Quotation from: Great Britain and Her QueenWritten by: Annie E. Keeling |
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In the personal history of our Queen during those ten years we may note with reverent sympathy some events that must shadow the festival for her. The calm and kindly course of her home-life has again been broken in upon by bereavement. All seemed fair in the Jubilee year itself, and the Queen was appearing more in public than had been her wont--laying the foundations of the Imperial Institute; unveiling in Windsor Park a statue of the Prince Consort, Jubilee gift of the women of England; taking part in a magnificent naval review at Spithead. But a shadow was already visible to some; and early in 1888 sinister rumours were afloat as to the health of the Crown Prince of Germany, consort of the Queen's eldest daughter. Too soon those rumours proved true. Even when the prince rode in the splendid Jubilee procession, a commanding figure in his dazzling white uniform, the cruel malady had fastened on him that was to slay him in less than a year, proving fatal three months after the death of his aged father had called him to fill the imperial throne. The nation followed the course of this tragedy with a feverish interest never before excited by the lot of any foreign potentate, and deeply sympathised with, the distress of the Queen and of the bereaved empress.
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