be submitted to her from all the arsenals and dockyards, and again,
weeks or months afterwards, referring to these returns, and desiring
to have everything relating to them explained and accounted for, and
so throughout every department....This is what none of her
predecessors ever did, and it is, in fact, the act of Prince Albert."

We turn from this picture of the Sovereign's habitual occupations to
her public life, and we find it never more full of apparently
absorbing excitements--splendid hospitalities exchanged with other
Powers, especially with Imperial France, alternating with messages of
encouragement, full of cordiality and grace, to her successful
commander-in-chief in India, Sir Colin Campbell, with plans for the
conspicuous rewarding of the Indian heroes at large, with public
visits to various great English towns, and with preparations for the
impending marriage of the Princess Royal; and we realise forcibly
that even in those sunny days, when the Queen was surrounded with her
unbroken family of nine blooming and promising children, and still
had at her right hand the invaluable counsellor by whose aid England
was governed with a wisdom and energy all but unprecedented, her
position was so far from a sinecure that no subject who had his daily
bread to gain by his wits could have worked much harder.



CHAPTER VI.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS.

[Illustration: Windsor Castle.]