She was barely seventeen, nearly three years the prince's junior. Her mother, Louise of Hesse-Cassel, was sole heiress of the old Danish royal family, and the princess was born and brought up at Copenhagen. Though her kinship was with Germany, her life was identified with Denmark. King Leopold, who discussed the choice of a bride with Queen Victoria, reported favourably of her beauty and character. But the prince's parents acknowledged his right of selection, and a meeting between him and Princess Alexandra was arranged, while he was in Germany in the summer of 1861. The princess was staying near at hand with her mother's father, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, at the castle of Rumpenheim. The prince saw her for the first time in the cathedral at Speier (24 Sept. 1861). Next day they met again at Heidelberg. Each made a favourable impression on the other. On 4 Oct. Prince Albert writes; ‘We hear nothing but excellent accounts of the Princess Alexandra; the young people seem to have taken a warm liking to one another.’ Again, when the Prince of Wales returned to England a few days later, his father writes to Stockmar: ‘He has come back greatly pleased with his interview with the princess at Speier.’

Prince Albert's death, 14 Dec. 1861.
For the present nothing further followed. The prince resumed his residence at Cambridge. He was in London on 31 Oct., when he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, was elected a bencher, and opened the new library at the Inn. But his studies at Cambridge went forward during the Michaelmas term. The stringent discipline was proving irksome, and he was involuntarily coming to the conclusion, which future experience confirmed, that his sojourns at the two English universities were mistakes. On 25 Nov. Prince Albert arrived to offer him good counsel. He stayed the night at Madingley Hall. A chill caught on the journey developed into what unhappily proved to be a fatal illness. On 13 Dec. the prince was summoned from Cambridge to Windsor to attend his father's deathbed. Prince Albert died next day.
At his father's funeral in St. George's Chapel on 23 Dec. the prince was chief mourner, in his mother's absence. He joined her the same day at Osborne. At the queen's request he wrote a day or two later a letter publicly identifying himself with her overwhelming anxiety to pay her husband's memory all public honour. On the 28th he offered to place, at his own expense, in the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, a statue of the prince instead of one of the queen which had already been cast for erection there, by way of memorial of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

II.

Queen Victoria's parental control.
The sudden death of his father, when the prince was just turned twenty years of age, was a momentous incident in his career. The strict discipline, to which his father had subjected him, had restrained in him every sense of independence and had fostered a sentiment of filial awe. He wholly shared his mother's faith in the character and attainments of the dead prince. In her husband's lifetime the queen had acknowledged his superior right to control her sons. But after his death she regarded herself to be under a solemn obligation to fill his place in the family circle and to regulate all her household precisely on the lines which he had followed. To all arrangements which the prince consort had made for her sons and daughters she resolved loyally to give effect and to devise others in the like spirit. The notion of consulting their views or wishes was foreign to her conception of duty. Abounding in maternal solicitude, she never ceased to think of the Prince of Wales as a boy to whom she owed parental guidance, the more so because he was fatherless. A main effect of his father's death was consequently to place him, in his mother's view, almost in permanence ‘in statu pupillari.’ She claimed to regulate his actions in almost all relations of life.
Earlier signs were apparent, even in Prince Albert's lifetime, of an uneasy fear on the queen's part that her eldest son might, on reaching manhood, check the predominance which it was her wish that her husband should enjoy as her chief counsellor. In 1857 she had urged on ministers a parliamentary enactment for securing Prince Albert's formal precedence in the state next to herself. Stockmar was asked to press upon her the imprudence of her proposal, and it was with reluctance dropped (Fitzmaurice, Lord Granville). But the episode suggests the limitations which threatened the Prince of Wales's adult public activity. In his mother's sight he was disqualified by his filial relation from filling the place which her husband had held in affairs of state or from relieving her of any political duties. His mother accurately described her lasting attitude alike to her husband's memory and to her children in a letter to King Leopold (24 Dec. 1861): ‘And no human power will make me swerve from what he decided and wished. I apply this particularly as regards our children¾Bertie, &c.¾for whose future he had traced everything so carefully. I am also determined that no one person, may he be ever so good, ever so devoted among my servants¾is to lead or guide or dictate to me’ (Letters, iii. 606).
The Prince of Wales always treated his mother with affectionate deference and considerate courtesy. Naturally docile, he in his frequent letters to her addressed her up to her death in simple filial style, beginning ‘Dear Mama’ and ending ‘Your affectionate and dutiful son.’ To the queen the formula had a literal significance. But on reaching man's estate the prince's views of life broadened. He travelled far from the rigid traditions in which he had been brought up. Difference of view regarding his official privileges became with the prolongation of his mother's reign inevitable. The queen was very ready to delegate to him formal and ceremonial labours which were distasteful to her, but she never ceased to ignore his title to any function of government. His place in the royal succession soon seemed to him inconsistent with that perpetual tutelage, from which Queen Victoria deemed it wrong for him to escape in her lifetime. Open conflict was averted mainly by the prince's placable temper, which made ebullitions of anger of brief duration; but it was a serious disadvantage for him to be denied by the queen any acknowledged responsibility in public affairs for the long period of nearly forty years, which intervened between his father's death and his own accession to the throne.
As soon as the first shock of bereavement passed, Queen Victoria set herself to carry out with scrupulous fidelity two plans which her husband devised for his eldest son's welfare, another foreign tour and his marriage.

