[420]
at Sion, and now we are going to Claremont.
From this account you will see how constantly engaged we are, and that we must make the most of our time to see at least some of the sights in London.
Dear aunt is very kind to us, and does everything she can to please us; and our cousin also is very amiable. We have not a great deal of room in our apartments, but are nevertheless very comfortably lodged.
The queen has since recorded her recollections of the prince at the time of this visit:
The prince was at that time much shorter than his brother, already very handsome, but very stout, which he entirely grew out of afterward.
He was most amiable, natural, unaffected, and merry; full of interest in everything; playing on the piano with the princess, his cousin; drawing; in short, constantly occupied.
He always paid the greatest attention to all he saw, and the queen remembers well how intently he listened to the sermon preached in St. Paul's, when he-and his father and brother accompanied the Duchess of Kent and the princess there, on the occasion of the service attended by the children of the different charity schools.
It is indeed rare to see a prince, not yet seventeen years of age, bestowing such earnest attention on a sermon.
After a stay in
England of some weeks, Prince Albert returned home, and resumed his studies.
Each of the cousins was highly prepossessed in favor of the other.
Indeed, the princess seems to have made up her mind, on this occasion, that, if public policy forbade her marrying her cousin Albert, she would never marry at all.
The eighteenth birthday of Princess Victoria, which was May the 24th, 1837, when she attained her legal majority, was celebrated throughout the
British Empire as a national