"Say? All sorts of things. Asked when it was to be? And how long you had been engaged? He was most particular to know how long you had been engaged." "Had he not heard?" Σή τ' ἀγανοφροσύνη μελιηδέα θυμὸν ἀπηύρα. "Apparently not. It was quite laugh- THE following paper was originally inable. He made me repeat it; and when tended to be a private record of interI said 'Since last September,' he ex- course with H.R.H. the late Duke of claimed after me, 'Since last September!' | Albany, and to be laid before the duchess as if it were something quite surprising. alone. But since it is understood that its He was immensely interested; he asked publication will be acceptable in quarters all sorts of questions; and when I chaffed where any inclination in such a matter has him about his being so ignorant himself, paramount authority, the paper, in a modihe only looked foolish, and had not a word fied form, is here given to the public. to say. Evidently Jem had not taken The fitting tone under circumstances of him into confidence. Talking dispassion this sad kind must always be hard to ately of Jem, I should not say he takes maintain; and in the case of a royal permany people into confidence." sonage the difficulty is so great that the writer (who is, of course, solely responsible for what is said) feels it needful to make an earnest appeal for indulgence, in case the due line should seem to have been in any direction overstepped. It has been thought best not to touch on what is already before the world - the duke's public speeches or appearances of any kind. What is here given is a reminiscence of personal intercourse; and if it be thought that such a mode of treatment involves too much of reference to the writer's own personality, it must be remembered on the other hand that he has no sort of right to come forward in the matter at all, except such right as is thought to have been conferred by the private intimacy with which the late prince was pleased to honor him, and which was repaid by an affection as true, as loyal, as man can feel for man. "You did not hear who this man was?" "Of course they said his name, but I did not catch it. Louisa does sometimes mumble so that no one can hear her, and they all seemed rather stupid and flus. tered. He was their brother's friend, you see, not theirs; and to tell the truth, I don't fancy they knew much about him. If only that brother of theirs had come in! Tiresome creature; he would have been of some good. As it was, I could not get hold of any one of the girls to inquire, and I had to leave before any one else did; how ever, I shall go down this afternoon, for I have left the library books behind me. A piece of luck, isn't it? Nobody can say I go to find out who my new friend is." "Nor to meet him again?" "Oh, there is no hope of that; he is off immediately off for London by the first train this afternoon: he had only looked in for an hour, as he happened to be passing through Clinkton on his way from somewhere or other. He had slept at the station botel last night, so he must have come from a distance; then he had walked up to call on the Hales, and his train was to leave about now." Later on in the day she rushed in with scarce a breath left. To those who love to watch the shaping of character, that subtle intertexture of ancestral and individual warp and woof, there is always something interesting, almost pathetic, in the sight of a young life which springs up amid fixed hereditary surroundings, and has to accommodate its fresh impulses to the strong tradition of "Mary, Mary! what do you think? Oh, bygone men. And from the legend of Mary! what will you say? He is a Buddha downwards, there has been many prince in disguise, an earl's son, and will a royal romance in which the interest has be the earl himself some day, for his turned on the young spirit's self-liberation brother is not married, and he is the heir. from the trammelling conditions, its resoThe Hales' brother has told them all lute emergence into a freer and higher about him since I was there in the morn- life. But there are other cases, not less ing, and they say he is such a friend of Jem's, and that he is sure to be Jem's best man at the wedding. He is the Honorable Edward Lessingham. Think of me and the Honorable Edward Lessingham!" worth record, where the progress of the inward drama has led, not to the casting off of hereditary usages or duties, but to their voluntary and fruitful acceptance, to the gradual self-identification of the new life with the old - the absorption of per sonal ambitions or pleasures in the mos| who has not yet the force for independent majorum, the ancient vocation of the race. action or pleasure the life of Windsor In the case of an English prince there Castle must sometimes seem as if it were can be no doubt in which of these direc- conceived on too vast a scale, and estab tions an upward progress must tend. lished too immutably, for the needs of a There can be no summons from without young and ardent spirit. The tramp of which leads to higher serviceableness than the sentinel beneath the windows, the that great birthright duly used; a young martial music at dawn of day, even the life needs no better aim than to become stately symmetry of the avenues which such that the English people may account radiate from the central keep all signs it as truly royal. And it was in this of pomp are signs also of circumscription, process of widening conceptions, of quick- and the concrete embodiment of eight ening conscience, that the great interest hundred years of monarchy weighs heavily of Prince Leopold's career consisted for on the individual heart. The pacings of those who watched him with anxiously a vague unrest have sounded along many loving eyes. His inward drama lay in the a terrace fringed with flowers, in Home gradual transformation of his