A private letter from Hanover states that, precisely at twelve minutes to
eleven in the morning on the ninth of the present November, his Majesty
King ERNEST was suddenly attacked by a violent fit of blue devils. All the
court doctors were immediately summoned, and as immediately dismissed, by
his Majesty, who sent for the Wizard of the North (recently appointed
royal astrologer), to divine the mysterious cause of this so sudden
melancholy. In a trice the mystery was solved--Queen Victoria "was happily
delivered of a Prince!" His Majesty was immediately assisted to his
chamber--put to bed--the curtains drawn--all the royal household ordered
to wear list slippers--the one knocker to the palace was carefully tied
up--and (on the departure of our courier) half a load of straw was already
deposited beneath the window of the royal chamber. The sentinels on duty
were prohibited from even sneezing, under pain of death, and all things in
and about the palace, to use a bran new simile, were silent as the grave!
"Whilst there was only the Princess Royal there were many hopes. There was
hope from severe teething--hope from measles--hope from hooping-cough--but
with the addition of a Prince of Wales, the hopes of Hanover are below
par." But we pause. We will no further invade the sanctity of the sorrows
of a king; merely observing, that what makes his Majesty very savage,
makes hundreds of thousands of Englishmen mighty glad. There are now two
cradles between the Crown of England and the White Horse of Hanover.
We have a Prince of Wales! Whilst, however, England is throwing up its
million caps in rapture at the advent, let it not be forgotten to whom we
owe the royal baby. In the clamourousness of our joy the fact would have
escaped us, had we not received a letter from Colonel SIBTHORP, who
assures us that we owe a Prince of Wales entirely to the present cabinet;
had the Whigs remained in office, the infant would inevitably have been a
girl.
For our own part--but we confess we are sometimes apt to look too soberly
at things--we think her Majesty (may all good angels make her caudle!) is,
inadvertently no doubt, treated in a questionable spirit of compliment by
these uproarious rejoicings at the sex of the illustrious little boy, who
has cast, if possible, a new dignity upon Lord Mayor's day, and made the
very giants of Guildhall shoot up an inch taller at the compliment he has
paid them of visiting the world on the ninth of November. In our playful
enthusiasm, we have--that is, the public _We_--declared we must have a
Prince of Wales--we should be dreadfully in the dumps if the child were
not a Prince--the Queen must have a Prince--a bouncing Prince--and nothing
but a Prince. Now might not an ill-natured Philosopher (but all
philosophers are ill-natured) interpret these yearnings for masculine
royalty as something like pensive regrets that the throne should ever be
filled by the feminine sex? For own part we are perfectly satisfied that
the Queen (may she live to see the Prince of Wales wrinkled and
white-headed!) is a Queen, and think VICTORIA THE FIRST sounds quite as
musically--has in it as full a note of promise--as if the regal name had
run--GEORGE THE FIFTH! We think there is a positive want of gallantry at
this unequivocally shouted preference of a Prince of Wales. Nevertheless,
we are happy to say, the pretty, good-tempered Princess Royal (she is
_not_ blind, as the Tories once averred; but then the Whigs were _in_)
still laughs and chirrups as if nothing had happened. Nay, as a proof of
the happy nature of the infant (we beg to say that the fact is copyright,
as we purchased it of the reporter of _The Observer_), whilst, on the
ninth instant, the chimes of St. Martin's were sounding merrily for the
birth of the Prince, the Princess magnanimously shook her coral-bells in
welcome of her dispossessing brother!
Independently of the sensation made in the City by the new glory that has
fallen upon the ninth of November (it is said that Sir PETER LAURIE has
been so rapt by the auspicious coincidence, that he has done nothing since
but talk and think of "the Prince of Wales"--that on Wednesday last he
rebuked an infant beggar with, "I've nothing for you, _Prince of
Wales_")--independently of the lustre flung upon the new Lord Mayor and
the Lord Mayor just out--who will, it is said, both be caudle-cup
baronets, the occasion has given birth to much deep philosophy on the part
of our contemporaries--so deep, that there is no getting to the end of it,
and has also revived much black-letter learning connected with the birth
of every Prince of Wales, from the first to the last--and, therefore,
certainly not least--new-comer.
