The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Illustrated Edition) - Robert Thomas Wilson

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and the Prince’s health as a house-warming. And after it the Prince said, very naturally and simply, ‘We have a hymn’ (he called it a psalm) ‘in Germany for such occasions. It begins,’ and then he repeated two lines in German which I could not quote right—meaning a prayer to bless our going out and coming in.”61 Miss Lucy Kerr, one of the Maids of Honour, insisted in her Scottish fashion on throwing an old shoe after the Queen as she crossed the threshold for the first time, and she further diverted the company by her desire to procure molten lead and sundry other charms of Scottish witchcraft to bring luck to the Royal pair.

      During the yachting cruise round the south coast, Baron Stockmar appears to have used his opportunities of close and intimate companionship with the Queen and her consort to note the changes that time had wrought in their characters. In his “Memorabilia” he records his impressions. “The Prince,” he writes, “has made great strides of late.... He has also gained much in self-reliance. His natural vivacity leads him at times to jump too rapidly to a conclusion; and he occasionally acts too hastily; but he has grown too clear-sighted to commit any great mistake.” “And the Queen also,” writes the same keen and watchful critic, “improves greatly. She makes daily advances in discernment and experience; the candour, the love of truth, the fairness, the considerateness with which she judges men and things, are truly delightful; and the ingenuous self-knowledge with which she speaks about herself is simply charming.”62

      In the autumn, too, some other German friends cheered the Queen with a visit. The Princess of Prussia, afterwards the Empress Augusta, came on a visit to her aunt, the Queen Dowager Adelaide, and in September her Royal Highness went to Windsor. The Baroness Bunsen, who was in her suite, has given us a charming picture of the happy family circle round the Queen into which she then found herself introduced. In a letter to her mother from Windsor Castle, the Baroness writes:—“I arrived here at six, and at eight went to dinner in the Great Hall, hung round with the Waterloo pictures. The band played exquisitely, so placed as to be invisible; so that, what with the large proportions of the hall, and the well-subdued lights, and the splendours of plate and decoration, the scene was such as fairy tales present; and Lady Canning, Miss Stanley, and Miss Dawson were beautiful enough to represent an ideal Queen’s ideal attendants. The Queen looked well and rayonnante, with that pleased expression of countenance which she has when pleased with what surrounds her, and which, you know, I like to see.”63

      In October the Queen and Prince Albert paid another round of visits. They left Windsor on the 19th and drove to the Queen Dowager’s place at Cashiobury, where they spent three days in strict privacy. After that they drove to Lord Clarendon’s seat near Watford, and went on to the Marquis of Abercorn’s at Stanmore Abbey. Taking a circuitous route by Reading, they drove to Hatfield, where they visited the Marquis of Salisbury. But the weather was most disagreeable, and even St. Albans failed to put up the usual arches of welcome, and bedeck itself in congratulatory bunting. Four miles from Hatfield they were met by Lord Salisbury and the

      ARUNDEL. (After the Picture by Vicat Cole, R.A.)

      Duke of Wellington. There was a pleasant party of friends at Hatfield waiting to welcome the Royal guests, including Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, the latter brooding over the growing uneasiness of the country and the painful dispute with the Court of France, the former gay and debonair, as if he had never known what it was to face the storms and strife of State. The Queen, it seems, was greatly interested in the treasures of the library, and spent much time poring over the Cecil papers. Her visit was long talked of in the district, for, in true baronial style, five hundred labourers were feasted in commemoration of the event at Hatfield, a great ox being roasted for the banquet, at which home-brewed ale flowed generously in hogsheads. In December her Majesty visited the Duke of Norfolk, Master of the Horse, at Arundel. At Portsmouth and Chichester she was welcomed with cordial demonstrations of affection, and not only was Arundel illuminated, but, what pleased her still more, a substantial dinner was given in her honour to every poor person in the town. Prince Albert, Lord John Russell, and the Earl of Arundel amused themselves with field sports; but the Queen,

      PROFESSOR FARADAY.

      attended by her host, the Duke of Norfolk, and the old Duke of Wellington, explored objects of interest in the neighbourhood. She held a formal reception in the great drawing-room of the Castle, and charmed all the “country people” with her simple, winning ways and sweet courtesies. It is recorded that at the ball held after this reception her Majesty distinguished herself by the hearty manner in which she joined in the dancing, an amusement which was ever a favourite one with her in those happy days of her golden youth.

      But life in the Royal circle was not all amusement. Baron Stockmar bears testimony to the zeal with which both the Prince and the Queen devoted themselves at this time to business and graver studies. And many events were happening, many intellectual and social movements beginning to develop, which keenly interested them. The unsatisfactory position of British art—emphasised by the fate of Haydon, who committed suicide in despair of ever interesting the English people in the higher forms of art—the development of the great movement in favour of popular education, and the rise of what afterwards came to be known as the Party of Secularism, were keenly canvassed during the latter part of this eventful year in every circle where thoughtful men and women met.

      Among the many remarkable movements that arose when the country was liberated from the strain of the Free Trade agitation, was that which originated the strife between parties as to the share which the Church and the State should take in the work of education. A crude and rudimentary scheme of national education was part of Lord John Russell’s programme, and the attention of the country had been excited by a pamphlet published by the late Dr. Hook, then Vicar of Leeds, afterwards Dean of Chichester, in which he proposed a plan which very much resembles that which the late Mr. W. E. Forster induced Parliament to accept in 1870. Her Majesty and Prince Albert were deeply interested in Dr. Hook’s plan, the leading points of which were: (1) Schools to be universally supported by the State; (2) Education to be secular, but one day in the week to be set apart for religious instruction, which should be given by each denomination to the children of its own members.

      The Secularist Party owed their origin to Mr. Holyoake, who at this time began to propagate the system of ethics known as Secularism, a system which aimed at promoting the welfare of mankind by human means, and measuring it by utilitarian standards. The service of others he held to be the highest duty of life. Secularism rejoiced in life as the sphere of exalting duties. It was a religion of doubt, neither affirming nor denying the existence of a Deity. Ultimately it came to be termed Agnosticism, and the working classes seemed to be considerably influenced by Mr. Holyoake’s teaching during this year and a few of the years that followed.

      In the year 1846 the scientific world was greatly interested by the publication of a most extraordinary series of experimental researches in electricity conducted by Faraday, illustrating alike the genius of the man and the spirit and methods of scientific investigation during the early part of the Victorian epoch. That spirit was, in the main, antagonistic to vacuous speculation or unprofitable theorising. It was daring enough in its utilitarianism to track by direct experiment the subtle elements of, or prove by tangible demonstration what were the occult relations which subsisted between, forms of matter and modes of force. “I have long held the opinion,” wrote Faraday, “that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin, or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.... I recently resumed the inquiry by experiment in a most strict and searching manner, and have at last succeeded in magnetising and electrifying a ray of light and in illuminating a magnetic line of force.”64 The phrase is not a felicitous one to express the idea of the transformation and transmutation of the forces, but it is worth citing as the original expression used. The paper from which it is taken simply proved that a ray of polarised light sent through certain transparent substances in the line of action connecting the two poles of a magnet, became visible or invisible just as the current was flowing or

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