EARLY DAYS OF PRINCE ALBERT.

Albert, the second son of Duke Ernest I. of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his wife, the Princess Louise, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, was born at the Rosenau, a charming summer residence belonging to the Duke, about four miles from Coburg, on the 26th of August, 1819. His mother is described as handsome, though of very diminutive proportions, fair, with blue eyes; and her son Albert, whom she idolised, closely resembled her. She was clever and entertaining; yet her marriage was an unhappy one, and a separation took place by mutual consent in 1824, after which date the Duchess never saw her children. Two years later the separation was turned into a divorce. The Prince never forgot her, but spoke of her to his dying day with much tenderness, and the very first gift which he ever made to the Princess Victoria was a little pin which his mother had given him. Not until the Prince was almost a young man did his mother die. When she died her race became extinct, save in the persons of her two sons. Many years later, her remains were brought to Coburg, and laid in the family mausoleum beside the Duke and his second wife. This mausoleum was not completed until 1860, in which year Queen Victoria deposited a votive wreath on the tomb of the mother of her husband. Prince Albert’s paternal grandmother, the Duchess Dowager of Coburg, in writing to her daughter, the Duchess of Kent, announcing Albert’s birth, lauded his beauty, and—little thinking how the fortunes of the two infant cousins were to be intertwined hereafter—thus concluded her communication:—“How pretty the May Flower (the Princess Victoria, born the preceding May) will be when I see it in a year’s time. Siebold cannot sufficiently describe what a dear little love it is. Une bonne fois, adieu! Kiss your husband and children.” Siebold was an accoucheuse who had attended at the births of both the children. On the 19th of September the Prince was christened, and thus named:—Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel.

The young Prince seems to have been adored as a child by all, whether relatives or others, who came in contact with him. “He leads captive,” said his fond mother, when he was two years old, “all hearts by his beauty and gentle grace.” After the sad separation of his father from his mother, the Prince was brought up largely under the care of his father’s mother, whom the Queen describes, from personal recollection, as “a most remarkable woman, with a most powerful, energetic, almost masculine mind, accompanied with great tenderness of heart, and extreme love for nature.” Of an evening she used to tell to her two grandchildren, Ernest and Albert, the stories of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, and, when they were old enough, employed them in writing letters to her dictation. She fondly described Albert, when he was not yet two years old, by the pet, diminutive name, “Alberinchen.” And she says—“With his large blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, he is bewitching, forward, and quick as a weasel. He can already say everything.” The step-maternal grandmother of the Prince too, second wife of his maternal grandfather, was sensible, kindly, and good, and took an interest in the children by no means inferior to that displayed by their own grandmother. With the former lady they spent very much of their time in their early years, at Gotha, and at her mansion in the vicinity of that town.

When Albert was not yet four years old he, with his brother, was removed to the care of a tutor, Herr FlorschÜtz, who most admirably discharged his duties, which he continued to fulfil until his pupils had become young men. With the assistance of masters for special subjects, he conducted the whole of their early educational training, and continued to control their studies until they left the University of Bonn. The two brothers, spite of the difference of about a twelvemonth in their ages, pursued all studies in common, and the closest brotherly love and amity united them from first to last.

The younger Prince was not nearly so robust as his brother, but his intellect was more vigorous, and his force of will decidedly greater; “he always held,” said his uncle Leopold, “accordingly, a certain sway over his elder brother, who rather kindly submitted to it.” The Princes were not much, in their early years, with their father, who was much from home, especially when settling the junction of the duchy of Gotha with his own of Coburg. The former he succeeded to partly in right of his wife, and partly by a mutual compact of exchange of territory, entered into with other reigning princes of the old Saxon stock. This period was passed by the Princes at Rosenau, with their tutor, varied by visits to the mansions of the two grandmothers.

In a memorandum drawn up by Count Arthur Mensdorff, cousin of the Prince, he describes the young Albert when about ten years of age, at which period the cousins contracted a friendship which lasted unimpaired until the Prince’s death. His disposition was mild and benevolent; nothing could make him angry, except anything unjust or dishonest. He was never wild or noisy, and his favourite study was natural history. He was a good mimic, and had a keen sense of the ludicrous; but he never pushed a joke to the extent of hurting one’s feelings. His moral purity was as conspicuous as the meekness of his disposition.

In November of 1831, the Princes suffered a great bereavement in the death of their admirable grandmother, the Duchess Dowager of Coburg; she died in the arms of her two eldest sons. She had, from an early period, formed the wish that a marriage should be contracted between her two grandchildren, Albert and Victoria.

In 1832, the young Princes, in their turn, accompanied their father in a journey to visit their uncle, King Leopold. This was a most important event in the Prince’s life; for, though the visit was of but short duration, the spectacle which he then saw, of a nation which had freed itself, and worked out its own destiny, had the strongest effect upon his mind and conscience, which thence grew in attachment to liberal principles. His deeply-rooted love of art, too, received a strong stimulus from the splendid architectural and artistic treasures of the old Belgian city. On his return from Brussels, being now about thirteen years old, he became remarkably studious, and vigorously set himself to the pursuit of an unusually comprehensive circle of subjects.

