IT IS very delightful and, we should hope, of happy augury that
the first public function performed by His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales [the future Duke of Windsor, after his abdication
as King Edward VIII] was the stone-laying of a new church on his
own demesne at Kennington. The gracious little speech the Prince
delivered on the occasion breathed the same spirit which animated
his illustrious predecessor in the titles of Prince of Wales and
Duke of Cornwall, and confessed, as the consequence of exalted
rank, that obligation of service to which the Black Prince's and
his own motto, Ich Dien, pledges him. The owner of the
manor on which the Black Prince lived and is believed tohave died,
the Prince of Wales, instructed and advised by his royal father, is
making it his care to provide suitable housing for the tenants on
his estate, and, mindful of their spiritual interests also, is
helping to plant a church, with its subsidiary buildings, in their
midst. St Anselm's, Kennington, is being raised with peculiarly
happy auspices, and in no church in the Kingdom, we imagine, will
the divine favour be more earnestly invoked on the Prince of Wales'
behalf than in that of his own parish. We observe with pleasure his
Royal Highness's adoption as his own the Black Prince's favourite
ascription, Auxilium meum a Domino.