1850.]

THE COMING EXHIBITION.

449

pressure of those labours, both of head and hands, which are inseparable from the discharge of the Sovereign's duties."* These labours ultimately produced insomnia or sleeplessness, and at the beginning of the year the Queen, writing from Windsor to Baron Stockmar, alludes to a suggestion from their doctor that his Royal Highness should take a trip to Brussels, and adds:-"For the sake of his health, which, I assure you, is the cause of my shaken nerves, I

could quite bear this sacrifice. He must be set right before we go to London, or God knows how ill he may get."

The Queen's affectionate desires could not be gratified. The business of organising the Great Exhibition of 1851 proved more engrossing than had been anticipated, not merely because the idea at the bottom of it was her husband's, but because he was found to be the only man in England who thoroughly understood the scheme. As Lord Granville, in a letter to Prince Albert's secretary, remarked, his Royal Highness seemed to be almost the only person who had considered the subject as a whole and in details. "The whole thing," said Lord Granville, "would fall to pieces if he left it to itself." * Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXXI.

On the 21st of February a brilliant meeting in support of the undertaking was held at Willis's Rooms, which was attended by the diplomatic representatives of the leading nations. This was followed up by a grand banquet at the Mansion House, which was attended by the great dignitaries of State, the Foreign Ambassadors, the Royal Commissioners for the Exhibition, and the heads of the county and municipal magistracy. After the Royal Commission had been appointed, the questions of site, space, and finance were those which pressed for settlement, and without doubt the last gave the Queen the utmost anxiety. The public, she saw, must be induced to support the scheme, and meetings be organised for the purpose of making its advantages known. Prince Albert's speech at this banquet, however, struck the key-note of all the subsequent advocacy which the Exhibition received. The age, said he, was advancing towards the realisation of a unity of mankind, to be attained as the result and product, and not by the destruction, of national characteristics. Science, by abridging distance, was increasing the communicability of ideas. The principle of the division of labour was gradually being applied everywhere, giving rise to specialism, but specialism practised in publicity, and under the stimulus of competition and capital. Thus was Man winning new powers in fulfilling his mission in the world—the discovery of Natural Laws and the conquest of Nature by compliance with them. The central idea of this Exhibition of 1851 was to give a true test, and a living picture of the point at which civilised Man had arrived in carrying out his mission, and to serve as a base of operations for further efforts which might carry Humanity upwards and onwards to a larger and loftier stage. Such, in a brief paraphrase, were the views of Prince Albert, and they ran through the country amidst a chorus of approval. The whole nation responded to the appeal of his Royal Highness, despite the metaphysics and mysticism which slightly tinged it, and the delight of the Queen was correspondingly great. We can easily understand that King Leopold was at first under the impression that a speech of such stately but restrained eloquence, rich in thought and fruitful in suggestion, must have been read. The Queen, however, informed him that he was mistaken. It was, she says, prepared most carefully and laboriously, and then written down; after which it was spoken freely and fluently without reference to the manuscript. "This," says the Queen, in her letter to the King of the Belgians, "he does so well that no one believes he is ever nervous, which he is." On the 23rd of February a meeting of ladies was held at Stafford House, under the presidency of the Duchess of Sutherland, with the object of inviting the women of England to assist in promoting the success of the Exhibition, and a very influential committee was formed for this purpose.

When Easter arrived the Queen's anxiety grew greater as she saw the Prince showing signs of increasing fatigue. At last, yielding to her importunity, he agreed to leave London and take a brief holiday at Windsor. But

1850.]

THE COMMANDERSHIP-IN-CHIEF.

451

It was to devise a system of draining

his idea of a holiday was peculiar.
Osborne, and utilising the sewage, &c., of the estate.

Age and infirmity had now begun to tell sadly on the Duke of Wellington, and he had become anxious as to the future of the army. Whilst he was alive and strong, as he said, he could hold the Commandership-in-chief. But his position was entirely exceptional for a subject, and in theory at least the office ought to be vested in the Sovereign, or some one very near the Throne. Englishmen have ever been a little jealous of permitting this post to be occupied by a subject. The favour it confers on him, and the influence which-if he has a magic personality-he may wield, might, if wedded to ambition, lead to untoward changes. But the fact that the Sovereign was a woman rendered it impossible to vest the Commandership-in-chief in the Crown. The Duke, therefore, to the surprise of the Queen, who apparently had never thought about the matter, suddenly proposed that arrangements should be made for installing Prince Albert as his successor. It says much for the sagacity and good sense of the Queen and Prince that neither of them liked the proposal-although it was one which would have presented an irresistible temptation to most young men. The Prince pleaded want of military experience. The Duke replied that his plan was to appoint under the Prince, as Chief of the Staff, the general who had most experience in the army. But this did not seem to weigh much with the Queen. Probably she knew her husband's nature better than the Duke, and was perfectly well aware that he would never permit himself to hold office as an ornamental "dummy." The revolution he wrought in Cambridge after he became Chancellor of the University gives us an indication of what must have happened in the army had he consented to become the Duke's successor. It would be wrong to say that the Queen paid much heed to the objection on the score of inexperience. Like the Duke, she fully believed that her husband's extraordinary power of work, and pertinacity of resolution, would soon fit him for the post. But, on the other hand, it was quite clear that the work would absorb all his time. In short, as the Prince would be certain to insist on doing the duty of the office to the fullest extent, and on his own responsibility, it was equally certain that if he became Commander-in-chief, he must abandon all his other occupations-even the chemical researches on the utilisation of sewage, in his pursuance of which he imagined at the time that he had within his grasp a discovery that would immortalise him as a benefactor of humanity. Moreover, how was the Queen to replace him as her private secretary? So much assiduous service could not be expected from any other holder of that office as Prince Albert cheerfully gave, and it was furthermore an office the duties of which, at a time when the Sovereign was beginning to wield an everincreasing consultative and moderating influence on public affairs, were necessarily augmenting. Then the Queen also urged that as she believed the Prince was undertaking too much work already, she could not approve of his burdening himself with more. To sum up the views of the Queen and her husband

on this difficult and delicate affair: many able generals could do the duty of Commander-in-chief as well, if not better, than the Prince. Nobody, however, in the kingdom could possibly do the work he was then doing for the Queen as well as he did it, and so the flattering proposal was put aside. Had it been accepted, and had the Prince overhauled the Horse Guards as he did the University of Cambridge, perhaps the terrible and shameful disasters of the Crimea

might have been avoided. On the other hand, it may be doubted if even his patient resolution would have enabled him to reform in so short a time the military administration which collapsed in 1854. In that case, the Court would have been blamed, and blamed unjustly, for the departmental catastrophes that still invest the Crimea with bitter memories for British soldiers.

On the 1st of May the Duke of Connaught was born. His birthday was coincident with that of the Duke of Wellington, and he had as his sponsors two of the most illustrious soldiers of Europe-the great Duke himself, and Prince William of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany. The ceremony of baptism took place on the 22nd of June, when the Prince was christened Arthur William Patrick Albert, the Duke and the Prince of Prussia both being present.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILBEN FOUNDAT ONS.