Nothing in England has been thought too good for the members of this happy family; but really it is rather too humiliating when we begin to express our doubts whether we can find anything, among the most venerable of our institutions, good enough to place at the feet of a Prince of Saxe-Gotha.
But though the compliment is left-handed, there are symptoms of a friendlier tone in the parallel between Prince Hal (Henry V) and Prince "Al." _Punch_, furthermore, congratulates the Prince on giving up the hat-business, interesting himself in the welfare of the working classes, and contributing by his speeches and subscriptions to the advancement of social reform. A year later he is saluted as the Prince of Bricklayers:--
His Royal Highness is now always laying the foundation stone of some charitable institution or other.... The services of Her Majesty's Consort ought to be duly requited, and _Punch_, in order to reward him in kind, hereby spreads the mortar of approbation with the trowel of sincerity, upon a Prince who really appears to be coming out like a regular brick.
But, as we have noted elsewhere, it was the Exhibition of 1851 which, more than anything else, tended to enhance the Prince's repute and popularity. It was a great and fruitful idea--and the Prince was its only begetter. The speech of the Prince Consort in explaining the significance of the Exhibition as the realizing of the solidarity of the world, Thackeray's May Day Ode, which appeared in _The Times_, and other utterances in the Press show, as Professor Bury points out in _The Idea of Progress_, that "the Exhibition was, at the time, optimistically regarded not merely as a record of material achievement and technical progress, but as a demonstration that humanity was at last on its way to a better and happier state.... A vista was suggested, at the end of which far-sighted people might think they discerned Tennyson's 'Federation of the World.'" _Punch_ never failed to give the Prince the credit of initiating the scheme, and, after a little wavering, gave it his enthusiastic support. The change in public opinion towards the Prince is well reflected in the frank but friendly palinode which appeared in the issue of November 26, 1853, as a result of the suggestion made by City magnates to erect a statue to the Prince in Hyde Park:--