Having thus, as Earl of Dublin (for that is also one of his titles), shown himself to and been cheered to the echo by the warm hearted Trish, the Prince, soon thereafter in the sume year (1849),' may be said to have made.his first official bow to. the English people by figuring with his eldest sister, the Princess Royal, at the side of his father at the opening of the new London Coal Exchange. Il] herself with the chicken-pox, the Queen had deputed her eight-year-old son' and heir to represent her at the ceremony, which was a very geand offi, The royal party wont to the City from Westminster by water in the ancient. manner, the royal barge bein; rowed by six and-twenty' waterman, All London had turned out to see and acclaim the little Prince and his pretty sister who, said Lady Lyttleton, ' behaved very well, civilly and nicely."' A speech was made by some pompous periwig-pated city magnate, who addressed the little Prince as "'the pledge and promise of a long race jof kings," so that it was no wonder "that poor Princey did'not seem to guess at all ihat he meant." 'A yellow-hired laddie very like his mother, with a good deal of fan in him"—wns another Indy eye-witness's opinion of the Prince on this first appearance of his ut a public function in England.
lat his next was to be a much greater and grander one—no less than the opening of the Crystal Palace Exhibition in Hyde Park, which had been the work of his father. Nothing in all the Queen's journal is so fine—bearing witness, as it does of having come straight from' the heart—ns Her Majesty's description of this epoch-making ceremony, when 'Albert led me in, having Vicky' in his hand, and Bertie holding mine." "It had been hoped of this event—perhaps the Prince himself had been encouraged by his father to share the hope—that it would inaugurate a lasting era of peace and good-will among the nations. But about three years later the youthful Heir Apparent was destined to receive a rude awakening from any dreams of this kind in which he may have been taught to indulge when, standing on the throne for the first time beside his parents not in the House of Lords, as has been erroneously stated by a recent writer, but at Windsor Castle—he listened to the addresses of both Houses of Parliament, in reply to the Queen' message announcing the outbreak of hostilities between England and Russia, Within three short years the Prince had witnessed the opening: of: 4
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.