CHAPTER VIII.

The Queen in Mourning--Death of Princess Alice--Illness of Prince of
Wales--The Family of the Queen--Opening of Indian Exhibition and Imperial
Institute--Jubilee--Jubilee Statue--Death of Duke of Clarence--Address to
the Nation on the marriage of Princess May.


Henceforth the great Queen was 'written widow,' and while striving nobly
in her loneliness to fulfil those public functions, in which she had
hitherto been so faithfully companioned, she shrank at first from courtly
pageantry and from the gay whirl of London life, and lived chiefly in the
quiet homes which she had always loved best, at Osborne and Balmoral. When
she has come out among her people, it has chiefly been for the sake of
some public benefit for the poor and the suffering.

At times there have been murmurs against the Queen for failing in her
widowhood to maintain the gaieties and extravagances of an open court in
the capital of her dominions. It was said that 'trade was bad therefore,'
and times of depression and want of employment were attributed to this
cause. The nation is growing wiser. It is seen that true prosperity does
not consist merely in the quick circulation of money--above all, certainly
not in the transference of wealth gained from the tillers of the soil to
the classes which minister solely to vanity and luxury.

A few months after her father's death, the Princess Alice married her
betrothed, Prince Louis, and since her own death (on the same day of the