Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/32

24 of the slave trade; Prince Leopold was deeply interested in its abolition. The same antagonism between them ran through all subjects, great and small.

These anecdotes of the coarseness and brutality of the Queen's immediate predecessors have been recalled for the purpose of illustrating the extreme difficulty of the position in which the Duchess of Kent found herself from the time of her husband's death to that of her daughter's accession. It also serves to explain an expression used in after years by the Queen in reference to her choice of the name of Leopold for her youngest son, where she says, "It is the name which is dearest to me after Albert, one which recalls the almost only happy days of my sad childhood." But if the Princess Victoria was unfortunate in some of her uncles, her uncle Leopold went far to redress the balance. At one time the prospect before him, as husband of Princess Charlotte, had been identical with the position afterwards occupied by Prince Albert. He had become a naturalized Englishman, and he had given great thought and study to the English Constitutional history, and particularly to the duties and responsibilities of a Constitutional monarch. He had strong personal ambition, disciplined by ability and conscientiousness. In 1817 the death of his wife dashed the cup of ambition from his lips. A contemporary letter speaks of him as Adam "turned out of Paradise without his Eve." From the important position of husband of the Heiress Apparent he sunk in one day to that of a subordinate member of the Royal Family, necessarily, as we have seen, out of sympathy with them and aloof from them. "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not," was the lesson of 1817 to him. With great power of personal abnegation, his disappointment did not imbitter him, his ambition did not turn sour. He trans-