In 1874, Mr. Disraeli spoke as follows: "The delicate state of health of Prince Leopold has prevented him from adopting a profession, which in the instance of his royal brothers has been followed, I may say, by them with energy and success. Partly from that state of health, and in a greater degree, probably, from difference of temperament, his pursuits are of a different character from those of princes who are called upon to deal with fleets and armies. Prince Leopold is a student, and a student of no common order. He is predisposed to pursuits of science and learning, and to the cultivation of those fine arts which adorn life, and lend lustre to a nation. It would, however, be a great error to suppose that for a young prince of his character there may not be an eminent career, and one not only creditable to himself, but most useful to his country. The influence of an exalted personage of intellect and culture upon a community is incalculable. No more complete and rare example of that truth can be shown than in the instance of his illustrious father, the Prince Consort. We can now contemplate the public labours of the Prince Consort with something of the candour of posterity. He refined the tastes, multiplied the enjoyments, and elevated the moral sense of the great body of the people. Nor has his influence ceased since he departed from us. Public opinion has maintained the influence it gave to our civilisation, because it sympathised with it. The example of such a father will guide and animate Prince Leopold."

Mr. Gladstone seconded Mr. Disraeli to the following effect:

"I believe the right hon. gentleman has not gone beyond the truth in the picture he has drawn of the large intelligence, the cultivated mind, and the refined pursuits of this Prince, and of his capacity to tread—in these most important respects—in the steps of his illustrious father."

The anticipations here expressed were no doubt regarded by some at the time as mere stock utterances necessary to the performance of an official duty. But, in commenting upon the words of our higher statesmen, it is apt to be forgotten what opportunities of observation and formation of judgment are open to them. Reading their utterances by the light of after events, we are now enabled to do justice to the discernment and foresight of these eminent speakers: they knew more than the public.

In comparing the principal occasions on which Prince Leopold has been in any large sense before the public, it will be seen that the thread of a common object runs through them, and thus evidences the bent of his mind and interest. Outside of partisan phraseology and those nominal demarcations which in the clash of minor politics mean so little and are counted so much, Prince Leopold may be called a Liberal. As the Times phrased it, "his views on education are of the widest kind."

At the meeting held at the Mansion House, on the 19th Feb. 1879, in support of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, Prince Leopold thus gave expression to his views :

"To all Englishmen, I think, it is gratifying to feel that the institutions of which we are so proud are not mere dead systems, but living organisms which can expand under new circumstances and meet new needs as they arise. Few English institutions have been the objects of so long and so wide a reverence as our Universities, and yet there was a time when they seemed to be falling out of harmony with the needs of the age. That reproach, I think, can no longer be urged against them. We may fairly claim that of late they have taken the lead in all the most important educational reforms. We sometimes hear comparisons made between German and English Universities, not always to the advantage of the latter. I have no means of making any such comparison, as my experience of Universities is confined to the University of Oxford; but I shall always look back to my residence at Oxford as one of the greatest pleasures and the greatest privileges of my life, and I should find it hard to believe that any other University can surpass Oxford in the power of attracting her alumni to herself. There is, however, one advantage possessed by German Universities which must strike everybody. They diffuse knowledge throughout a much wider class of the community than Oxford or Cambridge have hitherto reached. Learning in England has been too much regarded as the privilege of a particular class." Prince Leopold then referred to the conditions of residence at Oxford and Cambridge as keeping away students of narrow means, and pointed to the University of London as having removed barriers to the spread of culture, and opened facilities which now the elder Universities were glad to unite with her in offering. "A very strong spirit has arisen," he said, "in these old seats of learning. I cannot call it a spirit of benevolence, for these lectures are in no way a work of charity, and will, it is hoped, be self-supporting after the first few years. But it is a spirit of active sympathy with the wants and wishes of a very large class, whose needs in the direction of higher education have been too long ignored." Prince Leopold's lesson from Ruskin, and the spirit which we can trace as the actuating motive of the young speaker's earnestness, were very finely evidenced in the beauty and truth of his suggestion, "that the highest wisdom and the highest pleasure need not be costly or exclusive, but may be almost as cheap and as free as air, and that the greatness of a nation must be measured, not by her wealth or apparent power, but by the degree in which all her people have learnt to gather from the world of books, of art, of nature, a pure and ennobling joy."

London, "so large and unwieldy that everybody's business becomes nobody's business," was epigrammatically pourtrayed as the possessor of

"confused strength and half conscious greatness." The object of the London society, which is the formation of local centres for university teaching in the Metropolis, we may hope to see much more largely realised, so that not only one Oxonian may be found living in Whitechapel, but there may result a much more thorough intermingling of the cultivated and the uncultivated, to the end of the descent and spread of civilisation, a glorious dream at least of a practical New Jerusalem being let down in our midst.

Prince Leopold's next appearance as a public speaker was at the meeting on the 25th February, 1879, of the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, which is a foundation of a kind not very differen from that of the primitive University, such as it was in the days when scholars could not afford to pay a few hundreds a year during their educational career, and had not contemplated the luxurious privileges of an Oxford or a Cambridge. Prince Leopold, in presiding over this gathering, found himself treading in the footsteps of his grand-uncle, the Duke of Sussex, who, more than half a century before, had fulfilled the same office when the Institution was in its infancy. The studies fostered at this establishment are of the essentially modern order, comprising amongst others public speaking, drawing, mechanics, physiology, and even domestic economy, in addition to the theory of music, English literature, and even chess. The appearance of this favourite game of his own among subjects open to prize competition afforded Prince Leopold a text for a very charming and appropriate piece of metaphorical suggestiveness.

