Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/446

 that she showed to any other minister of her reign. But her present experience of Disraeli and his colleagues was brief. A general election in July left the conservatives in a minority.

In the same month the queen made a cruise in the royal yacht on the south coast, and a few weeks later paid a second private visit to King Leopold at his summer palace at Laeken. The weather was bad, but on returning she visited the chief objects of interest in Antwerp, and steered close to Calais, so that she might see it. When at Balmoral later in the autumn, information reached her of the generous bequest to her by an eccentric subject, John Camden Neild, of all his fortune, amounting to a quarter of a million. The elation of spirit which this news caused her was succeeded by depression on hearing of the death of the Duke of Wellington on 14 Sept. 'He was to us a true friend, she wrote to her uncle Leopold, 'and most valuable adviser ... we shall soon stand sadly alone. Aberdeen is almost the only personal friend of that kind left to us. Melbourne, Peel, Liverpool, now the Duke all gone.' The queen issued a general order of regret to the army, and she put her household into mourning. She went to the lying in state in Chelsea Hospital, and witnessed the funeral procession to St. Paul's from the balcony of Buckingham Palace on 18 Nov.

On 11 Nov. the queen opened the new parliament. Lord Derby was still prime minister, but the position of the government was hopeless. On 3 Dec. Disraeli's budget was introduced, and on the 17th it was thrown out by a majority of nineteen. Lord Derby promptly resigned.

For six years the queen's government had been extraordinarily weak. Parties were disorganised, and no leader request joyed the full confidence of any large section of the House of Commons. A reconstruction of ministry. party seemed essential to the queen and the prince. In November she had discussed with Lord Derby a possible coalition, and the ehief condition she then imposed was that Palmerston should not lead the House of Commons. When Derby resigned she made up her mind to give her views effect. She sent for veteran statesmen on each side, Lord Aberdeen and Lord Lansdowne, both of whom she had known long and fully trusted. Lansdowne was ill, and Aberdeen came alone. On 19 Dec. she wrote to Lord John Russell (, Life, iii. 161) : 'The queen thinks the moment to have arrived when a popular, efficient, and durable government could be formed by the sincere and united efforts of all parties professing conservative and liberal opinions.' Aberdeen undertook to form such a government, with the queen's assistance. Palmerston's presence was deemed essential, and she raised no objection to his appointment to the home office. The foreign office was bestowed on Lord John, who almost immediately withdrew from it in favour of the queen's friend, Lord Clarendon. On 28 Dec. Aberdeen had completed his task, and the queen wrote with sanguine satisfaction to her uncle Leopold of 'our excellent Aberdeen's success,' and of the 'realisation of the country's and of our own most ardent wishes.'

Thus the next year opened promisingly, but it proved a calm before a great storm. On 7 April 1853 the queen's fourth and youngest son was born, and was named Leopold, after the queen's uncle, King Leopold, who was his godfather. George, the new king of Hanover, was also a sponsor, and the infant's third name of Duncan celebrated the queen's affection for Scotland. She was not long in retirement, and public calls were numerous. Military training, in view of possible warlike complications on the continent, was proceeding actively with the queen's concurrence. Twice—21 June and 5 August 1853—she visited, the first time with her guests, the new king and queen of Hanover, a camp newly formed on Chobham Common, and (on 5 Aug. 1901) a granite cross was unveiled to commemorate the first of these visits. In the interval between the two the queen, Prince Albert, the prince of Wales, Princess Royal, and Princess Alice had been disabled by an attack of measles, and Prince Albert, to the queen's alarm, suffered severely from nervous prostration. On 11 Aug. the navy was encouraged by a great naval review which the queen held at Spithead. Before the month ended the queen paid a second visit to Dublin, in order to inspect an exhibition of Irish industries to Dublin, which was framed on the model of the Great Exhibition of 1851. A million Irish men and women are said to have met her on her landing at Kingstown. The royal party stayed in Dublin from 30 Aug. to 3 Sept., and attended many public functions. As on the former occasion, the queen spent, she said, 'a pleasant, gay, and interesting time.'

Throughout 1852 the queen continued her frank avowals of repugnance to personal intercourse with Napoleon III. Her relations with the exiled royal family of France