needs no emphasis; but no one who has loved and been loved as she has, should be called unhappy. It was also to Stockmar that the Prince confided his own most sacred feelings upon the priceless treasure his marriage had brought him. Writing to his trusted friend to pour out his grief on the death of his father, the Duke of Coburg, in 1844, the Prince says: "Just such is Victoria to me, who feels and shares my grief, and is the treasure upon which my whole existence rests. The relation in which we stand to one another leaves nothing to desire. It is a union of heart and soul, and is therefore noble, and in it the poor children shall find their cradle, so as to be able one day to insure a like happiness for themselves."
When Prince Albert's political influence first began to be felt, he was generally supposed to be a Tory; Greville repeatedly speaks of him as if he were a Tory; but from the wider knowledge which the publication of his correspondence has given, it is clear that his mind was on many subjects far in advance of even the Whig statesmanship of the day; for instance, he was a convinced Free Trader at the time when Melbourne was declaring that the repeal of the Corn Laws was the most insane proposal that had ever entered the human brain. He was ardently in favor of the reform of university education so as to bring the universities more closely into touch with the needs of modern life. He foresaw that German unity was the necessary condition of German greatness,[1] and urged the necessity of the smaller German princes making the sacrifices requisite to the attainment of
- ↑ In this respect his political views were far in advance of those of his English tutors. Greville records a conversation he had in 1849 with Lord Aberdeen about the Prince's politics. "Aberdeen spoke much of the Queen and Prince, of course with great praise. He says the Prince's views were generally sound and wise, with one exception, which was his violent and incorrigible German Unionism" (Greville, vol. vi. p. 305).
