Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/441

 should be often busy and should gradually sever valued links with the queen's youth.

Her aunt, Princess Sophia, died royal circles on 27 May 1848, and her old minister and mentor, Melbourne, on 24 Nov. 1848, while a year later George Anson, the prince's former secretary and now keeper of his privy purse, passed suddenly away, and his loss was severely felt by the queen. Another grief was the death, on 2 Dec. 1849 at Stanmore Priory, of the old Queen Adelaide, who was buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, beside William IV on 13 Dec. The summer of the following year (1850) was still more fruitful in episodes of mourning. On 3 July Peel succumbed to an accidental fall from his horse ; in him the queen said she lost not merely a friend, but a father. Five days later there died her uncle, the Duke of Cambridge ; on 26 Aug., Louis Philippe, whose fate of exile roused the queen's abiding sympathy ; and on 10 Oct. the French king's gentle daughter, the queen of the Belgians, wife of King Leopold. Minor anxieties were caused the queen by two brutal attacks upon her person : on 19 May 1849, when she was returning from a drive near Constitution Hill, a blank charge was fired at her from a pistol by an Irishman, William Hamilton of Adare, and on 27 May 1850 one Robert Pate, a retired officer, hit her on the head with a cane as she was leaving Cambridge House in Piccadilly, where the Duke of Cambridge was lying ill.

The last outrage was the more brutal, seeing that the queen was just recovering Prince from her confinement. Her third

son, Arthur, was born on 1 May 1850. The date was the Duke of Wellington's eighty-first birthday. A few weeks before the duke had delighted the queen by the injudicious suggestion that Prince Albert should become commander-in-chief of the army in succession to himself. The prince wisely declined the honour. Apart from other considerations his hands were over full already and his health was giving evidence of undue mental strain. But, by way of showing her appreciation of the duke's proposal, the queen made him godfather to her new-born son. A second sponsor was the prince of Prussia, and the christening took place on 22 June. The infant's third name, Patrick, commemorated the queen's recent Irish visit. At the time, despite family and political cares, the queen's health was exceptionally robust. On going north in the autumn, after inaugurating the high-level bridge at Newcastle and the Royal Border Bridge on the Scottish boundary at Berwick, she stopped two days in Edinburgh at Holyrood Palace, in order to climb Arthur's Seat. When she settled down to her holiday at Balmoral, she took energetic walking exercise and showed a physical briskness enabling her to face boldly annoyances in official life, which were now graver than any she had yet experienced.

The breach between the foreign minister (Palmerston) and the crown was growing wider each year. Foreign affairs interested the queen and her husband intensely. As they grew more complex the prince studied them more closely, and prepared memoranda with a view to counselling the foreign minister. But Palmerston rendered such efforts abortive by going his own way, without consulting the court or, at times, even his colleagues. The antagonism between Prince Albert's views, with which the queen identified herself, and those of Palmerston was largely based on principle. Palmerston consisteutly supported liberal movements abroad, even at the risk of exposing himself to the charge of encouraging revolution. Although the queen and the prince fully recognised the value of constitutional methods of government in England, and were by no means averse to their spread on the continent of Europe, their personal relations with foreign dynasties evoked strong sympathy with reigning monarchs and an active dread of revolution, which Palmerston seemed to them to view with a perilous complaisance. Through 1848, the year of revolution, the difference steadily grew. Palmerston treated with equanimity the revolutionary riots at Berlin, Vienna, and Baden in 1848-9, while they stirred in his royal mistress a poignant compassion for those crowned kinsmen or acquaintances whose lives and fortunes were menaced. When efforts were first made in Italy to secure national unity and to throw off the yoke of Austria, Palmerston spoke with benevolence of the endeavours of the Italian patriots. Although the prince strongly deprecated the cruelties which Italian rulers practised on their subjects, he and the queen cherished a warm sympathy with the Austrians and their emperor. In regard to Germany, on the other hand, the opposition between royal and ministerial opinions involved other considerations. The prince was well affected to the movement for national unity under Prussia's leadership. Palmerston's distrust of the weak reactionary Prussian king and his allies among the German princes rendered him suspicious of German nationalist aspirations. In the intricate struggle for the possession of the duchies