The early death of the Prince Consort had deprived her of her one intimate adviser, her one trusty friend, and for forty years she remained a lonely figure, widowed, and more than widowed, for her exalted station deprived her of the companionship which humbler people can enjoy. She had few friends, mostly ladies who had been with her in the happier days of her life. Among these, perhaps the chief were the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Ely, Lady Churchill and Lady Augusta Stanley. These all died before her—her last confidante was Lady Churchill, who predeceased her only by a few days. Her trusty friends, Sir Charles Phipps, Sir Thomas Biddulph and Sir Charles Grey, were long since dead. Sir Henry Ponsonby, her devoted and brilliant private secretary, who for so many years had served her most faithfully, died in 1895. Two excellent servants she had in Lord Stamfordham and Sir Fleetwood Edwardes, but she would not have been human had she not felt her solitude. Outliving is the curse of old age. Nor was it only among her own personal attendants that the Queen paid the tribute of sorrow which is the penalty of a long life. Two of her sons and one of her daughters predeceased her. The gallant Emperor Frederick, her much loved son-in-law, had died in 1888, her grandson, the Duke of Clarence, in 1892. The Ashanti War led to the death of another son-in-law, Prince Henry of Battenberg, in 1896. These are what may be called unnatural sorrows, though, unfortunately, they are common enough. That we should bury our fathers, though the grief be bitter and the loss irreparable, is in the ordinary course of nature; to bury our sons seems a cruel reversal of all fitness. Through those long, solitary years the Queen performed the duties of her Queenship with unflagging zeal and devotion, though she remained a mystery, felt but invisible. The people, though they would fain have had more opportunities of seeing her, respected her seclusion, knowing the value of their Sovereign, and proud of the successes of her reign. She came to the throne at a moment when the Crown was anything but popular. George the Fourth had greatly estranged his subjects, and William the Fourth was not the man to raise enthusiasm from the dead. That was reserved for a young Princess who was literally called out of her sleep to enter upon her high position when she was only eighteen years of age—a mere child. She made the people feel the value of a monarchy, and so, in the earthquake of 1848, when other thrones were tottering and falling, hers was as firm as a rock. Such slight disturbances as there were hardly excited alarm, and the Chartist rising, though important, was not an actual danger to the throne.