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.
"Is the goal so far away?
Far, how far no tongue can say;
Let us dream our dream to-day."
Far indeed it seemed, with the fratricidal contest raging in America,
and shutting out all contributions to this World's Fair from the
United States.
[Illustration: The Mausoleum.]
The Queen had betaken herself that May to her Highland home, whose
joy seemed dead, and where her melancholy pleased itself in the
erection of a memorial cairn to the Prince on Craig Lorigan, after
she had returned from Princess Alice's wedding.
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