It is characteristic of Stockmar that even after he was convinced that he had at first underestimated the Prince, and that it would be impossible to make a better choice of a husband for the Queen, he did not allow politics did not exclude morals; the next step after a suitable education for the Prince was that he should win the affection of the Princess, so that the marriage should be founded on a stable basis of mutual love. Nothing could be more erroneous than to suppose that Stockmar gained his great influence with the Queen and Prince by judicious flattery. Affection and admiration he had in abundance for both of them; the Prince especially he came to love as a son; but his rule of conduct with them and with all other Royal personages was to speak out fully and frankly what was in his mind, not at all to echo what he thought was in theirs. He did not in this nor in other things act so much by instinct as by settled rule. “If you are consulted by princes to whom you are attached,” he wrote to the Belgian Minister, M. Van de Weyer, “give your opinion truthfully, boldly, and without reserve. Should your opinion not be palatable, do not, to please or conciliate him, deviate for a moment from what you think the truth.” It was this absolute sincerity which gave his advice its weight and value. His early letters to the Prince are characterized by sharp criticism, such as few young men in any position would take in good part; and it is very much to the credit of the Prince that he was able to do so; for instance, on leaving England in 1841, Stockmar wrote a long letter to the Prince, in the course of which he dwells on the tendency he had observed in him to be carried away “by impulses and predilections for men and things which spring from mistaken or perverted feeling. This tendency, which on a close self-scrutiny you will find to be the result either of weakness or vanity, should because of its very origin be most strenuously subdued. The same defect too often leads your Royal Highness, even in matters of moment, to rest satisfied with mere _talk_, where _action_ is alone appropriate. It is, therefore, not merely unworthy of you, but extremely mischievous.”