It cannot be said that the public looked with much enthusiasm on any of the royal marriages. Such unions, with rare exceptions, are unpleasantly free from sentiment or romance; and in the present instances there was such a matter-of-fact air of mere ‘business’ about these contracts and ceremonies, such an absence of youth and the impulses and the dignity of youth, that the indifferent public, even remembering the importance of securing a lineal succession to the throne, was slow to offer either congratulation or sympathy. The caricaturists, on the other hand, were busy with a heavy and not very delicate wit; and fashionable papers, uniting implied censure with faint praise, observed that ‘the Duchesses of Kent, Clarence, and Cambridge are very deficient in the English language. They can scarcely speak a sentence. They possess most amiable dispositions.’ They also possessed true womanly qualities, which won for them the esteem of their husbands. After a brief residence at St. James’s, and as brief a sojourn at the Duke’s residence in Bushey Park, the Duke and Duchess of Clarence repaired to Hanover, and remained there about a year--no incident marking the time is worthy of observation. The issue of this marriage scarcely survived the birth. In March 1819, a daughter was born, but to survive only a few hours. In December 1820, another princess gladdened the hearts of her parents, only to quench the newly-raised joy by her death in March of the following year. The loss was the keener felt because of the hopes that had been raised; and the grief experienced by the Duke and Duchess was tenderly nourished, rather than relieved, by the exquisite art of Chantrey, which, at the command of the parents, reproduced the lost child in marble--sleeping for ever where it lay. The household at Bushey was admirably regulated by the Duchess, who had been taught the duties as well as the privileges of greatness. The fixed rule was, never to allow expenditure to exceed income. It is a golden rule which, when observed, renders men, in good truth, as rich as Crœsus. It is a rule which, if universally observed, would render the world prosperous and pauperism a legend. It was a rule the more required to be honoured in this case as the Duke had large calls upon his income. When those were provided for, old liabilities effaced, and current expenses defrayed, the surplus was surrendered to charity. There was no saving for the sake of increase of income--economy was practised for justice-sake, and the Duke and Duchess were so just that they found themselves able to be largely generous. With the increased means placed at their disposal by the death of the Duke of York, there was but trifling increase of expenditure. If something was added to their comforts, _they_ benefitted who were employed to procure them; and, if there was some little additional luxury in the rural palace of Bushey, the neighbouring poor were never forgotten in a selfish enjoyment of it.