He inaugurated and urged forward
many benevolent and scientific enterprises, and schools of art and music.
This extraordinary man seemed to have a prophetic sense of the value and
ultimate success of inchoate public improvements, and when he once
adopted a scheme allowed nothing to discourage him. He engineered the
Holborn Viaduct enterprise, and I notice that at a late meeting of the
brave Channel Tunnel Company, Sir E. W. Watkin claimed that "the cause
had once the advocacy of the great Prince-Consort, the most sagacious man
of the century."
With all these things he found time to carefully overlook the education
of his children. The Prince of Wales was now thought old enough to be
placed under a tutor, and one was selected--a Mr. Birch (let us hope the
name was not significant), "a young, good-looking, amiable man," who had
himself taken "the highest honors at Cambridge";--doubtless a great point
those highest Cambridge honors, for the instructor of an eight-years-old
boy. For all the ability and learning of his tutor, it is said that the
Prince of Wales never took to the classics with desperate avidity. He was
never inclined to waste his strength or dim his pleasant blue eyes over
the midnight oil.
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