and supported her then, and on many another hard day, by brotherly
kindness, sympathy, and generous help. It was in his company that she came
back with her child to Kensington.

One element of the Coburg character has been described as the sound
judgment and quiet reasonableness associated with the temperate blood of
the race. Accordingly, we find the Duchess not only submitting with gentle
resignation to misfortune, but rousing herself, as her brother might have
done in her circumstances--as doubtless he urged her to do--to the active
discharge of the duties of her position. On the 23rd of February, before
the first month of her widowhood was well by, she received Viscount
Morpeth and Viscount Clive, the deputation bearing to her the address of
condolence from the House of Commons. She met them with the infant
Princess in her arms. The child was not only the sign that she fully
appreciated and acknowledged the nature of the tie which united her to the
country, it was the intimation of the close inseparable union with her
daughter which continued through all the years of the Queen's childhood
and youth, till the office of sovereign forced its holder into a separate
existence; till she found another fitting protector, when the generous,
ungrudging mother gave way to the worthy husband, who became the dutiful,
affectionate son of the Duchess's declining years.

Five months after these events the Duchess, at her own request, had an
interview with William Wilberforce, then living in the house at Kensington
Gore which was occupied later by the Countess of Blessington and Count
D'Orsay. "She received me," the good man wrote to Hannah More, "with her
fine, animated child on the floor by her side, with its playthings, of
which I soon became one. She was very civil, but, as she did not sit down,
I did not think it right to stop above a quarter of an hour; and there
being but a female attendant and a footman present, I could not well get