In June her Majesty opened the new Parliament, an event which was followed in a fortnight by the resignation of Lord Derby's Ministry, and Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister with a strong Cabinet.

At the close of the season the sad news arrived of the sudden death from diphtheria of the year-old wife, the young Queen of Portugal.

In August the Queen and the Prince made one of their yachting excursions to the Channel Islands. The Duchess of Kent's seventy-third birthday was kept at Osborne. During the autumn stay of the Court at Balmoral, the Prince presided over the British Association for the Promotion of Science, which met that year at Aberdeen. He afterwards entertained two hundred members of the association, filling four omnibuses, in addition to carriages, at a Highland gathering at Balmoral. The day was cold and showery, but with gleams of sunshine. It is unnecessary to say that the attendance was large, and the games and dancing were conducted with much spirit. In honour of the country, the Prince and his sons appeared in kilts, the Queen and the Princesses in royal Stewart tartan skirts and shawls over black velvet bodices.

In 1859 the Queen made no less than three successful ascents of Highland mountains, Morvem, Lochnagar, and at last Ben Macdhui, the highest mountain in Scotland, upwards of four thousand feet. On the return of the royal party they went from Edinburgh to Loch Katrine, in order to open the Glasgow Waterworks, the conclusion of a great undertaking which was marred not inappropriately by a very wet day. The Queen and the Prince made a detour on their homeward route, as they had occasionally done before, visiting Wales and Lord Penryn at Penryn Castle.

This year saw the publication of a memorable book, "Adam Bede," for which even its precursor, "Scenes from Clerical Life," had not prepared the world of letters. The novel was much admired in the royal circle. In one of the rooms at Osborne, as a pendant to a picture from the "Faery Queen," there hangs a representation from a very different masterpiece in English literature, of the young Squire watching Hetty in the dairy.

In the beginning of winter the Prince suffered from an unusually severe fit of illness. In November the Princess Royal again visited England, accompanied by her husband.

There were cheery winter doings at Osborne, when the great household, like one large family, rejoiced in the seasonable snow, in a slide "used by young and old," and in a "splendid snow man." The new year was joyously danced in, though the children who were wont to assemble at the Queen's dressing-room door to call in chorus "Prosit Neu Jahr," were beginning to be scattered far and wide.

In January, 1860, the Queen opened Parliament in person, when for the first time the Princesses Alice and Helena were present.

On the twentieth anniversary of the Queen's wedding-day she wrote to Baron Stockmar, "I wish I could think I had made one as happy as he has made me."

In April the Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenberg, the Queen's brother-in- law, who was now an old man, died at Baden, after a long illness. He had been an upright, unlucky German prince, trusted by his contemporaries, a good husband and father—whose loss was severely felt by the widowed Princess. Her sorrow was reflected in the Queen's sympathy for her sister.

This year's Academy Exhibition contained Millais's "Black Brunswicker," Landseer's "Flood in the Highlands," and Phillips's "Marriage of the Princess Royal," now in the great corridor at Windsor Castle. "The Idyls of the King," much admired by the Prince, were the poems of the year.

Among the guests at Windsor Castle for Ascot week, in addition to King Leopold, who came to look once more on the old scene, were Prince Louis of Hesse and his younger brother. In a letter of the Prince Consort's, written soon afterwards, he alludes to an apparent "liking" between Prince Louis and Princess Alice.

Sir Arthur Helps, whose subsequent literary relations with the Queen were so friendly, was sworn in Clerk of the Council on the 23rd of June.

The first great volunteer review took place in Hyde Park this summer. The Queen was present, driving with Princess Alice, Prince Arthur, and King Leopold, while the Prince Consort rode. The display of the twenty thousand citizen soldiers, at that time reckoned a large volunteer force, was in every respect satisfactory. As a sequel her Majesty was also present during fine weather, in an exceptionally wet summer, at the first meeting of the National Rifle Association at Wimbledon, when the first shot was fired by the Queen, the rifle being so arranged that a touch to the trigger caused the bullseye to be hit, when the shooter scored three points.

At the close of the season the Prince of Wales sailed for Canada, after he had accepted the President of the United States' invitation to visit him at Washington. At the same time another distant colony was to be graced by the presence of royalty; it was settled that Prince Alfred was to land at the Cape of Good Hope. The Queen's sons were to serve her by representing her race and rule in her far distant dominions.

In July the Princess Royal became the medium, in a letter home, of the overtures of the Hesse family for a marriage between Prince Louis and Princess Alice—overtures favourably received by the Queen and the Prince, who were much attracted by the young suitor. Immediately afterwards came the intelligence of the birth of the Princess Royal's second child—a daughter.

The eyes of all Europe began to be directed to Garibaldi as the champion of freedom in Naples and Sicily.

In August the Court went North, staying longer than usual in Edinburgh for the purpose of holding a volunteer review in the Queen's Park, which was even a greater success than that in Hyde Park. The summer day was cloudless; the broken nature of the ground heightened the picturesqueness of the spectacle. There was much greater variety in the dress and accoutrements of the Highland and Lowland regiments, numbering rather more than their English neighbours. The martial bearing of many of the men was remarkable, and the spectators crowding Arthur's Seat from the base to the summit were enthusiastic in their loyalty. The Queen rejoiced to have the Duchess of Kent by her side in the open carriage. The old Duchess had not appeared at any public sight for years, and her presence on this occasion recalled former days. She was not venturing so far as Abergeldie, but was staying at Cramond House, near Edinburgh. Soon after the Queen and the Prince's arrival at Balmoral the news reached them of the death of their aunt, the Duchess of Kent's only surviving sister, the widow of the Grand- Duke Constantine of Russia.

This year the Queen and the Prince, with the Princesses Alice and Helena, made, in fine weather, a second ascent of Ben Macdhui.

The success of such an excursion led to a longer expedition, which meant a night spent on the way at what was little better than a village inn. Such a step was only possible when entire secrecy, and even a certain amount of disguise, were maintained. Indeed, the little innocent mystery, with all the amusement it brought, was part of the pleasure. The company consisted of the Queen and the Prince, Lady Churchill and General Grey, with two keepers for attendants. Their destination, reached by driving, riding, and walking through the shiel of the Geldie, Glen Geldie, Glen Fishie, &c, was Grantown, where the party spent the night, and were waited on, in all unconsciousness, by a woman in ringlets in the evening and in curl-papers in the morning. But before Grantown was left, when the truth was known, the same benighted chambermaid was seen waving a flag from the window of the dining and drawing-room in one, which had been lately so honoured, while the landlady on the threshold made a vigorous use of her pocket- handkerchief, to the edification and delight of an excited crowd in the street.

The Court returned to Osborne, and on the 22nd of September the Queen, the Prince, and Princess Alice, with the suite, sailed from Gravesend for Antwerp en route for Coburg, where the Princess Royal was to meet them with her husband and the child-prince, whom his grandparents had not yet seen.

The King of the Belgians, his sons and daughter-in-law met the travellers with the melancholy intelligence that the Prince's stepmother, the Duchess-Dowager of Coburg, who had been ill for some time, but was looking forward to this visit, lay in extremity. At Verviers a telegram announced that she had died at five o'clock that morning—a great shock to those who were hastening to see her and receive her welcome once more. Royal kindred met and greeted the party at each halting-place, as by Aix-la-Chapelle, Frankfort, where they slept, the valley of the Maine and the Thuringen railway, the travellers approached Coburg. Naturally the Queen grew agitated at the thought of the arrival, so different from what she had expected and experienced on her last visit, fifteen years before. At the station were the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Prince Frederick William of Prussia, in deep mourning. Everything was quiet and private. At the door of the palace, in painful contrast to the gala faces and dresses of her earlier reception, stood the Grand Duchess and the Princess Royal in the deepest German mourning, with long black veils, the point hanging over the forehead. Around were the ladies and gentlemen of the suites. "A tender embrace, and then we walked up the staircase," wrote the Queen; "I could hardly speak, I felt so moved, and quite trembled." Her room was that which had formerly belonged to the Duchess of Kent when she was a young Coburg princess. One of its windows looked up a picturesque narrow street with red roofs and high gables, leading to the market-place. His English nurse led in the Queen's first grandchild, aged two years, "in a little white dress with black bows." He was charming to his royal grandmother. She particularised his youthful attractions—"A beautiful white soft skin, very fine shoulders and limbs, and a very dear face, ... very fair curly hair." The funeral of the Dowager-Duchess took place at seven o'clock on the morning of the 27th September, at Gotha, and was attended by the gentlemen of the party, while the ladies in deep mourning, wearing the pointed veils, were present at a commemorative service in the Schloss Kirche at Coburg.

Then followed a quiet happy time, among the pleasures of which were the daily visits from the little grandchild, the renewal of intercourse with Baron Stockmar, whom Germans called the familiar spirit of the house of Coburg; the acquaintance of the great novelist, Auerbach; a visit to Florrschutz, the Prince's old tutor, in the pretty house which his two pupils had built for him.