Tour in the Holy Land, Feb.-May 1862.
The tour to the Holy Land which was to conclude his educational travel had been arranged by Prince Albert in consultation with Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. The suite included Gen. Bruce, Major Teesdale, Col. Keppel, Robert Meade, who had been associated with Lord Dufferin on his mission to Syria in 1860, and Dr. Minter as physician. The queen's confidence in Stanley was a legacy from her husband, and at her persuasion he somewhat reluctantly agreed to join the party. The prince travelled incognito, and owing to the family mourning it was the queen's wish that ceremonial receptions should as far as possible be dispensed with. Leaving Osborne on 6 Feb. 1862, the prince and his companions journeyed through Germany and Austria. At Darmstadt he was welcomed by the Grand Duke, whose son was to marry his second sister, Alice; thence he passed to Munich, where he inspected the museums and the galleries and saw the king of Bavaria. At Vienna he met for the first time the Emperor Francis Joseph, who formed a favourable impression of him, and thenceforth cherished a genuine affection for him. At Vienna he was introduced to Laurence Oliphant [q.v.], who was well acquainted with the Adriatic coast of the Mediterranean. Oliphant readily agreed to act as guide for that part of the expedition. From Trieste, where Stanley joined the party, the royal yacht Osborne brought the prince to Venice, to Corfu, and other places of interest on the passage to Egypt. Oliphant, who served as cicerone for ten days, wrote that the prince ‘was not studious nor highly intellectual, but up to the average and beyond it in so far as quickness of observation and general intelligence go.’ He recognised the charm of his ‘temper and disposition’ and deemed travelling the best sort of education for him. His defects he ascribed to a ‘position which never allows him responsibility or forces him into action’ (Mrs. Oliphant's Life of L. Oliphant, i. 269). The prince was on his side attracted by Oliphant, and many years later not only entertained him at Abergeldie but took him to dine at Balmoral with Queen Victoria, who shared her son's appreciation of his exhilarating talk.

In Egypt.
The prince disembarked at Alexandria on 24 Feb. Passing to Cairo, he lodged in the palace of Kasr-en-nil, and every attention was paid him by the viceroy Said. A three weeks' tour was made through upper Egypt. He climbed the summit of the Great Pyramid without assistance and with exceptional alacrity; he voyaged up the Nile to Assouan (12 March), and explored the temple of Carnac at Luxor. At length on 31 March he arrived in the Holy Land, where no English prince had set foot since Edward I, more than six hundred years before.

At Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was thoroughly explored, and the diplomacy of General Bruce gained admission to the mosque of Hebron, into which no European was known to have penetrated since 1187. ‘High station,’ remarked the prince, ‘has after all some merits, some advantages.’ Easter Sunday (20 April 1862) was spent on the shores of Lake Tiberias and at Galilee. Through Damascus the party reached Beyrout and thence went by sea to Tyre, Sidon, and Tripoli (in Syria). During the tour Stanley succeeded in interesting the prince in the historic traditions of Palestine. While he was easily amused, he was amenable to good advice, and readily agreed that sporting should be suspended on Sundays. ‘It is impossible not to like him,’ Stanley wrote. ‘His astonishing memory of names and persons’ and his ‘amiable and endearing qualities’ impressed all the party.

At Constantinople.
On 15 May the Osborne anchored at the isle of Rhodes. Thence the prince passed to Constantinople, where he stayed at the embassy with Sir Henry Bulwer, ambassador, and was formally entertained in his rank of Prince of Wales by the sultan. He saw the sights of the city. His host reported favourably of his tact and manner, and while he did not anticipate that he would learn much from books, he discerned powers of observation which would well supply the place of study. But he detected a certain danger in an ease of demeanour which at times challenged his dignity and in the desire for amusement. A first sojourn in Athens, where he was to be a frequent visitor, and a landing at Cephallonia brought him to Marseilles. At Fontainebleau he was welcomed hospitably by the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, and on 13 June he rejoined his mother at Windsor. One unhappy incident of the highly interesting journey was the serious illness contracted by General Bruce in the marshes of the upper Jordan. He managed with difficulty to reach London, but there he died on 27 June 1862. The prince was thus deprived finally of the close surveillance which his father had deemed needful to his welfare.
While the court was still in deep mourning the marriage of his second sister, Princess Alice, to Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt took place at Windsor on 1 July 1862.

The coming marriage.

The betrothal at Laeken, 9 Sept. 1862.
The International Exhibition of 1862, which the prince consort had designed, had been duly opened in May by the duke of Cambridge, to whom much court ceremonial was for the time delegated by Queen Victoria. The prince inspected the exhibition in the summer and received with charming grace the foreign visitors¾to one of whom, General de Galliffet, he formed a lifelong attachment. But the queen's chief preoccupation was the scheme for the prince's marriage which King Leopold and the prince consort had inaugurated the previous year. In the summer the queen wrote to Prince Christian, formally soliciting the hand of his daughter, Princess Alexandra, for her eldest son. Assent was readily given. At the end of August Queen Victoria left England to revisit Coburg, her late husband's home. On the journey she stayed with her uncle Leopold at his palace of Laeken, near Brussels. Her future daughter-in-law was with her father on a visit to Ostend, and Princess Alexandra came over to Laeken to meet Queen Victoria for the first time. The queen left for Coburg on 4 Sept. On the same date the prince set out to meet his mother and to begin what proved another long continental tour. On the 7th he arrived at Brussels, and paid his respects to Princess Alexandra at Ostend. Both were summoned by King Leopold to the palace of Laeken, and there on 9 Sept. 1862 they were formally betrothed. Next day they went over the battlefield of Waterloo together, and in the evening they attended a court banquet which King Leopold gave in their honour. They travelled together to Cologne, where they parted, and the prince joined his mother at Coburg.
The engagement was made public on 16 Sept. in a communication to the press drafted by Queen Victoria. It was stated that the marriage ‘privately settled at Brussels’ was ‘based entirely upon mutual affection and the personal merits of the princess,’ and was ‘in no way connected with political considerations.’ ‘The revered Prince Consort, whose sole object was the education and welfare of his children, had,’ the message continued, ‘been long convinced that this was a most desirable marriage.’ On 1 Nov. 1862 the queen gave her formal assent to the union at a meeting of the privy council. The announcement was received in England with enthusiasm. The youth and beauty of the princess and her association with Denmark appealed to popular sympathies. ‘I like the idea of the Danish connection; we have had too much of Germany and Berlin and Coburgs,’ wrote Lady Palmerston (Reid, Lord Houghton, ii. 83). In spite of the queen's warning, a political colour was given to the match in diplomatic circles. Prussia and Austria were steadily pushing forward their designs on the Schleswig-Holstein provinces which Denmark claimed. Public feeling in England, which favoured the Danish pretensions, was stimulated. In Germany it was openly argued that the queen and prince consort had betrayed the German cause.

