Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/211

QUEEN VICTORIA 367 before her great bereavement that the queen lost her mother, the Duchess of Kent. Few can read the account of that sorrowful parting without being drawn nearer to the sovereign by the tie of a common humanity, so deep and tender is the affection that is revealed. But till 1 86 1 the queen was surrounded by all those who were dearest to her, and she and the prince shared the sweet task of superintending their children's education. Few parents more anxiously considered the best methods for secur- ing a sound moral and religious training. "The greatest maxim of all," writes the queen, *is that the children shall be brought up as simply and in as domes- tic a way as possible, that (without interfering with their lessons) they should be as much as possible with their parents, and learn to place their greatest confidence in them in all things." As to religious training, the queen's conviction was that it is best when given to a child " day by day at his mother's knee." It was only the great pressure of public duty which rendered it impossible for her to fulfil her part so completely as she desired. " It is .a hard case for me," her majesty writes, in reference to the princess royal, " that my occupations prevent me being with her when she says her prayers." The religious convictions of the queen and the Prince Consort were deep. They both cared little for those mere accidents and conventionalities of religion which so many magnify into essentials. The prince, eminently devout, insisted on the realities of religion. ' We want not what is safe, but true," was his com- mentary on the exaggerated outcry against " Essays and Reviews." " The Gospel, and the unfettered right to its use," was his claim for Protestantism. For his own spirit, like that of the queen, was truly religious. The quiet evenings spent to- gether before communion, and the directness and reverence with which both served God were combined with an utter abhorrence of all intolerance. Such qualities are generally misunderstood by the narrow-minded, who have only their own "shibboleths" to test all faith, and the one Church whatever it may be that they regard as "true." The queen and the prince rose above such distinc- tions ; they shared the Catholicism of St. Paul, " Grace be with all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." But these bright and happy years were doomed to a sudden ending. It is only when we have realized all that her husband was to her that we can measure how fearful was the blow to her loving heart when he who was her pride and her constant companion was laid low. We may well feel what a shattering it brought to all that hitherto had enriched her life, and how very desolate her position be- came when she was left in loneliness on the throne, a widow separated by her queendom from many of those supports which others find near them, but from which she was deprived by her position. " Fourteen happy and blessed years have passed," she wrote, in 1854, "and I confidently trust many more will pass, and find us in old age as we now are, happily and devotedly united. Trials we must have, but what 'are they if we are together ? " In God's wisdom that hope was not to be realized, and in 1861 the stroke fell, and it fell with crushing power.