support, and love in an overwhelming manner.' She was so worn out by her efforts for peace that she could 'hardly hold up her head or hold her pen.'[15] England did not go to war, and Denmark was left to her fate; but how far the attitude of the Queen contributed to this result it is impossible, with our present knowledge, to say. On the whole, however, it seems probable that the determining factor in the situation was the {228} powerful peace party in the Cabinet rather than the imperious and pathetic pressure of Victoria. It is, at any rate, certain that the Queen's enthusiasm for the sacred cause of peace was short-lived. Within a few months her mind had completely altered. Her eyes were opened to the true nature of Prussia, whose designs upon Austria were about to culminate in the Seven Weeks' War. Veering precipitately from one extreme to the other, she now urged her Ministers to interfere by force of arms in support of Austria. But she urged in vain.[16] Her political activity, no more than her social seclusion, was approved by the public. As the years passed, and the royal mourning remained as unrelieved as ever, the animadversions grew more general and more severe. It was observed that the Queen's protracted privacy not only cast a gloom over high society, not only deprived the populace of its pageantry, but also exercised a highly deleterious effect upon the dress-making, millinery, and hosiery trades. This latter consideration carried great weight. At last, early in 1864, the rumour spread that Her Majesty was about to go out of mourning, and there was much rejoicing in the newspapers; but unfortunately it turned out that the rumour was quite without foundation. Victoria, with her own hand, wrote a letter to _The Times_ to say so. 'This idea,' she declared, 'cannot be too explicitly contradicted.' 'The Queen,' the letter continued, 'heartily appreciates the desire of her subjects to see her, and whatever she _can_ do to gratify them in this loyal and affectionate wish, she _will_ do.... But there are other and higher duties than those of mere representation which are now thrown upon the Queen, alone {229} and unassisted--duties which she cannot neglect without injury to the public service, which weigh unceasingly upon her, overwhelming her with work and anxiety.'[17] The justification might have been considered more cogent had it not been known that those 'other and higher duties' emphasised by the Queen consisted for the most part of an attempt to counteract the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. A large section--perhaps a majority--of the nation were violent partisans of Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein quarrel; and Victoria's support of Prussia was widely denounced. A wave of unpopularity, which reminded old observers of the period preceding the Queen's marriage more than twenty-five years before, was beginning to rise. The press was rude; Lord