Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/141

 suffer it to be read in her chapels. The Queen's children were not taught to dwell on the supernatural features of the Christian religion, but rather upon the pure and comprehensive morality which it teaches as its essential and indestructible element; they were taught that the conditions of belief in the former may and did vary in various stages of human development, but that the latter was the bed-rock on which the whole structure was founded.

The Queen and Prince, like other parents, took the keenest and most intense delight in the evidence given from time to time that their children had gifts of mind which would have fitted them to excel in whatever position of life they had been placed. Frequent reference will be found in the following pages to their pride in the remarkable intellectual gifts of the Princess Royal, who was described while still a young girl as having "a statesmanlike mind." Their boys were trained as carefully as if no royal road to distinction lay open to them. On returning from their first visit to their married daughter in Prussia in 1858, the Queen and Prince were met by the "delightful news that Affie" (Prince Alfred, aged 14) "had passed an excellent examination" (into the Navy) "and had received his appointment." He met his father and mother at the private pier at Portsmouth "in his middie's jacket, cap, and dirk, half blushing and looking very happy. He is a little pulled down from these three days' hard examination, which only terminated to-day. … We felt very proud, as it is a particularly hard examination."