ng improperly
in public affairs, and has used his influence to promote objects of
his own and the interests of his own family at the expense of the
interests of this country; that he is German and not English in his
sentiments and principles; that he corresponds with foreign princes
and with British Ministers abroad without the knowledge of the
Government, and that he thwarts the foreign policy of the Ministers
when it does not coincide with his own ideas and purposes." And again:
"It was currently reported in the Midland and Northern counties, and
actually stated in a Scotch paper, that Prince Albert had been
committed to the Tower, and there were people found credulous and
foolish enough to believe it."

But English gratitude is always such
To hate the hand which doth oblige too much.

These words of Daniel Defoe help to explain something of the attitude
of a part of the nation toward the Prince in his lifetime.

He had given his life in the service of his wife and his adopted
country, but he was a 'foreigner,' and the insular Briton, brought
up in the blissful belief that "one Englishman was as good as three
Frenchmen," could not and would not overcome his distrust of one who
had not been, like himself, so singularly blessed in his nationality.

But Time has its revenges, and the services of Prince Albert will
"smell sweet and blossom in the dust" long after the very names of
once famous lights of the Victorian era have been forgotten.

His home life was singularly sweet and happy, and a great contrast
to that of some of his wife's predecessors upon the English throne.
The Queen, writing to her Uncle Leopold in this the twenty-first year
of their marriage, says: "_Very_ few can say with me that their
husband at the end of twenty-one years is _not_ only full of the
friendship, kindness, and affection which a truly happy marriage
brings with it, but the same tender love of the _very first days of
our marriage_!"

The Prince, in a letter to a friend, rejoiced that their marriage
"still continues green and fresh and throws out vigorous roots, from
which I can, with gratitude to God, acknowledge that much good will
yet be engendered for the world."

The finest tribute to the Prince Consort's memory is to be found in
the Dedication written by Lord Tennyson to his _Idylls of the King_:

These to His Memory--since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of him