Whilst making his "grand tour," the Prince kept up an occasional correspondence with his cousin. From Switzerland he sent her an album of the places which he visited, from the top of the Rigi a dried Alpine rose, and from Ferney an autographic scrap of Voltaire, which he received from an old servant of the great philosopher. By the early part of 1839, the tour was concluded, and we find the Prince once more at Brussels with his uncle. Leopold now spoke to him more fully and definitely than he had hitherto done about his prospects in life and the state of his affections. It very clearly appears that the marriage with the Queen had been gradually becoming more and more an understood thing. It appears equally clear that the Queen was averse, as yet, to committing herself to a distinct and final engagement. She was willing to marry, but wished to defer the contraction of the union. She thought both herself and her cousin too young; and the interests of her people, rather than any personal backwardness, influenced her wish that both she and her husband should be older ere they became man and wife. She regretted afterwards this delay, and felt that the harassments of the Bedchamber Plot and other still more painful incidents which we have thought it preferable not to rake up and reproduce in these pages, would have been borne by her with more equanimity had she had the natural protection of a husband six months or a year ere the date of her marriage. It was probably this postponement of any definite settlement that occasioned Prince Albert's absence from England at the Coronation, in June, 1838. His father was invited, and received at the hands of his niece the honour of the Order of the Garter. The Dowager Duchess of Gotha was very proud of this, and proud also to recollect that her son-in-law possessed the noblest knightly order of Christendom, which her own father of Hesse-Cassel, and her father-in-law of Gotha, had also worn and treasured. [Sidenote: OBJECTIONS TO THE MARRIAGE.]