RELATIONS]

_Queen Victoria to the King of Prussia._

[_Translation._]

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, _June 1854._

DEAREST SIR AND BROTHER,--Your faithful Bunsen has handed me your
Majesty's long explanatory letter, and has taken his leave of us,[35]
with tears in his eyes, and I can assure your Majesty that I, too, see
with pain the departure of one whom I have been accustomed to consider
as the faithful mirror of your feelings, wishes, and views, and whose
depth and warmth of heart I esteem no less highly than his high mental
gifts. Sympathy with his fate is general here. I entirely recognise in
your letter the expression of your friendship, which is so dear to me,
and which does not admit any sort of misunderstanding to exist between
us, without my endeavouring at once to clear it up and remove it.
How could I meet your friendship otherwise than by equally absolute
frankness, allowing you to look into my inmost heart! Though you have
shown me a proof of your gracious confidence in giving me, down to the
smallest detail, an account of your personal and business relations
with your servants, I still believe that I have no right to formulate
any judgment. Only one thing my heart bids me to express, viz., that
the men with whom you have broken were faithful, veracious servants,
warmly devoted to you, and that just by the freedom and independence
of spirit, with which they have expressed their opinions to your
Majesty, _they have given an indisputable proof_ of having had
in view, not their own personal advantage and the favour of their
Sovereign, but his true interests and welfare alone; and if just such
men as these--among them even your loving brother, a thoroughly noble
and chivalrous Prince, standing next to the throne--find themselves
forced, in a grave crisis, to turn away from you, this is a _momentous
sign_, which might well give cause to your Majesty to take counsel
with yourself, and to examine with anxious care, whether perhaps the
hidden cause of past and future evils may not lie in your Majesty's
own views?[36] You complain, most honoured Sire and Brother, that
your policy is blamed as _vacillating_, and that your own person is
insulted at home and abroad (a thing which has often filled me with
_deep grief and indignation_), and you asseverate that your policy
rests upon a firm basis, which the conscience of "a King and a
Christian has laid down for it." But should it be possible to discover
in your Majesty's f