The next thing the Queen did for him was to make him a
member of the Privy Council. But a little later, he had a higher
promotion than that; for, on the 21st of November, the Princess Royal was
born in Buckingham Palace, in the early afternoon.
During the morning the Duchess of Kent had been sent for--and came
hurrying over. They also sent for the Duke of Sussex, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Melbourne,
Lord Palmerston, Lord Errol, Lord Albemarle--Lord John Russell, and other
Privy Councillors, whose constitutional duty it is to be present at the
birth of an heir to the throne of England,--and they came bustling in, as
old ladies come together on a like occasion in country places in New
England. It is probable they all looked for a boy. The girl was an
extraordinary baby, however, for when she was barely two days old, her
papa wrote to her grandpapa at Coburg, "The little one is very well and
very merry." The Prince welcomed her in a fatherly way, though, as he
confesses, sorry that she was the same sort of a human creature as her
mother,--that is, a daughter instead of a son. He wrote to his father
very frankly, "I should certainly have liked it better if she had been a
son, as would Victoria also," and so, strangely enough, would the English
people--unfortunate as they had often been with their Kings, and
fortunate as they had always been with their Queens.
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