Three hundred years ago, when our dread Sovereign Lady Elizabeth came to take possession of her realm and capital city, Holingshed, if you please (whose pleasing history of course you carry about with you), relates in his fourth volume folio, that--"At hir entring the citie, she was of the people received maruellous intierlie, as appeared by the assemblies, praiers, welcommings, cries, and all other signes which argued a woonderfull earnest loue:" and at various halting-places on the royal progress children habited like angels appeared out of allegoric edifices and spoke verses to her--"Welcome, O Queen, as much as heart can think, Welcome again, as much as tongue can tell, Welcome to joyous tongues and hearts that will not shrink.
God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well!
Our new Princess, you may be sure, has also had her Alexandrines, and many minstrels have gone before her singing her praises.Mr.
Tupper, who begins in very great force and strength, and who proposes to give her no less than eight hundred thousand welcomes in the first twenty lines of his ode, is not satisfied with this most liberal amount of acclamation, but proposes at the end of his poem a still more magnificent subscription.Thus we begin, "A hundred thousand welcomes, a hundred thousand welcomes." (In my copy the figures are in the well-known Arabic numerals, but let us have the numbers literally accurate:)--"A hundred thousand welcomes!
A hundred thousand welcomes!
And a hundred thousand more!
O happy heart of England, Shout aloud and sing, laud, As no land sang before;And let the paeans soar And ring from shore to shore, A hundred thousand welcomes, And a hundred thousand more;And let the cannons roar The joy-stunned city o'er.
And let the steeples chime it A hundred thousand welcomes And a hundred thousand more;And let the people rhyme it From neighbor's door to door, From every man's heart's core, A hundred thousand welcomes And a hundred thousand more."This contribution, in twenty not long lines, of 900,000 (say nine hundred thousand) welcomes is handsome indeed; and shows that when our bard is inclined to be liberal, he does not look to the cost.
But what is a sum of 900,000 to his further proposal?--"O let all these declare it, Let miles of shouting swear it, In all the years of yore, Unparalleled before!
And thou, most welcome Wand'rer Across the Northern Water, Our England's ALEXANDRA, Our dear adopted daughter--Lay to thine heart, conned o'er and o'er, In future years remembered well, The magic fervor of this spell That shakes the land from shore to shore, And makes all hearts and eyes brim o'er;Our hundred thousand welcomes, Our fifty million welcomes, And a hundred million more!"Here we have, besides the most liberal previous subscription, a further call on the public for no less than one hundred and fifty million one hundred thousand welcomes for her Royal Highness.How much is this per head for all of us in the three kingdoms? Not above five welcomes apiece, and I am sure many of us have given more than five hurrahs to the fair young Princess.
Each man sings according to his voice, and gives in proportion to his means.The guns at Sheerness "from their adamantine lips"(which had spoken in quarrelsome old times a very different language,) roared a hundred thundering welcomes to the fair Dane.
The maidens of England strewed roses before her feet at Gravesend when she landed.Mr.Tupper, with the million and odd welcomes, may be compared to the thundering fleet; Mr.Chorley's song, to the flowerets scattered on her Royal Highness's happy and carpeted path:--"Blessings on that fair face!
Safe on the shore Of her home-dwelling place, Stranger no more.
Love, from her household shrine, Keep sorrow far!
May for her hawthorn twine, June bring sweet eglantine, Autumn, the golden vine, Dear Northern Star!"Hawthorn for May, eglantine for June, and in autumn a little tass of the golden vine for our Northern Star.I am sure no one will grudge the Princess these simple enjoyments, and of the produce of the last-named pleasing plant, I wonder how many bumpers were drunk to her health on the happy day of her bridal? As for the Laureate's verses, I would respectfully liken his Highness to a giant showing a beacon torch on "a windy headland." His flaring torch is a pine-tree, to be sure, which nobody can wield but himself.He waves it:
and four times in the midnight he shouts mightily, "Alexandra!" and the Pontic pine is whirled into the ocean and Enceladus goes home.
Whose muse, whose cornemuse, sounds with such plaintive sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Musselburgh lie rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up to Leith shore to hear the exquisite music? Sweeter piper Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who has given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty.When a most beautiful, celebrated and unfortunate princess whose memory the Professor loves--when Mary, wife of Francis the Second, King of France, and by her own right proclaimed Queen of Scotland and England (poor soul!), entered Paris with her young bridegroom, good Peter Ronsard wrote of her--"Toi qui as veu l'excellence de celle Qui rend le ciel de l'Escosse envieux, Dy hardiment, contentez vous mes yeux, Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle."Quoted in Mignet's "Life of Mary."
"Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle." Here is an Alexandrine written three hundred years ago, as simple as bon jour.Professor Aytoun is more ornate.After elegantly complimenting the spring, and a description of her Royal Highness's well-known ancestors the "Berserkers," he bursts forth--"The Rose of Denmark comes, the Royal Bride!
O loveliest Rose! our paragon and pride--Choice of the Prince whom England holds so dear--What homage shall we pay To one who has no peer?
