Other anxieties and misfortunes had not been lacking while the fate of British India still hung in the balance.  The attitude of some European Powers, whom the breaking forth of the Mutiny had encouraged in the idea that England’s power was waning, was full of menace, especially in view of what the Prince Consort justly called “our pitiable state of unpreparedness” for resisting attack.  Prompted by him, the Queen caused close inquiry to be made into the state of our home defences and of the navy—­the first step towards remedying the deficiencies therein existing.  Also a “cold wave” seemed to be passing over the commercial community in England; the year 1857 being marked by very great financial depression, which affected more or less every department of our industries.  In connection with this calamity, however, there was at least one hopeful feature:  the very different temper which the working classes, then, as always, the greatest sufferers by such depression, manifested in the time of trial.  They showed themselves patient and loyal, able to understand that their employers too had evils to endure and difficulties to surmount; they no longer held all who were their superiors in station for their natural enemies:  a happy change, testifying to the good worked by the new, beneficent spirit of legislation and reform.

It is under the date of this year that we find Mr. Greville, on the authority of Lord Clarendon, thus describing the very thorough and “eminently useful” manner in which the Queen, assisted by the Prince, was exercising her high functions:—­

“She held each Minister to the discharge of his duty and his responsibility to her, and constantly desired to be furnished with accurate and detailed information about all important matters, keeping a record of all the reports that were made to her, and constantly referring to them; e.g., she would desire to know what the state of the navy was, and what ships were in readiness for active service, and generally the state of each, ordering returns to be submitted to her from all the arsenals and dockyards, and again, weeks or months afterwards, referring to these returns, and desiring to have everything relating to them explained and accounted for, and so throughout every department....This is what none of her predecessors ever did, and it is, in fact, the act of Prince Albert.”

We turn from this picture of the Sovereign’s habitual occupations to her public life, and we find it never more full of apparently absorbing excitements—­splendid hospitalities exchanged with other Powers, especially with Imperial France, alternating with messages of encouragement, full of cordiality and grace, to her successful commander-in-chief in India, Sir Colin Campbell, with plans for the conspicuous rewarding of the Indian heroes at large, with public visits to various great English towns, and with preparations for the impending marriage of the Princess Royal; and we realise forcibly that even in those sunny days, when the Queen was surrounded with her unbroken family of nine blooming and promising children, and still had at her right hand the invaluable counsellor by whose aid England was governed with a wisdom and energy all but unprecedented, her position was so far from a sinecure that no subject who had his daily bread to gain by his wits could have worked much harder.