Aunt Adelaide

who saw Sow jo

ue litter.

There are two nice.

little girls here AnEmily

laide and En

Curzon. Now good bye little biky

My good

Your dearest Papa send you & kise

к

One More Birthday

1842 by the Duchess of Kent, who on this occasion paid the Queen a visit of congratulation. A banquet was given in the evening in the grand dining-hall and a public dinner took place in the town, presided over by Mr. Neville, one of the members for the Borough. At the former an enormous cake, manufactured by Mr. Mawditt, Her Majesty's first yeoman-confectioner, was placed on the banqueting table in the Castle in the morning and partaken of by Her Majesty's royal and illustrious guests. A portrait of the young Prince is given in the next issue of The Illustrated London News, and two odes in honour of his birthday are published, the first of them commencing with the verse :

"The voice of nations rises on the gale,
Across the Island of the brave and free,
On this, thy festival, to bid thee hail
Young Lord of Empire over land and sea!
Great as thy heritage is great to be

It is no greater than the hope we twine

With the fair years of thy futurity.

Thou scion of sceptre-bearing line

Oh! Heir to all its power-be all its virtues thine.”

The other composition is more martial in its conception, two of its couplets being the following:

"There's Scotland in her bonnet blue
Steady and firm as rock of steel!
Her tartans waved at Waterloo,
When onward rushed the sturdy' Chiel.
There's England's glorious chivalry
And Erin's lance that seldom fails;

Match me old Earth! these nations through
Whose shields bear up the Prince of Wales.

"Fair child, thy years are barely five,
And yet to them the freeborn wave
Hath welcome been, where ' Jack's Alive.'
Right well thou lov'st the sailor brave,

Who ramparts well the Prince of Wales."

Another visit is paid to Osborne (November 18), and three days later, the sixth birthday of the Princess Royal (now the Queen's correspondent) is duly fêted there; while at Osborne the Queen and Prince Albert go to Arundel Castle, where they are entertained by the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk. As usual Christmas is kept at Windsor Castle, and both the Queen and her husband showed much interest in the Royal School, Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park, now completed. Christmas was commemorated with the various observances which reminded Prince Albert of old days at Rosenau, and the frost was so severe that on the last day of the year he was able to captain the victorious side in an exciting game of hockey played on the frozen surface of the lake.

CHAPTER IX

FROM GOVERNESS TO TUTOR: HOME LIFE AT
WINDSOR, OSBORNE, AND BALMORAL

1847-1850

THE fifth birthday of the Prince of Wales (November 9, 1846) marks in many ways an epoch in the annals of his boyhood. Amongst the visitors invited by the Queen to Windsor on that occasion was Madame de Bunsen, whose letters throw an interesting light on the nursery-life which was gradually shaping the receptive mind of the Heir Apparent for the serious studies of the school-room. In a letter to Mrs. Waddington dated Carlton House Terrace, November 13, 1846, this observant lady writes:

... I was invited to Windsor Castle to spend the birthday of the Prince of Wales, for the first time, as it is not usual with the Queen to have foreign guests on that occasion. In the morning I accompanied the Royal party to the terrace to see the troops, who fired a feu de joie in honour of the Prince of Wales, who enjoyed it much, in extreme seriousness and returned duly, by a military salute, the salutation he received as the colours passed. I inquired of Prince Albert whether he had formed. any idea yet of his position at this early age (five years). He told me that last month in travelling through Cornwall, he had asked for an explanation • "Memoirs of Baron de Bunsen," vol. ii. p. 120.