Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2Tytler, Sarah
History
Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2
Tytler, Sarah
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
In the meantime the Duke and Duchess of Albany had been expected on
their first visit after their marriage, and were met at Ballater. When
their healths were drunk with Highland honours, the happy Queen asked
her son to propose another toast "to the victorious army in Egypt"
coupled with the Duke of Connaught's name, and the health was drunk in
the hearing of his proud wife and his unconscious infant in her
nurse's arms.
In November the Queen reviewed the troops returned from Egypt in St.
James Park, and afterwards distributed war medals to the officers and
men.
On the 4th December her Majesty opened the New Law Courts. She was
received by the judges and the representatives of the Bar. Lord
Chancellor Selborne was raised to the rank of an earl, and knighthood
was conferred on the Governors of the Inns of Court.
The Duke of Connaught, accompanied by the Duchess, went to fill a
military post in India.
We have seen that Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, her Majesty's fourth
and youngest son, who was born on the 7th of April, 1853, had a
delicate childhood and boyhood. He suffered from a tendency to
haemorrhage on the slightest provocation. Ailments in the joints are
apt to accompany such constitutional weakness, and one of Prince
Leopold's knees was affected. As he grew up he was again and again
brought to the brink of the grave by sudden and violent fits of
indisposition. It is hardly necessary to say that the precariousness
of Prince Leopold's health, combined as it was with an amiable
disposition and intellectual gifts, only served to endear him the more
to his family and friends.
The bodily weakness which set the Duke of Albany apart from his elder
brothers and from lads of his age, which prevented his being regularly
trained either as a soldier or a sailor, in the two professions which
have been long held fit for princes, made him peculiarly the home-son
of the Queen, and caused him to be much longer associated with her
than he might otherwise have been, in her daily life and in her public
appearances during the later years of her reign.
It did not follow from this circumstance that Prince Leopold
relinquished an independent career or led an idle life. In 1872, when
he was in his twentieth year, he matriculated at Oxford, where he kept
his terms with credit alike to his original abilities and his
conscientious diligence. His honourable and pleasant connection with
his university remained a strong tie to the end of his short life, and
it was doubtless in relation to Oxford that he came sensibly under the
influence of Mr. Buskin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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