1847 INSTALLATION. 397 mar) with us, and driving about from one place to another. Albert received me at the door, and led me up to the seat prepared. He sat covered in his Chancellor's chair. There was a perfect roar of applause, and the heat was overpowering. Some preliminary business was gone through, and then the public Orator made a long, too long, Latin speech. The three Princes (Prince Waldemar of Prussia, Prince Peter of Oldenburg, and the Hereditary Grand-Duke of SaxeWeimar), Lords Abercorn, Spencer, and Fortescue, M. Van de Weyer, Prince Löwenstein, the Bishops of Oxford, Tasmania, Cape Town, and Melbourne, were made doctors. So also were Sir G. Grey, Sir Harry Smith (who was much cheered), Sir R. Murchison, Professor Ehrenberg-very odd and very German-looking-and Professor Muhler. . . . Got home at twenty minutes to five. Wrote and worked. Such a hot day; but Cambridge looks beautiful in summer, so different from what we saw it at the end of October, and with all its gardens so green, and the flowers in the windows of the colleges, has a very fine effect.' After dining with the Vice-Chancellor, and hearing the first part of a concert at the Senate House, where Lablache, Alboni, and Salvi sang very well,' the Queen and Prince returned to Trinity Lodge soon after ten. 'On our return, Albert went off to the Observatory, and I walked in the nice little garden here with my two ladies.' 6 Next day the ceremony of installation was gone through in the Senate House. The Prince, who had preceded the Queen, received Her Majesty at the door, and conducted her to her place. It was still more crowded; the heat greater almost than yesterday, and the applause tremendous.' After the prize poems had been read, and the medals had been distributed by the Prince, came the performance of the Installation Ode. The applause was immense, and "God save the Queen" was called for, and sung by the whole audience, which had a very fine effect. We drove home at a quarter to twelve. I occupied myself during the rest of the morning in reading, writing, working, and drawing.' After luncheon, the Royal party went to a horticultural show, in the grounds of Downing College. We walked round and into all the tents; I think there were six-and really this was a very formidable undertaking, for the heat was beyond endurance, and the crowd fearful." 6 A great banquet in Trinity Hall, followed by a reception, concluded the public proceedings of the day. The evening being so beautiful,' says Her Majesty's Diary, we proposed to walk out, and accordingly at ten set out in curious costumes: Albert in his dress coat, with a mackintosh over it; I, in my evening dress and diadem, and with a veil over my head, and the two Princes in their uniform, and the ladies in their dresses, and shawls, and veils. We walked through the small garden, and could not at first find our way, after which we discovered the right road, and walked along the beautiful avenues of lime-trees in the grounds of St. John's College, along the water and over the bridges. All was so pretty and picturesque in particular, that one covered bridge of St. John's College, which is like the Bridge of Sighs at Venice. We stopped to listen to the distant hum of the town; and nothing seemed wanting, but some singing, which everywhere but here in this country we should have heard. A lattice opened, and we could fancy a lady appearing, and listening to a serenade.' By eight o'clock next morning, the Royal party were again astir. After a busy morning, during which the Prince held a levee, and visits were paid to the library of Trinity, and to the grounds of St. John's College, in which there was a great gathering of the leading people of the Eastern counties, the Court bade adieu to Cambridge, where, says the record so often quoted, we had spent a truly pleasant and most interesting time. To see my Albert honoured and esteemed, 6 1847 AT CAMBRIDGE. 399 as he deserves, gives me the deepest satisfaction. . . . We reached Buckingham Palace at half-past five, and found all the children very well. I felt tired and étourdie. We walked a little in the garden-then dined alone, and spent a dear, happy, and peaceful evening.' Baron Stockmar, who had been ill, and suffering from one of those fits of despondency to which he was subject, was not forgotten; and a few lines from the Prince assured him, that all had gone off at Cambridge to a wish. 'Buckingham Palace, 9th July, 1847. My dear Stockmar,-Our expedition to Cambridge has gone off extraordinarily well, although it involved unusual excitement and fatigue. Never have I seen people in such good humour. There was a great gathering of bishops, scholars, royal personages (Fürstlichkeiten), nobles and political men, and all seemed well pleased. My Latin, too, proved a success. You will see all the details in the news papers. . . . Your mental powers appear to me not to have suffered, for I have not this many a day read anything so clear in thought and striking in expression as your long letter to Bunsen on the Press question, which he communicated to me.' 400 CHAPTER XIX. THE state of affairs both abroad and at home at the close of 1846 was calculated to occasion grave anxiety, if not apprehension, to the most sanguine politician. The disturbance of our cordial relations with France embarrassed our whole foreign policy. The ill-omened Spanish marriages had in them the seeds of future mischief to Spain itself, as well as to the chief victim in the transaction, which it required no prophetic power to foresee, and which were rapidly developed during the following year in the fall of administration after administration, and in the estrangement of the Queen and King and rumours of their probable divorce. Portugal had risen in arms against its Sovereign, and the country, laid waste by civil warfare carried on without decisive results on either side, was menaced by all the evils of poverty, famine, and revolution. Italy, stirred to the heart with hatred against the oppression by which it had so long been paralysed, demanded from its effete Governments a recognition of Constitutional principles, that would give freedom to thought, and a free field for material and social progress. To this aspiration a strong impulse had been given by the liberal opinions and the reforms of Pio Nono, on his accession to the Pontificate in the summer of 1846. The dream of a free and united Italy had become familiar to men's minds. Sardinia had identified herself with the popular movement; and Austria, alarmed for her footing in the Peninsula, was busy with preparations for a struggle, 1847 STATE OF EUROPE. 401 which it was obvious could not be far distant. In Switzerland revolutions had taken place in Berne and Geneva, which threatened, and indeed were soon afterwards followed by, civil war, embittered by the deadly element of religious animosities. Germany was not behind the other countries of Europe in demanding from her Sovereigns a recognition of the political rights of their subjects; and it was impossible not to foresee great danger in the indisposition of her rulers to appreciate the signs of the times, and the determination of their people to continue no longer without a voice in the government of their affairs. Years At home, again, a heavy cloud hung over the land. of unusual commercial prosperity, which had led as usual to over speculation, had been followed by the inevitable reaction. Employment had grown scarcer; wages had fallen; the crops had failed throughout the greater part of Europe; pinched by poverty, the working classes were again turning an ear to the doctrines of political agitators. Bankruptcy and commercial distress were general; and it was feared that, gloomy as the present state of affairs might be, still gloomier prospects awaited the country in the months to come. It was in this condition of things that the nation was called upon to grapple with the calamity of famine and pestilence, which had now fallen upon Ireland with a force far beyond the worst that had been feared by Sir Robert Peel and his Government, when first brought face to face with the failure of the potato crop of 1845. As they had then foreseen, the failure of the same crop in 1846 had been still more widely spread; and the ravages of the disease had fallen with scarcely less destructiveness upon the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. In Ireland alone the loss from this cause was computed at not less than sixteen millions. On a population, whose numbers had long been far in excess of the resources of the country for comfort or even decent |