The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-12-21 00:00:00

lJ ur Ig6ou aorrtspouttut.

fWe ei,!em 't right to state that we do not 14, all times
Zenith oarzelves with our Correspondent's opluipm3

Whatever of truth there may be in the declaration
of the ancient seer that—

"Life is a city with many a street;
Death is the market-place where all men meet,"
there can be no doubt, and the fact is constantly
manifested to us, that this last enemy, so graphically
described by St. Paul, is no respecter of persons. It
is of no service, in these later and degenerate days, to
sprinkle with blood the lintels of our door-posts, so
that the assailant may pause and then pass on; but we
find him doing his unremitting work in the palaces of
king; in
.the castles of our nobles, and in the mansions
of the wealthy, as well as in the cottage of the humble,
and the unpretending home of the lowly. This, truth,
always patent, and indeed as changeless as the
seasons or the action of the tides, has once more been
brought home to us with startling severity. It was on
Saturday, the 14th December, 1861, at ten minutes to
eleve.t.l at night, that the Prince Consort breathed his
last at Windsor Castle, and amongst those who, in
that hour, knelt reverently by the bedside of him
whose life was ebbing rapidly away, was his second'
daughter, Princess Alice. She was then in her nine-
teenth year, and had nursed her father through his
illness with a care and a devotion which would have
done credit to a 19nger experience than any which she
had had in the sick chamber. In a little more than an
hour afterwards the great bell of St. Paul's sent forth
the mournful tidings far and wide over London. When
the story of the Prince's illness came to be read in
every household in the kingdom, the affectionate solici-
tude of the Princess Alice throughout that trying time,
her insensibility to fatigue, and her anticipation of the
wants of the patient, formed the theme of praise at
each fireside in those long winter evenings, alike in
the crowded city, in the peaceful hamlet, and in the
secluded farmstead. When, in the month of April,
1862, Lord Palmerston, the veteran Prime Minister of
England, appeared at the bar of the House of Commons
with a message from Her Majesty announcing the in-
tended marriage of the Princess Alice to Prince Louis
of Hesse, the representatives of the people unanimously
voted her Royal Highness,e dowry of £30,000, and
£6,000 per ap, ntim for life. Never was a gift
more:&arthy made; and ,when the wedding took
place on the Ist of July following, in St. George's
Chapel, Windsor, there was not one of the Queen's
subjects who did not wish the Royal bride all
happiness. Those who knew her never more heartily
said, "God bless her!" and those to whom she was
known by her photograph in the printsellers' windows,
were charmed with the sweetness of her face, con-
veying as it did the most accurate idea of the
_amiability of her disposition.
Seventeen years roll away, and it is again
Saturday the 14th of December. The day and
the date both coincide with those of gloomy memory
more than half a generation ago. The Queen
is once more at
_Windsor Castle, but the family
which gathered round her in that first great
bereavement are 'mattered far and wide. One
is in Canada, performing the duties of a viceregal
position; her second son is in command of an iron-
clad, making his way home from the other side of the
Atlantic. Two married daughters are in Germany.
But as the pedestrian makes his way through the
streets of the metropolis on Saturday the 14th Decem-
ber, 1878, there are some incidents which irresistibly
bring back the memories of seventeen years ago.
There are anxious crowds outside the newspaper
offices, waiting for the publication of medical bulletins
respecting the illness of an illustrious sufferer. It
is the Princess Alice herself, who is this time
in the grip of the merciless Destroyer. The
morning papers have told their readers of the alarm-
ing condition of the beloved Princess, and they are
waiting in deep suspense for news from Darmstadt.
At length it came. The royal patient had suc-
cumbed to the attacks of a malignant disease,
which less than a month before had carried off one of
her own little children, only four years old. Heart-
felt and universal was the sorrow amongst those who
had gathered in the thoroughfares; and as they dis-
persed to their homes, in the bitter winter weather,
amid the tolling of church bells from many a steepls,
to every mind was presented the singular and terrible
coincidence of day and date above referred to.
Although the Princess Alice had been gone from us
sixteen years, her name never lost its affectionate hold
upon the hearts of the English nation. In the year
1870, when her country was engaged in a death
grapple with the legions of France, her exertions were
bestowed upon works of love and deeds of charity
which had for their aim the alleviations of the miseries
of the wounded. She; with her husband and children,
spentievpral weeks at Eastbourne in the early autumn,
and it was whilst on her visit to this country that
the ste'ramer bearing her name was run down in the
Thames, with an unparalleled loss of life. The
kind and sympathetic message which the Princess
sent to the arii;rors will never be forgotten, and it
has a melancholy interest now that the thoughtful
consideration which dictated it lends such a painful'
interest to its memories. There was in the Princess-,
Alice none of that hauteur which is sometimes asso-
ciated with the bearing of Royal personages. It
was only to look in her face to be assured of her good-
ness of heart and her evenness of temper. Born on
the 25th of April, 1813, she has been taken from her
bereaved husband and her motherless children at the
early age of 35, and when many years of life and use-
fulness might have been expected to lie before her.
There is not a household in the land which will not
sympathise with the Queen and the Grand Duke of
Hesse in this sad loss—not one who would not, could'
earthly power do it, call her again to a sphere where,
she was loved so well.