The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Vol. 1-4). Robert Thomas Wilson

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      THE VICTORIA TOWER, WESTMINSTER PALACE.

      table of studies prepared by Dr. Philpott for the Prince showed. But there was no denying the truth of his Royal Highness’s trenchant criticism on this document in his letter to Lord John Russell, in which he said that all the activity in these departments was “on paper,” and even if it had been real, the scheme was incomplete. After a long and laborious correspondence with the best authorities on the subject, the Prince succeeded in persuading the University to thoroughly modernise its course of instruction, and his revised plan of studies was triumphantly carried on the 1st of November, 1848. As Punch in a clever cartoon put it, H.R.H. Field-Marshal Chancellor Prince Albert took the pons asinorum after the manner of Napoleon at Arcola.

      As winter drew on, the state of Ireland became increasingly distressful, and the confusion on the Continent more and more ominous. In England some faint signs of reviving trade were discernible, but only just discernible. The death of Lord Melbourne, however, on the 24th of November, painfully affected the Queen, whose affection for her first guide in statecraft had never abated. “Truly and sincerely,” she writes in her Diary, “do I deplore the loss of one who was a most kind and disinterested friend of mine, and most sincerely attached to me. He was indeed for the first two years and a half of my reign almost the only friend I had, except Stockmar and Lehzen.” Her last letter to the aged Minister, expressed in terms of simple but touching solicitude, according to his sister, Lady Palmerston, did much to lift from his wearied spirit the cloud of melancholy that had settled on it. Melbourne’s character was rather misunderstood, for his whole life was a conceited protest against affectation. He was one of those who get great amusement out of life by treating it as a comedy, in which even in withered age they persist in playing the rôle of the jeune premier. He toiled hard to persuade Society that he was an elegant idler, and masked his vaulting ambition under the guise of a cynical indifference to worldly pomp and power. His tastes were a little coarse—otherwise his imposture would have been complete, and he would have perhaps realised the “grandly simple ideal” of a perfect aristocratic character, which the Earl of March imputed to George Selwyn. Melbourne’s first impulse was usually to frivolity. But when he saw that business must be attended to, no man could work harder or bring to bear on affairs of State a keener intellect, a more astute judgment, or a craftier scheme of strategy. His handsome person and his charm of manner rendered him in his old age a persona grata at the Court of the Queen, who treated him with filial affection and respect. In him one often fancied the characters of Walpole and Bolingbroke met in combination, and there is a passage in his speech on the Indemnity Bill (11th of March, 1818) which may be cited as strangely appropriate to his career. It is that in which, after expatiating on the advantages which a soldier has whose exploits are performed in the light of day, before his comrades and his foes, and so publicly, that his valour and his virtues cannot be denied or disputed before a world in which they receive bold advertisement, he proceeds to show that it is far otherwise with the politician. “Not so the services of the Minister,” exclaimed Melbourne, with a little sub-acid cynicism; “they lie not so much in acting in great crises, as in preventing those crises from arising; therefore they are often obscure and unknown, subject to every species of misrepresentation, and effected amidst obloquy, attack, and condemnation, whilst in reality—entitled to the approbation and gratitude of the country—how frequently are such services lost in the tranquillity which they have been the means of preserving, and amidst the prosperity which they have themselves created.”

      Another stout political chieftain had passed away on the 21st of September, when Lord George Bentinck died suddenly of heart disease. His leadership of the Protectionists had latterly been imprudent and unpopular, and he had indeed thrown it up during the Session, when it was no longer possible to conceal the dissatisfaction which it created among his followers. Lord George Bentinck was an able man, but like Achilles, “iracundus, inexorabilis, acer.” Discredit has recently been cast on his career on the turf, which too late in life he deserted for politics. His indignation at “being sold,” as he phrased it, when Peel abandoned Protection, flung him headlong into the civil strife of the times, with all his prejudices thick upon him, and with a mind ill-equipped by study or training for political controversy or the practice of statecraft. Fury and rancour, and a strange confusion of mind in marshalling his arguments, marked his harangues, and in strategy his impulsiveness and his arrogance often led him into serious errors. Yet he was popular on the whole in the House of Commons, for he was a man of dauntless courage, and was supposed to be guided by honesty of purpose in defending the interests of his order. If he had not been a little too much given to trumpeting his personal integrity, his zeal and self-sacrifice would have been better appreciated by his contemporaries, who till his death did him less than justice.