Princess Alexandra in England, Nov. 1862.
Although the match was wholly arranged by their kindred, it roused a mutual affection in the prince and princess. But they saw little of each other before their marriage. On 8 Nov. Princess Alexandra paid her first visit to England, coming with her father to Osborne as the guest of the queen. There and at Windsor she remained three weeks, spending much of her time alone with the queen.

The prince's foreign tour, Nov. 1862.
By Queen Victoria's wish the prince was out of the country during his bride's stay. On leaving Coburg he had invited his sister and her husband, the crown prince and princess of Prussia, to accompany him on a Mediterranean tour on the yacht Osborne. They embarked at Marseilles on 22 Oct. 1862. A most interesting itinerary was followed. A first experience of the Riviera was obtained by a landing at Hyères. Palermo, the capital of Sicily, was visited, and thence a passage was made to Tunis, where the ruins of Carthage were explored. Owing to an accident to the paddle-wheel of the royal yacht, the vessel was towed by the frigate Doris from the African coast to Malta. On 5 Nov. the party reached Naples, and there the prince's twenty-first birthday was passed without ceremony. There was some incongruity in celebrating so interesting an anniversary in a foreign country. Yet the experience was not out of harmony with the zest for travel and for foreign society which was born of the extended and varied wanderings of his youth. Before leaving southern Italy he ascended Vesuvius, and on the return journey to England he revisited Rome. From Florence he made his way through Germany by slow stages. At Lille on 3 Dec. he met Princess Alexandra on her way from England. He reached home on 13 Dec. By far the greater part of the year had been spent abroad on three continents¾America, Asia, and Europe. Although he was barely turned one and twenty, the prince was probably the best travelled man in the world. There was small chance that he should cultivate in adult life any narrow insularity.

The prince's income.
A separate establishment was already in course of formation at home. On reaching his majority he had come into a substantial fortune. The duchy of Cornwall was his appanage, and provided a large revenue. Owing to the careful administration of the prince consort the income of the duchy had risen from 16,000l. a year at the time of his son's birth to 60,000l. in 1862. The receipts had been allowed to accumulate during his minority, and these were now reckoned to amount to 700,000l. Out of these savings, the sum of 220,000l. was bestowed with the prince consort's approval on the purchase for his son from Spencer Cowper of the country residence and estate of Sandringham in Norfolk. The transaction was carried out in 1861. The estate covered 7000 acres, which the prince subsequently extended to 11,000; and the rental was estimated at 7000l. a year. The existing house proved unsuitable and was soon rebuilt. A London house was provided officially. Marlborough House had reverted to the crown in 1817 on the lapse of the great duke of Marlborough's long lease. It had since been lent to the Dowager Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, on whose death in 1849 it was employed as a government art school and picture gallery. In 1859 it was decided to fit it up as a residence for the Prince of Wales. During 1861 it was thoroughly remodelled, and in 1862 was ready for his occupation.

The first household.
For the next three months preparations for his marriage absorbed his own and the country's attention. Simultaneously with his return to England the ‘London Gazette’ published an official list of his first household. General Sir William Knollys, the prince consort's close friend, became comptroller and treasurer and practically chief of the establishment; Earl Spencer was made groom of the stole; the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe and Lord Alfred Hervey lords of the bedchamber; Robert Henry Meade and Charles Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax, grooms of the bedchamber; and Major Teesdale, Captain G. H. Grey, and Lieut.-colonel Keppel equerries. Herbert Fisher, his Oxford tutor, who had resumed his work at the bar, was recalled to act as private secretary, and he held the office till 1870. Mr. Wood was a very early companion, and all save Earl Spencer, General Knollys, and Lord Alfred Hervey had been closely associated with the prince already.
On 14 Dec. 1862 the prince was at Windsor, celebrating with his mother the first anniversary of his father's death. The queen refused to relax her habit of seclusion, and on 25 Feb. 1863 the prince took her place for the first time at a ceremonial function. He held a levee in her behalf at St. James's Palace. The presentations exceeded 1000, and severely tested his capacity for the fatigue of court routine. At a drawing-room which followed at Buckingham Palace (28 Feb.) the prince was again present; but his sister, the crown princess of Prussia, represented the sovereign.

In the House of Lords, 5 Feb. 1863.
Parliament opened on 5 Feb. 1863, and the prince took his seat for the first time in the House of Lords with due formality as a peer of the realm. He was introduced by the dukes of Cambridge and Newcastle. He showed his interest in the proceedings by staying till half-past nine at night to listen to the debate, which chiefly dealt with the cession of the Ionian islands to Greece.

