On the 14th of April, 1857, the Queen's fifth daughter and ninth and last child was born at Buckingham Palace. A fortnight afterwards the Duchess of Gloucester, the last of George the III. and Queen Charlotte's children, died in her eighty-third year. The Queen wrote of her to King Leopold, who must have been well acquainted with her in his youth, "Her age, and her being a link with bygone times and generations, as well as her great kindness, amiability, and unselfishness, rendered her more and more dear and precious to us all, and we all looked upon her as a sort of grandmother." Sixty-two years before, when the venerable Princess was a charming maiden of eighteen, she had gloried in the tidings of her princely cousin's laurels, won on the battlefields of Flanders. More than twenty years afterwards, when Princess Charlotte descended the staircase of Carlton House after her marriage with Prince Leopold, "she was met at the foot with open arms by the Princess Mary, whose face was bathed in tears." The first wedding had removed the obstacle to the second, which was celebrated a few weeks later. The Duchess lived for eighteen years happily with her husband, then spent more than twenty years in widowhood. She ended her long life at Gloucester House, Park Lane. At her earnest request, she was buried without pomp or show with her people in the family vault at Windsor. Before the late Duchess of Gloucester's funeral, Prince Albert, according to a previous pledge, opened, on the 5th of May, the great Art Exhibition at Manchester, to which the Queen contributed largely. On the announcement to Parliament of the Princess Royal's approaching marriage, the House of Commons voted in a manner gratifying to the Queen and the Prince a dowry of forty thousand, with an annuity of eight thousand a year to the Princess. At Osborne the Queen had a flying visit from one of her recent enemies, the Archduke Constantine, the Admiral-in-Chief of the Russian navy.