largely due to the fact that the Trinity party had pressed the Prince’s candidature after he had publicly withdrawn. They were, in fact, asking electors to vote for a candidate whose acceptance of office if elected was doubtful. On the other hand, the Prince could not force his partisans to stop proceedings, except by publicly declaring that in no circumstances would he accept, even if chosen, the Chancellorship of the University, which would have been justly construed into an insult to Cambridge. Ultimately the Prince agreed to take office, and on the 25th of March the ceremony of inauguration took place at Buckingham Palace, where the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Philpott, at the head of an imposing academic deputation, presented the Prince with the Letters Patent of his office. The venerable Laureate, Wordsworth, himself a Cambridge man, kindly responded to a suggestion that he should write the Installation Ode, and, as he observed in a letter to Colonel Phipps, “retouch a harp, which I will not say with Tasso, oppressed by misfortunes and years, has been hung up upon a cypress, but which has, however, been for some time laid aside.” That he excluded the Ode from his collected works indicates that he felt the ancient founts of inspiration had almost run dry, and yet there are many passages of stately beauty in the poem. It begins by referring to the rescue of Europe from the grasp of Napoleon, and to the wail of sorrow that resounded through England when the Princess Charlotte died:-- “Flower and bud together fall-- A nation’s hopes lie crushed in Claremont’s desolate hall.” Then a noble strophe announces the birth of the Princess Victoria, and celebrates her happy destiny:-- Love, the treasure worth possessing More than all the world beside; This shall be her dearest blessing, Oft to Royal heads denied.” But the strength and resonance of the Ode chiefly lie in the passages addressed to the Prince in relation to his duties:-- “Albert, in thy race we cherish A nation’s strength that will not perish While England’s sceptred line True to the King of Kings is found; Like that wise ancestor of thine Who threw the Saxon shield o’er Luther’s life, When first above the yells of bigot strife The trumpet of the Living Word Assumed a voice of deep portentous sound, From, gladdened Elbe to startled Tiber heard.”