became very nervous, and was inclined to shrink into solitude, even from
her children, and to find comfort nowhere but with the beloved consort who
was himself so soon to be taken from her.

The great blow which made the royal lady a widow, and deprived the whole
country of the throne's wisest and most disinterested counsellor, came on
the 14th of December 1861.

In the year 1861, what with public and private anxieties, the prince felt
ill and feverish, and miserable. He passed his last birthday on a visit to
Ireland, where the Prince of Wales was serving in the camp at the Curragh
of Kildare. From Ireland, the Queen, the prince, Prince Alfred, and the
Princesses Alice and Helena went to Balmoral; and there the prince enjoyed
his favourite pastime of deer-stalking. On the return to Windsor in
October, the Queen began to be anxious about her husband. One of the last
letters of the prince was to his daughter the Crown Princess of Prussia,
on her twenty-first birthday, and it shows the noble spirit which animated
his whole career. 'May your life, which has begun beautifully, expand
still further to the good of others and the contentment of your own mind!
True inward happiness is to be sought only in the internal consciousness
of effort systematically devoted to good and useful ends. Success, indeed,
depends upon the blessing which the Most High sees meet to vouchsafe to
our endeavours. May this success not fail you, and may your outward life
leave you unhurt by the storms to which the sad heart so often looks
forward with a shrinking dread.'

In conversation with the Queen, he seemed to have a presentiment that he
had not long to live. 'I do not cling to life; you do, but I set no store
by it. If I knew that those I love were well cared for, I should be quite
ready to die to-morrow.... I am sure, if I had a severe illness, I should