98

PRINCE LEOPOLD, DUKE OF ALBANY.

PRINCE LEOPOLD, DUKE OF ALBANY.

ENGLAND'S STUDENT PRINCE.

BY SOPHIA M. NUGENT.

'HE sorrow of our Queen is the sorrow of her whole people, and when, on Friday, March 28, the rumour began to spread that the Duke of Albany had died suddenly and in a foreign land, there was no one whose heart did not at once ache with deep sympathy with our Queen and the young Duchess.

It was not in their sorrow alone that we sorrowed, but for ourselves too, for all that was known of the Prince had awakened a true and admiring love for him. The suffering of his entire life, his dangerous illnesses, had made a link with him of which we did not know the strength until it was thus severed.

The Queen has let her people see the very letter which she wrote on his birth to the King of the Belgians: "I can report most favourably of myself, for I have never been better or stronger. Stockmar will have told you that Leopold is to be the name of our fourth young gentleman. It is a mark of love and affection, which I hope you will not disapprove. It is a name which is dearest to me after Albert's, and one which recalls the only happy days of my sad childhood."

He was always delicate, and wherever he is mentioned in the Queen's published journals, a mother's anxious care is shown. As a little child he was sent to Cannes after a severe illness. He was not nine years old when he lost his father, and as he stood at the funeral in St. George's Chapel, his boyish grief was touching to see. But his delicacy did not crush his exuberant spirits, and when he was kept to his room by illness he liked to have dogs and birds about him. A wonderfully bright spirit was his all his life. He never seemed to fret in his illnesses, and liked to see games going on that he could not share in himself. One of his fellow students at Oxford tells of " his strong, simple patience. This is no usual characteristic of men, in opening manhood especially.

PRINCE LEOopold, duke of AlbanY.

99

In him it was very striking, and the few friends who were privileged to cheer his sick bed will long remember it."

Three times his life was in great peril from his terrible illnesses.
For thrice thy weary feet have trod

The pathway to the realms of Death;
And leaning on the hand of God,

With halting step and panting breath,
Thrice from the edge of that dread bourne,
From which no travellers return,

Thou hast, like him who rose at Nain,
Come back to life and light again.

Such a life, so broken by repeated illness, always debarred from active work, might easily have sunk down into a listless, selfish existence. But it did not with him. His bright spirit would not allow itself to be crushed or chained by repeated suffering and continual weakness. Though he could not be a soldier or a sailor, like his brothers, he did not sink into apathy, but went to Oxford. He could not stand any severe strain of study, but yet he seemed to grasp almost intuitively what others toiled over, and what he grasped he kept, for he had a wonderfully retentive memory. He did not act as if there were a royal road to learning, but gave his whole mind to what he read, and entered into every study which his health would allow. Afterwards, when he began his public life, his speeches everywhere showed how thoroughly he had mastered what he learned.

It seems sometimes as if the high and differing life of a royal prince must separate him from being able to feel with common cares, and to set him far out of reach. But it was not so with the beloved Princess Alice. We can never think of her without remembering how she entered into a Refuge and desired to speak to the inmates" as a woman to women," and then used such deeply tender yet raising words to them. And there was the same trait in the Prince whom we are now mourning. Once he said in public, "I can feel for those who suffer, because I have been so long and so greatly a sufferer myself." From a very little child he showed this spirit of feeling with others. Once he was walking near Windsor, when a beggar woman accosted him. He hal no money with him, but he immediately took the valuable brooch out of the Highland plaid he always wore, and gave it to her. His attendants

100

FRINCE LEOPOLD, DUKE OF ALBANY.

objected, and wanted to ransom the brooch for half-a-crown, but the little Prince would not allow them, and said: "The Queen shall buy it back, she will know what ought to be given, and she will say I did rightly."

He was of a most unselfish and generous nature; all he had he shared with his friends. When he was a student at Oxford, all his pictures and treasures were freely shown; and he had just the same sort of feeling about sharing pleasures with the poor. Once he said, "How could a man feel himself so separate from his fellowcreatures as to think that the pleasures which were worth his own attention were quite superfluous trivialities in the case of poor men and women ?"

And England knew this. The nation had learned that in Prince Leopold they had one whose heart beat with their heart, and who used all the powers of his high position to raise both the spiritual and outward state of the poorest. He spoke to put his own favourite music within reach of the poor; he spoke to cheer the artisan in his search for self improvement; and he spoke even of such a simple thing as cookery, urging that it should be taught in ragged schools.

And so when the nation knew he was going to be married, they welcomed the news with a glad heart. English maidens have long joined in offering a Bible as their wedding gift to each Royal bride, and the feeling towards Prince Leopold was shown in that mere than double any past number joined in this gift to his Bride. He himself received it with her, and a few months ago, meeting one connected with it, he spoke in warm, earnest words of the great pleasure it had given the Duchess and himself to receive "the best of books." It is good to remember this now, and to feel that the "blameless life," which one and all unite in attributing to him, was the visible result of a mind fixed upon the Word of God. Good, too, to remember that when once abroad, he set his door wide open that he might hear the hymn-singing that was going on in another room of the hotel, and that he sent a special request that these two might be sung: "The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ the Lord," and "Abide with me."

He was very unwilling to leave England this spring, because the Duchess was not strong enough to accompany him and he was on the eve of his return when the doors of eternity opened before him

PRINCE LEOPOLD, DUKE OF ALBANY.

so terribly suddenly.

101

But not too sudden for the Lord to answer

the prayer in his chosen hymn:

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes,

Shine through the gloom, and light me to the skies! And now all hearts turn to the two bereaved homes. Our words of sympathy cannot penetrate into them except by prayer. Let us use earnestly this Royal way of entrance, that full and sweet answers of comfort may reach into those homes.

It is the third shattering blow which our revered and beloved Queen has borne in her life and though the widowed Princess is barely 22, deep sorrow has already been her portion. The very day after her marriage, she heard of the sudden death of her own eldest sister, then followed long nursing of the Prince through another severe illness, and now this most overwhelming sorrow of all darkens her young life.

In the solemn and sacred service held in St. George's, Windsor, on the 5th April, the same words of life which we hear at the burial of our poorest were heard at the burial of the beloved Prince: "I am the Resurrection and the Life!" May the voice of "The Life" Himself be heard in this sorrow to comfort the suffering ones.

Every available spot in the chapel was covered with white flowers. Among them was a large star, sent in respectful token of heartfelt and prayerful sympathy in behalf of the subscribers to the Maidens' Bible. This was graciously thanked for by the Duchess, who was "deeply touched by the kind thought." With the Star were these verses: "He came and touched the bier." "Jesus wept." "I am the Resurrection and the Life," &c., and in German, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." May the Comforter fulfil this our earnest petition!

BISHOP GOBART'S MEMORIAL SCHOOL.-Mrs. Maude acknowledges with many thanks the following sums, in response to the appeal in February No. of LIVING WATERS: E. E, 5s.; K. B., 2s.; Mrs. H., 10s.; Mrs. M., 78. 6d.; Lady C. K., £1; No. 49,638 J. E. W., 5s; A Reader of "L. W." (Tonbridge), £1; N. M. (Worcester), 18.

CONNEMARA ORPHANAGE BEDSTEADS.-Sophia M. Nugent warmly thanks for these donations, Durham Reader, 5s.; A Bradford Solicitor, 28. 6d.; and A Mite for Jesus, 1s. ; also a gold ring (Derby).