Read it through once

Perhaps the most beautiful and effective presentations of popular feeling and hopes in connection with this now historic sickness of the Heir Apparent were the sermons preached by Dean Stanley. No one has ever been closer in friendship and in personal knowledge to the Prince of Wales than had this eloquent and saintly ecclesiastic. No one has been more admired and respected in the Church of England in modern days than he; nor has any of its clergy possessed a wider view or more generous heart. Speaking in Westminster Abbey on December 10th, 1871, when the nation was awaiting in deep anxiety the issue of a struggle which seemed to be almost fatally and surely decided, he embodied the popular feeling in beautiful and appropriate words: "On a day like this when there is one topic in every household, one question on every lip, it is impossible to stand in this place and not endeavour to give some expression to that of which every heart is full. We all press, as it were, round one darkened chamber, we all feel that with the mourning family, mother, wife, brothers, sisters, who are there assembled, we are indeed one. The thrill of their fears or hopes passes through and through the differences of rank and station; we feel that, while they represent the whole people they also represent and are that which each family and each member of each family, is separately. In the fierce battle between life and death, for the issues of which we are all looking with such eager expectation, we see the likeness of what will befall every individual soul amongst us; and the reflection which this struggle, with all its manifold uncertainties suggests, concerns us all alike."