chequered life came to an end in the old palace of Claremont, just
before the "papal aggressions"--rash, impolitic, and mischievous, as
competent observers pronounced it, but powerless to injure English
Protestantism--had thrown all the country into a ferment, which took
some months to subside. We are told that Her Majesty, though
naturally interested by this affair, was more alive to the quarter
where the real peril lay than were some of her subjects; but in the
universal distress caused by the death of Peel none joined more
truly, none deplored that loss more deeply, than the Sovereign, who
would willingly have shown her value for the true servant she had
lost by conferring a peerage on his widow--an honour which Lady Peel,
faithful to the wishes and sharing the feeling of her husband, felt
it necessary to decline.

[Illustration: Earl of Derby.]

Amid these agitations, inferior far to many that had preceded them,
the year 1850 ran out, and 1851 opened--the year in which Prince
Albert's long-pursued project of a great International Exhibition of
Arts and Industries was at last successfully carried out. The idea,
as expounded by himself at a banquet given by the Lord Mayor, was
large and noble. "It was to give the world a true test, a living
picture, of the point of industrial development at which the whole of
mankind had arrived, and a new starting-point from which all nations
would be able to direct their further exertions." The magnificent
success, unflawed by any vexatious or dangerous incident, with which
the idea was carried out, had made it almost impossible for us to
understand the opposition with which the plan was greeted, the
ridicule that was heaped upon it, the foolish fears which it
inspired; while the many similar Exhibitions in this and other