It can scarcely be considered then too much to say that the whole Continent is favourably disposed towards him, and that from this particular standpoint alone he is surrounded by friendly and prospering influences. In our own England he has long been regarded as the “popular” Prince, and so begins his reign as a “popular” King. He is full of kindness and generosity; and there are many who assert that to those who deserve it least he is too kind and too generous. But “a good heart never changes,” as Shakespeare makes his Henry V say, and we may hope that the King’s reputation for this “good heart,” which he won as Prince of Wales, will be the rock on which the Empire may rest secure. Yet, without assuming the rôle of a soothsayer crossing the pathway of a Cæsar, those who truly “fear God and honour the King,” and have neither favours to ask, nor interests to serve, cannot but entertain without undue foreboding certain fears for his well-being. Dark to him, personally speaking, must be this particular turn in his pathway, when he takes up the Imperial Crown, glistening more with tears than with jewels, and dons the heavy robes of ceremonious state, for he has already lived long and lost much. Sorrow has dealt hardly with him in many ways, and the dangerous condition of his dearly beloved sister, the Empress Frederick, is an additional pang to his already grieving heart. Between duty and love his spirit must be sadly exercised. “A man is not as God, But then most Godlike being most a man.”