had been the favourite of Prince Albert in his last illness. His physician expressed one day the hope that he would be better in a few days; but the prince replied, "No, I shall not recover, but I am not taken by surprise; I am not afraid, I trust I am prepared ."
'When the end came' (we quote the beautiful words of the biographer) '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-men, 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."'
The funeral took place on the 23d December, at Frogmore, and the Prince of Wales was the chief mourner. The words on the coffin were as follow: 'Here lies the most illustrious and exalted Albert, Prince-Consort, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, the most beloved husband of the most august and potent Queen Victoria. He died on the 14th day of December 1861, in the forty-third year of his age.'
A Prince indeed,
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, through all time, Albert the Good.
On that sad Christmas which followed the prince's death the usual festivities were omitted in the royal household, and the nation mourned in unison with the Queen for the great and good departed.
It has been well said by a distinguished writer that it was only 'since his death, and chiefly since the Queen's own generous and tender impulse prompted her to make the nation the confidant of her own great love and happiness, that the Prince-Consort has had full justice…. Perhaps, if truth were told, he was too uniformly noble, too high above all soil and fault, to win the fickle popular admiration, which is more caught by picturesque irregularity than by the higher perfections of a wholly worthy life.'
CHAPTER VIII.
The Queen in Mourning—Death of Princess Alice—Illness of Prince of
Wales—The Family of the Queen—Opening of Indian Exhibition and Imperial
Institute—Jubilee—Jubilee Statue—Death of Duke of Clarence—Address to
the Nation on the marriage of Princess May.
Henceforth the great Queen was 'written widow,' and while striving nobly in her loneliness to fulfil those public functions, in which she had hitherto been so faithfully companioned, she shrank at first from courtly pageantry and from the gay whirl of London life, and lived chiefly in the quiet homes which she had always loved best, at Osborne and Balmoral. When she has come out among her people, it has chiefly been for the sake of some public benefit for the poor and the suffering.
At times there have been murmurs against the Queen for failing in her widowhood to maintain the gaieties and extravagances of an open court in the capital of her dominions. It was said that 'trade was bad therefore,' and times of depression and want of employment were attributed to this cause. The nation is growing wiser. It is seen that true prosperity does not consist merely in the quick circulation of money—above all, certainly not in the transference of wealth gained from the tillers of the soil to the classes which minister solely to vanity and luxury.