NEWS OF THE WEEK.
A PRINCESS has been added to the number of Queen VICTORIA'S children, now multiplying into a respectable little family. The event does not possess the political importance which attached to the birth of the first child, for a time heir presumptive, or to that of the Prince of WALES ; yet it will give scarcely less satisfaction. In the first place, much as the country has outgrown the super- stitious veneration for royalty, the safety, wellbeing, and domestic happiness of few other sovereigns are the objects of so great soli- citude to their subjects ; and though the Queen's name is not abused, as it wont to be, by being hacked on every occasion as a tool of party, certainly it never stood higher in the general esteem. There is a further reflection to gratify the student of the times. Until a very recent period it was a settled dogma, that in the case of royal personages all the feelings of human affection must be sacrificed to state-necessity. It so happened that the young VICTORIA had attractions to win a heart and a heart to give, and yet, being sovereign, could give her own consent ; so that state-necessity was put out of the Reid. According to the dogma, all sorts of evils ought to have ensued from that free choice. Have they ? Which is the more impressive and instructive ex- ample—such a union as this country has seen, in which a Prince, forced by state-necessity to a repulsive match, became, in his regal capacity, a mere begetter of progeny for state purposes, and at times, in his individual capacity, a reckless rioter in licences which were indulged as a set-off to that cornpultion ; or a union which is consecrated by affection, and holds up to the young, high and low, all the splendours of imperial estate tributary to the chief blessing, domestic happiness, peaceful and virtuous ?
