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[138] it to founding a charitable. institution for the education of young girls belonging to the working classes. Here she watches over her sisters of humbler birth, with heartfelt sympathy, alike interested in their physical, mental, and religious culture.

In the year 1855 the emperor and Eugenie visited the court of Queen Victoria. They were received with every possible demonstration of enthusiasm. England seemed to wish to blot out the memory of Waterloo, and to atone for the wrongs she had inflicted upon the first Napoleon, by the cordiality with which she greeted and the hospitality with which she entertained his successor and heir. There was English blood in the veins of Eugenie, and English traits adorned her character. It is not too much to say that she was universally admired in the court of St. James. The London journals of that day were full of expressions of admiration. It was said that Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle were never honored with the presence of a guest more truly queenly. In purity of character, in sincerity of Christian faith, Eugenic and Victoria must have found mutual sympathy, though one was a communicant of the Church of England, and the other of the Church of Rome.

Eugenie loved England. Her grandfather was an Englishman. Many of her dearest relatives were English; much of her education was English. The emperor, a man of warm affections, could not forget the hospitable welcome he had received in London, when an exile, banished by Bourbon law from his own country, simply because his name was Napoleon Bonaparte. The emperor has also ever been ready to render the tribute of his admiration to the institutions of England.

Thus both Louis Napoleon and Eugenie could be happy as the guests of Queen Victoria. There was moral sublimity in the event itself. It constituted a new era in the history of the rival nations. The Emperor of France and the Queen

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