It was semi-officially announced in the middle of July that the Duke of Edinburgh had been betrothed (11th July) to the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, the only daughter of the Czar of Russia. The affair had been the subject of some difficult and delicate negotiations, not so much because there was some difference of religion between the bride and bridegroom, but because, being an only daughter, the parents of the Grand Duchess felt that parting with her would be a bitter heart-wrench. She was devoted to her father, as he was to her, and it was said that if he had given his crown to the English Prince he could not have testified more strongly his esteem for him than he had done by bestowing on him his daughter’s hand. “I hear,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse from Seeheim (9th July), to the Queen, “Affie [the Duke of Edinburgh] comes on Thursday night. Poor Marie is very happy, and so quiet.... How I feel for the parents, this only daughter (a character of _Hingebung_ [perfect devotion] to those she loves)--the last child entirely at home, as the parents are so much away that the two youngest, on account of their studies, no longer travel about.”[59] This alliance was unusually interesting, for the Duke of Edinburgh was practically within the Royal succession.[60] Nothing but an Act of Parliament barring him from the succession, such as men talked of passing against the hated Duke of Cumberland, who conspired with the loyal Orangemen of Ulster to oust the Queen from the throne, could prevent the Duke from succeeding to the Crown if the Prince of Wales and his children did not survive the Queen. There was a very general feeling that this marriage was worthy of the country. Apart from her great wealth, the only daughter of the Czar of All the Russias appeared to the average British elector to be a much more fitting mate for a Prince who stood very near the English throne, than an impecunious young lady from a minor Teutonic “dukery”--if we may venture to borrow a term which Lord Beaconsfield made classical. Thoughtful observers of public life were grateful to the Queen for establishing a precedent which enlarged the area of matrimonial selection for English Princes. Since the reign of George II. this had been so closely limited to Germany, that the Royal Family of England from generation to generation had been purely and exclusively German. There was, therefore, no popular outcry against a Parliamentary settlement for the Duke of Edinburgh. Mr. Gladstone, on the 29th [Illustration: THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.]