understanding in politics for which she was afterwards so
distinguished. The gay, bright girl suddenly developed into a wise,
far-seeing woman, living only for others."

[Illustration: Princess Alice.]

This ministering angel in the house of mourning had been already
betrothed, with her parents' full approval, to Prince Louis of Hesse;
and to him she was married on July 1st, 1862, at Osborne, very
quietly, as befitted the mournful circumstance of the royal family.
Many a heartfelt wish for her happiness followed "England's
England-loving daughter" to her foreign home, where she led a
beautiful, useful life, treading in her father's footsteps, and
continually cherished by the love of her mother; and the peculiarly
touching manner of her death, a sort of martyrdom to sweet domestic
affections, again stirred the heart of her own people to mournful
admiration. A cottager's wife might have died as Princess Alice died,
through breathing in the poison of diphtheria as she hung, a
constant, loving nurse, over the pillows of her suffering husband and
children. This beautiful _homeliness_ that has marked the lives of
our Sovereign and her children has been of inestimable value, raising
simple human virtues to their proper pre-eminence before the eyes of
the English people of to-day, who are very materially, if often
unconsciously, swayed by the example set them in high places.

In the May after Prince Consort's death the second International
Exhibition was opened, amid sad memories of the first, so joyful in
every way, and a certain sense of discouragement because the golden
days of universal peace seemed farther off than ten years before.