Fortunately for the Crown Princess, the course of public events soon came to rouse her from her apathy and grief. Early in that same December which saw the death of the Prince Consort, the Prussian elections had resulted in large democratic gains, thus considerably weakening the Ministry. In a memorandum addressed to the Crown Prince just before he left for England to attend the funeral of his father-in-law, Duncker prophesied the fall of the Ministry, and for the first time suggested the plan of calling Bismarck to office. In his reports during the Ministerial crisis which followed, Duncker warned both the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess of the danger of trying to govern at one time with the Liberals and at another with the Conservatives. He advocated a Ministry composed of business rather than party men, who would know how to govern as Liberals on a Conservative basis; and he again urged that Bismarck should be utilised to strengthen the Ministry. The Crown Princess after her bereavement seemed to cling the more closely to the ties which bound her to the land of her birth and of her father's adoption, and this, as we shall see later, provoked a good deal of criticism in Berlin. She went to England as often as she could, or perhaps it would be truer to say as often as her father-in-law could be induced to give his permission. Her first visit after the Prince Consort's death was in March, 1862. Princess Mary of Cambridge went to Windsor especially to see her cousin. She says: "We found her well, and better in spirits than we expected." But it must have been a very sad and mournful time, for the Queen was "rigid as stone, the picture of desolate misery"; and everything reminded the Crown Princess of the father she had lost. In the following May, the Crown Prince, at the special request of Queen Victoria, represented his father at the Great Exhibition of 1862, but the Crown Princess, much to her regret, could not accompany him. He had served as chairman of the committee appointed to secure an adequate representation of German arts and industries, and had thus greatly promoted the success of the enterprise. The Crown Princess, however, went to England at the end of June to be present at the quiet wedding of her favourite sister, Princess Alice, to Prince Louis, afterwards Grand Duke of Hesse. It was solemnised at Osborne on July 1.