RT

This was the last birthday of the Prince Consort and it was spent
travelling to Killarney with the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the
younger members of the Royal family. A few days there and then the young
Prince returned to camp. In the autumn he visited the Rhine manoeuvres
of the German army and met his future bride, the Princess Alexandra. He
then returned to Cambridge and from thence journeyed in haste to Windsor
on December 13th to be present at his father's death-bed on the
following evening. No sadder event has occurred in the history of
English royalty than this premature and much-mourned death of the good
and really great Prince Consort. To the young Heir Apparent it meant the
loss of a loving father, a careful guardian, a watchful and wise
adviser. To the wife and widow it meant the ruin of a great happiness
and a sorrow which no passing years could ever remove. Sir Theodore
Martin's beautiful description of the scene at the death-bed, at which
knelt the Queen, the Princess Alice, the Princess Helena and the Prince
of Wales, may well be given here: "In the solemn hush of that mournful
chamber there was such grief as has rarely hallowed any death-bed. A
great light, which had blessed the world, and which the mourners had
but yesterday hoped might long bless it, was waning fast away. A
husband, a father, a friend, a master, endeared by every quality by
which man in such relations can win the love of his fellow-man, was
passing into the Silent Land, and his loving glance, his wise counsels,
his firm, manly thought should be known among them no more. The Castle
clock chimed the third quarter after ten. Calm and peaceful grew the
beloved form; the features settled into the beauty of a perfectly serene
repose; two or three long, but gentle breaths were drawn; and that great
soul had fled to seek a nobler scope for its aspirations in the world
within the veil, for which it had often yearned, where there is rest for
the weary, and where 'the spirits of the just are made perfect.'"

Not long before his death the Prince Consort had readily agreed to his
son's wish for a visit to the Holy Land and had planned the
preliminaries of the tour before he was stricken by the disease which
carried him off. After that sad event it was felt by the Queen that such
a journey would now be doubly wise and proper and she made arrangements
for General Bruce to accompany the Prince, together with Major Teesdale,
Captain Keppel and