present Ministers out of office it would be at the risk of sacrificing her
life--or her reason. When this message reached Lord Derby he was considerably

surprised. "Dear me!" was his cynicalcomment. "I didn't think she was so fond
of them as THAT."

Though the violence of her perturbations gradually subsided, her cheerfulness
did not return. For months, for years, she continued in settled gloom. Her

life became one of almost complete seclusion. Arrayed in thickest crepe, she
passed dolefully from Windsor to Osborne, from Osborne to Balmoral. Rarely

visiting the capital, refusing to take any part in the ceremonies of state,
shutting herself off from the slightest intercourse with society, she became

almost as unknown to her subjects as some potentate of the East. They might
murmur, but they did not understand. What had she to do with empty shows and

vain enjoyments? No! She was absorbed by very different preoccupations. She
was the devotedguardian of a sacred trust. Her place was in the inmost shrine

of the house of mourning--where she alone had the right to enter, where she
could feel the effluence of a mysterious presence, and interpret, however

faintly and feebly, the promptings of a still living soul. That, and that only
was her glorious, her terrible duty. For terrible indeed it was. As the years

passed her depression seemed to deepen and her loneliness to grow more
intense. "I am on a dreary sad pinnacle of solitary grandeur," she said. Again

and again she felt that she could bear her situation no longer--that she would
sink under the strain. And then, instantly, that Voice spoke: and she braced

herself once more to perform, with minute conscientiousness, her grim and holy
task.

Above all else, what she had to do was to make her own the master-impulse of
Albert's life--she must work, as he had worked, in the service of the country.

That vast burden of toil which he had taken upon his shoulders it was now for
her to bear. She assumed the gigantic load; and naturally she staggered under

it. While he had lived, she had worked, indeed, with regularity and
conscientiousness; but it was work made easy, made delicious, by his care, his

forethought, his advice, and his infallibility. The mere sound of his voice,
asking her to sign a paper, had thrilled her; in such a presence she could

have laboured gladly for ever. But now there was a hideous change. Now there
were no neat piles and docketings under the green lamp; now there were no

simple explanations of difficult matters; now there was nobody to tell her
what was right and what was wrong. She had her secretaries, no doubt: there

were Sir Charles Phipps, and General Grey, and Sir Thomas Biddulph; and they
did their best. But they were mere subordinates: the whole weight of

initiative and responsibility rested upon her alone. For so it had to be. "I
am DETERMINED"--had she not declared it?--"that NO ONE person is to lead or

guide or dictate to ME;" anything else would be a betrayal of her trust. She
would follow the Prince in all things. He had refused to delegate authority;

he had examined into every detail with his own eyes; he had made it a rule
never to sign a paper without having first, not merely read it, but made notes

on it too. She would do the same. She sat from morning till night surrounded
by huge heaps of despatch--boxes, reading and writing at her desk--at her

desk, alas! which stood alone now in the room.
Within two years of Albert's death a violentdisturbance in foreign politics

put Victoria's faithfulness to a crucial test. The fearful Schleswig-Holstein
dispute, which had been smouldering for more than a decade, showed signs of

bursting out into conflagration. The complexity of the questions at issue was
indescribable. "Only three people," said Palmerston, "have ever really

understood the Schleswig-Holstein business--the Prince Consort, who is dead--a
German professor, who has gone mad--and I, who have forgotten all about it."

But, though the Prince might be dead, had he not left a vicegerent behind him?
Victoria threw herself into the seething embroilment with the vigour of

inspiration. She devoted hours daily to the study of the affair in all its
windings; but she had a clue through the labyrinth: whenever the question had

been discussed, Albert, she recollected it perfectly, had always taken the
side of Prussia. Her course was clear. She became an ardentchampion of the

Prussian point of view. It was a legacy from the Prince, she said. She did not
realise that the Prussia of the Prince's day was dead, and that a new Prussia,

the Prussia of Bismarck, was born. Perhaps Palmerston, with his queer
prescience, instinctively apprehended the new danger; at any rate, he and Lord

John were agreed upon the necessity of supporting Denmark against Prussia's
claims. But opinion was sharply divided, not only in the country but in the

Cabinet. For eighteen months the controversy raged; while the Queen, with
persistent vehemence, opposed the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.

When at last the final crisis arose--when it seemed possible that England
would join forces with Denmark in a war against Prussia--Victoria's agitation

grew febrile in its intensity. Towards her German relatives she preserved a
discreet appearance of impartiality; but she poured out upon her Ministers a

flood of appeals, protests, and expostulations. She invoked the sacred cause
of Peace. "The only chance of preserving peace for Europe," she wrote, "is by

not assisting Denmark, who has brought this entirely upon herself. The Queen
suffers much, and her nerves are more and more totally shattered... But though

all this anxiety is wearing her out, it will not shake her firm purpose of
resisting any attempt to involve this country in a mad and useless combat."

