The circumstances of our long visit to Osborne on this occasion might have been in a sense more "pleasant," had they not been dashed, as they were, by the brief but alarming illness of Prince Leopold, and by the very painful accident to myself. But more auspicious they could not have been for my purpose as biographer of the Prince Consort, or my relations to Her Majesty and the Royal Family. Their kind natures were drawn to me by sympathy, as, but for my accident, they might not have been, and one and all vied in making both my wife and myself feel thoroughly at home. With regard to the Queen herself, frequent personal interviews did what no amount of correspondence could have done. They served to confirm the confidence with which I had been previously regarded, a confidence essential to the successful execution of my task. Insincerity, selfishness, obsequiousness could not live before her, and when her trust was given, her own sincere, sensitive, womanly nature was stirred, and it revealed itself with a frankness, a considerateness, and a courtesy that were irresistibly fascinating, and raised loyalty to chivalrous devotion. CHAPTER II. The letters above quoted show how deeply the Queen felt hurt by the severe remarks of many of the journals as to her seclusion and disappearance from the ceremonials of public life for some years after the death of the Prince Consort. Her Majesty must also have been aware that comments to the same effect were current in general society, where the accustomed gaieties of the Court remained at a standstill. Indeed one sometimes hears them still urged in reproach to her otherwise faultless life as a Sovereign, as though her duty to the State had been sacrificed to a morbid indulgence in the sorrows of her personal bereavement. At one time there might have been some excuse for such an impression, but there is none now. People did not then know, as they know now, how heavy a weight of labour and anxiety had been thrown upon the Queen by the death of the Prince. During his life her labours as Sovereign had been lightened by the constant presence at her side of a counsellor to whom the welfare of the Empire was as dear as to herself, whose life was merged in hers, on whose strong brain and constant devotion she had, for over twenty years, been accustomed to lean for support and guidance. While he lived, the cares of Royalty pressed comparatively lightly upon the Queen. But when he died the full burden of them fell upon her; and from that moment she became the most lonely of women--for who is so lonely as the survivor of two beings whose mutual devotion has been so all-sufficing that they have never looked elsewhere for mental companionship or support? How much more so if the survivor be a woman!