e cause of true upward progress will be
most served by the vast inevitable changes which, as they draw all
peoples nearer together, must deepen and strengthen the sense of
human brotherhood, and, as they bring the deeds of all within the
knowledge of all, must consume by an intolerable blaze of light the
once secret iniquities and oppressions abhorrent to the universal
conscience of mankind. The public conscience in these realms at least
is better informed and more sensitive than it was in the year of
William IV's death and of Victoria's accession.

CHAPTER II.

STORM AND SUNSHINE.

[Illustration: St. James's Palace.]

The beneficent changes we have briefly described were but just
inaugurated, and their possible power for good was as yet hardly
divined, when the young Queen entered into that marriage which we may
well deem the happiest action of her life, and the most fruitful of
good to her people, looking to the extraordinary character of the
husband of her choice, and to the unobtrusive but always advantageous
influence which his great and wise spirit exercised on our national
life.

The marriage had been anxiously desired, and the way for it
judiciously prepared, but it was in no sense forced on either of the
contracting parties by their elders who so desired it. Prince Albert
of Saxe-Coburg, second son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the
Queen's maternal uncle, was nearly of an age with his royal cousin;
he had already, young as he was, given evidence of a rare superiority
of nature; he had been excellently trained; and there is no doubt
that Leopold, king of the Belgians, his uncle, and the Queen's, did
most earnestly desire to see the young heiress of the British throne,
for whom he had a peculiar tenderness, united to the one person whose
position and whose character combined to point him out as the fit
partner for her high and difficult destinies. What tact, what
patience, and what power of self-suppression the Queen of England's
husband would need to exercise, no one could better judge than
Leopold, the widowed husband of Princess Charlotte; no one could more
fully have exemplified these qualities than the prince in whom
Leopold's penetration divined them.

The cousins had already met, in 1836, when their mutual attraction
had been sufficiently strong; and in 1839, when Prince Albert, with
his elder brother Ernest, was again visiting England, the impression
already produced became ineffaceabl