1857

QUEEN VISITS MANCHESTER.

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ence, according to my notions, can have no result beyond furnishing a sound view of the state of the case, and paving the way to its being dealt with hereafter.

'In regard to the Prince Consort affair, I am delighted that a step has been taken, which in many respects will be attended with beneficial results, were it only for this, that the assumption that there is nothing in a name is a purely one-sided one.

The time had now come for the Queen to make the visit to the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, which the state of Her Majesty's health, at the time of the Prince's visit, had prevented. Accordingly on the afternoon of the 29th the Queen and Prince, together with the Princess Royal, the Princess Alice, and the two eldest Princes, and Prince Frederick William of Prussia, left London for Worsley Hall, where they were to remain during this visit to Lancashire.

By nine o'clock next morning the Royal visitors were on their way to the Exhibition. The morning was dull, with occasional showers, but not so heavy as to require the carriages to be closed. All Manchester and its neighbourhood crowded the streets, through which the cortége passed at a foot's pace. Upwards of a million people were computed to have been assembled. The crowd,' says the Queen's Diary, 'was enormous, greater than ever witnessed before, and enthusiastic beyond belief-nothing but kind and friendly faces. The streets beautifully decorated with flowers and flags and drapery and long banners, and with so much taste-more like French decorations. Many Prussian flags, and endless kind and appropriate inscriptions, triumphal arches, &c. So much affection towards my darling Albert, so many kind allusions to Fritz and Vicky, united with us. One inscription bore: "Albert the Patron of Art and Promoter of Peace." My beloved Albert is most popular here. Sir H. Smith, and Colonel Hodge of the 4th Dragoons (greatly distinguished in the Heavy Cavalry charge [at Balaclava]), rode on either side.'

Soon after eleven the Exhibition building was reached. It was filled with a brilliant multitude. On a daïs raised for the occasion the Queen received and replied to addresses from the Executive Committee, and from the corporations of Manchester and Salford, and knighted the Mayor of Manchester, as the record already quoted bears, with

64

LETTER BY M. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

1857

Sir H. Smith's sword, which had been in four general actions.' After this came the inspection of the picture-galleries. After a full mention of the old masters, we were delighted,' says the Diary, 'with the modern school, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Copley, Gainsborough, Lawrence, Landseer, Leslie, Maclise, Cope, Herbert, &c. Copley is Lord Lyndhurst's father; and the picture, a very large one, of the "Defence of St. Helier's" is his. Very fine. Lord Lyndhurst mentioned it to me, asking me to look at it, and I was told he shed tears when it left his house. Returned as we came, with much rain-everything wet, but all the people out.'

Next morning was devoted by the Queen and Prince and their suite to a long examination of the contents of the Exhibition, which was not opened to the public until two o'clock in the afternoon, when the Queen left it to return to Worsley Hall, taking the Peel Park on the way, to see the recently erected statue of herself. Meanwhile the Prince, with his two eldest sons and Prince Frederick Wilhelm, went to the Manchester Town Hall, where an Address from the Corporation was presented to the Prussian Prince, to which he made a reply. Visits were then paid to Mr. Mackintosh's great india-rubber manufactory, and to several other large works, so that it was seven o'clock before Worsley Hall was reached. All,' says the Queen's Diary, 'had gone off very well. Fritz read well, and was much applauded. Albert very tired, and not quite well.'

The Royal visitors left Worsley Hall for London next morning, and reached Buckingham Palace by 3 P. M., in time to enable the Prince to go to meet King Leopold and his family at the railway station, and also to preside at a meeting of the Royal Fine Arts Commission. A great concert of Italian music given by the Queen completed the incidents of a busy and fatiguing day.

Before leaving town for Manchester, the Prince had had a full and interesting interview with M. de Tocqueville, of whose writings he had long been an admirer, and to whose fine work, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution, then recently published, we have seen (ante, vol. iii. p. 411) he attached the highest value. Two days afterwards he received from Lord Clarendon a copy of the following passage in a letter which M. de Tocqueville had written immediately after the interview to Lord Clarendon's sister, Lady Theresa Lewis :

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LETTER BY THE PRINCE.

65

'Je rouvre ma lettre pour vous dire que je viens de voir le Prince Albert, et que je suis enchanté du résultat de cette visite. Je ne saurais vous dire (surtout dans un postscriptum) combien j'ai été frappé et charmé de la justesse de son esprit. J'ai rarement rencontré un homme aussi distingué, et n'ai jamais approché d'un Prince qui m'a paru, à tout prendre, aussi remarquable, et j'ai pu lui dire sans flatterie, en le quittant, que parmi toutes les choses dignes de souvenir que je venais de voir en Angleterre, celle qui m'avait le plus frappé était la conversation que nous venions d'avoir. 'Vous êtes heureux de trouver un tel homme si près du trône. 'DE TOCQUEVILLE.

