CHAPTER VI.
THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS.
[Illustration: Windsor Castle.]
IT has been the Queen's good fortune to see her own true-love match
happily repeated in the marriages of her children. One would almost
say that the conspicuous success of that union, the blessing that it
brought with it to the nation, had set a new fashion to royalty.
There is quite a romantic charm about the first marriage which broke
the royal home-circle of England--that of the Queen's eldest child
and namesake, Victoria, Princess Royal, with Prince Frederick
William, eldest son of the then Prince of Prussia, whose exaltation
to the imperial throne of Germany lay dimly and afar--if not
altogether undreamed of by some prophetic spirits--in the future. The
bride and bridegroom had first met, when the youth was but nineteen
and the maiden only ten, at the great Peace Festival, the opening of
the first Exhibition. Already the charming grace and rare
intelligence of the Princess had attracted attention; and it is on
record that at this early period some inkling of a possible
attraction between the two had entered one observer's mind, who also
notes that the young Prince, greatly interested by all he saw of free
England and its rulers, was above all taken with the "perfect
domestic happiness which he found pervading the heart, and core, and
focus of the greatest empire in the world.
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