sion, which affected more or
less every department of our industries. In connection with this
calamity, however, there was at least one hopeful feature: the very
different temper which the working classes, then, as always, the
greatest sufferers by such depression, manifested in the time of
trial. They showed themselves patient and loyal, able to understand
that their employers too had evils to endure and difficulties to
surmount; they no longer held all who were their superiors in station
for their natural enemies: a happy change, testifying to the good
worked by the new, beneficent spirit of legislation and reform.

It is under the date of this year that we find Mr. Greville, on the
authority of Lord Clarendon, thus describing the very thorough and
"eminently useful" manner in which the Queen, assisted by the Prince,
was exercising her high functions:--

"She held each Minister to the discharge of his duty and his
responsibility to her, and constantly desired to be furnished with
accurate and detailed information about all important matters,
keeping a record of all the reports that were made to her, and
constantly referring to them; _e.g._, she would desire to know what
the state of the navy was, and what ships were in readiness for
active service, and generally the state of each, ordering returns to
be submitted to her from all the arsenals and dockyards, and again,
weeks or months afterwards, referring to these returns, and desiring
to have everything relating to them explained and accounted for, and
so throughout every department....This is what none of her
predecessors ever did, and it is, in fact, the act of Prince Albert."

We turn from this picture of the Sovereign's habitual occupations to
her public life, and we find it never more full of apparently
absorbing excitements--splendid hospitalities exchanged with other
Powers, especially with Imperial France, alternating with messages of
encouragement, full of cordiality and grace, to her successful
commander-in-chief in India, Sir Colin Campbell, with plans for the
conspicuous rewarding of the Indian heroes at large, with public
visits to various great English towns, and with preparations for the
impending marriage of the Princess Royal; and we realise forcibly
that even in those sunny days, when the Queen was surrounded with her
unbroken family of nine blooming and promising children, and still
had at her right hand the invaluable counsellor by whose aid Eng