The holiday was alarmingly interrupted by what might have been a grave accident to the Prince Consort. He was driving alone in an open carriage with four horses, which took fright and dashed along at full gallop in the direction of the railway line, where a waggon stood in front of a bar, put up to guard a level crossing. Seeing that a crash was inevitable, the Prince leapt out, escaping with several bruises and cuts, while the driver, who had remained with the carriage, was thrown out when it came in contact with the railway-bar, and seriously hurt. One of the horses was killed, the others rushed along the road to Coburg. They were met by the Prince's equerry, Colonel Ponsonby, who in great anxiety procured a carriage and drove with two doctors to the spot, where he found the Prince lending aid to the injured man. Colonel Ponsonby was sent to intercept the Queen as she was walking and sketching with her daughter and sister-in-law, to tell her of the accident and of the Prince's escape, before she could hear a garbled version of the affair from other quarters.

In deep gratitude for the Prince's preservation, her Majesty afterwards set aside the sum deemed necessary—rather more than a thousand pounds—to found a charity called the "Victoria Stift," which helps a certain number of young men and women of good character in their apprenticeship, in setting them up in trade, and marriage.

The royal party returned at the end of a fortnight by Frankfort and Mayence. At Coblentz, where they spent the night, her Majesty was attacked by cold and sore throat, though she walked and drove out next day, inspecting every object she was asked to see in suffering and discomfort. It was her last day with the Princess Royal and "the darling little boy," whom his grandmother was so pleased to have with her, running about and playing in her room. The following day was cold and wet, and the Queen felt still worse, continuing her journey so worn out and unwell that she could only rouse herself before reaching Brussels, where King Leopold was at the station awaiting her. By the order of her doctor, who found her labouring under a feverish cold with severe sore throat, she was confined to her room, where she had to lie down and keep quiet. Never in the whole course of her Majesty's healthful life, save in one girlish illness at Ramsgate, of which the world knew nothing, had she felt so ailing. Happily a night's rest restored her to a great extent; but while a State dinner which had been invited in her honour was going on, she had still to stay in her room, with Lady Churchill reading to her "The Mill on the Floss," and the door open that the Queen might hear the band of the Guides.

On the 17th of October the travellers left Brussels, and on the 17th arrived at Windsor, where they were met by the younger members of the family.

On the 30th of October the great sea captain, Lord Dundonald, closed his chequered life in his eighty-fifth year.

In December two gallant wooers were at the English Court, as a few years before King Pedro, the Arch-Duke Maximilian, and Prince Frederick William were all young bridegrooms in company. On this occasion Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt came to win Princess Alice, and the hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern Seigmaringen was on his way to ask the hand of Donna Antoine, sister of King Pedro. Lord Campbell paid a visit to Windsor at this time, and made his comment on the royal lovers. "My stay at Windsor was rather dull, but was a little enhanced by the loves of Prince Louis of Hesse and the Princess Alice. He had arrived the night before, almost a stranger to her" (a mistake), "but as her suitor. At first they were very shy, but they soon reminded me of Ferdinand and Miranda in the Tempest, and I looked on like old Prospero."

The betrothal of Princess Alice occurred within the week. Her Majesty has given an account in the pages of her journal, transferred to the "Life of the Prince Consort," how simply and naturally it happened. "After dinner, whilst talking to the gentlemen, I perceived Alice and Louis talking before the fireplace more earnestly than usual, and when I passed to go to the other room both came up to me, and Alice in much agitation said he had proposed to her, and he begged for my blessing. I could only squeeze his hand and say 'Certainly,' and that we would see him in our room, later. Got through the evening work as well as we could. Alice came to our room ... agitated but quiet.... Albert sent for Louis to his room, went first to him, and then called Alice and me in...." The bride was only seventeen, the bridegroom twenty-three years of age—but nearly two years were to elapse, with, alas! sad changes in their course, before the marriage thus happily settled was celebrated.

This winter her Majesty's old servant and friend, Lord Aberdeen, died.

In December the Empress of the French, who had recently lost her sister, the Duchess of Alba, in order to recover health and cheerfulness, paid a flying visit in private to England and Scotland. From Claridge's Hotel she went for a day to Windsor to see the Queen and the Prince. Towards the close of the year the Prince had a brief but painful attack of one of the gastric affections becoming so common with him.

In January, 1861, the Queen received the news of the death of the invalid King of Prussia at Sans Souci. His brother, the Crown Prince, who had been regent for years, succeeded to the throne, of which the husband of the Princess Royal was now the next heir.

In the beginning of the year the Prince of Wales matriculated at Cambridge.

In February the Queen opened Parliament. The twenty-first anniversary of the royal wedding-day falling on a Sunday, it was celebrated quietly but with much happiness. The Queen wrote to her uncle, King Leopold, "Very few can say with me that their husband, at the end of twenty-one years, is not only full of the friendship, kindness, and affection which a truly happy marriage brings with it, but of the same tender love as in the very first days of our marriage."



CHAPTER XXXIII.

DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF KENT.

The Duchess of Kent was now seventy-five years of age. For the last few years she had been in failing health, tenderly cared for by her children. When she had been last in town she had not gone to her own house, Clarence House, but had stayed with her daughter in the cheerful family circle at Buckingham Palace.

A loss in her household fell heavily on the aged Duchess. Sir George Cooper, her secretary, to whose services she had been used for many years, a man three years her junior, died in February, 1860.

In March the Duchess underwent a surgical operation for a complaint affecting her right arm and rendering it useless, so that the habits of many years had to be laid aside, and she could no longer without difficulty work, or write, or play on the piano, of which her musical talent and taste had made her particularly fond. The Queen and the Prince visited the Duchess at Frogmore on the 12th of March, and found her in a suffering but apparently not a dangerous condition.

On the 15th good news, including the medical men's report and a letter from Lady Augusta Bruce, the Duchess of Kent's attached lady-in- waiting, came from Frogmore to Buckingham Palace, and the Queen and the Prince went without any apprehension on a visit to the gardens of the Horticultural Society at Kensington. Her Majesty returned alone, leaving the Prince to transact some business. She was "resting quite happily" in her arm-chair, when the Prince arrived with a message from Sir James Clark that the Duchess had been seized with a shivering fit— a bad symptom, from which serious consequences were apprehended.

In two hours the Queen, the Prince, and Princess Alice were at Frogmore. "Just the same," was the sorrowful answer given by the ladies and gentlemen awaiting them.

The Prince Consort went up to the Duchess's room and came back with tears in his eyes; then the Queen knew what to expect. With a trembling heart she followed her husband and entered the bedroom. There "on a sofa, supported by cushions, the room much darkened," sat the Duchess, "leaning back, breathing heavily in her silk dressing- gown, with her cap on, looking quite herself"

For a second the sight of the dear familiar figure, so little changed, must have afforded a brief reprieve, and lent a sense of almost glad incredulity to the distress which had gone before. But the well-meant whisper of one of the attendants of "Ein sanftes ende" destroyed the passing illusion. "Seeing that my presence did not disturb her," the Queen wrote afterwards, "I knelt before her, kissed her dear hand and placed it next my cheek; but though she opened her eyes, she did not, I think, know me. She brushed my hand off, and the dreadful reality was before me that for the first time she did not know the child she had ever received with such tender smiles. I went out to sob.... I asked the doctors if there was no hope; they said they feared none whatever, for consciousness had left her.... It was suffusion of water on the chest which had come on."

The long night passed in sad watching by the unconscious sufferer, and in vain attempts at rest in preparation for the greater sorrow that was in store.

A few months earlier, on the death of the King of Prussia, the Prince Consort had written to his daughter that her experience exceeded his, for he had never seen any person die. The Queen had been equally unacquainted with the mournful knowledge which comes to most even before they have attained mature manhood and womanhood. Now the loving daughter knelt or stood by the mother who was leaving her without a sign, or lay painfully listening to the homely trivial sounds which broke the stillness of the night—the crowing of a cock, the dogs barking in the distance; the striking of the old repeater which had belonged to the Queen's father, that she had heard every night in her childhood, but to which she had not listened for twenty-three years— the whole of her full happy married life. She wondered with the vague piteous wonder—natural in such a case—what her mother, would have thought of her passing a night under her roof again, and she not to know it?

In the March morning the Prince took the Queen from the room in which she could not rest, yet from which she could not remain absent. When she returned windows and doors were thrown open. The Queen sat down on a footstool and held the Duchess's hand, while the paleness of death stole over the face, and the features grew longer and sharper. "I fell on my knees," her Majesty wrote afterwards, "holding the beloved hand which was still warm and soft, though heavier, in both of mine. I felt the end was fast approaching, as Clark went out to call Albert and Alice, I only left gazing on that beloved face, and feeling as if my heart would break.... It was a solemn, sacred, never-to-be-forgotten scene. Fainter and fainter grew the breathing; at last it ceased, but there was no change of countenance, nothing; the eyes closed as they had been for the last half-hour.... The clock struck half-past nine at the very moment. Convulsed with sobs I fell on the hand and covered it with kisses. Albert lifted me up and took me into the next room, himself entirely melted into tears, which is unusual for him, deep as his feelings are, and clasped me in his arms. I asked if all was over; he said, "Yes." I went into the room again after a few minutes and gave one look. My darling mother was sitting as she had done before, but was already white. Oh, God! how awful, how mysterious! But what a blessed end. Her gentle spirit at rest, her sufferings over."

By the Prince's advice the Queen went at once to the late Duchess's sitting-room, where it was hard to bear the unchanged look of everything, "Chairs, cushions ... all on the tables, her very work- basket with her work; the little canary bird which she was so fond of, singing!"