An hour or so after George the Fourth was born, we are told that the
waggons containing the treasure of the _Hermione_, a Spanish galleon,
captured off St. Vincent by three English frigates, entered St. James's
street, escorted by cavalry and infantry, with trumpets sounding, the
enemy's flags waving over the waggons, and the whole surrounded by an
immense multitude of spectators. Now here, to the vulgar mind, was a happy
augury of the future golden reign of the Royal baby. He comes upon the
earth amid a shower of gold! The melodious chink of doubloons and pieces
of eight echo his first infant wailings! What a theme for the gipsies of
the press--the fortune-tellers of the time! At the present hour that baby
sleeps the last sleep in St. George's chapel; and we have his public and
his social history before us. What does experience--the experience bought
and paid for by hard, hard cash--_now_ read in the "waggons of treasure,"
groaning musically to the rocking-cradle of the callow infant? Simply, the
babe of Queen Charlotte would be a very expensive babe indeed; and that
the wealth of a Spanish galleon was all insufficient for the youngling's
future wants.
We have been favoured, among a series of pictures, with the following of
George the Fourth, exhibited in his babyhood. We are told that "all
persons _of fashion_ were admitted to see the Prince, under the following
restrictions, viz.--that in passing through the apartment _they stepped
with the greatest caution_, and did not offer to touch his Royal Highness.
For the greater security in this respect, a part of the apartment was
latticed off _in the Chinese manner_, to prevent curious persons from
approaching too nearly."
That lattice "in the Chinese manner" was a small yet fatal fore-shadowing
of the Chinese Pavilion at Brighton--of that temple, worthy of Pekin,
wherein the Royal infant of threescore was wont to enshrine himself, not
from the desecrating touch of the world, but even from the eyes of a
curious people, who, having paid some millions toward manufacturing the
most finished gentleman in Europe, had now and then a wish--an unregarded
wish--to look at their expensive handiwork.
What different prognostics have we in the natal day of our present Prince
of Wales! What rational hopes from many circumstances that beset him. The
Royal infant, we are told, is suckled by a person "named Brough, formerly
a _housemaid_ at Esher." From this very fact, will not the Royal child
grow up with the consciousness that he owes his nourishment even to the
very humblest of the people? Will he not suck in the humanising truth with
his very milk?
And then for the Spanish treasure--"hard food for Midas"--that threw its
jaundiced glory about the cradle of George the Fourth; what is that to the
promise of plenty, augured by the natal day of our present Prince? Comes
he not on the ninth of November? Is not his advent glorified by the
aromatic clouds of the Lord Mayor's kitchen?--Let every man, woman, and
child possess themselves of a _Times_ newspaper of the 10th ult.; for
there, in genial companionship with the chronicle of the birth of the
Prince, is the luscious history of the Lord Mayor's dinner. We quit
Buckingham Palace, our mind full of our dear little Queen, the Royal baby,
Prince Albert--(who, as _The Standard_ informs us subsequently, bows
"bare-headed" to the populace,)--the Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor
Locock, the Duke of Wellington, and the monthly nurse, and immediately
fall upon the civic "general bill of fare,"--the real turtle at the City
board.
Oh, men of Paisley--good folks of Bolton--what promise for ye is here!
Turkeys, capons, sirloins, asparagus, pheasants, pine-apples, Savoy cakes,
Chantilly baskets, mince pies, preserved ginger, brandy cherries, a
thousand luscious cakes that "the sense aches at!" What are all these
gifts of plenty, but a glad promise that in the time of the "sweetest
young Prince," that on the birth-day of that Prince just vouchsafed to us,
all England will be a large Lord Mayor's table! Will it be possible for
Englishmen to dissassociate in their minds the Prince of Wales and the
Prince of good Fellows? And whereas the reigns of other potentates are
signalised by bloodshed and war, the time of the Prince will be glorified
by cooking and good cheer. His drum-sticks will be the drum-sticks of
turkeys--his cannon, the popping of corks. In his day, even weavers shall
know the taste of geese, and factory-children smack their lips at the
gravy of the great sirloin. Join your glasses! brandish your
carving-knives! cry welcome to the Prince of Wales! for he comes garnished
with all the world's good things. He shall live in the hearts, and (what
is more) in the stomachs of his people!