The Queen has ever since her great bereavement most constantly and piously revered the Prince’s memory. Her reverence has taken the practical form of the deepest sympathy with the woes and sorrows of the poorest and humblest of her subjects. She has eschewed the pomp and ceremony of State, and deliberately set herself to discover and soothe sorrow, and to recognise all good deeds of the same character performed by others. When the noble Peabody bestowed his princely act of munificence on the poor of London, no recognition was made of his generosity more signal than that made by the Queen. She has been among the first to help by loving words and by practical aid the sufferers by any great national calamity—a Lancashire famine, a shipwreck or railway accident, a colliery explosion, a catastrophe caused by mad and futile sedition. Ready and sympathetic condolence has especially flowed from her to those bereaved like herself, and when President Lincoln perished at his post, the Queen sent to his widow a long letter which her son described as “the outgushing of a woman’s heartfelt sympathy,” and which, with rare and commendable good taste, has never been exposed to the public eye. Most fitly has she specially commemorated her husband’s memory by the institution of a fit companion and complement to the Victoria Cross, the “Albert Medal,” which is bestowed on brave men who save lives from the “Peril of the Sea or Shipwreck.”
Many consolations have been vouchsafed by Heaven to the widowed Queen. Since she lost her great stay and support her realm has for the most part been prosperous and contented. Though environed by many troubles, and though the clang of battle has shaken the world, the dove of peace has benignantly hovered o’er Britain. Much advance has been made in those fields of social, moral, political, and educational improvement which were so dear to Albert’s heart, as they have always been to her own. And shortly before the period when these pages are first given to the public, the political progress of the nation has received a great stimulus, such as is given in a people’s history only at rare and long intervals. Her children grow up from youth to maturity, and from maturity to maternity and paternity, without a slur upon their fair names, and are, with those to whom the elder of them have united themselves in wedlock, all that a proud mother’s heart could wish. God has stricken her; but He has proved also an Infinite Healer and Solacer. Ours be it to add to the ordinary motives of patriotism, those more tender and touching influences which arise from the recollection that our Queen is now, as said that Queen of England whose subjects were Shakespeare and Bacon, Spenser and Sidney—“Married to her People.”
THE END.
CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.C.
CASSELL’S
REPRESENTATIVE BIOGRAPHIES.
Vol. I.
Life of John Bright 50 cents.
Vol. II.
Life of W. E. Gladstone 50 cents.