On the 30th of July, 1849, the Prince held a conference at Buckingham Palace with four confidential persons--Mr. Henry Cole, Mr. Francis Fuller, Mr. Scott Russell, and Mr. Thomas Cubitt, and they resolved to hold the exhibition if possible, not in the quadrangle of Somerset House, as the Government had suggested, but in Hyde Park itself. They also arranged to take steps to test the feeling of the industrial districts on the subject before going further. But in all this preliminary work of “sounding” influential persons, the Prince had given peremptory orders that his name should not be publicly mentioned. Unfortunately, Mr. Cole, with Hibernian effusiveness, had been tempted to disobey these orders at a meeting in Dublin, much to the annoyance of the Queen and her husband. “Praising me at meetings,” wrote his Royal Highness to Colonel Phipps, “looks as if I were to be advertised and used as a means of drawing a full house, &c.”--and if there was anything which was unspeakably offensive to the Queen, it was the use of her or her husband’s name for purposes of puffery. A few days after this disagreeable little episode (27th September) the Queen and her family left Balmoral for Osborne. They broke their journey at Howick, where they spent a night with Lord Grey, and in a few days after that they received tidings which filled their hearts with the utmost sorrow. The ever-faithful Anson, the Prince’s first Secretary, died, and the Queen’s household was filled with the deepest regret. The Queen herself wrote a touching letter to King Leopold, which shows how her heart bled for the widow of her most zealous servant; and Lady Lyttelton, writing on the 9th of November, says: “Every face shows how much has been felt; the Prince and Queen in floods of tears, and quite shut up.” All through the record of the Queen’s life, indeed, we find evidence of the cordial relations which bound her to those who served her. Their zeal indeed has been great, but it has been more than equalled by her sympathetic appreciation of it. Colonel Phipps succeeded Mr. Anson as Privy Purse, and Colonel (afterwards General) Grey as the Prince’s Secretary.