"I need not go, at length, into the advantages to be derived from each of the subjects which your curriculum embraces; there is not one which may not be of great service to the practical career or to the mental development of the zealous student. And there is so much similarity in the conditions of all effort and success, that even the studies which seem most remote from active life may always furnish a moral which life can adopt and employ. For instance, I notice that in what is called the 'Miscellaneous Department' of your curriculum you provide instruction in the game of chess. This is not the most obviously practical of your subjects; but it has struck me that even those, if any there be, who desire to limit their education to this branch alone, may learn some not unimportant lessons of life from the manner in which you teach it. Particular attention, I see your programme says, is paid to the study of the openings. Now, is it not true that in life, as in chess, it is often the opening, and the opening only, which is under our own control? Later in the game, the plans and wishes of others begin to conflict unpleasantly with our own; sometimes it is as much as we can do to avoid being checkmated altogether. But for the first few moves we are free. We can deploy our pieces to the best advantage; we can settle on the line of

action which best suits our powers; and we sometimes find that it will repay us to sacrifice a pawn or a piece so as to gain at once a position which may give us a decided advantage throughout the whole game. Does not this, too, remind us of early life? Must we not often be content to sacrifice some pawn of present pleasure or profit, to gain a vantage ground which may help us to successes which self-indulgence could never have won? I am sure that among the bright young faces which I see around me, there are many who have known what it is to labour against the grain; to begin a lesson when they would rather have gone to the theatre, to finish it when they would rather have gone to bed. And I am sure that such efforts of self-denial and conscientiousness form at least half the real benefit of education; that it would do us little good to wake up and find our heads magically stocked with all manner of facts, in comparison to the good which it does us to fight for knowledge, to suffer for her, and to make her at last our own. In great things as well as in small, this principle of self-help is a peculiarly English spirit."

Like his father, Prince Leopold is wide-minded; he regards facts, not from a narrow and personal, but from a general standpoint. To fully realise this attitude of our Royal Family, and to find a cause for gratitude at the same time, we have but to perform a simple process of comparison. In certain countries of the East how often do we not hear, in relation to the progress of this or that measure of reform, that it was impeded by palace intrigue? The advantage of the palace and the wellbeing of the people have there become too evidently distinct, and even antagonistic. With ourselves, it is no paradox to affirm that the prince, or even the Sovereign, may be the truest republican amongst us. We need not be misled by artificial or conventional meanings of words. A Republican in the true sense of the term is one who thinks and labours for the common good, fulfils the duties of his position, lofty or lowly, the service of the State, without bigotry and without selfishness.

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It is not difficult to discover what it is that enlarges the mind and enables it to take this expanded view; it is the all-mastering influence of a broad and generous culture. The mind that is deeply buried in pettifogging details may find it difficult to rise into this large and stimulating air. But even from pedestrian intellects imagination is rarely wholly absent, and it may fall to the lot of an eloquent prince to be the happy person to break the seal that holds a mummy's bandage upon an unopened mind. It is quite possible that, where a prophet might have cried in vain, the prestige of a prince may introduce the missing element; and the idea that could not obtain entrance before may pass by the aid of that slight stimulus into many a new mind.

A philosophic prince, living in the English country at the present day, may find some cause for gratitude that the public disposition is not

obstinately set against liberal ideas. In the days of some of his forefathers, for instance, Prince Leopold might have found it difficult to obtain a public hearing for such advanced thought as is exemplified in the following quotation from his speech at the Birkbeck Literary Institution, where it is on record that the sentiment was greeted with applause: "Foreign nations are not merely our competitors, but our friends; and nothing, I believe, is likely to create so true a feeling of friendship and sympathy between one people and another as a practical knowledge of each other's speech. Sometimes, perhaps, as the proverb says, we take what is unknown to be magnificent; but oftener, I think, we take it to be something unfriendly and distasteful to us-something which, if we did know it, we should not like. But we find that with every real increase of understanding of our fellow-men of different races some unkindly illusion disappears; we learn to realise their likeness to ourselves, to sympathise with their national character, to co-operate in their efforts after the common good." The Prince may fairly be described as an advocate for free trade in sympathy; of an exchange of which we cannot have too much. To wisdom he would strive to give the same extension. "Learning is a commodity the demand for which grows with the supply. We need not fear a glut of science or of intelligence as we might fear a glut of cotton goods or indigo. All the knowledge which we who now live can gain can assuredly be made useful both to ourselves and to those who come after us."

Prince Leopold's speech, made at Sheffield on the 20th of October last, is a discourse upon public spirit as manifested in the foundation of educational institutions, and so is well linked with his other addresses, the common motive of which is the desire for the spread of ennobling culture. Mr. Mark Firth, who gave to the people of Sheffield the Public Park which the Prince of Wales opened in 1875, on the later occasion added to his munificent gift a college, the lecture-hall of which is capable of accommodating a thousand students. Prince Leopold, therefore, was very happily chosen as the president of its inauguration; he had a theme before him to which he was able to do ample justice. Public or humanitarian spirit is the quality that above all others demarcates a high civilisation from a barbarian state. It must be found peculiarly pleasant to refer to present evidences of that spirit, by a prince whose ancestors have presided over the fortunes of this country downwards from times when, to put it mildly, barbarism preponderated over enlightenment. Fitly indeed may a prince of our times and people sing the pean of progress. Prince Leopold is evidently actuated by a keen and sincere enthusiasm. "We cannot wonder," he said in his speech at Sheffield, "that when a man has tasted the happiness of great and generous actions, he is eager to enjoy the high delight again, and finds other triumphs and satisfac