This union was equally close domestically and politically. We have already seen that to be parted from her husband, even for a day or two, was a serious trial to the Queen. The Prince went to Liverpool for a couple of days in 1846, and the Queen wrote to Stockmar in her husband’s absence, “I feel very lonely without my dear master; and though I know other people are often separated for a few days, I feel that it could not make me get accustomed to it.... Without him everything loses its interest.... It will always be a terrible pang to me to separate from him, even for a few days, and I pray God never to let me survive him. I glory in his being seen and loved.” The pathos of the words in the light of after events needs no emphasis; but no one who has loved and been loved as she has, should be called unhappy. It was also to Stockmar that the Prince confided his own most sacred feelings upon the priceless treasure his marriage had brought him. Writing to his trusted friend to pour out his grief on the death of his father, the Duke of Coburg, in 1844, the Prince says: “Just such is Victoria to me, who feels and shares my grief, and is the treasure upon which my whole existence rests. The relation in which we stand to one another leaves nothing to desire. It is a union of heart and soul, and is therefore noble, and in it the poor children shall find their cradle, so as to be able one day to insure a like happiness for themselves.” When Prince Albert’s political influence first began to be felt, he was generally supposed to be a Tory; Greville repeatedly speaks of him as if he were a Tory; but from the wider knowledge which the publication of his correspondence has given, it is clear that his mind was on many subjects far in advance of even the Whig statesmanship of the day; for instance, he was a convinced Free Trader at the time when Melbourne was declaring that the repeal of the Corn Laws was the most insane proposal that had ever entered the human brain. He was ardently in favor of the reform of university education so as to bring the universities more closely into touch with the needs of modern life. He foresaw that German unity was the necessary condition of German greatness,[14] and urged the necessity of the smaller German princes making the sacrifices requisite to the attainment of this great end, which was not achieved till nearly ten years after his own death. The Prince was thoroughly imbued with the sound principle that in politics reform is the best, indeed the only, safeguard against revolution. His mind, politically, was not unlike that of Sir Robert Peel, presenting a combination of Liberal opinions with extreme caution in regard to the time and method of giving effect to them.