struggle on which he had entered 1833; in 1842 he scored his first
great success in the passing of an Act that put an end to the
employment of women and children in mines and collieries; in 1844 the
Government carried their Factories Act, which lessened and limited
the hours of children's factory labour, and made other provisions for
their benefit. It was not all that he had striven for, but it was
much; he accepted the compromise, but did not slacken in his efforts
still further to improve the condition of the children. His career of
steady benevolence far outstretched this early period of battle and
endurance; but already his example and achievement were fruitful of
good, and his fellow-labourers were numerous. Nothing succeeds like
success: people had sneered at the mania for futile legislation that
possessed the "humanity-monger" who so embarrassed party leaders with
his crusade on behalf of mere mercy and justice; they now approved
the practical philanthropist who had taken away a great reproach from
his nation, and glorified the age in which they lived because of its
special humaneness, while they exulted not less in the brightening
prospects of the country. Sedition overcome, law and order
triumphant, the throne standing firm, prosperity returning--all
ministered to pride and hope.

In 1850 there had been some painful incidents; the death by an
unhappy accident of Sir Robert Peel, and the turbulent excitement of
what are known as the "No Popery" disturbances, being the most
notable: and of these again incomparably the most important was the
untimely loss to the country of the great and honest statesman who
might otherwise have rendered still more conspicuous services to the
Sovereign and the empire. The sudden violent outburst of popular
feeling, provoked by a piece of rash assumption on the part of the
reigning Pope, was significant, indeed, as evidencing how little
alteration the "Catholic revival" had worked in the temper of the
nation at large; otherwise its historic importance is small. At the
time, however, the current of agitation ran strongly, and swept into
immediate oblivion an event which three years before would have had a
European importance--the 'death of Louis Philippe, whose strangely
chequered life came to an end in the old palace of Claremont, just
before the "papal aggressions"--rash, impolitic, and mischievous, as
competent observers pronounced it, but powerless to injure English
Protestantism--had thrown all the country into a ferment, which took
some months to subside. We are told that Her Majesty, though
naturally interested by this affair, was more alive to the quarter
where the real peril lay than were some of her subjects; but in the
universal distress caused by the death of Peel none joined more
truly, none deplored that loss more deeply, than the Sovereign, who
would willingly have shown her value for the true servant she had
lost by conferring a peerage on his widow--an honour which Lady Peel,
faithful to the wishes and sharing the feeling of her husband, felt
it necessary to decline.

[Illustration: Earl of Derby.]

Amid these agitations, inferior far to many that had preceded them,
the year 1850 ran out, and 1851 opened--the year in which Prince
Albert's long-pursued project of a great International Exhibition of
Arts and Industries was at last successfully carried out. The idea,
as expounded by himself at a banquet given by the Lord Mayor, was
large and noble. "It was to give the world a true test, a living
picture, of the point of industrial development at which the whole of
mankind had arrived, and a new starting-point from which all nations
would be able to direct their further exertions." The magnificent
success, unflawed by any vexatious or dangerous incident, with which
the idea was carried out, had made it almost impossible for us to
understand the opposition with which the plan was greeted, the
ridicule that was heaped upon it, the foolish fears which it
inspired; while the many similar Exhibitions in this and other
countries that have followed and emulated, but never altogether
equalled, the first, have made us somewhat oblivious of the fact that
the scheme when first propounded was an absolute novelty. It was a
fascination, a wonder, a delight; it aroused enthusiasm that will
never be rekindled on a like occasion.

Paxton's fairy palace of glass and iron, erected in Hyde Park, and
canopying in its glittering spaces the untouched, majestic elms of
that national pleasure-ground as well as the varied treasures of
industrial and artistic achievement brought from every quarter of the
globe, divided the charmed astonishment of foreign spectators with
the absolute orderliness of the myriads who thronged it and crowded
all its approaches on the great opening day. Perhaps on that day the
Queen touched the summit of her rare happiness. It was the 1st of
May--her own month--and the birthday of her youngest son, the
godchild and namesake of the great Duke. She stood, the most justly
popular and beloved of living monarchy, amid thousands of her
rejoicing subjects, encompassed with loving friends and happy
children, at the side of the beloved husband whose plan was now
triumphantly realised; and she spoke the words which inaugurated that
triumph and invited the world to gaze on it.

"The sight was magical," she says, "so vast, so glorious, so
touching...God bless my dearest Albert! God bless my dearest country,
which has shown itself so great to-day! One felt so grateful to the
great God, Who seemed to pervade all and to bless all. The only event
it in the slightest degree reminded me of was the coronation, but
this day's festival was a thousand times superior. In fact, it is
unique, and can bear no comparison, from its peculiar beauty and
combination of such striking and different objects. I mean the slight
resemblance only as to its solemnity; the enthusiasm and cheering,
too, were much more touching, for in a church naturally all is
silent."

The Exhibition remained open from the 1st of May to the 11th of