It was in this year that the King had an opportunity of exhibiting in a public manner his strong interest in the British Colonies, the welfare of which was not then so much a matter of concern in the eyes of our statesmen as it is now. The occasion was a dinner given to the members of the Colonial Institute by the then Lord Mayor, Sir George MacArthur, himself an old colonist. An extraordinary number of distinguished men connected in various ways, official and other, with our colonies were present. In his speech the King pointed out that no function of the kind had ever taken place before--a statement which seems hardly credible nowadays, thanks in a great measure to His Majesty’s own unwearied exertions in the interests of our colonial empire. The King also alluded to his Canadian tour, and took the opportunity of paying a graceful compliment to his friend Sir John Macdonald, the Canadian statesman, who was present. [Illustration: THE KING IN 1882 _From the Painting by H. J. Brooks, published by Henry Graves and Co._] Very shortly after this dinner the King attended as patron the first meeting ever held in this country of the International Medical Congress. King Edward was deeply grieved at the death of Dean Stanley, with whom, as we have seen, he had been on terms of close intimacy. At a meeting held in the Chapter-House of Westminster Abbey, His Majesty paid a touching and eloquent tribute to his dead friend’s rare qualities, both of heart and intellect. Generally speaking, this period of the King’s life was not very eventful. His children were still quite young, and his public appearances, though tolerably frequent, did not usually possess more than a local importance. There were, however, some conspicuous exceptions, which broke the even current of his life. For example, it would be difficult to overestimate the value of the work which His Majesty did in promoting the International Fisheries Exhibition in 1883, which was visited by nearly three million people, and may be said to have been the first introduction into London of open-air entertainment on a large scale. Moreover, it resulted in a clear profit of £15,000, of which two-thirds was devoted to the relief of the orphan families of fishermen.