In one of the recently published letters of Princess Alice to the Queen, the former recalled after an interval of eight years the words which her father had spoken to her on the death of her grandmother, when he brought the daughter to the mother and said, "Comfort mamma," a simple injunction which sounded like a solemn charge in the sad months to come.

The melancholy tidings of the loss were conveyed by the Queen's hand to the Duchess's elder daughter, the Princess of Hohenlohe; to the Duchess's brother, the King of the Belgians—the last survivor of his family—and to her eldest grand-daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia.

The moment the Princess Royal heard of the death she started for England, and arrived there two days afterwards.

The unaffected tribute of respect paid by the whole country, led by the Houses of Parliament, to the virtues of the late Duchess, was very welcome to the mourners. The Duchess of Kent by her will bequeathed her property to the Queen, and appointed the Prince Consort her sole executor. "He was so tender and kind," wrote the Queen, "so pained to have to ask me distressing questions, but spared me so much. Everything done so quickly and feelingly."

The funeral took place on the 25th of March, in the vault beneath St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The Prince Consort acted as chief mourner, and was supported by two of the grandchildren of the late Duchess, the Prince of Wales and the Prince of Leiningen. The pallbearers were six ladies; among whom was Lady Augusta Bruce. Neither the Queen nor her daughters were present. They remained, in the Queen's words, "to pray at home together, and to dwell on the happiness and peace of her who was gone." On the evening of the funeral the Queen and the Prince dined alone; afterwards he read aloud to her letters written by her mother to a German friend, giving an account of the illness and death of the Duke of Kent more than forty years before. The Queen continued the allowances which the Duchess of Kent had made to her elder daughter, the Princess Hohenlohe, and to two of the duchess's grandsons, Prince Victor Hohenlohe and Prince Edward Leiningen. Her Majesty pensioned the Duchess's servants, and appointed Lady Augusta Bruce, who had been like a daughter to the dead Princess, resident bedchamber woman to the Queen.

Frogmore had been much frequented by Queen Charlotte and her daughters, and was the place where they held many of their family festivals. It had been the country house of Princess Augusta for more than twenty years. On her death it was given to the Duchess of Kent. It is an unpretending white country house, spacious enough, and with all the taste of the day when it was built expended on the grounds, which does not prevent them from lying very low, with the inevitable sheet of water almost beneath the windows. Yet it is a lovely, bowery, dwelling when spring buds are bursting and the birds are filling the air with music; such a sheltered, peaceful, home-like house as an ageing woman well might crave. On it still lingers, in spite of a period when it passed into younger hands, the stamp of the old Duchess, with her simple state, her unaffected dignity, her affectionate interest in her numerous kindred. The place is but a bowshot from the old grey castle of Windsor. It was a chosen resort of the royal children, to whom the noble, kind, grandame was all that gracious age can be. Here the Queen brought the most distinguished of her guests to present them to her mother, who had known so many of the great men of her time. Here the royal daughter herself came often, leaving behind her the toils of government and the ceremonies of rank, where she could always be at ease, was always more than welcome. Here she comes still, after twenty years, to view old scenes—the chair by which she sat when the Duchess of Kent occupied it, the piano she knew so well, the familiar portraits, the old-fashioned furniture, suiting the house admirably, the drooping trees on the lawn, under which the Queen would breakfast in fine weather, according to an old Kensington —an old German—custom.

The long verandah was wont to contain vases of flowers and statues of the Duchess's grandchildren, and formed a pleasant promenade for an old lady. Within the smaller, cosier rooms, with the softly tinted pink walls covered with portraits, was led the daily life which as it advanced in infirmity necessarily narrowed in compass, while the State rooms remained for family and Court gatherings. The last use made of the great drawing-room by its venerable mistress was after her death, when she lay in state there.

Half-length portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Kent are in the place usually occupied by the likenesses of the master and mistress of the house. Among the other pictures are full-length portraits of the Queen and Prince Albert in their youth, taken soon after their marriage— like the natural good end to the various pictures of her Majesty in her fair English childhood and maidenhood, with the blonde hair clustering about the open innocent forehead, the fearless blue eyes, the frank mouth. The child, long a widow in her turn, a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, must look with strange mingled feelings on these shadows of her early, unconscious self.

There are innumerable likenesses of the Queen's children such as a loving grandmother would delight to accumulate, from the baby Princess Royal with the good dog Eos curled round by her side, the child's tiny foot on the hound's nose, to the same Princess a blooming girl-bride by the side of her bridegroom, Prince Frederick William of Prussia.

The Duchess's other children and grandchildren are here on canvas, with many portraits of her brothers and sisters and their children. A full-length likeness of the former owner of Frogmore, Princess Augusta, Fanny Burney's beloved princess, hangs above a chimneypiece; while on the walls of another room quaintly painted floral festoons, the joint work of the painter, Mary Moser, and the artistic Princess Elizabeth, are still preserved.

Frogmore was for some years the residence of Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. When she removed to Cumberland House, the furniture which had belonged to the Duchess of Kent was brought back, and the place restored as much as possible to the condition in which she had left it, which implies the presence of many cherished relics— such as the timepiece which was the last gift of the Queen and the Prince, and a picture said to have been painted by both representing Italian peasants praying beside a roadside calvary. There are numerous tokens of womanly tastes in the gay, bright fashion of the Duchess's time, among them a gorgeously tinted inlaid table from the first Exhibition, and elaborate specimens of Berlin woolwork, offerings from friends of the mistress of the house and from the ladies of her suite. In one of the simply furnished bedrooms of quiet little Frogmore, as it chanced, the heir of the Prince of Wales first saw the light. For here was born unexpectedly, making a great stir in the little household, Prince Victor Albert of Wales.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

LAST VISIT TO IRELAND—HIGHLAND EXCURSIONS—MEETING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES AND THE PRINCESS ALEXANDRA OF DENMARK—DEATH OF THE KINO OF PORTUGAL AND HIS BROTHERS

In the retirement of Osborne the Queen mourned her mother with the tender fidelity which her people have learnt to know and reverence.

In April the Court returned to Buckingham Palace, when the Queen announced the marriage of the Princess Alice to the Privy Council It was communicated to Parliament, and was very favourably received. The Princess had a dowry of thirty thousand, and an annuity of six thousand pounds from the country.

The Queen's birthday was celebrated at Osborne without the usual festivities. During the Whitsun holidays Prince Louis, who was with the family, had the misfortune to be attacked by measles, which he communicated to Prince Leopold. The little boy had the disease severely, and it left bad results.

In June King Leopold and one of his sons paid the Queen a lengthened visit of five weeks. The Princess Royal, with her husband and children, arrived afterwards, and there was a happy family meeting, tinged with sorrow.

In July the most exalted Order of the Star of India was instituted, and conferred first on the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, Lord Clyde, Sir John Lawrence, &c., &c. That summer saw the death of two statesmen who had been men of mark in the Crimean war—Count Cavour, the Sardinian Prime Minister, and Lord Herbert of Lea. The royal visitors in London and at Osborne included the Archduke Maximilian and his young wife, and the King of Sweden and his son.

Towards the close of August the Queen went to Frogmore with the Prince and Princess Alice, in order to keep the birthday of the late Duchess of Kent, whose remains had been already removed from St. George's chapel to the mausoleum prepared for them in the grounds of her former home. The Queen wrote of the first evening at Frogmore as "terribly trying;" but it comforted her in the beautiful morning to visit the grand simple mausoleum, and to help to place on the granite sarcophagus the wreaths which had been brought for the purpose.

The day after the return of Prince Alfred from the West Indies, the Queen and the Prince, their second son and the Princesses Alice and Helena, sailed from Holyhead in the Victoria and Albert for Kingstown. This visit to Ireland meant also the royal presence on a field-day in the Curragh camp, where the Prince of Wales was serving, and a run down to Killarney in very hot weather. At the lakes the Queen was the guest of Lord Castleross and Mr. Herbert. The wild luxuriant scenery, the size and beauty of the arbutus-trees, and the enthusiastic shriek of the blue-cloaked women, made their due impression. In a row on one of the lakes her Majesty christened a point. The Prince's birthday came round during the stay in Ireland, and was marked by the usual loving tokens, though the Queen noted sadly the difference between this and other anniversaries: the lack of festivities, the absence from home, the separation from the younger children, and the missing the old invariable gift from the Duchess of Kent.

Balmoral was reached in the beginning of September. Prince Louis came speedily, and another welcome guest, Princess Hohenlohe, who travelled north with Lady Augusta Bruce. Dr. Norman Macleod gives a glimpse of the circumstances and the circle. He preached to the Queen, and she thanked him for the comfort he gave her. Lady Augusta Bruce talked to him of "that noble, loving woman, the Duchess of Kent, and of the Queen's grief." He found the Queen's half-sister "an admirable woman" and Prince Alfred "a fine gentlemanly sailor."

The Queen's greatest solace this year was in long days spent on the purple mountains and by the sides of the brown lochs, and in a second private expedition, like that of the previous year to Grantown, when she slept a night at the Ramsay Arms in the village of Fettercairn, and Prince Louis and General Grey were consigned to the Temperance Hotel opposite. The whole party walked out in the moonlight and were startled by a village band. The return was by Blair, where the Queen was welcomed by her former host and hostess, the Duke and Duchess of Athole. Her Majesty had a look at her earlier quarters, at the room in which the little Princess Royal had been put to bed in two chairs, and saw Sandy Macara, grown old and grey.

