Formerly the great officers of the Crown were charged with the oversight of the commonest domestic business of the palace. Being non-resident, these overseers did no overseeing, and the actual servants were practically masterless. Hence arose numberless vexations and extravagant hindrances. In 1843 this objectionable form of the division of labour was brought to an end, and one Master of the household who did his work replaced the many officials who, by a fiction of etiquette, had been formerly supposed to do everything while they did and could do nothing. The long-needed reform could not but be pleasing to the Queen, being quite in harmony with the upright principles that had always ruled her conduct, she having begun her reign by paying off the debts of her dead father--debts contracted not in her lifetime nor on her account, and which a spirit less purely honourable might therefore have declined to recognise. [Illustration: Osborne House.] Thanks to the Prince's able management, the royal pair found it in their power to purchase for themselves the estate of Osborne, in the Isle of Wight--a charming retreat all their own, which they could adorn for their delight with no thought of the thronging public; where the Prince could farm and build and garden to his heart's content, and all could escape from the stately restraints of their burdensome rank, and from "the bitterness people create for themselves in London." Before very long they found for themselves that Highland holiday home of Balmoral which was to be so peculiarly dear, and in which Her Majesty--whose first visit to the _then_ discontented Scotland was deemed quite a risky experiment--was so completely to win for herself the admiring love of her Scottish subjects. At Balmoral Mr. Greville saw them some little time after their acquisition of the place, and witnesses to the "simplicity and ease" with which they lived, to the gay good humour that pervaded their circle--"the Queen running in and out of the house all day long, often going out alone, walking into the cottages, sitting down and chatting with the old women," the Prince free from trammels of etiquette, showing what native charm of manner and what high, cultivated intelligence were really his. The impression is identical with that conveyed by Her Majesty's published Journal of that Highland life; and, though lacking the many graceful details of that record, the testimony has its own value. Happy indeed was the Sovereign for whom the black cloud of those years showed such a silver lining! Other potentates were less happy, both as regarded their private blessings and their public fortunes.