Prince Albert Victor of Wales was born unexpectedly at Frogmore, where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided occasionally, on the 8th of January, 1864. The child was baptised in the chapel at Buckingham Palace on the first anniversary of his parents' marriage, as the Princess Royal had been baptised there on the first anniversary of the Queen and Prince Albert's marriage. The Queen and the old King of the Belgians were present among the sponsors. When the Queen went north this year she was accompanied by the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg. On the 14th of March, 1865, her Majesty visited the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton, walking over the different wards and speaking to the patients. The news of the assassination of President Lincoln reached England in April, when the Queen became, as she has so often been, the mouthpiece of her subjects, writing an autograph letter expressing her horror, pity, and sympathy to Mrs. Lincoln. Prince Alfred on the 6th of August, his twenty-first birthday, was formally acknowledged heir to his childless uncle, the Duke of Saxe- Coburg. Two days later the Queen embarked with Prince Leopold, the three younger Princesses, the Duchess of Roxburgh, Lady Churchill, &c., &c., at Woolwich for Germany. She arrived at Coburg on the 11th and went to Rosenau. On the 26th, the birthday of the Prince Consort, perhaps the most interesting of all the inaugurations of monuments to his memory took place at Coburg. A gilt-bronze statue ten feet high was unveiled with solemn ceremony in the square of the little town which Prince Albert had so often traversed in his boyhood. After the unveiling, the Queen walked across the square at the head of her children and handed to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg flowers which he laid on the pedestal. Each of her sons and daughters followed her example, till "the fragrant mass" rose to the feet of the statue. Princess Alice writes of "the terrible sufferings" of the first three years of the Queen's widowhood, but adds that after the long storm came rest, so that the daughter could tenderly remind the mother, without reopening the wound, of the happy silver wedding which might have been this year when the royal parents would have been surrounded by so many grandchildren in fresh young households.