Pecuniary provision.
The queen was absent. Her speech from the throne, which had been read by the lord chancellor at the opening of the session, announced the conclusion of her son's marriage treaty, which had been signed at Copenhagen on 10 Jan. 1863, and ratified in London the day before. The prime minister, Lord Palmerston, informed the House of Commons that the marriage might ‘in the fullest sense of the word be called a love match’ and was free of any political intention (Hansard, Commons Report, 5 Feb. 1863). A few days later a message from the queen invited the House of Commons to make pecuniary provision for the bridegroom. Parliament on the motion of Palmerston granted him an annuity of 40,000l., which with the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall brought his annual income up to 100,000l. At the same time an annuity of 10,000l. was bestowed on Princess Alexandra, with a prospective annuity of 30,000l. in case of widowhood. Advanced liberals raised the issue that the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall supplied the prince with an adequate income, and that parliament was under no obligation to make addition to it. It was complained, too, that public money had been voted to the prince on his creation as K.G. and for the expenses of his American tour. But Gladstone defended the government's proposal, and the resolutions giving it effect were carried nem. con. The grant finally passed the House of Commons without a division. No other of Queen Victoria's appeals to parliament for pecuniary grants to her children enjoyed the same good fortune.

The Princess's entry into London, 7 March.
The marriage was fixed for 10 March. The princess left Copenhagen on 26 Feb. and spent three days (2-5 March) on the journey in Brussels as the guest of King Leopold, who was a chief sponsor of the union. On 7 March the prince met his bride on her arrival at Gravesend. Travelling by railway to the Bricklayers' Arms, Southwark, they made a triumphal progress through the City of London to Paddington. The six carriages, headed by a detachment of life-guards, seemed to many onlookers a mean pageant, but a surging mass of people greeted the couple with boundless delight (cf. Louis Blanc's Lettres sur l'Angleterre, 2nd ser. i. 13 seq.). At times the pressure of the enthusiastic mob caused the princess alarm. From Paddington they went by railway to Slough, and drove thence to Windsor. The poet laureate, Tennyson, summed up the national exultation in a Danish alliance when in his poetic ‘Welcome,’ 7 March 1863, he greeted the princess, with some poetic licence, as
‘Sea-kings' daughter as happy as fair,
Blissful bride of a blissful heir,
Bride of the heir of the kings of the sea.’

The wedding, 10 March.
The wedding took place on 10 March in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The prince was in the uniform of a general and wore the robes of the Garter. Queen Victoria in widow's weeds overlooked the proceedings from a gallery. ‘A fine affair, a thing to remember,’ wrote Disraeli of the ceremony. Kingsley, who attended as royal chaplain, admired ‘the serious, reverent dignity of my dear young master, whose manner was perfect.’ The crown princess brought her little son, Prince William (afterwards the German Emperor William II), who wore highland dress. The short honeymoon was spent at Osborne.

Public engagements.
On 17 March the prince and princess were back at Windsor, and on the 20th they held a court at St. James's Palace in honour of the event. At Marlborough House they received an almost endless series of congratulatory addresses. Numerous festivities and entertainments followed, and the prince's social experience widened. On 2 May he attended for the first time the banquet of the Royal Academy. He had hardly spoken in public before, and he had learnt by heart a short speech. His memory momentarily failed him and he nearly broke down. The accident led him to rely henceforth in his public utterances on the inspiration of the moment. He mastered the general idea beforehand but not the words. His tact and native kindliness stood him in good stead, and he soon showed as an occasional speaker a readiness of delivery and a grace of compliment which few of his contemporaries excelled. Lord Houghton, who was a pastmaster in the same art, judged the prince to be only second to himself.
The corporation of the City of London presented the prince with the freedom on 7 June, and gave a ball in honour of himself and his bride on the same evening at the Guildhall. He had already identified himself with civic life by accepting the freedom of the Fishmongers' Company on 12 Feb., which his father had enjoyed. A second City company, the Merchant Taylors', paid him a like compliment on 11 June. In this busy month of June the prince and princess went, too, to Oxford to take part in the pleasures of Commemoration. They stayed with Dean Liddell at the prince's college, Christ Church (16-18 June), and at the encænia he received from the chancellor, Lord Derby, the honorary degree of D.C.L. A year later similar experiences awaited the prince and princess at Cambridge during May week. They stayed in the royal apartments at Trinity College, and the prince received the honorary degree of LL.D. Meanwhile a sumptuous ball given by the guards regiment in the exhibition building at South Kensington on 26 June 1863 brought the gaieties of their first season to an end.
The prince's married life was mainly spent at Marlborough House. But Sandringham constantly drew him from London; he visited friends in all parts of the country for sport or society, and was in Scotland every autumn. Nor was his habit of foreign travel long interrupted. Part of the early spring was soon regularly devoted to Cannes or Nice in the Riviera, and part of the early autumn to Homburg, while tours on a larger scale were not infrequent.

Sandringham rebuilt, 1870.

