Prince Leopold was a pleasing and polished orator, and being the only member of his family who spoke the English tongue without any trace of a German accent, his platform performances were always successful. His addresses reflected the thoughtful, cultivated mind of a young man who had lived much in the companionship of books, and who had read discursively without studying deeply. He was never commonplace, and his merely formal utterances were usually marked by a distinction of style, that well became a princely scholar. In the singularly beautiful preface which the Princess Christian wrote for the “Biographical Sketch and Letters” of her sister, the Grand Duchess of Hesse (Princess Alice), she says that as the Duke of Albany was the last to see her gifted sister in life, so he was the first of the Queen’s children “to follow her into the silent land.” It is a curious fact that, as with her, the shadow of early death seems to have cast itself in the form of presentiment over his young life. Mr. Frederick Myers, in his eulogistic reminiscences of the Duke of Albany, alludes to this circumstance in the following passage:--“The last time I saw him [the Duke of Albany] to speak to,” writes a friend from Cannes, March 30th, “being two days before he died, he _would_ talk to me about death, and said he would like a military funeral, and, in fact, I had great difficulty in getting him off this melancholy subject. Finally, I asked, ‘Why, sir, do you talk in this morose manner?’ As he was about to answer he was called away, and said, ‘I’ll tell you later.’ I never saw him to speak to again, but he finished his answer to another lady, and said, ‘For two nights now the Princess Alice has appeared to me in my dreams, and says she is quite happy, and that she wants me to come and join her. That’s what makes me so thoughtful.’”[201]