boyish idea Park, and Hollow Garden, and Orangery, of royal descent as a title to enjoyment, and on the steep slopes of the royal hill. hampered by wearisome restraints, to his On the other hand, there were the fammanlier view of that high birth as a sum-ily affections, made more unique by isola mons to duty, and his willing submission to its accompanying restrictions, as part and parcel of the calling which his whole heart embraced. It is at Windsor Castle, when he was fifteen years old, that these recollections begin. He was then a most engaging boy; with the physical charm which ac companies the union of high spirit with fragile delicacy, and the moral charm of a nature whose affections, at once vivid and diffident, seemed to beseech the regard and notice which all who knew him were eager to bestow. He had already attracted the earnest good-will, the serious hopes of many of the leading men of the time, and I remember with what pleasure I found in his autograph book that maxim, from Archbishop Trench's hand, which should be written on all tablets and engraved on all hearts of princes O righteous doom, that they who make But they who bid stern Duty lead, Find Pleasure by the way. tion - the maternal solicitude which, from the first to the last day of that son's life, no cares of State could ever distract or slacken; the companionship of the justelder sister whose romantic girlhood lavished its wealth of love on him. And there was much of the buoyancy as well as of the restlessness of early youth; there were happy wanderings amid the boskages of the park, where the Angora goats which he loved to watch flecked the foreground with their soft whiteness, and the castle's bastions closed the vista with wall of steadfast grey. And indoors, too, were merry mockeries and bursts of boyish sportiveness, racings along the endless passages of the basement, hidings in the niches of turret walls, clamberings to the Round Tower's roof beneath the flag of England, in the rushing sunny air. I saw him at long intervals, but the first time when he seemed to me to awake to a sense of his own part in historic greatness was when the Garter had just been bestowed on him, in April, 1871. That was a time of deeply stirred emotion. The much-loved sister was going forth, a bride, from the home of her ancestors. It was as though a strain of beauty and tenderness were floating on the wind away. Then it was, as he sat at evensong at the royal oriel in St. George's Chapel, gazing upon the high vault thronged with banners, the walls inlaid with arms and blazonry of many a famous line, that his look was as though his spirit were kindling within him and yearning to take rank with his forefathers and heroes of a bygone day. It was at any rate in this manner, through the affections, through the imag ination, through personal intercourse with the representatives of knowledge or action, that his education was in great measure gained. The frequent troubles of health which interfered with regular reading never seemed to check his eagerness to see and talk with any noteworthy man. Many visitors to the Castle must remember interviews with the young prince in his rooms, interviews often prolonged far beyond mere complimentary limits, and leaving behind them the memory of a listener best pleased with what was best worth hearing, and whose transparent face expressed that pleasure with a boy's straightforward charm. There might one meet Mr. Gladstone, concentrating, perhaps, on some morsel of Wedg. wood china the great and complex engine of his mind; or, on a later day, Mr. Disraeli, fresh from private audience (December 18, 1877) and moved beyond his wont. And from the very first it was observable how quickly the young prince learnt from men, how retentive was his memory for names, for faces, for anything which had been said in his presence; how adroitly he fitted the pieces into that map of the human world which all of us carry in our heads in some fashion or other, but which in his case came to contain so many known points, and each in such true relation to the rest. who might be suspected of wishing to approach learning by a royal road. But these men, too, were won; nor, indeed, would they have found it easy to suggest how better to combine dignity with simplicity, or to be patrician without pride. Among the leaders of the university Prince Leopold had many friends. The Dean of Christchurch, Professors Rolleston, Acland, Jowett, Max Müller, Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr. Coxe - the list might be extended till most of the wellknown names were told. But among all these figures there was one figure which stood alone. There was one heart to which the prince's heart went forth with a loving reverence such as he never felt for any other man. Certain colloquies of Mr. Ruskin's at the bedside of Prince Leopold as he lay recovering from perilous illness, and still in danger of a relapse — will dwell in the mind of him who heard them as ideal examples of the contact of an elder and a younger soul. How close was that union in a region where earthly rank was swept away! How poor a thing did any life seem then which had not known the hallowing of sorrow! How solemn was that unspoken presence which men have miscalled death! From teachers, from friends, from suffering, the prince learnt much at Oxford. He returned to Windsor no longer a boy but a man; able to take up in firmer fashion his apportioned thread of fate. Such, at least, was the impression given when, a few months later, I saw him at Windsor once more. Kept indoors by a sprain, he devoted two whole days to a methodical survey of the castle's treas historic interest had grown; how in those thousand chambers, the fabric of a score of kings, he had learnt to decipher in brief and summary the great story of the English race; from the rude