ized
upon the imagination of the Queen. Her whole being, so instinct with
vitality, recoiled in agony from the grim spectacle of the triumph of
that awful power. Her own mother, with whom she had lived so closely and
so long that she had become a part almost of her existence, had fallen
into nothingness before her very eyes! She tried to forget, but she
could not. Her lamentations continued with a strange abundance, a
strange persistency. It was almost as if, by some mysterious and
unconscious precognition, she realised that for her, in an especial
manner, that grisly Majesty had a dreadful dart in store.

For indeed, before the year was out, a far more terrible blow was
to fall upon her. Albert, who had for long been suffering from
sleeplessness, went, on a cold and drenching day towards the end of
November, to inspect the buildings for the new Military Academy at
Sandhurst. On his return, it was clear that the fatigue and exposure to
which he had been subjected had seriously affected his health. He was
attacked by rheumatism, his sleeplessness continued, and he complained
that he felt thoroughly unwell. Three days later a painful duty obliged
him to visit Cambridge. The Prince of Wales, who had been placed at that
University in the previous year, was behaving in such a manner that
a parental visit and a parental admonition had become necessary. The
disappointed father, suffering in mind and body, carried through his
task; but, on his return journey to Windsor, he caught a fatal chill.
During the next week he gradually grew weaker and more miserable. Yet,
depressed and enfeebled as he was, he continued to work. It so happened
that at that very moment a grave diplomatic crisis had arisen. Civil
war had broken out in America, and it seemed as if England, owing to a
violent quarrel with the Northern States, was upon the point of being
drawn into the conflict. A severe despatch by Lord John Russell was
submitted to the Queen; and the Prince perceived that, if it was sent
off unaltered, war would be the almost inevitable consequence. At seven
o'clock on the morning of December 1, he rose from his bed, and with a
quavering hand wrote a series of suggestions for the alteration of the
draft, by which its language might be softened, and a way left open for
a peaceful solution of the question. These changes were accepted by the
Government, and war was averted. It was the Prince's last memorandum.

He had always declared that he