Oh how should England, dreaming of his sons, Since writing the above I have had the privilege of reading the beautiful address delivered on the last sad anniversary of our loss, by Dr. Macleod, to three of the Prince's children-the Crown Princess of Prussia, Princess Louis of Hesse, and Prince Alfred. How must their hearts have burned within them while they listened to the following glowing summary of their great Father's character: แ Yet in trying circumstances which constantly demanded from him a positive opinion, advice, decision, and action, on affairs of state and matters of world interest-in addition to those duties, themselves extremely onerous, belonging to his domestic and social life, the Prince not only came out of every ordeal unscathed, but triumphant and nobler than before. Who ever heard one whisper breathed against his moral character? What false step in politics did he ever take? What wrong advice on any subject did he ever tender? What movement, great or small, did he originate which was not beneficial to the state, and worthy of our honor and our greatness? What enemies did he ever make, unless possibly among such persons as have no sympathy with goodness, truth, or justice in any man? So completely did he become identified with all that was worth loving his capital, and proved the devotion of the Belgians to their constitutional sovereign and to the independence of their country. in the nation; so intuitively did he discern its wants, and those points on which, while preserving all that was good, true progress toward something better was possible, and therefore desirable—that all classes, all interests, claimed him as their leader. Commerce, agriculture, science, arts, the cottage and the camp, the great men in the nation, as well as the domestic servant and the ragged child, recognized in him their wisest guide and truest friend. For the attainment of whatever could benefit them, 'the Prince of all the land led them on.'. ". . . . Few men who have ever lived, no prince certainly of whom we read, could have possessed a mind so many-sided with such corresponding political and social influence. He was, indeed, the type of a new era-an era of power; but not of that kind of power represented by the armor of his noble ancestors, the power of mere physical strength, courage, or endurance, displayed at the head of armies or of fleets, but the moral power of character, the power of intellectual culture, of extensive knowledge, of earnest thought; the power of the sagacious statesman, of the single-minded good man; that power which discerns, interprets, and guides the wants and the spirit of the age-the power, in short, of highest wisdom directed by genuine benevolence to higher objects. ". . . . His real strength lay most of all in his character, or in that which resulted from will and deliberate choice, springing out of a nature singularly pure, by God's grace, from childhood. ... It is only now, when he is gone, that all who knew him are made to feel how much they unconsciously depended upon him! like a staff on which the weak have been so long accustomed to lean, that they know not how essential it was to their support until it be removed, and when with a sigh they withdraw the hand from the place, now empty, where it was wont to be! "It is this feature in the Prince's character," Dr. Macleod adds, "which ought to make every one sympathize to the very utmost with her Majesty, who, of all persons on earth, had the best means of knowing it, and the best means of proving it in a thousand ways in every-day life, and who had the best grounds, therefore, for appreciating its constancy, its tenderness, its unfailing strength." And well may the eloquent preacher appeal to "every true English heart or conscience" to acknowledge the demand which "now arises in mute eloquence from the throne for the sympathy, the prayers, the loyal self-sacrificing aid of every member of her house, and of every citizen of our Christian nation, on her behalf whom God, in His Providence, has been pleased to spare, and in mercy to continue to us, as our beloved Sovereign." THE EARLY YEARS OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE CONSORT. 1819-1841. CHAPTER I. The Saxe-Coburg Family.-Birth and early Infancy of the Princes.Birth of Princess Victoria.-Letters from the Duchess of Coburg, and from the Dowager Duchesses of Coburg and of Gotha. PRINCE ALBERT was descended from the Ernestine, or elder branch of the great Saxon family. That branch had, however, lost its birthright in the course of the 16th century. Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, had been the protector of Martin Luther, and was one of the first to embrace the doctrines of the Reformed Church, of which he was the most powerful supporter. His immediate successors adhered to the same religious opinions, and after the defeat of John Frederick the Magnanimous by Charles V., at Mühlberg, in 1547, they paid the penalty of their devotion to the Protestant faith in the forced surrender of their inheritance to the younger, B |