ister."
Stockmar's pupil had assuredly gone far and learnt well. Stockmar's
pupil!--precisely; the public, painfully aware of Albert's predominance,
had grown, too, uneasily conscious that Victoria's master had a master
of his own. Deep in the darkness the Baron loomed. Another foreigner!
Decidedly, there were elements in the situation which went far to
justify the popular alarm. A foreign Baron controlled a foreign Prince,
and the foreign Prince controlled the Crown of England. And the Crown
itself was creeping forward ominously; and when, from under its shadow,
the Baron and the Prince had frowned, a great Minister, beloved of the
people, had fallen. Where was all this to end?

Within a few weeks Palmerston withdrew his resignation, and the public
frenzy subsided as quickly as it had arisen. When Parliament met, the
leaders of both the parties in both the Houses made speeches in favour
of the Prince, asserting his unimpeachable loyalty to the country and
vindicating his right to advise the Sovereign in all matters of State.
Victoria was delighted. "The position of my beloved lord and master,"
she told the Baron, "has been defined for once amid all and his merits
have been acknowledged on all sides most duly. There was an immense
concourse of people assembled when we went to the House of Lords, and
the people were very friendly." Immediately afterwards, the country
finally plunged into the Crimean War. In the struggle that followed,
Albert's patriotism was put beyond a doubt, and the animosities of
the past were forgotten. But the war had another consequence, less
gratifying to the royal couple: it crowned the ambition of Lord
Palmerston. In 1855, the man who five years before had been pronounced
by Lord John Russell to be "too old to do much in the future," became
Prime Minister of England, and, with one short interval, remained in
that position for ten years.

CHAPTER VI. LAST YEARS OF PRINCE CONSORT

I

The weak-willed youth who took no interest in polities and never read a
newspaper had grown into a man of unbending determination whose tireless
energies were incessantly concentrated upon the laborious business of
government and the highest questions of State. He was busy now from
morning till night. In the winter, before the dawn, he was to be
seen, seated at his writing-table, working by the light of the green
reading--lamp which he had brought over with him from Germany, and
the construction of which he