extent of the power which he should exercise. 'And now,' says Lord Macaulay, 'William thought that the time had come when he ought to explain himself. He accordingly sent for Halifax, Danby, Shrewsbury, and some other political leaders of great note, and with that air of stoical apathy under which he had, from a boy, been in the habit of concealing his strongest emotions, addressed to them a few deeply meditated and weighty words.

"He had hitherto, he said, remained silent; he had used neither solicitation nor menace; he had not even suffered a hint of his opinions or wishes to get abroad; but a crisis had now arrived at which it was necessary for him to declare his intentions. He had no right and no wish to dictate to the convention. All that he claimed for himself was the privilege of declining any office which he felt that he could not hold with honor to himself and with benefit to the public. A strong party was for a regency. It was for the Houses to determine whether such an arrangement would be for the benefit of the nation. He had a decided opinion on that point; and he thought it right to say distinctly that he would not be regent. Another party was for placing the princess on the throne and for giving him during her life, the title of king and such a share in the administration as she might be pleased to allow him. He could not stoop to such a post. He esteemed the princess as much as it was possible for man to esteem woman ; but not even from her would he accept a subordinate and a precarious place in the government. He was so made that he could not submit to be tied to the apron-strings even of the best of wives. He did not desire to take any part in English affairs, but if he did consent to take a part there was one part only which he could usefully or honorably take. If the estates offered him the crown for life he would accept it. If not, he should, without repining, return to his native country.'

"William III. was right. When he was called into England he was thirty-eight years of age. For sixteen years he had defended a great European cause against the greatest king in Europe. England had called upon him to come and defend for her, and upon her soil, this same cause by bringing a revolution to a happy and successful issue. The crown of England was above all a great additional strength in carrying on his struggle upon the continent. To fulfil the mission laid upon him he had need of all the power and all the prestige of royalty. If he had accepted a lower position, were it lower but in appearance only, he would have been weakened, instead of strengthened, he would have lost instead of gaining.

“That which he insisted upon, while essential for his public career, required no effort, and occasioned no disturbance in his domestic relations. His wife, the Princess Mary, thought and wished as he did. When she learned that there was hesitation at London, in respect to the power and the title with which her husband should be invested, she wrote to Lord Danby that she was the Prince's wife, that she had no other desire than to be his subject, that the most cruel injury that any one could do her would be to establish a rivalry between herself and him, and that she should never regard as her friend, any person who should form such a plan. For eleven years, William had been king over his household; there even he would have suffered a certain diminution of authority and dignity if he had not had equal rights and powers with his wife in the new kingdom.

"When, in 1840, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, married Queen Victoria, his position was very different; he was young and unknown to the world. He married a young queen hereditarily established upon her throne, in a country most foreign to any necessity or any chance of revolution, a country governed as strongly as it was liberally. In his native land he had done nothing; in the new country to which he came,

there was nothing for him to do; England asked of him only to be a good husband to the queen, and to occasion in her government neither disturbance nor embarrassment.

"Guided either by the excellence of his own judgment or by the wise counsels of his advisers, Prince Albert understood admirably the situation, and adapted his conduct to it with equal dignity and good sense. He was at once active and modest, never seeking, in fact, avoiding any vain show of taking part in the government. Although very seriously occupied in the public affairs of England, and the interests of the crown worn by his wife, he was for twenty-one years Queen Victoria's first subject and her first counsellor, her confidential and only secretary, silently associated in all her deliberations, in all her resolutions, skilful in enlightening her and in seconding her in her relations with her Cabinet without embarrassing or offending the ministers themselves, exercising at the side of the throne a salutary and judicious influence, yet never going out of his place or interfering with the action of a constitutional government.

"For these twenty-one years, Prince Albert was in his domestic life as excellent a husband as he was a wise and useful counsellor. He lived with the queen, his wife, in the most tender affection, assiduously occupied, in concert with herself, in the education of their children, uniting to a serenity of character and the charm of an affectionate nature, a suitable measure of conjugal and paternal authority, filling and animating the life of those about him, and giving to his royal family as much happiness as he received from them. It was a career as beautiful as it was unostentatious, rare in the domestic history of thrones, and pursued by Prince Albert without effort, without alternating periods of good and bad, by the natural impulse of an upright and elevated mind, an affectionate heart, and a conscience as sensitive as it was enlightened."

The marriage of Queen Victoria with Prince Albert took place February 10, 1840. The prince was received in England with a certain coolness which at times betrayed itself by absurd and unjust suspicions, and by uncivil procedures. Prince Albert was a free-thinker, some said; others averred that he was a Roman Catholic. The proposition for an annuity for the prince was not accepted without debate in Parliament, and the amount was finally reduced from fifty thousand pounds to thirty thousand. Prince Albert was destined to be justly appreciated and to become thoroughly popular in his adopted country only after his death. Every year of his virtuous life was, however, to bring him increasing happiness in his family, and increasing consideration and respect in his country. And finally, all England was to lament him, feeling to this day the grief and void caused by his loss.

CHAPTER II.

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. THE EAST.

HE queen's marriage with Prince Albert was celebrated in

THE

February, 1840, and in June of the same year the first of those attempts upon her life was made, which from time to time have alarmed and exasperated England. The assassin was one Oxford, a boy of seventeen, half crazy, and treated as such. No political motive was assigned for this attack, the act of a disordered mind and an insane thirst for notoriety. Five times more, at very irregular intervals, the queen was destined to be the object of similar attacks. No one of the assassins paid with his life for the criminal attempt; no one even underwent a long imprisonment. A law, made expressly, fixed the punishment for such attempts at transportation for seven years, or imprisonment for not more than three years, "the culprit to be publicly or privately whipped as often and in such manner as the court shall direct, not exceeding thrice." Neither the queen nor the nation desired a vindictive punishment of these insane acts, which appear never to have been inspired by fanatical passions or instigated by secret societies, as were the attacks made upon Louis Philippe in France.

More serious anxieties at this time occupied the statesmen of both England and France. The recent difficulties between the Sultan of Turkey and his great vassal, Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, threatened to kindle a war between the great Powers of Europe, protectors of one or the other of the belligerents. Sultan Mahmoud died (July 1, 1839) at the moment when his