settled the matter. Henceforward it was impossible to forget that Albert had

worn the white flower of a blameless life.
The result was doublyunfortunate. Victoria, disappointed and chagrined, bore

a grudge against her people for their refusal, in spite of all her efforts, to
rate her husband at his true worth. She did not understand that the picture of

an embodied perfection is distasteful to the majority of mankind. The cause of
this is not so much an envy of the perfect being as a suspicion that he must

be inhuman; and thus it happened that the public, when it saw displayed for
its admiration a figure resembling the sugary hero of a moral story-book

rather than a fellow man of flesh and blood, turned away with a shrug, a
smile, and a flippant ejaculation. But in this the public was the loser as

well as Victoria. For in truth Albert was a far more interesting personage
than the public dreamed. By a curious irony an impeccable waxwork had been

fixed by the Queen's love in the popular imagination, while the creature whom
it represented--the real creature, so full of energy and stress and torment,

so mysterious and so unhappy, and so fallible and so very human--had
altogether disappeared.

IV
Words and books may be ambiguous memorials; but who can misinterpret the

visible solidity of bronze and stone? At Frogmore, near Windsor, where her
mother was buried, Victoria constructed, at the cost of L200,000, a vast and

elaborate mausoleum for herself and her husband. But that was a private and
domestic monument, and the Queen desired that wherever her subjects might be

gathered together they should be reminded of the Prince. Her desire was
gratified; all over the country--at Aberdeen, at Perth, and at

Wolverhampton--statues of the Prince were erected; and the Queen, making an
exception to her rule of retirement, unveiled them herself. Nor did the

capital lag behind. A month after the Prince's death a meeting was called
together at the Mansion House to discuss schemes for honouring his memory.

Opinions, however, were divided upon the subject. Was a statue or an
institution to be preferred? Meanwhile a subscription was opened; an

influential committee was appointed, and the Queen was consulted as to her
wishes in the matter. Her Majesty replied that she would prefer a granite

obelisk, with sculptures at the base, to an institution. But the committee
hesitated: an obelisk, to be worthy of the name, must clearly be a monolith;

and where was the quarry in England capable of furnishing a granite block of
the required size? It was true that there was granite in Russian Finland; but

the committee were advised that it was not adapted to resistexposure to the
open air. On the whole, therefore, they suggested that a Memorial Hall should

be erected, together with a statue of the Prince. Her Majesty assented; but
then another difficulty arose. It was found that not more than L60,000 had

been subscribed--a sum insufficient to defray the double expense. The Hall,
therefore, was abandoned; a statue alone was to be erected; and certain

eminent architects were asked to prepare designs. Eventually the committee had
at their disposal a total sum of L120,000, since the public subscribed another

L10,000, while L50,000 was voted by Parliament. Some years later a joint stock
company was formed and built, as a private speculation, the Albert Hall.

The architect whose design was selected, both by the committee and by the
Queen, was Mr. Gilbert Scott, whose industry, conscientiousness, and genuine

piety had brought him to the head of his profession. His lifelong zeal for the
Gothic style having given him a special prominence, his handiwork was

strikingly visible, not only in a multitude of original buildings, but in most
of the cathedrals of England. Protests, indeed, were occasionally raised

against his renovations; but Mr. Scott replied with such vigour and unction in
articles and pamphlets that not a Dean was unconvinced, and he was permitted

to continue his labours without interruption. On one occasion, however, his
devotion to Gothic had placed him in an unpleasant situation. The Government

offices in Whitehall were to be rebuilt; Mr. Scott competed, and his designs
were successful. Naturally, they were in the Gothic style, combining "a

certain squareness and horizontality of outline" with pillar-mullions, gables,
high-pitched roofs, and dormers; and the drawings, as Mr. Scott himself

observed, "were, perhaps, the best ever sent in to a competition, or nearly
so." After the usual difficulties and delays the work was at last to be put in

hand, when there was a change of Government and Lord Palmerston became Prime
Minister. Lord Palmerston at once sent for Mr. Scott. "Well, Mr. Scott," he

said, in his jaunty way, "I can't have anything to do with this Gothic style.
I must insist on your making a design in the Italian manner, which I am sure

you can do very cleverly." Mr. Scott was appalled; the style of the Italian
renaissance was not only unsightly, it was positively immoral, and he sternly

refused to have anything to do with it. Thereupon Lord Palmerston assumed a
fatherly tone. "Quite true; a Gothic architect can't be expected to put up a

Classical building; I must find someone else." This was intolerable, and Mr.
Scott, on his return home, addressed to the Prime Minister a strongly-worded

letter, in which he dwelt upon his position as an architect, upon his having
won two European competitions, his being an A.R.A., a gold medallist of the

Institute, and a lecturer on architecture at the Royal Academy; but it was
useless--Lord Palmerston did not even reply. It then occurred to Mr. Scott

that, by a judiciousmixture, he might, while preserving the essential
character of the Gothic, produce a design which would give a superficial

impression of the Classical style. He did so, but no effect was produced upon
Lord Palmerston. The new design, he said, was "neither one thing nor

'tother--a regular mongrel affair--and he would have nothing to do with it
either." After that Mr. Scott found it necessary to recruit for two months at

Scarborough, "with a course of quinine." He recovered his tone at last, but
only at the cost of his convictions. For the sake of his family he felt that

it was his unfortunate duty to obey the Prime Minister; and, shuddering with
horror, he constructed the Government offices in a strictly Renaissance style.

Shortly afterwards Mr. Scott found some consolation in building the St.
Pancras Hotel in a style of his own.

And now another and yet more satisfactory task was his. "My idea in designing
the Memorial," he wrote, "was to erect a kind of ciborium to protect a statue

of the Prince; and its special characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic was that the ciborium was
designed in some degree on the principles of the ancient shrines. These

shrines were models of imaginary buildings, such as had never in reality been
erected; and my idea was to realise one of these imaginary structures with its

precious materials, its inlaying, its enamels, etc. etc." His idea was
particularly appropriate since it chanced that a similar conception, though in

the reverse order of magnitude, had occurred to the Prince himself, who had
designed and executed several silver cruet-stands upon the same model. At the

Queen's request a site was chosen in Kensington Gardens as near as possible to
that of the Great Exhibition; and in May, 1864, the first sod was turned. The

work was long, complicated, and difficult; a great number of workmen were
employed, besides several subsidiary sculptors and metal--workers under Mr.