The Prince Consort's reforms in the economy and administration of the Court itself, though not the least valuable or necessary of his labours, naturally appealed less directly to the popular interest than his other activities, by the results of which the land of his adoption is to-day the gainer. Not a moment had been lost by the Prince in beginning to realize his early idea of associating for the first time since the days of the Stuarts the Sovereign with the promotion of letters, science, and art. The Court of Henry VIII. had been visited by Erasmus, and by other men of letters of the Protestant connection. If the story of Shakespeare's presence in the group that surrounded Elizabeth be apocryphal, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh undoubtedly paid their homage to the Virgin Queen. Charles I. was the patron of Van Dyck and an admirable connoisseur as well as encourager of true art wherever it could be found. Charles II., after his restoration, was less interested in painters and poets than in science.
Before Queen Victoria, the Hanoverian Sovereigns had not identified the new dynasty with any special affection for the accomplishments which gild and refine life. The Prince Consort, at the outset of his career mastered two facts. First, he discerned, that, even in the absence of a national scheme of education, the taste for reading and culture bred not only by improved intelligence, but by the growth of material prosperity and the humanizing influences of foreign travel, must before long result in a marked improvement of the appreciation among the countrymen of Reynolds, of Byron, of Wordsworth, and of Southey, of all that sweetens and brightens daily existence. The Prince perceived, too, that the lines on which English social intercourse was developing must involve a demand for amusements and for recreations upon a larger scale than family reunions beneath the domestic life could provide. The theatre in England had not become then a considerable force. It would have been premature to anticipate the later advice of Mr Matthew Arnold to organize the stage. The demand for good music in public places and on reasonable terms; the growing interest in the works of English artists; above all the newly awakened interest among the whole community in the welfare of their least fortunate members;--these are the features of the time which in his survey of the domestic situation chiefly impressed the Prince.