Chapter IV, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 4

" My Lord Mayor, Mr. Chamberlain, and Gentlemen, - It is, I assure you, a source of sincere gratification to me to attend here for the purpose of being invested with a privilege which, for the reasons you have stated, you are unable to confer upon me, and which descends to me by! inheritance. It is a patrimony which I am proud to claim, this freedom of the greatest city of the commercial world, which holds its charter from such an ancient date. My pride is increased when I call to memory the long list of illustrious men who have been enrolled among the citizens of London, more especially when I connect with the list the beloved father to whom you have adverted in such warm terms of eulogy and respect, and through whom I am here to claim my freedom of the city of London. My Lord Mayor and Gentlemen, the Princess and myself heartily thank you for the past - for your loyalty and expressions of attachment towards the Queen, for the manifestations of this evening towards ourselves, and for all your prayers for our future happiness."

The ball went off as such festivities usually do, but was enlivened and distinguished by a pretty little surprise which the Corporation had prepared for the Princess. On returning from the supper-room to the hall, the royal party was led through the Court of Aldermen. Here, in a large deep recess, was a moonlight scene of a palace, with a broad spreading lawn reaching down in the foreground to where real plants and ferns had been artistically arranged, so as to make them seem almost a continuation of the picture. This picture was a view of Prince Christian's palace of Bernstorff, where the Princess Alexandra was born; and standing in the centre of the lawn was a figure of the Princess herself, as if in the act of moving forward towards the entrance of the mansion. The Princess is said to have been highly gratified and delighted by this delicate and courtier-like compliment.

In this same summer, at the Oxford Commemoration, the Prince of Wales was invested with the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law, on which occasion the Earl of Derby, as Chancellor of the University, addressed the newly-admitted doctor in a speech alike perfect in its Latinity and exquisite in its urbanity.

On the 10th of June, occurred the inauguration of the Albert Memorial of 1851, at the Horticultural Gardens, South Kensington. With the exception of the Queen, most of the royal family were present, and the Prince of Wales presided over the proceedings. An address was presented to the Prince, to which he made a short and well-worded reply; and the memorial was then uncovered. Besides other inscriptions relating to the Exhibition of 1851, one tablet bore that the Memorial then uncovered was erected by public subscription.

"Originally intended only to commemorate the International Exhibition of 1851, now dedicated also to the memory of the great author of that undertaking, the Good Prince, to whose far-seeing and comprehensive philanthropy its first conception was due, and to whose clear judgment and untiring exertions in directing its execution the world is indebted for its unprecedented success - Albert Francis Augustus Charles Emmanuel, the Prince Consort. Born August 26, 1819. Died December 14, 1861."

Another inauguration of an Albert Memorial took place at Aberdeen in the October of this year. It was a bronze statue, by Marochetti, placed upon a polished granite pedestal, and represented the Prince Consort seated and wearing a field-marshal's uniform, with the robe of the Thistle over it; in one hand he held a scroll, and in the other a field-marshal's hat. This statue had been subscribed for by the city and county of Aberdeen. The Queen was present, and made a gracious reply (through Sir George Grey) to a loyal address presented to her; part of the reply ran as follows: -

" It is with feelings I should vainly seek words to express that I determined to attend here to-day to witness the uncovering of the statue which will record to future times the love and respect of the people in this county and city for my great and beloved husband; but I could not reconcile myself to remain at Balmoral while such a tribute was being paid to his memory, without making an exertion to assure you personally of the deep and heartfelt sense I entertain of your kindness and affection; and at the same time to proclaim in public the unbounded reverence and admiration, the devoted love, that fills my heart for him whose loss must throw a lasting gloom over all my future life."

After the address and reply, prayer was offered up by the Principal of the Aberdeen University, and the statue was uncovered in full view of Her Majesty, who, along with the members of the royal family, stood in a balcony opposite. The Queen is said to have gazed for a moment with earnest emotion on the striking likeness of her late illustrious husband.

