ery, and taking the little hand of the infant, he said, 'The next time we read, it must be on the rights and duties of a princess royal.'

On the 11th of September the Prince was made a member of the Privy Council. "Yesterday," he writes to Baron Stockmar in the letter above quoted, “I was introduced into the Privy Council. Lords Melbourne, John Russell, Clarendon, Holland, and Minto were present. The thing in itself is an empty form (eine leere Form), but from a distance it appears very grand.”*

Princess Augusta was very ill all this time at Clarence House, and suffered terribly. On the 22d of September she died. The Prince visited her more than once during her illness, and, after her death, accompanied the Queen on the 1st of October to Claremont, in order to be out of the way at the time of the funeral, which the Prince did not attend on account of the Queen's health.†

On their return to Windsor the Queen records that she and the Prince read Hallam's Constitutional History together.

She also mentions that the Prince, who had been lately appointed to the colonelcy of the 11th Hussars, used occasionally to go in the park with a squadron of the 1st Life Guards, then commanded by Colonel Cavendish, in order to become acquainted with the English system of drill and the words of command.

The mode of life at Windsor did not differ materially from that observed elsewhere, except that on three, and

* NOTE BY THE QUEEN.-By this the Prince meant that no political or other discussion took place there, as was formerly the custom. † Memorandum by the Queen.

occasionally four days in the week, at this season, there was shooting from eleven to two. In the afternoon there were drives, as in London; and in the evening, dinners and occasional dances.

On the 13th of November the court returned to Buckingham Palace, where, on the 21st, the princess royal was born. The Prince, writing to his father on the 23d, says, "Victoria is as well as if nothing had happened. She sleeps well, has a good appetite, and is extremely quiet and cheerful. The little one is very well and very merry. I should certainly have liked it better if she had been a son, as would Victoria also; but, at the same time, we must be equally satisfied and thankful as it is. . . . The rejoicing in the public is universal."

...

"For a moment only," the Queen says, "was he disappointed at its being a daughter and not a son." His first care was for the safety of the Queen,* and “we can not be thankful enough to God," he writes to the Duchess of Gotha on the 24th, "that every thing has passed so very prosperously."

"During the time the Queen was laid up, his care and devotion," the Queen records, "were quite beyond expression."

He refused to go to the play or any where else, generally dining alone with the Duchess of Kent till the Queen was able to join them, and was always at hand to do any thing in his power for her comfort. He was content to sit by her in a darkened room, to read to her, or write for her. "No one but himself ever lifted her from her bed to her sofa, and he always helped to wheel her on her bed or sofa into the next room. For this purpose he would

* Memorandum by the Queen.

come instantly when sent for from any part of the house. As years went on and he became overwhelmed with work" (for his attentions were the same in all the Queen's subsequent confinements), "this was often done at much inconvenience to himself; but he ever came with a sweet smile on his face. In short," the Queen adds, "his care of her was like that of a mother, nor could there be a kinder, wiser, or more judicious nurse.'

During the Queen's illness the Prince also saw the ministers, and transacted all necessary business for her.

When the Queen was well enough to move the court returned to Windsor, where Christmas was passed in the manner ever afterward observed. It was the favorite festival of the Prince-a day, he thought, for the interchange of presents, as marks of mutual affection and good-will. Christmas-trees were set up in the Queen and Prince's rooms, a custom which was continued in future years, when they were also set up in another room for the young princes and princesses, and in the oak-room for the household. The ladies and gentlemen in waiting were summoned to the corridor on Christmas-eve. The Queen and Prince, accompanied by the royal family, pointed out the presents for each, inviting them afterward to go through the different rooms to see what they themselves had mutually given and received.

The princess royal's christening took place on the 10th of February, 1841, the first anniversary of the Queen's happy marriage; but the account of this, as well as the other events of that year, must be reserved for another volume.

* Memorandum by the Queen.

N

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

REMINISCENCES OF THE KING OF THE BELGIANS.

IN the preceding chapters little has been said of the Prince's family. The wish has been to confine this memoir to what more immediately concerned the Prince himself; and therefore, beyond the slight allusion to them in the opening chapter, no mention has been made of any members of the family except those-his father, grandmothers, and brother-with whom his own early life was naturally identified.

Yet his immediate ancestors for two, if not three generations, had been so mixed up with the stirring events which marked the close of the last and the opening of the present century, that some notice of them from one who has himself borne a prominent part in the European history of these latter times will not be out of place here. The Prince's greatgrand-uncle, the Field-marshal Prince Friedrich of Saxe-Coburg, had commanded with distinction and success in the Netherlands at the commencement of the French Revolutionary War; his father commanded a corps toward its close while his uncle Leopold, after greatly distinguishing himself in the latter campaigns against Napoleon, has for the last four-and-thirty years, as King of Belgium, earned for himself, by the consummate ability and prudence with which he has passed through times of the greatest difficulty and danger, the character of the most sagacious as well as the most enlightened sovereign of Europe.*

In 1862, with a view to this memoir, the Queen applied to the king for some account of his recollections of the Prince and of his family; and his majesty, responding to that appeal, has related his reminiscences in the following letters.

• It will be seen that this was written while the king was still alive.