The only recreation which he pursued with vigour was deer-stalking, and this most beneficially promoted the robustness of a frame as yet distinguished by delicacy. On Palm Sunday, 1835, he was confirmed, and his heart seems, at and from this period, to have come under the influence of religious convictions of peculiar depth and sincerity, though of singular freedom from all traces of bigotry.

The confirmation of the Princes was immediately followed by a series of visits to various of their imperial, regal, princely, and noble relatives and friends throughout Germany and the provinces on the Danube. They visited in succession Mecklenburg, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Pesth, and Ofen. In May, 1836, the Princes came to England, on a visit to their aunt Kent. It was on this occasion that Albert and Victoria first met.

On his return to the Continent from this his first and most gratifying visit to England, the Duke of Coburg placed Albert and his elder brother for a time under the care of their uncle at Brussels. A private house was taken for them, in which they pursued their studies under Dr. Drury, an English clergyman, who had been appointed their tutor. This gentleman recorded this testimony of his pupil, when, shortly afterwards, he was removed from his tutelage, and before any idea was entertained about his distinguished future position:—“His attainments are various, and solid too; his abilities are superior; his disposition amiable; his conduct unexceptionable; and, above all, his belief in, and his attachment to, the Protestant religion is sincere.”

In the summer following (1837) the two brothers were entered as students of law, or, more correctly, of jurisprudence (juris studiosi), at the University of Bonn, the Oxford of Germany in respect to the high rank of some of its students, and standing in the very first place in point of intrinsic efficiency. The tutor FlorschÜtz still accompanied the young men; and they benefited by the prelections of such men as Fichte, Perthes, and Augustus Schlegel. Prince Albert studied classics, mathematics, mental philosophy, political economy, history, and statistical science. In the last subject he had been well grounded at Brussels by the distinguished M. Quetelet, who formed the highest opinion of his pupil’s powers and assiduity. He had, besides, private tutors for music and drawing, in both of which arts he was already well advanced. In the second stage of his curriculum his studies were specially devoted to jurisprudence and civil history. While at Bonn he displayed at once a talent for poetry and a benevolent heart, by the publication for the benefit of the poor of a collection of songs, which his brother set to meritorious musical accompaniments. He visited only among his princely fellow-students, and at the houses of the professors. His brother and he, though they occasionally gave courtly entertainments to their friends, lived in private a temperate and frugal life. He assiduously sought out the society of savans and men of letters, especially loving to associate with Professors Welcker and Schlegel. The latter, though he detested the ordinary run of “princelings,” was quite charmed by Albert, of whom he thought and spoke most highly. The Prince kept only three academical terms, and finally left the University, in September, 1838, leaving golden opinions everywhere behind him. Not the least hearty of his eulogists in after years was Peter Stamm, an hotel-keeper, who acted as gamekeeper to him on his shooting excursions, and who for years after pointed to English visitors the portrait of Prince Albert in his sitting-room, his eyes the while brimming over with glad tears. The University, after his marriage, conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and in the diploma pointed reference was made to his “summÆ fortunÆ magnitudinem ac gravitatem, summ comitate, amabilique morum suavitate et humanitate.”

The winter of 1838-9 was passed by the Prince in a tour through Switzerland and Italy. After pursuing his journey as far as Naples, and omitting no locality of interest on the way, he came home by way of Vienna, and returned to the Castle of Ehrenberg in the summer of 1839. It has been stated that he found, on the wall of his room, a miniature of Queen Victoria, by Chalon, which she had sent to him as a gift in his absence; but we have not discovered any very reliable authority for the anecdote. In August, having completed his twentieth year, he was formally declared of age. He inherited from his mother landed estates amounting to £2,400 yearly value. These lands, we have reason to believe, he transferred to his brother upon the formal announcement of his engagement to Queen Victoria, subject only to pensions and allowances to certain persons who had belonged to his modest household.

On the 8th of December, 1839, his betrothal was formally and publicly announced at Coburg. In the morning the Ducal family, with the Court officials, attended Divine service in the chapel of the Castle; in the afternoon, in the presence of the same dignitaries, with the deputies of the Duchies of Coburg and Gotha, the Chief Minister formally read the announcement of the betrothal; the while the booming of cannon from the fortress announced the tidings to the people of the town and the neighbouring country. About three hundred persons in all were present at the ceremony within the Castle, including bearers of congratulatory addresses, not only from the two duchies, but from Austria, Prussia, Hesse, Saxony, and other German states. From the report of an English gentleman of high social position, who was present on this important occasion, we extract, in conclusion, these fuller details:—

Lord Viscount Torrington and Colonel the Honourable Charles Grey, who were charged with the two-fold mission of investing the Prince with the insignia of the Order of the Garter, and escorting him and his suite to England, arrived at Gotha early in January, 1840, and the investiture took place on the 24th, with imposing ceremony. The jewels, which were of diamonds and of rare workmanship, were a present from the Queen. After a series of hospitable festivities in honour of the English envoys, Prince Albert set out for England on the 28th of the month.