After an excursion to Cairn Glaishie, her Majesty recorded in her journal, "Alas! I fear our last great one." Six years afterwards the sorrowful confirmation was given to words which had been written with a very different meaning, "It was our last one."

The Prince of Wales was on a visit to Germany, ostensibly to witness the manoeuvres of the Prussian army, but with a more delicate mission behind. He was bound, while not yet twenty, to make the acquaintance of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark, not quite seventeen, with the probability of their future marriage—a prospect which, to the great regret of the Prince Consort, got almost immediately into the newspapers. The first meetings of the young couple took place at Speyer and Heidelberg, and were altogether promising of the mutual attachment which was the desired result.

On the 18th of October the King of Prussia was crowned at Koenisburg—a splendid ceremonial, in which the Princess Royal naturally, as the Crown Princess, bore a prominent part.

On the return of the Court to Windsor, Prince Leopold, then between eight and nine years of age, was sent, with a temporary household, to spend the winter in the south of France for the sake of his health.

Suddenly a great and painful shock was given to the Queen and the Prince by the news of the disastrous outbreak of typhoid fever in Portugal among their royal cousins and intimate friends, the sons of Maria de Gloria. When the tidings arrived King Pedro's brother, Prince Ferdinand, was already dead, and the King ill. Two more brothers, the Duke of Oporto and the Duke of Beja, were in England, on their way home from the King of Prussia's coronation. The following day still sadder news arrived—the recovery of the young king, not more than twenty-five, was despaired of. His two brothers started immediately for Lisbon, but were too late to see him in life. The younger, the Duke of Beja, was also seized with the fatal fever and died in the course of the following month. The Queen and the Prince lamented the King deeply, finding the only consolation in the fact that he had rejoined the gentle girl-wife for whose loss he had been inconsolable.



CHAPTER XXXV.

THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.

The news of the terrible mortality in the Portuguese royal family, especially the death of the King, to whom the Prince was warmly attached, had seriously affected his health, never strong, and for the last few years gradually declining, with gastric attacks becoming more frequent and fits of sleeplessness more confirmed. At the same time the Prince's spirit was so unbroken, his power of work and even of enjoyment so unshaken, while the patience and unselfishness which treated his own bodily discomfort as a matter of little moment had grown so much the habit of his mind, that naturally those nearest to him failed in their very love to see the extent of the physical mischief which was at work. Nevertheless there is abundant evidence that the Queen was never without anxiety on her husband's account, and Baron Stockmar expressed his apprehensions more than once.

Various causes of care troubled the Prince, among them the indisposition contracted by the Princess Royal at the coronation of her father-in-law, the King of Prussia, and the alarming illness at Cannes of Sir Edward Bowater, who had been sent to the south of France in charge of Prince Leopold. After a fortnight of sleeplessness, rheumatic pains, loss, of appetite, and increasing weakness, the Prince drove in close wet weather to inspect the building of the new Military Academy at Sandhurst, and it is believed that he there contracted the germs of fever. But he shot with the guests at the Castle, walked with the Queen to Frogmore and inspected the mausoleum there, and visited the Prince of Wales at Cambridge afterwards.

Then the affair of the Trent suddenly demanded the Prince's close attention and earnest efforts to prevent a threatened war between England and America. In the course of the civil war raging between the Northern and Southern states the English steamer Trent sailed with the English mails from Savannah to England, having on board among the other passengers several American gentlemen, notably Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who had run the blockade from Charlestown to Cuba, and were proceeding to Europe as envoys sent by the Confederates to the Courts of England and France. A federal vessel fired on the English steamer, compelling her to stop, when the American Captain Wilkes, at the head of a large body of marines, demanded the surrender of Mason and Slidell, with their companions. In the middle of the remonstrances of the English Government agent at the insult to his flag and to the neutral port from which the ship had sailed, the objects of the officer's search came forward and surrendered themselves, thus delivering the English commander from his difficulty.

But the feeling in England was very strong against the outrage which had been committed, and it was only the most moderate of any political party who were willing to believe—either that the American Government might not be cognisant of the act done in its name, or that it might be willing to atone by honourable means for a violation of international law—enough to provoke the withdrawal of the English ambassador from Washington, and a declaration of war between the two countries.

Cabinet councils were summoned and a dispatch prepared. A draft of the dispatch was forwarded to Windsor to be read by the Queen, when it struck both her and, the Prince that it was less temperate and conciliatory than it might have been, while still consistent with perfect dignity. The Prince Consort's last public work for his Queen and country was to amend this draft. He rose as usual at seven o'clock, and faint and ill as he was, scarcely able to hold a pen, drew out an improved version of the dispatch, which was highly approved of by the Ministers and favourably received by the American Government. As the world knows, the President, in the name of his countrymen, declared that Captain Wilkes had acted without official instructions, and ordered the release of the gentlemen who had been taken prisoners.

In the meantime the shadows were darkening round the royal home which had been so supremely blest. The Prince was worse. Still he walked out on one of the terraces, and wrapped in a coat lined with fur he witnessed a review of the Eton College volunteers, from which his absence would have been remarked. The ill-omened chilly feeling continued, but there were guests at the Castle and he appeared at dinner. On Sunday, the 1st of December, the Prince walked out again on the terrace and attended service in the chapel, insisting "on going through all the kneeling," though very unwell.

Next morning something was said by the doctors of low fever. No wonder the Queen was distressed after the recent calamity at Lisbon, but concealing her feelings as such watchers must, she strove to soothe and amuse her sick husband. The members of the household who had been at Lisbon arrived with the particulars of the young King of Portugal's death. After listening to them the Prince said "that it was well his illness was not fever, as that, he felt sure, would be fatal to him."

One of the guests at the Castle was Lord Palmerston. In spite of his natural buoyancy of temperament he became so much alarmed by what he heard that he suggested another physician should be called in. Her Majesty had not been prepared for this step, and when she appealed to the two medical men in attendance, Sir James Clark and Dr. Jenner, they comforted her by their opinion that there was nothing to alarm her, and that the low fever which had been feared might pass off.

The next few days were spent in alternations of hope and fear. Which of us is so happy as not to have known that desperate faith when to doubt would be to despair? The Prince liked to be read to, but "no book suited him." The readers were the Queen and Princess Alice, who sought to cheat themselves by substituting Trollope for George Eliot, and Lever for Trollop, and by speaking confidently of trying Sir Walter Scott "to-morrow." To-morrow brought no improvement. Sir James Clark, though still sanguine, began to drop words which were not without their significance. He hoped there would be no fever, which all dreaded, with too sure a presentiment of what would follow. The Prince must eat, and he was to be told so; his illness was likely to be tedious, and completely starving himself would not do.

As if the whole atmosphere was heavy with sorrow, and all the tidings which came from the world without in these days only reflected the ache of the hearts within, the news came from Calcutta of the death of the wife of the Governor-General, beautiful, gifted Lady Canning, so long the Queen's lady-in-waiting and close companion.

The doctors began to sit up with the patient, another stage of the terrible illness. When her Majesty came to the Prince at eight in the morning she found him sitting up in his dressing-room, and was struck with "a strange wild look" which he had, while he talked in a baffled way, unlike him, of what his illness could be, and how long it might last. But that day there was a rally; he ate and slept a little, rested, and liked to be read to by Princess Alice. He was quite himself again when the Queen came in with his little pet child, Princess Beatrice, in whom he had taken such delight. He kissed her, held her hand, laughed at her new French verses, and "dozed off," as if he only wanted sleep to restore him.

The doctor in attendance was anxious that the Prince should undress and go to bed, but this he would not do. Throughout the attack, with his old habit of not giving way and of mastering his bodily feelings by sheer force of will, he had resisted yielding to his weakness and submitting to the ordinary routine of a sick-room. After it was too late the doctor's compliance with the Prince's wishes in this respect was viewed by the public as rash and unwise. On this particular occasion he walked to his dressing-room and lay down there, saying he would have a good night—an expectation doomed to disappointment. His restlessness not only kept him from sleeping, it caused him to change his room more than once during the night.

The morning found him up and seated in his sitting-room as before. But he was worse, and talked with a certain incoherence when he told the Queen that he had been listening to the little birds, and they had reminded him of those he had heard at the Rosenau in his childhood. She felt a quick recoil, and when the doctors showed that their favourable opinion of the day before had undergone a change, she went to her room and it seemed to her as if her heart would break.

Fever had now declared itself unmistakably. The fact was gently broken to the Queen, and she was warned that the illness must run its course, while the knowledge of its nature was to be kept from the Prince. She called to mind every thought that could give her courage; and Princess Alice, her father's true daughter, capable of rising to heights of duty and tenderness the moment she was put to the test, grew brave in her loving demotion, and already afforded the support which the husband and father was no longer fit to give.

Happily for her Majesty, the daily duties of her position as a sovereign, which she could not lay aside though they were no longer shared by the friend of more than twenty years, still occupied a considerable portion of her time. But she wrote in her diary that in fulfilling her task she seemed to live "in a dreadful dream." Do we not also know, many of us, this cruel double life in which the obligations which belong to our circumstances and to old habits contend for mastery with new misery? When she was not thus engaged the Queen sat by her husband, weeping when she could do so unseen.

