your Majesty's too conspicuous affliction, and the
solemnity of its relation to the severe and, alas! darkening
circumstances of the district.(71)

In presuming to touch upon that relation, and in following the
direction which his subject gave him towards very sacred ground,
he was especially desirous to avoid using even a phrase or a word
of exaggeration, and likewise to speak only as one who had seen
your Majesty's great sorrow in no other way than as all your
Majesty's subjects beheld it.

In speaking thus he knew that he must fall short of the truth; and
indeed, even were it becoming to make the attempt, he would in
vain labour to convey the impression made upon his mind by the
interview to which he was admitted at Windsor, and by the letter
now in his hands.

More follows in the vein and on the topics that are usual in letters of
mourning sympathy, and the effect was what the writer sought. From
Balmoral came a note (May 6, 1862): "The Queen wishes Princess Alice to
thank Mr. Gladstone in her name for the kind letter he wrote to her the
other day, which did her aching heart good. Kind words soothe, but nothing
can lessen or alleviate the weight of sorrow she has to bear."

Many years later he sat down to place on record his thoughts about the
Prince Consort, but did not proceed beyond a scanty fragment, which I will
here transcribe:--

My praise will be impartial: for he did not fascinate, or command,
or attract me through any medium but that of judgment and
conscience. There was, I think, a want of freedom, nature, and
movement in his demeanour, due partly to a faculty and habit of
reflection that never intermitted, partly to an inexorable
watchfulness over all he did and said, which produced something
that was related to stillness and dullness in a manner which was
notwithstanding, invariably modest, frank, and kind, even to one
who had no claims upon him for the particular exhibition of such
qualities. Perhaps I had better first disburden myself of what I
have to set down against him. I do not think he was a man without
prejudices, and this particularly in religion. His views of the
church of Rome must, I think, have been illiberal. At any rate, I
well remember a conversation with him at Windsor respecting the
papal decree imposing the belief in the immaculate conception,
somewhere about