The _Edinburgh Review_, soon after the King's death, while admitting that "his understanding may not have been of as high an order as his good nature," says: "We have learned to forget the faults of the Duke of Clarence in the merits of William IV." Where were these merits shown? Was it in "brooding"--(to use the expression of his own private secretary)--over questions of whether he could, during the commencement of his reign, personally appropriate sums of money outside the Civil List votes? Was it in desiring that Colonel Napier might be "struck off the half-pay list," for having made a speech at Devizes in favor of Parliamentary Reform? Was it when he tried to persuade Earl Grey to make Parliament pay Rundell and Bridge's bill for plate--and this when the masses were in a starving condition? Was it when he declared that he was by "no means dissatisfied" that a proposed meeting was likely to be so "violent, and in other respects so objectionable," as it would afford the excuse for suppressing by force the orderly meetings which, says his secretary, "the King orders me to say he cannot too often describe as being, in his opinion, far more mischievous and dangerous" than those of "a more avowed and violent character"? CHAPTER VII. THE PRESENT REIGN. Her present Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, was born May 24th, 1819, and ascended the throne June 20th, 1837, as representing her father, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George HI. On February 10th, 1840, it being the general etiquette for the Brunswick family to intermarry amongst themselves, she was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, who received an allowance from the nation of £30,000, to compensate him for becoming the husband of his wife. The Queen, more sensible than others of the arduous position of a Prince Consort, wished her loyal husband to have £100,000 a year. The Government reduced this to £50,000; Joseph Hume and the Radicals reduced it still further to £30,000. For this annual payment the Prince undertook to submit to naturalization, to be the first subject in England, to reside rent free in the Royal Palaces repaired at the cost of the nation. He also, on his own account, and for his own profit, attended to various building speculations at the West End of London, and died very rich. He is known as Prince Albert the Good. His goodness is marked--not by parks given to the people, as in the case of Sir Francis Crossley; not by improved dwellings for the people, as in the case of George Peabody; not by a large and costly market place, freely given, as in the case of Miss Burdett Coutts--Peeress without her patent of Baroness;--but by statues erected in his honor in many cities and boroughs by a loyal people. As an employer of labor, the Prince's reputation for generosity is marked solely by these statues. As a Prince, he felt in his lifetime how much and how truly he was loved by his people; and at a dinner given to the