Punch,  37 (1859), 126.

A Prince at High Pressure

Anon

Genre:

Poetry, Drollery

Subjects:

Education, Steam-power, Mathematics, Steamships, Accidents, Universities


    Describes the strenuous education of Edward, Prince of Wales. Notes how at the University of Edinburgh 'thy poor noddle perplext / The gauntlet must run of each science and study; / Till the mixed streams of knowledge [...] Through the field of thy boy-brains run shallow and muddy'. Goes on to note how, after Edinburgh, where 'Presbyterian pure science is quaffed', he attended the University of Oxford, and then the University of Cambridge, 'Where dynamics and statics, and pure mathematics / Will be piled on his brain's awful cargo of "cram"'. Notes that the Prince might later be educated at Berlin, Jena, Bonn, and Göttingen (reflecting Prince Albert's determination to secure a scientific education for his son). Concludes by warning the prince of the dangers of 'high-pressure fashion', a danger illustrated most spectacularly in the Great Eastern's 'disaster' (a reference to the explosion of one of its funnels on 9 September 1859).



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