Queen Victoria

nt, and become the mother of a little English girl, and for the second time a widow. Lovingly, though with a pang at his heart, the Prince bent over the cradle of this eight-months-old baby, who in her unconscious orphanage smiled into his kindly face, and though he thought sorrowfully of the little one whose eyes had never smiled into his, had never even opened upon life, he vowed then and there to the child of his bereaved sister, the devoted love, the help, sympathy, and guidance which never failed her while he lived.

This baby girl was the daughter of the Duke of Kent and of the Princess Victoire Marie Louise of Saxe-Coburg Saalfield, widow of Prince Charles of Leiningen. Edward, Duke of Kent, was the fourth and altogether the best son of George III. Making all allowance for the exaggeration of loyal biographers, I should say he was an amiable, able, and upright man, generous and charitable to a remarkable degree, for a royal Prince of that time--perhaps too much so, for he kept himself poor and died p