Of course one of the chief questions with regard to the new queen was that of her marriage. Usually the marriage of a sovereign was practically settled as a question of statecraft, but Victoria showed no inclination to allow her domestic life to be regulated by her ministers. In 1836 there had visited her at Kensington Palace her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg, and Victoria had looked upon him very favorably. Her uncle Leopold of Belgium, who had always been one of her chief advisers, desired her to marry Albert, and urged the matter after her accession to the throne, but Victoria's answer was, "I am too young and he is too young. I shall not think of marrying for four years yet." However, when in 1839 Albert and his brother came to England, it was unnecessary for uncle or ministers to urge upon Victoria the wisdom of a speedy marriage; her own heart was her counselor, and Albert had not been long in the palace, before the queen, to whom it was impossible that he should propose marriage, proposed marriage to him. She persisted in looking upon it as a sacrifice on Albert's part, but we may readily believe that he looked upon it in no such manner. They were married on February 10, 1840, and then began a life of domestic happiness which was unbroken until the death of Albert. Immediately after the wedding the young couple drove to Windsor, passing through over twenty miles of frantically cheering, loyal subjects. On their return, after a brief season of seclusion, to Buckingham Palace, Victoria turned her attention at once to her royal duties, and Albert showed himself from the outset a man peculiarly fitted to aid and advise her. His one desire was to sink his own individuality in that of the queen, but this was by no means her desire. She could not bear that her husband should be regarded as in any way subordinate to herself--that he should be forced to take a lower seat, or to walk behind her; and it was a real grief to her that she was not able to bestow upon him the title of "King Consort" rather than that of "Prince Consort." In one of her first letters after her marriage, Victoria said of her husband, "There cannot exist a purer, dearer, nobler being in the world than the prince," and this same attitude toward her husband she kept throughout her life.