During most of this anxious time it is hardly necessary to say that the domestic life of the Queen was one of wearing excitement. At the outset of the diplomatic disputes in which her Government entangled the country it seems that she paid rather less attention than usual to foreign affairs. Palmerston was no longer at the Foreign Office, and in Lord Aberdeen, who was at the head of the Government, the Queen put the most implicit confidence. She had formed a habit of regarding him as the _beau idéal_ of a “safe” Minister, and thus, when she sat down every morning to read her official correspondence, her Majesty approached all the projects of her Government, if not with a decided bias in favour of them, at any rate without that wholesome prepossession of suspicion, that rendered her a keen and searching critic of the Foreign Policy of the country when it was under the direction of Lord Palmerston. It was not till late in the autumn that the Queen’s correspondence, so far as it has been made public, shows a disposition on her part to resume the tone of independent, outspoken, but confidential criticism, that so often checked the vagaries of Lord John Russell’s Cabinet. The Queen, in fact, put too much confidence in the sagacity of the Coalition Government. The Coalition Government, conscious that, so long as Aberdeen could be persuaded to endorse their doings, they would not be very jealously scrutinised by the Crown, entered with a light heart on the most dangerous course of diplomacy. The Queen, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and the Czar all set out with the most sincere and unbounded confidence in each other. In little more than twelve months they were accordingly in almost irreconcilable controversy. [Illustration: THE THRONE ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.] After the Coalition Ministry was formed, what the Queen dreaded most was that it might break up over the question of Parliamentary Reform, or over some dispute as to the Premiership, in the event of Lord Aberdeen resigning office. Aberdeen was old and somewhat infirm, and there can be little doubt that he would have resigned soon after the Coalition was organised had not the Eastern Question risen to tie him to his post. Lord John Russell had some notion that he would be Aberdeen’s successor, and it was his fixed idea that his scheme for reforming Parliament would not have a fair chance, unless it were launched by him with all the prestige of the Premier’s advocacy in its favour. Some members of the Cabinet did not desire that this scheme should be launched at all; others, like Palmerston, were determined that it should not be launched, and that Lord John should not be Premier. A few weeks after the Ministry was constituted Lord John resigned the seals of the Foreign Office to Lord Clarendon, becoming a Minister without an office, but retaining the leadership of the House of Commons. The Queen warned him that he would grow discontented with [Illustration: SEBASTOPOL.]