On the 8th of December the Prince appeared to be going on well, though the desire for change continued strong in him, and he was removed at his earnest request to larger and brighter rooms, adjoining those he had hitherto occupied. According to Lady Bloomfield one of the rooms— certainly called "the Kings' rooms"—into which the Prince was carried, was that in which both William IV. and George IV. had died; and the fact was remembered and referred to by the new tenant, when he was placed where he too was destined to die. The Queen had only once slept there, when her own rooms were being painted, and as it happened, that single occasion was on the night before the day when the Duchess of Kent had her last fatal seizure.

The Prince was pleased with the greater space and light and with the winter sunshine. For the first time since his illness he asked for music, "a fine chorale." A piano was brought into the room, and his daughter played two hymns—one of them "Ein fester burg ist unser Gott" to which he listened with tears in his eyes.

It was Sunday, and Charles Kingsley preached at the Castle. The Queen was present, but she noted sadly that she did not hear a word.

The serious illness of the Prince Consort had become known and excited much alarm, especially among the Cabinet Ministers. They united in urging that fresh medical aid should be procured. Dr. Watson and Sir Henry Holland were called in. These gentlemen concurred with the other doctors in their opinion of the case as grave, but not presenting any very bad symptoms. The increased tendency of the Prince to wander in his mind was only what was to be expected. The listlessness and irritability characteristic of the disease gave way to pleasure at seeing the Queen and having her with him, to tender caresses, such as stroking her cheek, and simple loving words, fondly cherished, "Liebes frauchen, gutes weibchen." [Footnote: "Dear little wife, good little wife."] The changes rung on the relationship which had been so perfect and so satisfying.

On the 10th and the 11th the Prince was considered better. He was wheeled into the next room, when he called attention to a picture of the Madonna of which he was fond; he said that the sight of it helped him through half the day.

On the evening of the 11th a slight change in the Prince's breathing was perceptible and occasioned uneasiness. On the 12th it was too evident the fever and shortness of breathing had increased, and on the 13th Dr. Jenner had to tell the Queen the symptom was serious, and that there was a probability of congestion of the lungs. When the sick man was wheeled into the next room as before, he failed to notice his favourite picture, and in place of asking to be placed with his back to the light as he had hitherto done, sat with his hands clasped, gazing abstractedly out of the window. That night the Prince of Wales was summoned from Cambridge, it was said by his sister, Princess Alice, who took upon her the responsibility of bringing him to Windsor.

All through the night at hourly intervals reports were brought to the Queen that the Prince was doing well. At six in the morning Mr. Brown, the Windsor medical attendant of the family for upwards of twenty years, who was believed to be well acquainted with the Prince's constitution, came to the Queen with the glad tidings "that he had no hesitation in saying he thought the Prince was much better, and that there was ground to hope the crisis was over." There are few experiences more piteous than that last flash of life in the socket which throws a parting gleam of hope on the approaching darkness of death.

When the Queen entered the sick-room at seven o'clock on a fine winter morning, she was struck with the unearthly beauty—another not unfamiliar sign—of the face on which the rising sun shone. The eyes unusually bright, gazing as it were on an unseen object, took no notice of her entrance.

The doctors allowed they were "very, very anxious," but still they would not give up hope. The Queen asked if she might go out for a breath of air, and received an answer with a reservation—"Yes, just close by, for a quarter of an hour." She walked on one of the terraces with Princess Alice, but they heard a military band playing in the distance, and at that sound, recalling such different scenes, the poor Queen burst into tears, and returned to the Castle.

Sir James Clark said he had seen much worse cases from which there had been recovery. But both the Queen and the doctors remarked the dusky hue stealing over the hands and face, and there were acts which looked like strange involuntary preparations for departure—folding of the arms, arranging of the hair, &c.

The Queen was in great distress, and remained constantly either in the sick-room or in the apartment next to it, where the doctors tried still to speak words of hope to her, but could no longer conceal that the life which was as her life was ebbing away. In the course of the afternoon, when the Queen went up to the Prince, after he had been wheeled into the middle of the room, he said the last loving words, "Gutes frauchen," [Footnote: "Good little wife."] kissed her, and with a little moaning sigh laid his head on her shoulder. He dozed and wandered, speaking French sometimes. All his children who were in the country came into the room, and one after the other took his hand, Prince Arthur kissing it as he did so, but the Prince made no sign of knowing them. He roused himself and asked for his private secretary, but again slept. Three of the gentlemen of the household, who had been much about the Prince's person, came up to him and kissed his hand without attracting his attention. All of them were overcome; only she who sat in her place by his side was quiet and still.

So long as enough air passed through the labouring lungs, the doctors would not relinquish the last grain of hope. Even when the Queen found the Prince bathed in the death-sweat, so near do life and death still run, that the attendant medical men ventured to say it might be an effort of nature to throw off the fever.

The Queen bent over the Prince and whispered "Es ist kleins Frauchen." He recognised the voice and answered by bowing his head and kissing her. He was quite calm, only drowsy, and not caring to be disturbed, as he had been wont to be when weary and ill.

The Queen had gone into the next room to weep there when Sir James Clark sent Princess Alice to bring her back. The end had come. With his wife kneeling by his side and holding his hand, his children kneeling around, the Queen's nephew, Prince Ernest Leiningen, the gentlemen of the Prince's suite, General Bruce, General Grey, and Sir Charles Phipps, the Dean of Windsor, and the Prince's favourite German valet, Lohlein, reverently watching the scene, the true husband and tender father, the wise prince and liberal-hearted statesman, the noble Christian man, gently breathed his last. It was a quarter to eleven o'clock on the 14th of December, 1861. He was aged forty-two years.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE WITHDRAWAL TO OSBORNE—THE PRINCE CONSORT'S FUNERAL.

The tolling of the great bell of St. Paul's, borne on the wintry midnight air, thrilled many a heart with grief and dismay, as London was roused to the melancholy fact of the terrible bereavement which had befallen the Queen and the country.

To the Prince indeed death had come without terror, even without recoil. Some time before he had told the Queen that he had not her clinging to life, that if he knew it was well with those he cared for, he would be quite ready to die to-morrow. He was perfectly convinced of the future reunion of those who had loved each other on earth, though he did not know under what circumstances it would take place. During one of the happy Highland excursions in 1861, the Prince had remarked to one of the keepers when talking over with him the choice and planting of a deer-forest for the Prince of Wales, "You and I may be dead and gone before that." "He was ever cheerful, but ever ready and prepared," was the Queen's comment on this remark.

But for the Queen, "a widow at forty-two!" was the lamenting cry of the nation which had been so proud of its young Queen, of her love- match, of her happiness as a wife. Now a subtler touch than any which had gone before won all hearts to her, and bowed them before her feet in a very passion of love and loyalty. It was her share in the common birthright of sorrow, with the knowledge that she in whose joy so many had rejoiced was now qualified by piteous human experience to weep with those who wept—that thenceforth throughout her wide dominions every mourner might feel that their Queen mourned with them as only a fellow-sufferer can mourn. [Footnote: "The Queen wrote my mother, Lady Normanby, such a beautiful letter after Normanby's death, saying that having drunk the dregs of her cup of grief herself, she knew how to sympathise with others."—LADY BLOOMFIELD.] All hearts went out to her in the day of her bitter sorrow. Prayers innumerable were put up for her, and she believed they sustained her when she would otherwise have sunk under the heavy burden.

On the Sunday which dawned on the first day of her Majesty's widowhood, when the news of her bereavement—announced in a similar fashion in many a city cathedral and country church, was conveyed to the people in a great northern city by Dr. Norman MacLeod's praying for the Queen as a widow, a pang of awe and pity smote every hearer; the minister and the congregation wept together.

The disastrous tidings had to travel far and wide: to the Princess Royal, the daughter in whom her father had taken such pride, who had so grieved to part from him when she left England a happy young bride, who had been so glad to greet him in his own old home only a few months before; to the sailor son on the other side of the globe; to the delicate little boy so lately sent in search of health, whose natural cry on the sorrowful tale being told to him was, "Take me to mamma."

Deprived in one year of both mother and husband, alone where family relations were concerned, save for her children; with her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, a lad of not more than twenty years, the devoted servants of the Queen rallied round her and strove to support and comfort her.

In the absence of the Princess Royal and the Princess of Hohenlohe, the Duchess of Sutherland, one of the Queen's oldest friends, herself a widow, was sent for to be with her royal mistress. Lady Augusta Bruce watched day and night by the daughter as she had watched by the mother. The Queen's people did not know how sore was the struggle, how near they were to losing her. Princess Alice wrote years afterwards of that first dreadful night, of the next three terrible days, with a species of horror, and wondered again and again how she and her mother survived that time. The Queen's weakness was so great that her pulse could hardly be felt. "She spoke constantly about God's knowing best, but showed herself broken-hearted," Lady Bloomfield tells us. It was a sensible relief to the country when it was made public that the Queen had slept for some hours.

The doctors urgently advised that her Majesty should leave Windsor and go to Osborne, but she shrank unconquerably from thus quitting all that was mortal of the Prince till he had been laid to rest. The old King of the Belgians, her second father, afflicted in her affliction as he had gloried in her happiness, added his earnest entreaty to, the medical men's opinion, in vain, till the plea was brought forward that for her children's sake—that they might be removed from the fever- tainted atmosphere, the painful step ought to be taken. Even then it was mainly by the influence of the Princess Alice that the Queen, who had proved just and reasonable in all her acts, who had been confirmed by him who was gone in habits of self-control and self-denial, who was the best of mothers, gave up the last sad boon which the poorest might claim, and consented to go immediately with her daughters to Osborne.

