So began the happy years of peaceful married life. The prince liked early hours and country pleasures, and the Queen, like a loyal wife, not merely consented to his tastes, but made them absolutely her own. Before she had been married a year, she made the naive pretty confession that 'formerly I was too happy to go to London and wretched to leave it, and now, since the blessed hour of my marriage, and still more since the summer, I dislike and am unhappy to leave the country, and would be content and happy never to go to town;' adding ingenuously, 'The solid pleasures of a peaceful, quiet, yet merry life in the country, with my inestimable husband and friend, my all in all, are far more durable than the amusements of London, though we don't despise or dislike them sometimes.' They took breakfast at nine; then they went through details of routine business, and sketched or played till luncheon, after which the Queen had a daily interview with Lord Melbourne (prime-minister till the next year). Then they drove, walked, or rode, dined at eight o'clock, and had pleasant social circles afterwards, which were broken up before midnight. Both were fond of art and music. Indeed the Prince-Consort gave a powerful impulse to that study of classical music which has since become so universal. Mendelssohn himself praised the Queen's singing, though without flattering blindness to its faults and shortcomings. And the brightness of life was all the brighter because it flowed over a substratum of seriousness and solemnity. The first time that the Queen and her husband partook of holy communion together, they spent the preceding evening--the vigil of Easter--in retirement, occupied with good German books, and soothed and elevated by Mozart's music, for the prince was master of the organ, and the Queen of the piano. The prince made his maiden speech at a meeting for the abolition of the slave-trade, speaking in a low tone, and with 'the prettiest foreign accent.' While she was driving up Constitution Hill, an attempt was made upon the Queen's life by a weak-minded youth, but luckily neither of the pistol shots took effect. There have been at least seven other happily futile attempts on the life of the Queen. The Princess Royal was born on the 21st November 1840; and the royal mother, fondly tended by her husband, made a speedy and happy recovery. Prince Albert's care for the Queen in these circumstances was like that of a mother. The Prince of Wales was born on November 9, 1841, and after that the little family circle rapidly increased, and with it the parents' sense of responsibility. 'A man's education begins the first day of his life,' said the prince's tried friend, the wise Baron Stockmar, and the Queen felt it 'a hard case' that the pressure of public business prevented her from being always with her little ones when they said their prayers. She has given us her views on religious training: