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