THE ROYAL PROGRESS

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, SEPT. 1849]

QUESTION "What is a King?" Answer-"A monster who devours the human race." Such was a part of the catechism taught to all the children of France during the first fervour of the Revolution in 1789. "I wonder the people should die of want," said a princess during the dreadful famine of 1774; "for my part, if I was one of them, I should live on beef-steaks and porter, rather than perish." Such are the feelings with which the members of the same community, children of the same family, unhappily sometimes come to regard each other during periods of democratic excitement or mutual estrangement. Ignorance, worked on by falsehood, and misled by ambition, is the main cause of this fatal severance. Nothing removes it so effectually as bringing them together. So natural are the feelings of loyalty to the human heart, so universally do they spring up when the falsehood which has smothered them is neutralised by the evidence of the senses, that it may be considered as one of the greatest evils which can afflict society, when circumstances occur which keep sovereigns aloof from their people, and one of the greatest blessings when they can rejoin each other. Of this, a signal example occurred on the return of the royal family of France from the fatal journey to Varennes, when Barnave, who had been sent down with Petion, as one of the most vehement and stern republicans, to bring them back to Paris, was so impressed with the philanthropic benevolence of the King, and so melted by the heroic magnanimity of the Queen, that he became thenceforward one of the most faithful defenders of the royal cause. "How often," says Thiers, in recounting this

remarkable conversion, "would factions the most inveterate be reconciled, if they could meet and read each other's hearts!"

The sudden change often produced in the general mind, by the veil of ignorance and prejudice being withdrawn, which had concealed from them the real character of their rulers, is not to be ascribed merely to the lustre of royalty, or the dazzling of the public gaze by the magnificent pageants which, on such occasions, generally surround it. It arises mainly from a different cause it is allied to the generous affections it springs from the feelings planted by the Author of nature in the human heart, to bind society together. It is often seen most strongly when the royal pageants are the most unpretending, and the royal personages, laying aside their previous state, mingle almost without distinction, save from the superior grace of their manners, with the ordinary citizens. It is more like the irresistible gush of affection which overspreads every heart, when the members, long severed, of a once united family are reassembled; or when the prodigal returns to his father's home, only the more dear from the events which had estranged him from it.

It is sometimes said that loyalty is an instinctive principle, meant to supply the place of reason before the intellectual faculties have grown to their full strength among a people, but unnecessary, and which gradually dies out, when society, under the direction of self-government, has come to be regulated by the rational faculties. There never was a greater mistake; and every day's experience may convince us that it is not only false, but directly the reverse of the truth. The time will never come, when the aid of loyalty will not be required to bind society to its chief; and if the period should ever arrive that its generous influence is no longer felt, it may safely be concluded that the sun of national prosperity has set, and that a night of darkness and suffering is at hand. Mankind cannot be attached, save in a passing moment of fervour, to an abstract principle, or a vast community without a head, or something which may supply its want to the senses. The aid of individuals or localities is required to concentrate and keep alive the patriotic affections, where they are not centred on an individual sovereign. What the Acropolis was to Athens, the Capitol to Rome, St Mark's to Venice, that the sovereign is to a monarchical community; and so it will remain to the end of the world.

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All the fervour of the Revolution could not supply in France the want of one chief, till Napoleon concentrated the loyal affections on himself. The real enemy to loyalty is not reason, but selfishness. It dies away, not under the influence of enlarged education, but under that of augmented corruption; and till that last stage of national decay has arrived, its flame will only burn the more steadily from reason adding the fuel by which it is to be fed.

If any doubt could be entertained, by a well-informed mind, of the incalculable importance of loyalty, as the chief and often the only bond which holds society together, it would be removed by two events which have occurred in our own times, the Moscow invasion, and the steadiness of England during the mind-quake of 1848. On the first occasion, this sacred principle defeated the mightiest armament ever assembled by the powers of intellect against the liberties of mankind; on the last, it preserved unshaken and unscathed the ark of the constitution in the British islands, amidst the deluge which had shaken the thrones of almost all the other European monarchies. In these two examples, where two states in the opposite extremes of infancy and civilisation were successively rescued from the most appalling dangers, amidst the ruins of all around them, by the influence of this noble principle, we may discern the clearest proof of its lasting influence upon man, and of the incalculable blessings it is fitted to confer, not less in the most enlightened than in the most unenlightened ages of society. But for it, the social institutions of Great Britain would have been overturned on the 10th April 1848, and England, with all its education, civilisation, and habits of freedom, would have been consigned to destruction by a deluge of civilised barbarians, compared to whom, as Macaulay has well said, those that followed the standard of Attila or Alaric were humane and temperate warriors. Hence we may learn how wonderfully loyalty is strengthened, instead of being weakened, by the progress of knowledge and the spread of civilisation in a really free community; and what force that noble principle acquires when, to the generous enthusiasm which binds the unlettered warrior to his chief, is added the determination of freemen to defend a throne which all feel to be the keystone in the arch of the national fortunes. It is a fortunate, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to