His love of animals.
Outside London his career for the most part resembled that of any man of wealth and high station. At Sandringham the prince until his death spent seven or eight weeks each year, living the life of a private country gentleman. The first Easter after his marriage was spent at Sandringham, but the old house was then condemned as inadequate, and a new mansion was completed in 1870. The hospitality at Sandringham was easy and unconstrained; and the prince's guests were drawn from all ranks and professions. He interested himself in his tenants, and maintained his cottages in admirable repair. On every detail in the management of the estate he kept a watchful eye. The furniture and decorations of the house, the gardens, the farm, the stables, the kennels, were all under his personal care. For his horses and dogs he always cherished affection. The stables were always well filled. In the kennels at Sandringham were representatives of almost every breed. He was an exhibitor of dogs at shows from 27 May 1864, and was patron of the Kennel Club from its formation in April 1873. He actively identified himself with the sport of the county. For some twelve years he hunted with the West Norfolk hounds, at times with the princess for his companion, but after 1880 he abandoned hunting, both at home and on visits to friends. Shooting at Sandringham gradually took its place as the prince's main sport. To his shooting parties were invited his Norfolk neighbours as well as his intimate circle of associates. He reared pheasants and partridges assiduously, profiting by useful advice from his neighbour, Thomas William Coke, earl of Leicester, of Holkham. Partridge-driving grew to be his favourite sporting recreation. He was a variable and no first-rate shot, but was successful with high pheasants.

Autumn holidays in Scotland.
For his autumnal vacation at Scotland during September and October Queen Victoria lent him Abergeldie Castle, on Deeside near Balmoral, which she had leased in 1862 for sixty years. He varied his sojourn there by visits to Scottish noblemen, with one of whom, the duke of Sutherland, he formed an intimate friendship. The duke's mother was a beloved associate of Queen Victoria, and at the ducal seat, Dunrobin Castle, the prince was a frequent guest. In Scotland the prince's chief sports were grouse-shooting and deerstalking. He had killed his first stag on 21 Sept. 1858; on 30 Aug. 1866 he killed as many as seven, and for years he was no less successful. Fishing never attracted him. But he was always fond of the sea, and his early life on the Isle of Wight made him an eager yachtsman. Succeeding his father as patron of the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes, he became a member on 8 July 1865, commodore in 1882, and finally admiral in 1901. He was soon a regular witness of the Cowes regatta in August, and as early as 1866 was owner of a small yacht, the Dagmar. But neither horse-racing nor yacht-racing occupied much of his interest till he reached middle life.

Place in London society.
But while country life had no lack of attraction for the prince, London, which Queen Victoria had practically abandoned for Osborne, Balmoral, or Windsor, was the chief centre of his mature activities. In the capital city he rapidly became the leader of fashionable life. The queen's withdrawal left him without a rival as ruler and lawgiver of the world of fashion, and his countenance was sedulously sought by all aspirants to social eminence. With manhood he developed increasingly an accessibility and charm of manner, a curiosity about persons, a quickness of observation, and a love of hearing promptly the current news. He took genuine pleasure in the lighter social amusements, and gave them every encouragement. Consequently society in almost all its phases appealed to him, and the conventions of royal exclusiveness, to which he had been trained, gave way to his versatile human interests. There was a democratic and a cosmopolitan breadth about his circle of companions. He did not suffer his rank to exclude him from gatherings to which royalty rarely sought admission. He attended the reunions of the Cosmopolitan Club as a private member, or dined with friends at the Garrick Club, or attended the more bohemian entertainments of the Savage Club. In 1869 there was formed under his immediate auspices and guidance a new club called the Marlborough Club, with a house in Pall Mall almost overlooking Marlborough House. The members were drawn from the wide range of his personal acquaintances, and he joined them at the Marlborough Club without ceremony. A chance meeting at the Cosmopolitan Club in 1867 with the Hungarian traveller, Arminius Vambéry, made the stranger thenceforth a favoured associate. The experience was typical of his easy catholicity of intercourse.

His philanthropic energy.
His mother, while denying his title to political responsibility, was well content that the prince should carry on in her behalf her husband's works of charity and public utility. He readily obeyed her wish in this regard. No public institution or social movement, which his father had favoured, sought his countenance in vain. Of the Society of Arts he was soon elected president (22 Oct. 1863) in succession to the prince consort. He always took an active part in the choice of the recipient of the Albert medal, which was founded by the society in 1862 in his father's memory to reward conspicuous service in the arts, manufactures, and commerce. When on his accession to the throne he exchanged the post of president for that of patron, he accepted with much satisfaction the award of the Albert medal to himself. But he went far beyond his father in his personal association with great public institutions. He created a new precedent by accepting the presidency of St. Bartholomew's Hospital on 20 March 1867, an office which he also held till his accession. His public energy in any genuine cause of social improvement, education, or philanthropy knew indeed no slackening till his death. In every part of the country he was busy pronouncing benedictions on good works. Among his early engagements of this kind were the opening of the British Orphan Asylum at Slough (24 June 1863); the opening of the new town hall at Halifax (August 1863); the laying of foundation stones of the new west wing of the London Hospital (June 1864), of the British and Foreign Bible Society (11 June 1866), and of new buildings at Glasgow University (8 Oct. 1868); and the unveiling of the statue of Peabody, the American philanthropist, in the City of London (23 July 1869). He presided at innumerable charity festivals, beginning on 18 May 1864 with the Royal Literary Fund dinner, and he repeated that experience at the centenary celebration of the Fund in 1890. Like his father, too, he was especially active, when the opportunity offered, in organising exhibitions at home and abroad.

