Twice in the history of England have extraordinary efforts been made to avert the supposed misfortune of a female heir to the throne; and twice has the “divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,” decreed that these efforts should be in vain, and the dreaded national misfortune has turned out to be a great national blessing. Mr. Froude tells us that five out of Henry VIII.’s six marriages were contracted in consequence of his patriotic desire to secure the succession to the throne in the male line. But when the feeble flame of Edward VI.’s life was extinguished, four women stood next in the succession, and England acquired at a most critical moment of her history, in the person of Elizabeth, perhaps the greatest Sovereign who has ever occupied the throne of this country. The second occasion was after the death of the Princess Charlotte in 1817. George III., with his fifteen children, had not then a single heir in the second generation. It would not be correct to say that the Royal Dukes were then married by Act of Parliament, no Act of Parliament was necessary; but political pressure was brought on them to marry, and Parliament granted them extra allowances of sums varying from £10,000 to £6,000 a year, and in May and June, 1818, the marriages took place of the Duke of Cambridge to the Princess Augusta of Hesse, of the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.) to Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, and of the Duke of Kent to Princess Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, widow of the Prince of Leiningen, and sister of Prince Leopold, the husband of Princess Charlotte. The marriage of the Duke of Kent is the only one of these that immediately concerns us. As the fourth son of George III., his children would, under ordinary circumstances, have had but a remote prospect of succeeding to the throne. But of his elder brothers, the Prince Regent had, in consequence of the death of Princess Charlotte, become childless, the Duke of York was also childless, the Duke of Clarence, whose marriage was contracted on the same day as that of the Duke of Kent, 13th June, 1818, took precedence of him as an elder brother, and if he had had legitimate heirs they would have succeeded to the throne. The Princess (afterwards Queen) Adelaide was not childless. She bore two children, but they died in their infancy; and thus the only child of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the Princess Alexandrina Victoria, became heiress-presumptive of the English throne. The Duke of Kent took the strongest interest in his baby girl’s chances of the succession. Before the birth of the child he urged upon his wife, who was then resident at Amorbach in Bavaria, that the possible future King or Queen of England ought to be born on English soil, and then she consented to remove to Kensington; it is said he was so keenly anxious for her safety that he drove her carriage the whole of the land journey between Amorbach and Kensington with his own hands. At