further evidence. Her good days and hopes were over; henceforward, when she wrote to her dearest friend in the old confidential strain, it was as “your poor unfortunate Morley” that the bereaved mother signed herself. Nothing altered these sad adjectives. She felt herself as poor and unfortunate in her unutterable loss when she was queen as if she had been the humblest woman that ever lost an only child. Marlborough was absent when his little pupil fell ill, but hurried back to Windsor in time to see him die. It was etiquette in those days that in case of a death the survivors should instantly leave the place in which it had happened, leaving the dead in possession, to lie in state there and receive the homage of curious or interested spectators. But Anne would not be persuaded to leave the place where her child was, and, four or five days after, the little prince was carried solemnly by torchlight through the summer woods, through Windsor Park, and by the river, and under the trees of Richmond, to Westminster: a silent procession pouring slowly through the odorous August night. His little body lay in state in Westminster Hall--a noble chamber for such a tiny sleeper--for five days more, when it was laid with the kings in the great abbey which holds all the greatest of England. A more heartrending episode is not in history. William did not take any notice of the announcement of the death for a considerable time, which embarrassed the ambassador at Paris greatly on the subject of mourning, and has given occasion for much denunciation of his hardness and heartlessness. When he answered at last, however--though this was not till more than two months after, in a letter to Marlborough--it was with much subdued feeling. “I do not think it [Illustration: THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER ENGRAVED BY R. A. MULLER, FROM MINIATURE BY LEWIS CROSSE IN THE COLLECTION AT WINDSOR CASTLE; BY SPECIAL PERMISSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA.] necessary to employ many words,” he writes, “in expressing my surprise and grief at the death of the Duke of Gloucester. It is so great a loss to me as well as to all England, that it pierces my heart with affliction.” It seems impossible that the loss of a child who had shown so touching an allegiance to himself should not have moved him; but perhaps there was in him, too, a touch of satisfaction that the rival pair who had been thorns in his flesh since ever he came to England, were not to have the satisfaction of founding a new line. At St.-Germain the satisfaction was more marked still, and it was supposed that the most dangerous obstacle in the way of the young James Stuart was removed by the death of his sister’s heir. We know now how futile that anticipation was; but at the time this was not so clear, and the anxiety of the English parliament to secure before William’s death a formal abjuration of the so-called Prince of Wales shows that the hope was not without foundation.