29 Juin, 1857.'

(Signé)

The Prince was obviously deeply gratified by the praises of a man who had himself established so great a reputation. It is not often that we find in his papers any reference to the panegyrics with which he must by this time have become familiar, but he considered that of the French philosophical politician worth the following entry in his diary: 'M. de Tocqueville writes to Lady Theresa Lewis a very high panegyric upon me [ein grösstes Lob über mich]. As Baron Stockmar had been the Prince's tutor in political science, there was a special reason in the identity of the Baron's views and principles with those of the eminent Frenchman, why this panegyric should be no less gratifying to the Baron than to the Prince himself.

'I have made the acquaintance of Tocqueville,' he wrote, 26th of July, to the Baron, and had a long conversation with him, with which we were both greatly pleased. He has expressed himself in such friendly terms about me to Lady Theresa Lewis, that I send you a copy of the passage which the Queen has made, feeling sure that it will give you pleasure, as I maintained your views and principles, which have become my own.

'The Prince of Hohenzollern has been here for the last four days, and we are much pleased with him. Now the mystery is out," the diplomatists are furious that they had no scent of it.

"Our reception in Manchester was enthusiastic beyond belief. It was truly touching; and Fritz was also received

Of the marriage which had been arranged between the King of Portugal and the Princess Stephanie, daughter of the Prince of Hohenzollern and his wife Josephine, a Princess of the Grand-Ducal House of Baden, and a cousin of the Empress Josephine. The Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden was a niece of the Empress Josephine's first husband, and an adopted daughter of the Emperor Napoleon I.

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THE PRINCE OF WALES.

1857

with great affection. He is to receive the freedom of the, city on the 13th in Guildhall, and must leave us for Germany on the 14th.

'Bertie set out to-day at noon for Königswinter-he will take a week to get there. Of the young people only Lord Derby's son will go with him in the first instance; Wood Cadogan, and Gladstone will follow.'

10

The visit of the Prince of Wales to Königswinter was for the purposes of study. Besides the young companions referred to by the Prince, he had with him General Grey, Colonel (now General) H. Ponsonby, his domestic tutor, Mr. Gibbs, his classical tutor, the Rev. Charles Tarver (now one of the Canons of Chester), and Dr. Armstrong. During the Prince's stay at Königswinter Mr. W. Gladstone, Mr. C. Wood (son of Lord Halifax), the present Lord Cadogan, and Mr. Frederick (now Colonel) Stanley, son of the late Lord Derby, and now Minister at War, were with him as companions.

10 In 1858, when Mr. Gibbs retired, Mr. Tarver was appointed his Director of Studies and Chaplain, in which capacity he accompanied the Prince to Rome, Spain, and Portugal, and then went with him to Edinburgh, remaining with the Prince till the autumn of 1859, when his education ceased to be conducted at home.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

Outbreak of Indian Mutiny-Departure of Sir Colin Campbell for India as Commander-inChief-Correspondence of the Queen with Lord Palmerston as to Reinforcements for India-Letter from Lord Canning to the Queen-Letter by the Prince Consort to the Prince of Prussia-Marriage of the Princess Charlotte of Belgium-Reinforcements for India urged by the Queen.

In distributing the Victoria Cross on the 26th of June, there must have been present to the mind of the Queen not only what had been so lately done by the brave soldiers, so well represented by the heroes of that brilliant scene, but also what they and their comrades might soon be called upon to do in the cause of their country. For some time the tidings from India had indicated the existence of a spirit of disaffection among the native troops, which there were strong grounds to believe was due to an organised plan for sapping their allegiance. Several regiments had been disbanded, but the feeling continued to spread to an extent which could not be regarded otherwise than with alarm. Towards the end of June this alarm turned out to have been only too well grounded; and when the tidings arrived in England of the mutiny of the native regiments at Meerut on the 10th of May, and of the massacre by them of numbers of English officers, women and children, followed by the retreat of the mutineers to Delhi, and the spread of the mutiny among the troops there, it was felt that a crisis had come which demanded immediate help from this country.

On the 28th of June Lord Panmure wrote to the Queen that the Cabinet, after anxious deliberation, had sanctioned his giving instructions to the Commander-in-Chief to hold four regiments in readiness to embark for India in addition to those already under orders. He reported that Lord Canning had drawn upon Ceylon for a regiment, but as an additional regiment had been ordered to be stationed there as a reserve for China, that island would not be denuded of troops. The regiments which had been despatched to China