The heir to the throne adorned by Queen Victoria was born in the midst of one of the very darkest periods of English history. In 1841 the condition of the people had been declining from the beginning of the year. Operatives were on half time--at last they had no work at all--and the few who had had the means or the will to be provident, were living on their savings. Public meetings were being held to consider what was to be done, and public subscriptions were opened. Then the idle hands commenced to meet in large numbers, with a sullen look of despair, waiting for death or alms--a comparatively small number being employed at the expense of municipal and other recognised bodies, in road making or road mending. Crime, which follows pauperism as surely and almost as rapidly as the obscene vulture pounces upon the carrion which is not yet cold, was rife; murders came in multitudes, poisonings by wholesale; murders by trades unionists, murders by thieves. It was when this dark cloud lowered over England--a cloud never completely dispelled until the rise of the great and glorious Free Trade sun, five years later--that the Prince of Wales first breathed. A _London Gazette_ extraordinary, which appeared on Tuesday evening, November the 9th, ran as follows:-- Buckingham Palace, Nov. 9th. This morning, at twelve minutes before eleven o'clock, the Queen was happily delivered of a Prince, His Royal Highness Prince Albert, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, several Lords of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and the Ladies of Her Majesty's Bedchamber, being present. This great and important news was immediately made known to the town by the firing of the Tower and Park guns; and the Privy Council being assembled as soon as possible thereupon, at the Council Chamber, Whitehall, it was ordered that a Form of Thanksgiving be prepared by His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be used in all churches and chapels throughout England and Wales and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on Sunday, the 14th of November, or the Sunday after the respective ministers shall receive the same. Her Majesty and the infant Prince are, God be praised, both doing well.