Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/597

 entrance of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, and was unveiled by Professor Huxley.

Association with the British Museum stimulated his earlier interest in new educational institutions, especially those which developed technical or artistic instruction. In music he delighted from childhood, and to efforts for the expansion of musical teaching he long lent his influence. As early as 15 June 1875 he had presided at a conference at Marlborough House to consider the establishment of a National Training School for Music. Three years later he accepted a proposal to institute a National College of Music. On 28 Feb. 1882 he presided at a representative meeting at St. James's Palace, and in an elaborate speech practically called into being the Royal College of Music. He formally inaugurated the college on 7 May 1883 in temporary premises, with Sir George Grove as director. Six years later he personally accepted from [q. v. Suppl. II] a sum of 30,000l. (increased to 40,000l.) for the provision of a special building, the foundation stone of which he laid on 8 July 1890. He opened the edifice in May 1894 and never lost his enthusiasm for the venture.

In no part of the country did he fail to encourage cognate enterprises with a readiness altogether exceeding that of his father, in whose steps in these regards he was proud to follow. In every town of England he became a familiar figure, opening colleges, libraries, art galleries, hospitals, Parks, municipal halls, and and docks. On 2 May 1883 he was at Oxford laying the foundation stone of the Indian Institute. On 28 April 1886 he visited Liverpool to inaugurate the working of the great Mersey tunnel. Very readily he went on like errands to places which no member of the royal family had hitherto visited. The centres of industry of every magnitude, Sheffield, Leeds, Wigan, Bolton, Hull, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Blackburn, Middlesbrough, Great Grimsby, and Swansea, as well as Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, all possess public buildings which were first dedicated to public uses by the prince. One of the most memorable of his provincial engagements was his laying the foundation stone of the new at Truro on 20 May 1880. It was the first cathedral erected in England since St. Paul's was rebuilt in 1697. The bishop, Edward White Benson, was well known to the prince in his earlier capacity of headmaster of Wellington College. By the prince's wish the ceremony was performed, despite clerical misgivings, with full masonic rites. Some seven years later (3 Nov. 1887) the prince returned to attend the consecration of the eastern portion of the building, the first portion to be used for divine worship. Dr. Benson, then archbishop of Canterbury, was his companion.

The development of his property at Sandringham stirred in him an active interest in agriculture, and his provincial visits were often associated with the shows of the Royal Agricultural Society, of which he was elected a life governor on 3 Feb. 1864, and subsequently became an active member. He was four times president, for the first time in 1869, when the show was held at Manchester, afterwards in 1878 at Kilburn, in 1885 at Preston, and in 1900 at York. He rarely failed to attend the shows in other years, being present at Gloucester in the year before his death; he subsequently accepted the presidency for the meeting at Norwich in 1911, which he did not live to see. In 1889, the jubilee year of the society, he acted at Windsor for the queen, who was president, and presided the same year at the state banquet given in St. James's Palace to the council and chief officers of the society. He showed minute interest in the details of the society's work.

At the same time, there was no district of London to which he was a stranger. He not only laid the foundation stone of the Tower Bridge on 21 June 1886 but opened the complete structure on 30 June 1894. He showed interest in the East End by opening a recreation ground in Whitechapel on 24 June 1880. He laid the foundation stone of the People's Palace in London on 8 June 1886, and on 21 June 1887 he opened for a second time new buildings at the London Hospital. His educational engagements in the metropolis were always varied. They included during this period the formal installation of the Merchant Taylors' School in the old buildings of Charterhouse on 6 April 1878, the opening of the new buildings of the City of London School on 12 Dec. 1882, and of the City of London College in Moorfields on 8 July 1883, together with the new foundation of the City and Guilds of London Institute on 25 June 1884. On 21 Dec. 1885 he went to Sir Henry Doulton's works at Lambeth in order to present