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great enough to escape some popularity; but we now discovered that we had lost one of the first of England’s princes. On his leaden coffin we were informed it was engraved that he was most illustrious and exalted, and for once the style of heraldry was within the truth. That was our loss – “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.” He spoke in the presence of those who bore the Queen’s authority in this ancient and noted town and of those who wore her uniform. We were told that even in the first hours of her bereavement our royal widow felt that she must not weep, but work. The head of the army at once began to act in the same spirit, and our chief administrator of Justice had said that he felt the Queen would be best pleased by having duty gone on with. In this crisis of our state when so sagacious a counsellor was taken away, and when the unknown answer of peace or war was even now crossing the ocean to our shores; when our Queen demands all our duty and devotion to enable her to keep right the mighty bark of this empire, it behoved those who bore charge for her in church and state to act singly and sincerely for the country’s good as in her sight and God’s. It behoved the gallant men whom we already honour as England’s choicest sons to train themselves with patience and with chivalry to take cause for the widow Victoria. It behoved us all to do the same. If we were in a weeping mood, our manhood need not be ashamed to weep for her; if we were Christian men, we should pray for her; and if we were worthy to be Englishmen then in whatever station of duty we were placed, for her sake we should worthily do that duty. And now that he had invoked their loyalty, he would take his last look down into the vault of the royal dead. At that sight he was inclined to say to himself “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”, and the only fault he could find in that text was that the word vanity did not occur often enough. They would now take leave of the dark asylum, where rows of crimson and purple covered coffins made known the emptiness of human dignity. They would bring their thoughts to a brighter land, where everything loudly proclaimed the importance of human duties faithfully performed. They were not unmindful that that house was Heaven’s Gate, and that as they entered they put aside the apparatus of earthly rule to pass into refulgent brightness. There reigns Christ the Prince of Princes, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. By Him they received their reward. If they trusted with devout confidence the Prince they had lost was in holy rest – a rest won for him by Christ. If the memory of his virtues was dear to us, we must also remember that all true graces come from Christ, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit were matured and ripened. There would be some in readiness to give up their-