In the month of May, in the middle of the Irish distress, the great agitator of old, Daniel O'Connell, died in his seventy-second year, on his way to Rome. The news of his death was received in Ireland as only one drop more in the full cup of national misery. In the same month of May another and a very different orator, Dr. Chalmers, the great impassioned Scotch divine, philosopher, and philanthropist, one of the leaders in the disruption from the Church of Scotland, died in Edinburgh, in his sixty-eighth year. Prince Albert had been elected Chancellor of Cambridge University--a well-deserved compliment, which afforded much gratification both to the Queen and the Prince. They went down to Cambridge in July for the ceremony of the installation, which was celebrated with all scholarly state and splendour. "The Hall of Trinity was the scene of the ceremony for which the visit was paid. Her Majesty occupied a chair of state on a dais. The Chancellor, the Prince in his official robes, supported by the Duke of Wellington, Chancellor of Oxford, the Bishop of Oxford, the Vice- Chancellor of Cambridge, and the Heads of the Houses entered, and the Chancellor read an address to her Majesty congratulatory on her arrival. Her Majesty made a gracious reply and the Prince retired with the usual profound obeisances, a proceeding which caused her Majesty some amusement," so says the _Annual Register_. This part of the day's proceedings seems to have made a lively impression on those who witnessed it. Bishop Wilberforce gives his testimony. "The Cambridge scene was very interesting. There was such a burst of loyalty, and it told so on the Queen and Prince. E--- would not then have thought that he looked cold. It was quite clear that they both felt it as something new that he had earned, and not she given, a true English honour; and so he looked so pleased and she so triumphant. There was also some such pretty interludes when he presented the address, and she beamed upon him and once half smiled, and then covered the smile with a gentle dignity, and then she said in her clear musical voice, 'The choice which the University has made of its Chancellor _has my most entire approbation_.'" The Queen records in her Diary, "I cannot say how it agitated and embarrassed me to have to receive this address and hear it read by my beloved Albert, who walked in at the head of the University, and who looked dear and beautiful in his robes, which were carried by Colonel Phipps and Colonel Seymour. Albert went through it all admirably, almost absurd, however, as it was for us. He gave me the address and I read the answer, and a few kissed hands, and then Albert retired with the University."