year as her father's) in the year 1878, we have had an opportunity of
looking into the royal household from the point of view of a daughter and
a sister. The Prince-Consort's death-bed made a very close tie between the
Queen and the Princess Alice, who herself had a full share of womanly
sorrow in her comparatively short life, and the tone of perfect
self-abnegation which pervades her letters is very touching. On that fatal
14th December 1878, the first of the Queen's children was taken from her.
The Princess Alice fell a victim to her kind-hearted care while nursing
those of her family ill with diphtheria. Her last inquiries were about
poor and sick people in her little capital. And the day before she died,
she expressed to Sir William Jenner her regret that she should cause her
mother so much anxiety. The Queen in a letter thanked her subjects for
their sympathy with her loss of a dear child, who was 'a bright example of
loving tenderness, courageous devotion, and self-sacrifice to duty.'

In 1863, on the 10th of March, the Prince of Wales married the Princess
Alexandra of Denmark, and in 1871, when the fatal date, the 14th of
December came round, he lay at the point of death, suffering precisely as
his father had done. But his life was spared, and in the following spring,
accompanied by the Queen and by his young wife, and in the presence of all
the power, the genius, and the rank of the realm, he made solemn
thanksgiving in St Paul's Cathedral.

On the 3rd November 1871, Mr H. M. Stanley, a young newspaper
correspondent, succeeded in finding Dr Livingstone. This was but the
beginning of greater enterprises, for, catching the noble enthusiasm which
characterised Livingstone, Stanley afterwards crossed the Dark Continent,
and revealed the head-waters of the Congo. Again he plunged into Africa
and succoured Emin Pasha, whose death was announced in the autumn of 1893.