But first her Majesty visited Frogmore, where the Duchess of Kent's mausoleum had been built, that she might choose the spot for another and larger mausoleum where the husband and wife would yet lie side by side. It was on the 18th of December that the Queen, accompanied by Princess Alice, drove from the Castle on her melancholy errand. They were received at Frogmore by the Prince of Wales, Prince Louis of Hesse, who had arrived in England, Sir Charles Phipps, and Sir James Clark. Her Majesty walked round the gardens leaning on her daughter's arm, and selected the place where the coffin of the Prince would be finally deposited. Shortly afterwards the sad party left for Osborne, where a veil must be drawn over the sorrow which, like the love that gave it birth, has had few parallels.

The funeral was at Windsor on the 23rd of December. Shortly before twelve o'clock the cortege assembled which was to conduct the remains of the late Prince Consort the short distance from the state entrance of Windsor Castle, through the Norman Tower Gate to St. George's Chapel. Nine mourning-coaches, each drawn by four horses, conveyed the valets, foresters, riders, librarian, and doctors; the equerries, ushers, grooms, gentlemen, and lords in waiting of his late Royal Highness; and the great officers of the Household. One of the Queen's carriages drawn by six horses contained the Prince's coronet borne by Earl Spencer, and his baton, sword, and hat by Lord George Lennox. The hearse, drawn by six horses, was escorted by a detachment of Life Guards.

The carriages of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, and the Duchess of Cambridge followed. The company which had received commands to be present at the ceremony, including the foreign ambassadors, the Cabinet Ministers, the officers of the household, and many of the nobility and higher clergy, entered St. George's Chapel by the Wolsey door and were conducted to seats in the choir. The Knights of the Garter occupied their stalls. The royal family, with their guests, came privately from the Castle and assembled in the chapter-room. The members of the procession moved up the nave in the same order in which they had been driven to the South porch. Among them were the representatives of all the foreign states connected by blood or marriage with the late Prince, the choir, canons, and Dean of Windsor. After the baton, sword, and crown, carried on black velvet cushions, came the comptroller in the Chamberlain's department, Vice-Chamberlain, and Lord Chamberlain, then the crimson velvet coffin, the pall borne by the members of the late Prince's suite. Garter-King-at-Arms followed, walking before the chief mourner, the Prince of Wales, who was supported by Prince Arthur, a little lad of eleven, and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and attended by General Bruce. Behind came the son-in-law, the Crown Prince of Prussia, the cousins—the sons of the King of the Belgians—with the Duc de Nemours, Prince Louis of Hesse, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the Queen's nephew, Count Gleichen, and the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh. The gentlemen in waiting on the foreign princes wound up the procession.

When the coffin arrived within the choir, the crown, baton, sword, and hat were placed on it. That morning a messenger had come from Osborne with three wreaths and a bouquet. The wreaths were simple garlands of moss and violets woven by the three elder princesses; the bouquet of violets, with a white camellia in the centre, was from the Queen. These were laid between the heraldic insignia. The Prince of Wales with his brother and uncle stood at the head, the Lord Chamberlain at the foot, the other mourners and the pallbearers around. Minute-guns were fired at intervals by Horse Artillery in the Long Walk. A guard of honour of the Grenadier Guards, of which the Prince Consort had been colonel, presented arms on the coming of the body and when it was lowered into the grave. During the service the thirty-ninth Psalm, Luther's Hymn, and two chorales were sung.

The Prince of Wales bore up with a brave effort, now and then seeking to soothe his young brother, who, with swollen eyes and tear-stained face, when the long wail of the dirge smote upon his ear, sobbed as if his heart were breaking. At the words—

"To fall asleep in slumber deep, Slumber that knows no waking,"

part of a favourite chant of the Prince Consort's, both his sons hid their faces and wept. The Duke of Coburg wept incessantly for the comrade of his youth, the friend of his mature years.

Garter-King-at-Arms proclaimed the style and title of the deceased. When he referred to her Majesty with the usual prayer, "Whom God bless and preserve with long life, health, and happiness," for the first time in her reign the word "happiness" was omitted and that of "honour" substituted, and the full significance of the change went to the hearts of the listeners with a woeful reminder of what had come and gone. The Prince of Wales advanced first to take his last look into the vault, stood for a moment with clasped hands and burst into tears. In the end Prince Arthur was the more composed of the two fatherless brothers.

As the company retired, the "Dead March in Saul" was pealed forth.

The whole ceremony was modelled on the precedent of other royal funerals, but surely rarely was mourning so keen or sorrow so deep.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE FIRST MONTHS OF WIDOWHOOD—MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES, ETC., ETC.

The Princess of Hohenlohe arrived in England on the 20th of December, and immediately joined the Queen at Osborne before the funeral of the Prince. The old King of the Belgians came to Osborne on the 29th of December—one can imagine his meeting with the widowed Queen.

On the 10th of January, 1862, occurred the terrible Hartley Colliery accident, by which upwards of two hundred miners perished. The Queen's grief for the Prince was not a month old when she telegraphed from Osborne her "tenderest sympathy for the poor widows and mothers."

The Prince of Wales left Osborne on the 6th of February in strict privacy to accomplish the tour in the East projected for him by his father. The Prince was accompanied by Dean Stanley, General Bruce, &c.

In the Queen's solitude at Osborne Princess Alice continued to be the great medium of communication between her Majesty and her Ministers. (Times.)

The opening of the second great Exhibition in the month of May must have been full of painful associations. At the State ceremony on the first day the royal carriages with mourning liveries were empty, but for the Crown Prince of Prussia, Prince Oscar of Sweden, and the Duchess of Cambridge with her daughters. Tennyson's ode was sung. It contained the pathetic lines—

"O silent father of our kings to be, Mourned in this golden hour of jubilee, For this, for all we weep our thanks to thee."

It was decided that the Queen's birthday should be spent at Balmoral, a practice which became habitual. Dr. Norman Macleod was summoned north to give what consolation he could to his sorrowing Queen. He has left an account of one of their interviews. "May 14th. After dinner I was summoned unexpectedly to the Queen's room; she was alone. She met me, and, with an unutterable expression which filled my eyes with tears, at once began to speak about the Prince.... She spoke of his excellences, his love, his cheerfulness, how he was everything to her; how all now on earth seemed dead to her...."

On the 4th of June the Prince of Wales arrived in England from his eastern tour. A melancholy incident occurred on his return—General Bruce, who had been labouring under fever, died soon after reaching England on the 24th of June. Another sad death happened four days later—that of Lord Canning, Governor-General of India. He had also just come back to England. He survived his wife only six months.

Princess Alice's marriage, which had been delayed by her father's death, took place at Osborne at one o'clock on the afternoon of the 1st of July, in strict privacy. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of York in room of the sick Archbishop of Canterbury. The Queen in deep mourning appeared only for the service. Near her was the Crown Princess of Prussia—already the mother of three children—and her Majesty's four sons.

The father and mother, brothers and sister of the bridegroom, and other relatives, were present. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg in the Prince Consort's place led in the bride. Her unmarried sisters, Princesses Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, and the bridegroom's only sister, Princess Anna of Hesse, were the bridesmaids. Prince Louis was supported by his brother, Prince Henry.

The guests were all gone by four o'clock. No contrast could be greater than that of the brilliant and glad festivities at the Princess Royal's wedding and the hush of sorrow in which her sister was married. The young couple went for three days to St. Clare, near Ryde, and left England in another week. The English people never forgot what Princess Alice had proved in the hour of need, and her departure was followed by prayers and blessings.

In August the Queen was at Balmoral with all her children who were in this country. On the 21st she drove in a pony carriage, accompanied by the elder Princes and Princesses on foot and on ponies, to the top of Craig Lowrigan, and each laid a stone on the foundation of the Prince Consort's cairn. On the late Prince's birthday another sad tender pilgrimage was made to the top of Craig Gowan to the earlier cairn celebrating the taking of the Malakoff.

Her Majesty, whose health was still shaken and weakened, sailed on the 1st of September for Germany. She was accompanied by the Prince of Wales, Prince Arthur, and Prince Leopold, Princesses Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, and the Princess Hohenlohe. During the Queen's stay with her uncle, King Leopold, at Laeken, in passing through Belgium, she had her first interview with her future daughter-in-law, Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Princess with her father and mother drove from Brussels to pay a private visit to her Majesty.

The Queen's destination in Germany was Reinhardtsbrunn, the lovely little hunting-seat among the Thuringian woods and mountains, which had so taken her fancy on her first happy visit to Germany. There she was joined by the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia and their children, Prince Louis and Princess Alice, and Prince Alfred.

Her Majesty could not quit Germany without revisiting Coburg, hard as the visit must have been to her. One of the chief inducements was to go to one who could no longer come to her, the aged Baron Stockmar, whose talk was still of "the dear good Prince," and of how soon the old man would rejoin the noble pupil cut off in the prime of his gifts and his usefulness.

Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse spent the winter with the Queen in England, and in the month of November Princess Alexandra of Denmark paid a short visit to her Majesty, when the Princess's youthful beauty and sweetness won all hearts.

Early in the morning on the 18th of December the Prince Consort's remains were removed from the entrance of the vault beneath St. George's Chapel to the mausoleum already prepared for them at Frogmore. The ceremony, which was attended by the Prince of Wales, Prince Arthur, Prince Leopold, and Prince Louis of Hesse, was quite private. Prince Alfred had a severe attack of fever in the Mediterranean.

The Duchess of Sutherland presented the Queen with a Bible from "many widows of England," and to "all those kind sister widows" her Majesty expressed the deep and heartfelt gratitude of "their widowed Queen."

As a consequence of the failure of the cotton crop in America, caused by the civil war rending the country asunder, the Lancashire operatives were in a state of enforced idleness and famine, calling for the most strenuous efforts to relieve them.

When Parliament was opened by commission on the 5th of February, 1863, the Queen's speech announced the approaching marriage of the Prince of Wales. On the 7th of March Princess Alexandra, accompanied by her father and mother, brother and sister, arrived at Gravesend, where the Prince of Wales met her. Bride and bridegroom drove, on the chill spring day which ended in rain, through decorated and festive London, where great crowds congregated to do the couple honour.

In the afternoon at Windsor the Queen was seen seated with her two younger daughters at a window of the castle which commanded the entrance drive. The little party waited there in patient expectation till it grew dark.

On Tuesday, the 10th of March, the marriage took place in St. George's Chapel. The Queen in her widow's weeds occupied the royal closet, from which she could look down on the actors in the ceremony. She was attended by the widow of General Bruce. Among the English royal family were Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse, and the Crown Princess of Prussia leading her little son, Prince William.

The Prince of Wales, who wore a general's uniform with the star of the Garter, was supported by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and the Crown Prince of Prussia.

Princess Alexandra came in the last carriage with her father, Prince Christian of Denmark, and the Duke of Cambridge. The bride's dress was of white satin, and Honiton lace, with a silver moire train. She had a wreath of orange-blossoms and myrtle. She wore a necklace, earrings, and brooch of pearls and diamonds, the gift of the Prince of Wales, rivieres of diamonds, the City of London's gift, an opal and diamond bracelet, presented by the Queen, &c., &c. The bride's train was borne by eight unmarried daughters of English dukes, marquises, and earls.

Princess Alexandra was in her nineteenth, the Prince of Wales in his twenty-second year.

On reaching the haut pas, the bride made a deep reverence to the Queen. During the service her Majesty was visibly affected. Indeed an interested spectator, Dr. Norman Macleod, remarked as a characteristic feature of the marriage that all the English princesses wept behind their bouquets to see—not the Prince of Wales, not the future king, but their brother, their father's son, standing alone before the altar waiting for his bride.

The bride and bridegroom on leaving the chapel occupied the second of the twelve carriages, and were preceded by the Lord Chamberlain, &c., &c. Her Majesty received her son and new daughter at the grand entrance. The wedding breakfast for the royal guests was in the dining-room, for the others in St. George's Hall. At four the Prince and Princess of Wales left in an open carriage drawn by four cream- coloured horses for the station, where the Crown Princess of Prussia had already gone to bid her brother and his bride good-bye, as they started for Osborne to spend their honeymoon.

That night there were great illuminations in London and in all the towns large and small in the kingdom. Thousands of hearts echoed the poet-laureate's eloquent words—

Sea kings daughter from over the sea, Alexandra. Saxon and Norman and Dane are we, But all of us Danes in our welcome to thee, Alexandra.

Among the Princess of Wales's wedding presents was a parure of splendid opals and brilliants from a design by the late Prince Consort, given in his name as well as in the Queen's.

The town and country houses selected for the Prince and Princess of Wales were Marlborough House and Sandringham.

On the 4th of April Princess Alice's first child, a daughter, was born at Windsor.

On the 8th of May the Queen paid a visit to the military hospital at Netley, in which the Prince Consort had been much interested.

Her Majesty left England on the 11th of August for Belgium and Germany. She was accompanied by the Princes Alfred and Leopold and the Princesses Helena and Beatrice. Their destination was Rosenau, near Coburg, where the Queen was again joined by the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia and Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse. In the house which was so dear and so sad, the late Prince's birthplace, his widow and children spent his birthday. During the Queen's stay in Coburg she went to see the widow of Baron Stockmar, and Mr. Florschuetz, the late Prince's tutor. The venerable superintendent Meyer was still alive and able to preach to her. Her Majesty's health continued feeble, but she was able to receive visits at Rosenau from the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria. She quitted Coburg on the 7th of September, spending the 8th at Kranichstein, near Darmstadt, the country house of Princess Alice and her husband.

Later on in autumn the Queen with nearly the whole of her family was at Balmoral and Abergeldie. The cairn on Craig Lowrigan was finished. It formed a pyramid of granite thirty feet high, seen for many a mile. The inscription was as follows:—

"TO THE BELOVED MEMORY

of

ALBERT, THE GREAT AND GOOD,

PRINCE CONSORT,

RAISED BY HIS BROKEN-HEARTED WIDOW,

VICTORIA B.,

AUGUST 21, 1862.



He being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time, for his soul pleased the Lord, therefore hastened He to take him away from among the wicked.

Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 13, 14.

The appropriate verse is said to have been suggested by the Princess Royal.

Immediately after her Majesty's arrival at Balmoral she went to Blair to see the Duke of Athole, who was hopelessly ill with cancer in the throat. The poor Duke bore up bravely. He had to receive the Queen in his own room, "full of his rifles and other implements and attributes of sport now for ever useless to him." But he was able to present the white rose, the old tribute from the Lords of Athole to their sovereign, and he was gratified by the gracious and kindly mark of attention shown in her Majesty's visit. He insisted on accompanying her to the station, where she gave him her hand, saying, "Dear Duke, God bless you." He had asked permission that the same men who had gone with the Queen and the Prince Consort through the glen two years before might give her a cheer. "Oh! it was so dreadfully sad," was the Queen's comment in her journal.

About three weeks afterwards, on the 7th of October, the Queen had an alarming accident. She was returning from Altnagiuthasach with two of her daughters in the darkness of an autumn evening, when the carriage was upset in the middle of the moorland. Her Majesty was thrown with her face on the ground, but escaped with some bruises and a hurt to one of her thumbs. No one else was injured. The ladies sat down in the overturned carriage after the traces had been cut and the coachman despatched for assistance. There was no water to be had, nothing but claret to bathe the Queen's hand and face. In about half an hour voices and horses' hoofs were heard. It was the ponies which had been sent away before the accident, but the servant who accompanied them, alarmed by the non-appearance of the Queen and by the sight of lights moving about, rode back to reconnoitre. Her Majesty and the Princesses mounted the ponies, which were led home. At Balmoral no one knew what had happened; the Queen herself told the accident to her two sons-in- law who were at the door awaiting her.

Six days afterwards the Queen made her first appearance in public since the Prince's death a year and nine months before, at the unveiling of his statue in Aberdeen. She was accompanied by the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse, Princesses Helena and Louise, and Princes Arthur and Leopold. The day was one of pouring rain, and the long silent procession was sad and strange. The Queen was trembling; she had no one as on former occasions to direct and support her. She received the Provost's address, and returned a written reply. She conferred the honour of knighthood on the magistrate, the first time she had performed the ceremony "since all was ended."

On the 14th of December the Queen and her family visited the mausoleum, [Footnote: Dr. Norman Macleod describes an earlier visit in March, 1863 "I walked with Lady Augusta to the mausoleum to meet the Queen. She was accompanied by Princess Alice. She had the key, and opened it herself, undoing the bolts, and alone we entered and stood in silence beside Marochetti's beautiful statue of the Prince. I was very much overcome. She was calm and quiet."] to which she went constantly on every return to Windsor. Princess Alice in her published letters calls the sarcophagus—with the exquisite decorations which were in progress, and cost more than two hundred thousand pounds paid from her Majesty's private purse—"that wonderfully beautiful tomb" by which her mother prayed. It became the practice to have a religious service celebrated there in the presence of the Queen and the royal family on the anniversary of the Prince's death.

In December Lady Augusta Bruce left the Queen's service on her marriage with Dean Stanley. On the night of the 23rd of December Thackeray died.

Prince Albert Victor of Wales was born unexpectedly at Frogmore, where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided occasionally, on the 8th of January, 1864. The child was baptised in the chapel at Buckingham Palace on the first anniversary of his parents' marriage, as the Princess Royal had been baptised there on the first anniversary of the Queen and Prince Albert's marriage. The Queen and the old King of the Belgians were present among the sponsors.

When the Queen went north this year she was accompanied by the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg.

On the 14th of March, 1865, her Majesty visited the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton, walking over the different wards and speaking to the patients.

The news of the assassination of President Lincoln reached England in April, when the Queen became, as she has so often been, the mouthpiece of her subjects, writing an autograph letter expressing her horror, pity, and sympathy to Mrs. Lincoln.

Prince Alfred on the 6th of August, his twenty-first birthday, was formally acknowledged heir to his childless uncle, the Duke of Saxe- Coburg.

