from Paddington station through the streets of London, where but a few years before he had gone to and fro without notice.

Preparations were made for him at Windsor where he was to occupy the bedroom in which Louis Philippe had slept. Only three days before the Emperor's arrival the widowed Queen Marie Amélie had driven away from the Castle "in a plain coach with miserable post-horses," as the English Sovereign wrote, adding "and to think that this was the Queen of the French, and that six years ago her husband was surrounded by the same pomp and grandeur which three days hence will surround his successor !" The contrast was painful in the extreme. Another of Time's marvellous changes struck Her Majesty who while dancing with the Emperor at a ball in the Waterloo room-from the walls of which portraits of the distinguished soldiers and statesmen who conquered Napoleon looked down on them-thought it strange indeed that the nephew of her country's old enemy was now her guest, her most intimate ally and her friend. To the Sovereigns and the people of England and France this visit was entirely satisfactory. Even more so was the return visit paid in August (1855) by the Queen who was the first English Sovereign to enter Paris since Henry VI. (1422) had passed through its streets in triumph to be crowned. It is probable that her ancestor was

less enthusiastically received than was Her Majesty, who seated beside the Emperor and surrounded by princes, marshals, generals, and statesmen, she drove about half-past eight on this summer evening through thoroughfares blazing with lights, decorated with arches, flags, and flowers, lined with troops, and deafening with the cheers of thousands. Marshal Magnan told Lord Clarendon that he had known Paris for fifty years but had never witnessed such a scene, not even when the great Napoleon returned flushed with victory from Austerlitz.

The Queen who was accompanied by her Consort and their two eldest children, was enchanted by the beauty and novelty of the city and its surroundings. Reviews, receptions, concerts; visits to the Exhibition, to the opera, to churches, palaces, and historic sights; balls, and dinners, rapidly succeeded each other. If on becoming acquainted with the Emperor and Empress, the Queen had found the former gracious, full of tact, and dignified "as if he had been born a king's son, and brought up for the place," and the latter gentle, graceful, kind, and modest; her good opinion of them increased while she was their guest. The Emperor, whose knowledge of women was wide, had taken the surest way of ingratiating himself with the Queen as may be gathered from her comment on his manners. Speaking to Lord Clarendon she said, It is very odd; but the Emperor knows everything,

I have done and where I have been ever since I was twelve years old; he even recollects how I was dressed, and a thousand little details it is extraordinary he should be acquainted with." The Prince, though was also greatly interested in all he saw, and much cheered by the visit. Both regretted it ended so soon; a feeling shared by his present Majesty, who apparently had fallen in love with Paris at first sight. When, as Lord Clarendon related to Charles Greville the time for departure drew near, the Prince of Wales, then in his thirteenth year, told the Empress that he and his sisters were both sorry to leave and asked her if she could not get permission for them to stay a little longer. The Empress was afraid that would be impossible, as the Queen and Prince Albert would be unable to do without them; to which he answered, "Not do without us? Don't fancy that, for there are six more of us at home, and they don't want

Before the year ended another foreign Sovereign also an ally of England, visited Her Majesty. This was Victor Emmanuel, then King of Sardinia. Arriving in London November 30 (1855) he was driven through the gloomy muddy streets on his way to Windsor. Though the Queen was not favourably impressed by his person or by the reputation which had preceded him, she received him with the honours due to a Sovereign, and during his stay invested him 18

VOL. II

with the Order of the Garter. A man who felt out of place in Courts, his stay of five days was devoted chiefly to visits to arsenals, dockyards, and factories, to seeing military manœuvres and the fleet at Spithead. At the end of his visit, the Queen got up at four in the morning to see him depart, while the Prince accompanied him to Folkestone. An excellent vignette of the monarch to whom such attentions were paid is given by Greville who says: "His Majesty appears to be frightful in person, but a great, strong, burly, athletic man, brusque in his manners, unrefined in his conversation, very loose in his conduct, and very eccentric in his habits. When he was at Paris his talk in society amused or terrified everybody, but here he seems to have been more guarded. It was amusing to see all the religious societies hastening with their addresses to him, totally forgetting that he is the most debauched and dissolute fellow in the world; but the fact of his being excommunicated by the Pope and his waging war with the ecclesiastical power in his own country covers every sin against morality, and he is great here with the Low Church people and Exeter Hall. My brother-in-law said that he looked at Windsor more like a chief of the Heruli or Longobardi than a modern Italian Prince; and the Duchess of Sutherland declared that of all the Knights of the Garter she had seen, he was the only one who seemed as if he would have the best of it with the dragon."

Events of the greatest interest in the domestic life of the Queen and Prince Albert were now about to take place, and to compensate in some measure for the care and anxiety which political affairs had recently caused them. One of these was the birth of Her Majesty's ninth and last child, which took place at . Buckingham Palace April 14, 1857. This Princess whom her father thought "prettier than babies usually are," at baptism received "the historical, romantic, euphonious, melodious name of Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodora." In the following month an announcement was publicly made of an event which for some time previously had filled the thoughts of the Queen and the Prince with tenderest concern. This was the engage

ment of the Princess Royal to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick. Prince Fritz having reached his twenty-fourth year, his parents desired that he should marry. Their choice of a bride for their heir, fell on the young Princess Royal, with whom they had been most favourably impressed during their visit to England. The youth had also seen her, but that he might judge for himself if their temperaments were likely to harmonise, he arrived at Balmoral, where the Court was then staying, September 14, 1855. The fact that he was favourably regarded as a suitor for their eldest child by the Queen and Prince Albert, was due to the belief that he would ensure her future happiness, rather than