[The speculation about the Duke of York and his bride in which the Church Times indulged became fact in 1936, of course.]

DR JOHNSON observed in one of his essays that great men do not appear great to their own households, for there they are seen to be but men, having the same need to eat and drink and sleep as others of less commanding intellect or high rank. Yet it is precisely the consciousness of common interests and common needs that to-day makes the whole realm rejoice in a royal wedding. The marriage of yesterday had its points of special interest. The bridegroom stands at present but one remove from the throne; in certain circumstances, which it is to be hoped may not arise, his bride might be the first subject for four centuries to be raised to the dignity of a Queen-Consort. He has shown himself not only a true scion of his family in his devotion to exacting public duty, but also a professed and serious student of social and economic problems. Nor is it of small interest to us as Churchmen that his bride is a daughter of the Scottish Church, a descendant of men of the Faithful Remnant, whose chapel in Glamis Castle was consecrated in 1688, only a few months before those who were faithful to their Catholic heritage were driven forth from their churches, to suffer for more than a century the oppression of penal laws. So before countless altars yesterday there were those who prayed that every phrase of the nuptial benediction might be abundantly fulfilled for the royal bridegroom and his bride.

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