Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/211



year 1861 closed the book of the happy wedded life of the Queen. The hand of death lay heavy upon her, and took from her first her mother, and then her husband. The death of her mother was her first very great sorrow. Her half-brother, Prince Charles of Leiningen, had died in 1856; but his life and hers, during his latter years, had lain very much apart, and though she mourned him deeply and truly, he had not made part of her life, and his death could not be to her what the death of her mother was, who had watched over her from childhood, and with whom she passed part of almost every day; still less could it bring the loneliness and desolation in which the Queen was left by the death of her husband, "her dearest life in life," as she had called him.

The Duchess of Kent died in March, 1861. There is no consolation in being told that such a loss is common. It is not common to the heart that has to bear it. The Queen felt, as all must feel when death takes from them a beloved parent, that part of her life was gone which nothing could restore. She wrote in the diary so often quoted:—

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