The news of the terrible mortality in the Portuguese royal family, especially the death of the King, to whom the Prince was warmly attached, had seriously affected his health, never strong, and for the last few years gradually declining, with gastric attacks becoming more frequent and fits of sleeplessness more confirmed. At the same time the Prince's spirit was so unbroken, his power of work and even of enjoyment so unshaken, while the patience and unselfishness which treated his own bodily discomfort as a matter of little moment had grown so much the habit of his mind, that naturally those nearest to him failed in their very love to see the extent of the physical mischief which was at work. Nevertheless there is abundant evidence that the Queen was never without anxiety on her husband's account, and Baron Stockmar expressed his apprehensions more than once. Various causes of care troubled the Prince, among them the indisposition contracted by the Princess Royal at the coronation of her father-in-law, the King of Prussia, and the alarming illness at Cannes of Sir Edward Bowater, who had been sent to the south of France in charge of Prince Leopold. After a fortnight of sleeplessness, rheumatic pains, loss, of appetite, and increasing weakness, the Prince drove in close wet weather to inspect the building of the new Military Academy at Sandhurst, and it is believed that he there contracted the germs of fever. But he shot with the guests at the Castle, walked with the Queen to Frogmore and inspected the mausoleum there, and visited the Prince of Wales at Cambridge afterwards. Then the affair of the _Trent_ suddenly demanded the Prince's close attention and earnest efforts to prevent a threatened war between England and America. In the course of the civil war raging between the Northern and Southern states the English steamer _Trent_ sailed with the English mails from Savannah to England, having on board among the other passengers several American gentlemen, notably Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who had run the blockade from Charlestown to Cuba, and were proceeding to Europe as envoys sent by the Confederates to the Courts of England and France. A federal vessel fired on the English steamer, compelling her to stop, when the American Captain Wilkes, at the head of a large body of marines, demanded the surrender of Mason and Slidell, with their companions. In the middle of the remonstrances of the English Government agent at the insult to his flag and to the neutral port from which the ship had sailed, the objects of the officer's search came forward and surrendered themselves, thus delivering the English commander from his difficulty.