to our colonies, and to the various nationalities of the world, in
commerce and in closer sympathy; and never was the hand and heart of
Benevolence busier than in this later period of the nineteenth century.
Our colonial empire has shared also in the welfare and progress of the
mother-country.

When we come to look into the lives of the Queen and Prince-Consort, we
are thankful for all they have been and done. The wider our survey of
history, and the more we know of other rulers and courts, the more
thankful we shall be that they have been a guiding and balancing power,
allied to all that was progressive, noble, and true, and for the benefit
of the vast empire over which Her Majesty reigns. And the personal example
has been no less valuable in

Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which heats upon a throne,
And blackens every blot.

In the year 1819 the family outlook of the British royal house was not a
very bright one. The old king, George III., was lingering on in deep
seclusion, a very pathetic figure, blind and imbecile. His son the Prince
Regent, afterwards George IV., had not done honour to his position, nor
brought happiness to any connected with him. Most of the other princes
were elderly men and childless; and the Prince-Regent's only daughter, the
Princess Charlotte, on whom the hopes of the nation had rested, and whose
marriage had raised those hopes to enthusiasm, was newly laid in her
premature grave.

But almost immediately after Princess Charlotte's death, the king's third