relieved only by the knowledge, not only that the Queen herself had taken her place at the sufferer’s sick bed, and that the ever self-sacrificing Princess Louis of Hesse--a nurse of high technical skill--had installed herself in charge of the sick room. The Princess of Wales was herself suffering, doubtless from the same poison which had attacked her husband. Day by day the bulletins were eagerly scanned, not only in the newspapers, but by excited crowds at public places like the Mansion House and Marlborough House, where they were exhibited. After twenty-five days of suffering the Prince, who had shown signs of recovery, had a relapse, and then the worst was feared. The Prince it was thought must die, and the shock of the bereavement might be fatal to the Queen, whose health was already sadly impaired. Englishmen remembered for the first time that only two precarious lives--one of which was flickering between life and death--stood between the country and a Regency. But what might a Regency portend? It had been fatal to the Monarchy in France; within the memory of living men it had nearly proved fatal to the Monarchy in England. When it was announced on the 9th of December that all the members of the Royal Family had suddenly been summoned to Sandringham, securities in the Money Market, with the exception of Consols, fell from one to [Illustration: THANKSGIVING DAY: THE PROCESSION AT LUDGATE HILL. (_From the Picture by N. Chevalier._)] two per cent. Twice the physicians warned the Queen that the end was at hand, but at last, on the 14th of December--strangely enough the tenth anniversary of his father’s death--the Prince made a rally, and the bulletins again became more hopeful. Prayers had been offered up for his recovery in every church in the empire, and even the Republican societies had sent addresses of sympathy to the Sovereign. The heart of the people had gone forth to her and to the Princess of Wales in sincere and unrestrained sympathy, and as the year closed an official announcement was made which dispelled the gloom that had settled on all classes. It stated that, though Sir James Paget had not left Sandringham, the Prince was then (29th December) progressing favourably. This was followed by a letter from the Queen to the Home Secretary, in which she said:--“The Queen is very anxious to express her deep sense of the touching sympathy of the whole nation on the occasion of the alarming illness of her dear son the Prince of Wales. The universal feeling shown by her people during these painful, terrible days, and the sympathy evinced by them with herself and her beloved daughter the Princess of Wales, as well as the general joy at the improvement in the Prince of Wales’s state, have made a deep and lasting impression on her heart which can never be effaced. It was, indeed, nothing new to her, for the Queen had met with the same sympathy when, just ten years ago, a similar illness removed from