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.
A few months after her father's death, the Princess Alice married her
betrothed, Prince Louis, and since her own death (on the same day of the
year as her father's) in the year 1878, we have had an opportunity of
looking into the royal household from the point of view of a daughter and
a sister. The Prince-Consort's death-bed made a very close tie between the
Queen and the Princess Alice, who herself had a full share of womanly
sorrow in her comparatively short life, and the tone of perfect
self-abnegation which pervades her letters is very touching. On that fatal
14th December 1878, the first of the Queen's children was taken from her.
The Princess Alice fell a victim to her kind-hearted care while nursing
those of her family ill with diphtheria.
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