DEPOSITUM ILLUSTRISSIMI ET CELSISSIMI ALBERTI, PRINCIPIS CONSORTIS, DUCIS SAXONIAE, DE SAXE-COBURG ET GOTHA PRINCIPIS, NOBILISSIMI ORDINIS PERISCELIDIS EQUITIS, AUGUSTISSIMAE ET POTENTISSIMAE VICTORIAE REGINAE, CONJUGIS PERCARISSIMI, OBIIT DIE DECIMO QUARTO DECEMBRIS, MDCCCLXI. ANNO AETATIS SUAE XLIII. [Here lies the most illustrious and exalted Albert, Prince Consort, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the most beloved husband of the most august and potent Queen Victoria. He died on the fourteenth day of December, 1861, in the forty-third year of his age.] Thus died and was buried a great and a good man, one of the most useful men of his age, one to whom England owes much. "For that he loved our Queen, And, for her sake, the people of her love, Few and far distant names shall rank above His own, where England's cherish'd names are seen." [Sidenote: THE QUEEN IN HER WIDOWHOOD.] The Queen has ever since her great bereavement most constantly and piously revered the Prince's memory. Her reverence has taken the practical form of the deepest sympathy with the woes and sorrows of the poorest and humblest of her subjects. She has eschewed the pomp and ceremony of State, and deliberately set herself to discover and soothe sorrow, and to recognise all good deeds of the same character performed by others. When the noble Peabody bestowed his princely act of munificence on the poor of London, no recognition was made of his generosity more signal than that made by the Queen. She has been among the first to help by loving words and by practical aid the sufferers by any great national calamity--a Lancashire famine, a shipwreck or railway accident, a colliery explosion, a catastrophe caused by mad and futile sedition. Ready and sympathetic condolence has especially flowed from her to those bereaved like herself, and when President Lincoln perished at his post, the Queen sent to his widow a long letter which her son described as "the outgushing of a woman's heartfelt sympathy," and which, with rare and commendable good taste, has never been exposed to the public eye. Most fitly has she specially commemorated her husband's memory by the institution of a fit companion and complement to the Victoria Cross, the "Albert Medal," which is bestowed on brave men who save lives from the "Peril of the Sea or Shipwreck."