Early in June the Queen and Prince and their Court left busy, smoky London for a few days of quiet and pure air at lovely Claremont. They spent part of that restful time in going to the Derby, in four carriages and four with outriders and postilions--a brave sight to see.
On the first of June, Prince Albert was invited to preside at a great public meeting in Exeter Hall, for the abolition of the Slave Trade--and he did preside, and made a good speech, which he had practiced over to the Queen in the morning. That was an ordeal, for he spoke in English for the first time, and before a very large and distinguished audience. It was a very young "Daniel come to judgment" on an ancient wrong--for the Prince was not yet of age.
That sweet Quakeress, Caroline Fox, thus speaks of the Prince on this interesting occasion, in her delightful "Memories":--"Prince Albert was received with tremendous applause, but bore his honors with calm and modest dignity. He is certainly a very beautiful man,--a thorough German, and a fine poetical specimen of the race."
Ah, what would that doughty champion of the Slave Trade, William IV., have said, could he have seen his niece's husband giving royal countenance to such a fanatical, radical gathering! It was enough to make him stir irefully in his coffin at Windsor.
But for that matter, could our ancestors generally, men and women who devoutly believed in the past, and died in the odor of antiquity, know of our modern goings-on, in political and humanitarian reforms--know of our "Science so called," and social ethics, there would be "a rattling among the dry bones," not only in royal vaults, but in country churchyards, where "_The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep._"
On the 10th of June, 1840, occurred the first mad attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria--made as she and Prince Albert were driving up Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace, in a small open phaeton. Prince Albert, in a letter to his grandmamma, gives the clearest account of it. He says: "We had hardly proceeded a hundred yards from the Palace, when I noticed, on the foot-path on my side, a little, mean-looking man, holding something toward us, and, before I could distinguish what it was, a shot was fired, which almost stunned us both, it was so loud--barely six paces from us. ... The horses started, and the carriage stopped. I seized Victoria's hands and asked if the fright, had not shaken her, but she laughed."