Visits to Ireland.
Early visits to Ireland had brought that country well within the scope of his interest, and although political agitation came to limit his Irish sojourns, he lost few opportunities in manhood of manifesting sympathy with efforts for the country's industrial progress. As guest of the viceroy, Lord Kimberley, on 8 May 1865, he opened the Grand International Exhibition at Dublin. It was thus in Ireland that he first identified himself in an authoritative way with the system of exhibitions. He returned to Dublin in the spring of 1868 on a visit of greater ceremony, and the princess came with him to pay her first visit to the country. The lord-lieutenant was the marquis (afterwards first duke) of Abercorn, whose eldest son, Lord Hamilton, had joined the prince's household in 1866 and was a very intimate associate. The prince was now invested on 18 April with the order of St. Patrick; he was made honorary LL.D. of Trinity College, Dublin, witnessed the unveiling of Burke's statue outside the college, attended Punchestown races, and reviewed the troops in Phenix Park. It was the period of the Fenian outbreak, and there were threats of disturbance, but they came to little, and the prince and princess were received with enthusiasm. The lord mayor of Dublin in an address of welcome expressed a hope that the prince would acquire a royal residence in Ireland. Before and since the recommendation was pressed on the English government and it was assumed that it had the prince's acquiescence. A third visit was paid to Ireland during the prince's adult career, in August 1871, when he opened the Royal Agricultural Exhibition at Dublin. Earl Spencer, the lord-lieutenant, and Lord Hartington, the chief secretary, were his personal friends, and under their auspices he enjoyed a week of brilliant festivity. Unluckily at its close (Sunday, 7 Aug.), while he was staying at the Viceregal Lodge in Phenix Park, a proposed meeting in the park of sympathisers with Fenian prisoners in England was prohibited. A riot broke out by way of demonstrating that ‘patriots are dearer to [Irish] hearts than princes.’ The political disaffection, although it did not prejudice the prince's relations with the Irish masses, was not easily silenced, and fourteen years passed before the prince sought a new experience of Irish hospitality.
III

Attitude to foreign politics.
His mother's desire to exclude the prince from all political counsels was not altogether fulfilled. Her ministers at the outset of his adult career questioned her prudence in keeping him in complete ignorance of political affairs. From 1864 onwards the prince, stirred in part by the princess's anxiety for the fortunes of her family, was deeply interested in the wars which disturbed central Europe. Prussia and Austria continued their endeavours to deprive Denmark of all hold on Schleswig-Holstein. The prince's Danish sentiment was in accord with popular English feeling. But it caused embarrassment to Queen Victoria, who in spite of her private German leanings was resolved on the maintenance of England's neutrality. Her relations with her son were often strained by his warm support of the Danes.
In 1865 Lord Russell, the prime minister, avowed sympathy with the prince's request for access to those foreign despatches which were regularly placed at the disposal of all cabinet ministers. The queen reluctantly so far gave way as to sanction the communication to the prince of carefully selected specimens of the confidential foreign correspondence. The restrictions which guarded the privilege dissatisfied the prince, and his endeavours to secure their diminution or removal formed a constant theme of debate with the sovereign and ministers till near the end of his mother's reign. The queen's oft-repeated justification for her restraints was the prince's alleged lack of discretion and his inability to keep a secret from his intimates. Resigning himself with some impatience to the maternal interdict, the prince sought other than official means of information and influence in foreign matters. To foreign ambassadors he offered abundant hospitality, and with them he always cherished frank and cordial intercourse.

Birth of an heir, 8 Jan. 1864.

Danish sympathies.
The prince's relations with the French ambassador in London, Prince de la Tour d'Auvergne, during the Danish crisis of 1864 show him in a characteristic light. On 8 Jan. 1864 a first child, a boy, had been born to the prince and princess at Frogmore. There were many festive celebrations, and the prince's guests were influential. But the rejoicings over the new experience of fatherhood did not lessen the prince's excitement regarding the foreign situation. On 10 March the christening took place at Buckingham Palace. At a concert in the evening the French ambassador was present. Napoleon III was making proposals for arbitration between Denmark and the German powers. The prince at once questioned his French guest on the subject with what the latter described to his government as the prince's customary indifference to rules of etiquette. The prince warned the ambassador with heat that the Danes were a brave people, who were ready to meet death rather than any kind of humiliation (10 March 1864). King Leopold, who was staying with Queen Victoria, sought to moderate the prince's energy. Twelve days later the ambassador dined at Marlborough House, and was surprised by signs of greater prudence and moderation in the prince's talk, which he attributed to the influence of King Leopold. The prince now agreed that Denmark would be wise in assenting to a pacification. He also spoke in favour of the idea of Scandinavian unity. The ambassador in reporting fully to his government the prince's deliverances, pointed out that the views of the heir to the English throne needed consideration, and that it would be wise for France, in view of the prince's opinion, to do what was practicable in support of Danish interests (Les origines diplomatiques de la guerre de 1870-1, Paris 1910, tom. ii. pp. 109 seq.). Thus while Queen Victoria and her ministers held that the prince's opinions counted for nothing, he contrived privately to give foreign ambassadors quite a different impression. The discrepancy between the home and foreign verdicts on his relations with foreign policy grew steadily.
The prince's tact always more or less controlled his personal feelings. Gladstone detected only ‘a little Danism’ in the prince's conversation. If the prince was careful to prevent Count von Beust, the Austrian ambassador, whose hostility to Denmark was admitted, from even approaching the princess, he succeeded in establishing the best social relations between himself and the count. A passion for direct personal intercourse with all who dominated great events tended to override personal sentiment and prejudice. In April 1864 he drew on himself a severe rebuke in the royal circle by visiting Garibaldi, who was staying with the prince's friend, the duke of Sutherland, at Stafford House. He sought out first-hand intelligence of all that was passing abroad. In July of the same year, when he dined with Lord Palmerston, Sir Horace Rumbold, who was then secretary of legation at Athens, was of the company. The prince at once sent for him to learn the exact position of affairs in Greece, where his wife's brother, Prince William of Denmark, had just been elected king as George I.

