The feeling of the country on the subject of the Royal Marriage is, to my thinking, very fairly summarised in a leading article in the _Times_ of 10 Feb., portions of which I transcribe: “It has followed from this policy, {119b} that an English monarch should, _cœteris paribus_, rather avoid than court an alliance with one of the first-rate powers of Europe, but should prefer security to aggrandizement, satisfied with a consort selected from a less prominent, and, therefore, less exposed, position. If there be safety, therefore, in comparative weakness and insignificance, we know not that, on such a ground, any other princely house throughout Europe, could offer inducements preferable to those possessed by those of Saxe-Coburg. Objections against this individual member of the family might, perhaps, present themselves to reflecting minds, on the score of his close consanguinity to Queen Victoria, a circumstance not usually looked upon as propitious to the hope of a flourishing offspring. “Another argument might be urged against the match, from the undoubted fact that the name of Saxe-Coburg is not popular in this country, a misfortune for which we do not undertake to account; nor shall we longer dwell upon either of the above considerations, which we have hinted at, merely to shew that they have not wholly escaped our notice. . . . “Prince Albert has now become one of us. He is, actually, now an English subject. He is tied to us by law and self-interest. Let us bind him to us by gratitude and affection. The happiness of our youthful Queen is now in his hands. He has the means of so directing and assisting her future footsteps, as to retrieve for Her Majesty (we speak with frankness, but with all respect) all she has forfeited in the hearts of the most loyal, enlightened and virtuous of her subjects, through her unhappy bias towards persons and principles which are hourly undermining the deep foundations of her Throne. “We have said that it devolves upon Prince Albert to counteract a host of ‘evil influences,’ and to aid his Royal Consort in repairing ‘many very grievous errors’ into which selfish and treacherous counsellors have betrayed her, and which her constant separation (contrived by them) from all but one section, or coterie of her subjects, has served to render extremely difficult of correction. “Queen Victoria has scarcely been permitted to see the general aspect of the British aristocracy, or to become acquainted with their sentiments, their characters, or their manners. The petty, artificial world framed and got up for her deception, is no more capable of suggesting to her mind the vast moral and social creation beyond its narrow boundaries, than one or two leaves of a _hortus siccus_ exemplify the productions of a noble forest, or a varied and inimitable landscape. . . .