The grief of the Queen was only equalled by that of the Prince of Wales, who seems to have regarded the Grand Duchess as his favourite sister. As for the English people, they mourned for her with simple-minded sincerity. The character of the Princess Alice--so full of sense and enterprise, and high-spirited self-helpfulness--had been to them peculiarly attractive. She had won their gratitude by her devotion to her mother in the first hours of her widowhood, and to the Heir Apparent, when in 1871 his life hung in the balance. That her daily existence was clouded with sordid cares due to straitened means was not known to her countrymen till after her death. But they were well aware that much domestic sorrow had entered into her life. Her efforts to raise the condition of her sex in Germany procured for her many enemies in a country where it is deemed desirable to reduce the house-mothers to the position of upper servants in their families, who, however, do their work without claiming wages. Sticklers for Court etiquette were shocked by the unconventional activity manifested by the Princess in furthering the organisation of charitable and educational movements. Even the poor in most instances viewed her visits to their homes--visits which she ultimately found prudent to make _incognito_--with suspicious hostility. She had the character in fact of being bent on revolutionising the domestic and social life of Darmstadt by English ideas. She loved learning, and delighted in the society of men of letters and artists, who were always her most favoured guests. Hence it was bruited about that she was an infidel, and a foe to religion. Undoubtedly at one time, when she cultivated close relations with Friedrich Strauss, under whom she studied the works of Voltaire, her theological views ceased to be orthodox. But her musings on the mystery of life, the problem of duty, the conflict between Will and Law in the world, reveal a profoundly reverent and eagerly upstriving spirit, ever struggling towards the light. Some day the story of the spiritual conflict that went on in the still depths of this pure and gentle soul may be told. Here it is enough to say that personal influences played a great part in bringing it to a happy issue. Some time after her philosophical conclusions had crumbled away like dust, one of her most intimate relatives writes, “She told me herself, in the most simple and touching manner, how this change had come about. I could not listen to her story without tears. The Princess told me she owed it all to her child’s death, and to the influence of a Scotch gentleman, a friend of the Grand Duke’s and Grand Duchess’s,” who was residing with his family at Darmstadt.[138] “I owe all [Illustration: THE ALBERT MEMORIAL, KENSINGTON.]