Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/238

 marriage took place not long after the date originally fixed, July 1st, 1862. In the autumn of the same year the Queen, who visited her uncle, King Leopold, at Laeken, arranged to meet, for the first time, her future daughter-in-law, the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Later, in 1862, the beautiful young Princess visited the widowed Queen at Windsor, and received a mother's welcome from that warm, tender heart. All references to the Princess of Wales throughout the Queen's journals and the Princess Alice's letters are most loving and tender. "Dear, sweet, gentle Alix," are among the many endearing epithets bestowed on her by her mother and sister-in-law. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales on March 10th, 1863, took place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. It was a most magnificent ceremonial, and was the first Royal marriage celebrated in that Chapel since that of Henry I. in 1122. At the wedding Prince William of Prussia, aged four, was placed between his two little uncles, Arthur and Leopold, who were instructed to keep him quiet. Bishop Wilberforce says that he resented any interference, and bit his uncles on their "bare Highland legs" if they tried to control him.

The good feeling among the various members of the English Royal Family was soon after this put to a severe test. The Schleswig-Holstein quarrel between Denmark and Germany came to a head in 1864, and war was declared, with the inevitable result that the little kingdom of Denmark was completely beaten by her powerful opponents, the combined Powers of Austria and Prussia. The King of Prussia was father-in-law of our Princess Royal. She and Princess Alice, as wife of another German Prince, naturally espoused the German side in the quarrel; the Prince and Princess of Wales, as naturally, espoused that of