reviews as seemed to his thoughtful mind to be good or important. At ten
he went out with the Queen.

So began the happy years of peaceful married life. The prince liked early
hours and country pleasures, and the Queen, like a loyal wife, not merely
consented to his tastes, but made them absolutely her own. Before she had
been married a year, she made the naive pretty confession that 'formerly I
was too happy to go to London and wretched to leave it, and now, since the
blessed hour of my marriage, and still more since the summer, I dislike
and am unhappy to leave the country, and would be content and happy never
to go to town;' adding ingenuously, 'The solid pleasures of a peaceful,
quiet, yet merry life in the country, with my inestimable husband and
friend, my all in all, are far more durable than the amusements of London,
though we don't despise or dislike them sometimes.'

They took breakfast at nine; then they went through details of routine
business, and sketched or played till luncheon, after which the Queen had
a daily interview with Lord Melbourne (prime-minister till the next year).
Then they drove, walked, or rode, dined at eight o'clock, and had pleasant
social circles afterwards, which were broken up before midnight. Both were
fond of art and music. Indeed the Prince-Consort gave a powerful impulse
to that study of classical music which has since become so universal.
Mendelssohn himself praised the Queen's singing, though without flattering
blindness to its faults and shortcomings. And the brightness of life was
all the brighter because it flowed over a substratum of seriousness and
solemnity. The first time that the Queen and her husband partook of holy
communion together, they spent the preceding evening--the vigil of
Easter--in retirement, occupied with good German books, and soothed and
elevated by Mozart's music, for the prince was master of the organ, and
the Queen of the piano. The prince made his maiden speech at a meeting for