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 royal family. Not merely did it humiliate the imperial house by allying it with a prince of inferior social standing, but it compromised the good relations of Berlin with St. Petersburg, where Prince Alexander was heartily disliked. Bismarck even credited the queen with a deliberate design of alienating Russia and Germany in the hope of bringing about an Anglo-German alliance and against the tsar. When the queen reached Charlottenburg this awkward dispute was at its height. The Empress Frederick stood by her daughter, who was unwilling to abandon Prince Alexander. The dying emperor and his son, the Crown Prince William, in vain endeavoured to move her. Prince Bismarck threatened resignation unless Prince Alexander was summarily dismissed. On 24 April the queen, after much conversation with her daughter, boldly discussed the question in all its bearings with Prince Bismarck. He forced her to realise the complications that resistance to his will would raise, and, yielding to his power, she used her influence with her daughter and granddaughter to induce them to break off the engagement with Prince Alexander. Reluctantly they yielded. The Crown Prince William, who had stoutly opposed his mother, was by the queen's persuasion reconciled to her, and domestic harmony was restored. On the night of her interview with Bismarck, the queen attended a state banquet in the Charlottenburg Palace, and the reconciliation was ratified. None the less the queen always took a kindly interest in Prince Alexander, whose humiliation she deplored; and though she regretted his marriage next year (6 Feb. 1889) to Fraülein Loisinger, a singer at the Dresden and Darmstadt court theatres, she used no harsh language, merely remarking pathetically, 'Perhaps they loved one another.' The prince barely survived his marriage four years; he died on 17 Feb. 1893.

On 15 June 1888 the Emperor Frederick died. A week later the queen wrote from Windsor to her friend, Archbishop Benson: 'The contrast between this year and the last jubilee one is most painful and remarkable. Who could have thought that that splendid, noble, knightly prince—as good as he was brave and noble—who was the admiration of all, would on the very day year (yesterday) be no longer in this world? His loss is indeed a very mysterious dispensation, for it is such a very dreadful public as well as private misfortune' (Life of Archbishop Benson, ii. 211). Court mourning prevented any celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the queen's coronation on 28 June. But on her visit Balmoral in the autumn she took part in several public ceremonials. She stayed with Sir Archibald Campbell at Blythswood in Renfrewshire in order to open new municipal buildings at Glasgow, and to visit the exhibition there. She also went to Paisley, which was celebrating the fourth centenary of its incorporation as a borough. In November the widowed Empress Frederick was her mother's guest at Windsor for the first of many times in succeeding years; the queen showed her the unusual attention of meeting her on her landing in England at Port Victoria (19 Nov.)

During 1889 the queen's health was good and her activity undiminished. Her spring holiday was spent for the first time at Biarritz, in former days the favoured health resort of the queen's friend, the Empress Eugenie (6 March to 1 April). On 27 March she made an excursion into Spain to visit the queen-regent at San Sebastian. This was another new experience for an English sovereign. None before had set foot on Spanish soil, although Charles I and Charles II went thither princes. On her return to England she was distressed by the death of her aunt, Duchess of Cambridge, at the age of ninety-one (6 April). The final link with her childhood was thus severed. The queen wished the duchess to be buried at Windsor, but her aunt had left instructions that she should be buried beside her husband at Kew. The queen was present at her funeral on the 13th, and placed a wreath on the coffin. At the end of the month she paid a visit to her son at Sandringham, and on the 26th she witnessed there a performance by (Sir) Henry Irving and his company of 'The Bells' and the trial scene from 'The Merchant of Venice.' It was the second time that the queen had permitted herself to witness a dramatic performance since the prince consort's death. The first occasion, which was near the end of her twentieth year of widowhood, was also afforded by the prince and princess of Wales, who, when at Abergeldie Castle in 1881, induced the queen to come there and see a London company of actors perform Mr. Burnand's comedy of 'The Colonel' (11 Oct. 1881).

In May 1889 she laid the foundation-stone of new buildings at Eton (on the 18th), and she reviewed troops at Aldershot (on the 31st). On 3 June she presented at Windsor new colours to the regiment with which she had already closely identified herself, Princess Victoria's royal Irish fusiliers; she had presented colours to it in 1833 and 1866. Next