In Denmark and Sweden, Sept. 1864.
It was, too, never his practice to depend for his knowledge of foreign complications on those whom he met at home. Scarcely a year passed without a foreign tour which combined amusement with political discussions. In September 1864 the prince paid a visit to his wife's family in Denmark, crossing from Dundee to Copenhagen. He extended his tour to Stockholm, where he was entertained by King Charles XV and had a first experience of elk-shooting. He freely discussed the political situation from various points of view. The expedition extended his intimacy among the royal families of Europe. Not only did he make a lasting acquaintance with the cultured Swedish ruler, King Charles XV, who as the grandson of General Bernadotte had a warm affection for France and a keen suspicion of Prussia, but he then inaugurated a long and cordial intimacy with the Russian dynasty. During his visit to Copenhagen the Princess of Wales's sister Dagmar was betrothed to the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, the heir of the Tsar Alexander II. The grand duke's death next year annulled the match, but the princess transferred her hand to the grand duke's next brother, Alexander, afterwards Tsar Alexander III, and a first link between the royal families of England and Russia was thereby forged.
From Denmark the prince proceeded to Hanover and thence visited his sister Alice in Darmstadt. On the return journey he was the guest at Brussels of his grand-uncle King Leopold, who was fertile in political counsel. The prince was home again on 6 Nov. The visit to Germany was repeated in 1865, when Queen Victoria unveiled a statue of the prince consort at Coburg. The prince there saw much of his German and Prussian relatives, with some of whom he stalked and shot bustards.

His philanthropic energy.
His mother, while denying his title to political responsibility, was well content that the prince should carry on in her behalf her husband's works of charity and public utility. He readily obeyed her wish in this regard. No public institution or social movement, which his father had favoured, sought his countenance in vain. Of the Society of Arts he was soon elected president (22 Oct. 1863) in succession to the prince consort. He always took an active part in the choice of the recipient of the Albert medal, which was founded by the society in 1862 in his father's memory to reward conspicuous service in the arts, manufactures, and commerce. When on his accession to the throne he exchanged the post of president for that of patron, he accepted with much satisfaction the award of the Albert medal to himself. But he went far beyond his father in his personal association with great public institutions. He created a new precedent by accepting the presidency of St. Bartholomew's Hospital on 20 March 1867, an office which he also held till his accession. His public energy in any genuine cause of social improvement, education, or philanthropy knew indeed no slackening till his death. In every part of the country he was busy pronouncing benedictions on good works. Among his early engagements of this kind were the opening of the British Orphan Asylum at Slough (24 June 1863); the opening of the new town hall at Halifax (August 1863); the laying of foundation stones of the new west wing of the London Hospital (June 1864), of the British and Foreign Bible Society (11 June 1866), and of new buildings at Glasgow University (8 Oct. 1868); and the unveiling of the statue of Peabody, the American philanthropist, in the City of London (23 July 1869). He presided at innumerable charity festivals, beginning on 18 May 1864 with the Royal Literary Fund dinner, and he repeated that experience at the centenary celebration of the Fund in 1890. Like his father, too, he was especially active, when the opportunity offered, in organising exhibitions at home and abroad.

Visits to Ireland.
Early visits to Ireland had brought that country well within the scope of his interest, and although political agitation came to limit his Irish sojourns, he lost few opportunities in manhood of manifesting sympathy with efforts for the country's industrial progress. As guest of the viceroy, Lord Kimberley, on 8 May 1865, he opened the Grand International Exhibition at Dublin. It was thus in Ireland that he first identified himself in an authoritative way with the system of exhibitions. He returned to Dublin in the spring of 1868 on a visit of greater ceremony, and the princess came with him to pay her first visit to the country. The lord-lieutenant was the marquis (afterwards first duke) of Abercorn, whose eldest son, Lord Hamilton, had joined the prince's household in 1866 and was a very intimate associate. The prince was now invested on 18 April with the order of St. Patrick; he was made honorary LL.D. of Trinity College, Dublin, witnessed the unveiling of Burke's statue outside the college, attended Punchestown races, and reviewed the troops in Phenix Park. It was the period of the Fenian outbreak, and there were threats of disturbance, but they came to little, and the prince and princess were received with enthusiasm. The lord mayor of Dublin in an address of welcome expressed a hope that the prince would acquire a royal residence in Ireland. Before and since the recommendation was pressed on the English government and it was assumed that it had the prince's acquiescence. A third visit was paid to Ireland during the prince's adult career, in August 1871, when he opened the Royal Agricultural Exhibition at Dublin. Earl Spencer, the lord-lieutenant, and Lord Hartington, the chief secretary, were his personal friends, and under their auspices he enjoyed a week of brilliant festivity. Unluckily at its close (Sunday, 7 Aug.), while he was staying at the Viceregal Lodge in Phenix Park, a proposed meeting in the park of sympathisers with Fenian prisoners in England was prohibited. A riot broke out by way of demonstrating that ‘patriots are dearer to [Irish] hearts than princes.’ The political disaffection, although it did not prejudice the prince's relations with the Irish masses, was not easily silenced, and fourteen years passed before the prince sought a new experience of Irish hospitality.
III

