need any instruction from him, and that the length of time he had known me was a guarantee that the Prince was in good hands. Turning to his wife he smiled, and said in an undertone, “I trained Griesheim, and now he shall train our son.’”[246] Prince Frederick William had thoroughly fulfilled the hopes of his parents and his tutor, and he was precisely the type of man likely to win favour in Prince Albert’s eyes. It was, therefore, with supreme disgust that the Queen and her husband discovered an attempt would be made to prejudice public opinion against the marriage. The engagement was not to be announced till after Easter. And yet the _Times_ began to attack the Queen, Prince Albert, and the Prussian Court, for bringing about such an alliance. The country was told that the Princess Royal was being sacrificed to “a paltry German dynasty,” and Prince Fritz was jeered at as a poor creature, who would have to pick up a livelihood in the Russian service, and “pass these years which flattering anticipation now destines to a Crown, in ignominious attendance as a General Officer on the levee of his Imperial master, having lost even the privilege of his birth, which is conceded to no German in Russia.” Malignity as well as ignorance inspired this abuse, for it was at that time the cue of a certain section of polite society to hold Prince Albert up to odium on every possible occasion as a tool of the despotic European Courts. As a matter of fact, the young Prince’s sympathies were with the Opposition rather than with the Government in Prussia, and he was in the habit of seeking Prince Albert’s advice as to how he should steer his course in the stormy sea of Prussian politics. Very sound and wise guidance did the Prince get from his future father-in-law, who viewed with delight and hopefulness his assiduous efforts to fit himself for his high destiny. “In another way,” he writes to the young Prince, “Vicky is also busy; she has learned much in various directions.... She now comes to me every evening from six to seven, when I put her through a kind of general catechising, and, in order to give precision to her ideas, I make her work out certain subjects by herself, and bring me the results to be revised. Thus she is now engaged in writing a short compendium of Roman history.”[247] [Illustration: THE WOOING OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL.] On the 30th of November the King of Sardinia, accompanied by Count Cavour, arrived in London to visit the Queen and Prince Albert. A rough, frank, good-humoured cavalry officer, passionately devoted to field sports, and fired with an ardent love of Italy and a bitter hatred of all foes of Italian Unity--such was our ally, Victor Emmanuel. He had been preceded by his social reputation in Paris, which was, in truth, such as to make the Queen somewhat nervous. Lord Malmesbury, writing in his Diary on the 29th of November, says, “The King of Sardinia, who is here (Paris), is as vulgar and coarse as possible.”[248]