But there was business to be done, and the Queen was fortunate in having with her such trusty counsellors as Lords Aberdeen and Liverpool. A compact about the Spanish marriages was then and there made between France and England; a compact for the terms of which we are dependent, not alone upon English state papers, but upon the unimpeachable testimony of MM. Guizot and Regnault. As the starting-point of the one court was that the Queen of Spain should marry a Prince of the House of Coburg, and of the other that she should marry a Prince of the reigning French house, of course no settlement could be come to except by an unequivocal compromise. Thus did Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot arrange it:--The King of France renounced all pretensions, on the part of any of his sons, to the hand of the Queen of Spain. It was stipulated that the Queen should choose her husband from the princely descendants of Philip V.; this stipulation excluding the dreaded competition of a Coburg. As to the projected marriage of the Duc de Montpensier, the son of Louis Philippe, with the Infanta Donna Maria, sister of the Queen of Spain, Louis Philippe agreed that it should not take place "till the Queen was married and had had children." On these conditions, the Queen of England and her counsellors waived all objections to the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier. Louis Philippe kept his word by having his son married to the Infanta on the very same day, and at the same altar, as that on which her elder sister the Queen was married. In the summer of this year, the Princess Augusta of Cambridge, the Queen's first cousin, was married to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The following extract from the diary of Mr. Raikes will be admitted to be far from the least amusing and characteristic anecdote of the Queen which we present in these pages:--