Page:King Edward VII, his life & reign; the record of a noble career 1.djvu/21

Rh Throughout his course of life a naturally quick temper was held in control; he was ever most affectionate in family relations, ever a faithful friend, and a sure keeper of countless secrets confided to his care. His courtesy to persons in the most humble walks of life was as unfailing as that displayed to those in a rank next the throne. A deputation of working men always left his presence, when he was Prince of Wales, with the conviction of his earnest sympathy with their troubles, and with a most grateful sense of his courteous behaviour. The London cabmen and the London police received from him, on certain occasions, emphatic public testimony to the merits which none but ill-natured and prejudiced people would attempt to deny. In his readiness to afford the people in provincial towns the longed-for opportunity of gazing upon him, he rode in open carriages, with personal discomfort, amid wintry cold and in storms of rain. Such a man could hardly fail to enjoy, in the best sense, what is called "popularity". We conclude this part of our subject by a reference to the breadth and diversity of intellectual culture possessed by him. Rarely, indeed, did any man receive such a training for such a position. The son of a most able and accomplished father, he was carefully educated by tutors chosen under the best advice. The teaching of his boyhood was followed by a brief university course at Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge, where he received the soundest instruction from the ablest men in their several departments. His mind, in early and later manhood, was further developed and enlarged by travel extending to all the continents save Australia. In wanderings many, not of suffering, risk, and toilsome adventure, as in those of the Homeric hero, but of profitable and pleasurable ease, the King was a veritable modern Ulysses. Many men and cities he saw and knew, and many ways of mankind, and this knowledge he turned, on many occasions, to good account in social and political affairs as one of the best of non-professional diplomatists.