Life Of The Prince Consort.

LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT .

MR . Theodore Martin has given us the concluding volume ( the fifth ) of this most interesting life and it is , we think , almost impossible to read it without emotion ; for not only have the inner life , and thoughts , and strivings , and trials of a great and a good man opened out skilfully and carefully before us ( a fact always beneficial to us all alike ) , but we have also the premature close of a noble career in the mysterious counsels of the Most High

, with much good left unfinished , with all of sorrow for surviving friends at uncompleted aims and righteous ends most touchingly described in simple yet graphic words . It is very often affecting to us all in private life , in humbler spheres and secluded lots , where no worldly greatness or glory has entered to dazzle or defame , to realize rightly the unexpected summons or the earl y death . We

all of us mourn more or less , even though we are old and wayworn now , soft voices hushed too soon , sweet faces veiled from our longing gaze , great promise , clinging tenderness , goodly trust , excelling talents , all passed away in all the fresh , pure glow of early youth . And if such be the case with us in our humble life to-day , what must be the realit y in itself in respect to the late Prince Consortwhose life was so valuablenot onlto his loving famil

, , y y and adopted country , but to the world , to the very happiness and progress of humanity . All we can safely say to-day , as often here below with submissive minds , if with tearful eyes , is , that God ' s ways are not as man ' s ways , nor His providences like human fatalities , and that in this as in all matters of His great moral government of the world , if what we see we know not now , we shall know one day hereafter . All is mysteryand darknessand confusion

, , here ; but it shall not be always so , in the " Land of the Leal " all- will be li ght , and knowledge , and peace . This volume deals with the stirring times between the beginning of 1860 and the end of 1861 , for with the Prince Consort ' s death , December 14 th , 1861 , the curtain falls . These were eventful years for England , for Europe , and the world , and it is not too much to say that in those great emergencies

and grave difficulties , through the chicaneries of statesmanshi p and the tumults of the hour , amid the seductions of courts , and the turbulence of revolution , one clear mind and elevated will seems ever to have taken a right view of things , persons , ancl events , and to have left his mark of acumen , judgment , patriotism , high honour , and noble unselfishness on all he planned and purposed , all he said , wrote , ancl performed .

We confess Ave rise from the perusal of the affecting pages with even a deeper sense of the intense chivalry and greatness of the Prince Consort , and of his irreparable loss to all he loved the most and best , to England , to society , ancl to the world , though high as our opinion of his merits had formerly been , than we had ever mastered or attained unto . Indeed , one of the many merits of Mr . Martin ' s faithful ancl honest pages lies in this , that he allows the Prince ' s character to develope itself , that he does not even alloy admitted

excellencies with overstrained eulogium or " comparisons overmuch , " that he does not seek to " gild refined gold , " or " paint the lily , " or " add fresh perfume to the violet , " but that he offers us facts , salient , solemn , clear , and convincing , and so succeeds as well no doubt in the aim and object of the book , in stilling C 3 aiic criticism , in silencing callous calumny . We wish that all others whose names are recorded in these effective pages , which will long be read , especially if published some day for the student in a cheaper form , could come out of the " ordeal of battle " as pure and unsullied as docs the late Prince Albert .