may meet you in your eventful life, you may repose the most entire confidence in him. And then only will you feel how great a treasure you possess in him!

He has, besides, all other qualities necessary to make a good husband. Your life cannot fail to be a happy one!

'I shall be very glad when the excitement of the first days is over, and all is again quiet, and when Papa shall have left England to be a distant and unintruding spectator of your new life. But how I shall then feel how much I have lost! Time will, I trust, help me also! Now-I feel very lonely! 'ERNEST.'

6

If the brother, with all the interest of opening manhood before him, felt thus lonely,' what was the state of the fond grandmother at Gotha, for whom nothing could replace the void thus created in her life? I am very much upset,' she writes to the Prince's father (12th December, 1839). The brilliant destiny awaiting our Albert cannot reconcile me to the thought that his country will lose him for ever! And for myself, I lose my greatest happiness. But I think not of myself. The few years I may yet have to live will soon have passed away. May God protect dear Albert, and keep him in the same heavenly frame of mind! I hope the Queen will appreciate him. I have been much pleased that she has shown herself so kind towards me, especially as I am sure I owe it all to the affection of my Albert. And yet I cannot rejoice.'

A few days previous to this letter, the official declaration of the intended marriage had been made with unusual solemnity at the Palace in Coburg. The day,' the Prince wrote to the Queen, affected me very much, as so many emotions filled my heart. Your health was drunk at dinner, where some 300 persons were present, with a tempest of huzzas. The joy of the people was so great that they went on firing

1839

LEAVE-TAKINGS.

51

in the streets with guns and pistols during the whole night, so that one might have imagined a battle was going on.'

The joy thus expressed was coupled nevertheless with a wide-spread regret, that the country was to lose the presence of a Prince, who had made himself no less beloved than respected throughout the Duchies.

These last days,' the Prince writes to the Queen, from Gotha, on the 28th December, 1839, have been very trying and painful for me. The day before yesterday I bade adieu to dear old Coburg; now it lies behind me, and we have arrived at Gotha. The extraordinary kindness everywhere shown me on my leaving increased the emotion I could not but feel at taking leave. There was quite a stream of people from all quarters to the palace, the last days I was there, to get another look at me; not a village but must send its delegate to town to express to myself the interest taken by the community in the coming event. I am usually (alas!) of a rather cold nature, and it needs a pretty strong appeal to move me, but to see so many eyes filled with tears was too much for me. Here I have been received with a grand illumination, and a torchlight procession of the civic body.'

And when the time came, as it did on the 28th of the following month, for the departure of the Prince to England, the prevailing feeling was most strikingly shown. It cannot be better described than in the words of General Grey, who had gone over with Lord Torrington with the Patent for investing the Prince with the Order of the Garter, and to accompany him to England.

The winter months of this year,' writes Frederick Perthès, under whom the Prince had studied at Bonn, in a letter published in his Memoirs, have been made interesting and exciting by the chapter of history which has been enacted here. For the Grand-Ducal Papa bound the Garter round his boy's knee, amidst the roar of 101 cannons. The earnestness and gravity with which the Prince has obeyed this early call to take an European position, give him dignity and standing, in spite of his youth, and increase the charm of his

6

The departure from Gotha was an affecting scene, and everything showed the genuine love of all classes for their young Prince. The streets were densely crowded; every window was crammed with heads, every housetop covered with people, waving handkerchiefs, and vying with each other in demonstrations of affection that could not be mistaken. The carriages stopped in passing the Dowager Duchess's, and Prince Albert got out with his father and brother to bid her a last adieu. It was a terrible trial to the poor Duchess, who was inconsolable for the loss of her beloved grandson. She came to the window as the carriages drove off, and threw her arms out, calling out "Albert, Albert!" in tones that went to every one's heart, when she was carried away, almost in a fainting state, by her attendants' (Early Years, p. 297).

whole aspect. Queen Victoria will find him the right sort of man; and unless some unlucky fatality interpose, he is sure to become the idol of the English nation-silently to influence the English aristocracy-and deeply to affect the destinies of Europe.'

CHAPTER IV.

MEANWHILE some incidents had occurred in England which were calculated to give the Prince an impression that a somewhat rough experience awaited him in his future home.

Lord Melbourne's anticipation that the announcement of the marriage would be well received was fully realised. The nation hailed with pleasure the union of their Sovereign with a Prince whom universal report proclaimed worthy of her choice. Nor was it less welcome because it promised to sever finally the connection between England and Hanover, and the very unpopular Hanoverian Monarch, who, failing the Queen, would have ascended the English throne.

No time had been lost after the Coburg Princes left England in summoning the Privy Council to receive the formal announcement of the betrothal. They met on the 23rd of November at Buckingham Palace, eighty in number. Wearing a bracelet with the Prince's portrait, which seemed to give her courage,' as the Queen's Journal records, Her Majesty read to the Council the declaration of her intention to contract a union, which, she expressed her strong conviction, will at once secure my domestic felicity, and serve the interests of my country.' Some tidings of the purpose for which the Council had met had reached the public, and on leaving the Palace Her Majesty was greeted by the crowds outside with even more than usual cordiality.

A still more interesting and trying ordeal had to be passed

through by the Queen, in making the formal announcement of the approaching marriage from the throne. This was done at the opening of Parliament on the 16th of January following. Enthusiastic crowds lined the streets along the route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster; and the brilliant throng which filled every corner of the House of Lords thrilled with an emotion as intense as it was unwonted, while the youthful Sovereign with clear and unfaltering voice announced the intention to form that alliance on which the future happiness of her life was to rest. On every side the announcement was received with the warmest congratulations and demonstrations of sympathy; and Sir Robert Peel spoke the prevailing sentiment when, in supporting as leader of the Opposition the Address of Congratulation which followed, he said, 'Her Majesty has the singular good fortune to be able to gratify her private feelings while she performs her public duty, and to obtain the best guarantee for happiness by contracting an alliance founded on affection. I cordially hope that the union now contemplated will contribute to Her Majesty's happiness, and enable her to furnish to her people an exalted example of wedded happiness.'

Baron Stockmar had arrived in England on the 9th of January, to settle, as the representative of the Prince, the terms of the treaty of marriage, and the arrangements for the Prince's future household. On the latter point the Prince had, in a letter to the Queen on the 10th of December preceding, declared his wishes in terms which show how completely, even at this early period, he had adopted the important principle, from which he never afterwards swerved, of having always the best men about him, and of belonging to no party. 'I should wish particularly,' he says, 'that the selection should be made without regard to politics, for if I am really to keep myself free from all parties, my people must not belong exclusively to one side. Above all, these appointments