that there would be many followers where the foremost man of England was anxious and ready to lead the way. That, with a large breadth of the lands of Great Britain partially tilled, or scarcely cultivated at all, the British Nation should not unfrequently have to expend twenty or thirty millions of money in foreign corn, is a reproach against our practical sagacity, in which the Prince at least can have no share of the blame. It has been said that, if we knew any man's life intimately, there would be some great and peculiar moral to be derived from it-some tendency to be noted, which other men, observing it in his career, might seek to correct in themselves. I cannot help thinking that I see what may be the moral to be derived from a study of the Prince's life. It is one which applies only to a interested in few amongst the highest natures; and, simply stated, it is this—that he cared too much about too many things. The Prince too much too many things. His craving for perfection. Moreover, everything in which he was concerned must be done supremely well if it was to please and satisfy him. The great German, Goethe, had the same defect, or rather the same superabundance. He would take inordinate pains even in writing a short note, that it should be admirably written. He did not understand the merit of secondbest; but everything that was to be done must be done perfectly. It was thus with the Prince. In the choice of a jewel, in the placing of a statue, in the laying out of a walk, in the direction of a party of pleasure, his reasoning mind must be satisfied; and he longed that everything that was to be, should be the best of its kind. the health. Now men of this nature, with an abiding Strain upon aspiration towards what is beautiful, and such an inordinate appreciation of what is reasonable, require also to have an extraordinary stock of health,* otherwise they make extravagant demands upon their powers of thought and attention, and thus upon the primary elements of life. *And the Prince had very good health. At any rate he had begun with a fine constitution. Every one of the chief organs of life was well developed in him, with the exception of a heart that was not quite equal to the work put upon it; so that he mostly had but a feeble pulse. It was upon the nervous energy that this constant stress of work, and this striving after excellence in everything, must have told, as such demands do tell upon all men of that high nature. The man who insists upon having a good reason for everything he thinks and does, has set himself a task which it requires almost superhuman energy to master. With a boundless appetite for knowledge, the Prince declined to be superficial in anything; and whatever question was brought to him, he set to work at it with a resolution to give his best attention to solve it. All men, when they find such a mind to lean. upon, delight to bring their difficulties to it; and in the Prince's case his extraordinary good nature and prompt sympathy forbade him to ignore any question which interested his fellow-men. I cannot help thinking that, but for this peculiarity in his nature-a peculiarity which, regret it as we may, we cannot but love and admire-he would have lived for many years longer, to be, as he had always been, the worthiest and ablest supporter of the Throne, and the foremost advocate of all that held out a promise of increasing the welfare of the people. It may here be well to remind the reader that the Prince was only forty-two years of age when he died; and that the sagacity and prudence for which he gained a just renown, were manifested at an age when many other men, even of the brightest sort, are far from showing maturity of judgment. This early death, too, makes the great amount of knowledge that he had acquired all the more extraordinary. And, altogether, we may say that seldom has there been compressed into a life more of thought, energy, and anxious care, than was crowded into his. His death appears especially premature at a period when we are accustomed to have great soldiers, lawyers, and statesmen distinguishing themselves, and almost showing new faculties, after they have reached the threescore years and ten so pathetically spoken of by the Psalmist. If the Prince had lived to attain what we now think a good old age, he would inevitably have become the most accomplished statesman and the most guiding personage in Europe a man to whose arbitrement fierce national quarrels might have been submitted, and by whose influence calamitous wars might have been averted. So subtly are men constituted, and so difficult is it, even from a careful enume E ration of their qualities, to get at the result of their nature, and to understand the men themselves, that it would be possible, notwithstanding all that has been justly said in praise of the Prince, that he might still have failed to be a very loveable character. You meet with people against whom nothing in dispraise can well be urged, and for whom high-sounding panegyrics might justly be written, who yet are not pleasant, amiable, or loveable. It was not so, however, with the Prince. The mere enumeration of his high qualities and his good tendencies would fail to give a just representation of his The gentle peculiarly gentle, tender, and pathetic cast of mind. Indeed this kind of character is rather German than English, and had always been much noted as a prevailing character in the Prince's family. Though eminently practical, and therefore suited to the people he came to dwell amongst, he had in a high degree that gentleness, that softness, and that romantic nature, which belong to his race and his nation, and which make them very pleasant to live with, and very tender in all their social and family relations. ness of the Prince. |