Attitude to foreign politics.
His mother's desire to exclude the prince from all political counsels was not altogether fulfilled. Her ministers at the outset of his adult career questioned her prudence in keeping him in complete ignorance of political affairs. From 1864 onwards the prince, stirred in part by the princess's anxiety for the fortunes of her family, was deeply interested in the wars which disturbed central Europe. Prussia and Austria continued their endeavours to deprive Denmark of all hold on Schleswig-Holstein. The prince's Danish sentiment was in accord with popular English feeling. But it caused embarrassment to Queen Victoria, who in spite of her private German leanings was resolved on the maintenance of England's neutrality. Her relations with her son were often strained by his warm support of the Danes.
In 1865 Lord Russell, the prime minister, avowed sympathy with the prince's request for access to those foreign despatches which were regularly placed at the disposal of all cabinet ministers. The queen reluctantly so far gave way as to sanction the communication to the prince of carefully selected specimens of the confidential foreign correspondence. The restrictions which guarded the privilege dissatisfied the prince, and his endeavours to secure their diminution or removal formed a constant theme of debate with the sovereign and ministers till near the end of his mother's reign. The queen's oft-repeated justification for her restraints was the prince's alleged lack of discretion and his inability to keep a secret from his intimates. Resigning himself with some impatience to the maternal interdict, the prince sought other than official means of information and influence in foreign matters. To foreign ambassadors he offered abundant hospitality, and with them he always cherished frank and cordial intercourse.

Birth of an heir, 8 Jan. 1864.

Danish sympathies.
The prince's relations with the French ambassador in London, Prince de la Tour d'Auvergne, during the Danish crisis of 1864 show him in a characteristic light. On 8 Jan. 1864 a first child, a boy, had been born to the prince and princess at Frogmore. There were many festive celebrations, and the prince's guests were influential. But the rejoicings over the new experience of fatherhood did not lessen the prince's excitement regarding the foreign situation. On 10 March the christening took place at Buckingham Palace. At a concert in the evening the French ambassador was present. Napoleon III was making proposals for arbitration between Denmark and the German powers. The prince at once questioned his French guest on the subject with what the latter described to his government as the prince's customary indifference to rules of etiquette. The prince warned the ambassador with heat that the Danes were a brave people, who were ready to meet death rather than any kind of humiliation (10 March 1864). King Leopold, who was staying with Queen Victoria, sought to moderate the prince's energy. Twelve days later the ambassador dined at Marlborough House, and was surprised by signs of greater prudence and moderation in the prince's talk, which he attributed to the influence of King Leopold. The prince now agreed that Denmark would be wise in assenting to a pacification. He also spoke in favour of the idea of Scandinavian unity. The ambassador in reporting fully to his government the prince's deliverances, pointed out that the views of the heir to the English throne needed consideration, and that it would be wise for France, in view of the prince's opinion, to do what was practicable in support of Danish interests (Les origines diplomatiques de la guerre de 1870-1, Paris 1910, tom. ii. pp. 109 seq.). Thus while Queen Victoria and her ministers held that the prince's opinions counted for nothing, he contrived privately to give foreign ambassadors quite a different impression. The discrepancy between the home and foreign verdicts on his relations with foreign policy grew steadily.
The prince's tact always more or less controlled his personal feelings. Gladstone detected only ‘a little Danism’ in the prince's conversation. If the prince was careful to prevent Count von Beust, the Austrian ambassador, whose hostility to Denmark was admitted, from even approaching the princess, he succeeded in establishing the best social relations between himself and the count. A passion for direct personal intercourse with all who dominated great events tended to override personal sentiment and prejudice. In April 1864 he drew on himself a severe rebuke in the royal circle by visiting Garibaldi, who was staying with the prince's friend, the duke of Sutherland, at Stafford House. He sought out first-hand intelligence of all that was passing abroad. In July of the same year, when he dined with Lord Palmerston, Sir Horace Rumbold, who was then secretary of legation at Athens, was of the company. The prince at once sent for him to learn the exact position of affairs in Greece, where his wife's brother, Prince William of Denmark, had just been elected king as George I.

In Denmark and Sweden, Sept. 1864.
It was, too, never his practice to depend for his knowledge of foreign complications on those whom he met at home. Scarcely a year passed without a foreign tour which combined amusement with political discussions. In September 1864 the prince paid a visit to his wife's family in Denmark, crossing from Dundee to Copenhagen. He extended his tour to Stockholm, where he was entertained by King Charles XV and had a first experience of elk-shooting. He freely discussed the political situation from various points of view. The expedition extended his intimacy among the royal families of Europe. Not only did he make a lasting acquaintance with the cultured Swedish ruler, King Charles XV, who as the grandson of General Bernadotte had a warm affection for France and a keen suspicion of Prussia, but he then inaugurated a long and cordial intimacy with the Russian dynasty. During his visit to Copenhagen the Princess of Wales's sister Dagmar was betrothed to the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, the heir of the Tsar Alexander II. The grand duke's death next year annulled the match, but the princess transferred her hand to the grand duke's next brother, Alexander, afterwards Tsar Alexander III, and a first link between the royal families of England and Russia was thereby forged.
From Denmark the prince proceeded to Hanover and thence visited his sister Alice in Darmstadt. On the return journey he was the guest at Brussels of his grand-uncle King Leopold, who was fertile in political counsel. The prince was home again on 6 Nov. The visit to Germany was repeated in 1865, when Queen Victoria unveiled a statue of the prince consort at Coburg. The prince there saw much of his German and Prussian relatives, with some of whom he stalked and shot bustards.

A first visit to Russia, Nov. 1866.
His foreign engagements in 1866 brought him for the first time to Russia. On the journey he stayed for a few days at Berlin, where his sister and her husband gave in his honour a banquet which the king of Prussia attended. On 9 Nov., his twenty-fifth birthday, he reached St. Petersburg to attend the wedding of his wife's sister Dagmar with the tsarevitch Alexande