She was, she declared, "prepared to make a stand," even if the resignation of
the Foreign Secretary should follow. "The Queen," she told Lord Granville, "is

completely exhausted by the anxiety and suspense, and misses her beloved
husband's help, advice, support, and love in an overwhelming manner." She was

so worn out by her efforts for peace that she could "hardly hold up her head
or hold her pen." England did not go to war, and Denmark was left to her fate;

but how far the attitude of the Queen contributed to this result it is
impossible, with our present knowledge, to say. On the whole, however, it

seems probable that the determining factor in the situation was the powerful
peace party in the Cabinet rather than the imperious and patheticpressure of

Victoria.
It is, at any rate, certain that the Queen's enthusiasm for the sacred cause

of peace was short-lived. Within a few months her mind had completely altered.
Her eyes were opened to the true nature of Prussia, whose designs upon Austria

were about to culminate in the Seven Weeks' War. Veering precipitately from
one extreme to the other, she now urged her Ministers to interfere by force of

arms in support of Austria. But she urged in vain.
Her political activity, no more than her social seclusion, was approved by the

public. As the years passed, and the royal mourning remained as unrelieved as
ever, the animadversions grew more general and more severe. It was observed

that the Queen's protracted privacy not only cast a gloom over high society,
not only deprived the populace of its pageantry, but also exercised a highly

deleterious effect upon the dressmaking, millinery, and hosiery trades. This
latter consideration carried great weight. At last, early in 1864, the rumour

spread that Her Majesty was about to go out of mourning, and there was much
rejoicing in the newspapers; but fortunately" target="_blank" title="ad.不幸；不朽；可惜">unfortunately it turned out that the rumour

was quite without foundation. Victoria, with her own hand, wrote a letter to
The Times to say so. "This idea," she declared, "cannot be too explicitly

contradicted. "The Queen," the letter continued, "heartily appreciates the
desire of her subjects to see her, and whatever she CAN do to gratify them in

this loyal and affectionate" target="_blank" title="a.亲爱的">affectionate wish, she WILL do... But there are other and
higher duties than those of mere representation which are now thrown upon the

Queen, alone and unassisted--duties which she cannot neglect without injury to
the public service, which weigh unceasingly upon her, overwhelming her with

work and anxiety." The justification might have been considered more cogent
had it not been known that those "other and higher duties" emphasised by the

Queen consisted for the most part of an attempt to counteract the foreign
policy of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. A large section--perhaps a

majority--of the nation were violent partisans of Denmark in the
Schleswig-Holstein quarrel; and Victoria's support of Prussia was widely

denounced. A wave of unpopularity, which reminded old observers of the period
preceding the Queen's marriage more than twenty-five years before, was

beginning to rise. The press was rude; Lord Ellenborough attacked the Queen in
the House of Lords; there were curious whispers in high quarters that she had

had thoughts of abdicating--whispers followed by regrets that she had not done
so. Victoria, outraged and injured, felt that she was misunderstood. She was

profoundly unhappy. After Lord Ellenborough's speech, General Grey declared
that he "had never seen the Queen so completely upset." "Oh, how fearful it

is," she herself wrote to Lord Granville, "to be suspected--uncheered--
unguided and unadvised--and how alone the poor Queen feels! " Nevertheless,

suffer as she might, she was as resolute as ever; she would not move by a
hair's breadth from the course that a supremeobligation marked out for her;

she would be faithful to the end.
And so, when Schleswig-Holstein was forgotten, and even the image of the

Prince had begun to grow dim in the fickle memories of men, the solitary
watcher remained immutably concentrated at her peculiar task. The world's

hostility, steadily increasing, was confronted and outfaced by the
impenetrable weeds of Victoria. Would the world never understand? It was not

mere sorrow that kept her so strangely sequestered; it was devotion, it was
self-immolation; it was the laboriouslegacy of love. Unceasingly the pen

moved over the black-edged paper. The flesh might be weak, but that vast
burden must be borne. And fortunately, if the world would not understand,

there were faithful friends who did. There was Lord Granville, and there was
kind Mr. Theodore Martin. Perhaps Mr. Martin, who was so clever, would find

means to make people realise the facts. She would send him a letter, pointing
out her arduous labours and the difficulties under which she struggled, and

then he might write an article for one of the magazines. "It is not," she told
him in 1863, "the Queen's SORROW that keeps her secluded. It is her

OVERWHELMING WORK and her health, which is greatly shaken by her sorrow, and
the totallyoverwhelmingamount of work and responsibility--work which she

feels really wears her out. Alice Helps was wonderfully struck at the Queen's
room; and if Mrs. Martin will look at it, she can tell Mr. Martin what