ctoria paid me a visit in my bedroom, which is
also sitting-room, to-day. She is of sweet temper, decidedly
pretty, very like both the Queen and her mother. Then I went to
see the three Prussian children, and the two elder ones played
with my rusty old stick of twenty or twenty-five years' standing.

_Holyrood, Oct. 11._--On Friday morning, as I expected, I talked to
the Queen until the last moment. She did give me opportunities
which might have led on to anything, but want of time hustled me,
and though I spoke abruptly enough, and did not find myself timid,
yet I could [not] manage it at all to my satisfaction. She said
the one purpose of her life was gone, and she could not help
wishing the accident had ended it. This is hardly qualified by
another thing which she said to Lady Churchill, that she should
not like to have died in that way. She went on to speak of her
life as likely to be short. I told her that she would not give
way, that duty would sustain her (this she quite recognised), that
her burden was altogether peculiar, but the honour was in
proportion, that no one could wonder at her feeling the present,
which is near, but that the reward is _there_, though distant....
Then about politics, which will keep. She rowed me for writing to
Lord Palmerston about her accident, and said, "But, dear Mr.
Gladstone, that was quite wrong." The secret is kept wonderfully,
and you must keep it. I hinted that it would be a very bad thing
to have G. Grey away from such a cabinet on Tuesday, but all I
could get was that I might arrange for any other minister (some
one there certainly ought to be). I lectured her a little for
driving after dark in such a country, but she said all her habits
were formed on the Prince's wishes and directions, and she could
not alter them.

_Hawarden, Dec. 29._--I am well _past half_ a century. My life has
not been inactive. But of what kind has been its activity?
Inwardly I feel it to be open to this general observation: it
seems to have been and to be a series of efforts to be and to do
what is beyond my natural force. This of itself is not
condemnation, though it is a spectacle effectually humbling when I
see that I have not according to Schiller's figure enlarged with
the circle in which I live and move. [_Diary._]

IV

_Jan. 2, 1864._-