ast Victoria found it possible to regret the bad weather without
immediately reflecting that her "dear Albert always said we could not
alter it, but must leave it as it was;" she could even enjoy a good
breakfast without considering how "dear Albert" would have liked the
buttered eggs. And, as that figure slowly faded, its place was taken,
inevitably, by Victoria's own. Her being, revolving for so many years
round an external object, now changed its motion and found its centre
in itself. It had to be so: her domestic position, the pressure of
her public work, her indomitable sense of duty, made anything else
impossible. Her egotism proclaimed its rights. Her age increased still
further the surrounding deference; and her force of character, emerging
at length in all its plenitude, imposed absolutely upon its environment
by the conscious effort of an imperious will.

Little by little it was noticed that the outward vestiges of Albert's
posthumous domination grew less complete. At Court the stringency of
mourning was relaxed. As the Queen drove through the Park in her open
carriage with her Highlanders behind her, nursery-maids canvassed
eagerly the growing patch of violet velvet in the bonnet with its jet
appurtenances on the small bowing head.

It was in her family that Victoria's ascendancy reached its highest
point. All her offspring were married; the number of her descendants
rapidly increased; there were many marriages in the third generation;
and no fewer than thirty-seven of her great-grandchildren were living at
the time of her death. A picture of the period displays the royal family
collected together in one of the great rooms at Windsor--a crowded
company of more than fifty persons, with the imperial matriarch in
their midst. Over them all she ruled with a most potent sway. The small
concerns of the youngest aroused her passionate interest; and the oldest
she treated as if they were children still. The Prince of Wales, in
particular, stood in tremendous awe of his mother. She had steadily
refused to allow him the slightest participation in the business of
government; and he had occupied himself in other ways. Nor could it
be denied that he enjoyed himself--out of her sight; but, in that
redoubtable presence, his abounding manhood suffered a miserable
eclipse. Once, at Osborne, when, owing to no fault of his, he was too
late for a dinner party, he was observed standing behind a pillar and
wiping the sweat from h