"There is no one near me to call me 'Victoria' now!" is said to have been the desolate cry of the Queen, when, on waking from that first sleep, the cruel morning light, smote upon her with a full consciousness of her bereavement, and a new sense of her royal isolation. She was on a height where the storm beat fiercest and there was the least shelter. Her sacred grief was the business of the world;--she could not long shut herself up with it, and fold her hands in "blameless idleness"; but as the widowed mother and housekeeper in humble life struggles up from the great stroke, and staggers on, resolutely driving back the tears which "hinder needle and thread," and choking down her sobs, to go wearily about her household tasks,--so Victoria, after a little time, rose trembling to her feet, and went through with such imperative State duties as could be delegated to no one. To a near friend, who expressed joy to find her more calm than at the time of her mother's death, she said simply, "I have had God's teaching, and learned to bear all He lays upon me." There is a record by Lord Beaconsfield of her faithful discharge of such duties a few years later; but what was true of her then, was almost as true an account of the routine of her official life, during a large part of the first years of her widowhood. In a public speech, Beaconsfield said: "There is not a dispatch received from abroad, or sent from this country abroad, which is not submitted to the Queen. The whole of the internal administration of this country greatly depends upon the sign- manual of our Sovereign, and it may be said that her signature has never been placed to any public document of which she did not know the purpose and of which she did not approve. Those cabinet councils of which you all hear, and which are necessarily the scene of anxious and important deliberation, are reported, on their termination, by the Minister to the Sovereign, and they often call from her critical remarks requiring considerable attention; and I will venture to say that no person likely to administer the affairs of this country would be likely to treat the suggestions of Her Majesty with indifference, for at this moment there is probably no person living who has such complete control over the political condition of England as the Sovereign herself." I have come upon few incidents of that first sad year. The Princess Alice was married very quietly at Osborne, and went away to her German home, where she lived for seventeen happy years, a noble and beneficent life. In character she was very like her father--to whose soul hers was so knit, that, when in her last illness, the anniversary of his death came round, she seemed to hear his call, and went to him at once in child- like obedience. She took that fatal illness--the diphtheria--from a dear child in a kiss, "the kiss of death," as Lord Beaconsfield called it.