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    Mat9,1857.] THE LEADER. 445

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    PRINCE ALBERT ON THE GEORGES. Pbince Alb...

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    UP AND DOWN LONDON. From Paddington to L...

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    Our Steam Troop-Ships. Last Week We Expr...

    vented . The fault may ba principally with the engines ; but if our steam troop-ships cannot even steam ( no one accuses them of sailing ) , they appear to us to be properly called unseaworthy . It is at least satisfactory to find that the Adventure and Assistance are being tried daily in Stokes Bay , and that they answer well . We may hope that their topsides will be tight and their rigging stretched before they proceed to China . To say nothing of their engines .

    Mat9,1857.] The Leader. 445

    Mat 9 , 1857 . ] THE LEADER . 445

    Prince Albert On The Georges. Pbince Alb...

    PRINCE ALBERT ON THE GEORGES . Pbince Albert said at Manchester , " In the Duchess of Gloucester we have lost the last of the children of that good king who occupied the throne during sixty years , and carried this country fearlessly through the most momentous struggles of its history . " We wish it were possible to place in contrast four lectures on the Georges by Prince Albert with the famous four by Mr . Thackeray . "We possess , however , the opinions of the great satirist , and we have

    now a clue to the opinions of the accomplished Prince . Mr . Thackeray appeals to the pity of history in behalf of the poor insane king , the victim of delusion and disease ; he is solemnly and profoundly pathetic when he asks us to approach with reverence the affliction of a crazed , forlorn old man ; but Mr . Thackeray's Lear is Prince Albert ' s Cromwell . For , standing on the Manchester dais , with a canopy above him very like a crown , the Consort felt all but regal , and in the name of the Queen decreed : —

    Art . I . That George III . was a good king . Art . II . That for sixty years he was The State . Art . III . That he fearlessly carried England through the most momentous struggles of her history . The portraits of the great men who lived when George III . was king , might have been observed to frown when Prince Albert , in their presence , thus deified the memory of the virtuous pastor and champion of his people . But the Manchester audience gazed at the Prince and took no heed of the statesmen , the admirals , and the generals ignored in his brief oration .

    If History should reply , Give History the lie ! A few persons there might have been , however , who , having read Lord Brougham ' s Lives , Mr . Tuackkray ' s Lectm-es , and the necessary chapters of Universal History , were startled to hear that George III . had carried the country through long and glorious struggles . They fancied that , within a fow moments , Prince Albert had grown

    in voice and countenance very like a German potentate of the seventeenth century ; his words were so purely monarchical ; he attributed all vigour and victory to the throne ; he uttered not the name of George , but spoke of him witli monumental perip hrasis as ' that good king . ' Well might thoughtful men , with clear memories , staro at the Prince while he gave this public contradiction to Mr . Tjiackeray . Ho who has so often

    distinguished himself by the enlightened philanthropy and scholarly culture displayed in his speeches , who has pronounced so often the panegyric of science , of art , of literature , was holding up his head under that little iirmaraonfc of violet and gold , denying history , tolling Englishmen that their recollections deceived thorn , afTecting to believo that Gbouge III ., who waa mad hulf his Hfo and mischievous all the rest , 'performed those vast achievements which almost redeemed a

    policy besot with disaster and disgrace Pity that Mr . Thackkkay was not there , roponting of his Edinburgh apology , and resolving , for

    the future , never to commiserate the imbecility of Prince Albert ' s model monarch , to whom England owes that the combined Powers , during a series of wars , did not consume . her utterly . The great Bourbon war and the American war were carried out by George Rex , solus ; Pitt , Nelson , Wellington , were the puppets of the kingly Energttmenos .

    Prince Albert , speaking of the kindly and charitable Duchess of Gloucester , in whom beneficence was a virtue unalloyed by ostentation , was , perhaps , bound by courtly duty to flatter her father's name . Well , he need not have been perplexed how to impute a good quality to the third George . There was something personally likable in the shattered old King , in his lucid intervals . He was honest in his sympathies ; he loved some of his children ; a few of his servants are reported to have wept , not in public , at his death . But as a King , he was the incarnation of obstinacy ; he was addicted to favouritism in its worst form ; he continually

    sought to encroach upon the Constitution ; he involved his kingdom in disasters , and in no way aided in their triumphant issues . We are sorry that Prince Albert should have added this exhibition to the display o Art Treasures at Manchester , because we sincerely x * egret any circumstance that casts a slur upon the throne . The English public believes in a mixed form of government , and in a balance of constitutional powers , and it has a loyal respect and affection for whatever virtues may hallow and adorn the Crown ; but after two revolutions and a succession of reforms , it will not learn anew

    the lessons of divine right , or discredit history because Prince Albert contradicts it . The intellectual Prince will not succeed in popularizing the principle of personal government and monarchical sanctity . Happy would it have been for England had royalty been in the days of George III . what it is now , an element of dignity and grandeur in the State ; but inasmuch as it was The State , it was a cause of calamity ; and inasmuch as it was not The State , a race of able ministers , generals , and admirals ' carried the country through the most momentous struggles of its history . '

    We have reason to be glad that Prince Albert did not enlarge his comment on the reign of George III . ; he reversed in one sentence the history of half a century ; had he proceeded , lie mig ht have become ironical , in spite of himself , and have supplied a fifth satire to Mr . Thackeray ' s series . Only , the satire might have wounded the living instead of the dead .

