Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/575

 of 1812. Crossing lake Michigan, he touched United States soil at Detroit on 19 Sept.; there he was met by Lord Lyons, minister at Washington. At once scenes of extravagant enthusiasm belied all fears of a cool reception. Short stays in Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg preceded his arrival at Washington (3 Oct.), where President Buchanan (an old man of seventy- seven) received him at the White House with friendliest cordiality. A crowded levee at White House was given in his honour. With the president he visited on 5 Oct. Mount Vernon, Washington's home and burial place, and planted a chestnut by the side of the tomb. Such a tribute from the great-grandson of George III was greeted by the American people with loud acclamations of joy, and England was hardly less impressed. 'The Prince of Wales at the Tomb of Washington' was the subject set for the English poem at Cambridge University in 1861, and the prize was won by Frederic W. H. Myers. Going northwards, the prince stayed at Philadelphia (7 Oct.), where he heard Madame Patti sing for the first time. At New York (11 Oct.) he remained three days. A visit was paid later to the military school at West Point, and proceeding to Boston he went over to Cambridge to inspect Harvard University. At Boston he met Longfellow, Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He embarked for home in H.M.S. Hero from Portland in Maine on 20 Oct. and arrived after a bad passage at Plymouth on 15 Nov., six days after completing his nineteenth year.

Everywhere the prince's good-humour, courteous bearing, and simple delight in novel experiences won the hearts of his hosts. 'Dignified, frank, and affable,' wrote the president to Queen Victoria (6 Oct. 1860), 'he has conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people.' The tour differed in every regard from his previous trips abroad. It was originally planned as a ceremonial compliment to the oldest and most important of English colonies on the part of the heir to the throne travelling as the reigning sovereign's official representative. No British colony had previously received a like attention. Canada accorded the prince all the honours due to his royal station. In the United States, too, where it was stipulated by Queen Victoria that he should travel as a private person under his incognito of Baron of Renfrew, the fiction went for nothing, and he was greeted as England's heir-apparent no less emphatically than in British North America. The result satisfied every sanguine hope. It tightened the bond of affection between Canada and the mother country at the moment when a tide of public sentiment seemed setting in another direction, and it reinforced the sense of unity among the British American colonies, which found expression in their internal union of 1867. On the relations of the United States and England the effect was of the happiest. On 29 Nov. 1860 Sir Charles Phipps, who was high in the confidence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, gave expression to the general verdict in a letter to Dr. Acland. 'The success of the expedition has been beyond all expectation; it may be reckoned as one of the most important and valuable state measures of the present age, and whether we look to the excitement and encouragement of loyalty and affection to the mother country in Canada, or to the soothing of prejudice and the increase of good feeling between the United States and Great Britain, it seems to me impossible to overrate the importance of the good results which the visit promises for the future.'

On the youth himself the tour exerted a wholly beneficial influence. The duke of Newcastle noticed in the prince a perceptible intellectual development. The journey left a lasting impression on his mind. If at times in later reminiscence he associated Canadian life with some want of material comfort, he always cherished gratitude for the colonial hospitality, and never lost a sense of attachment to the American people. His parents felt pride in the American welcome, and a year later, when Motley, then American minister at Vienna, was passing through England, he was invited to Balmoral, to receive from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert expressions of their satisfaction. Some American publicists were inclined to attribute to the heartiness of the prince's reception Prince Albert's momentous diplomatic intervention in behalf of the north over the affair of the Trent. When the American civil war broke out next year, Prince Albert on the eve of his death powerfully discouraged English sympathy with the revolt against the authority of the government at Washington, which had given his son an ovation.

The prince's career in England pursued its normal course. He returned to Oxford