helm of a Plantagenet, hanging in some deserted gallery, to that treasure-house which holds in rich confusion the visible tokens of Queen Victoria's Indian sway the golden gifts of rajah and maharajah, and tribute of the imperial East. His entrance at Oxford still under the guidance of Mr. Collins, his best and lifelong friend was a new source of interest and excitement. There was at first something of pathetic wistfulness in the way in which he regarded his joyous contemporaries, able to take their pleasures in a fashion more active than he could share; but as he began to make real inti-ures. And here it was evident how his macies his affectionate nature found full play; and never, perhaps, has undergraduate felt more delightfully that first bloom of friendship which idealizes the young man's world. Lord Brooke, Lord Harris, Sidney Herbert, Walter Campbell, Herbert Gladstone, and a few others, formed the nucleus of a group which constantly widened, and which fused together senior and junior men with a success which, as university hosts well know, is the highest proof of academical tact and bonhomie. He was still shy, but his shyness was of that winning kind which irresistibly suggests the pleasure to be derived from overcoming it. And at Oxford he was met on all sides with a manly welcome: the only trace (as it were by reaction) of the tuft-hunting of former days being a slight unwillingness on the part of some independent spirits to countenance one But the time came when it was fitting for him to have a home of his own, and to take his place in that class of country gentlemen among whom our English princes are proud to be enrolled. Boy In a pre-nuptial will the duke bequeathed his collection of autographs to the Bodleian, and the duchess childless, he wished his library to go to the Unattached has offered to carry out this bequest. Had he died Students of Oxford. ton Manor is a typical country gentleman's home. Above it stretch the wild Wilt shire downs; beneath them the old Elizabethan manor-house stands in its terraced nook, and long glades fringed with beeches push deep into the hollowed hill. The prince's establishment was a modest one; for his means, considering the una voidable demands upon them, were never large, and from the time when an income of his own was accorded to him a great part of it was returned by him to the nation in subscriptions to philanthropic ends. But at Boyton he exercised much quiet hospitality, and himself gained greatly in social initiative and in the power of dealing with men and women. I remember, on the occasion of one din ner-party in particular, when several of his royal kinsfolk were staying with him, and some of his guests came prepared to derive horor rather than pleasure from the entertainment, with what simple and almost boyish grace he set the shyest at ease, and transformed what had seemed formidably like a royal family party into a scene of unaffected enjoyment. Such successes are not wholly trifling; they imply genuine kindliness and alert attention; and those who saw the prince beginning to regard these social gatherings as occasions for bestowing happiness rather than for receiving amusement, felt that in one more direction he was learning to look primarily to the duties rather than the pleasures of his lot. "Boy amongst boys, but amongst men a man,' he kept through life his youthful freshness, though he learnt more and more to combine with it the manlier gifts of consideration, counsel, and sympathy. Boyton, however, was hardly more than a transitional stage between tutelage and independence, and it was with his removal to Claremont in 1879 that his developed manhood may be said to open. It was in that year that his individuality grew more marked and definite, and his talk, without losing its ingenuous boyishness, began to have substance and to show thought of his own. Here, then, it may be well to recall the upshot of many conversations, the drift of much which was habitually working in his mind during these last four active years. The question of his public duties is best approached, as he in fact approached it, from the side of actual experience, from the consideration of what the nation does practically demand from a royal personage en disponibilité, from a young prince whom it believes to be both willing and able to respond to modern needs. And it will be found that, although the new demands made on royalty may be different from the old ones, they are certainly not less onerous; and a prince whom circumstances preclude from war or politics is by no means driven to find his only resort in pleasure. At first sight, indeed, it might seem as though the main interests of civilized peoples gave little scope for the intervention of princes. We note the steady rise of commerce and industry, of science, art, and letters. And we ob serve that one group of these pursuits is unfitting for royalty, while success in the other demands personal rather than hered. itary qualifications. But this increasing complexity of society is in fact develop ing besides these a new calling of the highest importance, and increasingly in need of active official heads. Philan thropy in the widest sense of the word, including all organized and disinterested attempts to better by non-political means the condition of the nation, tends to absorb a larger and larger part of the activity of civilized men. In fact the propor tion of national activity which is thus directed may be taken as no bad test of the degree of advance to which any people's civilization has attained. This generous effort, however, tends by no means wholly to good; much of it is wasted on demonstrable impossibilities; much of it is debased by an admixture of selfish objects; much of it, through sheer ignorance, does absolute harm. Philanthropy, in short, is a field where guidance