Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/145

 when she became possessed of country homes, one in the Isle of Wight, and the other in Scotland, that were entirely her own. When the purchase of Osborne was just accomplished, the Queen wrote (March 25th, 1845) to her uncle at Brussels, "It sounds so pleasant to have a place of one's own, quiet and retired, and free from all Woods and Forests and other charming departments, which really are the plague of one's life."

The purchase of the estate and the building of the house, costing something like £200,000, were met by the Queen without difficulty out of her income, so greatly had her resources been practically increased by good management and wise economy in the administration of the household. In the same spirit the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, the property of the Prince of Wales, were carefully managed for his benefit, so that a very large property from them awaited him as soon as he attained his majority. The Prince Consort's love for landscape gardening found ample scope both at Osborne and Balmoral. The work was for several years a constant source of recreation and delight to him. Of Osborne in particular, he felt that he could say that the gardens were his creation; there was hardly a tree in the grounds that had not been placed there by him. Lady Canning wrote from Osborne in 1846, in one of her private letters, "You will be pleased to hear of this rural retreat. … Whatever it is, it perfectly enchants the Queen and Prince, and you never saw anything so happy as they are with the five babies playing round about them." The Royal children had at Osborne a place that was especially their own, a thing that all children love; thousands of country homes all over England have some Noah's Ark or Pigs' Paradise, where the boys and girls are masters of the situation, and may car-