say a Providential circumstance, that a QUEEN, during the late eventful years, has been on the throne of the British empire. Had a king been there, still more one of unpopular manner or retired habits, when all the thrones of Europe were falling around us, the event might have been very different, and England, with all its glories, have been sunk in the bottomless pit of revolution. The feelings of loyalty to a Queen, especially if she is young and handsome, and unites the virtues to the graces of her sex, are very different from those which, under the most favourable circumstances, can be awakened in favour of a king. The natural gallantry of man, the feelings of chivalry, the respect due to the softer sex, are mingled in overwhelming proportions with the abstract passions of loyalty when a young and interesting woman, endowed with masculine energy, but adorned with feminine beauty, surrounded by the husband of her choice and the children of their love, is seen braving the risks and enduring the fatigues of a journey through lands recently convulsed by civil dissension, solely to win the love of her subjects, to heal the divisions of the great family of which she forms the head.

History affords numerous examples of the far greater power, in periods of intestine troubles, queens have than kings in winning the affections or calming the exasperation of their subjects. Despite all her errors, notwithstanding her faults, Queen Mary exercised a sway over a large part of her subjects which no man in similar circumstances could have done. Austria would have been crushed by the arms of France and Bavaria in 1744, but for the chivalrous loyalty which led the Hungarian nobles to exclaim in a transport of generous enthusiasm, “Moriamur pro Rege nostro, Maria Theresa !"

"Fair Austria spreads her mournful charms,

The Queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms."

And it is doubtful if all the fervour of the Reformation could have enabled England to withstand the assault of the Catholic league, headed by Spain in the time of Philip II., if in defence of the nation had not been joined the chivalrous loyalty of a gallant nobility to their Queen, as well as the stern resolution of a Protestant people in behalf of their religion and their liberties.

But the passion of loyalty, as all other passions, requires aliment for its support. Like love, it can live on wonder

fully little hope, but it absolutely requires some. A look, a smile, a word from a sovereign, doubtless go a great way; but entire and long-continued absence will chill even the warmest affections. It is on this account that Royal Progresses have so important an influence in knitting together the bonds which unite a people to their sovereign. They have one inestimable effect-they make them known to each other. The one sees in person the enthusiastic affection with which the sovereign is regarded by the people, the latter the parental interest with which the people are regarded by their sovereign. Prejudices, perhaps nourished by faction or fostered by party, melt away before the simple light of truth. A few hours of mutual intercourse dispels the alienation which years of separation, and the continued efforts of guilty ambition during a generation, may have produced. The generous affections spring up unbidden, when the evidence of the senses dispels the load of falsehood by which they had been restrained. Mutual knowledge produces mutual interest; and the chances of success to subsequent efforts to bring about an estrangement are materially lessened, by the discovery of how wide had been the misapprehension which had formerly existed, and how deep the mutual affection which really dwelt in the recesses of the heart, and was now brought to light by the happy approximation of the sovereign and her people.

It was a noble spectacle to behold a young Queen, at a time when scarce a monarch in Europe was secure on his throne, setting out with her illustrious consort and family to make a royal progress through her dominions, and selecting for the first place of her visit the island which had so recently raised the standard of rebellion against her government, and for the next the city which had first in the empire responded to the cry of treason raised in Paris, on the overthrow of the throne of Louis Philippe. Nor has the result failed to correspond, even more happily than could have been hoped, to the gallant undertaking. If it be true, as is commonly reported, that our gracious sovereign said, “She went to Ireland to make friends, but to the Land of Cakes to find them," she must by this time have been convinced that the generous design has, in both islands, proved successful beyond what her most enthusiastic friends could have dared to hope. Who could have recognised, in the multi