CHAPTER I. Sunsets in High Places. "The chamber where the good man meets his fate Is privileged beyond the common walk Of virtuous life,―quite in the verge of heaven. A deathbed's a detector of the heart. You see the man, you see his hold on heaven, B M I. THE PRINCE CONSORT. UCH as Prince Albert was appreciated and loved during life, and irreparable as was the loss sustained by the Queen and the nation by his death, the full extent of that loss is but now, at the end of sixteen years, being understood, through the appearance of the successive volumes of his biography by Mr. Theodore Martin. Every page of these volumes bears testimony to his superior abilities, personal excellences, and especially to his preeminent qualifications for the position he held as the husband and adviser of the Queen. He was the second son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and was born at Rosenau, a summer residence of his father, on the 26th of August, 1819. His father being the brother of the Duchess of Kent, he was first cousin to the Queen. |