The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-03-15 00:00:00

Ely 3tearhrittge ebserbtr.

SATURDA:,, MARCH 15, 1879.

ROYAL MARRIAGES.

IT may be asserted without fear of contra-
diction that in all Europe there is no Royal
palace so venerable, so full of old traditions,
and so magnificently equipped and sur-
rounded as Windsor Castle. St. George's
Chapel alone has about it as many ancient
memories as Weetminster Abbey itself, and
a Royal marriage in St.. George's Chapel
is a ceremony of no ordinary kind. The
Duke of Connaught, the bridegroom on this
occasion, is popular with those amongst
whom he has moved. Devoting himself
to military studies he has shown a capability
to master the details of an intricate science;
and if we know but little personally of the
beide, the reputation of her father has gone
before her, and his is the fame of a gallant
commander and a brave man. He and the
Crown Prince of Germany, -who have been
bidden to this wedding fast, have appeared
together upon another and a different scene
The splendid festivities of a Royal marriage
must seem to them to be in strong and
brilliant contrast to those A.celdamas upon
which they have looked down in former years,
when the Crown Prince was encircling one
French army with a ring of iron at Sedan, and
Prince Frederick Charles, the father of the
bride, drew a similarly inexorable cordon
round the fortress of Meta. Happily those
days have gone, only to show out more strik-
ingly the present joyous period. As the
shadows of the night disappear before the
rays of the rising dawn, so does the dark
and dreary winter flee before the advance of
the warm and genial spring. " Happy is
the bride that the sun shines on ;' and
while the sun is again reasserting his power-
ful sway, and the soft south wind comes as
the breath of life to the aged and infirm, a
short time may not be unprofitably spent in
summoning back a few redections suggested
by this Royal marriage.
With the Duke of Connaught united to
the Princess Louise Marguerite in the bonds
of holy matrimony, the married children of
the Queen may re-echo the sentiment" we
are seven !" The presence of the Crown
Prince and Princess of Germany carries our
recollections back to a time represented by
the passing away of more than two decades
when they were the central figures of a
wedding scene, not indeed at Windsor, but
at the Chapel Royal, St. James's. The
Princess R iyal Wis. the first of the Queen's
t ) leave her home, over ono-and•
twenty years Ricci. Her aeparture cetted
tat: tirst voict ix a household which had
a v. s been a happy one, bitwhereia sorrow
I.i the ch.an.,lee wr.Arght by unalterable
a.ays h:tiou mr..de so many alterations.
Wien iler eldest daughter was married, her
Majesty was a young woman herself, for she
had not then completed he thirty-ninth
year; her next birthday will be her sixtieth.
In f,at (lay of bleak midwinter the 25th
of January,lBsB when the first of those
Royal wedding%tk place, the Queen's
mother was a spectator of the ceremony, and
ter husband took a prominent part in it as
giving his daughter to be the wife of the
stalwart soldier who then toek his place in
front of the altar. The Duchess of Kent
vfas then 70 years of ago, and in the coarse
of nature must soon have been gathered to
her fathers. In a little more than three
years afterwards in the month of March,
1861—the DuohesB of Kent died; and as the
bells from many a steeple raxg out their
muffled peals, tilling the springlike air with
notes of mourning, there was not one subject
of the Queen, in all her vast dominions, who
could have anticipated the trouble which was
to fall upon her before the clos2 )F that
gloomy year. The people were preparipg
for Cliristrau.s in all the LODlefi of the United