all modern times.

Thirty years rolled away and I saw the good Queen again. The Albert
Memorial, erected to the handsome Prince Consort, whom she idolized, had
just been completed, and one morning the Queen came incognito to make
her first private inspection of the memorial. Through the intimation of
a friend I hurried at once to the Park, and found a small company of
people gathered there. Her Majesty had just come, accompanied by Prince
Arthur, the Princess Louise and the young Princess Beatrice; and they
were examining the gorgeous new structure. The Queen wore a plain black
silk dress and her children were very plainly attired, so that they
looked like a group of good, honest republicans. The only evidence of
royalty was that the company of gentlemen who were pointing out to the
Queen the various beauties of the monument just completed were careful
not to turn their backs upon Her Majesty. I observed that when her
children bade her "good morning" they kneeled and kissed her hand. She
remained sitting in her carriage for some time, chatting and laughing
with her daughter Beatrice. Her countenance had become very florid and
her figure very stout. The last time that I saw her driving in the Park
her full, rubicund face made her look not only like the venerable
grandmother of a host of descendants, but of the whole vast empire on
which the sun never sets. Last year the most beloved sovereign that has
ever occupied the British throne was laid in the gorgeous mausoleum at
Frogmore beside the husband of her youth and the sharer of twenty-two
years of happy and holy wedlock. All Christendom was a mourner beside
that royal tomb.

From London I went on a very brief visit to Paris, at the time when
Louis Phillipe was at the height of his power and apparently securely
seated on his throne. Within a half a dozen years from that time he was
a refugee in disguise, and the kingdom of France was followed by the
Republic of Lamartine. My brief visit to Paris was made more agreeable
by the fact that my kinsman, the Hon. Henry Ledyard, was then in charge
of the American Embassy, in the absence of his father-in-law, General
Lewis Cass, our Ambassador, who had returned to America for a visit. The
one memorable incident of that brief sojourn in Paris that I shall
recall was a visit to the tomb of Napoleon, whose remains had been
brought home the year before from the Island of St. Helena. Passing
through the Place de la Concord and crossi