"
Ah, what would that doughty champion of the Slave Trade, William IV.,
have said, could he have seen his niece's husband giving royal
countenance to such a fanatical, radical gathering! It was enough to make
him stir irefully in his coffin at Windsor.
But for that matter, could our ancestors generally, men and women who
devoutly believed in the past, and died in the odor of antiquity, know of
our modern goings-on, in political and humanitarian reforms--know of our
"Science so called," and social ethics, there would be "a rattling among
the dry bones," not only in royal vaults, but in country churchyards,
where "_The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep._"
CHAPTER XVI.
Death passes by--Life comes.
On the 10th of June, 1840, occurred the first mad attempt to assassinate
Queen Victoria--made as she and Prince Albert were driving up
Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace, in a small open phaeton.
Prince Albert, in a letter to his grandmamma, gives the clearest account
of it. He says: "We had hardly proceeded a hundred yards from the Palace,
when I noticed, on the foot-path on my side, a little, mean-looking man,
holding something toward us, and, before I could distinguish what it was,
a shot was fired, which almost stunned us both, it was so loud--barely
six paces from us.
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