Seldom has a year witnessed the disappearance from the scenes which their genius, valour, or virtue had adorned, of a greater number of illustrious men than the year 1863. Two of the heroes of the Indian Mutiny, Sir James Outram and Lord Clyde; four distinguished statesmen, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Elgin, and Sir G. Cornewall Lewis; the veteran politician, Mr. Ellice, often called the Nestor of the Whig party; and, among authors, Archbishop Whately and Thackeray, are among those who within the twelvemonth paid the debt of nature. Outram, a native of Derbyshire, during an active career in Eastern climes, extending over nearly forty years, won universal respect, not only for his courage and capacity in war, but for his thorough honesty, firmness, and justice, as a ruler and administrator. In the affair of the Ameers of Scinde he withstood to the face the fiery and imperious old conqueror, Sir Charles Napier, by whom he thought those princes had been hardly dealt with, and his views were finally adopted by the Court of Directors. To his powers of combination and foresight was mainly owing the brilliant and complete success of the short Persian campaign in 1857; and as to the important share which he bore in the recovery of India after the mutiny, ample testimony has already been borne to it in these pages. In 1858, he was made a baronet, and returned finally from India in 1860, but with greatly shattered health; the rest so well earned was not long enjoyed. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Lord Clyde, better known as Sir Colin Campbell, was simply a soldier, but a soldier of whom any army in the world might have been proud. He was an eminent instance of what a strong will and a well balanced mind, lodged in a vigorous body, can effect without the favours of fortune. In the days of purchase, he was too poor to purchase his steps; in an age of patronage, he had no family connections to keep his name in the front. He called himself Campbell, but the social weight neither of the house of Argyll nor of the house of Breadalbane was at his back. He rose to fame simply because a large portion of his life was cast on troubled times, and because, whenever and wherever he was tried through a long life, his coolness, tenacity, and energy were never found unequal to the occasion. His father was a Highlander of humble origin of the name of M'Liver, but for family reasons he assumed his mother's name of Campbell. Sent into the army when he was hardly of an age to wield a sword, as a beardless boy he fought under Sir John Moore at Corunna; later on, he shared in and contributed to the triumph at Vittoria, and led the forlorn hope at St. Sebastian. Like most Peninsular officers, he had not the good luck to be at Waterloo, and for the best part of thirty years, undecorated and unknown, he performed the routine duties of a captain or major on the peace establishment. When the Opium War with China broke out in 1842, Colin Campbell was sent out to that country in command of the 98tlx Regiment; thence he was transferred to India, where he distinguished himself highly in the Sikh War, and by a well-timed charge with the 61st, on the bloody field of Chilianwallah, saved the British army from a crushing defeat. He served through the Crimean War, leading the Highland Brigade to the charge at Alma, and was afterwards entrusted with the important command of Balaclava. The readers of this history will remember how, upon the news of the death of the Commander-in-Chief in India, General Anson, reaching London, the name of but one man occurred to the Duke of Cambridge as possessed of all the qualities needed for the recovery of an empire almost falling from our grasp. Sir Colin Campbell went out, and his management of the war justified all the expectations that had been formed of him. In 1858, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Clyde of Clydesdale, "taking his title from the river by whose banks he was born, as he had not an acre of hereditary or purchased land from which to derive his designation." In 1862, he was made a field- marshal. Death found him in the next year, in the early part of which he had followed the body of Outram to the grave.

Lord Clyde was a man of striking and commanding person. " His crisp grey locks still stood close and thick, curling over the head and above the wrinkled brow, and there were few external signs of the decay of nature which was, no doubt, going on within, accelerated by so many wounds, such fevers, such relentless, exacting service. When he so willed it, he could throw into his manner and conversation such a charm of simplicity and vivacity as fascinated those over whom it was exerted, and women admired and men were delighted with the gallant old soldier." He was strict and unsparing in the maintenance of military discipline, yet had a genuine love for the common soldiers, whose true interests he warmly promoted, enduring no word to be said in their disparagement, no act to be committed to their detriment.

