With all these things he found time to carefully overlook the education of his children. The Prince of Wales was now thought old enough to be placed under a tutor, and one was selected--a Mr. Birch (let us hope the name was not significant), "a young, good-looking, amiable man," who had himself taken "the highest honors at Cambridge";--doubtless a great point those highest Cambridge honors, for the instructor of an eight-years-old boy. For all the ability and learning of his tutor, it is said that the Prince of Wales never took to the classics with desperate avidity. He was never inclined to waste his strength or dim his pleasant blue eyes over the midnight oil. Prince Albert never gave the training of his boys up wholly to the most accomplished instructors. His was still, while he lived, the guiding, guarding spirit. The Queen was equally faithful in the discharge of her duties to her children--especially to her daughters. In her memoranda I find many admirable passages which reveal her peculiarly simple, domestic, affectionate system of home government. The religious training of her little ones she kept as much as possible in her own hands, still the cares of State and the duties of royal hospitality would interfere, and, writing of the Princess Royal, in 1844, she says: "It is a hard case for me that my occupations prevent me from being with her when she says her prayers." Some instructions which she gave to this child's governess should be printed in letters of gold: "I am quite clear that she should be taught to have great reverence for God and for religion, but that she should have the feeling of devotion and love which our heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling; and that thoughts of death and an after life should not be represented in an alarming and forbidding view; and that she should be made to know as yet no difference of creeds, and not think that she can only pray on her knees, or that those who do not kneel are less fervent or devout in their prayers."