It is certain that from the early part of the year 1818 the aged Queen may be said to have been in a rapidly declining state. Her condition, however, was not highly dangerous till the autumn, when her spasmodic attacks became more frequent and the progress of dropsical symptoms more alarming. Her sufferings were very great, and if she experienced temporary ease the slightest variation of position renewed her pain. She continued in this condition until the 14th of November, when, by a slight rupture in the skin of both ankles, from which there took place a considerable effusion of water, the venerable lady experienced some relief. Her condition, however, was not bettered thereby, for mortification soon set in, and that portion of her family which was in attendance upon her soon learned that all hope was abandoned; after an interval of more than eighty years England was again about to lose a Queen-consort; but no Queen-consort had for so long a period shared the throne of the empire as Charlotte. For fifty-seven years she had occupied the high place from which she was now about to descend. On Tuesday, the 16th of November 1818, at one o’clock P.M., the Queen calmly departed, at her suburban palace at Kew. Her last breath was drawn in a low arm-chair, that cannot be called an _easy_ chair, and which is still preserved at Kew. The Regent, the Duke of York, the Princess Augusta, and the Duchess of Gloucester were present. The Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg was said to have been absent, on account of some difference between herself and her royal mother, but it was afterwards ascertained that a reconciliation had taken place between mother and child before the Princess left the kingdom for her own home. How far the Queen had acquitted herself as a parent towards her children was made a ‘vexed question’ at the time of her death; and an endeavour was made to connect the fact of the dispersion of several of the princes and princesses in foreign countries with the mother as an irritating cause thereof. The ‘Times,’ at the period of which we are treating, entered largely upon this subject; and that organ was evidently inclined to conclude that her Majesty had not succeeded in attaching to her the hearts of her children. ‘The Duke of Cumberland,’ said the ‘Times,’ ‘is out of the question. The inflexible, but well-meant determination of the Queen to stigmatise her niece, by shutting the doors of the royal palace against her, may excuse strong feelings of estrangement or resentment on the part of the Duchess and her kindred. But that the Dukes of Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge at the same time should have quitted, as if by signal, their parent’s death-bed, is a circumstance which, in lower life, would have at least astonished the community.’ The ‘Times’ adds, that ‘the departure of the Princess Elizabeth, the Queen’s favourite daughter, who married and took leave of her in the midst of that illness which was pronounced