public dignities and funds--to satisfy the ambition and greed of
favourites or their friends--in the face of national bankruptcy,
private ruin, and widespread disaffection, in the very death-throes of
the Revolution, chose that time of all others to buy--under whatever
specious pretext of exchange and indemnification--for him who had
already so many hunting-seats, the fresh one of Rambouillet; for her,
who had Little Trianon in its perfection, the new suburban country
house of St. Cloud.

Osborne abounded in the advantages which the royal couple sought. It
was in the Isle of Wight, which her Majesty had loved in her girlhood,
with the girdle of sea that gave such assurance of the much-courted,
much-needed seclusion, as could hardly be procured elsewhere--
certainly not within a reasonable distance of London. It was a lovely
place by nature, with no end of capabilities for the practice of the
Prince's pleasant faculty of landscape-gardening, with which he had
already done wonders in the circumscribed grounds of Buckingham Palace
and the larger field of Windsor. There were not only woods and valleys
and charming points of view--among them a fine look at Spithead; the
woods went down to the sea, and the beach belonged to the estate. Such
a quiet country home for a country and home-loving Queen and Prince,
and for the little children, to whom tranquillity, freedom, the woods,
the fields, and the sea-sands were of such vital and lasting
consequence, was inestimable.

In addition to other outlets for an active, beneficent nature,
Osborne, with its works of building, planting, and improving going on
for years to come, had also its farms, like the Home Farm at Windsor.
And the Prince was fond of farming no less than of landscape-gardening
--proud of his practical success in making it pay, deeply interested