EARL BEACONSFIELD ON THE DEATH OF PRINCESS ALICE.

Kumara Times, Issue 746, 19 February 1879, Page 2

EARL BEACONSFIELD ON THE DEATH OF PRINCESS ALICE.

The Earl of Beiconafield, in proposing ah address of sympathy from the House of Lords, brought out one incident of pathetic interest. With peculiar felicity be spoke of the virtues of the illustrious dead ; venture to call her by that name, though she wore a crown—afforded one of the most striking contrasts that I can remember of richness of culture and rare intelligence combined with most pure and refined domestic sentiments. (Cheers.) You who know her life well can recall those agonising hours when she attended the dying bed of her illustrious father, 1 who had sketched out her formed her tastes. You can recalJJ'too, the moment when at which she kttended her Royal brother at a time when the hopes of England seemed to depend upon his life—(cheers) and now you can remember too well . how, when the whole of her family were* stricken by a malignant disease, she |v [been to them the angel of the- house, ; till at last her own vital power was, peMiape,- exhausted, and she has fallen. There is something wonderfully-pitious in the immediate cause of her death. The physicians who permitted v her to watch over her suffering family enjoined her under ho circumstances whatever to be tempted into an embrace. Her admirable self-restraint guarded her through the crisis of/this terrible complaint in safety. She remembered and

"’bbserved the injunctions of her physicians. But it became her f<-t to bieak to heir son, quite a youth, the ilea'h of his .youngest sister, to whom he was devoutedly attached. Tlie hoy was so overcome with misery that the agitated mother clasped him in her arms, and thus she recei/ed the kiss of death. 1 hardly know an incident more pathetic, it is oneby which poets might be inspired, and in which piofessors of the tine aits, from the highest to the lowest branches, whether in painting, sculpture, or gems, might find a 6tting subject of comineiation,” The Princess Alice was one of those noble-minded women whom Englishmen of all ranks and of all political Creeds delight to honour. The tibates paid to her memory, in condolence with the Queen, by both Houses of Parliament, and many other public bodies, are no merely traditional or courtly expressions of feeling. Sbe united the domestic virtues and the practical qualities which bring so much happiness to English life with the highest mental culture.