1819-36

EARLY YEARS.

5

ever, to have become somewhat oppressive to the kind old lady. The boys are very wild,' she writes a few months afterwards, ‘and Ernest flies about like a swallow.' They are to be placed under the care of a tutor, of which she is glad. Not so, however, the maternal grandmother at Gotha. She heard with alarm of the transfer of such young children, the one under five and the other under four, and both in some respects delicate, from the care of their nurse to that of a man, who could scarcely be expected to know so well how to look after their childish ailments.

Young as he was, so young that he was very willing to let his tutor carry him up and down stairs, the Prince was delighted with the change; having even as a child shown a great dislike to be in the charge of women. The tutor was a M. Florschutz of Coburg, and he superintended the education of both the Princes up to manhood through all its stages. The admirable qualities of his pupils made his duties a pleasure. To the younger Prince he was especially attracted from the first. Every grace,' he writes, ‘had been showered by nature on this charming boy. Every eye rested on him with delight, and his look won the hearts of all.' Like his mother in person, and resembling her also in quickness, vivacity, and playfulness, he was her favourite child; and she made no secret of a preference, which might in ordinary circumstances have been mischievous to the boy, and disturbed the affection between his brother and himself. But this distracting influence was not to be long at work. In 1824 a separation was arranged between the Duke and Duchess (followed by a divorce in 1826), but not before she had established a hold upon the affections of her children which, although they never saw her again, remained with them to the last.3 All that could be done to compensate the

She died at St. Wendel, in Switzerland, in 1831, at the age of thirty-two, after a long and painful illness. She was not only beautiful, but exercised a

loss of a mother's presence and care was done by the grandmothers of the Princes, who continued to watch over them with a twofold tenderness, and had the happiness of seeing them grow up in the bonds of closest attachment, brightening from year to year in intelligence and knowledge, and, while they grew in strength and comeliness, retaining that freshness of heart and warmth of feeling, which a simple and happy home life, such as theirs, is best calculated to develope.

From a very early age the Prince's thoughtfulness and love for knowledge were remarkable. He learned quickly, and he was always learning. To do something was with him a necessity' (Early Years, p. 28). The energy with which he pursued his studies was carried into his childish sports; and although in childhood he was rather a delicate boy, the force of his character even then made itself felt with his brother and their childish companions, who yielded to a sway, which he was not indisposed to claim, and upon occasion to enforce by the vigour of his arm. This strength of will, which rested on superior earnestness and depth, naturally showed itself more decidedly as he advanced into boyhood; but it was not inconsistent with a prevailing gentleness and benevolence of disposition.

'It was only what he thought unjust or dishonest,' writes Count Arthur Mensdorff (Early Years, p. 57), 'that could

great charm through her intelligence and kindness of heart. Full of espièglerie, and with a habit of viewing men and things in a droll and humorous waycharacteristics in which the Prince strongly resembled her-she was a general favourite. But her marriage, which commenced under the fairest auspices, proved unhappy. The Prince,' says the Queen (Early Years, p. 8), 'never forgot her, and spoke with much tenderness and sorrow of his poor mother, and was deeply affected in reading, after his marriage, the accounts of her sad and painful illness. One of the first gifts he made to the Queen was a little pin he had received from her when a little child. Princess Louise (the Prince's fourth daughter, and named after her grandmother) is said to be like her in face.' This likeness is strikingly apparent in a portrait prefixed to an interesting description of the ceremonies upon the occasion of her marriage, published at Coburg in 1817.