On the 10th of January, 1840, a death instead of a marriage took place in the royal family, but it was that of an aged member long expatriated. Princess Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse Homburg, died at Frankfort. It was twenty-two years since she had married and quitted England, shortly before the old Queen's death, a year before the birth of Queen Victoria. The Landgravine had returned once, a widow of sixty-four, and then had gone back to her adopted country. She had survived her husband eleven years, and her sister, resident like herself in Germany, the Princess Royal, Queen of Wurtemberg, twelve years. The Landgravine as Princess Elizabeth showed artistic talent. She was famous in her middle age for her great _embonpoint_; as she was also tall she waxed enormous. Baroness Bunsen, when Miss Waddington, saw Princess Elizabeth, while she was still unmarried, dressed for a Drawing-room, with five or six yellow feathers towering above her head, and refers to her huge dimensions then. It was alleged afterwards that it required a chain of her husband's faithful subjects in Homburg to encompass his consort. She accommodated herself wonderfully, though she was an elderly woman before she had ever been out of England, to the curious quaint mixture of State and homeliness in the little German town in which she was held in much respect and regard. The Landgravine was seventy years of age at the time of her death. After her widowhood she resided in Hanover, where her brother, King William, gave her a palace, and then at Frankfort, where she died. Out of her English income of ten thousand a year, it was said she spared six thousand for the needs of Hesse Homburg. Its castle and English garden still retain memories of the English princess who made her quiet home there and loved the place. The marriage of the Queen was fixed for the 10th of February, and many eager, aspiring young couples throughout the country elected that it should be their wedding-day, also. They wished that the gala of their lives should fit in with hers, and that all future "happy returns of the day" might have a well-known date to go by, and a State celebration to do them honour. Lord Torrington and Colonel--afterwards General--Grey set out for Gotha to escort the bridegroom to England. They carried with them the Order of the Garter, with which Prince Albert was invested by his father, himself a Knight of the Order, amidst much ceremony.