The habits of this Northern potentate were in some respects remarkably simple and austere. All through his life, he slept on a leathern sack, stuffed with hay or straw. The sack thus filled was stretched upon a camp-bed, and the Emperor never intermitted this custom, even when on a visit to foreign Courts. He produced a very marked impression on the Queen and Prince Albert, and the former, writing to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, on the 4th of June, observes of the Emperor:--“He is certainly a very striking man, still very handsome; his profile is beautiful, and his manners most dignified and graceful; extremely civil, quite alarmingly so, as he is so full of attention and _politesse_. But the expression of the eyes is severe, and unlike anything I ever saw before. He gives Albert and myself the impression of a man who is not happy, and on whom the burden of his immense power and position weighs heavily and painfully. He seldom smiles, and, when he does, the expression is not a happy one. He is very easy to get on with.” Lady Lyttelton says in one of her letters:--“The only fault in his face is that he has pale eyelashes, and his enormous and very brilliant eyes have no shade; besides which, they have the awful look given by occasional glimpses of white above the eyeball, which comes from his father Paul, I suppose, and gives a savage wildness, for a moment, pretty often.” He and the King of Saxony were delighted with Windsor, and the Emperor said that the English Court was conducted on the noblest scale of any Court he had ever seen, everything being done without effort, and as if it were the ordinary condition of affairs. The Autocrat of the Russias abounded in gallant speeches to the British sovereign, and pleased her much by his high praises of Prince Albert. Her Majesty was at first a good deal opposed to the visit, seeming to entertain some vague feelings of apprehension on political grounds; but, after a few days, she conceived a sentiment of friendship for him, and in writing to King Leopold expressed her conviction that he was truthful and sincere. She did not regard him as very clever, and she saw that his mind was far from cultivated. The arts, which were so dear to her own husband, he regarded with entire want of interest, and confined his attention solely to politics and military affairs. He showed much alarm about the condition of the East, and professed the greatest anxiety to be on good terms with this country. Speaking of sovereign rulers to her Majesty, he made use of an expression which was very remarkable as coming from him; being to the effect that in modern times all princes should strive to make themselves worthy of their position, so as to reconcile people to the fact of their being princes. This does not seem much in accordance with the ideas or practices of the Czar Nicholas; but his discernment may have taught him what his position, his passions, or his habits, did not allow him to carry out.