“As my precious, invaluable Albert sat there, and _our little love between us_, I felt quite warm with happiness and love to God!” The gentle woman’s heart, then so “warm with happiness,” was destined to know the coldness of a life-long sorrow, but the “love to God” never failed;--never relaxed in its firm trust and faith, and herein was the great light that seemed to spring mystically from England’s throne and spread a halo round England’s Sovereign. “I am quite clear,” said the Queen, speaking of her eldest daughter, then a child, “that she should be taught to have great reverence for God and for religion, and that she should have the feeling of devotion and love which our Heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to have for Him and not one of fear and trembling.” “Reverence for God!” No one will deny that the Queen in the closing years of her long and splendid reign must have seen this reverence dying out and that her heart must often have been surcharged with weeping when she considered the great change that has come over modern thought and modern life since she first ascended the throne, a shy, pretty little girl, with all England waiting to do her homage. She must have noticed a complete departure from old ways and customs which, however simple they were, certainly did mark English women as the Queen-roses of the world, and did so influence men to love their homes and to work for the glory of their country that they were able to leave it greater than they found it. She must have watched Progress marching with swift, impetuous strides in one direction,--but Retrogression and Decay marching as steadily, though more slowly in another,--progress let us say in machinery, but retrogression in men. Who shall count the tears the Queen has shed for the evils which she, with her well-known wisdom and prescience, may not have foreseen coming upon England! Who shall estimate the grief and pain she has suffered on account of the cruel war which has ravaged the homes of a people who are one with ourselves in the Christian faith,--a war which, in her last days on earth, she had to learn was not ended, but rather likely to be prolonged! Noble-hearted, deeply God-loving woman as she was, her beautiful spirit on the verge of eternal glory, must have often contemplated the dark clouds on England’s horizon with the most poignant and tender sorrow, and her anxiety for the many difficulties likely to surround her son, our King, must have been acute and pitiful indeed. For there can be no doubt that much of the peace of Europe was the result of her personal influence; and personal influence is a far more important factor in the welding together and holding of countries and peoples than is generally taken into account by such of us as are superficial observers and who imagine everything is done by Governments.