Page:King Edward VII, his life & reign; the record of a noble career.djvu/19

Rh eldest daughter of Prince Christian of Glücksburg and his wife the Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel. We may here observe that in the autumn of this year (1863), on the sudden death of Frederick VII, the Prince of Wales's father-in-law became King of Denmark as Christian IX. On February 19 proposals for the settlements to be made on the Prince and his bride were brought forward in Parliament by the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, Leader of the House of Commons, and unanimously adopted. The heir apparent was to receive £100,000 a year—£40,000 from the Consolidated Fund, and £60,000 from the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, while £10,000 was voted for the separate use of the Princess of Wales, and £30,000 a year in the event of her surviving her husband. We may as well here dispose of the subject of Parliamentary grants to the King before his accession by stating that, in 1889, an additional yearly income of £36,000 was awarded to the Prince of Wales for the maintenance of his younger children, the Queen at the same time undertaking to provide for her other descendants. When the Parliamentary grant was made, as above, in 1863, Lord Palmerston, the most genial of mankind, made a very characteristic remark in congratulating the nation on having secured a handsome bride for the heir to the throne. This brings us to inquire, with a necessary backward look in point of time, how was the marriage brought about, and who, precisely, was the Princess Alexandra? Setting aside ridiculous fables put forward in answer to the first question, we state the facts. The marriage was essentially and assuredly one of mutual affection, and, after the Prince had once made the acquaintance of the Danish beauty, all thoughts of other projected alliances were given up. It was during his foreign tour in the autumn of 1861 that he first, informally, met the Princess in the Cathedral of Worms, where with his tutor and equerry he went to examine the famous frescoes. There they fell in with Prince Christian of Glücksburg and his eldest daughter. Some time later, the young people met again at Heidelberg, when the Prince of Wales was staying with his sister the Crown Princess of Prussia, and