ON ALEXANDRINES.A LETTER TO SOME COUNTRY COUSINS.
This paper, it is almost needless to say, was written just after the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in March, 1863.
DEAR COUSINS,--Be pleased to receive herewith a packet of Mayall's photographs and copies of Illustrated News, Illustrated Times, London Review, Queen, and Observer, each containing an account of the notable festivities of the past week.If, besides these remembrances of home, you have a mind to read a letter from an old friend, behold here it is.When I was at school, having left my parents in India, a good-natured captain or colonel would come sometimes and see us Indian boys, and talk to us about papa and mamma, and give us coins of the realm, and write to our parents, and say, "I drove over yesterday and saw Tommy at Dr.Birch's.I took him to the 'George,' and gave him a dinner.His appetite is fine.
He states that he is reading 'Cornelius Nepos,' with which he is much interested.His masters report," &c.And though Dr.Birch wrote by the same mail a longer, fuller, and official statement, Ihave no doubt the distant parents preferred the friend's letter, with its artless, possibly ungrammatical, account of their little darling.
I have seen the young heir of Britain.These eyes have beheld him and his bride, on Saturday in Pall Mall, and on Tuesday in the nave of St.George's Chapel at Windsor, when the young Princess Alexandra of Denmark passed by with her blooming procession of bridesmaids;and half an hour later, when the Princess of Wales came forth from the chapel, her husband by her side robed in the purple mantle of the famous Order which his forefather established here five hundred years ago.We were to see her yet once again, when her open carriage passed out of the Castle gate to the station of the near railway which was to convey her to Southampton.
Since womankind existed, has any woman ever had such a greeting? At ten hours' distance, there is a city far more magnificent than ours.
With every respect for Kensington turnpike, I own that the Arc de l'Etoile at Paris is a much finer entrance to an imperial capital.
In our black, orderless, zigzag streets, we can show nothing to compare with the magnificent array of the Rue de Rivoli, that enormous regiment of stone stretching for five miles and presenting arms before the Tuileries.Think of the late Fleet Prison and Waithman's Obelisk, and of the Place de la Concorde and the Luxor Stone! "The finest site in Europe," as Trafalgar Square has been called by some obstinate British optimist, is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, and statues so puerile, disorderly, and hideous that a lover of the arts must hang the head of shame as he passes, to see our dear old queen city arraying herself so absurdly; but when all is said and done, we can show one or two of the greatest sights in the world.I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast or striking as the Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show such a prodigious muster of faithful people as our young Princess saw on Saturday, when the nation turned out to greet her.
The calculators are squabbling about the numbers of hundreds of thousands, of millions, who came forth to see her and bid her welcome.Imagine beacons flaming, rockets blazing, yards manned, ships and forts saluting with their thunder, every steamer and vessel, every town and village from Ramsgate to Gravesend, swarming with happy gratulation; young girls with flowers, scattering roses before her; staid citizens and aldermen pushing and squeezing and panting to make the speech, and bow the knee, and bid her welcome!
Who is this who is honored with such a prodigious triumph, and received with a welcome so astonishing? A year ago we had never heard of her.I think about her pedigree and family not a few of us are in the dark still, and I own, for my part, to be much puzzled by the allusions of newspaper genealogists and bards and skalds to Vikings, Berserkers, and so forth.But it would be interesting to know how many hundreds of thousands of photographs of the fair bright face have by this time made it beloved and familiar in British homes.Think of all the quiet country nooks from Land's End to Caithness, where kind eyes have glanced at it.The farmer brings it home from market; the curate from his visit to the Cathedral town; the rustic folk peer at it in the little village shop-window;the squire's children gaze on it round the drawing-room table: every eye that beholds it looks tenderly on its bright beauty and sweet artless grace, and young and old pray God bless her.We have an elderly friend, (a certain Goody Twoshoes,) who inhabits, with many other old ladies, the Union House of the parish of St.Lazarus in Soho.One of your cousins from this house went to see her, and found Goody and her companion crones all in a flutter of excitement about the marriage.The whitewashed walls of their bleak dormitory were ornamented with prints out of the illustrated journals, and hung with festoons and true-lovers' knots of tape and colored paper;and the old bodies had had a good dinner, and the old tongues were chirping and clacking away, all eager, interested, sympathizing; and one very elderly and rheumatic Goody, who is obliged to keep her bed, (and has, I trust, an exaggerated idea of the cares attending on royalty,) said, "Pore thing, pore thing! I pity her." Yes, even in that dim place there was a little brightness and a quavering huzza, a contribution of a mite subscribed by those dozen poor old widows to the treasure of loyalty with which the nation endows the Prince's bride.