    Up And Down London. From Paddington To L...

    UP AND DOWN LONDON . From Paddington to London-bridge , every 0110 will admit , is a more formidable journey than from London-bridge to Brighton . But has any one man , in one day , travelled from Iceland wharf to Kensington Canal ? Dr . Livingstone might do it . He ia accustomed to sickness , fatigue , and danger . But we would counsel no less resolute and hardy oxporimontaliat to undertake the expedition without trustworthy guides , a proper

    apparatus of transport , and a plenitudo oi money in the current coin of the several boundless contiguities of brick . London , to say the truth , is still barbaric . AVith a fow oxcoptions , embracing the northern and southern populations , ita inhabitants still employ carriages , cabs , and omnibuses as their means of transit , so that St . John ' s-wood is virtually more distant from the Strand than Richmond , and Islington than tho top of Norwoodhill , that looks ovor Groydou , and catches

    the breath of the sea . Yet there seems no reason why we should for ever depend upon cab and omnibus proprietors for our facilities of metropolitan locomotion , or in default be driven into vile steamboats , the builders of which , obviously , have never been in America , or they would improve their construction , and give the public saloon-cabins instead of rat-holes , while the passengers generally seem equally untravelled , or they would swear themselves into a bilious fever at the companies and captains . We have

    been half a century obtaining an amelioration of our omnibuses ; our four-wheel cabs are still rickety sedan-chairs rolled upon wheels by horses that stagger as they go ; yet we hear of ten per cent , dividends , and of satisfied proprietors realizing their shares and retiring . It is full time to think of making both ends of London meet , in a metaphorical sense , in order that Greenhithe may be brought within a day's journey

    of the Swiss Cottage , and that the dwellers by the Greenland Dock may explore the world , if so they are inclined , at least as far as the Bayswater rivulet . If not for their sakes , at least for business purposes , we must speedily cast about us for some method of retrieving those thoroughfares which Burke described as bursting with opulence , but which , in his time , no more resembled the main streets of our day than the Serpentine resembles the East India Docks .

    We have arrived at the epoch of proposals —nothing more . It is true that Parliament has already granted power to a company to construct a railway connecting the Great Western , the London and North Western , and the Great Northern Railways , at a central terminus near the General Post-office ; but the public has not granted the money , although it would be more safely invested between St . Paul ' s-churchyard and the Harrowroad than in the marshes and forests between Moscow and Ufa . Plans , however , exist in abundance . Mr . Mitchell , a civil engineer , solicits the attention of Sir Benjamin Hall

    to averybold and comprehensive idea . He will , if properly authorized and indemnified , surpass all the CiESARS in history , and , knocking his way through the sixty thousand acres covered with buildings and streets that constitute London , will construct a grand , straight thoroughfare from Kensington Palace to Shoreditch . Its length would be four miles , its width ninety-eight feet . It would traverse the Serpentine , Hyde Park , Grosvenor-square , Regent-street , St . Giles's , Lincolu ' s Inn-fields , Holborn , Victoria-street , Smithfield , the Artillery Ground , and JFinabury-square , and terminate at tho Eastern Counties Railway Station ; vast heaps of

    trashy brickwork would be obliterated ; bridges and viaducts would preserve the stately level ; a double line of crystal colonnades would keep tho rain oft * the footways without intercepting the sun ; there would be a new palace , sublimely elevated , at one end of the line , and the double facade would present examples of every architectural order—Doric , Ionic , Corinthian , Gothic , Norman , and Palladian , Moresco , Italian , and Egyptian—with vast intervals , no doubt , ot that higgledy-piggledy of stucco , of early English grimace , tux ' ret of Italy , arch of Spain , pillar of Corinth , which is tho glory and tho beauty of our suburbs .

    Parallel with this unparalleled street should run a lino of railway , sunk in tho earth , with crystal stations and fiower-embroidored banks . Thero must bo six stations—at Kensiugton-gardon Gate , Grosvenor Gate , St . George ' s Church , St . Giles ' s Church , Chancery-lane , Smithfield , Iftnabury-square , and Shoroditch . A branch-lino should bo onrriod ovor tho bonds of tho wayfarers on W aterloo

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 9, 1857, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09051857/page/13/