is eminently necessary, and where experience shows that any indication of royal approval carries immediate weight. The multitude of applications for the use of the Duke of Albany's name for public objects of this kind would probably sur prise every one except those millionaires who have learnt, by the demands made on their purses, how multifarious are modern efforts for the welfare of mankind. This widespread eagerness for his approval and advocacy certainly took the prince himself by surprise. Thinking very modestly of his own knowledge and powers, he was at first inclined to respond to few of such appeals, and only where he felt that some special taste or interest of his own gave him a right to a decided opinion. But he gradually recognized that this was not really all which his post in the world demanded of him. He be gan to enter into the ideal which his wise father had perhaps been the first among His business is not to be a special pleader, but an arbitrator; not an explorer, but a map-maker; not to lead revolutions in opinion, but to confer a de jure title on opinions which are rapidly acquiring a de facto sway. This was not altogether an attractive programme for a young man of spirit. To say nothing from the impulse of the moment, to write nothing without the gravest deliberation, to enforce accepted truths and sanction winning causes there may seem little in such work which can be embraced with enthusiasm. Yet here again the voluntary acceptance of limitations is soon seen to render possible the achievement of most important good. Though only those causes be supported which a consensus of careful opinion pronounces to be both deserving of success and likely to attain it, the field of choice is still very large. And sometimes (as was the case, for instance, with the ques tion of parks, open spaces, preservation of the Lake country from railways, etc., in which Mr. Ruskin's influence was discernible), the ultimate success of some philanthropic effort can be safely predicted at a very early stage by those who make it a business to watch all such efforts as they arise, to study their interrelation, and to know something of the character of their supporters. Assuredly there is work here work earnestly demanded and gratefully welcomed by the nation - for as many public-spirited princes as any reigning family can supply. royal personages distinctly to conceive and steadily to apply the ideal of royalty as a source of disinterested counsel and encouragement, not thrust upon a nation, but always ready when desired, and representing thus some part of the old paternal function which, as nations grow to man. hood, must needs change its character or disappear. The peculiarity of the prince consort's position prevented his great qualities from being rapidly realized; and the nation lost him before it knew him well enough to feel all the gratitude which he deserved. Prince Leopold, on the other hand, had the inestimable advantage of being his mother's son as well as his father's, and of beginning life with an unlimited draft of credit on England's affection and respect. And he became gradually aware that the nation was demanding of him, almost beyond his powers, that which he felt that his father would have have been able to supply so much more fully than was in his time demanded, namely, a kind of headship of philanthropy, a guidance and encouragement of the manifold efforts which our age is making towards a higher and purer life. A selfish or a timid man might shrink from such a responsibility as this; a foolish or a vain man might degrade it by supporting mere favorites and advocating mere crotchets of his own. But from vanity of this kind Prince Leopold was completely free. He had by no means an exaggerated opinion of his own powers; and when he heard his abilities or character ranked with his father's, he was merely pained to think how much of the credit due to the origi- Moreover, there is another branch of nator of a wise line of thought or conduct this work more onerous than any task for is often diverted to a successor whom tongue or pen. If a great personage circumstances enable to carry out the wishes to give the full weight of his suppregnant suggestion in a popular and con- port to any cause, it is often necessary spicuous way. Fortunately for England, that he should be actually stamped on the this very modesty, simplicity, straightfor- popular retina in visible connection with wardness of character were precisely what it, actually looked at hour after hour while was most needed in the prince's position. the cause is kept before the minds of men. For what the public expects a royal opin. It is obvious that for this function royalty ion to represent is not simply an individ- is uniquely fittted, and Prince Leopold ual preference, however refined or ingen recognized to the full that this must form ious, but rather a kind of résumé or out- a large element in his life. Some eminent come of the best opinions held at the examples have accustomed the public to time. Just as a great newspaper gains its so high a standard of royal vigor that the power by subordinating to "the common fatigue of these duties of ceremony and sense of most" all personal predilection representation is scarcely realized by ordi or whim, so a princely supporter of nary observers. To Prince Leopold's schemes of public welfare will carry per- delicate constitution those fatigues were manent weight only if the public feels that most severe, though he met them with it can count on his position as a real guar-readiness, and would only jestingly allude antee of impersonality, of detachment not to the inconvenience of holding one's hat only from unworthy motives, but from three inches above one's head for a couple every kind of prepossession or crotchet. of hours in an east wind, or to the pains |