St. James's has still a royal resident in the sole surviving member of the great family of George III., the venerable Duchess of Cambridge, who lives in the north wing of the palace. Marlborough House and Clarence House are in the immediate vicinity, indeed the last is so near that it is reached by a covered way. And as if to make the sense of the neighbourhood of a cluster of royal establishments more vivid, and the thought of the younger generation of the Royal Family more present in the old place, as the visitor passes through its corridors the cannon in the park peals forth the announcement of the birth of the last of her Majesty's grandchildren. On the 28th of February, a little more than a fortnight after the marriage, came the Prince's first practical experience of its cost to him. His father left on his return to Coburg. "He said to me," the Queen wrote in her Journal, "that I had never known a father, and could not therefore feel what he did. His childhood had been very happy. Ernest, he said, was now the only one remaining here of all his earliest ties and recollections; but if I continued to love him as I did now, I could make up for all.... Oh! how I did feel for my dearest, precious husband at this moment! Father, brother, friends, country, all has he left, and all for me. God grant that I may be the happy person, the _most_ happy person to make this dearest, blessed being happy and contented. What is in my power to make him happy I will do." Prince Ernest remained in England nearly three months after his father had left. Early in March a step was taken to render the Prince's position clearer and more secure. Letters patent were issued conferring on him precedence next to the Queen. How necessary the step was, even in this country, towards a conclusion which appears to us to-day so natural as to be beyond dispute, may be gathered from the circumstance that, even after the marriage, objections were made to the Prince's sitting by the Queen's side in the State carriage on State occasions, and to his occupying a chair of State next the throne when she opened and prorogued Parliament.