viewed the prospect of death with
equanimity. "I do not cling to life," he had once said to Victoria. "You
do; but I set no store by it." And then he had added: "I am sure, if I
had a severe illness, I should give up at once, I should not struggle
for life. I have no tenacity of life." He had judged correctly. Before
he had been ill many days, he told a friend that he was convinced he
would not recover. He sank and sank. Nevertheless, if his case had
been properly understood and skilfully treated from the first, he might
conceivably have been saved; but the doctors failed to diagnose his
symptoms; and it is noteworthy that his principal physician was Sir
James Clark. When it was suggested that other advice should be taken,
Sir James pooh-poohed the idea: "there was no cause for alarm," he said.
But the strange illness grew worse. At last, after a letter of fierce
remonstrance from Palmerston, Dr. Watson was sent for; and Dr. Watson
saw at once that he had come too late The Prince was in the grip of
typhoid fever. "I think that everything so far is satisfactory," said
Sir James Clark.(*)

(*) Clarendon, II, 253-4: "One cannot speak with certainty;
but it is horrible to think that such a life MAY have been
sacrificed to Sir J. Clark's selfish jealousy of every
member of his profession." The Earl of Clarendon to the
Duchess of Manchester, December 17, 1861.

The restlessness and the acute suffering of the earlier days gave place
to a settled torpor and an ever--deepening gloom. Once the failing
patient asked for music--"a fine chorale at a distance;" and a piano
having been placed in the adjoining room, Princess Alice played on it
some of Luther's hymns, after which the Prince repeated "The Rock of
Ages." Sometimes his mind wandered; sometimes the distant past came
rushing upon him; he heard the birds in the early morning, and was at
Rosenau again, a boy. Or Victoria would come and read to him "Peveril
of the Peak," and he showed that he could follow the story, and then she
would bend over him, and he would murmur "liebes Frauchen" and "gutes
Weibchen," stroking her cheek. Her distress and her agitation were
great, but she was not seriously frightened. Buoyed up by her own
abundant energies, she would not believe that Albert's might prove
unequal to the strain. She refused to face such a hideous possibility.
She declined to see Dr. Watson. Why should she? Had not Sir James Clark
assured her th