Two days later the Queen embarked with Prince Leopold, the three younger Princesses, the Duchess of Roxburgh, Lady Churchill, &c., &c., at Woolwich for Germany. She arrived at Coburg on the 11th and went to Rosenau. On the 26th, the birthday of the Prince Consort, perhaps the most interesting of all the inaugurations of monuments to his memory took place at Coburg. A gilt-bronze statue ten feet high was unveiled with solemn ceremony in the square of the little town which Prince Albert had so often traversed in his boyhood. After the unveiling, the Queen walked across the square at the head of her children and handed to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg flowers which he laid on the pedestal. Each of her sons and daughters followed her example, till "the fragrant mass" rose to the feet of the statue. Princess Alice writes of "the terrible sufferings" of the first three years of the Queen's widowhood, but adds that after the long storm came rest, so that the daughter could tenderly remind the mother, without reopening the wound, of the happy silver wedding which might have been this year when the royal parents would have been surrounded by so many grandchildren in fresh young households.

While the Queen was in the Highlands during the autumn, her journal, in its published portions, records a few days spent with the widowed Duchess of Athole at her cottage at Dunkeld. This visit was something very different from the old royal progresses. It was a private token of friendship from the Queen to an old friend bereaved like herself. There was neither show, nor gaiety, nor publicity. The life was even quieter than at Balmoral. Her Majesty breakfasted with the daughter who accompanied her, lunched and dined with the Princess, the Duchess, and one or more ladies. There were long drives, rides, and rows on the lochs—sometimes in mist and rain, among beautiful scenery, like that which had been a solace in the days of deepest sorrow, tea among the bracken or the heather or in some wayside house, friendly chats, peaceful readings.

This year Princess Helena was betrothed to Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, a brother of the husband of her cousin, Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe. The family connection and the personal character of the bridegroom were high recommendations, while the marriage would permit the Princess to remain in England near her mother.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

DEATHS OF LORD PALMERSTON AND THE KING OF THE BELGIANS—THE QUEEN AGAIN OPENS PARLIAMENT IN PERSON, &C., &C.

The Prime Minister so long connected with the Queen, Lord Palmerston, energetic to the last, died at Brockett Hall on the 18th of October.

A still greater loss befell her Majesty in the month of December—a marked month in her history. King Leopold died on the 9th at Laeken, within a few days of attaining his seventy-sixth year, the last of a family of nine sons and daughters. He had been cured of a deadly disease by a painful and dangerous operation two years before. He had suffered afterwards from a slight shock of paralysis, which had not prevented him from coming to England to be present at the baptism of Prince Victor of Wales, the fifth generation, counting that of George III., which King Leopold had known in connection with the English throne. In addition to his fine mental qualities, he was singularly active in his habits to the end. He walked thirty miles, and shot for six hours in winter snow, after he had entered his seventy-fifth year. Though the Queen must have been prepared for the event, and his death was peaceful, it was a blow to her—much of her early past perished with her life-long friend and counsellor.

In 1866 the Queen opened Parliament in person for the first time since the death of the Prince Consort, and there was a great assemblage to hail her reappearance when she entered, not by the State, but by the Peers' entrance. There were none of the flourishes of trumpets which had formerly announced her arrival—solemn silence prevailed. She did not wear the robes of state, they were merely laid upon the throne. Her Majesty was accompanied by the Princesses Helena and Louise. When the Queen was seated on the throne the Prince of Wales took his seat on her right, while the Princesses stood on her left. Behind the Queen was the Duchess of Wellington, as mistress of the robes, and a lady in waiting. Her Majesty's dress was dark purple velvet bordered with ermine; she wore a tiara of diamonds with a white gauze veil falling down behind. The speech, which in one passage announced the coming marriage of Princess Helena and Prince Christian (who sat near the end of one of the ambassadors' benches) was read by the Lord Chancellor. The Parliament granted to Prince Alfred an annuity of fifteen thousand pounds—voted in turn to each of his younger brothers on their coming of age—and to Princess Helena a dowry of thirty thousand and an annuity of six thousand pounds, similar to what had been granted to Princess Alice and was to be voted to Princess Louise.

In March the Queen instituted the "Albert Medal," as a decoration for those who had saved life from shipwreck and from peril at sea, and for the first time during five-years revisited the camp at Aldershot and reviewed the troops. She was accompanied by Princess Helena and the Princess Hohenlohe, who was on a visit to England.

Queen Amelie died at Claremont on the 24th of March, aged eighty-three years.

On the 25th of May Prince Alfred was created Earl of Ulster, Earl of Kent, and Duke of Edinburgh.

The Princess Mary of Cambridge was married to the Prince of Teck on the 12th of June, in the presence of the Queen, in the parish church of Kew, where the bride had been confirmed, "among her own people." Parliament granted her an annuity of five thousand pounds.

Another marriage, that of Princess Helena, was celebrated in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, on the 7th of July. The bridegroom was supported by Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein and Prince Edward of Saxe- Weimar. The bride entered between her Majesty and the Prince of Wales. The usual eight noble bridesmaids followed. Prince Christian was in his thirty-sixth, Princess Helena in her twenty-first year. Their home has been first at Frogmore and afterwards at Cumberland Lodge.

While the German war which had Schleswig-Holstein for a bone of contention was still only threatening, the Crown Princess of Prussia lost a fine child, Prince Sigismund.

Afterwards the Queen had the pain of seeing her married children, with their unfailing family affection, inevitably ranged on different sides in the war. Princess Alice trembled before the fear of a widowhood like her mother's as the sound of the firing of the Prussian army, which lay between the wife at home and the husband in the field, was heard in Darmstadt. The quiet little town fell into the hands of the enemy, and was at once poverty and pestilence stricken, small-pox and cholera having broken out in the hospitals, where the Princess was labouring devotedly to succour the wounded. In such circumstances, while the standard of her husband's regiment lay hidden in her room, Princess Louis's third daughter was both. Happily peace was soon proclaimed. In honour of it the baby, Princess Irene, whose godfathers were the officers and men of her father's regiment, received her name.

This year Hanover ceased to be an independent state, and became annexed to Prussia.

Dr. Norman Macleod has a bright little picture of an evening at Balmoral in 1866. "The Queen sat down to spin at a nice Scotch wheel while I read Robert Burns to her, 'Tam o' Shanter,' and 'A man's a man for a' that'—her favourite."

Her Majesty sent her miniature with an autograph letter to the American citizen, Mr. Peabody, in acknowledgment of his magnificent gift of model lodging-houses to the Working people of London.

In 1867 the Queen again opened Parliament in person, her speech being read by the Lord Chancellor.

The grievous accident of the breaking of the ice in Regent's Park, when it was covered with skaters and spectators, took place on the 15th of January.

"The Early Tears of the Prince Consort," the first instalment of his "Life," brought out under the direction of General Grey, with much of the information supplied by the Queen, was published, and afforded a nobler memorial to the Prince than any work in stone or metal.

On the 20th of May her Majesty laid the foundation of the Albert Hall. She was accompanied by the Princesses Louise and Beatrice, Prince Leopold, and Prince Christian, and received by the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Queen's elder sons. The latter presented her with a bouquet, which she took, kissing her sons. In reply to the Prince of Wales's speech her Majesty spoke in accents singularly inaudible for her. She mentioned the struggle she had undergone before she had brought herself to take part in that day's proceedings, but said she had been sustained by the thought that she was thus promoting her husband's designs.

In June and July the Queen of Prussia and the Sultan of Turkey came in turn to England. The latter was with her Majesty in her yacht at a great naval review held in most tempestuous weather off Spithead. In the end of July the Empress of the French paid a short private visit to her Majesty at Osborne.

On the 20th of August the Queen left for Balmoral. On her way north she spent a few days with the Duke and Duchess of Roxburgh at Fleurs, when her Majesty visited Melrose and Abbotsford. After inspecting with great interest the memorials of Sir Walter Scott, who had been presented to her when she was a little girl at Kensington Palace, she complied with a request that she should write her name in the great author's journal, adding the modest comment in her own journal that she felt it presumption in her to do so.

During the autumn the Queen paid an informal visit to the Duke of Richmond's shooting lodge in Glen Fiddich. On the first evening of her stay the break with the luggage failed to appear, and her Majesty had to suffer some of the half-comical inconveniences of ordinary travellers. She had to dine in her riding skirt, with a borrowed black lace veil arranged as a head-dress, and she had to go to bed without the necessary accompaniments to her toilette.

In 1867 the terrible news from Mexico that the Emperor Maximilian (Archduke of Austria and husband of the Queen's cousin, Princess Charlotte of Belgium) had been shot by his rebel subjects, while his wife was hopelessly insane, rendered it a mercy to all interested in the family that old King Leopold had not lived to see the wreck of so many hopes.

In 1868 the Queen gave to her people the first "Leaves" from her journal in the Highlands, which afforded most pleasant glimpses of the wonderfully happy family life, the chief holidays of which had been spent at Balmoral. Her Majesty sent a copy to Charles Dickens, with the graceful inscription that it was the gift of "one of the humblest of writers to one of the greatest."

On the 13th of May the Queen laid the foundation stone of St. Thomas's Hospital, and on the 20th she held a great review of twenty-seven thousand volunteers in Windsor Park. Instead of her mother or her little children, her daughter-in-law and grown-up daughters, the Princess of Wales, Princess Christian, and Princess Louise, were in the carriage with her, while in room of her husband and her brother or cousin, her two soldier sons rode one on each side of the carriage.