“What dismal times are these.... Augustus, Clementine, Nemours, and the Duchess of Montpensier, have come to us one by one like people shipwrecked. Victoire, Alexander, the King, the Queen, are still tossing on the waves, or have drifted to other shores.... France is in flames; Belgium is menaced. We have a ministerial, money, and tax crisis; and Victoria is on the point of being confined. My heart is heavy.” It was in this depression that the courageous heart of the loving woman cheered and sustained that of her husband. As soon as she was able to write after the birth of the new baby, she wrote to her uncle Leopold:-- “From the first I heard all that passed; my only thoughts and talk were politics. But I never was calmer, quieter, or less nervous. Great events make me calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.” The letter in which the Prince announced to Stockmar the birth of Princess Louise contains an expression which invites criticism; he writes: “I have good news for you to-day. Victoria was safely delivered this morning, and _though it be a daughter, still_ my joy and gratitude are very great,” &c. The Prince is only responsible for the sentiment, not for the italics; but why should it be necessary to write in this way of the birth of a daughter even in the dark backward and abysm of time of 1848? Mr. George Meredith writes of one of his heroines that she had never gone through the various nursery exercises in dissimulation, and “had no appearance of praying forgiveness of men for the original sin of being a woman.” But here we have an even more perverted sentiment than that presented by a woman apologizing for being a woman; it is black ingratitude for one of the best gifts God gives to man when either father or mother begrudges a welcome to a new baby on account of its sex. The Queen, we gather, did not give little girls a grudging welcome to this world; on the birth of her first granddaughter, the Princess Charlotte of Prussia, in 1860, she wrote of the news that “Vicky had a daughter.” “What joy! Children jumping about--every one delighted.” The Prince, too, on this occasion wrote to the Princess Royal of her little daughter, as “a kindly gift from heaven,” and even says, “Little maidens are much prettier than boys. I advise her to model herself on her Aunt Beatrice.”