THE QUEEN’S LOVE STORY.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 7, 13 May 1893, Page 11

THE QUEEN’S LOVE STORY.

Queen Victoria will be seveidy-four years old on the 24th of May, and on June 20 she will have reigned fifty-six years. Her excellent, if not robust, health, gives every promise that she will round out the century as Queen and Empress. At any time it must be an awkward and unpleasant matter for a woman to pop the question. And yet this is what Queen Victoria was compelled to do. This is how an exchange tells the story : —Prince Albert was visibly in love with Her Majesty, but his position as a foreign prince, and occupying a place inferior to the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, prevented his declaring the passion which possessed him. At last the Queen could bear his silence no longer. Of the different accounts of Her Majesty’s proposal, one says that “ Her Majesty endeavoured to encourage her lover by asking' how he liked England, to which he replied, ‘ Very much P’ Hext day there was the same query and the same answer. On the third day the maiden monarch, blushing, asked him ‘ If he would like to live in England,’ and, emboldened by Her Majesty’s demeanour, ‘ on this hint he spoke,’ and the affair was

settled.” Another rendering of the pretty story is that Prince Albert replied, “ Exceedingly,” when the Queen put the question “ Do you like England ?” “ Then,” pursued Her Majesty, “it depends on you to make it your home.” Full of joy at the eventful question of the woman he loved, Prince Albert wrote :

“ The Queen sent for me alone to her room the other day and declared to me, with a genuine outbreak of affection, that I had gained her whole heart, and would make her intensely happy if I would make her the sacrifice of sharing my life with her, for she said she looked on it as a sacrifice. The only thing which troubled her was that she did not think she was worthy of me.” The Queen on her part was quite as happy at the result, as she herself declares. Writing shortly after the proposal to her old friend Baron Stockmar, she said: “ I do feel so guilty I know not how to begin my letter, but I think the news it will contain will be sufficient to ensure your forgiveness Albert has completely won my heart, and all was settled between us this morning. I feel certain he will make me happy. I wish I could feel as certain of making him happy.” Naturally, when the Queen was happily mated, and when in the years to come the young Prince and Princesses were given in marriage, she took an intense delight in furthering the love matches. In her “ Diary in the Highlands ” you may find several expressions of this joy at seeing her children married. The marriage of the Emperor Frederick William, when Crown Prince of Prussia, to the Princess Royal, gave her great pleasure. Prince Frederick made love to the Princess Victoria at

Balmoral, and this is what the Queen, said of the engagement; “He (Prince Frederick) had already spoken to us of his wishes ; but we were uncertain, on account of her extreme youth, whether he should speak to her himself or wait till he came hack again. However, we felt it was better he should do so ; hut during our ride up Craig -ua - Ban this afternoon, he picked a piece of white heather (the emblem of ‘good luck’), which he gave to her, and this enabled him to make an allusion to his hopes and. wishes as they rode down Glen. Goinoch, which led to this happy conclusion.”