days of 1871, calling forth such keen anxiety throughout the land that it seemed as if thousands of families had a son lying in imminent peril of death, showed at once that the nation was yet loyal to the core.  True prayers were everywhere offered up in sympathy with the mother, the sister, the wife, who watched at the bedside of the heir to the throne; and when, on the very anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death, the life that had seemed ebbing away turned to flow upward again; a sort of sob of relief rose from the heart of the people, who rejoiced to be able, at a later day, to share with their Queen her solemn act of thanksgiving for mercy shown, as she went with her restored son, her son’s wife, and her son’s sons, to worship and give praise in the great cathedral of St. Paul’s.

Princess Alice, who had shared and softened the grief of her mother ten years before, had been again at her side during all the protracted anxiety of this winter, and had helped to nurse her brother.  The Princess’s experience of nursing had been terribly increased during the awful wars, when she had been incessantly busied in hospital organisation and work, suffering from the sight of suffering as a sensitive nature must, but ever toiling to lighten it; and she had come with her children to recover a little strength in her mother’s Highland home.  Thus it was that she was found at Sandringham when her brother’s illness declared itself, “fulfilling the same priceless offices” of affection as in her maiden days, and endearing herself the more to the English people, who grieved for her when, in the ensuing year, a mournful accident robbed her of one darling child, and who felt it like a personal domestic loss when in 1878 the beautiful life ended.  Other royal marriages have from time to time awakened public interest, and one, celebrated between the Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne, heir of the dukedom of Argyll, had just preceded the illness of the Prince and was regarded with much more attention because no British subject since the days of George II’s legislation as to royal alliances had been deemed worthy of such honour.  But not even the more outwardly splendid match between the Queen’s sailor son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and the daughter of the Czar Alexander, could eclipse in popularity the quiet marriage, overclouded with sorrow, and the tranquil, hard-working life of the good and gifted lady who was to die the martyr of her true motherly and wifely devotion.

[Illustration:  Lord Beaconsfield.]

[Illustration:  Lord Salisbury.]

From these glimpses of the joys and troubles affecting the household that is cherished in the heart of England, we return to the more stormy records of our public doings.  A sort of link between the two exists in the long and very successful tour which the Prince of Wales, some time after his restoration to health, made of the vast Indian dominions of the crown.  Extensive travels and wide acquaintance with the great world to which Britain is bound by a thousand ties have entered largely into the royal scheme of education for the future King.  No princes of England in former days have seen so much of other lands as the sons of Queen Victoria; and this particular journey is understood to have had an excellent political effect.