"From Canada," wrote the Prince Consort to Stockmar in August, 1860, we have the best possible accounts. Bertie is generally pronounced the most. perfection of nature." But what had taken Bertie" to Canada? In the character of a tourist he had already seen a great part of the Old World, but it was more than the mero curiosity of an intelligent traveller which prompted his departure for the New One. he fuct is, that now, in his nineteenth year, he had been entrusted with the first of those missions which have enabled the Prince of Wales to be rightly regarded as a very useful and important part. of the machinery of the British State—missions, that is to say, which, while ostensibly pri-vote and personal in their aim, were at the same time calculated to produce great political impressions and results, The offer of New South. Wales, in 1885, to send a contingent of her loyal sons to help us in fighting our Egyptian battles was by no means the first instance of colonial devotion to old Mother England. During the Crimean war the Canadians had also, of their own free will and offer, fitted out a regiment for our service in the East, and in return for this favour they had begged that the Queen would visit their Dominion, It had been found as inexpedient to comply with this request as with the alternative demand that her Majesty should appoint one of her sons—still all in their teens—Governor-General of Canada; but in lieu thereof the Queen had promised that, when the Prince of Wales was old enough, he should be started off on a visit to the Dominion, and the time had now come for the fulfilment of this most gratifying pledge.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.