candidates mentioned there was only one with whom she had any acquaintance
to speak of, it may be supposed that the generality of the proposed wooers
passed like vague shadows before her imagination.

In the meantime the devoted friends of her whole life had naturally not
left this question--the most important of all--entirely unapproached. Her
English cousins stood to her somewhat in the room of contemporary brothers
and sisters; for her own brother and sister, however united to her in
affection, were removed from her by age, by other ties, and by residence in
a foreign country, to which in 1833 there was still no highway well trodden
by the feet of kings and queens and their heirs-presumptive, as well as by
meaner people, such as we find to-day. But there were other cousins of whom
much had been said and heard, though they had remained unseen and
personally unknown. For that very reason they were more capable of being
idealised and surrounded by a halo of romance.

At the little ducal Court of Coburg there was the perfect young prince of
all knightly legends and lays, whom fate seemed to have mated with his
English cousin from their births within a few months of each other. When he
was a charming baby of three years the common nurse of the pair would talk
to him of his little far-away royal bride. The common grandmother of the
two, a wise and witty old lady, dwelt fondly on the future union of her
youngest charge with the "Mayflower" across the seas.

In all human probability these grandmotherly predictions would have come to
nothing had it not been for a more potent arbiter of the fortunes of his
family. King Leopold had once filled the very post which was now vacant,
for which there were so many eager aspirants. None could know as he knew
the manifold and difficult requirements for the office; none could care as
he cared that it should be worthily filled. His interest in England had