Of Lord Lyndhurst and the Marquis of Lansdowne it has been said that the first did not understand the English people, while the second conspicuously did. Lord Lyndhurst, the son of Copley, the eminent painter, born at Boston, in the United States, before the Declaration of Independence, died at the ripe age of 90; and it was thought and said by those who underrated the resources and the resolution of the Northern States, that, as his life began before the formation of the American Union, so it did not close till he had seen the dissolution of it. After distinguishing himself at Cambridge, Lord Lyndhurst went to the bar and soon rose to eminence. He connected himself from the first with the Tory party, and, as Solicitor-General, was employed in the proceedings against Queen«. Caroline, in the House of Lords, on which occasion he displayed remarkable eloquence, judgment, and forbearance. He was Lord Qhancellor on three different occasions when his party came into power, and conducted himself in that high office with rare ability, some of his decisions being looked upon as models of lucid reasoning and admirable diction. An upright and sagacious judge, and an available politician, he was yet deficient in the highest qualities of a statesman. That width of political sympathy which makes the true statesman zealous for the good government and prosperity of every portion of the commonwealth whose affairs he administers, however nature or circumstances may have alienated it from other portions, was not found in Lord Lyndhurst. To this deficiency must be ascribed the unfortunate expression which once fell from him in the House of Lords, when, in resisting some measure of conciliation to Ireland, he spoke of the Irish as " aliens to us in blood and in religion." The taunting and contemptuous phrase was never forgotten by those to whom it was applied, and was often quoted with damaging effect against both himself and his party.

Lord Lansdowne, who died at the advanced age of 82, was descended from Sir William Petty, one of the most fortunate of the Cromwellian grantees in the south of Ireland. An immense tract of land in the county Kerry fell to him as his portion of the spoil after the Cromwellian conquest, and is still enjoyed by his descendants. Lord Lansdowne first entered into public life as Lord Henry Petty, and shrank not from the conflict with the mature experience and rhetorical skill of William Pitt, against whom he sustained the charges brought against Lord Melville for peculation, and demonstrated their truth. He was a member of the Grenville and Grey Ministry, which came into power in 1807, and went out of office with them when George III. refused to entertain their Catholic Relief Bill. He was an important and valuable member of every Liberal Ministry which held power from that time to the year 1852, generally holding the post of Lord President of the Council. All through life he was a thoroughly consistent but moderate Liberal, and it used to be said that no public man had less to fear on the score of consistency, or would come out more triumphantly from the crucial test of a recurrence to the pages of Hansard. He was a generous patron - a kind of Maecenas - to literary men and artists. It was to him that we owed the introduction of Lord Macaulay to public life; his pleasant voice and kindly smile gave an additional charm to the large and discerning hospitality which gathered around him at Lansdowne House all that was brightest in genius and most refined in manners, without regard to differences of nationality, language, or religion.

Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a man of solid, not brilliant parts, an indefatigable student, a cautious theoriser, a prudent financier, was cut off in the prime of life, at the age of 57. In the biographical article which appeared in the Times soon after his death it-was truly said: - "Sir George Lewis was not a showy character, and- especially he did not shine much in those debates from which the country at large learns to estimate the position of a minister; but his wonderful power of mastering any subject, his clear head, his sound sense, and his practical ability were fully recognised, and, spite of his slow, hesitating manner, his voice had an authority in the House of Commons which men of much more eloquence might have envied. In that assembly, the most critical in the world, no one commanded more attention when he rose to speak, and no man was more entirely trusted. A doubt might attach to the speeches of other ministers. This one might be supposed to be careless, that to be occasionally ill-informed, and a third to be capable of intentional ambiguity. It was certain that Sir George Lewis would always be accurate and truthful; and he more than made up for the want of brilliancy by the worth of his character by the completeness of his work."