There was an immense feeling of relief all over the country when the day passed off so quietly. The popular feeling in London was manifested by the cheers which greeted the Duke of Wellington when he turned out early the next morning to his post at the Horse Guards. The Prince wrote to his private secretary on April 11th, “What a glorious day was yesterday for England.... How mightily this will tell all over the world!” The utter inability of the revolutionary germ to thrive in the soil of constitutional liberty was the lesson of 1848. Repeated illustrations of the same fact have been given in more recent times. After the explosion in Greenwich Park in 1894, caused by the Frenchman Bourdin, the police seized an anarchist club near Tottenham Court Road, and caught a gang of eighty men representing the anarchist propaganda in London. Every man but one was a foreigner, and the solitary Englishman was a journalist who had come, not to revolutionize, but to get copy for his paper! With characteristic conscientiousness the Queen and her husband did not rest content with the fact that the social peace of England was not endangered. They felt there never would have been even the anticipation of danger, unless there had been much in the condition of the poorer classes which called for redress. They had not been many days at Osborne before they sent for Lord Ashley (better known to this generation as Lord Shaftesbury), and asked his advice as to what could be done to render more happy the condition of the poor. This was a subject which, as is well known, was to Lord Ashley, not merely an occupation, but a passion. His whole life, from youth to old age, was given to it; almost his last words, at the age of 85, when he knew he was dying, were: “I cannot bear to leave the world, with all the misery in it.” The Prince could not, therefore, have sent for a better counsellor. They had a long conversation in the gardens at Osborne. The Prince asked for advice, and how he could best assist towards the common weal. “Now, sir,” replied Lord Ashley, “I have to ask your Royal Highness whether I am to speak out freely, or to observe Court form.” “For God’s sake,” said the Prince, “speak out freely.”