O, worthy should be, the life and manifold
the good works of that man for whom so many peoples and tongues have
given surety to Heaven by fervent intercessions and supplications.
This long sad time of anxiety and peril drew the Queen out of her sorrow
as nothing had done before. She watched tenderly by the bedside of her
son, and when he was recovered, and went to St. Paul's to return thanks,
she sat by his side, and wore a white flower in her bonnet, and her
grateful smile showed that there was a rift in the cloud of her mourning,
and that God's sunlight was striking through.
Lord Ronald Gower quotes a letter from his sister, the Duchess of
Westminster, describing the Prince and Princess of Wales as she saw them
about this time. She said: "He is much thinner and his head shaved, but
little changed in his face, and looking so grateful. She looks thin and
worn, but so affectionate--tears in her eyes when talking of him, and his
manner to her so gentle."
Surely convalescence is a "state of grace." Would that it might always
last a lifetime with us!
During this year, Irish disaffection broke out very seriously in the
great Fenian movement. An upheaval this, from the lowest stratum of
society, with no gentlemen, or eloquent orators, for leaders, but all the
more appalling for that.
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