probably have been erected on the spot.' But her desire was to do
something which might benefit her fellow-creatures.

The outgrowth of this true impulse of the Queen's was the establishment of
the 'Victoria Stift' at Coburg, whereby sums of money are applied in
apprenticing worthy young men or in purchasing tools for them, and in
giving dowries to deserving young women or otherwise settling them in
life.

In the course of the same year the Queen's second daughter, Princess
Alice, afterwards the friend and companion of her mother's first days of
widowhood, was betrothed to Prince Louis of Hesse. In February 1861, the
Queen and the Prince-Consort kept the twenty-first anniversary of their
wedding-day--'a day which has brought us,' says the Queen, 'and I may say,
to the world at large, such incalculable blessings. Very few can say with
me,' she adds, '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 of the same tender love as in the very first
days of our marriage.' The Prince-Consort wrote to the aged Duchess of
Kent, 'You have, I trust, found good and loving children in us, and we
have experienced nothing but love and kindness from you.'

Alas! it was the death of that beloved mother which was to cast the first
of the many shadows which have since fallen upon the royal home. The
duchess died, after a slight illness, rather suddenly at last, the Queen
and the prince reaching her side too late for any recognition. It was a
terrible blow to the Queen: she wrote to her uncle Leopold that she felt
'truly orphaned.' Her sister, the Princess Hohenlohe, daughter of the
Duchess of Kent by her first marriage, could not come to England at the
time, but wrote letters full of sympathy and inspiration; yet Her Majesty