14th; and there fell on
her to whom his last conscious look had been turned, his last caress
given, a burden of woe almost unspeakable, and for which the heart of
the nation throbbed with well-nigh unbearable sympathy. Seldom has
the personal grief of a sovereign been so keenly shared by subjects.
Indeed, they had cause to lament; the removal of the Prince Consort,
just when his faculties seemed ripest and his influence most assured,
left a blank in the councils of the nation which has never been
filled up. "We have buried our _king_" said Mr. Disraeli, regretting
profoundly this national loss; but for once the English people forgot
the public deprivation in compassionating her who was left more
conspicuously lonely, more heavily burdened, than even the poor
bereaved colliers' wives in the North for whom _her_ compassion was
so quick and so sharply sympathetic. Something remorseful mingled
then, and may mingle now, with the affection felt for this lost
benefactor, who had not only been somewhat jealously eyed by certain
classes on his first coming, but who had suffered much silently from
misunderstanding and also from deliberate misrepresentation, and only
by patient continuance in well-doing had at last won the favour which
was his rightful due.

"That which we have we prize not to the worth
While we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
While it was ours."

A peculiar tenderness was ever after cherished for Princess Alice,
who in this dark hour rose up to be her mother's comforter,
endeavouring in every way possible to save her all trouble--"all
communications from the Ministers and household passed through the
Princess's hands to the Queen, then bowed down with grief.... It was
the very intimate intercourse with the sorrowing Queen at that time
which called forth in Princess Alice that keen interest and
understanding in politics for which she was afterwards so
distinguished. The gay, bright girl suddenly developed into a wise,
far-seeing woman, living only for others."

[Illustration: Princess Alice.]

This ministering angel in the house of mourning had been already
betrothed, with her parents' full approval, to Prince Louis of Hesse;
and to him she was married on July 1st, 1862, at Osborne, very
quietly, as befitted the mournful circumstance of the royal family.
Many a heartfelt wish for her happiness fol